Chapter 14 Lachlan
Lachlan
Lachlan Scott was trying to be optimistic.
He wished he had been born reckless or happy-go-lucky. But he wasn’t his brother. He had responsibilities. He had people who relied on him.
He had people to protect.
Lachlan remembered the day he’d met Delilah and taken her photo—the day he watched a fearless girl run into the wind and felt a twist of jealousy, wonder, and something foreign rush his heart. That day felt like an important one—like things might change forever.
But they didn’t. Delilah had gone as quickly as she’d come.
He couldn’t say it to Mo, but he wasn’t excited for an unexpected visitor from Los Angeles coming to their village for an undisclosed amount of time and for an undisclosed reason—probably to touch magic rocks that didn’t exist.
“Ready!” Mo called from under the tumbling things in her closet.
“Ready?” he called.
“Be there in forty-five seconds!”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
Lachlan set a forty-five-second timer on his watch and started toward his old Land Rover. He thought, not for the first time, how very lucky he’d been to find Mo—or for her to find him.
He’d been barely thirteen when the long-lost daughter of Callum McDonnell claimed the family home.
When she first offered to pay him to come by and weed the garden, chop firewood, or repaint a door, he’d been a kid thankful for the chance to stash away some money.
He didn’t realize she was perfectly capable of doing everything on her own, and that he probably slowed the processes down.
He didn’t realize she was giving him shelter from the storm of his father and home.
Mo was a stalwart friend. And as Lachlan became an adult, he understood what she had given him, despite what she had been denied by her family.
But there were more ways to be family than blood.
So Lachlan made sure the weeds were pulled in the garden that he had never seen bloom, and the heather-sown path was shoveled when it snowed. He polished the old wooden furniture. He made sure the fire stayed warm.
The night Mo read him the email, the small hope he saw in her eyes had sunk his heart with dread.
Lachlan knew better than anyone how quickly Delilah would run from their dying town once she’d had a real taste.
He knew what it was to have your family abandon you.
Mo had been so betrayed by hers that she’d run to their crumbling hamlet and spent years trying to get back on her feet, but she’d never fully recovered.
Those people had wounded his friend in an irreparable way.
The women in Mo’s family had ever only reached out to take. Never to comfort, never to embrace or offer a helping hand.
No one was going to leave Mo behind in pieces. Not again. And whoever Delilah MacDonald might have been twenty years before, she was one of them now.
It was Lachlan’s turn to be Mo’s shelter, even if she couldn’t smell the storm gathering.
“Hey,” Mo huffed as she heaved herself into the Defender. “What was my time?”
Lachlan looked down. “Forty seconds.”
“Damnit!”
Lachlan grinned as he turned the keys. “You’re early, Mo. That’s a win.”
“I said forty-five seconds. I hate being wrong. I’m often late, but I’m never wrong.”
“That,” Lachlan said as he eased the car forward in case there was an unfortunately short sheep beyond the bonnet, “I know. I should get a second watch dedicated to Mo-Time that runs half an hour behind.”
“Finally.” She rubbed her hands together to warm them. “I always said you were a bright boy. It’s nice to see you living up to your potential.”
“My father would be elated.”
Mo gave him a sideways look, and Lachlan felt the familiar press of being under her observation. Mo might have been a little messy and a little-always late, but she’d never missed a single thing that mattered.
“Speaking of—” she began.
“It’s fine.”
“Lachlan, I really don’t mind.”
He was about to tell her again that he didn’t want her to sacrifice time with her niece to help him with his family obligations, but a plan began to grow.
If he was going to protect Mo, he would need to separate them.
He would need to get enough time with Delilah to suss her out and, more importantly, scare her off.
“Actually, if you really don’t mind, I’ve got a lot going on, and she’s been a little needier lately—”
“Done.” Mo nodded.
“Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t sure, Lachlan. Now, stop asking and start driving. We’ve got shopping to do.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Lachlan turned onto the road to Edinburgh as he turned over his plan in his head. He’d get this woman alone and find the reason for her sudden arrival—be it to dig through the floorboards for a secret inheritance or pry open a long-locked door in Mo’s life. Lachlan would find the truth.
And when she proved to be a rotten apple flung from a poisoned tree, he’d make her wish she’d never come to Fearnhall. He’d make her life so intensely unpleasant she’d go running back to where she came from before she could break Mo’s heart.