He who kisses joy as it flies by
will live in eternity’s sunrise.
William Blake
The Last Stand Inn was a warren of rooms spanning what had once been a handful of separate buildings connected through the centuries with step-ups and step-downs, odd angles, crooked walls, and scattered courtyards in between. Anna left the small dining area where the auditions were being held and wove through several cozy side rooms, each occupied by one or two scattered groups of people. When she reached the pub, she found Flora and Duncan moving at double-quick speed behind the bar, a well-orchestrated dance of beer foaming into glasses, light refracting on bottles of amber whiskey, ice clinking. A small crowd clustered near the television watched a soccer game, their occasional cheers or groans punctuating the hum of conversation. A goal shortly after Anna entered brought three-quarters of the fans to their feet.
Connal wasn’t in the main pub, but she finally spotted him on the far side in a quiet alcove of the adjacent room. Seated alone by the fireplace, he had his phone wedged against his shoulder while he scribbled notes.
The sight of him caught Anna unexpectedly. Caught her in the pit of her stomach like an ache she’d been trying to ignore.
Still listening to whoever was on the other end of the phone, Connal took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He looked vulnerable in that moment, the way he had at the first village meeting, and the distance shrank between them, the air growing warm and lighter, as though parting to let her reach him faster. To push her toward him. Which was a ridiculous notion, brought on—clearly—by one or possibly two too many of Flora’s Highland coffees.
Cheeks hot, Anna stopped halfway down the bar to collect her thoughts. She couldn’t let her imagination overrule her common sense.
It wasn’t just that he was pretty. Brando was pretty. Brando was also smart, considerate, more complex than she’d imagined, and—as Elspeth had repeatedly pointed out—looked darn good in a kilt. Brando had a sense of humor. For all she knew, Connal MacGregor had none of those things, and while Brando had an actor’s ability to mask his feelings, Connal was an actor. That made him doubly dangerous. So what was she doing, standing here gaping at him with her stomach tied in knots and her heart beating too fast?
Being an idiot, that’s what.
She really needed air.
What was it that Brando had said? The loch would find a way to make things happen even when the head wouldn’t listen. But Anna had already been kicked into a thousand pieces once by the kind of romance that made her dizzy. Henry had made her palms sweat the first time he’d passed her a handout in AP Bio their sophomore year of high school, and she’d never stopped feeling that way about him. Not until the moment when, the summer after college while she was back home finalizing the arrangements for their wedding, he’d thrown away his job managing his father’s furniture factory and run off to Hollywood with her sister Katharine.
He’d given Anna no warning at all, none that she had seen anyway. Maybe none that she’d been willing to see. Apparently, he’d always been a better actor than she’d believed him to be.
She’d spent the rest of that summer sending back wedding gifts and trying to politely hold her head up while her mother told her to pretend it didn’t matter, that she couldn’t let people see she minded. Of course, Anna had minded. So much she’d ached with it.
In her cold bed every night, all the moments of their time together had played like a song stuck in her head—every touch, every word, every last glance between her and Henry, between Henry and Katharine. She had spent months searching her mind for clues she could have missed, and she’d never found any answers.
Getting out of bed in the mornings had been even harder. Every new day meant eating in the kitchen with her mother watching, eagle-eyed, to make sure Anna didn’t let herself get fat on greasy food and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. It meant more long hours mired in the scandal of it all while her mother paraded her around the country club. Smile, Anna, smile.
Law school had been a merciful escape, but Anna hadn’t gone out on a single date in those three years. Even after law school, apparently, she’d played it safe and let herself get engaged to a man who made her feel little more than friendship for him.
Connal MacGregor was not the sort of man to inspire lukewarm emotions. Not in her. Perhaps not in anyone. Which made him a complication Anna didn’t need in her life.
So why couldn’t she make herself stop staring?
“Did you lose something, doll? I’d be ’appy to help you find it.” From beside the bar on Anna’s left, a voice addressed her. Seated there with two mates, all three of them clearly the worse for drink, a tall man in an Aran sweater and leather jacket got up and headed toward her.
Smiling at him vaguely, Anna shook her head and whipped around to her left. She marched toward the inn’s main entrance and let herself out amid the jingling bells.
The night was cold. The wind smelled of mountain thyme, greening heather, and something like fear, acrid and bitter and suffocating. Anna had left her coat inside, and the chill raised goosebumps on her skin. Around the side of the courtyard, the loch was visible, the dark water rippling with moonlight and the ranks of shadowed steep-sided Highland braes standing guard over both sides down the long length of the glen.
Hugging herself for warmth, Anna stopped on the moss-edged flagstones by the fence, trying to still the confusion that made her itchy and unsettled, like pins and needles, like a limb that was waking up after having lost circulation for too long.
It was ironic: At home, focused on work and day-to-day activities, she had rarely stopped to think about relationships or love or emotional needs. She’d met Mike soon after moving to D.C., and he’d been charming and fun. Distracting. That was the truth of it. He’d been distracting. They had started with a few casual dates, and then, so gradually Anna had barely even noticed, they’d slipped into a relationship that didn’t require a lot of effort.
She’d barely stopped to think when he’d proposed. Her work had been going well. Marriage had been a logical step—sometime in the future. Mike had claimed he understood that her hours were crazy, and if she wasn’t ready to set a date just yet, that had been fine. But as time passed, it had become less fine.
Time was the one thing Anna had known she needed. And the time had never been right. On some inner level, she must have known her reluctance to set a date had nothing to do with being too busy. She hadn’t loved Mike the way that she’d loved Henry. Maybe she hadn’t let herself love him like that.
It hurt too much to love with her entire heart. When Henry had left, everything she’d believed about him, about herself, about the two of them together, had splintered into shards. She’d spent her life since seeing the world in fragments, the past, the present, the future she’d believed in all distorted. Loving someone that much had left her wide open to the kind of pain it was almost impossible to survive.
“Waiting for me, doll?” An arm landed heavily around Anna’s shoulders, and hot beer breath fanned across her cheek.
Anna froze. Froze in a way she hadn’t frozen since she was a child, but then, she’d spent so much of the past few days dredging up things she’d been ignoring too long. Unburying things she’d hidden deep away.
She told herself to move, to wrench away from the man. The signal took too long to reach her brain.
It was the man in the bar with the Aran sweater. A drunk. Nothing more. She stepped forward. The fence blocked her and, when she turned, the man put his arm out to box her in.
“Don’t go running off so soon,” he said with a happy, drunken smile, as though what he was doing was perfectly all right. “I came out to get acquainted.”
Anna turned the other way. He stepped around her.
“Let me go,” she said, her voice high and tight.
“Nae, now, don’t be getting mad. I liked the way you smiled at me far better, and you wanted me to follow, didn’t you? Well, here I am.” He pushed in closer, grinning wider.
Anna spun, and he blocked her again. She was tall, but he was taller and broader, and even drunk he moved with surprising speed. The courtyard was empty in the cold night air, everyone inside where the light shone warmly through the windows.
It was stupid to be afraid. She wasn’t a ten-year-old girl this time, pulled into a closet backstage at a beauty pageant by a judge—an old man—who pulled her against his crotch and kissed her so hard that her own teeth cut through her lip. She wasn’t alone this time. All she had to do was yell, and someone would hear her.
Only then it would be another scene, wouldn’t it? Two car accidents and one more stupid mess she’d gotten herself into in front of half the village.
She’d spent her whole life trying so hard to avoid making messes. To avoid unpleasantness. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to do the right thing.
To heck with it, then. She was done being nice. Done being polite.
Done holding back.
“Let me go,” she repeated coldly, “or I swear I’ll make you and the children you will never have regret you ever saw me.”
He studied her and something in her voice must have finally penetrated his drunken cheerfulness. The grin faltered, and he stepped away from her, his hands raised in surrender.
“No use getting in a flap, doll. I was only being friendly-like.”
He turned with exaggerated care and swaggered away. Anna hugged herself, shivering, and watched him go, trying to catch her breath.
Beyond him, Connal was just emerging from the inn. Spotting Anna, his stride lengthened, and he hurried toward her with a muffled greeting to the drunk as he walked past. Anna locked her knees to keep herself from running toward him.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he drew closer. “I was coming out to find you, because Rhona said you’d gone looking for me.”
“I’m fine,” Anna said, her teeth chattering, her breath still coming fast.
“You’re freezing. What are you doing out here?” He studied her more closely. “What happened? That man, he didn’t—” Connal glanced back at the door that had just swung shut behind the drunk, and his expression shifted. Puzzled to furious.
He half-turned, shoulders bunching, fingers curled into his palms. But Anna grabbed his sleeve, needing his warmth. Needing not to be alone.
He studied her, shivering himself in the thin sweater he was wearing, and she saw the moment of hesitation before he reached for her and started to rub her arms, trying to warm her up.
Big fires started with a little bit of friction.
He touched her. Looked down at her. They looked at each other. Her heartbeat skittered, and his eyes dropped to her mouth.
This was probably stupid, a stupid thing to do, but Anna clearly couldn’t avoid messes, and where had being careful gotten her in life? Henry and Mike and nowhere. . . .
No, not nowhere.
Here.
And Connal had been honest with her from the beginning. He’d shown her his vulnerabilities.
She didn’t step away. He had that shimmer around him again, and the electricity in the air concentrated around her into one hard shove, pushing her forward into his arms. He watched her as she fell against him, watched a long moment without moving, and then his hand slid almost reluctantly along the column of her neck and the curve of her cheek, lingering there, a question written on his features.
Do you want this?
Yes. Heavens, yes, Anna thought, though she couldn’t have said a word even if she’d tried.
Connal’s eyes had gone dark and solemn. Slowly, carefully, he lowered his head, gave her plenty of time to step away, to run. His lips brushed hers with such gentleness, a butterfly’s touch. For the first time in her life, Anna came close to understanding chaos theory: how the wings of a butterfly beating could cause a hurricane. Every drop of her blood surged to meet him, every muscle quivered, begging to be closer.
He murmured something against her mouth and tore off his hat. Drawing her closer, he deepened the kiss, made it grow even more electric until Anna thought she would drown with the joyful pain of waking up, of being alive. Her heart beat so fast she couldn’t breathe.
She hadn’t felt like this since high school. Since Henry.
No, not even Henry.
It was as if every sensation she had ever experienced was all collecting inside her now, a million nerve endings zinging from her lips to her core, every fiber and excited molecule. The feeling was all heat that blurred away thought and plans and calculations, all the hopes she’d tucked away in the dark recesses of herself along with her dreams for the future.
And she let herself fall, because she was surprised and a little drunk and suddenly—inexplicably—oh, so tired of holding herself back, of listening to the voice of reason in her head, of telling herself she wasn’t free or alive or enough for this to happen to her yet.
Yet.
Yet was the most tyrannical of words, wasn’t it? It almost always came after “not” or was used in place of “but,” and it was never said with “yes, please.”
Yes, please was exactly what Anna wanted now. What she needed.
She pressed against Connal, met his lips with her own, claimed his tongue, his breath, his pulse that was as erratic as hers. She wanted to feel everything, to be the kind of girl who lived without a three-step program and a plan for the future. A girl who lived for the moment and in the moment.
This moment.
These lips.
This magic that was singing so unexpectedly in her blood.
She kissed him back until she was dizzy, until they were dizzy together, leaning against each other, breathing hard. He rested his forehead against hers, then started to pull back only to be drawn back to her mouth again as though he couldn’t help himself, as if his lips were drawn there magnetically. And that was the word for what she felt between them. Magnetism that aligned her neurons to his, her polar north toward him, until every cell of her was aware and melting beneath his touch.