She started to put books into one of the boxes until her eyes clouded over so much that she couldn't see what she was doing. She'd gone and fallen for Humbleby too, and having to leave it would half-kill her. It sounded stupid, but the cottage felt ‘sad' that she would be going soon, as if it had been lonely in its enforced long emptiness and had rather enjoyed having a funny little boy, an incurable romantic and a rather loud Gaelic giant enjoying its warmth and protection.
She was going mad, obviously, thinking about old houses having feelings. What next? Imagining the dishwasher sobbing as it scrubbed the pots clean? She needed to get out. Somewhere in the presence of other human beings doing something that would bat these ridiculous notions of emotional inanimate objects out of her head. Filling up her water bottle, she grabbed her gym card and car keys and headed out to Well Life.
Stevie looked at the calorie counter. Apparently, she had burnt up 350 of them in the last hour and she still wasn't tired, but then her body didn't feel connected to her head. Her legs were pounding but her brain wasn't giving out any messages for them to stop. It was too busy blotting everything out. It wasn't connected to her ears either so it didn't hear the track ‘Loneliness' playing once again and it wasn't connected to her eyes so she didn't see the screens showing MTV and Morning Coffee in front of her. Nor did she see Adam MacLean walking up the side of the StairMasters either.
Not until she saw a big, hairy arm put a small jeweller's box on the water-bottle shelf and heard that big thunderous voice of his saying, ‘Ah hear you've fallen for me hook, line and sinker, woman,' was she even remotely aware of his presence. And in shock, she lost her footing, cracked her head on the control panel and did the sort of backwards flip that would have knocked the Romanian gymnasts off the Gold Medal spot in the Olympics.
Chapter 59
‘So once again I make a complete prat of myself in front of everyone because of you,' she said in his office as he applied a bag of ice to the fast-growing egg-shaped lump. ‘Ow, ow, ow!'
‘Wheesht, woman.'
‘And if vibrating me off the machine with your voice wasn't enough fun for you, you give me an empty box as well!'
‘Course it's empty. I just wanted to see what your reaction would be.'
‘You are a sadist. I was right all along.'
‘Not at all. Choosing a ring is an important matter. I'd only have got something with too many diamonds on it.'
‘Is there such a thing?'
He smiled a little and had a good look at the lump. ‘I think this might hatch at any minute.'
‘Anyway, what did you mean by you've heard that I've fallen for you hook, line and sinker? Which mentally deranged nutter could possibly have told you that?'
‘Stop moving your head, woman! Matthew came to see me earlier. Very brave in the circumstances. Said I was an idiot if I'd let you go.'
‘Matthew?'
‘Aye. He said you were the most wonderful woman he'd ever known.'
‘Yes, well, I couldn't have been that wonderful if he dropped me like a hot brick, now could I?'
‘He also said that he'd asked you to go back to him but you were in love with me. And you were under the impression that I was back with Jo.'
‘Did he now?' She cleared her throat in preparation for the next question, ‘And are you?' It came out all shaky.
‘Oh aye, that's why I'm giving ring boxes to you.'
‘Empty ring boxes though.'
‘I explained the reason for that. You have tae wear the thing for ever, so it's no' fair fo' me to force ma tastes on youse, is it noo?'
‘I suppose,' said Stevie. Her heart was thumping so loud she thought it might even deafen Adam. ‘But you still haven't answered the question.'
‘Stevie.' Adam looked her squarely in the eyes so she could read the truth in them for herself. ‘I don't know if I ever was in love with Jo. I was besotted, but I don't even know if there is a real Jo MacLean. I think she just borrows personalities aff a peg and wears them like a suit. The trouble with that is that none of them ever quite fit properly. I certainly didn't know her – I realized that at Will's barbecue.' He didn't say he could trace that moment back to when she shoved little Danny away and he saw the hurt in the wee boy's eyes. He knew then she wasn't the woman she had presented herself to be. She wasn't the woman he had waited for all his life.
‘So how come you left me a note saying we both needed space?'
‘Because even though I knew I wanted you more than anything, I needed to give you some time to find out what you felt for Matthew once he was free. I mean, I'm no' exactly your archetypal romantic hero, am I noo? You like handsome men who whisper and I'm a big, ugly, noisy bugger.'
‘I don't want Matthew. I'm from Venus. I'm not like you Mars lot, that sod off into caves and play with elastic bands or whatever it is.'
‘No, you're not like anyone I've ever met, Stevie Pollen Bumble Bee Nectar or whatever your name is.'
She blurted out a big pocket of laughter that pulled out a few bonus tears with it.
‘Stop crying, woman,' he said gruffly. ‘Okay, I admit it. I saw how quickly you jumped when Matty Boy called and I judged you on that. I thought you'd gone back to him. After all, it's what we planned for all along.'
‘He was suffering, Adam. Jo stuffed him too. I couldn't have walked away and see him branded a violent sex pest.'
‘Aye, well, I know that noo.' He took the ice-pack away and bowed his head. ‘But, stupid man that I am, I thought I'd lost you just when I was on the brink of getting you. And Danny, of course. Ba' Christ, I've missed the wee laddie.'
‘You stupid, stupid man,' said Stevie, for Danny and herself.
‘Hang on a wee minute – you loved Matt, you didnae even like me!'
‘Oh, Adam MacLean, you've got a nerve, considering how marvellous you thought I was in the beginning!'
Adam laughed, remembering the flour and the cocoa and that snotty ‘I hate you' look on her face and her friend with the mad pink hair. How very deceiving those first impressions had been. On both sides too, for at the same time, Stevie was thinking of the wild, red man pushing a holiday reservation up her nose in Matthew's front room. Who would have ever thought she could have loved him to the same degree that she hated him then?
‘And all the time I was thinking that now Jo was available, you'd be straight off back to her.'
‘Naw,' he smiled. ‘How could she compete with you?'
‘Yeah right,' said Stevie.
Adam looked at her sweet, disbelieving face and realized she would never know how lovely she was, which was a shame. He wanted to tell her how very deeply he had fallen for her, how she seemed to have flooded every chamber of his heart as only the right person could. But there was time, lots of it to come. For now, a kiss would suffice. He put down the ice pack, took her face in his great hands and carried on where he'd left off that night of the fillet steaks and her home-made cake and the raspberry-truffle coffees and the interrupting knock on the door.
Her lips were sweeter than honey.
Epilogue
They married at the beginning of the next summer – a day full of balmy May sunshine. There were Scottish pipers and the bonny bride carried an armful of wild wooded bluebells and heather instead of a formal pink rose bouquet. Adam took his vows in the tartan-trimmed church with a heart that was truly satisfied and content. There was no feeling that a part of him was pleading to an inaccessible part of his lady; he knew she was all his. For Stevie it was better than any ending she could have written. Like her alter ego Evie Sweetwell, she had found her Damme MacQueen. And he was even better in the flesh than he was on the page.
Matthew sent the happy couple a silver-plated bluebirds of happiness – he paid for it in cash – and a building society cheque for three thousand pounds, made out to Mrs Stevie MacLean. It was the first time she had seen her new name in print and it made her insides as runny as the waters of the Clyde.
They had a Ceilidh at the reception and a Scottish band, and wore kilts and danced jigs and reels such as Blue Bonnets and The Birds and the Bees well into the night. Things went awry as the champagne flowed, and some of the dancers ended up with different partners from the ones they started out with. But that seems to have turned out all right.
The newlyweds compromised on some of the Scottish traditions – the groom didn't drink whisky and wore very nice Calvin Klein boxers under his kilt. He did, however, eat a Sassenach alive for breakfast the next morning. And by all accounts, she rather enjoyed it too. They honeymooned for five days in an old castle by a beautiful loch, then they picked up Danny from Catherine's and whisked him away to EuroDisney for a week.