Chapter 12 Mo
Mo
Five thousand miles away from Los Angeles, Mo McDonnell stared at her computer.
From: Delilah MacDonald
To: Maureen McDonnell
Subject: See you soon, Aunt Mo! (Please?)
Hi, Aunt Mo. It’s me, Deli. I know I haven’t seen you in a really long time and this is really out of the blue, but I’m coming to visit. Well, I’m hoping I can come visit. Just for a little while?
I arrive Tuesday, I think. Or Thursday? Crap. I can’t remember. I’ll forward you the details when I have a second.
Anyway, I hope it’s okay. I understand if not, but I don’t have a Plan B yet, and I think you might be able to help me.
See you soon?
Deli
P.S. Thanks for the holiday card!
Lachlan knocked softly and peeked his head inside. When it came to Lachlan, things were always easy. Mo cherished ease.
“So, what’s the big surprise, Mo?” He lowered himself into a kitchen chair.
She slid him the whisky she’d poured before he arrived, adjusted her reading glasses, and cleared her throat.
“Hi, Aunt Mo . . .”
Lachlan listened calmly until she’d finished.
“So, your niece is coming here.”
“In two days, apparently,” Mo said.
“For how long?”
“No idea.”
“What does she want?”
“No idea.”
They leaned back in their chairs and fell into comfortable silence, lost in their own thoughts about the stranger and her inevitable arrival from the land of palm trees. A bright yellow daffodil—the first thing to grow in the garden in twenty years—glowed cheerily in a bud vase between them.
Lachlan spun his glass against the table. “One question.”
“Shoot.”
“This niece of yours. Is she a respectable lass?”
“No idea.”
Lachlan shook his head with a sigh. “She’ll be a wild woman, then, like you?”
Mo smiled a wicked smile. “God, I hope so.”
“A shame.”
“Isn’t it?”
Lachlan squeezed Mo’s shoulder and raised his whisky in a toast. A sly grin played on his lips. “To the wild women.”
“To the wild women.”
“Slàinte,” they said together.
The sound of their glasses clinking was swallowed up in the crackling fire and heavy rain of the inky Scottish night.