Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Scottie
She was a Tennessean. A southerner. A commoner. An O’Shay. Yet the blood of the Blue royals, the long-reigning family of the North Sea Island Nation of Lauchtenland, also flowed in her veins.
“…should’ve done this more,” her father muttered as they crested one of the rolling hills of Dad’s hobby farm. His horse, Nova, snorted against the clean evening air. “Only trouble is I don’t come out as much as I want. I let stuff get in the way.”
Dad rested forward with his arm on the saddle horn like an old cowboy, looking over the green rolling acres of Bar T Ranch.
The scent of warm leather and honeysuckle led Scottie and her gelding, Dart, through the soft dusky light.
Along the horizon, the paddocks of Bar T created a checkerboard on the ryegrass.
“You’ve been busy building an empire,” she said, keeping her voice light.
“Still, if you don’t enjoy the fruit of your labor—”
“You think ole Grandpa Loom O’Shay envisioned this when he arrived from Ireland with a bolt of cloth and pair of shears? A glass-and-steel headquarters off River Road, a production plant, and an international sales force?”
“Maybe. My grandfather always said he was a dreamer.” Dad stroked Nova’s neck and whispered, “Good girl.” Then, “I’m feeling the pull, Scottie, for fewer meetings and more afternoons on the golf course or riding Nova.
Your grandpa stopped by the office last week and asked me to go on his dream fishing trip to Alaska.
Neither one of us are getting any younger.
I don’t want him to leave this good earth hoping his son will set aside work long enough to fish with him.
When he ran O’Shay, he took time for me.
Came to all my games, took me fishing, skiing, rafting. ”
His silhouette looked crumpled in the saddle as if he wore the weight of his words.
Still, to Scottie, sixty-two-year-old Trent O’Shay was fit and broad-shouldered with thick silver hair, leading O’Shay Shirts with a young man’s energy.
The lines around his eyes and mouth had carved deeper in the last six months.
“Dad, is everything okay? You’ve been sighing a lot lately.” Scottie leaned to see his expression. “Is it Remi?” Dad’s new love.
“There’s just a lot going on with the board,” he said, tipping his head back as Nova walked on, knocking off his worries. “It happens every so often. One of them gets an idea in his head and won’t let go.”
“What kind of idea?” She nudged Dart forward. She attended board meetings. Never witnessed anything concerning.
“Nothing, Scottie.” Dad regarded her for a long moment, sighed, then said, “I’m in love with Remi.” He urged Nova into the breeze. “She’s got me thinking I don’t need to score another O’Shay touchdown. Maybe I should kick off and let the next player run with the ball.”
“I’m the next player, Dad.” Though lately, she wondered if the corner office she’d prepared for all her life really was her future. “And I can tell you’re in love. I’m happy for you. Remi’s great.”
“You don’t have to be the next player if you don’t want to be, Scottie.”
She laughed but not in a ha-ha kind of way. “Are you serious? You, Fritz, Shug, the extended family and half the staff at O’Shay have been preparing me to take the ball my whole life.”
“I’m just saying…you have options if you want.” Dad steered Nova around the large sprawling oak and headed for home. “What’s happening with you and Cap? Wouldn’t now be a good time to get married, start a family? Give yourself some breathing room before taking over the company?”
One would think, yes. “We broke up,” Scottie spoke in rhythm with the slow clop of hooves against the hard ground and the distant rumble of an unforeseen storm.
“You what? When?” Dad exhaled and Nova stopped and then reached down to snack on the tall grass.
“A week ago. He’s in love with the ex-wife. She’s in love with him. He didn’t know there was even a chance of getting back together. Anyway, they’re getting remarried.”
“If that don’t beat all, Scotto. If he loved his ex, why was he dating you?”
“It’s a recent thing and to be honest, I wasn’t all in with him. I wanted him to be the one but work always took priority. Same with him.”
Dad watched her for a moment with that fatherly look of sorrow, then started Nova moving again. “How about we grill out steaks tonight? Watch one of our favorite movies?”
“Dad, the night Cap told me about his wife, I called Kate.”
“I see.” He brought Nova around to face her. Scottie urged Dart to take a step back. “Is this a thing now? You talking to her instead of me?”
“No, it was spur of the moment. I felt like talking to her. I thought she’d be more objective than you or Shug. She never met Cap. Anyway, it was late here, early there, and I called. Done deal.”
“Well, was her advice sound?”
“She invited me to Hadsby Castle for the spring. About eight weeks. Or however long I can spare. Everyone in the family will be gone from May through June and she wants support for the spring season out of Hadsby Castle.” Scottie had texted her for more details as she mulled the invitation.
“She’s still struggling with GBS and asked if I’d come for the Garden Party, stay a while, attend the Rose Ball.
She wants to give me a title. Lady Royal Blue. ”
Dad shifted in the saddle and stared into the horizon. Dart stamped and snorted as if he sensed the tension. “What’d you say?” he said after another tick-tock of silence.
“I’d think about it. Talk to you.”
“It sounds like you want to go.”
“I do. In fact, I’m going. I already called her.”
“I see,” Dad looked over at her. “Scottie, we run a business. This is not like the college semester you wanted to spend abroad. What about the winter line? Your staff? I assume you’ve made provisions for all of this. Don’t tell me you’re presenting this grand exit without a plan.”
He was upset. But not as much as she expected.
“I have a plan. I’ve jotted down things.”
Dad scoffed.
“I’ll have a plan. You know I will. I’m sorry I didn’t confirm with you first. But the more I thought about her invitation, nothing else seemed to matter.
Dad, I have a mom. I want to know her. I’ve tried to put it off, tell myself it’s too late, that I’m grown.
She’s married with two sons and grandchildren.
Yet I think about her all the time. I miss her.
I’m restless. I lose focus during the day.
I stare out my office window toward the east wondering what the Blues are doing.
What if the GBS complicates Kate’s health and I can’t spend time with her? What if she dies?”
“She’s too stubborn to die.”
“I want to know my mother, Dad.”
“I know. I wanted you to have a mom when you were little.” Dad spurred Nova toward the barn. “I dated a few good women who’d have made good moms, but I couldn’t see any of them raising Kate’s girl. A real-life princess. I decided it was my task alone, and I loved every minute of it.”
“Wanting to know Kate doesn’t change anything about us, Dad. We’re the two musketeers for life. Maybe I didn’t have a mom, but so many of my classmates didn’t have dads. They were jealous of me. They thought I was lucky.”
“I was telling Remi about the day I was late to your fourth-grade class party, rushing with my box of smashed Haven’s cupcakes.
Gracie Welch asked in the loudest possible voice, ‘Where’s your mom, Scottie?
Everyone has a mom.’” Dad looked over at her.
“You just stood there, tears in your eyes, and for the first time in your life, I knew I wasn’t enough.
I felt completely helpless. I couldn’t fix the fact that your mother was four thousand miles away, raising her two princes, preparing to rule a small island kingdom. ”
“Dad, you and Shug, and Fritz…you were the best trio. I have zero regrets. Best childhood ever. But now I know… Now I have a chance to know my mother. Who I thought was dead until I was thirty-five.”
“What was the reporter’s name who broke the story?”
“Leslie Ann Parker.” Her name was forever burned into Scottie’s psyche.
“I’m not asking for repentance or for explanations or to change the past. I understand why Kate left me with you.
For thirty-five years it was your secret.
But now it’s my story. It’s up to me to change my future.
I want to go to Lauchtenland, which surprises me, excites me, and scares me.
Eight weeks, Dad. Then I’m back and all yours.
You can take those afternoons for the golf course. ”
Scottie was eight when Dad fed her the “truth” about her mother, his supposed high school sweetheart named Brenda Luck.
They married young but shortly after Scottie was born, she died.
When and where, how, he never said. They never visited her grave or her people.
There were no pictures, no memories shared, or love stories told.
When Scottie learned the actual truth, that she was the secret daughter of the Queen of Lauchtenland, Dad defended the simplicity of his three-decades-old story.
“Simple kept the lie straight for us.”
“So you’re going?” Dad said. “To become a princess?”
“No, not a princess. Just as a daughter. The title is Kate’s idea. I won’t be an HRH. I’ll be back before you know it. O’Shay Shirts is my future kingdom. Who knows, this break might stir my creativity as well as establish new business connections in Europe.”
“I don’t want to lose you, Scottie. You’re my girl. Your grandmother used to say when you were out of earshot, ‘They best not ever come for her. She’s ours.’ Made me wonder if she knew something I didn’t.”
“You’ll never lose me, Dad. You gave up everything for me. Kate will never replace you. As for Shug, my grandmother drama queen is also irreplaceable. I was the daughter she never had.”
As the sun set, the air cooled, the shadows deepened, and Scottie and Dad paused at the top of a knoll.