Page 64 of Scotlander

Willa wove her hands together in prayer position, her eyes seeking his for absolution.

He pulled off his cap and scrubbed his hand through his hair. ‘No, I’m sorry. I jumped to a conclusion and shouldn’t have.’ He huffed out a short laugh. ‘You really drew the short straw, didn’t you? In the Jamie department.’

‘Well . . . when you consider Trevor as an alternative . . .’ she began, a soft smile tweaking at the edges of her lips.

The connection thawed something in him. Reminded him that he’d sought her out. Wanted Willa, of all the people in Scotland, to be the one who helped him figure out how he was going get through today, tomorrow, and with any luck the next fortnight without any of the guests knowing the farm was facing imminent foreclosure.

He crossed over to her and slid down the wall so that they were sitting side by side, watching the piglets. He’d seen this scores of times and still . . . they were the cutest little things. All snout and diddy little legs. Polka-dotted. What wasn’t to love? An ache he rarely liked to acknowledge pressed against his chest.

‘My dad used to bring me out here,’ he said.

‘When piglets were born?’

‘No – well, that too, but . . .’ C’mon, Finn. Wear your big boy pants. ‘He used to bring me out here when he wanted to talk about difficult stuff.’

‘Like?’

‘The farm mostly. The responsibilities that came with it. The castle.’

‘It’s a good place to do that.’

‘Aye.’

Willa turned to him after more than a few awkward seconds had ticked past. ‘Finn, are you trying to tell me you need to have a difficult conversation with me? If yesterday was cold feet, or you’ve got better things to do elsewhere, or there’s a jealous girlfriend who’s going to come claw my eyes out, I’d be mighty grateful if you gave me a heads up. My ego can only take so much without immediate access to ice cream. Preferably rum raisin.’

He smiled. They barely knew one another, but he already felt familiar with her tendency to cosset her fears in humour. He owed it to her to be straight.

‘There’s no jealous girlfriend. No girlfriend at all. I didn’t have cold feet. But I do have a lot to do. Crisis-management stuff.’

She made an I-need-more beckoning gesture.

‘Where should I start?’

‘The beginning is usually traditional, but I’ll leave the structure up to you.’

He started at the beginning.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The trouble with trying to dislike a guy pouring out his life story in a delicious Scottish accent while holding a piglet in his lap is that it’s pretty much impossible. Doubly so when that particular Scotsman was Finlay Jamieson, a man whose story – a proper heartbreaker – was bringing tears to her eyes.

She should be furious. Enraged that Finn and his family had been so duplicitous. They’d been brought here for the express purpose of getting money to fix a potato harvester?

The money Val had spent on this immersive experience could have gone to her kids, her husband, a cancer charity.

Then again . . . all the guests were having a ball. They were even having a competition over who was getting the most blisters. (ChiChi was winning.)

Confusion tore through her. Only someone who was desperate would have done this. Gone to this level of effort to make ends meet. And it wasn’t like Orla was planning on lying around in a gold-plated bath full of ass’s milk after this. She was going to pour what money was left over from hosting them into farm machinery. Nobody’s coffers would be overflowing at the end of this.

Another set of questions pulled her up short. Should she tell Gabe? Would knowing this whole thing was a set-up change the reasons everyone had come?

A full-on existential crisis set in.

She scoured her brain for answers to questions only Val could answer. Why had she chosen this specific place to reintroduce Gabe to Lachlan? And why bring her along as a third wheel?

Sometimes you have to step away from the person you think you are, to become the one you want to be.

Maybe she’d got it wrong. Maybe Gabe was the one who’d been brought along to be her support system and Lachlan was the sugar pill, a gift from the past to keep him here.