“Feeling’s mutual,” I echoed.
“Touché.” He laughed. “So what’s this post about? More food?”
“Don’t hate on the food. Food is life,” I said with a triumphant smile. “This is about food in Scotland. I was supposed to go before…” My voice trailed off, but I forced myself to recover. “Before everything.”
He nodded. “But you had to cancel, right?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “It was a research trip. I was really excited about it.”
“I’m surprised it wasn’t some tropical destination,” he joked with a smile.
I frowned. “Huh? Why?”
And now it was time for him to look away. “I may have assumed that you stay at nice hotels, eat their food, then post about it and get kickbacks. I didn’t know there was actual research. Is this the part where I tell you I’m a jackass and I’m sorry?”
“Yup. Read the room, Rip, read the room.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK.” I checked out the freshly posted content. “I know the digital world is hard for dinosaurs like yourself to understand.”
“I deserved that.”
“Yup.”
Without any warning he got up and left. So still a jackass… noted. I heard some rummaging in the kitchen and had dived back into my work when suddenly a glass appeared in front of my laptop.
“What’s this?”
“Whisky. Neat.” The glass was clear, one ice cube and at least two inches of whisky were in it, and the man handing it to me? With his dark hair, gorgeous eyes, and wicked smile, yeah, he wasn’t bad either.
“And you’re handing me this for what? Some sort of weird manly peace offering where I get drunk and talk about stocks and bonds or…”
“It’s the best I could do.” He sat down next to me on the couch. “But Edinburgh by far is the best location for a whisky tasting, in my opinion. It could be the castle nearby, the way that the Highlands call out to you, or even the Witchery by the Castle, an eatery just down the street that feels like it’s built inside a cave. It’s one of those places that you just know someone had to have gotten murdered in back in the day.” He laughs. “It’s Gothic, beautiful, and exactly what you should write about. I think that’s my top favorite—” He stopped talking and tapped my screen. “Shouldn’t you be taking notes?”
I choked down the whisky and rasped, “I can’t decide if I hate you more, or if I should say thank you. It’s very confusing and quite frankly alarming. Um… should I feel hot?”
He smirked. “It’s the whisky.”
Was it, though? “Right, right, so whisky, castle.” I set the glass down and started adding to my post. “And cave murder. Nice.”
“Type in ‘the Witchery,’” he said.
I quickly pulled up the website and sighed. “One day.”
“One day,” he echoed. “When life isn’t…” He glanced at the still-dirty kitchen. Well, at least the dishes were done. “This.”
I let out a snort. “Please, that’s normal for me.”
Rip’s eyes widened in horror.
“Gotcha.” I winked. “That’s Satan’s pigsty, and I have a feeling it’s gonna be like that until we figure out how to balance our new… life.”
“We’ll get there.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We will.”
We stared at one another for a few seconds before he cleared his throat and looked away. It was the first time his green eyes had lingered on mine that something unspoken had passed between us.