Must Love Highlanders by Patience Griffin Grace Burrowes Page B

him all the way back to the car park. The day had been magical, and some of the magic clung to her, even as she wondered:
    What would it take for Liam to be happy too?

    A prediction of rain saved Liam’s sanity, for yesterday’s frolics had about done him in. He took himself down the path to the cottage, intent on confirming with Louise that she’d not need her driver for the day.
    Honesty compelled Liam to admit that Louise Cameron’s
mouth
—a perfectly mundane arrangement of two lips—had about done him in. Her mouth had moods— thoughtful, determined, merry, frustrated. He’d taken to studying her mouth when he ought to have been studying portraits of old Rabbie Burns or Mad King George.
    Louise was leaving in less than two weeks, but the image of her smiling atop Arthur’s Seat would linger in Liam’s memory long after her departure. More excellent composition, which he’d e-mailed to himself, but he’d probably not share those photos with his classes.
    He knocked on the front door of the cottage, and nobody answered. From the base of the picture window, Dougie blinked up at him.
    “I brought cat food,” Liam informed his pet. “Though I suspect you’ve wheedled cheese and worse from the lady.”
    Dougie replied with a squint—a self-satisfied squint.
    The door was unlocked, practically guaranteeing another visit from Uncle Donald. “Anybody home?” Liam called as he walked into the kitchen.
    Perhaps Uncle Donald had kidnapped Louise for a spot of fishing. She had Liam’s cell phone number, and might have called if her plans—
    Somebody was down the hall in the studio, humming along to the strains of “Caledonia.”
    Bless the rainy forecast.
Liam set the can of gourmet cat food on the kitchen counter, slung his damp jacket around the back of a chair, and eased down the hall.
    Louise sat before the pottery wheel, a small column of wet, reddish clay rotating slowly between her hands. Liam’s reaction was immediate, erotic, and inconvenient as hell.
    He was going daft. First her mouth, then her hands. She pressed her thumbs into the top of the column, creating the beginnings of a dished shape, then continued to press, so the column developed a hollow interior.
    Just like Liam’s mind. Arousal, visual pleasure, consternation, and surprise rocketed about inside him, but nothing as coherent as an actual thought.
    “I know you’re there, Liam,” Louise said as the clay became a vase. “I thought I heard the door, and I can smell your aftershave. You’re allowed to watch. I’m not one of those artists who throws mud at someone who interrupts her work.”
    From the CD player, Dougie MacLean—
such
a helpful fellow—sang gently about kisses, love, and going home.
    “Wouldn’t fiddle music be easier to work to?” Liam asked, leaning on the doorjamb. “There’s a Paul Anderson album in that stack that’s breathtaking.”
    Everything Paul Anderson recorded was breathtaking.
    Louise used the back of her wrist to scratch her chin and got a daub of wet clay on her jaw.
    “I’ll listen to them all before I leave, possibly before the day’s done. The forecast said rain for most of the day.”
    And thunder and lightning behind Liam’s sporran, apparently. For years he’d not been plagued with unforeseen arousal, with much of any arousal. His equipment functioned, he made sure of that from time to time, but Louise with her wet hands and her hair in a haphazard topknot had ambushed him.
    “If you want to spend the day here, I have plenty of work to do,” Liam said. “Papers to read, lecture notes to prepare. If you need anything, you have only to—”
    “I need a hard-boiled egg or two and a cup of coffee.”
    Liam nearly told her, as he would have told any sister, cousin, or other presuming female, to get it herself or at least say please, but Louise hadn’t looked up from her project. She bent closer to the wheel, shaping the vase into a taller column, gently, gently, then spreading the