Chapter 61 Deli
Deli
“Fuck me,” Lachlan muttered.
“Who is that?” Deli whispered, seated on a table with her boobs out, quite unacceptable for polite company.
A key scraped against the lock. Lachlan moved in a half crouch, collecting various flung garments.
“It’s pure baltic out here! Let me in!”
“Here.” He tossed her bra and underwear at her. “Go through the back. My office is unlocked.” He threw his flannel over his shoulder in her direction-ish while he bent for his own discarded sweater.
The stranger pounded on the door. “Did you change the locks? Typical!”
His accent was so familiar, but it wasn’t someone from the local crew in Fearnhall.
Lachlan’s face was stricken with panic and . . . regret? Guilt? He spoke low and urgent, pleading. “Deli, I’m so sorry, but you have to hide.”
“Hide?” She blinked as she slipped the flannel onto her arms. A minute ago he was changing her entire opinion of the cosmos and her place in it. Now she was an old-timey mistress? A shameful booty call? Something ugly in her started to bloom.
“Should I leave the money on the nightstand, or—”
“Deli, please,” he cut her off. “Go.”
She stood, stung, but reached up and ran a hand through his hair, tucking it back into its standard casual unruliness. As she turned to go, he caught her hand in his, kissed the inside of her wrist, and pressed her palm to his cheek.
Lachlan closed his eyes, exhaling slowly, and Deli was struck a bit speechless again.
By the cut of his jaw and the curve of his lips—the deep rose in his cheeks and dark flame in his hair.
She’d never forget those eyes finding hers while he was on his knees, glowing with intention and desire—like he was lit from within and she was looking into a room ablaze.
He was dripping honey. Liquid gold. The steady flow of something rare at its most pure.
Being near him, being with him, was some kind of magic.
She made a mental note to tell as many lurid details she could recall if she ever got the chance to grow old in a retirement home with proper ladies in need of scandalizing.
The door shook so violently the man outside must have shoulder-checked it. Lachlan grew so agitated that she was struck with a terrible thought. It tumbled out before she could stop it.
“Are you ashamed of me?”
“What?” Another impact outside nearly rattled the place. “Go! Please!” he hissed.
Deli grabbed her phone and bag from behind the bar and bolted through the door to the back, then turned and pressed her ear against it. The dead bolt slid. Rain and wind came rushing into the room behind the stranger. His footsteps reverberated across the wooden floor.
She’d never heard Lachlan sound threatening before. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s that charm.” She heard a sound like he’d clapped Lachlan on the shoulder.
Lachlan practically snarled, “What are you doing here, William?”
William?
“I needed a drink.” His footsteps moved past Lachlan. “And anyway, there’s no place like home.”
No place like home? She pictured the Scott family hanging on the wall. The missing little brother.
“Can you not?” Lachlan sounded almost petulant. “That’s the most expensive bottle.”
William chuckled, low and rich from his chest, and she heard the telltale scrape of glass across wood from Lachlan’s sacred space behind the bar. The air tasted stale and achy—like dust on a forgotten photograph, or a scar dully lamenting a fall long ago.
“Please, Lachlan.” Liquid poured. “I’m not the one he would have been worried about handling his best stock.”
Lachlan was silent. A sour note streaked through the space, and Deli could feel the sting of this stranger’s words on his soft heart.
She wanted to know who had interrupted her impossible night and who she might have to fistfight.
She knew from the look in Lachlan’s eyes when he recognized the voice that she should really just stay out of sight.
But she figured curiosity had killed a lot of cats, and Deli was no better than the exquisite Sir Beans.
She’d be a dick to think so. So, she peeked.
William stood behind the bar with his back to her.
He was even taller than Lachlan was, but with shoulder length, thick, sandy blonde waves and broad shoulders that pressed against his very expensive looking camel coat.
He stood casually, one leg tucked in front of the other, propped against the counter and holding a glass.
Lachlan braced himself against the bar where he’d kissed her not long before.
William took a sip of the whisky and held it up to the light.
His hair fell back from his face as he admired the contents.
Deli’s breath caught. No effing way . . .
Lachlan glared. “Do you have any idea how much I charge for a pour of that?”
“You’re the businessman in the family.” William shrugged and took another sip. “I’m just the entertainer.”
Deli’s phone lit up in her hand as it connected to the restored internet, glowing blue in the dark. She rushed to tuck it under her shirt.
“Family.” Lachlan’s laugh was short and bitter. “Surprised you still consider yourself a part of this one.”
William snorted. “Doesn’t it get strange, spending every day standing in the very spot he died?” He took another slow drink from his glass, draining it with a dramatic ahh. “You’re starting to sound just like him.”
“At least I’m here.”
“So am I.”
“For how long this time, Will? How long until you disappear again, and I have to come up with a good reason you’re on the telly every night but she can’t see you?”
There was no way Deli was seeing what she was seeing and hearing what she was hearing.
Perhaps there was an ancient Scottish curse that gave American women hallucinations if they dared defile anointed land—like the local pub—by bouncing their baps about.
That had to be it, because there was no way, no way, that was—
“How many times, William,” Lachlan continued, “are you going to break Mum’s heart?”
Deli’s phone chimed under her shirt.
She scrambled to turn the volume down. William poured another glass from the expensive bottle as Lachlan shot a glance toward the crack where her eye peeked through. She saw his widen.
“At least you inherited Dad’s taste for guilt trips and whisky, Lachlan.”
Her phone chimed again as it downloaded missed messages, and William grew still.
The text she’d sent to Trey just before she’d lost service—the one sealing the fate she’d been terrified of for years—scrolled in her mind.
Her hands shook as the screen opened to where she’d left off.
A new message banner showed one from Trey.
Deli, you can’t be serious?
Notifications started pouring in. An email from her mother. One, two, three texts from Trey as she finally turned the volume off. She clicked on the message.
Deli, Please, I’m so sorry I’ve been such a dick. Can we talk?
“Is there someone here?” William asked.
“No!” Lachlan answered too quickly. The floor creaked.
I can’t lose you. Talk to me. I need you. Please.
Trey, saying what she’d longed to hear for most of her life, coming in a minute too late? Or was it too late? Her hands shook as she tried to make sense of everything happening at once. The phone clattered to the ground.
“Will, no! Wait!”
The door swung open—revealing Deli 50 percent dressed, 90 percent disheveled, and 100 percent in shock. William’s frame eclipsed most of the light while he looked her up and down, and a slow smile spread across his face.
All she could say was, “It’s you.”
Because she did know him. That voice had been declaring love and war into her living room the night she decided she was going to come to Scotland. The night this all began.
Billy S. Burns, the star of The Highlander, was William Scott.
Lachlan’s brother.
And William Scott was standing over her—less oily, but just as impressive—grinning like a cat who’d just spotted a tasty canary, despite Lachlan’s attempts to hide her.
“Aye, it’s me.” He had very white teeth. “Who, exactly, are you?”
“Deli—” Lachlan yanked the currently unkilted television star back from the doorway. “I . . . Are you okay?”
William surveyed her over Lachlan’s shoulder. He had to be taking in her mussed hair, his brother’s shirt, and her bare legs. She felt her ears turn hot.
William smirked. “I’d say she looks like she’s doing just fine.”
Deli had never seen Lachlan so . . . pained. She saw it in his face, and it broke her heart.
His brother finding her was his nightmare.
He spoke, resigned. “William, this is Deli.” Deli raised a hand. “And Deli”—Lachlan closed his eyes—“this is William. My brother.”
William popped his head onto Lachlan’s shoulder with a shit-eating grin.
Lachlan looked as guilty as a dog who’d torn up the sofa. Good, she thought, you should.
“Deli, I’m sorry—”
William interrupted him with a hard pat on the back.
“Where are your manners? We have a guest! Come join us for a drink. On the house!”
Deli widened her eyes at Lachlan to scream absolutely not as nonverbally as possible.
She thought she heard the sound of the doorknob behind the two towering (actual) Highlanders in front of her as Lachlan’s brother wrapped his arms around Lachlan’s waist and lifted him off the ground to tug him backward.
“William!” Lachlan growled.
“Lachlan!” Deli called.
“Deli?” The door slammed open, punctuating Aunt Mo’s voice like an exclamation point. “We’ve got a problem.”
The boys swiveled. Lachlan elbowed William in the stomach and dropped to his feet as his brother released him with an oof.
Her aunt smiled. “Hi, Will. Good to see you.”
“Aunt Mo!” Deli grabbed her phone off the floor and stuffed it into her bag as she pushed through the door toward her aunt.
“Aunt Mo?” William looked between them before sliding his gaze to Lachlan.
“Hey, kid.” Aunt Mo winked at Lachlan, whose face lit up like a torch. “Will, I see you’ve met my niece. And, Deli? Your mother and grandmother are here.”