Tate (Mountain Men 3)

“For Christ’s sake,” she mutters, panting. “That view’s deceptive. Seems like it’s right outside that damn door, but they make you work for it, don’t they?”

I take her hand and tug her alongside me. “There are loads of things worth working for, lassie,” I say with a wink.

“Leave it to you to make it dirty.” But I can tell with the grin she’s giving me that she’s bloody pleased.

She frowns when we get to the cliff’s edge. My heart smacks against my ribcage seeing her set foot at the very brink, looking down at the beach below. “My God is it lovely here,” she whispers. “Something so raw and primal about it, isn’t there?”

“It’s alright,” I tease. “Leave it to the writer to wax poetic on it.” She sticks her tongue out at me.

“Damn lucky you’re so close to the edge, darlin’, or I’d smack your arse for the cheek.”

She wiggles said arse, but then the next moment, her brow furrows and she sobers, peering down at the beach below.

“How do we get to the beach?” she asks, stepping back off the edge.

I look around us, until I spy a stone staircase that looks like it’ll take us there. “Let’s try this.”

One does not go quickly down small, roughly-hewn stone steps built into the side of a cliff. By the time we’re on the beach, whatever she spotted is gone.

“Fran,” I say, my patience waning. “What did you see, love? Why won’t you tell me?”

She sighs, wrapping her arms around herself as a brisk wind kicks up over the sea. I drape an arm around her and turn her away from the bitter cold, bearing the brunt of the chill myself.

She shivers against me. “Because,” she says with a sigh. “I don’t want to give you false hope.” Her voice drops. “Or fear.”

“I can take it.”

She looks up at me, her eyes wide as saucers. “Thought I saw Islan, Tate. With her Welsh mate. Couldn’t be sure, of course…”

“What?” It’s the last thing I expected her to say. “How would she get here?”

“He’d have access to the same type of transport you do, wouldn’t he?”

I don’t reply at first, as I mull this over. “So now it’s ‘her Welsh mate?’”

She grimaces. “Believe so, aye.”

“Maybe it was just someone who looked like them…”

She doesn’t look convinced. “Perhaps.”

We explore every inch of the beach. A path here leads straight to the city centre, so even if it was Islan, and there’s no way to know if it was, there would be no way for us to find her. I call my family, but no one answers. Finally, just as we make it back up to the main house, I get Paisley.

“Where’s Islan?”

She blows out a breath. “Good morning to you, too, brother. Honest to God.”

“Paisley, this is important.”

She sighs. “Of course it is. Everything is always important. What is it, Tate?”

She’s not giving me a direct answer, and I know enough by now to know there’s reason for that.

“Paisley,” I say, in a warning tone.

“Fine, Tate. She spent the night with her date. She’s a legal adult now, you know, and doesn’t have to answer to all of you.”

“She bloody well does when our Clan’s in danger.”

“Tate, we’re always in danger. Bloody always.”

I don’t answer at first, because she’s fucking right. Every day you wake up a Cowen is a day you face danger.

“I need you to track her down, Pais. Can you do that for me? It’s important.”

She pauses before she answers. “Aye. I can.”

“Thank you. Keep me posted.”

We hang up the phone as we make it back to the main McCarthy house. We meet Nolan and Sheena, Keenan’s youngest brother and his wife, as we make it to the house. Fran chats easily with Sheena, and Nolan and I briefly catch up. By the time we head to the main dining room, it’s teeming with people. Staff milling about, filling teacups and mugs, carrying large platters of sizzling sausages, fried eggs, and broiled tomatoes, while others lay baskets of golden scones and thick slabs of soda bread on the table beside crocks of butter.

Fran swallows. “Now this is the way to honeymoon.” She winks, and now that she’s not teetering on the edge of a cliff, I give her that smack to the arse she earned.

“Tate!” she hisses, her cheeks coloring.

“I’ll show you the way to honeymoon,” I whisper in her ear. I live for the smile she gives me.

I sit beside my Clan brothers and Fran pulls out her phone. I can tell by the way her eyebrows knit and she works her lip, and the fact that she doesn’t touch her plate of food, that she’s hard at work on something. I don’t ask her what, giving her time to deal with it herself. She’ll tell me when she’s ready.