Chapter 28 Mo
Mo
Mo watched Lachlan’s fists clench and release in time with his jaw as Hannah’s hand whipped across her sketch pad.
Then there was a crash from the direction of the bathroom, and Lachlan was gone.
“I’m okay!” Deli called from behind Lachlan’s frame eclipsing the bathroom door. “Tooootally fine!”
“You’re bleeding,” Lachlan said.
“’Tis only a flesh wound.”
“Bleeding?” Mo rushed to the narrow passageway to the toilet. “Deli, what happened?”
“Is the boozes stronger here? Or is gravity different in Scotland?”
“Here,” Lachlan said. Mo couldn’t see what was happening.
“Ow!”
“Shh.”
Deli huffed. “Don’t shh me. I’ll bleed on you.”
“You’re already bleeding on me.”
“And whose fault is that?”
The surliness in Lachlan’s voice was gone—once again gentle and good natured. “I don’t mind.”
“You’re weird.” Deli hiccuped. “You’re a weird guy.”
“I’m also your ride home.”
“I don’t wanna go home.”
“Too bad,” he said as he ran the tap for a moment. “You need a nap.”
“You need a nap.” Deli snickered.
Lachlan sighed. “I’d love to be napping right now.”
“It’s too hot to nap in LA.”
“Good thing you’re in Scotland.”
Deli gasped. “Oh my god, you’re right!”
There had been moments in Mo’s life where she was struck with a certain type of knowing.
The first time she set foot on Scottish soil, she knew that she’d live there someday.
The first time she saw Beth, she knew she’d love her all her life.
As she witnessed something blossoming between the two kids she called her family, arguing on the bathroom floor, she knew again.
“Can you walk?” Lachlan asked.
Deli chortled. “Your butt can walk.”
“Once-in-a-generation comedic gift, you’ve got there. Let’s get you up.”
There was a shuffling.
“Everyone okay in there?” Blair asked over Mo’s shoulder.
“I believe so,” Mo said quietly, “though our Lachlan may have met his match.”
A handful of emotions passed over Blair’s face. “I hope you’re right.”
“I’m afraid the talent show is over, though.”
“I’m on it.” Blair turned to the pub. “Oi, you lot! Closing time! You know the drill!” She rallied everyone into tidying and moving the furniture back, and Mo slipped behind the bar to start washing up.
When Deli and Lachlan emerged from the bathroom, his hand hovered over her lower back.
Deli had a small trickle of blood dripping from a cut on her forehead.
Mo felt a spike of unfamiliar panic. “What happened?”
Deli grinned and winced as she prodded her face. “You should see the other guy.”
“You mean the sink.” Lachlan raised his eyebrows at Mo. “The ‘other guy’ is the sink.”
“Yeah, and it’s out cold. I said I’m fine, Lachlan!” Deli waved him away. “I just slipped.”
“Rolled your ankle and cracked your head, you mean? Once you’re outside my pub, you can fall all you want. You’re too American. I don’t need a lawsuit.”
“Aunt Mo, save me,” Deli pleaded. “I’m being smothered by the giant off the green beans can.”
Lachlan edged her toward the door. “Bit of a stretch.”
“A little leafy kilt and an overblown sense of importance?” Deli leaned back and squinted to look at him. “I see no difference.”
“First of all, the green bean giant is wearing a mini toga—”
“Toh-gay-toh, toh-gah-toh—”
“Secondly”—Lachlan pulled a chair out of Deli’s path before she walked straight into it—“I’m wearing jeans.”
“Pffft! You’re all”—she gestured at his body—“tall and hunky and rugged and stuff. And you totally have a kilt. I bet you sleep in it.”
“Absolutely no—”
“He does!” Mo called out, unable to help herself. “Nothing but the kilt!”
“Really?” Lachlan glared over his shoulder. “Really, Mo?”
“Kilts are hot,” Deli said. “You are hot.”
Lachlan’s back went uncharacteristically stiff as he took a step away from Mo’s niece, but just then Deli tripped on something unseen.
Before Mo could call her name, Lachlan was there—one arm looped under her back while the other grasped her hand, and he caught her in a classic movie-scene dip. Their faces were inches apart.
“Holy shit,” Deli said. “I almost just died.”
“You’re okay.” Lachlan’s voice was tight. “You’re perfectly alive.”
“What were you putting in those drinks?”
“Gin.”
“And poison.”
“Sure,” he said softly, “and poison.”
“If you’re trying to kill me, you suck at it. You won’t get rid of me that easy, Lachlan Scott.”
The following beat of silence lingered too long. Deli looked at him strangely before he stood them both up, steadied her with a stiff hand on either arm, and took a full step backward.
“Mo.” He turned to face her on his heel like a military maneuver. “Will you lock up? I need to get her home as soon as possible.”
Lachlan almost never let anyone close for him, but Mo wasn’t about to interject.
“Sure thing, Blair and Andrew can drop me at home afterward.”
“Great.” Lachlan turned to Deli. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, uh.” Deli looked worriedly at Mo. “Okay?”
Mo smiled. “It’s okay, that gives you two kids time to bond.”
Lachlan’s eyes flared with small panic. “On second thought, let’s just lock up now.” He raised his voice so the room could hear him. “Don’t worry about tidying up, everyone. I’ll do it in the morning. Let’s all call it a night.”
Blair and Douglas hugged Deli and swayed back and forth with her wrapped in their arms before they carried on, leaving Graham to right her as she tilted, with a side-hug so crushing Mo heard Deli squeak. Hannah shuffled out with Graham. Andrew clapped Deli on the back.
“Glad you’re with us, Deli,” Andrew said. “I think you’re here for a reason.”
Deli’s nose scrunched up like she’d smelled Douglas’s cooking. “Yeah, a friggin’ boy.”
“Let’s hope.” Andrew chuckled and jogged after his fiancée.
Lachlan helped Mo get Deli into the car on her shaky ankle, leaving puffs of breath in their wake, then opened the passenger door for Mo.
“Wait! My jacket’s still inside.”
“Go quickly,” Lachlan said as he slid into his seat.
Mo unlocked The Wallflower with her own set of keys. She found her coat balled up on the bar top and shook it out, rubbing the familiar leather between her fingers.
The day Mo’s father died, she’d collapsed onto the kitchen floor, but she hadn’t cried. Not when she got the call, not when his lawyer read that he’d left her the cottage he’d grown up in, and not when her mother and sister had said all the things they could never take back.
Mo didn’t fall apart until she opened the cottage’s bedroom closet to find her father’s jacket hanging with a letter in the pocket addressed to “Momo.” She’d slipped on the jacket he’d worn nearly every day of his life, slid down the wall, and read the last things her father would ever tell her.
There were still some smudges in the ink where her grief had bled into his confessions.
Hannah’s easel caught Mo’s eye as Lachlan honked outside. Mo had seen Hannah make up wonderful bullshit plenty of times, but now and then she thought there might be some truth to her claims of reading longings of the heart.
Mo wondered what she’d seen in Lachlan’s mind as she reached for the sketchbook. Perhaps a younger version of his parents—though Mo believed Mr. and Mrs. Scott were sick a long while before anyone had noticed. Maybe Lachlan longed only for a strong pint.
What Mo found on the page made her gasp.
Another beep came from outside, somehow angrier than the last.
“Coming!” Mo closed the drawing pad and tucked the secret away. It would find who needed it when they needed it.
Mo McDonnell was a patient woman.