“I—uh, okay,” I replied, as he dropped my hand and pushed open the door of the chippy beside his garage. I hurried in behind him, relieved to be out of the wet, but disappointed that my hinting skills seemed not to have improved since my long-ago relationship with Campbell.
We’d stepped outside an hour later, and that time Hamish held the door for me. It had been a spirited meal, as Geordie and another mechanic had been inside and had waved us over to their table. Hamish had taken a fair bit of ribbing over keeping company with the new American waitress, but on the whole it had been—if not exactly what I’d hoped for in a date—still pretty fun.
I stepped out into the rain, and Hamish followed me across the street as I went to collect my bicycle. The gel spikes had fallen out of his hair in the damp, and he pulled a baseball cap from his pocket and jammed it on backwards.
“Hair’s ruined in the dreich, anyroad,” he said.
It had been a long time since I had walked with a male wearing a ball cap on backwards, but I peered up at him through the misty darkness. “California Angels?” I guessed, squinting back at the logo.
“Aye!” he answered, delightedly. “They’re mah team.”
I flipped the switch on the bike lamp and it created a damp puddle of light on the ground in front of us. “I guess I’d better head home,” I said, reluctantly. “Thanks for dinner.”
He burped gently, smothering it in one large fist. “Better up than down,” he said, cheerfully, and put his hands over mine on the handlebars. “And why would ye ride, lass, when I can take ye?”
I pretended I hadn’t heard the burp and grinned up at him. “No reason I can think of,” I said. I followed him over to his van and waited while he loaded the bike in the back.
He came around the side, the rain creating dark patches on both his shoulders. “Plannin’ to take the wheel, are yeh?” he said, and gestured at the van.
I realized I was standing on the drivers’ side. “Old habits …” I muttered, and scurried around to the other door while he grinned at me through the rain-speckled glass.
I slid in beside him and the warm air from the heater enveloped me. Hamish wiped his long arm across the seat between us, sweeping a collection of paper cups and wrappers onto the floor at my feet.
“Sorry ’bout that, luv,” he said. “Two deliveries to Fort Augustus and one to Inverness.”
“Are you on the road often?” I asked, over the roar of the engine.
He nodded and shifted gears, as the road to Morag’s place lurched beneath us. “Aye, quite a bit, actually. No’ really my favorite part of the job, but good practice, for all that.”
“Good practice?”
He shot me a shy smile. “For mah green card application. Though’ I migh’ try mah hand at long-distance truckin’ in America.”
“Ah.” My heart lifted a little. He so loved America. Maybe that meant he could fall for an American girl?
I’d never really pictured myself with a truck-driving guy, but—what was I thinking, anyway? That my Jamie and I would live happily ever after in Scotland? I told myself to quit being so judgmental and just learn to enjoy the moment.
Gravel crunched under the wheels of the van, and he pulled off the motorway at the end of Morag’s lane.
“She’s locked the gate,” he said, peering into the darkness. “I’ll wheel the bike up for ye.”
I jumped out and walked around to the back of the van.
He flung open the doors and hoisted the bike over the gate in one smooth motion, and then patted the seat. “Yer chariot awaits, milady.”
I slipped through the swing door of the gate and lifted my leg across the seat. He stepped through the gate and, with his arms holding me safely in place, wheeled the bike up the path to the house.
The gray stone of the old farmhouse loomed at the end of the drive. The rain had stopped, but a silvery mist crept up from the damp hollows. A lamp burned low over the rear door of the farmhouse and another over the barn door, but apart from those, the landscape was completely dark.
“My room is in the barn,” I whispered, and we skirted the pool of light from the farmhouse and headed for the thatched-roof building off to the left. As we closed the distance to the barn, my heart was pounding like an autumn drum.
I had my feet on the pedals, but Hamish was essentially doing all the work, pushing my bike up the slight rise in the path. We rolled up to the barn door, and I stood up to swing my leg off, but he caught me under the arms and lifted me down. With no one holding the bike, it teetered and fell, and inside the barn, one of the residents lowed, cranky at being awoken at such an ungodly hour.