Free Scot of My Dreams by Janice Maynard Page A

truth at best.
    He stared down at me as if trying to read my mind, a feat made more difficult by the gathering gloom. “Let’s sit for a minute,” he said. Steering me toward a bench beneath a lamppost, he sighed. “I want to ask you something.”
    My heart pounded. Whenever I was scared, my default was to make jokes. “It’s far too early for a proposal. We just met. And if you’re about to proposition me, I have to tell you I don’t put out on a first date.”
    Bryce groaned aloud. “‘Put out?’ What kind of terrible American expression is that? No wonder you don’t believe in romance.”
    “I believe in romance,” I said quickly. “At least in theory. But romance has a tendency to make women stupid.”
    He sobered. “That sounds like the voice of experience. Have you had your heart broken, Willow?”
    “Yes. But not in the way you mean. My father abandoned us when I was in the fourth grade. My mother was helpless without him. She had spent the duration of their twelve-year marriage becoming the perfect wife, mother, and homemaker. The idea that he didn’t love her anymore was soul-crushing.”
    “What happened after that?”
    “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” I said. I hated talking about my past. Even McKenzie and Hayley didn’t know much about what happened to me in the years we were out of touch. Maybe I was trying to prove to myself how incredibly foolish it would be to fall victim to the romance of being wined and dined and seduced by a handsome, sophisticated Scotsman.
    We didn’t say anything for a long time. It must have been late, but I didn’t care. Back at the hostel, there would be another group of strangers for me to meet. At the moment, I knew Bryce MacBrae better than anyone else around.
    And he must have known me, too, because he didn’t argue with me or try to persuade me to go on. He simply sat in silence and let me be me.
    At last, I exhaled. “It takes a very long time for a bank to foreclose on a mortgage. My mother had no job. She was paying only the electricity and the water bills, and somehow she had enough for food. At least in the beginning.”
    “Your father didn’t offer financial support?” Bryce sounded disapproving. Undoubtedly, he was the kind of man who took his obligations seriously.
    “No. We didn’t even know where he was. The credit cards were in his name. He cancelled them all. I think my mother had a modest savings account. I remember she began taking me to rummage sales on the weekends and selling off our things little by little.”
    “I’m sorry, Willow.”
    “The change in our circumstances didn’t really hit me until the police came and evicted us. By then I was in sixth grade and old enough to be humiliated and embarrassed. We drove across town to my aunt’s house. She took us in for seven or eight months. But it was a tiny place, and that arrangement ultimately ended. Then it was one family member after another, until eventually even friends weren’t exempt from my mother’s sob story.”
    “Children need security.”
    “Yes.” I swallowed hard. “At fourteen, I got a job at the neighborhood supermarket. I gave my entire paycheck to whichever family member was feeding us. It was the only way I could hold my head up.”
    “And your mother?”
    “She never got over my father. She still thinks he may come back one day.”
     
     

Chapter 13
     
    I don’t know what I expected from Bryce. Already, I regretted my candor. I think unconsciously I was trying to enlist his support, so we would both know not to get involved in something ill-advised.
    He rose abruptly and stared down the street, his back to me. Hands shoved in his pockets, he remained still as a slight breeze ruffled his hair. Finally, he turned back to face me. “If you expect me to feel sorry for you, Willow, I don’t.”
    I stood as well, feeling the sharp sting of regret. “I didn’t ask you to.”
    “But you did want me to know why a beautiful woman like