Page 24 of A Scot on the Rocks

She gave him the look of a woman wondering why men required so much time to arrive at obvious conclusions.

Jamie took the basket from her. “What’s all this?”

“Food.”

“I’ve already eaten.”

“You’ll eat again.”

Inside the basket was bread, cheese, two onions, and a small piece of salt pork.

She looked to where one of the upper shutters had come loose again and tapped against the stone when the breeze shifted.

“You fixing that today?”

“I was planning to.”

“And my roof?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You said that yesterday.”

With a sigh, he looked at her. “I’m beginning to notice an unpleasant pattern among the women of this glen.”

“Good.” Morag turned to go as Jamie watched her walk down the path, her shawl drawn tight around her shoulders.

The shutter needed fixing, her roof needed new slate, Alasdair needed convincing to wait until the water cleared, and Bess needed rubbing down.

He carried the basket inside, thinking about the meddlesome women in his life.

Chapter 5

Olivia

Glenbrae, Scotland

Present Day

It had been threatening to storm most of the day, the clouds hanging over Glenbrae in a low gray ceiling that hid the tops of the hills, but it was the thunder rolling somewhere beyond Dunarraidh that finally made Fiona look up from the restoration plans and suggest, that perhaps they’d done enough for one day.

Olivia, who was crouched beside the tunnel entrance to the old passage, cheeks pink and one gloved hand braced against the wet stone, looked toward the sky and had to admit Fiona had a point.

The weather had changed quickly during the last half hour. What had begun as an ordinary drizzle had turned into a steady rain, turning the gravel drive to mush in spots, and flattening the long grass along the slope while gusts rattled the temporary fencing around the excavation.

The restoration crew had removed the final boards from the tunnel mouth less than an hour earlier, and now the opening stood exposed beneath a sagging stone lintel, the scent of damp earth, old mortar, stagnant water, and something Olivia had been trying to identify since the first timber had come loose.

That last scent was the reason she was still standing there in the cold instead of going back inside for a hot cup of tea like a reasonable person.

Calum wedged the claw of his pry bar beneath a rusted nail and leaned his weight into it until the iron finally came free with a protesting shriek. He was twenty-five, red-haired and freckled, with the solid build of a man who spent his days carrying stone, timber, and equipment. Rain ran from the brim of his hard hat and down the shoulders of his waxed jacket as he tossed the nail into a bucket with the others.

“We should leave the rest till morning,” he said.

Olivia straightened, adjusting the strap beneath her hard hat. “If this keeps up, the lower section could flood.”

Calum looked at the clouds, then at the narrow black opening in the hillside. “Aye. Which was rather my point.”

She smiled despite herself.