Nanny Behaving Badly (22 page)

Maddie just stared at him.

Lyle in a black leather biker’s suit. Waiting beside the motorbike she recognised from his den at the Lodge, looking lean and rugged.

And it wasn’t just the raw sexy man that was having this impact on her, making her quiver and yearn for him. It was recognising how he affected her in every possible way – the sight of him, the broad lines of his body that made her want to reach out and tug him close, from his sleek dark head of hair to his leathery biker boots.

‘Lyle, what are you doing here?’ she asked when she finally reached him, her breathing coming in short shallow gasps because she’d rushed like crazy to get there. ‘How’s Josh?’

‘He’s safe and sound with his grandma and my sister. Don’t worry, I’m not neglecting him. I’m here to talk to you. I tried the doorbell but no one answered. I worry about you, Maddie Adams. You have an internal compass set to trouble. rushing off alone like this, oblivious to good sense. Staying in the middle of nowhere solo.’

Silent, Maddie unlocked the cottage door and led him inside.

‘I’m here because it’s my turn to take the reins. To stop you in your tracks. Just like when you pushed me into a cupboard that first day we met.’ His eyes were solemn and accusatory. ‘For once
you
have to be stopped, so that you’ll listen and not blow it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she answered. ‘I know. I was wrong.’

Lyle shook his head. ‘Not as sorry as I am. I know I fired in stupidly instead of giving you time. I should have talked to you, let you know what I was thinking. I was so intent on taking ‘us’ slow, that I forgot you might need careful handling in other areas.’

‘Lyle, I don’t even know where to start – ’

‘Hear me out,’ he insisted. ‘I tried to help Marco, and indirectly help you, in the shortest route possible. It was unfair of me, and I made a huge mistake by discussing your uncle’s business behind your back. I thought I was solving problems, but instead I was unpicking your trust in me.’

Maddie blew out a sigh and wished she’d combed her hair, made more effort with her clothes than these tatty jeans, a huge cardigan and a crumpled T-shirt. ‘I said lots of things I shouldn’t have,’ she admitted softly. ‘You make me sound like a container of fragile china. Trouble is, I’m broken even worse than you know, and I mishandle things too.’

Lyle raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘You’re not Becca and I can’t just charge around taking decisions and putting things right without consulting you. If we’re going to make this work, our relationship has to be based on mutual respect. You’d never put me and Josh on the line with your mistakes like Becca did, though you did hurt me with your accusations, and then taking off this way. But I should have appreciated how deep your father’s betrayal goes.’

Maddie let out a low, wavering breath. Tears were swimming in her eyes. She was so lucky to have captured this man’s interest. A man who’d come all this way, not to blame or lecture her, or go crazy – but to make peace. He wanted her and his regard was worth more than property deeds or any future built solely on assets and ownership.

‘I want a solid future with you,’ he finished. ‘No more miscommunication. No more holding back. No secrets.’

No secrets.

But what about the baby?

Maddie felt her pulse rev high as her panic rose too. She saw him reach into his leather suit and draw out a velvet box with the silver script of George Street’s most famous jeweller. As shock dawned, something inside her morphed into hazy fog as her heart stuttered almost to a halt. When he reached out to take her hand, she could not bear it.

‘No, Lyle! Not like this.’

Lyle looked at her in puzzlement, then offered her the small, velvet-covered box. ‘You want stability, a shared life, a relationship built on trust. I can learn, I can adjust. At least let me try.’

His fingers gently teased up the lid, and a diamond and sapphire ring peeped out at her. But she could only shake her head and push the box away.

Lyle’s grey eyes assessed, watchful. His tone was controlled. ‘You don’t want to marry me.’

Maddie stared. Aching, she watched the difficult scene unfold before her, but she couldn’t play a detached role when honesty was all.

‘I’m afraid.’

Stilted thoughts became stilted words because of the inner maelstrom. Maddie screeched back the stool and picked up her bunch of keys. ‘You deserve more. More than I have. I’ve messed it up again.’

‘Why do you underestimate how deep my commitment goes?’

She ran for the door. ‘Because I’m pregnant, pregnant with your baby. You were right that day you met me – I mess up. You should have fired me and saved yourself this chaos.’

Without waiting to see his reaction, Maddie sped out and away towards her car. Inside her head and heart all the things that made Lyle such a worthy man caused tears to swell: he’d helped Marco, he loved his son; loyalty and honour and courage were his personal codes. And now all she had to give back was a shock revelation and baggage. She clutched the keys because escape was all she had left. Running, still fleeing heartbreak.

Lyle watched from the doorway as she revved the car to speed away. Her heart bleeding with every jagged breath.

The fuel indicator mocked her folly. Maddie slammed her hand against the steering wheel as the car came to a chugging halt. Remote seemed an optimistic descriptor, there weren’t even any sheep around here. Just hills and deserted Scottish countryside.

No fuel, no filling stations. No shred of common sense.

She’d run away, done it again. Which was just how she’d ended up in Scotland in the first place. She could run again, she could lose herself in escape – she could put the miles between herself and these problems, but in her heart she knew they wouldn’t be cured by denial.

Risking her heart hurt so much. It was easier to flee and avoid the pain, to put the guilt on someone else.

Again she turned the ignition over fruitlessly. But she knew there was no fuel and no magic fairy to miraculously send the gauge shooting upwards. She switched on her phone and no signal showed.

A sickly feeling crept from her toes to spike the hairs on her body one by one. She switched on the radio – a fuzzy station crackled on. A Christmas tune played on violins slit an old wound open. She immediately cursed and jerked the radio back off.

Maddie’s hand went to her abdomen – taking stock from the tiny life there. The trusting family she’d always craved. With her hand on that tiny life, her mind and heart thudded hopelessly.

‘
Why didn’t you tell him you love him?’

The thing Lyle deserved most had been left unsaid.

The pregnancy was a shock but with love anything was possible, or so they said. Had her father’s inability to show love left her just as lacking in confidence when it came to admitting her heart’s truth?

The sight of a single headlight – a motorbike – in her rear-view mirror caused hope tempered by a hint of wariness. It neared, slowly, almost more slowly than she could bear – rising and falling over the bumps and dips in the winding single track road.

Seizing bravado, she jumped from the car and began to flag it down.

The motorbike slowed, then parked up behind her. Maddie’s heart cantered hard as she watched him. This time she wouldn’t screw it up. She had Lyle here, and she loved him. Did she have enough reserves left to prove it to him?

She stared as Lyle came up to the car beside her.

The enormity of the personal revelations she’d just undergone made her all the more psyched to recognise just what the man beside her was. How much she truly loved him from the heart. Yet she’d badly let him down.

Best to jump right in at the deep end and tell him exactly why she’d run.

‘Lyle, it’s true. I’m … I’m pregnant with your child.’

‘I’m still taking it in.’

She watched his jaw tense and his eyes widen as his stare clamped her hard. Sharp grey eyes turned on her. ‘You ran out and left me again – this time with a ring in my hand. You certainly know how to give a guy lots to worry about, Maddie Adams. Don’t even get me started on the baby news.’

His grey eyes flicked away and she knew how deep the hurt ran in that instant. ‘You’re sure?’ He shoved his hand through his hair. ‘I mean, really sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. And I’m having the baby before you ask that question and have me in tears again.’ She puffed out a long breath. ‘And before you get me mad too, yes, it was only you. I don’t sleep around.’

‘Meaning?’ He tilted his dark head to watch her. ‘You think I’d turn my back on you? Walk out, or tell you to terminate our baby?’

He glared, sparking fury.

‘You have to trust me, Maddie. You have to learn that I’m here for you. Don’t disparage me at every turn.’

‘There’s something you don’t know,’ she said at last, hardly daring to believe what he had told her. ‘They weren’t my birth parents. I was adopted – only Alicia and Clark kept that from me as long as they could. I sometimes wonder if Mom would have told me at all if she hadn’t been terminally ill. I loved my mother, I just found the unspoken truths hard to deal with.’

Lyle reached out and tenderly brushed her hair. His eyes had softened. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I didn’t trust myself. Running away was more comfortable than the truth – which is the root cause of why my mother and father let me down. So, if anything’s ever going to make me fight my hardest to be the best parent I can be, it’s my past. I want to be a wonderful mother. One with an abiding sense of honesty.’ The tears ran down her cheeks as she said it.

Lyle drew her into his strong arms. ‘You will be, Maddie. But I also want you to be my wife. I love you. We can face the future together.’

Removing the diamond and sapphire ring from his pocket, he placed it gently on her finger.

Maddie tried to smile through her tears but that only made them flow faster.

Misreading her distress, he reached out for her hands. ‘We’re pregnant! And I want to be there for you all the way.’

‘I may need a little help along the journey,’ she whispered. ‘And your faith that I can do it.’

‘You have it. You always did. I trusted you with the most precious thing in my life – my son. I trust you with all I have.’

Then he kissed her. Softly, and very slowly. He pulled her into a bone-tingling, spine-melting embrace that filled her soul with light and rainbows.

‘You run, but sometimes you can’t hide,’ he confided in her ear. ‘I did it for long enough myself, I tried to act like you didn’t mean anything to me. All the time I knew you did, but I pretended I could handle it. After Becca, my patience seemed to have run out. But for the right people I have an endless supply. It’s a new start for us all.’

Tears glistened on Maddie’s face but she smiled as she hugged him tight, loving the smell of leather and the outdoors and her very own Lyle.

‘I love you, Lyle.’

‘You’ve got my love on a lifetime visa.’ With a deep silky stare, he pulled her against his chest. ‘Think of your good judgements – putting all your faith in Marco, even subverting me for Brewster. Together we can forge a good life together – a winning team that’ll repay Marco in full, because we’ll make what he built a success. We could make Bonafonte’s like he’d dreamed it always could be.’

‘You really want those things with me?’

‘Car safety tuition wouldn’t go amiss either – never travel in remote areas without being equipped. Don’t laugh, I’m serious.’

‘Perhaps I just need a good navigator?’

‘We’ll ditch the bike at Paula’s.’ He gave her a look that left her brimming with joy. ‘Then you’re going to pack and let’s get my two little mavericks back home – to Edinburgh. It’s Christmas and we’ve an engagement to celebrate. With love and faith we can all get there together.’

Except they didn’t go right home.

As soon as they got to Paula’s cottage, she turned in his arms and couldn’t resist unzipping that leather biker’s suit. Well, what a waste it would be not to!

‘Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ Maddie said. ‘Any chance I could add this to my most wanted list? I’d rather you kept the leathers just for my own private attention. Maybe I could buy you another set for Christmas, just for the bedroom?’

‘I know what I want already.’ Lyle’s grin flashed his face alight. ‘Move in, marry me – quickly? And how about an hour now, you and me naked, to set me up for the long journey home?’

She pressed her lips to his in a slow line of sensual kisses. ‘You’ve always been a guy who knows what he wants. The good part is, I’m following your lead now.’

She pulled down that sinful zipper and ran her hands up his hard abs. At the feel of his flesh against her fingers, she could not help whimpering a little. She’d missed him so much, it ached in every fibre.

With a grin that turned into needy, urgent kisses, Lyle pulled her to the bed. ‘This is what I call a Christmas present.’

Maddie smiled. ‘C’mon, rally guy. You can consider it an early peek – unwrap me.’

Epilogue

Edinburgh sparkled in crisp wintertime sunshine. A plane taxied down to the city’s airport like some magical silver dragon, while the river Forth drew the eye like a discarded indigo scarf on grass.

The smiling wedding party posed for photographs on the ancient castle esplanade, the Mons Meg cannon stood sentry on the ramparts. These were photographs that would capture a very special union.

Maddie, in bridal finery, looked around herself, entranced.

Josh in page boy dress kilt ensemble. Bridesmaids Heather and Paula in serene empire-line silks. Even Marco was wearing tartan as he watched his niece with shining pride – and Angelina by his side.

Maddie’s exquisite gown was topped by a gossamer stole with shimmering crystal snowflakes. Her eyes sparkled as she squeezed her new husband’s arm.

‘A year ago, I drove you crazy. A year later – we’re married!’

‘A year ago you shut me in an airtight cupboard and I knew my life would never be the same,’ Lyle answered drily.

Maddie grinned. ‘Someone had to tame you.’ She glanced at her gleaming platinum wedding band. Never the same again – but all good. Man and wife. To have and to hold.