Scotlander, page 18
‘Aye, right. Okay, then.’ Finn pushed the chair back and rose, gave Colin a brisk handshake. ‘Thanks for that, Mr Robertson.’
‘Colin, son. I’ve known you since you were a bairn. I think we’re free to be on a first-name basis now that you’re carrying your father’s mantle.’
Finn shot him a sharp glance, trying to figure out if he’d meant anything beyond the obvious.
No. It had just been a comment.
‘Right you are. Thank you. I’ll be in touch.’
‘Don’t leave it too long, Finlay.’
‘No, no.’ He was already at the doorway, lifting one hand in farewell and pulling up the livestock auctioneer’s phone number with the other. ‘We’ll speak soon. Dinnae worry.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lachlan approached Gabe at exactly the same moment Willa did. Oh boy. Cock blocks at dawn, was it?
She turned to go.
‘Willa, wait.’ Gabe held up a hand, then asked, ‘Lachlan, give us a few minutes, will you?’
Lachlan demurred with a hand on his chest and a half bow. Bloody zen-yoga-hipster-beardy type. Not that any of this was Lachlan’s fault. Or Gabe’s. It was entirely her fault that she’d decided the only reason Val had sent them on this trip was to fall deeply and irrevocably in love. Having Finn run for the hills had just been some extra delicious rejection icing on the cake.
‘C’mere.’ Gabe crooked his arm for Willa to take and then, to Lachlan, ‘You wouldn’t mind hunting down those tools we needed, would you, Lach? I’m just going to show Wills what we’ve been up to.’
‘Good idea.’ Lachlan smiled his benign, Dalai Lama smile and jogged off.
A part of her hoped he would trip, but her karma was already down the pooper, so she willed him a graceful journey to the tool shed. Why make things worse than they already were?
‘You okay?’ Gabe asked once they were out of the courtyard and heading towards the castle ruins.
‘Yeah,’ she lied. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Willa. It’s me. You can admit to being upset.’
‘I told you!’ she screeched. ‘Not upset! Finn’s his own person. Who am I to try to tie a Highlander down? Besides’ – this little speech of hers was quite freeing – ‘he underestimated me, my intellect and my rather impressive farming skills on the basis that I interview celebrities for a living, so frankly, I was hoping he wouldn’t turn up today. This is a win. One hundred per cent. I mean, the man thought I thought cows ate Oreos.’ She fuzzed out a raspberry. ‘McJackass.’
He gave her a look.
‘Okay, fine. I’m a little bit narked.’ She pinched the teensiest bit of air between her fingers.
‘You really are handling it with grace.’ Gabe feigned a look of admiration.
‘Impressive, huh?’ She gave a smug little shoulder shimmy and shot him a smile, hoping it communicated to him how grateful she felt for the space to hurtle from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other.
‘Well, for what it’s worth,’ Gabe said, ‘it’s his loss, and although I know you’ve had other invitations, you are very welcome to join me and Lachlan.’
‘Ohhhh, no. That’s cool. You two have got your whole reunion thang going on.’
‘Shall we walk for a bit?’ Gabe suggested. ‘Talk when we get there?’
‘Good idea.’
Gabe set a good pace and by the time they reached the castle walls, Willa’s heart was pounding hard enough to mostly drown out the screams of self-recrimination threatening to consume her.
A smile lit up Gabe’s face as they hit the first arch. He stopped just short of where they could see in. ‘Do you remember what it was like when you first came in here?’
‘What? You mean yesterday morning? Yes, Gabe. I can remember yesterday morning.’
‘Okay, bonita. Point made.’ He laughed, completely unperturbed by her shirty response.
She looked at him, then. Really looked at him. Only twenty-four hours had passed between the moment he’d first seen Lachlan but it was like she was meeting a brand new person.
Gone was the cool, inaccessible, ultra-desirable Latino and in his place was a smiley, kilt-wearing, happy guy. One whose mood refused to be tamped. He was also a bit scruffy-looking. He had all sorts of funny little cuts on his forehead and cheeks and, in one case, a bruise.
She grimaced and pointed. ‘Do I need to call a hotline for you? That looks like it hurts.’ She did a dramatic little double take. ‘Wait. Have you and Lachlan been playing kilted Fight Club?’
He huffed out a good-natured laugh. ‘With the brambles, aye.’
She snorted. ‘Okay, Madonna.’
‘Hey! Not fair.’ He shot her a cheeky side-eye. ‘I’ve not married anyone and I am not speaking with a Scottish accent.’
‘Oh, aye, right you are, laddie,’ she tried to roll her Rs and failed. ‘You ken y’are.’
She got a soft kick in the bum for her efforts. And then, with a courtly half bow, he stepped to the side so she could enter the castle gardens.
The expanse, which she was proudly informed was the equivalent of three acres, was almost entirely clear apart from a beautiful collection of ancient-looking trees in orchard formation. The stone walls had autumn-coloured ivy still clinging to them. There was a massive burn pile off to one side, but apart from that, they had single-handedly unearthed an utterly breathtaking walled garden.
‘Oh my god, Gabe,’ she managed. ‘What are you? A new breed of Marvel gardening hero?’
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ He explained how Duncan had appeared on the digger after they’d managed to clear about a metre’s worth of brambles. Despite their protests that they were happy to do it by hand, he’d overruled them and systematically cleared the lot with Lachlan and Gabe acting as his skivvies. ‘Duncan deserves a cape for this. He’s like . . . a ballerina with his digger.’
‘I’m sure he’d love to hear that,’ Willa teased.
‘Yeah. Maybe not,’ Gabe said, eyes glued to the garden, an undimmable smile on his lips. ‘What do you think?’
She pointed at her dropped jaw to show just how amazing she thought it was. She walked up to one of the trees. ‘Oh my gawd. These have apples on them!’ She was beaming now and so was he.
He put on a wicked witch voice and reached for one. ‘Yes, my beautiful young maiden. Would you like to try one of my very special apples?’
She smirked at him. ‘You could totally lure someone into your secret lair with your wicked witch act. It’s very nuanced.’
His bright smile remained, then softened as the energy buzzing between them shifted into something demanding more than pithy one-liners.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘For what?’ She was playing stupid. She knew what. But he didn’t actually owe her an apology. This was one of those scenarios that drove her nuts in romance novels. When a simple miscommunication between the couple (he’s gay, she’s not) keeps them at odds for tortuous ages when a simple straightforward question would have sorted things out in no time. It’d be a boring romance, and very short, but far less irritating. And yet, here she was, happily bearing the mantle of the one prolonging the misunderstanding.
‘I had no idea Val had organised the whole Lachlan thing,’ Gabe said. ‘It’s important to me that you and I stay friends. I don’t think I would’ve come here without you cheering me on. Are you up for that? A friendship with . . . apples?’
He picked one off the tree and handed it to her.
She clutched it to her heart, hoping he couldn’t see her hands trembling. He was bearing the brunt of the apology for her idiocy.
‘Of course.’ She opened her arms and they had a weird, awkward-angles hug. What was the most embarrassing aspect about all of this was that it hadn’t even occurred to her that her relationship with Gabe didn’t have to involve romance. She had no doubt he would be an amazing, loyal friend. Just like his sister had been.
She made herself say the words they both needed to hear to draw a line under any further misunderstandings. ‘How could I be mad when the best friend a girl could have reunited her brother with his first love?’
‘It was pretty badass.’ He blew a kiss up to the crisp, blue sky above them. ‘I miss you, Concha.’
She closed her eyes and, as clear as if it were real, saw Valentina blowing one back at the pair of them. I miss you too, Val. Forever and a day I will miss you.
‘She’s the gift that keeps on giving.’ Willa tried to control the crack in her voice as she continued. ‘And I’m happy for you. Lachlan seems really nice. And I fully expect to be your bridesmaid at the real handfasting ceremony. What is it?’ She looked at her non-existent wrist watch. ‘A year from now?’
Gabe smiled, tipped his head back and forth. ‘Who knows what will happen? But it’s nice. Having someone who knew me back then. And my family. It’s kind of like completing myself, you know? Coming full circle, but better.’
She nodded a weird bobbly-headed nod because what he’d just said was something she was so hungry for it made her bones ache.
Gabe pointed back towards the barns. ‘I told you I read my letter, right?’
She made a vague noise. She didn’t want to talk about the letters.
‘It was really useful.’
‘Useful?’
He nodded. ‘When I saw Lachlan, I – I was angry instead of happy and that felt wrong. He is the only man I’ve ever let myself fall completely head over heels for and then he disappeared. Well, I disappeared and then he disappeared, and I was angry, you know? I felt abandoned and pissed off that I hadn’t handled it better.’ He balled his hands into fists and fake-punched himself in the head. ‘For years, I’ve been thinking of what I’d say to him if I ever saw him, and what do I do when I get the chance? I storm off. It’s what I did back then, and I did it again yesterday and . . . I need to stop doing that. I need to face stuff head on. Whether or not it turns out well.’
She got that. Big time. Not watching Outlander was her form of protest that Valentina wasn’t fighting harder to beat her cancer. It had been a completely unfair reaction to something Valentina had next to zero control over. You didn’t fight cancer. You endured it. Did the best you could in the face of a malignant invasion. And when her best friend had reached out to her, literally asking her to be by her side as she came face to face with her mortality, what had Willa done? She’d said no. And she would have to carry that burden of guilt forever. There was no way she could make up for it with Val, but she could try here, now, with Gabe.
She ducked her head to catch his eye. ‘You were a teenager when you met. Like . . . Romeo and Juliet’s age. How on earth were you meant to handle something like that with the equilibrium of a seasoned therapist?’
Gabe scrubbed his fingertips through his oil-slick-coloured hair. ‘I know, but being with Lachlan again – realising how much precious time we’d missed – it really brought home to me just how much I’d missed with Valentina.’ His voice thickened as the grief took purchase. ‘I never met her kids. Her husband. I don’t know any of my other siblings’ children. I don’t even know if I’d recognise them if we passed one another on the street. I was their big brother and I walked away. Walked away and didn’t look back.’ His eyes were dark now – pure dilated pupil. ‘I thought I was leaving behind all the pain I’d ever experience in the world, not even considering that what I’d actually done was create a huge black hole where all of that messy family stuff should have been.’ He clawed his hands into his chest as if to prove the black hole’s existence. As abruptly, he threw his hands up. ‘So, my dad doesn’t like that I’m gay. So what? I let my fear of that disapproval take twenty years of family time away from me.’ He clawed at his chest again. ‘I’m the one who did it to myself and I’m the one who’s going to have to live with that.’
His raw, unfettered remorse crashed through her like an earthquake. She still went home to see her family, sent birthday presents for her nieces and nephews, made pumpkin pie with a whipped cream smiley face at Thanksgiving. But she’d always had the sense that they all knew the reason she came back wasn’t because being there, with them, was a choice. It was an obligation. And acknowledging that created the same, terrifying black hole Gabe spoke of.
Willa swirled her toe round in the dirt making one circle, another, and then a third connecting the first two. Was there a way to make her two worlds one?
She could be practical. She was sleeping on straw bales and called in cows and was about to go and build a stone wall. In petticoats and a corset, no less. A honking, stinking one. It was all stuff her family would’ve loved doing. Pragmatic. Down to earth. Real.
And yet . . . proving she could do farm chores wasn’t the link she needed. She didn’t want to be loved for the things she did. She just wanted to be loved.
She’d felt that type of bond with Val. The same one she saw between Jennifer and Jules. So why couldn’t she feel it with her own family?
Maybe if she were to read Val’s letter . . .
She swiped at a couple of tears and blurrily caught Gabe doing the same. ‘Did your letter from Val . . . Was it like . . . Did it spell out . . .’ Oh god. She wanted to know and also she really didn’t.
She looked up at the sky and shouted, ‘What the fuck, Val?’
Gabe laughed as if she had finally gone round the twist, then copied her.
As clearly as if Val had descended from heaven, she heard her friend’s familiar laugh and a very dry, You could just open the envelope, stupid.
Yeah. She could. But then all of this would be over and she’d have to admit to herself that it was time to move on and that would mean deciding whether or not her life in LA had any actual content in it beyond regurgitating stories about celebrities with whom she’d spent five-to-ten minutes of not-very-private time and possibly moving back to Oregon because she couldn’t really think of anything else she wanted to do in LA, but she definitely couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do in Pendleton, all of which would mean she’d be stripped bare of the way she defined herself and would, at the ripe age of twenty-nine, be forced to start over.
Which clearly meant her best bet was to not read Val’s letter.
Gabe reached across, took her hand and said, ‘My letter basically said that the things that terrify us the most are the things that are the most worth doing.’
Willa smiled through another rush of tears. ‘What else?’
‘It wasn’t long.’ Gabe’s voice went scratchy again as he recalled snippets of the letter. How Val had said that their dad had regretted his actions but was too proud and too old-fashioned to know how to start over. That they all loved him. That their lives were richer because of him. He had started out stoically, but both their faces were streaming with tears now. Each of them desperately missing that brave, beautiful, vivacious woman they’d been lucky enough to have in their lives. They hugged and sobbed and made ugly crying noises so awful that they ended up cackling too.
‘Oh, there you are.’
They both looked across and saw Lachlan.
Instinctively, Willa pulled away from Gabe’s embrace. ‘Sorry, I—’
Lachlan shook his head in apology. ‘No, lassie. The two of you are enjoying a well-deserved greet.’
‘Uhhh . . .’
‘A good cry,’ Lachlan said, tugging tissues out of his sporran and handing them one each. ‘Bamboo. Earth-friendly.’ He plopped down on the ground beside them. ‘Oh god, I love a good weepy session, don’t you?’
Willa breathed out an emphatic, ‘Yes,’ then held out her hand for another tissue.
‘Hallelujah,’ Lachlan said companionably. ‘Better out than in. Sometimes when I feel the need for a proper sob, but can’t get it, you know, primed, I get in some chocolate, some ice cream, bring the duvet out to the sofa and pick out a fil-um that’s guaranteed to make me cry.’
She and Lachlan looked at one another while Lachlan rubbed Gabe’s back then, as one, they said, ‘Romeo and Juliet with Leo and Claire.’ Then, ‘Yeeaaas, Queen!’ Then more tears. More tissues. More sharing of films that were sure to induce puffy eyes and a headache.
Gabe started laughing. ‘I’m guessing I don’t need to worry about the two of you hitting it off, then.’
‘Och, away,’ Lachlan said. ‘If you love her, I love her.’ His tone was so full of warmth she felt as if they’d been friends for a hundred years. No wonder Gabe had fallen for him. He was like a sexy, Scottish, kilted James Blunt. Full of warmth, kindness and humour that knew no boundaries.
After a few more minutes of chatting, talk turned to plans for the walled garden and orchard, which Willa took as her cue that it was, in fact, time to do some chores. She excused herself, saying she was off to find the girls.
As she left, Gabe jogged up behind her. She turned around and smiled at her new friend.
‘I just wanted to make sure we’re cool.’
‘Yeah, of course.’ They were. Definitely.
‘You should read your letter,’ he said.
She nodded. She knew she should.
He looked over his shoulder to where Lachlan was doing a sun salutation in the middle of the orchard. Shirtless.
‘Go,’ she said.
He leant in and gave her cheek a kiss.
‘You’ll be okay,’ he said.
She had no idea why, but she believed him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next day, ignoring the catcalls, sotto voce boos and Trevor’s utterly charmless greeting (no one needed to bear witness to one of his crotch grabs), Finn marched through the courtyard looking for Willa.
She stood up from where she’d been peeling potatoes with a couple of the other guests and wiped her hands on her smock. It caught him by surprise how at home she looked in her Jacobean gear. Someone had sewn a ‘maiden modesty’ panel into her dress, and her long hair, loose today, was caught behind a kerchief.
