Quarterback's Secret Baby (Bad Boy Ballers) (34 page)

I thanked Mrs. Clyde for telling me and then left her in the kitchen to go and get ready for my trip to the pub with Darach. I had no idea what I was going to say to him about what I'd been told, if anything.

Darach drove us to the pub in an ancient, dusty Land Rover and I didn't mention anything Mrs. Clyde had said - not at first. He noticed my mood, though, and tried to make me laugh.

"What were you expecting, a Lamborghini? I'm not the Lamborghini type, Jennifer."

I forced a smile. "I'm not the Lamborghini type either. But only because I can't afford it."

My comment wasn't even really a joke but the Laird laughed anyway. He was wearing a thin, blue cashmere sweater over a button-down shirt and a pair of dark dress pants. I watched him drive out of the corner of my eye, noting the way his long, pale fingers gripped the steering wheel at the top and the way he used the heel of one hand to turn it. He looked so perfectly at ease in his own surroundings - I envied him that sense of belonging - of home.

We got a few stares when we got to the pub and Darach noticed me noticing them.

"They know who I am. And they don't know who you are. That's all it is - just nosey locals."

It still made me a little self-conscious. I had yet to see a single other black person in Scotland, although I suppose it wasn't that much of a surprise, given Castle McLanald's isolated location. When Darach came back to the little wooden table we'd decided to sit at he handed me a large glass of dark liquid.

"Here you go, Jennifer the American. To your first pint!"

We clinked glasses and he watched me take a small, tentative sip. I really tried not to make a face but whatever it was he had me drinking it was extremely bitter.

"Ha! Don't worry, we'll have your palate trained soon enough."

I watched him sip his beer, probably a little too closely I must admit. It left a mustache of foam in the stubble on his upper lip and my fingers itched to reach up and brush it away. It was a relief to be in the pub - the unfamiliar surroundings and new experiences took my mind - and, I suspect, the Laird's - momentarily off Cameron and the fact that she wasn't waiting for us back at the Castle, safe and sound.

The beer didn't just taste strong. Before I'd even finished half of it I could feel the warm, comforting fog of a mild buzz descending over me, making it even more difficult to take my eyes off the straight line of Darach's jaw or the burly width of his shoulders.

"You lightweight, you're not even halfway through your first pint!" he teased, grinning at me and taking a large gulp of his own beer, as if to show me up for the wimp I was.

At one point he got up to go the restroom and left his wallet on the table. I checked to see if anyone was watching and opened it up to see if I could find an I.D. card of some sort. I wanted to know how old he was and I didn't want to have to ask and possibly embarrass myself.

"Jennifer! If you need money, you can just ask."

Busted. I looked up at the Laird. He was grinning at me, sitting back down at the table.

"What do you want to know? How old I am?"

I nodded, cringing, as my cheeks and the tips of my ears got hot.

"I'm thirty-three, Jenny. You could have just asked - I may be an old man to you but I'm not quite over the hill yet."

I almost laughed out loud at Darach's "old man" phrase. He was many things, but 'old man' was not one of them. Devastatingly handsome, masculine enough for his mere presence to make my heart race - yes - but not in any way 'old.' The vibe he gave off was one of grown-up virility - a kind of sexiness that was all his own and nothing like any of the boys I went to college with.

I wasn't sure about bringing up my conversation with Mrs. Clyde and initially decided against it. Darach seemed happier at the pub but I could still sense the sadness underlying everything. He looked drained and I understood more fully why that was. What I wanted to do was get out of my chair, walk around to where he was sitting across from me and put my arms around him. It wasn't just because I wanted to feel his touch again (although that was definitely part of it) - it was the sense of helplessness, of being unable to do anything to truly make him feel better.

We chatted for a while but neither of the two elephants in the room - the kiss we had shared the previous day or Cameron's weekly visits to London - were brought up. The feeling that had been in the air between us at the Treacle-Eater's Tower was still there, but I could feel all the weight of the day on top of it.

"I'm sorry, I'm terrible company, I shouldn't have dragged you out here tonight, Jennifer."

Darach winced as he spoke to me, slowly turning his pint glass round and round in circles on the table.

"You're not terrible company," I replied carefully, trying to make sure I didn't say anything silly, "Everyone is in a sad mood, and everyone knows why."

"I suppose Mrs. Clyde told you everything?"

I was caught off-guard by that comment and Darach knew it.

"It's alright, Jennifer. It's no big secret, and you are Cameron's nanny - you should know what's going on."

"Oh, OK, well..." I stalled, unsure of what to say to the Laird.

"I'm not sure staying here all night and drowning my sorrows is a very good idea. What would you say to a drive to gaze upon our impressive and world famous local landmark?"

I smiled at his obviously sarcastic emphasis on "world famous" and looked at him properly for the first time that night. It was hard for me to look at Darach, because looking at him meant I'd have to look away before I started visibly staring and drooling and I didn't quite trust myself to be able to pull it off.

"Sure," I said, giving a little shrug that I hoped conveyed nonchalance, "what is it?"

"It's a stone, Jennifer. Just a stone on a hill. Some say the fairies put it there but it was probably just the Picts. Of course I'll need your reassurance that you're not the type of lady who faints at such exciting things as carved stones."

I laughed out loud for the first time that evening at Darach's comment and it immediately softened the atmosphere between us.

So we climbed back into the Land Rover and drove down a series of dark, winding lanes for about ten minutes until we got to an open field with a small hill situated in the center of it.

"Do you think you can handle getting a little closer, Jennifer? Or is it all too much for you?"

"I don't know," I said, played along, "You might need to help me stand up if start to feel overcome."

We walked along a footpath giggling like children until we got to the top of the hill. It was too dark to really see anything so Darach reached down and took my hand, placing it on the stone's face so I could trace my fingers along the swirling carvings.

"How old is this?"

"It's probably about two thousand years old, give or take. It's called a 'Pictish stone' and it basically just means a stone carved by the Picts. It may not have been put here originally, some of them have been moved."

"Who are the Picts?" I asked, still following the patterns on the rough stone with my hand and suddenly more intrigued than I had expected to be.

"No one really knows. They're thought to have lived here around the Iron Age and they were either wiped out or assimilated sometime around the Viking Age, a thousand or so years ago."

I'd never heard of the Picts. It was nevertheless a strange and wonderful feeling to be standing in a field underneath a sky studded with clear, bright stars and running my fingers over symbols carved by someone who had been dead for two millennia. I looked up at Darach even though it was too dark to see him properly.

"Wow. This is...this is actually really cool. I want to come back during the day and take a photo."

"Absolutely - we can do it this week, Cameron loves it here."

The mention of Cameron made us both quiet for a moment. I remember the night air feeling cool but not cold. When the Laird put his hand on my back it was as if that had been the one thing I was waiting for. I leaned back into his touch, inhaling sharply.

"Jennifer." Darach whispered my name and brushed the hair off the back of my neck so he could lean down and kiss me and my fingers tightened on the stone's surface at the torturously slow kisses Darach trailed across my nape.

"I've wanted to do this to you ever since I lay eyes on you that first day, in the kitchen."

Mrs. Clyde's warnings about Darach's charm, my own memories of being hurt before and the simple known rules about fraternizing with your employers - none of it mattered as long as his hands were on me. He grasped my hips and pulled me back against him, holding his body tightly against mine so I was pushed up against the cool roughness of the stone. When I felt him - hard - against my back, it made me gasp at the quick, hot need that bloomed between my legs.

"Oh my God...Darach." I didn't mean to say it and I certainly didn't intend the helpless tone I could hear in my voice when I did, but there was no room inside me for embarrassment at that point. I turned around to face him and he bent his head down to mine, opening my mouth with his and pushing his tongue inside.

In one instant I suddenly knew what all the books and songs were talking about. I had kissed men before - I would even have said I enjoyed it - but Darach was different. The driving, insistent male hunger I could feel in him took away my will. I didn't choose to respond to him the way I did, he compelled it - he
demanded
it - and I found myself responding without conscious thought. It was almost as if I'd been waiting my whole life for someone to pull that reaction out of me.

I wasn't surprised at the aggression in Darach - I knew where it was coming from. I suppose any surprise I felt was at my own response. When he grasped one of my wrists and pinned my hand hard enough against the stone that it started to hurt I didn't want him to stop - in fact I wanted him to push harder, I wanted to take away as much of whatever stress and pain was driving him as I could.

"I'm sorry, am I hurting you?" he asked at one point, reaching down with his free hand and running it down my body before digging his fingers into my hip and pulling me against him.

"No, Darach, no you're not hurting me." It was a lie, but I didn't want him to stop. The fabric of my panties and my thin cotton pants was soaked through - I could feel the slickness between my legs every time I moved.

When he took the hem of my shirt in his hands I lifted my arms willingly and let him pull it off over my head. All I could hear was the sound of my blood rushing in my ears and my own short, halting breaths. He stood in front of me for a few seconds after taking my bra off, looking down at my breasts and adjusting himself in his pants.

"Jesus, Jennifer."

I opened my mouth to respond but any words that would have come out dissolved into a soft moan as Darach cupped my breasts in his hands, squeezing and pushing and then simply lowering his head and running the tip of his tongue around one of my nipples. I felt it harden instantly. The feeling of cool air against wet, bare flesh was so acute I almost stumbled. I needed him inside me. The tickle between my legs was an ache now, and one I wasn't going to be able to ignore.

"Darach, I-" He sucked my other nipple into his mouth and I couldn't finish the sentence.

"What is it, Jennifer? Is something wrong?"

The Laird was speaking to me with my nipple in his mouth - I could hear the teasing smile in his voice as he pretended not to have any idea what he was doing to me.

Still unable to speak, I buried my hand in Darach's hair and arched my back, offering my breasts up to him and pulling him against me. He was fiddling with the button on my pants, pushing his hand down until it was almost where I wanted it and then going back to the button again.

"Darach, please."

He knew what I wanted. He kissed his way back up my neck to my mouth and paused, slipping his fingertips an inch or so into my jeans and then pulling them out again.

"I know what you want, Jennifer," he whispered in my ear, flicking his tongue over my earlobe and exhaling heavily as I tilted my hips forward against his body, "You want my fingers inside you, don't you? I don't know if I can do that out here in the open, what if someone sees us?"

He was still teasing, clearly enjoying my breathless neediness. He kept talking as he unbuttoned my jeans and started to unzip them:

"You're a naughty girl, Jennifer, aren't you? I can feel how much you want it. Are you all wet for me, little one?"

I felt him slip his hand into my panties and keep going, two fingers sliding down over my clit and between my lips until I was gasping and struggling, desperate to get my pants all the way off.

"Oh Jennifer, Jenny, oh God, baby."

Darach's control was starting to waver badly. He pushed two fingers into me, all the way in until my eyes closed and all I could do was whimper. "Is this for me, Jennifer? Is this mine?"

There was no time to answer the question - he knew the answer anyway. I just let my knees do what they'd been threatening to do - give in. I sank down onto the grass, yanking my pants and my panties off as Darach stood in front of me unbuckling his belt. I sat there watching him in the darkness, barely able to see and burning up as he undressed. When he finally knelt down between my legs all I needed to feel was his body against mine.

"I need this, Jenny. I need you."