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Lachlan makes a face. “What else would it be?”

“But that guy came out and said it was all a hoax?”

Lachlan chuckles. “Alastair? Oh, aye. He was…a family friend. Did us a real solid coming out with all that talk of Spurling confessing.”

“So the hoax was…a hoax?”

“Kelpie magic and monsters, andthat’sthe part you’re struggling with?”

His quiet laugh drifts back toward me as he continues forward, and I stumble after him, still in a daze. “Okay, but you have to admit that plaster and wood on a toy submarine was pretty believable.”

“A toy submarine from the thirties? How on earth do you think they even got it into position? Remote controls?”

“I…Hm. I didn’t think of that.”

“Sometimes, lass…things are exactly what they appear to be.”

I pick up my pace so I can fall into step beside him. “Have there been other real sightings?”

“A few,” he tells me. “It’s hard to hide when you’re so…big.”

And he really is big.

I shake my head back and forth.

Stop that. Just because he isn’t being a total dick to you doesn’t mean you should start appreciating how hot he is.

I sneak a glance to my left, eyeing the way his neat beard highlights the sharpness of his jaw. The way it makes his mouth look soft and full and—

Stop. It.

“So how much further?”

Lachlan shrugs. “We’re close to the halfway point. There’s an auld barn on the other side of that hill”—he points to the rising slope that seems miles away from this vantage point—“and from there it’s less than an hour left, I’d say.”

A rumble of thunder sounds above us, and I peek up at the sky warily. “Do you think we’ll make it there dry?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says confidently. He taps the side of his nose. “I can smell when it’s going to rain. We’ve got hours yet before it starts.”

Sounds like bullshit, but what do I know?

“Okay,” I answer. “If you’re sure.”

Lachlan scoffs. “I’malwayssure.”

We’re utterly drenched by the time we make it inside the dilapidated old barn that’s really more of a leaking, thatched roof over four rotting walls—and I shake off my backpack as I glare at Lachlan, who is shaking the rain out of his hair.

“You can smell the rain, huh?”

He shoots me a glare.“Haud yer wheesht.”

“English,” I groan.

“Be quiet, you arse.”

“Wow.” I ring out the end of my sweater. “Real nice.”

He presses his hands to his hips after he drops his pack, looking around the space. “Least we’ll be dry here. I’m sure the rain will pass soon. It always does.”