Chapter 15: Kitchen Conquest
The empty bowls sat in the sink, the wok a cool, greasy monument in the center of the stove. The silence now was a different creature—not tense, but thick and humming, like the air after a summer storm. Roz traced the grain of the countertop with a fingertip, the memory of her uncle’s voice finally receding, replaced by the solid, warm reality of Ally’s shoulder brushing hers as he rinsed a spoon.
He moved with a quiet efficiency, but his energy had shifted. The focused calm of cooking had condensed into something more potent, more deliberate. He turned off the tap and leaned back against the counter opposite her, crossing his arms. His gaze was direct, a slow, warm scan that started at her flour-dusted toes and travelled up, over the charcoal-smeared leggings, the old sweater slipping off one shoulder, finally settling on her mouth.
“You’ve got a bit of sauce,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “Just there.”
She instinctively swiped at the corner of her lips. “Gone?”
“No.” He didn’t move. “Other side.”
She tried again, missed. He pushed off the counter and closed the small distance between them. He didn’t use his thumb. He bent his head and kissed it away, his mouth soft, a brief, devastatingly precise touch. The taste of soy and ginger was on his tongue. A shiver, sharp and electric, shot straight down her spine.
When he pulled back an inch, his eyes were dark. “All clean.”
The kitchen felt ten degrees hotter. The hum of the refrigerator was suddenly loud. Roz’s hands found the edge of the counter behind her, gripping the cold granite. She felt unmoored, floaty, all the day’s anxiety transmuting into a single, focused point of need.
He saw it. He always saw it. A smile touched his lips, not the bright, public one, but something private, possessive. “You’re thinking too much.”
“I’m always thinking,” she breathed.
“Not tonight.” It was a statement. He placed his hands on the counter on either side of her hips, caging her in without touching her. His warmth radiated against her. “Tonight, I want you out of that brilliant, chaotic head of yours. I want you here. In this kitchen. With me.”
He dipped his head again, this time kissing the pulse point just below her jaw. She gasped, her head tipping back of its own accord. “Ally…”
“I’ve got plans for you, Roslyn McLeod.” His words were a vibration against her skin as his mouth travelled down the column of her throat. “Big, elaborate, incredibly selfish plans.”
Her laugh was a shaky puff of air. “Yeah?”
“Mhm.” His hands slid from the counter to her waist, his thumbs pressing into the soft dip above her hips. “The second your last painting is hung, and that show is open, I’m stealing you. No phones. No journalists. No uncles. Just a cottage so remote the sheep have their own postcode. And I am going to spend the first three days doing nothing but learning the map of you.”
He punctuated this by lifting her, effortlessly, onto the cleared counter. The cold granite seared through her thin leggings. She let out a small, surprised sound that was swallowed by his mouth as he kissed her properly, deeply. This was not the gentle kiss from the gallery. This was hunger, long-stewed and finally unleashed. It was all tongue and heat and the faint, familiar taste of his toothpaste underneath the dinner. She kissed him back, her fingers plunging into his hair, scattering the carefully styled strands.
Between kisses, against her mouth, he continued, his voice a rough scrape. “I’m going to find out what that sound you just made tastes like. I’m going to discover if the skin behind your knee is as sensitive as the spot just here…” He bit down, gently, on her earlobe, and she jerked against him. “…and I am going to worship every single one of these freckles.” His hand slid under her sweater, his palm searing a path up her ribcage. “The ones you say are boring. I’m going to prove you wrong. For days.”
Her brain short-circuited. Plans, logistics, fears—they dissolved like sugar in hot water. There was only the pressure of his body between her thighs, the hard edge of the counter digging into the backs of her legs, the thrilling shock of his words. This was a threshold of a different kind, and he was asking her to cross it with abandon.
“What about… training?” she managed, arching into his touch.
“Scheduled around you.”
“The cottage… is it real?”
“Booked it this morning. Keys are in my jacket.” He tugged her sweater over her head in one smooth motion. The cool air kissed her skin, raising goosebumps that his hands immediately soothed. “See? Plans.”
She looked down at him, at his flushed face, his pupils blown wide. The framed photos on the wall behind him—Ally holding a trophy, Ally in a team portrait—seemed like artifacts from another life. This was the real man. Not the brand, not the headline. Her man. Possessive, passionate, meticulously planning her pleasure like it was a crucial part of his playbook.
A boldness surged through her, fueled by his certainty. She pushed at the shoulders of his t-shirt. “Off.”
He obeyed, pulling it over his head. The sight of him still stole her breath—the powerful shoulders, the defined planes of his chest, the faint silvery scar along one rib. She ran her fingers over it, a familiar trail.
“Your plans sound… thorough,” she said, her voice husky.
“I’m a thorough guy.” He leaned in, capturing her mouth again, his hands sliding under her thighs to pull her closer to the edge of the counter. The hard length of him pressed against her through their clothes, a blunt, undeniable promise. “But they can wait.” He kissed the hollow of her throat. “Tonight,” he murmured, his breath hot on her skin, “is just about reminding you who you are when the world isn’t watching.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. His mouth found her breast through the lace of her bra, and the world did, in fact, fall away. There was no canvas, no deadline, no ringing phone. There was only sensation—the scrape of his stubble, the clever, relentless work of his tongue, the way his hands held her as if she were both fragile and essential. She cried out, the sound echoing off the tiled walls, and he swallowed it, his own groan vibrating against her skin.
Later, much later, when the kitchen was a landscape of discarded clothing and the only light was the blue glow from the oven clock, he carried her to the bedroom. She was boneless, languid, her mind a blissful blank. He laid her on the bed and just looked at her in the semi-darkness, his expression unreadable.
“What?” she whispered.
He shook his head slowly, a trace of wonder in his eyes. “Just memorizing.” He stretched out beside her, pulling the duvet over them both. He drew her back against his chest, his arm a heavy, comforting weight around her middle. His lips brushed her shoulder. “The first panel of my private collection.”
She drifted towards sleep, wrapped in his heat and his scent. The chaos was still out there, waiting. The canvas on the living room wall was a giant, unfinished question. But here, in the dark, with the solid beat of his heart against her back, she had her answer. It was simple. It was him.
Just before sleep took her, she felt his embrace tighten, almost imperceptibly. His voice, slurry with exhaustion, was the last thing she heard.
“I’ve got you, Roz. No matter what door they try to open next.”
The morning light through the blinds cut sharp lines across the duvet and over Ally’s sleeping face. Roz watched it trace the scar on his brow, the stubble darkening his jaw. He looked younger in sleep, the constant, ready tension in his shoulders finally released.
Her mind, however, was already ticking. The unfinished canvas in the other room was a physical weight in her thoughts. The phone call from her uncle was a sour taste under the sweet memory of the night. She shifted carefully, trying to slip out without waking him.
His arm, heavy across her waist, tightened instantly. “No you don’t,” he mumbled into the pillow, his voice gravelly with sleep. “It’s barely light. The world can wait.”
“The world is probably emailing,” she whispered, but she settled back against him. His skin was warm, his heartbeat steady under her palm where it rested on his chest. This was the contradiction of him: brutal strength on the field, utter stillness here.
“Let it.” He opened one eye, a sliver of blue regarding her. “You’re thinking again. I can hear the gears grinding.”
“I have fifteen doors to paint in seven weeks. One of them is currently a scary white rectangle staring at me.” She poked his ribs. “Some of us have real work to do.”
He caught her finger, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “Some of us have a match in Cardiff on Saturday. My work involves being hit by very large men for eighty minutes. Your work involves making beauty from the noise they create.” He rolled onto his side, facing her. “We’re both in the trauma business, sweetheart. Just different pitches.”
The analogy was so absurd, and so perfectly him, that she laughed. The sound felt good in the quiet room. He smiled, a slow, satisfied thing that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, his thumb lingering on her skin. His expression softened, the playful glint deepening into something more profound, more vulnerable.
“My wee one,” he said, the Scots endearment rough and tender in his morning voice. He searched her face. “My gorgeous baby. I love you.”
The words, so simply delivered, stole the air from her lungs. They weren’t framed by passion or crisis. They were just there, a fact laid bare in the striped morning light. Her throat tightened. She saw her own reflection in his eyes—sleep-rumpled, bare-faced, utterly seen.
She reached up, her hand curling around the back of his neck, pulling his forehead to rest against hers. The intimacy of it was sharper than anything that had come before. “I love you too, Ally.” She breathed the words into the space between them. “My big guy.”
He let out a shaky breath, as if he’d been holding it for weeks. He kissed her then, slowly, a silent seal on the promise. It was different from the hunger of the kitchen. This was a foundation being laid.
The moment was shattered by the aggressive buzz of his phone on the nightstand. It skittered, vibrating against the wood. They both ignored it. It stopped. Then started again immediately, a relentless, jagged sound.
“Hamish,” they said in unison.
Ally groaned, throwing an arm over his face. “He knows the schedule. He knows I’m not at the hotel until tomorrow.”
“Maybe it’s important.”
“It’s always important.” He dragged his hand down his face and snatched up the phone. “What?” he barked, his voice all business.
Roz watched his face change. The softness from moments ago evaporated, replaced by a focused intensity. His eyes flicked to her, then away. “When?” A pause. His jaw tightened. “And they just ran it? No call to you first?”
She sat up, pulling the sheet around her. The studio-light calm was gone, replaced by a familiar, cold drip of anxiety. Ally listened, his responses clipped. “Right. Yeah. I’ve seen it. No, we’re not commenting. Not a word.”
He ended the call and dropped the phone onto the bed as if it were contaminated. For a long moment, he just stared at the wall where one of his rugby photos hung—a frozen moment of uncomplicated triumph.
“Ally.” Her voice was small.
He looked at her, and the anger in his eyes was barely banked. “The Sunday Clarion. They’ve got a two-page spread. It’s not about the article from last week.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a profile. Of you.”
“Of me?” The ice in her veins spread. “What profile? They’ve never spoken to me.”
“They don’t need to. They’ve spoken to ‘close associates’.” He made air quotes, the gesture vicious. “And ‘family sources’. It’s about your ‘meteoric rise from obscurity’. Your ‘tragic past’ neatly packaged. Your ‘unique hold’ on Scotland’s most promising sports star.” He recited the phrases like they were poison. “There’s a quote. From your Uncle Paul.”
The room tilted. Roz pressed a hand to her stomach. She could see it. The maudlin telling of her parents’ accident. The narrative of the lonely, fragile artist. The implication that she was a captivating project for a charitable hero. Her vision blurred, the morning’s joy curdling into something hard and sick.
“What did he say?” Her own voice sounded distant.
Ally’s gaze was fierce, protective. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
He exhaled, defeated. “He said, ‘We’ve always worried about Roslyn, she was so sensitive after the tragedy. We’re just glad she’s found someone so… stable to look after her.’” Ally’s fist clenched on the duvet. “He sold you out for a pint and his name in the paper, Roz. He made you small.”
The humiliation was a live wire. They’d taken her history, her grief, the very thing that had shaped the quiet person she was, and turned it into a selling point for a salacious story. They had made her art into a symptom. Her love into a diagnosis.
She pushed back the covers and stood on unsteady legs. The charcoal-smeared clothes from last night were a pile on the floor. She ignored them, walking naked and purposeful out of the bedroom, through the living room, past the giant, half-born canvas on the wall.
She went straight to her laptop on the cluttered desk and opened it. Ally followed, pulling on a pair of sweatpants, saying nothing.
She found the article online. The headline was brutal in its faux concern: The Keeper of Alistair MacLeod’s Heart: The Tragic Muse Behind the Rugby Star. There was a photo of her, one she didn’t recognize, taken from her college’s website, looking young and startled. Another of Ally, mid-tackle, all fury and power. The contrast was the whole story.
She read it. Every condescending word. She felt Ally behind her, a radiating pillar of silent fury. When she finished, she closed the laptop. Her hands were cold.
“Okay,” she said, her voice eerily calm.
“Roz—”
“No.” She turned to face him. The hollow feeling was gone, burned away by a clean, cold flame. “They want a tragic muse? They want a sensitive soul being looked after?” She walked to the intimidating white canvas. She picked up a stick of charcoal, her grip sure. “Fine. But I get to draw her myself.”
She didn’t sketch. She attacked. The charcoal shrieked across the primed fabric, a violent, swirling mark that consumed the center of the frame. It was dark, chaotic, a storm of lines. But within the chaos, if you looked, was the deliberate, sharp outline of a key. Not in a lock. Held in a hand, poised to strike.
Ally watched, the muscle in his jaw working. “What’s that?”
“It’s not a door,” she said, not stopping, her arm sweeping wide. “It’s the key. And it’s not for opening.” She stood back, breathing heavily, her skin dusted with black. She looked at him, her eyes clear and hard. “It’s for fighting back.”
His phone buzzed again from the bedroom. Then hers chimed on the desk. The world was at the gate, hammering. But the sound was different now. It wasn’t a tremor in her hands. It was a metronome. She picked up a brush, dipped it in a pot of Venetian red, and without hesitation, drew a single, dripping line from the heart of the charcoal storm.
The battle was no longer about hiding. It was about defining the terms of the war, and her first salvo was this: a key, drawn not to escape, but to carve her name into the narrative they thought they owned.