Off Kilter (18 page)

“Why do you ask?” she replied, sounding anything other than interested in the line of questioning.

“Just … watching Graham get married was like watching a close member of my immediate family leave the roost, so to speak. In a good way, but a way that will forever change things. I wondered if that’s how it feels when a brother or sister marries.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I’d think it’s close to the same. We’re the closest to family we’ve got, all three of us.”

“You’re an only child?” she asked.

He smiled. “I wouldn’t know.”

She turned to him then, frowning in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t know. I was abandoned as a baby. I have no idea if either of my parents ever procreated again.”

Her mouth dropped open, then she shut it again. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? I had a great childhood.” He glanced at her. “They’re right you know. It does take a village.” His smile grew. “At least it did with me. But I believe I’m better for it.”

“I doubted you.”

“What? Why? About what?”

“Your comment about understanding being a misfit. I couldn’t fathom it. You were born and raised here and are openly adored. I’ve never met anyone who so clearly fits his environment. So the whole misfit tag just didn’t work for you. I shouldn’t have judged, though. I know better.”

“We all come to conclusions. That’s normal. Like with me, I thought you were a bit of a snob. Maybe prima donna was a better term.”

“Me? A snob?” She barked a laugh.

“It wasn’t specific, more of an air, the way you carried yourself. I thought you presumed we were all backwoods bumpkins,
living out here on our little scrap of earth. As if we were somehow beneath your notice.”

“And I thought you were a pretty boy who got by on looks and charm and didn’t have much motivation to do more than that.”

Roan looked up as the helicopter flew over their heads. He waved. “Well, at least one of us was wrong.”

She gave him a shot with her elbow, then lifted her camera and got a few departing shots of the whirlybird as it sailed into the sunset. “I guess that takes care of my shot selection dilemma.”

“Where did you grow up?” he asked.

She lowered her camera and took aim toward the shore. The bright yellow inflatable skiff had landed. Blaine had dismounted and was waiting, legs braced, the horse standing next to him as if they’d ridden in battle together many times. It was quite the vision, what with the top hat and all.

“I sure hope he doesn’t have to resort to using the cane as a weapon,” Roan said conversationally.

Two people debarked from the skiff with the help of their skipper, and confronted Blaine on the small spit of sand, the waves lapping at their feet. Things appeared to get rather … animated.

“Even two to one, I’d put my money on him,” she said, shutter whirring.

“Well, technically, he does have the horse as back up.”

“True.”

Roan listened as Tessa’s shutter continued to whir. “So, small town? Big city?”

“I’m working.”

“No, you’re not. You’re being nosy. I like it.”

She glanced at him with a
you’re impossible
look, then went back to shooting. “Big estate in a small town,” she said after a few seconds.

That surprised him. Both that she’d answered, and the answer itself. “So, I wasn’t far off then, after all. Woman of privilege.
What does your family think of your globe-trotting job that takes you to the most dangerous places on earth?”

“I don’t have a family. No, that’s not entirely true. Kira is my family. I don’t have any blood relatives.”

“Not one?”

“Not a one. We’re both little orphan Annies, it appears. Or little orphan Andrew in your case, I guess.” She shot him a quick smirk.

He wasn’t going to let her derail the conversation. He’d started it as idle conversation, to keep her talking to him, but he was truly intrigued. “What about the big estate part?”

“Well, my estate manager lived there with me, until I was sent off to boarding school. Overseas. The better to keep me out of the loop, don’t you know. He continued to live there. At least until I was made aware that he’d filched my trust fund and invested it in some development scheme in Hong Kong. That was to cover up the fact that he’d already bilked the estate out of the rest of its assets.”

“What did you do? How old were you when you found that out?”

“Seventeen. How I found out was when the school I was attending in London escorted me to the curb with all my worldly possessions. My tuition was long overdue and they’d finally determined there would never be any additional monies coming their way.”

He gaped at her. “That’s … an incredible story.”

“It’s a true story. I’m not sure, even in hindsight, if I’d have been equipped to handle things any differently. He was a very trusted employee and close friend of my father’s at the time of my father’s death. I thought he was loyal and cared about me, so I had no sense not to trust him. He was my sole legal guardian. It was a pretty easy ripoff for him, I must say. But I was too young to have any realization of that.”

“How old were you when your father passed?”

“Six and a half. I was in boarding school by the time I was eight.”

“What happened to him?”

“Well, when the cookie crumbled, he took off. To where, I had no idea. I had no legal representation or money to hire anyone to go after him. I lost the estate, everything. I wasn’t a legal adult yet, so, fortunately, none of the debt followed me, but I was penniless and homeless. They tried to put me in a foster home, but that didn’t take very well. I took off and managed to stay under their radar until I was eighteen. No one had any right to say what I did from that point on.”

“He got away with it?”

She laughed. “You’re so outraged.”

“It’s an outrageous thing to do! Leaving a young girl completely alone and destitute. The man should be strung up and have his knackers sliced off. In tiny pieces.”

She pretended to flinch and it occurred to him she’d seen far worse than that.

“Remind me never to cross you,” she said, still amused. “But I didn’t say he got away with it, just that I couldn’t go after him at the time.”

“But you did. Eventually.”

She nodded. “How do you think I became an investigative reporter?”

Roan grinned. “Really? Well. I rather like that story.”

“So did the London Examiner. And the Wall Street Journal. And Time magazine. 60 Minutes enjoyed it, too.”

Roan grinned. “Well done.”

She smiled, nodded in acceptance.

“So … you became the righter of wrongs then, is that it?”

“I became interested in exposing stories that outsiders might judge wrongly due to preconceptions.”

“Like the poor little rich girl.”

“Something like that.”

“And the camera? When did that become the predominant thing?”

“Oh, I’d always lugged one around. I’m not even sure when that started. I was in school. And the camera was … like …
my friend. A way to see the world, judge it even, without having to be part of it, I guess. A way to grieve about my father passing, I suppose, be a little mad about it all. I was so unhappy on my own in school.” She smiled briefly. “I met Kira there. It got better after that. When I started working, the pictures were the part that, for me, were telling the truer story. In a way the words—my words, anyway—were not. The words could only convey so much. The pictures were important, vital. They were what delivered the ultimate knock-out punch. That’s what called to me.”

He’d dug deeper into her career over the past few days as he’d struggled to come to terms with the strong feelings she provoked in him. But he hadn’t dug into her childhood, or even her early career. There was so much to read about what she’d done since, he’d hadn’t gotten to the point of digging that far back.

He had only about a million other questions on the tip of his tongue, but before he could choose which one to ask next, a small car came whizzing back up the single track road and stopped in a spray of rock and dirt right at the edge of the meadow.

“That’s Eliza’s car.” Alarmed by the speed with which she’d come toward them, Roan started moving across the meadow, worried that something had happened. The chopper was long gone, so it wasn’t anything to do with Graham or Katie. Probably a pub fight had broken out, or something of that sort. “What is it?” he called, as she scrambled to get her stocky girth out from behind the tight fit of the wheel. He’d never figured out why she drove the tiny thing in the first place. She’d always struck him as the type to drive a big, oversized utility vehicle. The better to intimidate folks with. “Is everything okay?”

Tessa was right behind him as they made it to the road before Eliza, still in her wedding finery, but with her bun slightly askew, had fully righted herself.

“Oh, good,” she trilled, upon seeing Tessa with him. “You’re both here.” She waved a manila envelope at them. “We’ve gotten
word!” She beamed at them both. “Came in on the ferry during the ceremony. It was at the office when I stopped by on my way in. We’ve won!” She looked as pleased and excited as a child on Christmas morning. “The calendar contest,” she clarified when they both simply stared at her. “Ye’ve gone and done it, lad!” Her blue eyes twinkled like those of a woman half her age. “And you’ve snagged the best slot of them all.” She smacked the envelope into Roan’s chest.
“You
are Mr. December!”

“I
t’s not funny.”

Kira smiled at Tessa. “Oh, I assure you, it’s quite amusing.”

“Well, amuse me by telling me where on earth—or on Kinloch, to be specific—we’re going to get Christmas-themed photos. In September. The calendar people want at least three to choose from, preferably five. Why couldn’t he have been Mr. October?”

“You don’t have to have snow.” Kira’s smile widened. “You could always pose him in front of a roaring fire wearing nothing more than St. Nick’s velvety red stocking cap.”

It did not improve Tessa’s mood in the slightest that her traitorous mind immediately latched onto that visual like she was a sex-starved fiend. Which she wasn’t. Okay, so the sex-starved part might have been a tad close to the truth. But she took umbrage at the fiend part. Except, ever since the wedding, her imagination had taken on rather fiendish tendencies.

She’d spent the past two days printing wedding pictures … and the nights imagining a variety of calendar poses that would make even Kira blush. Most of those poses required … assistance. She envisioned him tugging her down in front of that fire, rolling her to her back on that fur rug, plunging his hands into her hair, his tongue into her mouth. She’d rise up to meet
his thrust … Or she’d roll him over and ride him, the firelight sparking a halo around her red hair, his hips pistoning from the floor, showcasing the lean muscles in his thighs, the cut of muscle in his shoulders and biceps … She could frame him again, and again, and again, and there would never be a bad angle.

The only advantage of it all was that she hadn’t suffered a nightmare in almost a week. Not since he’d kissed her out in the courtyard and distracted her every waking thought. She wasn’t sleeping any more soundly, but if she had to choose, waking in an adrenaline rush caused by dreams of Roan playing his own Highland version of a sexy Santa beat the hell out of the reasons she normally woke up in a hot sweat.

“When’s the deadline?” Kira asked as she bent her head back to the basket she was weaving.

Tessa blinked away images of naked Santa Roan and leaned against the framed entryway to the studio. She and Kira had both risen early. Tessa had been in the dark room since before sunrise, largely due to the very vivid naked Roan dreams she’d been having. When she’d heard Kira rustling about, she’d come out to get her friend’s input on the latest inconvenience. “Two weeks. They’re scheduled to go to press mid-October for an early November delivery. Apparently that’s high season for calendar sales.”

“Makes sense. Holiday shopping.”

Tessa nodded. “The winners each get paid a fee for being included. Roan said all along he planned to funnel any income he derived back into the island economy. His bigger hopes are that the information about Kinloch he’ll include in his bio will drive tourists here.”

“That would be a very Roan thing to do,” Kira said, sounding pleased.

It was on the tip of Tessa’s tongue to ask her a few questions about Roan, just random curiosity stuff. What he’d been like as a kid, how it had really been for him being raised here with no immediate family.

“Being the last man in the calendar is good, I suppose,” Kira said, “Keeps him in the public’s eye longer that way. Unless they don’t read his bit until it’s his turn.”

“Didn’t you hear? Traditionally, Mr. December is always the cover guy.”

Kira grinned and hooted. “Really! I bet that set his knickers into a knot.”

Tessa didn’t rightly know. She’d read the contents of the envelope while Roan was explaining his ideas for marketing, then she’d handed it all off to him and they’d agreed to discuss the photos they needed to take after Graham and Katie returned to allow her to finish their wedding photos. “I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed a few amused smiles picturing his face when he got to that part.”

“You weren’t there? Pity. We might have gotten pictures of the moment.”

Tessa’s smile grew. “Now I wish I’d stuck around. He did tell me he wants to incorporate baskets into the shoot. You do some of the most innovative work on the island, so I told him you’d be happy to let me use your work in the shoot. I hope you don’t mind.”

Kira looked sincerely stunned. “Really? But my work is so … untraditional. Maybe you should stick with samples of what we’ve done for the past couple hundred years instead.”

“I’ll have a sampling. At least that’s my plan. Roan knows all the weavers and I’m sure they’ll be happy to contribute. But I definitely want yours in there. They have the most visual appeal.”

Kira snorted. “Like anyone is going to be looking at the baskets.”

“Again, you have a point,” she said, grinning, “but, hopefully, when they flip the very last page to the bios, they’ll read about Roan’s lifelong work promoting the centuries-old Kinloch craft trade, and they’ll go back to the picture and look at them. When they do, I’d like them to be looking at your work.”