This wasthe longest plane ride I’d ever been on. Even flying first class, I needed to get up and stretch my legs. Taylor slept quietly beside me. He’d given me the window seat so I could see as we flew into Edinburgh. I remembered vividly one day when my mother and I had been heading to the grocery store together—I must have been only six, maybe younger—and I asked her why she looked so sad. All she did was sigh and shake her head. The song “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Jefferson Airplane came on the radio. She turned it up and sang softly while I bopped my head. Then when she parked the car in the parking lot, she turned and looked back at me.
“Marry the man who gives you the window seat on the plane, sweetie. One who does it without you asking for it.”
I never understood what she meant. Until now. She wasn’t saying because someone gave you a window seat, you needed to marry them. I’d thought it was such a weird bit of advice when I was little. But now I realized she was saying marry the man who gives you what you need before you know you need it. It unnerved me that Taylor was doing that. That’s not what I expected from him.
As we touched down on Scottish soil, Taylor’s body tensed. The energy he gave off changed, and his posture went tighter and tighter with every passing moment. As we picked up our rental car, he tensed. As we drove the winding roads through the beautiful landscape, he tensed. His grip on the steering wheel was white-knuckled, his jaw clenched so hard I could see the veins in his neck popping, and when we reached the gated property, he stopped and turned to look at me.
“You don’t know what this means. You doing this. And I’m sorry in advance for the welcome you’re going to receive.”
“I don’t know what you’re so afraid of.”
He didn’t answer me, but as the gate slid open, I reached out and placed my palm on his knee, giving it a light squeeze. Something in his shoulders loosened with that bit of contact, so I didn’t move my hand, and when we pulled up to the large old estate, I realized there was a lot more to Taylor Savage and his backstory than anyone had ever let on.
“Um, are you like a laird or something?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No, but my granddad is.”
“Oh my God. Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s a surprise. Why didn’t the media pick up on that?”
“We paid them a very handsome sum of money to keep it quiet.”
“Is your real last name Savage?”
“Legally? Yes.”
“And what about at birth?”
“No. I come from a long line of McCulloughs.”
“So I’m Becca McCullough, then?”
He stiffened. “No. You’re Rebecca Savage. And I’m Taylor Savage. And that’s all there is to it. You understand? I’ll never claim the title.”
“So what happens when it passes to you?”
“It won’t. I’ve got a cousin named Hugh, and he will have that great honor.”
“My, my, my, the baker and the rake sounds like a romance novel if I ever heard one.” I giggled.
“Just tell me one thing.”
“What?”
He smirked, a bit of levity brightening his eyes. “Is it a bodice ripper?”
That made my belly flip and tingles build between my thighs. I thought maybe it was.
“I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“That’s much more promising than a no.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“Oh, my hopes have been up since the day I met you and you tried to kill me.”