CHAPTER TEN

THE NEXT DAY MALCOLM WOKE UP EARLY to his alarm and rapped sharply on Kylee’s door to wake her. “Time to get up, Ky. We need to get going.” He waited until he heard a sleepy acknowledgment inside and then rustling that indicated she was getting out of bed. It was her voice lesson that necessitated the early wake-up call, but she was a teenager after all. They’d rushed out the door far too many times, something that grated on Malcolm’s precise, orderly concept of time.

By the time Kylee came downstairs, dressed in her weekend clothes of jeans and a hoodie, her long blonde hair tied in a ponytail, the porridge was ready and waiting to be spooned into bowls. It was just about the only thing Malcolm could make without burning.

“What a surprise!” Kylee said. “I would never have expected porridge for breakfast.”

“Clam up, girlie,” Malcolm said, gesturing to the table. “You can make your own breakfast if you don’t like it.”

Kylee had heard this same routine before, so she rolled her eyes and slid into the chair with her bowl in hand. “You know, you don’t have to drive me. I do have my own car.”

“A four-hour round-trip is too far for you to be driving alone at seventeen. I feel better taking you myself.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are way overprotective?”

“Only you, about twenty times. And I have good reason to be overprotective.” He fixed her with a stern look and instantly regretted it when a shadow of grief passed over her face. He didn’t mean to remind her about Nicola and Richard’s passing any more often than she already thought about it, but surely she could understand that he might be reluctant to send her off by herself when it was an auto accident that had taken her parents’ lives nearly a year ago. The weather in Scotland was too unpredictable. All it took was an unforecasted storm to turn rain to snow and create driving conditions that she was too inexperienced to handle. As long as he was in charge of her, he would err on the side of caution.

As soon as Malcolm finished his porridge, sweetened with honey, cream, and butter, he put his bowl in the sink. “I’m going to get dressed, and then we can go.”

As he climbed the stairs, he wondered what Serena was doing at this moment. Was she already moving into the croft house next door, or was she, too, having breakfast with her children? He and Serena weren’t as different as she seemed to believe. They were both single parents doing the best they could with the circumstances they’d been given. Of course, she had the resources to spend time with her children; but then again, Kylee was at an age where she needed Malcolm’s guidance and support far more than his constant attention. She was also incredibly responsible for her age. He definitely had the easier job of the two of them.

Not that Serena would acknowledge their similarities. Like it or not, things had gotten personal between them, but she seemed to believe that if she ignored it, pretended the spark didn’t exist, it would go away. Maybe she could flip the switch that easily, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how inviting her lips had looked and wishing he’d made a move, consequences be hanged.

Malcolm combed his hair and trimmed his beard, which was looking more like a proper beard than the scraggly mess it had been before, then donned a heavy fisherman’s knit sweater with his jeans. His laptop went into a ballistic nylon case along with a small notepad and a reference book on web design. He’d have a couple of hours to work while Kylee was in her voice lesson, and even though the coding to add the social media feed to the site hardly compared in difficulty to his old work of analyzing astronomical data, he was out of practice.

“We’re going to be late!” Kylee yelled from downstairs.

“I’m coming.” He slung the case over his shoulder, descended the stairs quickly, and took his coat from the front hall. “Grab your keys. You’re driving today.”

Kylee looked surprised, but she took her rucksack and followed him outside to where her Volkswagen was parked behind his Ford Focus. The tiny cars in the United Kingdom had been a surprisingly difficult readjustment after years in the United States. He’d tried to talk Kylee into something a little bigger and a little safer, but she had insisted on this supermini in case she moved to the city center at some point. A reasonable plan, but it still meant feeling like a sardine squeezed into a can whenever he rode with her.

He didn’t complain when she turned the radio to a pop station the minute they crossed the Skye bridge—those were the rules: the driver chose the music—and instead cracked open the web-design book.

After a few minutes she glanced over at him. “What are you reading?”

“XML and CSS. Thrilling, right?”

“Sounds like good craic. My next question is why?”

“I asked Serena to take over the hotel’s social media. I’m working on tying it in to the hotel website.”

“That’s a good idea!”

He shot her a wry smile, even though she missed it because she was responsibly keeping her eyes on the road. “Don’t sound so surprised, Kylee. It does happen every once in a while.”

“Sorry. You know that’s not what I meant. I didn’t know you even had an Instagram account.”

“Well, now that I’ve retired my eight-track and you’ve shown me those newfangled things called MP3s, I figured I’d go all the way with the technology.”

Kylee snorted, but she didn’t apologize. With typical teenage centricity, she assumed that anyone over the age of twenty had no idea what was going on in the world, never mind the fact that Malcolm had made a career of writing software for cutting-edge technology. He just smiled to himself and returned to his reading. Despite the adjustment inherent in the move back to Skye and taking on a responsibility he’d thought was still years in the future, he liked Kylee. She was smart and funny, just like Nicola. When she started singing along with the radio, he reminded himself to add talented to the list. God only knew where she had inherited her singing ability, because when the rest of the family sang, the neighborhood dogs joined in.

He’d refreshed his cascading style sheet knowledge and gotten a disturbingly thorough education on the Top 40 by the time Kylee made the turnoff to the small commercial section of Fort William, where her voice teacher was located. She made a quick detour and pulled up in front of a pub called the Blooming Fuchsia. “Pick you up in two hours?”

“I’ll be waiting. Have fun.” He climbed out and watched the red car drive off before heading inside.

It was early to be in a pub, but the Blooming Fuchsia opened at seven o’clock and served an excellent breakfast. As soon as he set foot in the clubby interior, with its dark paneling and polished mahogany bar, a young blonde woman appeared from the back, wearing a bright smile.

“Morning, Malcolm! Your usual?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, Janine. I’m going to grab a booth.”

He settled in at one of the large corner booths, knowing the pub didn’t start picking up steam until after noon on Saturday, and took out his laptop. He nodded his thanks to Janine when she left his tea, mixed with milk and sugar, and then he brought up a code editor on-screen. He’d already found some open source social media widget code; all it would take was a few tweaks to make it work with their existing site and save him hours of coding and testing.

“Kylee at her voice lesson?”

Malcolm looked up as Janine set his Scottish breakfast order on the table. “She is. How have things been around here?”

“Not bad. My mum’s moving to Aberdeen with her new boyfriend. Just been helping her pack.”

“Do you still have family in the Highlands?”

“My dad, but I don’t see him much. Leaves me lots of free time.” She looked flattered by the question, which made him regret that he’d engaged. She always seemed to leave openings as if she were hoping he’d ask her out. Which wasn’t going to happen. Not only was she at least ten years younger than he—he guessed about twenty to his thirty-three—but she wasn’t his type. He’d never gone for the slender blondes, especially when they reminded him so much of his niece.

Unbidden, Serena’s image rose in his mind by means of comparison. Hard to pretend that he didn’t at least have a little bit of a thing for his boss when that happened with such regularity. He cleared his throat. “Nice to see you, Janine, but I need to finish this before Kylee comes back.”

“Oh, right. Sure. Just let me know if you need anything. I’ll be right over there.”

Definitely flirting. Malcolm smiled vaguely. “Thanks, I will.”

He hadn’t finished the changes by the time Kylee walked into the pub, but he was close. He saved his work and shut the laptop. “How did it go?”

“Good. We’re working on one of Rosina’s arias from The Barber of Seville. Which is brilliant, because it’s for a coloratura mezzo-soprano, and I’m almost a true contralto.”

He only understood about five words of that sentence, though he was pretty sure the opera was an Italian comedy. He remembered because he’d thought it was funny that a story set in Spain was written in Italian. Still, he gave her an encouraging smile. She wasn’t at all an operatic singer—she wanted to be a singer-songwriter, after all—but she threw herself after anything that would help her reach her ultimate goals. He wanted to encourage that kind of work ethic. “Ready to go, then? You can tell me all about Rosana in the car.”

“Rosina.”

“That’s what I said.” He ruffled her hair, knowing it irritated her, then waved good-bye to Janine behind the bar.

They walked out to where the Polo was parked at the curb, dodging a foursome on their way into the pub. Kylee grinned at him. “You know that girl has been wanting you to ask her out for the last six months.”

“The fact you called her a girl is exactly why I would never do it. She could be one of your friends.”

“You know, you could totally date. It would be okay with me.”

Malcolm got into the car, hoping that she would drop the subject on her way to the driver’s seat, but she persisted.

“Really. I mean, I feel bad that you and Teresa split up when you left—”

“That was Teresa’s doing,” Malcolm said, “not yours. So don’t waste any thought on that. Besides, there’s no point in dating when we have no idea where we’ll end up next.”

He expected her to turn on the ignition, but she just sat there. “What if we stay in Scotland? The University of Glasgow has a good music program, and I’ve already been accepted.”

He frowned. “What’s this about, Kylee? I thought you were keen on going to America.”

She swallowed hard and reached into her pocket, then brought up an e-mail on her phone. His stomach sank as he read the return address: UCLA. He read only as far as it took to see it was a flat rejection. She reached over him to swipe to another message, this one from Berklee College of Music, her first choice. He steeled himself for the bad news.

“Wait, this isn’t a rejection,” he said. “You’re on the waiting list.”

“Same thing. It’s not like any spaces are going to open up. Everyone who gets in attends.”

Malcolm clicked off the screen and handed the phone back to her. “I’m sorry, Kylee. I know how much you wanted this.”

She shrugged, her throat working and her long lashes fluttering as she blinked away tears. “It’s okay. I knew it was a long shot. I mean, at least they didn’t reject me, right? They thought I had talent, but it’s not like I’ve had the world-class training here that some of the other kids had. I’ve heard the program is hellishly competitive.”

Malcolm hesitated and then put an arm around her and gave her a tight hug. “I’m proud of you, Kylee. You’re so talented, I have no doubt that you’ll end up where you’re supposed to be. You can always try a couple of years at Glasgow, and then if you still want to go to America, transfer in as a junior. Or you can do your undergrad program here and then apply for a diploma program at Berklee. You told me admissions for that are less competitive.”

“You’d do that? Stay here in Scotland?”

“Of course I would. We’re a family. That means we look out for each other.” He gave her a little nudge. “Now let’s get going. It looks like rain.”

Kylee was quiet on the way home, but not mopey. He was proud of her maturity. He would have had difficulty dealing with that kind of disappointment at her age, but here she was considering all the options. With her determination, there was no doubt she would make her way in the music business one way or another, even catch the eye of a record label. She had her father’s brains, her mother’s tenacity, and plenty of God-given talent. Malcolm might not be able to claim any credit for that, but at least he could give her every opportunity within his power.