Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“My hasty wedding with Scarlett was for the same reason,” he interjects smoothly. “After nearly burning her alive, I owed her my protection.”
Was that all? Suddenly, the memories of last night don’t feel as warm.
“Yeah, not exactly a meet cute,” I joke weakly. This does not go over well with Alastair, but Isobel and Sorcha laugh gleefully.
“One day when we know each other better,” Sorcha says, “I’ll have to tell ye the story of my ‘meet cute’ with Alastair.” She blinks up at him adoringly, but I know she’s screwing with him because I didn’t think his jaw could get any tighter.
“When will you be bringing Scarlett home for a proper meeting?” Alastair asks, and I can feel Wallace stiffen next to me.
“Soon, I hope,” he says. “I have a job to do for the Chieftain, and there’s some information I’m acquiring about Scarlett’s situation.”
This interests his father, who leans forward, closer to the camera. “While I know the MacTavish intel resources are excellent, you well know that ours are better. Let me get started on this end, we can work together.”
Wallace nods stiffly. “I’ll send ye- you- what I have so far.”
I side-eye him. Did he just slip into an English accent?
We talk for another twenty minutes or so, every one of them ticking by with painful slowness.
They’re not sure what to ask about me, given my idiot step-brother’s strike against the MacTavish’s business in Boston.
What am I going to brag about? That Marlena forced me to drop out of college and I’ve been a house cleaner and a cook for the last two years?
What a catch, eh?
Alastair makes me feel even more excruciatingly guilty by mentioning the Taylor Mafia was a partner in the MacTavish holdings there. There’s a stumbling round of apologies from me until he waves them off. “You didn’t do this. You have no fault or responsibility here. Please don’t trouble yourself.”
I ask general questions about their lives; where Isobel goes to school, about family and friends. I keep far away from any details about how they met after Sorcha’s taunting of her husband earlier.
Wallace is mostly silent, adding in a detail here or there. I’m sweating down the back of my dress by the time we finally wrap it up.
“We’re very much looking forward to having ye here in London for a bit,” Sorcha says, still unfailingly gracious and kind. “Sweetheart, I hope ye can finish your business there soon.”
“We miss you!” Isobel chimes in. “Nice to meet you, Scarlett!”
“Take care son,” Alastair says with the first real warmth I’ve seen from him. “Let me know what you need from us, I’m a phone call away.”
It’s obvious he loves Wallace as much as Sorcha does, leaving me to wonder about the odd distance between father and son.
The screen goes black and muscle by muscle, my husband relaxes again.
“I think that went well,” I say brightly. “Even though the Banner Syndicate robbed your dad and probably a couple of the guards killed were his. Plus, you getting stuck with me after nearly burning me up.”
Okay, I guess that earlier comment stung more than I thought.
“Can ye do one last hard thing?” he asks, his eyes kind.
“Does it involve more in-laws?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “It involves the promise I made you when you said ‘I do.’”
I sit down abruptly.
“You mean… You already know? You have proof? About Dad?”
He slides a flash drive over to me, a small black plastic thing. It looks so innocuous.
”It was Marlena,” he says quietly. “She wanted you both gone.”
I put the flash drive in the palm of my hand, closing my fingers over it.
“Don’t look at it now,” he says. “Take your time, think about it. When you’ve made a decision about what you want me to do to the man who killed your father, you tell me and I’ll take care of it.”
“You kept your promise,” I say wonderingly. “Just like that.”
He moves over to the bar cart. ”I will always keep my promises to you, wife.” He pours us both a drink. “Here,” he says, eyes twinkling with amusement. “Ye look like ye could use it, aye?” He’s gone full-on Scottish accent again.
I take a big gulp because that last half hour was a lot, and instantly wheeze. “What is this?”
“It’s a good bottle of Ardbeg Corryvrekan, a heavy peat scotch. Do ye taste the smokey notes of it?”
“No. I think my taste buds just disintegrated,” I cough. “And possibly my trachea.”
“Aye, ye are more of a white wine sort of lass.” He pats my back. “Try smaller sips.”
“I’m not ashamed of my feeble palate,” I say defensively. “Wine tastes like wine. This tastes like lighter fluid and tar.”
Taking the glass from me, Wallace sets it down, holding my chin and coming in for a kiss. “Well then. Now that you’ve got a bit of scotch in ye, would you like a few inches more?”
“Oh, I see,” I cough again. “Yeah, the play on words, scotch, Scots… that’s slick. Take me now.”
“Let me be more direct, then.” He kisses me again, slowly, with lots of tongue. “Wife, would ye like to join me upstairs so I can feck your brains out in a proper bed?”
“It’s the only place we haven’t christened in this massive house of yours,” I shrug. “So, I suppose.”
Instantly, I’m up and flung over his shoulder and I yelp as he slaps my ass. “Let’s go,” he says, already out of the study and charging up the stairs like my considerable weight is no problem at all. “I was hard as hell the entire fecking time, sitting next to ye and remembering how good ye feel.”
“Yeah, you seemed kind of uptight,” I say, upside down and watching his ass muscles flex. “I thought it was the family dynamics.”
“Half and half,” he concedes. “Now, let me distract ye in the best way.”
“Oh, are we going to set something on fire?”
That earns me a thunderous slap on the ass.