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Even though I couldn't make out his face, my shoulders began to tense up a bit, as I sensed something very recognizable about the way he moved.  I was beginning to believe I would sense his presence anywhere, despite my wish or wish not to do so.  I had a very ill and certain sense it was Iain Ross. 

Suddenly I saw him wave, and my already certain sense became an even more certain reality.  His form suddenly disappeared as he followed the narrow road down a hill.  When he came to the top of the hill he would be visible again, and he would also be very much closer.  I didn't want him to be very much closer.  

I looked around me, ridiculously, for a hiding spot.  This, of course, was not like the new Ellen Irvine, the girl that was supposed to be running to revel in her circumstances.  No, rather, this was the old Ellen, the one that rna to run away from those circumstances.  I knew this even when I saw that bit of forest to my right and rashly dashed into it.  

In retrospect, I suppose the action was a very stupid one.  It would have been ridiculous to assume that he couldn't see me.  My running suit was black and the snow, however scant it may have been, was white.  No sooner did I enter the forest than did I hear a shout of laughter ring out behind me.  I looked around to see Iain's red shirt enter the woods and disappear behind a tree.  I stopped short, heart beating quicker now, not just because I'd been discovered in my hasty retreat but also because I could no longer see him.  It was just like Iain to taunt me when he sensed from me any sort of vulnerability.  Simply catching me would never have been good enough.  No, he wanted to jump out and grab me and make me squeal.  

"Oh, so you want to play games, do you?" I muttered under my breath haughtily, "why am I not surprised?"  

I crept sideways, eyes peeled for the red shirt, ready for him to jump out and start chasing me.  When finally I did catch eye of the red shirt, however, it was not even on his body.  It sat in an sneering heap, looking like incarnadine against the rather large patch of snow that encircled the trunk of a tree.  Of course he had rid himself of the pitiful camouflage, the wily idiot.  I turned around quickly, expecting to see his shirtless form jump out and grab me.  For a man who was supposedly so bold it was very ironic that he was able to pull off being elusive, I thought to myself as I furrowed my brow, and I proceeded forward again with keen awareness of my peripheral.  I eyed a large oak tree suspiciously, thinking it may have been a principal accomplice in his schemes as it was the only tree trunk big enough to completely hide him.  I slowly approached it, still keeping myself at a distance.  My heart jumped, however, when I became parallel to it, as I saw Iain leaning against it, feet spread out before him, and hand insolently stroking his chin as he grinned widely and wickedly at me. 

He leapt quickly towards me, just as if he was a dark wolfish monster awaiting his suddenly visible prey.  I shrieked, of course, but before he closed the gap between us, I was determined I'd give him a chase he had not incorporated in his plans.  I reached down and grabbed a large bit of unmelted snow that had gathered around the smaller oak by which I stood, and I threw the contents in his face.  I heard him laugh and saw him flinch, and with that I made my run for it. 

I had always been swift-footed and thus had no trouble striding away from him initially.  However, as I had normally raced other girls when I ran track, I was only conditioned to outrun girls.  Iain was a very fit male.  And though a woman could be in every sense equal to a man in mind, she was rarely equal to him in physique.  The fact that I was 5'10" and taller than many men would have perhaps proved me a rarity in some circumstances.  But it did not help me with this one, given that Iain was nearly a half-foot taller.  

I could hear him gaining on me, and it only fueled my adrenaline, making my legs as adeptly quick as the red stag's.  I heard him mutter a curse from behind me, likely because he was shocked at my speed, and I grinned despite myself, silently willing him to eat my dust, or rather, in this circumstance, to eat my snow powder.  We ran until we came out of the woods and into the clearing.  Out in the open, however, I was no match for his dead sprint, and I could hear him closing in on me.  I felt strangely like I was a race-horse tiring just before the wire, as the late-finisher closed the distance between us and threatened to overtake my lead.  I was tiring from my initial expenditure, but he was growing stronger, his male strength outlasting mine. 

I did not want to accept defeat.  I refused to accept defeat.  At least not defeat to him of all people.  My mind spun for a moment as I thought of what I would do.  I waited until he was almost upon me, and then I decided to do something his style, something duplicitous.  I suddenly slowed, turned around, and stuck out my foot.  And just as I had hoped, he tripped as gracefully as a man could trip, and took a perfect dive, face forward, into the ground.  He had managed to half-grab me before he fell, so after loosing my balance I fell down beside him, laughing to the point of near hysterics over the ridiculousness of our culmination.

"Wee coward" he accused between laughing and breathing hard, as he tried to wipe the mud off of his chest, "ye couldna win fairly so ye had tae resort tae cheating."

"Ah, then I am merely playing on your level" I replied easily, and smugly, despite the fact that I was breathing hard and trying to control laughter. 

"Wha?  Ye think I am a cheater?" he asked me, incredulous.

His unbelieving look made me laugh even harder.  "Well" I started, "first you don't show up to group library meetings so Vic and I had to do all the work on the project, then you insisted on avoiding payment on a Christmas Ball ticket so that we can instead climb through a window and sneak into the party, then you messed up my lip gloss by needless massacre of my mouth and stole my compact so that I couldn't fix it, then you probably cheated during Clobyosh, then you mysteriously show up at the pub the day my parents are there dressed to the nines in your suit that you never wear and not only charm their faces off but also manage to convince me that we're dating, oh and that one time when you convinced me that your packed lunch meat was sausage until after I ate some and you decided to tell me that it was haggis..." I took a gasping breath, "did I forget something?...I'm sure I'm forgetting things..."

He eyes crinkled as he laughed, "Ey...doona deny it...ye know ye liked the haggis."

I rolled my eyes, "Whether I liked it or not is not the point I'm trying to make.  You still cheated."

"I wouldna call tha' cheating" he countered, looking pensive.

"Oh, really?  Then what on earth would you call it?" I asked with both brows raised, earnestly eager to hear his excuse.

"Strategizing" he said slowly, with a grin that spread indolently across his face.

I rolled my eyes again, trying to fight the smile that attempted to break through my stern guise, "Well, either way Mr. Ross, I believe you'd do anything to get what you want, be it immoral or no."

"Ach, maybe so" he said as he rolled over so that he was on his stomach.  He braced himself on his elbows and then gave me a thoughtful look.  I returned it suspiciously.  "But I am sorry about last night, Ellen" he said finally.

My brows rose.  An apology?  From never-do-wrong Iain Ross?  "Sorry for what?" I asked, needing clarification, having no explanation for the increased beating of my heart.

"Weel, for being too bold and for kissing ye like tha' when ye obviously werena ready for it" he answered, being completely serious and sincere.

I looked down.  I had not expected this sincerity.  The conversation had taken a sharp turn away from the realm of witty banter and into the realm of grave matters.  I was no longer comfortable, but there was no where to run, so I bore it, seeking to defend myself.  "How could you have known that I wasn't ready for it?  Who's to say I didn't like it?"

"Ye ran from me, Ellen!  It couldna 'ave been clearer.  Even today, you ran from me.  You werena ready, and ye arena ready" he explained, making very clear sense.  It angered me, his acute ability to pinpoint all of the things that I wasn't proud of about myself.  However, I bit my tongue, because he was correct in his assumption.  He continued, "Look, if ye doona want tae date me, then ye doona 'ave tae, Ellen.  I like ye, aye, tha' is for certain.  But I see something in ye tha' ye havena even seen yet yourself.  And until you can see it too, ye will never be ready to kiss me" he finished, still boring his eyes into the side of my ever-reddenning face.  

"Iain" I began, knowing that I had to tell him how I really felt, "I don't know if I'll ever be ready to be with you."

There was silence between us.  A Golden hawk made its cry in the distance, but he remained unseen.

"Say what ye mean" he said, needing my clarification now, though I was certain I had already been blunt enough.  

"Iain, I don't think we're right for each other" I said more directly, more bluntly.  A weight suddenly lifted from my shoulders and disintegrated into the warming air.

The silence between us came again.  This time, however, there was no hawk, only the beating of my own heart as I awaited his response. 

"I disagree" he said finally.

I looked him in the eyes then, emboldened by his inane, simple words.  "I know you do.  I just don't know why."

"I told ye.  Because I see something in you tha' ye canna yet see" he said slowly and with painstaking truth, taking my admission surprisingly well, "And it appeals to me greatly" he finished on a soft mutter.

I convinced myself not to be wooed by his gentle tone.  "What is this thing that you see?" I asked him exasperatedly, not liking this strange elusiveness about him.  I was beginning to think I preferred his boldness, which I would have thought ludicrous weeks before.  Though his boldness was at times offensive and brash, at least it was without clandestine meaning.  

He looked at me pensively, his eyes softening a bit.  In a surprisingly affectionate movement, he ran his finger across my jaw line.  I froze, not expecting his boldness to return in an act of tenderness.  He dropped it suddenly when he saw the scandal in my eyes, and for the first time since we'd been sitting down, he looked away from me, and he looked away wistfully.  My heart, strangely, wrenched.  

"It's best if I let ye discover it yourself" he said softly as he dug his index finger into the almost-lush spring ground, "and wait."

He moved on to his back again, finished saying what he wanted to say.  I didn't know how I knew he was finished, but I just did.  So I did not question him further, though my mind was reeling with his haunting words, and his suddenly soulful emotions.  It was as if his mind was a world of crystal balls, and he had tapped into my future as confidently as would a fortune teller.  How could he know what I had left to discover about myself?  Was i an open book?  Was I really so easy to read?  Did he honestly still think we would somehow miraculously end up together?  He had said that he would wait.  What if I discovered this undiscovered element of myself and then married someone else, like Professor Kane?  What would his waiting mean, then?  What would he do if his waiting left me taken?  Would he kidnap me then, and hid me away in the stone tower of his parents' old stone mansion?  I huffed slightly as I formulated the thought.  Only in Scotland could certain aspects of fairy tales seemingly not cease to exist.  My jaw line still tingled with his rare touch, which had been a combination of bold assurance and tender affection, and utterly confusing.  I shifted my weight on the ground, and ran my finger overtop a small yellow flower, a perennial, that shook and yet still stood courageously in the spring wind.  The tone of Iain's conviction eerily reminded me of that flower.  In that one hope-filled word, wait, he had promised to have something that Kane never had - commitment, a shaken but rooted constancy.  I was disturbed by this thought.  Anything that jaded Kane further was beginning to irritate me.  There was a reason Kane was afraid to commit.  He had been hurt.  No matter, he was who I had chosen.  He was the only man I could trust to make me free-fall, to make me fly amidst thunderclouds, and to make me love.  Therefore, I decided this commitment that Iain promised was nothing but commitment from a libertine, which really seemed quite the paradox.  I smiled dryly.  Justification.  At least I had saved my own conscience by telling Iain how I had truly felt about us.  

"I'm bloody freezing" Iain interrupted my thoughts.  

I looked over at him and couldn't help but laugh.  It was his own fault that he was currently covered with cold mud - he had taken off his running shirt. 

"Want some cheese with that whine?" I asked him with a bit of a smile in my voice.  

He looked over at me with the devil's very glare.  "Only if it's Gouda."