Chapter 44 Deli
Deli
Deli entered The Wallflower that night with a stomach full of lead.
“Ah! The beauties of McDonnell Cottage! Welcome to my tournament of Darts!” Graham spread his arms wide. “Just in time to watch me demolish old Cairn.”
Cairn leaned against the wall in the same exact outfit Deli had last met him in with his hat tipped low over his brow. He flashed her an unbothered smirk as he twirled a dart between his fingers like magicians roll a coin.
Blair and Andrew’s kids sat on a couch, transfixed as Douglas made a balloon animal.
Hannah was at the bar between Andrew and Blair.
A framed black-and-white photo of Lachlan’s parents, smiling with their arms wrapped around each other in front of the pub, hung behind them.
Even in shades of gray, Lucinda’s eyes were striking.
Lachlan slid a Guinness and a gin and tonic across the bar to Deli and Aunt Mo. He smiled at her, and Deli felt like she’d been dunked into warm water—caught in the caramel heat of Lachlan’s eyes.
It was delusional to think there was something in the way he’d looked at her at practice, or even the way he’d looked at her when she’d just walked in.
It was senseless to fall asleep imagining his arms, his heat against her body.
Deli’s brain, the mutinous glob, was concocting the connection between them.
How could he even be kind to her, much less be attracted to her, after the things she’d said?
It was no wonder he’d lashed out, knowing now that she’d taken shots about a father who wasn’t around and a mother who was replaying his childhood trauma in a care facility.
She felt . . . disgusting. Lachlan had said things, too, but Deli needed to make amends.
“Ye shall never take what’s mine, Farm Beast!” Graham boomed.
Aunt Mo leaned toward her. “This rivalry has been brewing for years. Graham’s gloating has become . . . excessive.”
Cairn’s blue eyes glittered as he cocked his arm. A hush fell over the pub. “Kieran? What do I need to win?”
“A bull’s-eye!”
“Then bull’s-eye it is.” He threw the dart with shocking speed, and it connected with a satisfying thud in the very center.
The pub erupted.
“God, the walls,” Lachlan groaned behind her. Hannah flicked her wrist and produced a blade. She looked at Cairn.
He winked. “Go on, hen.”
She sank the blade into the wall, adding a tally to a column with the letter C above it, and Graham collapsed to the floor in a dramatic heap.
Blair came over and threw her arm around Deli’s shoulders as she called for Lachlan. Deli dropped her eyes. “Hey, you, I have a wedding favor to ask.”
Lachlan nodded. “Of course I’ll pour drinks.”
“Actually, we were hoping you’d be our photographer.”
He looked stricken. “Me?”
“Of course you.”
“I couldn’t—it’s . . . I haven’t touched a camera in ages, and—”
“Lachlan, please?” Blair interrupted, her voice soft. “For old time’s sake?”
He stilled, and Deli felt like she was watching an important moment on a tightrope—Lachlan balancing under a spotlight on the brink of a drop far longer than it appeared to everyone but him.
Aunt Mo jumped in with a smile. “You just need a little practice. We’ll sort it out! Blair, let me show you some color palette ideas.”
Blair and Aunt Mo sank into a loveseat and left Deli at the bar with Lachlan alone.
She plucked up the guts. “Hey, um, Lachlan?”
His shoulders hunched up around his neck, and he turned as slowly as a person could without actually doing the slow motion bit, multiple feet away from her. “Mmm?”
“I . . .” She cleared her throat and tried to project a whisper. “I’m sorry for what I said.”
“What?”
She added a little volume, shooting a look at the merrymakers close by. “I’m sorry.”
Lachlan didn’t come any closer. “What?”
“Would you just come here already?”
His voice was tight and smile fake as he approached. “At your service, miss.”
Deli took a big breath in and slowly let it out between her teeth. “I just wanted to apologize for . . . what I said in the car the other day. I shouldn’t have . . . I just . . .”
He stared at her with a superior glee now that he knew she was apologizing. “Go on.”
“I didn’t know what I was commenting on, and I shouldn’t have commented on it. I was angry, and I’m not used to being angry.”
Lachlan raised an eyebrow. “I find that unlikely.”
Deli narrowed her eyes. “Well, I was finding you insufferable.”
“Lotta feelings.”
She felt irritation slip into her voice. “I’m finding you insufferable now.”
“Shocking.”
“Like I said,” she said slowly, trying to reharness the sentiment, “I am sorry.”
His mouth turned down in a thoughtful frown. “Alright.” He raised his eyebrows. “Anything else?”
Her annoyance picked at her patience. He’d said some nasty things, too, to be acting so above it all. She slid off the barstool as she snatched her drink off the counter. “Enjoy the view from your very high horse.”
He stuck a finger in an ear. “Sorry, can’t hear you from up here!”
But when she spun, Douglas was standing so close they were very face to face.
“Deli, may I?” He hopped onto the stool beside her, and she climbed back up reluctantly. Lachlan had turned away, and she was grateful for the small privacy. Douglas produced a rectangular parcel wrapped in brown paper from under the bar and placed it gingerly between them.
“A gift for you.”
“What?”
“It’s a painting. It’s yours.”
“Oh my god, Douglas, that’s too kind!”
Douglas put his hands on hers. “Take it home, but don’t open it.”
“Why?”
“I suspect it has something to tell you.”
“You have something to tell me?”
Douglas shook his head. “The painting does, love. I’m just the delivery guy.”
Deli pressed her lips together. “Will the painting tell me when to open it?”
“Don’t take a sarcastic tone, or she may show you before you’re ready.”
“And what would happen if she did that?”
He looked at her with sorrowful eyes. “We would never know. And it would be a tragedy.”
Silence stretched between them for a moment. Deli was coming to deeply appreciate Douglas and all of his Douglas ways.
“I won’t open it until it tells me to.”
He released her hands. “My work is done. Now, it’s well past time for a pint.”
Lachlan was already watching them out of the corner of his eye. Aunt Mo slid onto the stool on the other side of Deli and hugged her with one arm as Lachlan drew near.
“Hey, Lachlan, listen. I have a plan.”
“I don’t trust your plans, Mo.”
“No, this one’s good.”
Deli listened in shocked silence to Aunt Mo’s solution for Lachlan’s conundrum.
When she was done, his tone was nearly as flat as his mouth. “I’m not doing that.”
“Why not? You’ll get the practice you need to feel ready, Deli’s free, and your kilt hasn’t been touched in ages. It’ll need a day to breathe before the weekend anyway.”
“And how am I meant to be in the photos and taking them?”
“You’ve got to get good at self-timer before the wedding, as I expect your buns in most of them.”
“Blair doesn’t want me in her wedding photos.”
“Like hell I don’t, Scott!” Blair looked proud of her eavesdropping. “Plus, the bride requests a few solo glamour shots just for Mo’s fridge.”
Aunt Mo held her hand up and Blair high-fived it seamlessly. “Think of my fridge.”
Lachlan looked at Deli, and the warmth bloomed in her again. She snapped her jaw shut and stared at her hands—figuring it was better to be suddenly mute and incapable of eye contact than risk speaking while her brain was, apparently, melting.
She could feel his eyes like a laser beam. “Don’t you have anything to say about this?”
She counted her fingers. Nine. No, wait . . . that . . . She started over.
“Earth to Deli—have you no thoughts?”
She had a lot of thoughts, but they weren’t in English.
“She’s struck speechless by the genius of it!” Aunt Mo clapped her hands together. “So that’s that.”
Lachlan’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling. His face pleaded for Deli to intervene.
She shrugged and sighed. “I guess that’s that.”
They would go to some scenic glen, pretend to be into each other in a romantic fashion, and create photographic evidence of it in two days’ time. The wedding was that weekend.
“What a time for you to be made speechless.”
Lachlan handed her a Diet Coke with lemon when he saw she hadn’t touched the gin and tonic. Deli had never ordered one from Lachlan before—he must have noticed her drinking it at the cottage. She took a hearty swig that ended up too hearty, and sloshed dark brown soda down her front, sputtering.
He grinned. “Though it’s good to know you’ve not lost your effortless grace.”
“And you your charm,” Deli said while still dribbling. Lachlan extended a fistful of napkins before she could ask, and she snatched at them with the hand that wasn’t cupped under her chin, collecting Diet Coke runoff from her face.
“You’re dripping on my floor.”
She stared him in the eyes, unblinking, and dipped her fingers into her glass before flicking them onto the ground. “Am I?”
Then Deli felt a tug on her elbow. Kieran blinked up at her. “Excuse me? My mum wants to speak to you, Delilah.”
Deli cringed at the name, reminded of their strange conversation before. Lachlan let out a low whistle. She spun on him.
“Did you tell Kieran my full name?”
“Me?” He polished the bar top casually. “Not I, Delila—”
“Don’t.”
He chuckled.
“I told you,” Kieran said, tugging on her sleeve. “My friend told me. Can you come talk to my mummy please?”
Deli followed Kieran dutifully to report to Blair, who, Deli suspected, was just giving her child a task to keep busy.
She pulled Deli into a corner. “Deli, I have to ask you something.”
Had Blair seen the strange shift in Deli and Lachlan’s interactions? “Sure!”
“Would you design my bouquet?”
“Oh.” It was a reverent thing—a wedding bouquet. The photos could hang in their home forever. “I would be honored, Blair.”
“Very good.”
“Wow. Do you have any ideas about what you want?”
Blair shrugged with a big smile. “I trust you.”
“Are you sure, Blair?”
“Yes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see a man about a dress.” Blair strode toward Douglas, leaving Deli alone with her thoughts.
Until her phone started buzzing in her pocket.