“Ouch!”
The road beneath the van had more ripples in it than Dev Montgomery’s stomach, and that was saying a lot. Each time the van hit a rut it jumped like a jackhammer, driving pain straight into Toni’s temples. She deserved it, both for drinking too much and for making a complete ass out of herself.
She touched her hip pocket where she’d stashed the scrap of paper with his telephone number. She’d never use it. How could she?
“Of course, there is a slight matter of my having eight inches on Mr. Gibson.”
“Oh? Where?”
She winced. And then she’d told him, “You must know you’re gorgeous.”
And had she really said she wished she could “do” Sean Connery? There was no denying Sean was still a fine specimen of a Scotsman, but he was a hundred and fifty years old! And surely she couldn’t have tried to—please God, let this memory be wrong!—peek under his kilt!
And then to cap it off, there had been that kiss.
She could still feel the rising pitch point of desire, the heat of his lips, the fierce pull of attraction… She was lucky she hadn’t woken up in the same bed with him.
Or maybe that was unlucky. She wasn’t sure.
That was the problem. Everything she’d done since she’d fallen off that damn fence made her look like an easy American girl on the prowl. But in truth, she’d never been promiscuous, not anything even remotely like it. Dev Montgomery, however, had made her want to toss a lifetime of caution aside and leap feet first into his bed. It was unnerving, and that alone, she decided as she rolled up the van window against the chill air, was an excellent reason for not calling him this morning.
Along with her aforementioned shamelessness.
No, she wouldn’t be calling him, now or ever. Just the thought of facing him again drove the blood boiling to her face.
She was so immersed in her thoughts she nearly missed the battered sign on the side of the road that said Oronsay Kennel was about ten miles east. She stopped the van, reached into her purse, and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol, dumping two capsules into her palm before popping them into her mouth. With a sense of getting her due, she chomped down on the bitter pills.
No more mooning over Dev Montgomery. Her life was about to change; she was on the cusp of taking possession of the finest dog in the world, a dog she’d longed for since seeing his image on an Internet video loop last year: Grand International Champion Nolly’s Black.
Nolly’s Black would be the basis not only for her own business, but for a program of introducing European bloodlines into her dogs’ pedigrees. If things went as well as she had every reason to believe they would, she would live the life she’d always dreamed about—May through November in two of the world’s most gorgeous “summer” cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and the rest of the year traveling in warmer climes.
Several companies had already offered her lucrative contracts for her and her dogs’ talents. Nolly’s Black would increase the snob appeal immensely among the higher-end suburban companies.
She stepped on the gas, lurching onto the pitted road, her headache fading with her anticipation, thoughts of Devlin Montgomery usurped by the image of a glossy, black-and-white blue-eyed Border collie. By the time she pulled to a stop in front of a neat stone building bearing the Oronsay name, the throbbing in her head had subsided to a dull ache. She got out of the car, looking around with interest.
It was small. She’d expected a large facility with shining kennels set in rows behind modern buildings. Instead the famous Oronsay kennels looked like someone’s converted garage. No more than a dozen runs extended from the side of the building, and only half of these contained dogs—two bitches with litters, a couple of young dogs, and an old campaigner snoozing on a rug. At the far end of the building an old Volvo station wagon stood with its hood wide open, a light rain anointing its automotive innards.
She walked around the side of the building. Behind it, hidden from the road and a short distance up a narrow lane, she saw a small—a really small—castle. Half of it was tumbled in picturesque ruin; the other half was pockmarked with new brickwork and large modern windows. On the renovated side a drift of smoke rose from a thoroughly modern smokestack. She grinned, the romantic part of her nature elbowing aside her practical—and most often louder—side.
It really was a castle, no matter how diminutive, and people really did live in it. Amazing. She’d toured roughly a hundred castles since arriving, castles being something of an obsession with her, but she hadn’t been inside one where the heirs of the original occupants still lived. They were probably associated with the kennels. Probably the owners.
She wondered if there was any chance of her getting inside. Maybe if she played her cards right and hinted to Mr. McGill, the kennel manager with whom she’d corresponded, that she’d like to meet the laird or lairdess—was there such a thing?—she’d be invited up to the castle for an introduction. And a scone. Maybe they even knew Devlin Montgomery.
But first things first. She found a door marked Office and entered. Inside was a large room filled from floor to ceiling with shelves displaying well-dusted trophies, cups, and ribbons. Pictures of dogs—oil paintings, watercolors, and photographs—papered the walls, leaving hardly any space bare. A carved and battered desk that Toni was certain belonged on the Antiques Roadshow stood squarely in the center of the room, and behind this, stooped over a ledger book, sat the quintessential Scottish laird.
His elderly face was lean and ruddy and fierce. A spider’s web of tiny veins mapped his beaky nose, and bristling white brows stood out like shelves above his little piercing blue eyes. Thinning white hair lay smoothly across a freckled, domed head. He silently mouthed numbers from the ledger he pored over.
With a start, Toni realized he hadn’t noticed her entrance. She cleared her throat noisily. He glanced up and then, seeing her, popped to his feet.
He wasn’t very tall. The sports coat he wore—tweed, of course—had leather patches at the elbows, and his trousers bagged at the knees as though he spent a good deal of time kneeling in them.
“Aye?”
He actually said “aye” as an inquisitive! Toni nearly sighed with pleasure. She held out her hand, extending it over the desk. “Hello. I’m Toni Olson, and you must be Donald McGill. It’s so nice to meet you.” Her hand hung unaccepted in the air. The fierce blue eyes were staring at her blankly.
“Mr. McGill?”
“You’re Tony Olson?”
“Yes. Oh.” She suspected the reason for his pole-axed expression. “Toni. Short for Antoinette. You were probably expecting a man?”
“Bloody well right I was,” the old man exploded, taking Toni aback. “I thought you were a man, and I was having a hard enough time with it as it was, but now that you’re a woman…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“Now that I’m a woman, what?” Toni asked, a deep fear beginning to take root.
“Well, a deal’s a deal no matter what, I suppose,” the old man muttered, ignoring her remark. She didn’t press the matter. For a second there she thought the old man was going to renege on their deal.
That couldn’t happen. She’d already made a down payment of half the price of the dog, and her check had already been cashed. That, along with the cashier’s check made out to Oronsay Kennels that she carried in her purse, had effectively wiped out her bank account. Even her credit card was maxed out, run up to the hilt with the presents and things she’d purchased over the last two weeks.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now, if I might see him.”
“Aye,” McGill groused sullenly. “Soon enough fer that. You need to know some things about the beastie before you go carryin’ him off to yer Minna-Soda.”
“Of course.” She must play this cautiously—not give him any excuse to back out of their deal. She sat down on the only other chair in the office. “What can you tell me about Blackie?”
“Well, first off, he’s no kennel dog. He’s been treated like a prince by some that ought to know better since the day he was whelped. No concrete runs for him, ye ken. Ye’d break his heart if ye put him in solitary, and that’s all it is, tha damned kennels with their chain links and not a dog to keep company with. Such cruelty is solitary confinement, as sure as yer standin’ here. A dog’s a pack animal. He craves companionship as much as ye or I.”
Toni, who’d worked with dogs all her life, was in complete agreement, but she couldn’t help the prickle of resentment that crept up her spine at his belligerent tone, or the fact that he was lecturing to her even after they’d had a fair amount of correspondence on this very subject.
Unless he thought she’d just been acting agreeable in order to purchase the dog.
“As I told you,” she said, “I have no intention of putting him in a kennel. He’ll be living in my house. Probably sleeping on my bed.”
“Yer naught thinkin’ of tryin’ to make him a lady’s pet, are you?” McGill asked suspiciously. “’Cause he’s no pet. He’s a workin’ dog,” he cautioned sternly.
“He’ll work, all right. Five or six times a day at least.”
That impressed McGill. He peered at her as though suspecting she was lying. “That’s a fair day’s work. Unless ye mean by work a few exercises.”
“No,” Toni replied. “I mean work. As in ‘work for his kibble.’”
“I dinna know Minnesota had so many sheep.”
Toni laughed. “Oh, it doesn’t. At least not that I know of. But geese it has in spades.”
“Geese?”
“Yes. Big Canadians. They’re everywhere, a plague on Minnesota’s landscape. Every golf course and every park, every stretch of grass by any bit of water, is ankle deep in—”
“Yer gonna use Grand International Champion Nolly’s Black to chase geese off golf courses?”
McGill erupted from his seat. Toni stared at him in alarm. His face and throat were violently red. His jowls quivered. His hands clenched and unclenched into white-knuckled fists at his side.
“Yeah…” she said slowly, worried the old duffer was going to keel over.
“Over my dead body!”
Exactly what she’d been thinking.
The fire engine red had morphed into a shade of magenta, and his neck was swelling up alarmingly, like a bullfrog’s.
“Take it easy,” she said, rising to her feet. “You might pop something if you go on like this. Listen. Is there someone I can call—”
“I’ll be fine just as soon as ye leave here, miss! So please do so. At once.”
She studied him narrowly. As soon as she realized he wasn’t going to actually explode, she considered his words. She didn’t like them. Not one bit
“I’m not leaving without my dog.”
“He isn’t yers yet, lassie.”
“I have a signed contract. You’ve deposited my money in your bank, and I have a cashier’s check here with your name on it. In my book, that makes him mine.”
“Well”—he slapped his hands palms down on the desk, leaning over it and thrusting his red, angry face into hers—“we’re in Scotland now, Missie, and what is or isn’t in yer book don’t matter here.”
“Oh?” she asked quietly.
Toni was normally very easygoing, but the same tenacity that had allowed her ancestors to endure near Arctic winters now surged forth. She had bought this dog. She had scraped and saved and sacrificed in order to buy this dog. She wanted this dog. And by God, she was going to have this dog.
She had contracts to honor. Plans she’d spent a year devising. Two lovely young border collies waiting to be made mothers by a Scottish stud.
She laid her hands on the desk and shifted her weight forward until her eyes were on a level with McGill’s, inches from his face. They both understood the rules in this game: Don’t blink.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to discount my book if I were you, Mr. McGill. Your government certainly won’t, and it might prove a costly mistake if you do. In fact, I guarantee it. Now, if you don’t hand over my dog, I’ll sue your Scottish ass as quick as you can say Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Such foul language! I never hoped to hear a lass—”
“Can it, McGill,” Toni said curtly. “Let me make myself even clearer. I have a plane ticket with reservations for one dog to be transported from this country to mine, and that ticket is nontransferable and nonrefundable and confirmed for three days from now. Come hell or high water, Mr. McGill, I intend to be on that plane. With my dog.”
His brilliant blue eyes narrowed on her. “Ye don’t understand. This dog, Miss… Miss Olson, he’s not just any dog. There’s been a Nolly’s Blackie with the clan for near two hundred years, and every generation carefully accounted for and recorded in that very book.” He pointed at a heavy, battered-looking leather tome sitting in a place of honor in the middle of the bookshelves.
“Why, there are heads of state sittin’ on thrones today who don’t have a pedigree as fine and unblemished as his. And ye want to use him, a Grand International Sheepherding Champion, the distilled essence of the perfect sheepdog, valiant, bold, Nolly’s Black to”—he sputtered, the red flooding his cheeks once more—“to…chase geese?”
Toni’d heard the arguments before. While she too believed that a working dog not only should but must work in order to be happy, she was just as sure that to a herding dog, what it herded didn’t make a damn bit of difference. She’d seen Border collies herd ducks, sheep, geese, and if those weren’t available, children, and always with the same intensity and desire.
Unfortunately, their human handlers were far more prejudiced.
“Believe me, he’ll adore chasing geese, and they present some pretty unique challenges, you know. They swim, and we have lots of lakes, so he’ll have to—”
“He won’t ‘have to’ anything!” McGill’s attempt at being reasonable had apparently ended. “He’s not goin’ with ye. I’ll write ye out a repayment check right now, and ye’ll be off. I’m sure ye’ll be able to find some poor daft herder who’ll sell ye his dog for a tenth of what ye were going to spend on Blackie.”
“Am going to spend on Blackie. You don’t seem to understand. I don’t want any dog. I want Nolly’s Black. He’s going to be the basis for—”
“For what?” sneered McGill. “For a Grand International Gooseherding Champion?”
There was no sense in talking to him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand. He wouldn’t.
“Please go get my dog, or I will be forced to call the local authorities.”
That threat chased the sneer from his thin lips. “Now ye don’t want to do that, miss. I’m sure we can come to some sort of an understanding. I have a fine young—”
“My dog, Mr. McGill,” she said loudly. “Now, please.”
“If ye’ll just listen to reason—”
“Look. I’m giving you until the count of five to leave this office and go get me my dog. If you don’t, I’m going to dial 999.”
He pressed his lips tightly together and marched around the side of the desk. He was small but nasty, and the fact that he had to crane his neck to glare up at her didn’t decrease his ferocity. She quickly back-stepped as he stomped past, stopping halfway through the door to turn and glare at her.
“Ye’ll not take exception to me havin’…” He stopped. Whether his lips were trembling with rage or some other deep emotion, she couldn’t say. He hitched his chin up proudly, and continued. “Ye’ll not mind me havin’ a bit of a farewell with me lad, would ye?”
Her anger abruptly dissolved. How in God’s name could she refuse? She wasn’t heartless. The reminder that she was taking this man’s dog from him hit her with almost physical force. She could only guess what it would mean to her if some stranger were to come and take her dog away.
“Of course,” she replied softly, suddenly abashed. “Of course! You say good-bye to him. Take as long as you like.”
“It’ll be a spell. Blackie…he’s up to the castle.” The old man wiped the back of his knuckles across his eyes. “The…the only home the dear little fellow has…has ever known!”
And with a strangled sob he swung around and fled, slamming the door behind him, leaving Toni to watch him trot, head bowed with the strength of his emotions, past the window. She gulped, feeling a bit like Cruella de Vil, and wandered over to the wall to read some of the framed newspaper clippings.
It took her a good half-hour to finish reading them, and another to leaf through the photo album and studbook. By the time, she’d finished, she was feeling less like a villain and more like a victim. McGill was certainly taking his own sweet time with his good-bye. A person could be halfway to Fort George in the time it was taking him to…
Suspicion hit her like a sledgehammer.
No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. She hurried outside. The rain had stopped, but a bracing wind had replaced it, pushing the clouds overhead.
“McGill!” she hollered. “McGill!”
The dogs in the kennel, up for a bit of afternoon sport, barked encouragingly.
“McGill!” She ran around the side of the building. The van stood where she’d left it, and farther along the Volvo still immodestly exposed its engine. Thank God for that. She hurried back the way she’d come and headed up the path she’d seen McGill take. Maybe the old guy was really still up there, sobbing into Blackie’s ruff.
Close up, the castle lost a lot of its charm. Someone was obviously working on a major renovation, and she could see why. Rubble might look quaint from a distance, but it smelled bad up close. The damp stone scattered about the unrepaired section smelled unpleasantly organic and stale. On the other hand, the newer section looked too new. Why, no one had even bothered to take the windows’ e-rating stickers off!
She banged on the newly hung door. Nothing. She banged harder. A voice shouted for her to come in.
She eased open the door and stepped inside. It was a disaster. A painter, a carpenter, and a fast food deliveryman had obviously had a gigantic brawl in this room, because the evidence of all three professions was scattered across what she judged just might some day become a kitchen floor. She pulled her fascinated musings back to the matter at hand.
“McGill!” she shouted. “McGill, where are you? I want my dog! Now!”
She heard the sound of booted feet approaching from the other side of a closed door across the room. She lifted her chin. No more screwing around.
The door opened. He stood backlit against the bright light, tall and lean and broad-shouldered and gorgeous. He was wearing jeans this time, and damn if he didn’t look just as good in Levi’s as he had in a kilt.
Her eyes grew round. Her jaw grew slack. Her heart started racing as she remembered with exacting detail the shape and texture of his mouth.
His brows dipped in a scowl. So much for their happy reunion.
“McGill left about an hour ago,” Devlin Montgomery said. “Now, what’s this about a dog?”