Claire Delacroix (29 page)

And in a hurry to fulfill it.

* * *

Unfortunately, the cook in the restaurant wasn’t so easy to convince. He wore a white T-shirt and sported a day’s growth of beard. The way the cigarette dangled jauntily from the corner of his lip made him look as though he belonged in the galley of an oil tanker instead of a quaint inn in the Scottish highlands.

Maybe he didn’t have quite the same motivation as Blake did.

“Now, you see, I don’t heat up the fryer for a good hour. Makes no sense to waste the power before there’s lots of orders coming in.”

“But my wife wants french fries!”

The burly cook rolled his eyes. “American, are you?” he asked, the words more a statement than a question. He rolled his eyes again and strolled away, as though that explained everything.

Blake appealed to the matronly waitress with the unlikely bright orange hair. “Don’t Scotsmen get hungry in the late afternoon?”

“Of course they do, love, but it’s teatime. What you’re wanting is tea and scones, a wee meat patty, maybe a sausage roll. That will set you straight until dinner.”

“But she wants french fries.”

The waitress looked sympathetic, but a stern glance from the cook had her shaking her head. “This isn’t no Mcdonald’s, you know,” the cook said testily and slammed the over door behind a tray of meat pies.

The waitress clucked her tongue. “There’s no reasoning with him when he’s in a mood, don’t you know,” she counseled in a low voice. “Highland temper, where would we be without it?”

“I heard that, Gladys!” the cook bellowed.

Blake leaned on the counter and tried for his persuasive best. He wasn’t going back upstairs without Justine’s fries. “Look, my wife really wants french fries. I’ll give you twenty pounds to heat the fryer up early.”

The pair exchanged a look. “American, all right,” the cook declared sagely, then turned away.

The waitress patted Blake’s arm. “Look, love, he’s gone and dug in his heels. Why don’t I make your wife a nice cup of tea?”

But Blake wasn’t interested in tea because Justine wasn’t interested in tea. He flung out his hands and said the first thing that came to mind.

“But she’s pregnant! And there’s no reasoning with her. She wants something and I’m supposed to just get it. Pickles in the middle of the night, french fries in the afternoon. It’s making me nuts, but she has to eat something for the baby, and what am I going to do when all she wants is french fries?”

“Pregnant?” echoed the waitress.

“Pregnant?” The cook pivoted the face Blake with surprising grace, his cigarette dangling at an angle that was far from jaunty. “Why didn’t you just say so, man? There’s no reasoning with a woman during her time!”

And he flicked the red switch on the deep fryer to On.

“He’s seven bairns of his own,” the waitress confided in an undertone as the cook set to cutting potatoes. “And not a one of them over ten years old. This be a man who knows pregnant women.”

Blake didn’t ask how many women had contributed to that impressive pool of children. He shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling like an idiot for telling such a lie, yet perversely proud of himself for coming up with something that had worked.

“It’ll be a while, love. Why don’t you sit and have a pint?”

Blake turned back to the nearly vacant restaurant that doubled as a pub – or vice versa – and for the first time noticed Alasdair. The highlander was sitting alone in the far corner, pushing a glass of water across the tabletop.

“Hey, Alasdair!” Blake waved as he crossed the room, not waiting for an invitation before he pulled out a chair. “How’s it going?” He noticed belatedly that the other man looked morose. “What’s the matter? Morgan kick you out?”

Alasdair glared across the table. “What do you know of this Matthew James Reilly?” he demanded grimly.

Blake barely kept his mouth from falling open. “She told you about him?” Alasdair nodded and Blake whistled through his teeth. “Wow. She never talks about him at all. Hey, you want a ‘wee dram’? Just us guys?”

Alasdair shook his head slowly, the move making him look like a stubborn lion. “I drink whisky no longer. I have pledged this to Morgaine.”

Blake sat back and considered his companion. Justine would be pleased that things were getting so serious so fast.

But Alasdair sure didn’t look like a happy camper. He leaned forward now and tapped his finger slowly on the table. “What do you know of this so-called man?”

Blake frowned in recollection. “Well, it’s been ten years now. Um, he and Morgan were already together when I came on the scene. Married and everything.” He rolled his eyes. “Though no one was very pleased about that.”

“No one?”

“Well, Justine but especially Auntie Gillian. Wow! Now there was one opinionated old babe. She was something else.”

“I know naught of any Auntie Gillian.”

“You’re not alone there.” Blake grimaced. “No one knows much about her, and those who do aren’t telling. They never talk about her, but she was the one who raised them.”

“I do not understand.”

“Justine and Morgan are sisters. Sorry, I thought you could see the resemblance. Most people do. At any rate, when they were little squirts, their parents went away, maybe to a wedding. I forget, but they left the girls with Auntie Gillian.”

Blake flagged down the waitress and ordered a pint. Alasdair declined with a shake of his head. Once she was gone, Blake resumed. “Well, there was a car accident – really horrible – and the girls were orphaned. They must have been four and two at the time, and real handfuls, as kids that age usually are. Busy, not bad. And if Auntie Gillian wasn’t their closest relative, she was certainly the one most determined to give them a home.”

Blake waved gratitude as his beer came, and after a long draught, he warmed to his story. Alasdair was listening intently.

“You see, she wasn’t really their aunt – something like the aunt of a cousin of their mother. Some distant relative, anyway. And possession is nine-tenths of the law, right? She had the girls and she kept them, the rest of the family be damned.” Blake snorted. “I sure wouldn’t have gone head-to-head with Auntie Gillian over anything.”

A faint smile curved Alasdair’s lips. “She was a woman of determination?”

Blake laughed. “More like one with an iron will. She was incredible. She put everything into raising those two.
Everything
. They went to dance lessons and piano lessons and to the best schools. For an older person, Auntie Gillian kept up one helluva pace. She was bound and determined that they were going to have the best. Yet at the same time, neither of them got away with anything.”

“She sounds most fierce.”

“Yeah.” Blake grinned in recollection. “I’ve gotta tell you, I was pretty worried when it was time for me to meet her. I mean, I knew that if Auntie Gillian put the kibosh on me seeing Justine, that would be the end of it. And I really didn’t want that to happen.”

“But you met with approval?”

Blake still felt surprised by his certainty of that. “Yeah! I remember that day like nothing else. We drove out to this little town in Michigan – we were living in Chicago even then. It was just as cute and apple pie as you can imagine. One of those places where the feed store is the biggest building in town and all the houses are these old wooden jobs from the turn of the century. Big porches, people sitting out watching what everyone else is doing. Norman Rockwell stuff.

“Well, Auntie Gillian’s place wasn’t one of the big showy ones, just a cozy little place complete with a white picket fence. Of course, I was shaking in my boots, I was so worried the woman would hate me on sight.”

Blake took a sip of beer. “I can still see her standing on the walkway, waiting for us to get out of the car. Mauve polyester pantsuit, blue hair all tucked up and eyes that just snapped. You could tell that she never missed a thing. She stood staring at me, and I felt like she knew everything about me before we were even introduced. I was surprised when we got up to her that she was only as tall as Justine’s shoulder – about the same height as Morgan – because her presence was so formidable.”

Blake turned his glass in the wet circle it had made on the table. “We went into her living room. It was filled with this curvy old furniture with red upholstery and horsehair stuffing that itched your legs. We had tea in these little bone china cups, and she ranted about Matt.”

Blake laughed. “It was so anticlimactic. I was ready to be interrogated to the nth degree, but she didn’t ask me anything. Once she got done with her list of Matt’s crimes, we actually had a very pleasant dinner.”

Alasdair’s smile widened. “She must have approved of you.”

“Yeah, well, Justine gave me a big kiss in the car and told me that I’d seriously won the compare-and-contrast game.” When Alasdair looked blank, Blake continued. “I don’t know that I would have done so well in Auntie Gillian’s estimation if Matt hadn’t jumped in first and shown her how bad things could be.”

“What manner of man was he?”

Blake frowned. “You know, it wasn’t anything you could put your finger on. He was a good-looking guy, a smooth talker. He worked out and played sports and stuff. Seemed like an okay guy, actually. At the beginning, I thought Auntie Gillian was just being overprotective of Morgan and Justine was just chiming in. You know, ‘there’s nobody good enough for our girl’ kind of thing.”

“But later?”

“Well, gradually I started to see it. You know, Morgan was completely head over heels. She thought the sun rose and set in this jerk, and she would have done anything for him. And over time, I started to get the feeling that it wasn’t all mutual. Just a comment here or there, nothing you could really pinpoint, but the impressions added up.”

“He did not love her.”

Blake shook his head. “I don’t think Matt loved anyone besides himself.” He drank heavily of his beer, remembering hundreds of little details.

“Yet he married Morgaine.”

“I think he liked that she was in love with him. His own little fan club.” Blake grimaced. “She was young, and she had been really sheltered from his kind. He was flashy. Lots of women go for that – at least until they know better.”

Alasdair’s approval of that was clear. “And what happened to this Auntie Gillian?”

“Well, Justine and I got married about six months after the Interview That Could Have Ended It All. A couple of months after that, we got a call from the hospital in the town nearest Auntie Gillian’s.” Blake swallowed. “She’d had a stroke and was barely hanging on. Morgan turned up begging a ride, and the three of us drove down together within half an hour of getting the call.”

“And this Matthew?” Alasdair’s tone was thick with disapproval.

Blake shrugged. “There was some excuse. I don’t remember what it was, just that I knew it was a lie. Morgan looked like she’d been crying. Justine gave me one of Those Looks and I just shut up and drove. You know how it is.”

Alasdair nodded grimly. “Aye, that I do.”

“So, we got there and it was too late to visit, but Auntie Gillian told the nurse in the ICU that she was holding on for her girls and they had damn well better let them in because she couldn’t make it to morning. And they did. Like I said, you didn’t mess with her. I guess she was in pretty rough shape because they were surprised she had lasted as long as she had. Every blue hair was in place, though. That was Auntie Gillian.”

Blake shook his head in admiration. “You know, she might have been in charge of the place instead of dying there. Justine and Morgan sat one on each side and took her hands. I kind of lingered in the background, you know, watching that little red light on the heart monitor go
beep-beep-beep
.

“She told them that now that her chicks were married, for better or for worse – Morgan got a look for that one – it was time for her to go. She said good-bye to them both, reminded them to mind their manners, then gave them each a kiss. Then she laid back, closed her eyes, and the little red light didn’t beep anymore.”

Blake could see the sparse hospital room in his mind’s eye and felt again the sudden absence of Auntie Gillian’s commanding presence. The room had abruptly seemed emptier and colder, and he had known that her formidable spirit had slipped out of her body before he even looked at the monitor.

“It was like a movie,” he confessed quietly, still awed by the memory. “Perfectly planned, brilliantly executed. She even died on her own terms. Amazing woman. It turned out she was a good fifteen years older than any of us had imagined.”

“She sounds a woman of rare good sense,” Alasdair said gruffly.

Blake frowned as he recalled where he had been going with this story, and his tone turned grim. “Yeah. And Auntie Gillian was right about Matt, that’s for sure. Now, I don’t know exactly what happened and I know better than to ask” – Blake punctuated this with a significant glance at his companion – “but I know what I saw and I bet it’s not what Morgan told you.”

Alasdair leaned closer, his eyes gleaming. “Tell me.”

If this guy wasn’t nuts about Morgan, Blake would eat his Day-Timer.

And given that, Alasdair deserved to know everything Blake knew. Justine would think otherwise, but she wasn’t here to know about it. Blake looked from side to side, then leaned across the table himself, dropping his voice even though he knew neither sister could hear him.

“About a year after that, Justine couldn’t get ahold of Morgan and she was starting to worry. She was always edgy about Matt, said he was too smooth. So we went over there and knocked forever before Matt opened the door. He was half-stinko, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. He gave us some cock-and-bull story about Morgan having a big assignment due for school, but I could tell he was surprised she hadn’t called Justine either.”

Blake sighed. “All the way home Justine was talking about calling the cops. She was sure the bastard had hurt her baby sister. She said she had a bad feeling and was really wound up about his drinking. I think she thought she should be doubly protective of Morgan because Auntie Gillian was gone.”