Chapter 18
Mo
Mo McDonnell knew instantly, the way flowers know to bloom, that a piece of her heart had come home.
“Aunt Mo!” Her niece threw herself into Mo’s arms, and Mo hugged her as tightly as she could, bathrobes and all. “I go by Deli now.”
“Deli . . .” Mo rolled the name around in her mouth, remembering the little girl who acted as Mo’s champion when she herself had declared her own name. It’s Auntie MO now, Grandma! Not Auntie Maureen. “I love it.”
“Really?” Deli asked.
Mo saw Lachlan glowering over Deli’s head before his attention snapped to the ceiling.
“Deli is an excellent name.” Mo kicked the cottage door closed behind her. Beans cried from her bedroom as she draped the bathrobes across the back of the sofa. “Did you get to meet both of my boys?”
“Uhhh,” Deli said as Lachlan very pointedly looked elsewhere.
“Lachlan?” He looked guilty. She crossed the open living space to her bedroom and released a furry flash of calico. “And Sir Beans?”
Beans went straight to Deli and rubbed against her combat boots until his fur stood up with electricity. Deli scooped him into her arms.
“Beans and I are already great pals,” she said into the top of his head before she kissed him and he nuzzled her face.
Mo couldn’t smile any wider. “I’m afraid Beans has stolen your charisma crown, Lachlan.”
Lachlan looked at her like he’d been called on in class from a dead sleep. Deli eyed him over Beans’s eyebrow whiskers and mumbled, “Just barely.”
Huh, Mo thought. “Did Lachlan give you the tour?”
“No, he must have forgotten that part,” Deli said, a little too sweetly.
He grumbled and dropped to a knee to examine the fire. “Hadn’t gotten around to it.”
Mo pushed open the door to the second bedroom, a little thing with a simple bed, dresser, and nightstand—adorned with a vase of daffodils. “This is your room!”
“Wow, mine?” Deli put too much emphasis on the last word, and Lachlan muttered something under his breath.
She couldn’t believe Deli was there. “All yours. As long as you’d like.”
Lachlan dropped the fire poker with a clatter.
She showed Deli the shared bathroom and her room, then brought her back to the common space that was half kitchen, half living room while Lachlan sipped a glass of water broodily near the sink.
“And now, the best part . . .” Mo swung open the door to the back garden.
“Wow.” Deli gasped as Mo followed her out. Her face transformed with wonder as she beheld the true, untapped beauty of the Scottish Highlands, and Mo saw it—that spark. Deli was still Deli.
“I know, right?” Mo took in the scene through Deli’s eyes, like she had when she first arrived in her thirtieth year.
Standing in the garden, they were dwarfed by soaring slopes disappearing into the dove gray clouds.
Snowcaps faded into streaks of iron, charcoal, and sage as silver threads of crystal water braided together, running down the mountainside into babbling creeks that cut deep lines through the tall grasses.
Still pools of cool water mirrored the peaks and sky.
A handful of sheep dotted the mountain face, and gulls called from somewhere they couldn’t see.
The air smelled of sea salt and wet earth.
Mo never got sick of it all. “Bit of a trek to get here, but you can’t beat the view.”
“You said it.” Deli laughed and twirled in a circle. Behind her, Mrs. Peevis emerged from her shelter with a polite moo, and Deli shrieked, “Is that a Highland cow?”
“Meet Mrs. Peevis, a.k.a. my pet Peeve.”
Deli stared at her. “That . . . is so effing good, dude.”
Mo nodded sagely. “Peevie loves making friends. Just watch the horns.”
Lachlan stepped beside Mo as Deli jogged toward Mrs. Peevis. She pivoted her attention. “What’s up with you?”
“What? Nothing!”
“Mhmm.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, an inch from pouty. They watched Deli bend at the waist to be eye to eye with the cow, her tone bright but too far away to hear words.
“So . . . did she tell you why she’s come to Scotland?”
Mo shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”
“Seems like an important thing to know.”
A raindrop fell on Mo’s shoe. “It will come out when she’s ready.”
“Of course.” Lachlan was failing to sound casual. “I just hope she’s not into something dangerous.”
Deli plucked a dandelion and tucked it into the cow’s fur. Mo nodded toward her. “Observe, the evil mastermind at work.”
Lachlan stewed quietly for a minute more.
Mo made a mental note to put out her quilt on Deli’s bed before night.
Mo’s Gran had made it for her little boy, Callum, who had grown up and kept it safe for two little girls named Lorraine and Maureen to wrap up in against the cold.
It was soft and stained from a long history of being right in the middle of real-life moments, but it was still sturdy. It was still warm.
For the first time, Mo McDonnell could wrap herself around her niece and keep her warm and safe. She didn’t know why Deli had come, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care if Deli left her stained or worn down.
Mo wouldn’t waste her second chance.
Lachlan cleared his throat. “How did it go today?”
“Pretty good.” Mo spoke evenly. “She’s joined the puzzle club.”
“Puzzle club?”
“Apparently puzzling is the activity, and the club is exclusive.”
Lachlan’s tone went dark. “Good for her.”
“Lachlan—”
“Did she ask after me?”
Mo hesitated, wishing the truth wouldn’t sting. “She asked after William.”
“Of course she did.”
“It’s okay, Lachlan. It’s okay to feel—”
He sniffed hard and squared his shoulders. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be fi—”
“Mo, I’m fine. Just like always. Please.” His eyes softened with his plea. “Leave it be.”
They were tracing the same well-worn circles. Lachlan picked at a callus on his palm. Another raindrop landed on Mo’s shoulder as he made a bored clicking sound with his tongue.
“Seriously, you’ve got a weird energy about you today, Lachlan.”
“It’s going to rain,” he announced, and practically did an about-face to disappear into the cottage. She heard the squeaky gate on the fireplace open.
“Aunt Mo!” Deli had a flower tucked behind her ear and many more crowning Peeve. “Your life rules!”
Mo grinned as Deli started back toward her, amazed at how much better her life had become in one day. She heard Lachlan turn on the kitchen sink. “It’s got its perks!”
“Seriously,” Deli said as she neared the cottage. She stopped about ten feet away and knelt to cradle a daffodil bloom. Deli smiled up at Mo, sunnier than the flower. “Daffodils.”
“Funniest thing, I planted an entire flower garden when I moved in, but everything—and I do mean everything—I planted died. Didn’t matter when, or which, or what season.
I tried for years before I gave up. Then, last week, boom.
A daffodil.” Mo gestured toward the many new patches of yellow. “Now they’re growing like weeds!”
“New beginnings,” Deli said, running a thumb along a petal.
“What?”
She stood, wiping her palms on her jeans. “Daffodils say new beginnings.”
Flowers know to bloom, Mo thought.
“For real, though,” Deli said, turning again to take in the scene—so different from the dusty blues and orange haze of Los Angeles. “I can’t believe this looks exactly how they make it seem on The Highlander!”
A glass shattered in her sink, followed by a curse. The sky opened up and doused the two women in a sudden torrent.
By the time they’d run inside, both giggling as Deli shrugged out of her drenched denim jacket and holey boots (both things Mo internally vowed to improve), Lachlan was emerging from the bathroom, smoothing a plaster around his finger.
Mo stole his hand as he tried to cover it with the other. “Lachlan! What happened?”
“I was just being careless. I broke your glass, Mo. I’ll replace it.”
“Nonsense,” she said, patting his uninjured palm. “The glass deserved it. It tried to pick a fight with my favorite mug just this morning.”
Lachlan didn’t smile. It sent a stabbing feeling through Mo’s heart.
“Are . . . um, are you sure you’re okay, Lachlan?” Deli asked, her voice suddenly small.
Lachlan’s head jerked up, eyes trained on Deli like a deer in headlights. “Yes.”
A tense silence bloomed. Mo clapped her hands and snatched the bathrobes off the sofa. “Deli, tell me you like to swim?”
Deli and Mo slipped into their rooms to change. When they emerged, Lachlan was gone.
“Guess he had somewhere to be.” Mo shrugged, slipping her feet into grippy shoes. “Just like us.”
“Yeah.” Deli touched her denim jacket—no longer in a ball, but hanging on the back of the cushy chair, drying in front of the fire. “I guess so. Wait, where are we going?”
Mo grinned. “Where the wild women go.”