Chapter 17 Lachlan
Lachlan
Lachlan had been sure he’d gotten the train’s arrival time wrong. He’d double- and triple-checked, but he was still watching the minutes tick by on his watch, guilt stricken at the thought of leaving Mo’s niece stranded somewhere.
That was why he was caught off guard when she spoke to him. Though he couldn’t blame distraction for the next bit, when the sight of Delilah MacDonald—with raven hair in a lopsided ponytail and eyes that scattered the light—had stuttered his mind, too.
She was, he noted with distrust, beautiful.
Lachlan was also surprised to find himself holding his breath—waiting for her to remember the elusive, unreal feeling from the scrap of their childhoods.
He could recall it like he was still hiding on the other side of a mossy stone wall, listening to angry voices as Delilah disappeared behind the bright red door.
By the time he realized he was staring blankly and hadn’t spoken to her yet, he was already on the back foot.
Not ideal. He had a plan to execute.
In hindsight, Lachlan did wonder if he’d gone a bit too hard with the acidity out of the gate.
There was being strategically unpleasant as a means of making Fearnhall as inhospitable as possible, then there was, well, being petulant.
But right about the time he thought he might have taken it too far, Deli had gone full Neanderthal and stolen his keys.
She might as well have grabbed him by the collar and hauled him so far over the line they were both hurtling down a cliffside of churlish dislike and bickering.
He feared there was no coming back from there.
So Lachlan grinned and took another turn with too much speed, sending Deli’s hand flat against the window as she hissed.
“Can you Not?”
“What?” He feigned innocence. “Drive?”
“Like you have a death wish,” Deli said. Her face seemed a bit paler than when she’d gotten in. “Can you not drive like you have a death wish?”
“I’ll do my best.” He hit the gas.
She tried for the silent treatment, though it neither bothered Lachlan nor lasted very long.
The closer they got to Mo’s, the closer her face got to the window.
He started hearing small sounds of wonder at each new curve in the road’s reveal.
Lachlan didn’t realize he’d slowed way down until a sedan sped past him at a straight stretch of road.
“You . . .” He cleared his throat. “Erm, you alright?”
She shot him a distrustful look, which, he supposed, was earned. “Yeah, I just . . . didn’t remember it being so beautiful.”
Lachlan bent down a bit to peer over the wheel and scan the horizon for the object of her fascination, but everything was ordinary. “What’s so beautiful?”
Deli gave a disbelieving laugh. “Are you kidding? Everything.”
He watched the blurring scenery flicker in the light of her eyes until he had to look back to the road.
He supposed the contrast of the ferns gone rust with frost against the black stone and streaks of green was, in its cold, lonely way, remarkable.
He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he noticed the magnificence of winter.
“Oh my god, there it is!” Deli pressed a fingertip to the windscreen, leaving a smudge he’d have to wipe clean, as she pointed to Mo’s cottage at the end of her narrow road.
Mo’s car was still gone. She hadn’t returned from helping his mother yet.
Deli’s voice trailed into a whisper. “It’s been so long . . .”
Lachlan quite suddenly felt his heartbeat in his chest as he pulled up alongside the stone path leading to Mo’s door—too fast and too hard, for no reason at all.
He turned off the ignition. “When was the last time you were here?”
She turned to smile at him, her first real smile since she’d arrived by his calculation, and he felt the oddest sensation—like a wee tether was buried in his chest, tugging him toward.
“About twenty years ago.” Deli opened the door with an excited “Eee!” and stepped onto the first stone of the path. She was laughing as she turned to look at him.
There they were, in the same places they’d been so many years before.
Lachlan hadn’t felt like a boy in so long it would be many weeks before he could name the way his heart thudded in his ears and ballooned in his chest as he watched Deli laughing into the wind—like maybe that day had been significant after all.
Instead, he felt his blood rush and his world narrow, and Lachlan Scott decided that Deli MacDonald was a bigger problem than he’d prepared for.
He’d expected her to make quick work of Mo’s trust, considering how dearly his friend wanted to reconnect with her long-lost niece.
He hadn’t expected it to work well on him.
From what he’d heard, neither of the other two wayward McDonnells could be described as charming or warm or open.
But as he watched Deli kneel in front of the cottage for the first time in twenty years, Lachlan knew there was a true threat in Mo’s life.
Deli’s face changed to tender concern as she touched a stem and a few papery, graying buds crumbled off the dead ground cover Lachlan had repeatedly asked Mo to let him replace. She stood as he approached with one of her bags.
“No, no, I’ll take it. I’m perfectly capable, thanks.”
Lachlan eyed the uneven stones, the missing wheel, and her outstretched hand. “I think it’s best if I just carry it—don’t want to chip the pave stones—”
Deli rolled her eyes, grabbed the handle, and jerked before Lachlan could let go—wobbling like a Chihuahua losing a battle of tug with a Great Dane.
His hand found her waist to steady her on instinct, and Lachlan felt a bolt of lightning crackle through him at the spot.
Deli scowled up at him. His brain stuttered.
“Careful,” he said in a quiet breath.
She looked uncertain. “I . . .” Deli began, then she closed her eyes, took a beat, and reopened them, entirely clear of the unsureness he’d seen. “I wouldn’t have to be careful if you weren’t so stubborn.”
Sense came back to Lachlan in a rush. “Me, stubborn?”
“They’re my bags!” She waved her hands in the air at nothing in particular.
“Yes, and you packed, what? Gold bars? Dead bodies?”
“Ugh!”
Lachlan lifted the bag easily and held it behind him as Deli made a grab for the handle. She blinked—once, twice, three times—then turned on her heel and stomped toward the door.
“Aunt Mo? Aunt Mo, it’s me!”
Lachlan took his time ferrying the rest of her luggage to the doorstep while she continued to knock, whistling as he went, savoring the small increases in volume and manufactured cheeriness each time Deli called for a woman who wasn’t home.
He cleared his throat behind her and watched her shoulders go rigid. She turned, lips flat in a line.
He smiled as wide as he could and began to angle past her. “Exsqueeeeze me.”
She scoffed. “She’s clearly not home. And what makes you think my aunt would open the door for you and not me, anyway?”
“I may not be the princess of this particular castle . . .” He held up his fist and opened it to let the cottage keys he’d had on his key chain since he was fourteen jingle as they dangled from his fingertip.
“But I am the groundskeeper. Now, if you’ll excuse me, milady.
” He gave a small curtsy and reached for the lock as Deli shuffled behind him.
“How do you know my Aunt Mo, Lachlan?” She said his name like it was an alias.
“We’ve been pals a long time.” Lachlan noted the knob had come a bit loose and made a mental note to come back with his tools as he opened the door. It gave a cheery squeak, and he made a note to fix that, too. “Careful of Beans,” he said as he reached in for the light switch.
Deli looked baffled. “Careful of . . . what?”
Mo’s no-good, excellent calico cat tried to shoot past him, but Lachlan was ready.
He managed to scoop Beans up under the belly and hoist him into the air, his little cat legs still wheeling.
Lachlan held the creature up with both hands as he waited for the cat’s yowl of protest to fade into a prolonged, incensed note of what he assumed was a string of curse words in Beans’s native tongue.
“This is Beans,” he said as Beans continued to make a sound like an accordion on its deathbed. “Sir Beans McGee, if we’re using titles.”
Deli’s eyes went wide. She abandoned their mutual hostility and closed in on the cat, who, mutinously, dropped the prisoner of war act and went straight to purring.
Deli scritched his lower jaw with both hands. “Beans, you are a perfect thing.”
“He’s an escape artist and a liar.”
Beans reprised his sad song as Lachlan tucked him like a rugby ball and stepped inside with his back against the door. He swept his feline-free arm toward the place he, too, called home, in a way. “Welcome to McDonnell Cottage.”
Deli’s breath caught and her step halted. Her eyes dropped to the threshold. She took a long breath before crossing and only looked up when she’d made it a few steps inside.
Lachlan observed carefully. Deli took in the simple living room, handmade table and chairs, and threadbare quilt that hung over the back of the low sofa—a favorite perch of Beans’s.
Thus far, her delight and dislike had been visible the instant they appeared—but now Lachlan found himself struggling to know what she was thinking. All of a sudden she was . . . cloudy.
“Huh.” She ran her fingers across the back of a kitchen chair.
“Huh?” He moved to lock Beans in jail while he finished getting Deli settled—a contested battle of dexterity and will as he tossed the cat toward Mo’s mattress and retreated.
A fuzzy paw chased his foot from under the door.
Lachlan turned and found Deli standing in front of the robin’s-egg blue refrigerator, examining the photos, notes, street art, and postcards from Mo’s many adventures.
He watched vigilantly as she combed through the snapshots of a life she’d never borne witness to.
He knew it wasn’t fair that she’d been kept away as a child, but where had she been as an adult?
Lachlan chased pity away with facts—no one knew why Deli was here now, and he couldn’t imagine it brought anything but bad tidings.
“Who’s this?” Deli squinted as she coaxed Mo’s lone photo of Beth out from under its magnet. He was across the small space in an instant, plucking the precious thing from her hand and wedging himself between her body and the rest of Mo’s memories.
She stared at him with her mouth agape.
“Erm, can I get you a drink?” He opened the cabinet without needing to move.
“Excuse you?” She reached for the photo behind his back. He held it over their heads as Deli stood on tiptoes, aware of how ridiculous he was being.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, ashamed but committed to his protective panic maneuver. “It’s . . . private.”
Deli blinked up at him. “Are you serious? Give it to me.”
“I, erm . . .” Lachlan couldn’t think of a better explanation than the truth, and the truth wasn’t his to share. “No.”
For a flash, he thought he saw pain shadow her features, then they settled into stone. “Where is my aunt?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. Saying Mo was busy with a favor for him would probably be the wrong thing to say. “She had an errand.”
“An errand,” Deli repeated, walking pointedly to the door and tugging in a suitcase. “Right.”
Lachlan realized in a jolt he’d abandoned the chore. He hid the photo of Mo and Beth under a postcard from Japan and turned to do the heavy lifting, but a look from Deli glued his feet to the ground.
“I said . . .” She drew her words out slowly. Her tone grew patronizing. Venomous. Lachlan had only ever heard her mother’s voice from behind a door, but in his memory, Deli sounded just like her. “I would do it myself. Got it?”
There was his first bit of hard proof.
“Fine, struggle all you like.” Lachlan crossed the room and began building a fire in Mo’s old fireplace, more for her than for Deli, as she’d be home any minute.
He prepped kindling and listened to the sounds of exertion coming from the impossible woman hauling in her baggage until her boots appeared beside him.
One toe, complete with a hole in the cheap material, tapped.
“Which room is mine?” she demanded.
Lachlan returned to the fire, stoking a small ember. “Neither.”
“You know what? I don’t appreciate your attitude, and I think you’re an ass.”
Lachlan raised a brow, eyes glued to his work as smoke began to twist in small tendrils from the pile. “Is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. And you know what else?” She waited. When he didn’t react, she shoved his leg with her boot. It didn’t do anything—Lachlan had excellent balance—but it was irritating. “My aunt invited me here, bucko.”
“That,” Lachlan said, slowly meeting her eyes, his narrowed to match, “is not exactly true, now . . . is it?”
Fire caught as he rose to his feet, and she tilted her chin up to keep his gaze. Gravel popped outside. Mo honked an exuberant greeting on her horn as she pulled up to the cottage.
A smirk tugged at Deli’s lips. “You should probably go. Family reunion.”
“Nah,” he said, low enough that Mo couldn’t hear him as she pulled something from the boot and slammed the lid. The thought of leaving Mo unguarded and unaware of how quickly Deli had dropped the sincere act made his stomach drop. “I think I’ll stay awhile.”
“Delilah!” He could hear the smile in Mo’s voice as Deli flinched at her full name.
“Go on, Delilah,” he said.
She hesitated like she was loath to turn her back, but faced the doorway as Mo appeared, beaming, with matching bathrobes held up in each hand. She looked between Deli and Lachlan, radiating joy.
“Oh, I can already tell.” Mo chuckled. “This is gonna be great!”