The Sweetest Hours

A gust of cold wind blew by, and he hunched his shoulders against the frigid temperature. “What are the risks tonight, then?” he asked.

“Me. I’m the risk. I’m bringing someone to a family event.” She choked out a laugh, and then glanced at him helplessly. “Trust me, they would love to pair us up. And it turns out the whole clan is going to be here, not just Stephanie and Lily. So, could you please back me up—make it clear that we’re work colleagues only?”

He stared at her. There were so many things ahead that could go wrong—so many potential traps she didn’t even know about. But he could only fixate on one thing.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“No.” She shivered. “I am happily single.”

For some reason he liked that response. He smiled at her. “Then we’ll be happily single together.”

She seemed relieved. Nodding, a look of grim determination on her face, she opened the door. “One more thing,” she said, turning to him. “If you don’t like the haggis, then you don’t have to eat it.”

“I’ll be certain not to. You can count on that.”

She smiled at him, and something in his chest pinged. This wasn’t good. He was getting drawn to her despite himself.

There was a reason he’d done his best to keep his distance from her during the afternoon. But now here he was entering her private home, and it was too late to back out. “May I ask why your family is having a Burns Night? All these years I’ve lived in this country, and I don’t think anyone has ever invited me to one. It’s not well-known outside of Scotland.”

“Meet my family, and I’m sure they’ll tell you why it’s important—well, important to me, at least.”

The door was creaky, so she threw her hip into it. With a rattle of glass and a squeak of hinges, they stood inside a warm kitchen. That distinctive odor of tatties and neeps—potatoes and turnips—hit him, and he wrinkled his nose. He also noted sheep—haggis—mixed in, and he grimaced.

He’d been following behind Kristin, but she was immediately whisked away by a female rug rat. She was a shrimp of a girl, a ginger, with the wildest red hair and a smattering of freckles that he’d not seen in ages. Such a combination usually only existed on his home island.

The ginger rug rat was wearing a kilt that clashed with her features. A bright red Royal Stuart tartan, displayed outside almost every tourist shop on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. He was having difficulty not chuckling aloud, so he squeezed his lips between thumb and forefinger.

“George Smith?” a woman asked him. He didn’t answer right away; it wasn’t registering that she was speaking to him. When it did occur to him, he turned abruptly.

And looked down. She was a shrimp of a woman, too, to match the shrimp of a daughter. Black hair, flashing eyes, and wearing a chef’s white top, checkered loose pants and kitchen restaurant clogs.

That was a relief—she was a professional. Thus, it was unlikely he would be poisoned.

The lady chef grabbed his hand and pulled him into a small butler’s pantry off to the side. And then she shut the door behind them.

Inside, with a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and rows of spices and jarred dry goods arranged on shelves, she grabbed a bottle of whisky—single malt—from a top ledge and unscrewed the cap. “A word with you, Mr. Smith,” she said, pouring them each a wee dram.

Solemnly she handed him a glass. “I know you’re an out-of-town guest, a work colleague to Kristin, but I am telling you, they are going to crucify her in there. And if you don’t support her—or worse, if you join in on the laughter and the insults—then I will personally see you pushed into a snowbank. Do you understand?”

“I...”

“Of course you do.” She smiled sweetly and raised her glass to him before slinging back the shot.

“Whoa!” she said. “That waters the eyes.”

“Er,” he said, still holding the glass of whisky, “I thought this was Kristin’s family celebrating a Burns Dinner?”

“Sure, but they’re not always an easy crowd, and definitely won’t be tonight once they figure out what kind of food I’m feeding them.” She shivered. “Trust me, I’ve known this bunch forever. Kristin was my nap partner in kindergarten. She kept me laughing so much, I never got my sleep. We were always in trouble.”

“Kristin has how many brothers?” Were they big? How many stone did they weigh?

“It has taken me weeks to find a decent haggis recipe,” she said, ignoring him, “and then, importing the ingredients and testing it in my kitchen.” She poked him in the chest. “It’s taken me a while to crack the code and make it palatable. The rest of them likely won’t touch it, but you will. You will at least try to like it for Kristin’s sake. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” He slugged back the whisky shot. It burned his throat like comfortable fire. “That’s good stuff,” he muttered, smacking his lips.

“Damn straight it is. I’m bringing up a little girl who’s fifty percent Scottish-American. My husband has three Scottish-American grandparents, and one Scottish grandmother, actually born in the old country. I figure that makes me Scottish by injection, and I plan to act accordingly.”

He nearly choked.

“So, you’ll play along with Kristin and me?”

Mutely, he nodded.

Thankfully, she pivoted on her clogs and stalked back to her instrument of his doom—a silver range with six gas burners, four of them currently going full throttle, shooting up vicious blue flames. He wiped his mouth and ventured out of her kitchen and into the lion’s den.

With foreboding, he glanced into the dining room, where a crowd of men stood, drinking lager from brown longneck bottles. Unless they all ganged up on him, he figured he could handle each of them, alone, judging by height and weight. One of the men looked as though he might be bigger than Malcolm, but Malcolm couldn’t be sure because the man, unfortunately, sat in a wheelchair and had a glum expression on his face.

Kristin was nowhere to be seen.

Malcolm raked a hand through his hair. She would be back soon, with the little girl in tow, he assumed, and introductions would commence. He could behave seriously and in a low-key manner, the same as he’d been doing all day.

Or...there was still time to confess to her. Pull Kristin aside and tell her his real name. His true purpose. Let her in on his thoughts about what her CEO had asked him to do. Maybe some steps she could take for herself to mitigate the fallout before anyone else knew...

It was insanity to consider it.

He’d planned to never see this woman again after tonight. She was not part of upper management at Aura Botanicals, nor was there any reason for her to learn of his past. If he came clean now...

Then that would break his agreement with Jay Astley to remain anonymous. Malcolm would be jeopardizing the new product branding plans. He would also be jeopardizing his own company and the people in it.

It was too risky.

He had to continue the charade. One last night of being George Smith before the security name was retired for good. Kristin would never find out who he really was.

The only difficult part would be the guilt.

No. Guilt he could handle. The worst part would be resigning himself to remaining aloof for the next few hours. Like it or not, he saw all the ways that she was like him, with her heavy flashlight and her love and loyalty to her family and her employer. She had an innate capability for taking care of herself and others. And, she was fun. The lady was quietly compatible to him in a way that he hadn’t known in years, in a way that pulled him in and attracted him.

It was downright dangerous, and he could be in trouble here unless he was careful.

Plus, he would eat no more than one bite of haggis—he didn’t care what her dynamo of a sister-in-law threatened him with.

And, he would never let on to any of them that he knew what Burns Night was. He was simply an observer, killing time. His mouth shut. A ghost who would fade from memory once his driver arrived and he left this small Vermont town forever.

The brother in the wheelchair rolled over to him at the same time that Kristin came hurrying back into the room.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her face flushed and her smile trembling in an “I apologize!” grimace. “My niece wanted help with her part in the festivities. I didn’t mean to desert you.”

She turned to the largest of the men, the one in the wheelchair. “George, this is my brother Stevie. Stevie, this is George. He’s a work colleague, and he’s stranded in town until his ride gets here.”