Page 48 of Merry & Bright
Rob didn’t know what to say. The truth was, none of the locals really spoke to Cam McMorrow often enough to call him anything. After his argument with Rob, Cam had stopped coming into the café. He’d stopped going to The Stag on Friday nights too. If he was mentioned in conversation, the locals tended to shrug and note that he“kept himself to himself”.
But Rob couldn’t say that to Cam’s—what was she? Sister?
“Well,” he began carefully, darting a look at Cam. “He’s never mentioned tomethat he goes by ‘Cam’.”
There. That wasn’t untrue, was it?
He felt absurdly gratified when Cam raised his gaze from the table and seemed to minutely relax.
“I can’tbelievehe hasn’t told you!” the girl exclaimed. “He’s always gone by ‘Cam’. Our mum started calling him that when he was a baby—she’s Italian but she insisted on giving us these really Scottish names, didn’t she, Cam? I think it was her way of fitting in with the McMorrow side of the family.” She smiled brightly at Rob. “I got ‘Eilidh’.”
Ai-ly. She clipped the two syllables out, short and quick in that Glaswegian accent that sounded so much like Cam’s. Funny how the same accent could make two people sound so different. Eilidh had that cheeky, gallus thing going on that Glaswegians were so famous for, while Cam was quieter, yet harder somehow.
“Eilidh’s a good name,” Rob said, smiling back. He glanced at Cam then, noting that the man’s body language—shoulders angled just slightly towards the tinsel-framed window—suggested that he wished Rob would leave them alone.
“So, Cam,” the girl said. “Are you going to...introduce me to your friend?”
“My frie—” Cam broke off, then cleared his throat. “Oh—Rob. Right, this is, uh, Rob Armstrong. He owns the café.” He sent an apologetic look Rob’s way. “This is my sister, Eilidh.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Rob said, offering her a smile. The family resemblance was obvious, once you knew. Cam and Eilidh had the same olive complexion, the same dark eyes and hair—inherited, presumably, from their mother. Both tall and lean and good-looking, an effortlessly glamorous pair, even in beat-up jeans and scuffed boots.
“You too, Rob,” Eilidh replied cheerily. “And this place is great. The cakes look awesome. Are they homemade?” She was a lot more friendly than her brother, Rob thought wryly. She’d smiled at him more in the last few minutes than Cam had all year.
“Yeah,” Rob replied. “My manager Val makes them. She’s an amazing baker. She takes care of this place most of the time, actually—I just do part-time hours.”
“Oh yeah? What do you do with yourself the rest of the time?”
“I’m an artist.”
Eilidh’s gaze went straight to the walls of the café, skipping over the dozen or so canvasses hanging there. “Are these all yours, then?” She glanced back at Rob who nodded. “God, they’regorgeous. I love the colours.”
She turned in her chair to look more carefully at the nearest canvas, an oil painting close to their table. It was a simple picture of two cottages at dusk. The white walls were almost luminous against the shadowy hillside and violet sky. Most of the picture was rendered in variations of purple and black with just touches of acid-bright colour here and there—a line of yellow at the edge of a roof, pinpricks of vermillion in the corner of a window.
“Thanks,” Rob said politely. “This place is kind of an unofficial gallery for me, although I also display my stuff in other places on the tourist trail.”
He noticed then that Cam was scowling at the painting, as though it offended him. Rob felt himself bridling, till Eilidh’s huff of laughter drew his attention back to her.
“Don’t mind Cam,” she said. “He always glares when he’s thinking hard.” She poked Cam’s arm, “Don’t you?”
Cam started at that and looked round. “What?” he said, seeming puzzled. When Eilidh chuckled he gave a tiny, dismissive shake of his head then met Rob’s gaze, jerking his thumb at the picture. “Is that out by Cardrogan Bay?”
Rob felt an unexpected stab of pleasure at Cam’s recognition of the place. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the scene he’d painted. It could’ve been anywhere along the coastline—there were hundreds of little cottages just like that round here—and he’d worked from a pretty inaccessible viewpoint that not many people would be familiar with.
“Yes, it is,” he admitted, helpless to stop the little smile that tugged his lips upwards. “That’s the view from the crags on the hillside behind the Bechie Woods.”
“Yeah, I recognise it. I take the bike up there sometimes,” Cam said. “Sometimes I sit on the crags and look out over the sea. You quite often see seals swimming out in the bay. I even saw a couple of sea otters once.” Their gazes met and Cam’s cheeks seemed to colour a little, as though he’d given away more than he’d meant to. He cleared his throat then, glancing at his sister. “It’s a really nice spot.”
Eilidh just raised a brow. She looked amused. Rob didn’t feel amused though. Something about the thought of Cam sitting alone on the crags, looking out over the bay—it made him feel sad somehow. Which was a disconcerting thought.
Equally disconcerting was the insidious little voice at the back of his mind wondering how fit Cam must be to ride his bike up the steep paths of the Bechie Woods.
What must the muscles on those long legs be like?
Rob cleared his throat. “So,” he said, injecting a change-the-subject note into his voice. “Do you know what you want to order?”
“Oh, yes! I’ll have the brie and bacon panini,” Eilidh said promptly. “And a large cappuccino. Oh, and one of those chocolate cupcakes—they look amazing.”
“Theyarepretty awesome,” Rob confirmed with a wink before turning to Cam. “And for you?”