Two Wee Drams of Love, page 6
“Same. Shall we get you out of there?”
The shower curtain whipped back, revealing a damp Dunstan Cromarty wearing nothing but a pleated black kilt and a scowl. “I can manage.”
“I can help.” He hated this, hated being seen helpless, and Jane could understand that. “My Aunt Della fell in the shower and busted a hip. She lay there for more than a day before my cousin found her.”
A heavy arm settled across Jane’s shoulders. “You’re such a ray of sunshine, wee Jane. How have I functioned without you in my bathroom all these years? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not your auld auntie.”
“One foot at a time,” Jane said, tucking an arm around his waist.
He moved somewhat more easily, so Jane let him find his way to the couch on his own and tidied up in the bathroom. She left the door open to let the steam out, tossed the dirties and the used towels in a closet washing machine and started the load.
“Where’s the heating pad?”
“In the linen closet upstairs, but you mustn’t let the cat see you plugging it in.”
“I noticed cat food in a plastic container labeled ‘Wallace.’ Do you have more than one cat?”
Dunstan eased back on the sofa cushions, and carefully, carefully, stretched out full length. “His proper name is Fat Bastard Wallace Cromarty. The whiskey’s above the cat food in the pantry. Perhaps you’ll share a dram with me?”
The Scots were reputed to be a hospitable lot, unless they were planning murder or treason—much like the Italians. Jane went off in search of hooch and a heating pad.
Dunstan’s house was tidy, even his king-size bed was made—cozy Black Watch plaid flannel sheets and wool blankets—and his personal bathroom was spotless. Sheets and towels in the linen closet were neatly folded and stacked, lavender soaps and sachets tucked between them.
And yet, two spare rooms down the hall from his bedroom were empty. Not sparsely furnished, but echoingly empty. No curtains, no stacked boxes.
The pantry shelves presented the same picture: What stores Dunstan had—healthy cereal, canned soup (low salt, not low fat), tea, coffee, a bag of gourmet bite-size dark chocolates—were arranged for easy access, but more than half the shelves were empty.
And only one box of pasta, one can of tomato sauce, one can of chili beans, though again, the quality was good.
“Why do you stock your larder like an old person?” Jane asked as she plugged in the heating pad.
“Now you’ve done it. Wallace and that heating pad have an unnatural relationship.”
The heating pad’s flannel sleeve was Black Watch plaid. Wallace hopped down from the upright piano and positioned himself sphinx-like on the arm of the sofa.
“He heard you summon him,” Jane said, though the cat’s dimensions suggested an open can of fancy white albacore was the only summons he truly heeded. “Scoot a bit.”
Dunstan snatched the heating pad from her rather than allow her to tuck it behind him. “I’ll do it.”
He positioned it low against his back—very low.
“You have two empty rooms upstairs,” Jane said. “Is that Scottish frugality, or a sign of impending departure for the Auld Sod?”
Because somewhere in the Lonely Woman’s Handbook of Heartbreak, it was written that just as that woman finally found a man who might— might—interest her, he had to ship out for his next assignment, transfer to the home office, or otherwise become geographically compromised.
Though Jane was not interested in Dunstan Cromarty, Esquire. Could not be interested in him.
He closed his eyes, and rather than stand over him, Jane took a seat on the carpeted floor, which created a curious, eye-level intimacy.
“I’ll go home, eventually,” he said. “My mother claims she lives for the day, though she’s little ones aplenty and all three of my siblings to console her. I’m in practice by myself. All the revenue is mine and all the bills too. You know what that’s like.”
He had done a better job than Jane had at creating a home. His piano had pictures of people on it; family, judging from the number of big, smiling men in kilts. The mantel over the woodstove held framed awards and more pictures, one of them a panoramic photograph of some gray stone castle by a beautiful, still lake.
“Take these,” Jane said, passing him two pills. “I found them upstairs. I’m guessing you bought them in the UK, because they have codeine in them and they’re not prescription.”
“That I did.” He downed the pills. “I forgot I had them in my luggage, which doesn’t say much for the constabulary in Customs.”
A sip of water came next, a tricky undertaking when supine. Jane resisted the urge to support Dunstan’s head and took the glass back when he’d finished.
“I’ve been in Damson County for five years,” she said, stroking a hand over Wallace’s thick fur, “and I still have boxes of stuff I moved up here from DC. I’ve thought about switching apartments after the first of the year, but then I’d be committing the mortal sin of moving the same boxes twice.”
Dunstan turned his head to offer her a small, conspiratorial smile.
“My boxes are in the garage. I should be in practice with a partner, of course. When I set up shop, I was the new fellow, and I talked funny. Still do, but a partner reduces the risks. You have a partner.”
“Not any more. Louise chucked all the glamour and glory of small town legal practice for art school and a certain art professor. Now I have an office big enough for two lawyers and nobody to gripe about it to.”
“Gripe to me. I’m a captive audience, and I’m developing an unnatural relationship with the couch and the heating pad both. Wallace has set me a bad example, you see. You, fortunately, are putting my cat to sleep, or he’d be tormenting me in my helpless and vulnerable state.”
For all his grousing about the cat, Dunstan was less uncomfortable. Jane deduced this from his eyes, from his color, from the way he relaxed into the sofa cushions. And Wallace wasn’t going to sleep. He wouldn’t when he was on duty as a guardian kitty of Clan Cromarty’s Maryland branch.
“I miss Louise.” Jane scratched Wallace’s white bib of a chin rather than admit she hadn’t meant to say that. “She would come slamming back from court, ranting about Judge Mansfield’s bias against people named Horatio, or the prosecutor’s inability to organize a docket, and I could come back with lazy opposing counsel and cheating spouses.”
“I hate it when they cheat, though I don’t blame them. Loneliness is the most dangerous and sincere precursor to stupidity.”
He stuffed a pillow under his head, making the muscles of his chest flex, and Jane endured a bolt of sincerity passing right down her middle.
“I can’t blame the ones who cheat,” Jane said, “but if you’ll cheat on your spouse, you’ll cheat on your cheat. What sort of foundation is that to move forward on?”
They fell silent while Wallace set up a stentorian purring, co-counsel in agreement with any discussion that kept people close enough to pet him. The cat’s expression was knowing and smug, even for a very large, well loved cat.
Insight popped into Jane’s mind like Gopher popping up in the middle of the night to visit One Stuck Bear.
Doreen Almquist was cheating.
All of that polish and shine, the time at the gym, the designer wardrobe, the perfect hair, wasn’t for the husband she never saw. It was to impress the personal trainer, the sugar daddy—
The guy who bought her all of that jewelry and the fancy perfume.
“You look angry, wee Jane. Is it time for you to leave? Wallace might appreciate a bit of tucker in his dish before you go.”
He wouldn’t ask for himself, but he’d ask for a cat large enough to have its own gravitational field.
“Family law can be such a trial.”
“Put that on a T-shirt, why don’t you? Every family law practitioner on the planet would buy it in three different colors.”
“I’m abandoning you,” Jane said, rising. “Wallace, keep an eye on the patient. I’ll be in the kitchen addressing the sore lack of decent victuals on these premises. Dunstan, do you need anything? Once I start cooking, I’m hard to interrupt.”
“My files.”
“Hopeless,” Jane said, though if he could focus on work, then his back was doing better.
Which meant cooking was simply an excuse to stay here, in the half-empty home of a guy Jane could ethically share a professional friendship with—but no more.
* * *
Wallace at least waited until Jane had disappeared into the kitchen to march across Dunstan’s chest and settle on his belly.
“She likes you,” Dunstan said. Then more quietly, “I like her.”
He reached—carefully—for the Almquist file, then set it aside in favor of the Baxter guardianship, a more or less uncontested matter. Wallace had positioned himself so Dunstan could hold a file too close to read easily or too far away.
“Damned cat.”
The Baxter order was well drafted—Trenton Knightley knew what he was about—and the Ostergard pleadings were ready to submit.
Outside, the wind had picked up, and if Dunstan hadn’t been nursing his back, he would have loaded up the woodstove. Instead, he pulled the tartan blanket off the back of the couch, suffering Wallace’s back claws to his belly for his trouble, only to have the cat re-establish residency when Dunstan had twitched and tugged the blanket into place.
The painkillers were taking effect, subduing the ache in Dunstan’s back, while an ache of a different sort rose up in its place.
He subdued that ache with his notes from the Almquists’ meeting.
“Something tasty this way comes,” Dunstan informed the cat some time later. “Though I don’t know what Jane found to cook up. If you were any sort of friend, you’d go on reconnaissance instead of using me for your personal chafing dish.”
Jane emerged from the kitchen, a wooden spoon in her hand. “Are you on the phone?”
“Arguing with my cat,” Dunstan said, feeling foolish. She’d called his pantry elderly, and old people also talked to their cats. “And winning.”
“Ha. Try this.” She knelt and held the spoon up to Dunstan’s mouth. He took a nibble of tomato, oregano, a hint of cilantro, heat, cumin…
“Does it need something? I like a little heat, a little spice, a hint of sweetness…bold, but not pushy.” She tasted from the same spoon Dunstan had, and innuendo blended with the spices, at least in Dunstan’s male mind. An image of Jane wearing nothing but her spike heels and a smile—heat, spice, sweetness, and boldness—assaulted him.
“Go for bold,” Dunstan said. “The sauce has to stand up to the meat.”
“Right. Bold is good. Do you need your glasses?”
He needed a cold shower, which might do permanent damage to his back.
“Aye. Yonder paperweight means I can’t view anything from a proper distance.” In more ways than one.
“You, come with me.” Jane scooped the cat from Dunstan’s lap, her hand brushing low across his belly through the blankets. “Leave your buddy in peace so he can deal with his lawyer guilt.”
Wallace turned his best take-me-to-your-tuna-fish stare on Jane, while Dunstan put the Ostergard file on his lap. “He’s not allowed on the counter.”
“Oh, right. All day when you’re gone, he sits around staring heavenward, reciting the commandment about not hopping up on spotless counters. He has you so trained.”
They disappeared into the kitchen, Jane muttering about stubborn males, Wallace doing his impersonation of a besotted rag doll.
While Dunstan stared at a file that, even with his glasses on, in his present condition, he had little chance of reading.
Chapter Four
* * *
“You must be feeling better,” Jane said, though better was a relative term. Dunstan had moved from the couch far enough to heed nature’s call, and he’d downed a gratifying quantity of chili, but he’d eaten his supper on the couch, a blanket around his shoulders, heating pad at the ready, rather than sitting on a hard kitchen chair.
“I’ll manage from here,” Dunstan said, jamming a pillow behind his back. “Now it’s mostly waiting for the ache to recede while I move about like an old man with a bad hangover.”
“You won’t overdo?”
“Oh, likely I will, but I’ve more of those magic pills and your magic chili. You’re welcome to take the cat as a sign of my gratitude.”
Wallace now sat tucked against Dunstan’s side, feline Laird of the Western Couch.
“You can make it up the stairs?”
“That might be a challenge.”
Something nagged at Jane, something besides the wish that she could, like a girlfriend, for example, spend the night fussing over him.
In the big bed with the cozy flannel sheets.
“Your house is cold, Dunstan. The kitchen was toasty because I cooked there, but here and up in the bedroom, you need some heat.”
Which observation came out all wrong, factual though it was.
“I haven’t serviced the furnace yet this year. The woodstove is normally all I need.” He shifted and pushed and came to his feet, looking quite…quite tall wearing nothing but a kilt.
And not at all cold.
“Run along now, Jane. I’ll survive.”
Run along? Were he not ailing, she would have smacked him for that.
“Show me how to fire this thing up,” Jane said, crossing to the squat, black iron stove in the fireplace. “It can’t be that difficult.”
“It’s easy, if you’ve split enough of the wood that’s been seasoning in the garage, which neither I nor Wallace have got ’round to yet.”
Dunstan was trying to get rid of her, and that was smart. Then too, wearing only his kilt, he didn’t seem affected by the chill seeping into Jane’s bones.
“I’m supposed to leave you here, barely able to stand, your house freezing, with no one but that cat to look after you?”
“My back is much better, and by morning I’ll be right enough. My bed is cozy, and the roads will only get messier the longer you tarry. Wet leaves can be slicker than ice, even if you have four-wheel drive. Away with you.”
Pathetic, that he’d have to shoo her off so determinedly, and yet, Jane could see that even standing upright was costing him.
“The chili’s in the fridge,” Jane said, taking her coat from the chair she’d tossed it over hours ago. “I fed Wallace some of the Italian sausage when I was cooking, and the corn bread is in the pantry near the whiskey. We never did share that wee dram.”
Not that she was about to drink it now, when dark, wet country roads awaited her.
And a cold apartment without so much as a healthy ficus plant to welcome her.
“My thanks, then,” Dunstan said, walking with her to the door. “You’re a good cook, Jane DeLuca, but don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”
“And you love your cat,” she said, because it was as close to banter as she could dredge up. She found his keys in her coat pocket, shouldered her bag, and prepared to offer him a cheery farewell.
While to herself, she could admit she liked this guy. More than liked him, she respected him. How long had it been since a man, any man, had caught her eye? And worse, Dunstan Cromarty, with his cranky devotion to his cat, his Gaelic cussing, and his lonely frugality, caught her by the heart too, and that was—
That was rottenly unfair.
“My thanks,” he said again, and while Jane had been silently railing at the universe, Dunstan had moved closer. He still smelled good, of his usual fragrance and some minty muscle rub he’d sneaked onto himself while Jane had done the dishes.
And now, shake hands? Thumbs up with a parting wink? Jaunty salute?
Jane was in her flats, so she had to brace a hand on Dunstan’s chest to lean up and kiss his cheek. He held still for it, for the entire, lingering, humiliating, delightful duration of a presuming but not-quite-out-of-bounds parting kiss between friendly associates, and then his arms settled around her.
“If not for you, I’d be stretched out on the floor of my office praying for a coma by now,” he muttered. “You’re a managing female, and I’m grateful for it. Wallace says the same, and he doesn’t give compliments lightly.”
Jane’s cheek rested against a bare, warm chest, a small fortification against a long, cold, lonely drive home. Jane was further consoled by the notion that nothing she had done with Dunstan, nothing they had done, would make facing each other across the conference table or the courtroom any more difficult.
Wonderfully professional of her, all this good behavior.
“I should be going.” Dunstan should be letting her go, too.
His cheek came to rest against her hair. “Jane?”
“Hmm?” Do not kiss this man. Do not lick this man. If you must breathe this man in, do so quietly.
“The Almquist case calls for full discovery. Proper motions with the court, deadlines, interrogatories, depositions, the whole bit.”
Was he warning her that his client had colored outside the lines? If so, what warning did she owe him? He wouldn’t drop a dime on his own client, which meant he was warning Jane that it really was time for her to leave.
Which it was. Jane stepped back and didn’t bother attempting any cheery bullshit, the loss of Dunstan’s embrace being about the least cheery misery to befall her since she’d seen a two-time domestic assaulter walk off with custody of his three small children in her first year of practice.
“Full discovery makes sense,” she said, though it would drag the case out for months, and the last thing she wanted to deal with any longer than necessary was this situation with Dunstan. “Sleep well.”
She didn’t offer to fetch him anything he might need from the office tomorrow. Let the ever gallant and resourceful Knightley pests perform that chore. Jane had an exceptionally thorough discovery order to draft, nosy interrogatories to pull together, hellacious depositions to plan—
“G’night, then, Jane. Drive carefully and use the seat heater.”
