Highland Secrets (English Edition) (18 page)

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up there was a plate with sandwiches and a pot of tea next to me on the bedside table. Adam had made himself comfortable
in an armchair and was sleeping. The fact that he had spent the night in the armchair really hurt. I would have liked for him to have held me in his arms and stopped me from feeling torn up after everything that had happened to me. But maybe he even needed somebody to stop him from feeling torn up. His face didn’t even look relaxed when he was sleeping. Wrinkles appeared on his forehead and the corners of his mouth were hanging down. He was breathing quickly as if he was running. Perhaps a nightmare was tormenting him. I poured myself a cup of tea. It was cold and I drank it all in one go.

I then
slipped under the shower to wash away the last traces of the past events from my body. Despite having had a bath yesterday, I still felt defiled. The cut on my calf stung a little when the water came against it, but it felt like I had a sore bruise even when I walked. It would heal in a few days and I may well be left with a thin scar that would always remind me of what had happened. I could barely feel the small incision that was at about the same height as my right ovary. It looked like a small hole. Molly had just scratched the skin.

I forced myself to focus on the hot tingling water and made a promise to myself to never think about Molly and
this basement and the sight of the dead Italian girl ever again. If I wanted to stop myself from breaking down in the same way as I did when my parents died, I couldn’t allow Molly to get the upper hand. Maybe I would need a couple of hours with my therapist to enable me to go outside of my apartment again without constantly feeling threatened. I was glad that I had never completely cut off contact with her. The therapy was the only thing that my grandmother Alice didn’t consider to be a weakness. This was maybe because she had also needed a therapist herself to deal with the death of her daughter.

When I
got out of the bath, a fresh t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants had been left on the bed. I slipped the clothes on that were far too big for me and I suddenly felt safe and secure. This was because of Adam’s scent that was all over the clothing. Even though they had been washed, the items smelt a little bit of him. Maybe I was just imagining it and I had only got this idea in my head because I knew he had worn this t-shirt just a few days ago.

Adam
was waiting for me in the kitchen. He had made tea and his mood didn’t appear to have improved at all since yesterday. “I’ve thrown the food away”, he said and there was a fleeting smile on his face. “I found this in the cupboard. Cicuta Virosa, water hemlock. She must have poisoned your haggis with this.”

Adam
held a small glass bottle in front of my nose and I couldn’t believe it. “She wanted to kill me? I mean previously … before she captured me down there?” I stuttered and my stomach started to cramp up because I felt sick at the thought that I had escaped death twice at the hands of this woman.

“The plant causes nausea and cramp when served in small doses, but also leads to respiratory paralysis.”

I laughed bitterly. “If she liked dismembering people so much, then I don’t understand why she wanted to poison me.”

“Maybe it was a warning or she wanted to get you out of the way. Can you remember how desperate she was for us to go to the harbor festival?”

“Yes, or the distillery. She wanted me to go and see the distillery.”

Adam
nodded and leaned against the kitchen cupboards. He was wearing a shirt that he hadn’t buttoned up. It gaped open and I had to force myself not to devour his naked chest with my eyes. “Aye, she was alone with Alfred at home most of the time. But when you came, either you or I or both of us were always there.”

I
cringed when I thought about the way she tortured her victims and how they shouted for help. And nobody had heard them. Well, at least nobody who had helped them. Alfred was under her control to such a major extent that he didn’t dare to do anything. And he was also a murderer himself. He was responsible was instigating everything. I shouldn’t forget that.

I got up and put my cup in the sink. When I turned around, Adam was gazing at me. “The clothes are much too big, but I didn’
t have anything else. At the least there is a strap on the trousers which you’ll find essential when they keep falling from your waist.” He grinned boyishly and this look made me feel very warm. “I’ll drive you to London”, he said so unexpectedly that I blinked in confusion. He pushed off and walked past me. This man really did suffer from mood swings. He had just been joking around and a second later any kindness he had shown disappeared from his facial expression and was replaced by an angry determination.

“Right away?
”, I asked in astonishment and really felt as if I’d been caught unawares. It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy to leave this hellhole. Every second I spent here filled me with dread because I simply couldn’t forget that women had been murdered in the basement of this house.

“Yes, the car is
ready and waiting.”

Adam had decided to keep quiet again as we were travelling which really got on my nerves. But
I was even more annoyed by this defensive stance he had taken towards me since we had slept together. Why was he doing this? Especially seeing as he knew that Aidan had done the same to me. But with Aidan I was sure that he never felt anything for me. He lied to me the whole time. I knew it was different with Adam unless he had lied to Molly and the portrait of his father.

“I heard what you said to Molly.”

“What did I say?” He looked at me briefly and then back at the road.

“That
you were attracted to me. You only let me go back to London because you didn’t want me to encounter that madman”, I said anxious to hear his reaction.

Adam
’s grip tightened around the steering wheel. “I wanted to please Molly because I felt as if that was what she wanted to hear.”

I snorted derisively. “I also heard you admitting to the
portrait of your father that he was right”, I attempted again.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Was I mistaken or did he not want to admit to his feelings? I wasn’t sure, but his rejection hurt me. “At least you won our bet. We had sex just the one time. You didn’t break your own rules. I broke mine. But you know what, I am honest enough to admit to myself that I don’t regret what happened between us. We had fun. It was nothing more.”

Adam
snarled a little, which I didn’t understand, and then stared out of the wind shield again without even looking at me for a brief moment. I just wanted to shake him, hit him or both. And I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck, sit on his lap and take him inside me once again. And I wanted all this, despite knowing that he would drop me home in a few hours and I would never see him again. Okay, we had reached this point before, but nothing would change things this time. There were no longer any psychopaths who would drag me back to Scotland again in the trunk of a car.

Sitting next to him and not being able to touch him made everything even worse. My desire for him increased with every kilometer
we put behind us. I should have taken a taxi. This was like torture. And I had been tortured enough over the last few days.

I couldn’
t remember a man ever arousing so much desire in me. My body was calling for Adam’s and was not being answered. It was not just my body that was calling out to him, but also my heart. It was already mourning his loss. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me, why I was reacting to Adam MacLeod with such intensity and why did his rejection make me even more attracted to him. Or was it the disappointment of knowing that whatever it was between us would come to an end in London? Was that the reason why I wanted to nestle up to him, pull him into my arms and never let go?

“Do you really want to sit here with me in silence until we get to London? I don’t have a problem with the silence itself, but it’s making me a little nervous that you are sitting like that and
grumbling to yourself.”

“What do you want to talk about?
”, he asked disgruntled.

“We could talk about the fact that there is a sex video of us on the Internet.”

Adam laughed bleakly. “Yes, that is a problem. One of the officers said that the website would be blocked immediately and all the videos would be removed, but it is possible that the users might have downloaded the videos and that they might appear again sooner or later.”

“What?
”, I groaned in outrage. Anybody I’d meet in the future might have seen me have sex with Adam. This idea alone was sufficient for me to wish for the ground to swallow me up in shame. And it only fuelled my hatred of Molly and Alfred even more. This video turned me into somebody who men and women would use to get themselves aroused. I shuddered in disgust at the thought.

Adam looked at me from the side and the corners
of his mouth lifted up. “It’s a shame that I don’t have any of the videos. You on my desk, now that would be a sexy image.”

I hit him in the shoulder. “I don’t want to know how many
women you have had over that desk.” Despite being worried that our little number would soon appear for all to see on the appropriate websites, the memory of Adam’s tongue between my vaginal lips made me feel aroused.

“None
. That desk belonged to my father and before you came I had never used the gallery.”

“So you wanted to monitor me?
”, I asked indignantly.

“No, I wanted to fi
nd out why my father had chosen you.”

“And? Did you find out?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Maybe I wasn’t actually his favorite student and he wanted to punish me for something.”

“That’s quite possible. Or maybe it’s your gentle nature and your openness. Perhaps he saw somebody in you who he thought I would or could trust.”

“You can forget it all now and go back to seducing the female tourists. At least now you have an exciting theme for the next masked ball. Or you could do guided tours for the tourists and show them
all the basement. And if the horror effect doesn’t get them to go to bed with you, then try the sex videos.”

“Maybe. I
’ll make a start on it tomorrow. Or I’ll leave that and instead I’ll live in a monastery in future. Or even better, I’ll turn the house into a monastery.”

“Perhaps it was for the best that your father’s plan didn’t work”, I said reluctantly.

“Why, I am not good enough for you? Of course, you don’t want to have anything to do with a man like me. But don’t forget that you had your legs wide open for me. So I can’t have been that bad”, he said almost shouting and I was scared that he would soon tear off the steering wheel.

I stared at him in astonishment. I wanted to provoke him, but not in this way. I was still angry too. “I never said that you weren’t good enough. But nice of you to remind me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

We sat in silence for the rest of the journey. I didn’t bother
trying to change Adam’s mind. It was just better to leave it even if I did wish that we weren’t parting on bad terms at the end of our little trip. But maybe it was all down to the tension of the last few days. Maybe Professor MacLeod would have been right, if Molly and Alfred hadn’t discovered murderous tendencies. There had at least been moments where Adam had started to open up. But I couldn’t force him to do something that I didn’t know I could do myself.

I guided Adam through London. He parked the car in front of the entrance to my home and when I saw the entrance, my heart started to beat faster.
This wasn’t down to the feeling of joy and relief at finally being home, it was because I had been hit over the head behind this door. Would I ever feel safe in this house again? I pressed my lips together and gathered my thoughts.

“I am really sorry about what you had to put up with. I hope you can come to terms with it soon”, said Adam and he laid his hand on my thigh. I looked up at him and he seemed to be genuinely compassionate.

“Thank you”, I said. “I wish you the same.” Perhaps we had both not quite got over everything that had happened. Maybe everything was still too fresh in the memory for us to be able to talk about it with one another. If we couldn’t talk about the bad things that bound us together, then how could we talk about our feelings for each other. We had reached a point from where there was no other way out other than to go our separate ways.

He looked at me sadly. “So, maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Yes.”

He leaned over towards me and
gave me a soft kiss on the lips. It wasn’t really a kiss, it was more him stroking his lips over mine. But it was sufficient to give me a pleasant pulling sensation in my lower regions.

I opened the door and got out without turning around, but I could feel him gazing at me. He didn’t drive away until I was in the house. Seeing the car turn around the corner
felt like a huge weight dropping on my chest. I could hardly breathe. And even before I reached my apartment on the second floor, the sudden pain in my heart turned into a stinging sensation that extended to my throat and brought tears to my eyes.