A Laird to Hold by Angeline Fortin (free children's ebooks online .TXT) 📕

Rhys wasn’t certain what he meant by break up, though it had shattered him at the time.

“I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it…”

It was both an out and an invitation. Rather than opting for the former, Rhys was surprised to hear himself say, “Nay, I dinnae mind. He passed away no’ long ago.”

“I’m sorry.” The apology was sincere and Jack took his hand with a comforting squeeze. He asked how it had happened and Rhys glossed over the truth as best he could but it was a relief to talk about it. The pain of that moment had lessened.  It was easier than he’d imagined.

“How did you meet?”

“He was my squi—” Rhys cut himself off again, wishing he didn’t have to be so bloody circumspect with someone he’d begun to trust. And care for. “He was in my employ. Despite our time together, he was ne’er comfortable wi’ ignoring the difference in our stations, which kept us from truly bonding despite our years together. As for me, I dinnae acknowledge the more personal aspect of our relationship until Scarlett urged me to. I had been engaged to wed a lady ‘ere that so I’m fore’er grateful to her.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. “Scarlett Thomas is the one who pulled you out of the closet? That’s a story I’d love to hear.”

“One for another time,” Rhys evaded the request. Recounting his drunken conversation with Scarlett about the wives of Henry the Eighth while Willem poured them more wine than they could hold with dignity was definitely not a tale for a friendship only two weeks old. “Now, I thought we were planning on an evening out, aye?”

“Yes, but I told you we were going to a night club?” Jack eyed Rhys up and down with pursed lips. “That’s what you want to wear?”

“Is this no’ suitable for dancing?”

Jack was wearing a tailored paisley dress shirt with a black velvet jacket and jeans. While he looked rather dashing, his colorful garb was not so drastically different from what Rhys had chosen.

“You are not wearing a sweater,” Jack protested. “You’ll die of heat stroke in five minutes. Let me see what else you have to wear.”

“In my room?”

“Why do you say it like that? My room? I’ve been up there before.”

But not while they were alone. The attraction between them was building. Progressing, but given all that had happened in Rhys’s life and his plans for the future—namely those in the past far, far away from Jack Prescott—Rhys wasn’t sure he should or could let their pleasantly casual relationship evolve into something more physical.

And he was even less certain if they went to his room he’d be able to stop it. He had no intention of becoming attached to anything so impermanent.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve a T-shirt beneath the sweater.”

“Rhys?”

There was a wealth of questions contained in the word but Rhys wasn’t about to answer any of them. For all his outer jocund swagger, he’d learned caution the hard way early in life. He downed the rest of his beer. “Are ye ready to go?”

Jack looked worried but nodded. “I am if you are.”

“Then let us go.”

Scarlett

The next evening

“Everything still looking all right with the baby, Willa?”

The neonatal nurse pursed her lips and shook her head at Scarlett with a hint of a smile. “When are you going to name this child, Ms. Thomas, so we can stop calling her baby Hepburn?”

“That seems to be the question of the hour. Perhaps we’ll just name her Baby and solve the problem,” Scarlett teased back.

Perhaps she should’ve countered by asking when the nursing staff would stop addressing her as Ms. Thomas and begin using her married name. She’d gotten on friendly terms with the nursing staff over the past couple of weeks. They’d all managed to move beyond her fame and treat her like a real person, a rare and wonderful occurrence she appreciated dearly. But she was still a celebrity to them and they must have assumed Scarlett wouldn’t forsake the name that had brought her to fame.

“Tell that hot husband of yours to think of something better if you won’t,” Willa shot back. “Poor child needs a real name.”

“We’ll work on it,” Scarlett assured her.

Laird was waiting patiently in the hall, rocking from foot to foot. Relaxed but ever diligent. Willa was spot on with her assessment. He was hot. A tempestuous volcano with a molten core. The bright French blue of his dress shirt somehow turned his normally gray eyes the same shade. The tailored cut hugged his shoulders and skimmed him down his broad chest to his narrow waist. With one hand in the pocket of his jeans and the other hooked on the collar of the charcoal woolen jacket tossed over his shoulder, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a photo shoot for GQ. Deliciously sexy.

And she got to be the one who took him home each night.

“Ms. Thomas?”

“Hmm…what?” Scarlett blinked and turned back to Willa. “Did you say something?”

Willa chuckled. “I was just answering your question, but you keep looking all you like.”

A flush warmed her cheeks. “What were you saying?”

“Just that the baby’s fine. Doing just fine. She’s growing like a weed.” Willa rocked the infant against her broad bosom and smiled down at her. “A few days more and you’ll be taking her home.”

“From your lips to God’s ears, Willa.”

A few more long, excruciating days and she could take her family back home. Away from the nightmare of the twenty-first century. Away from the crowds and the reporters who still