Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 32223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 161(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 107(@300wpm)
Right, fun.
Except what happens when I stop being able to hide the truth? What happens when Cat learns that I’m not just marrying her father, but that I’ve been fantasizing about him for years. What happens when she figures out that marrying Lachlan McDougall is a fantasy come true? What happens when she learns about what we’ve just done? Or about the things that are quite possible we’ll be doing as well?
Cat giggles, blissfully unaware of the guilt eating me up as she grabs my hands and drags me from the room.
…This is going to be a disaster.
Chapter 8
Lachlan
“Cheers, my friend.”
My glass of whiskey clinks as I tap it against Callum, Hamish, and Tor’s, and with a nod of thanks, I bring it to my lips.
“Gods that’s good,” I growl, my brow arching as I look at the glass after taking a sip.
“Thank Malcolm,” Hamish says with a chuckle. “He had it delivered to my castle to bring to you as wedding gift.” He grins. “His way of apologizing for he and Ailith not being able to make it.”
I shake my head. “It was short notice, and I know he’s down in the south.” I smile, raising my glass. “The whiskey will do just fine.”
I turn to Callum, who’s become not just my son-in-law, being Catriona’s husband, but a good friend as well. He’s a good, honest man. As is Hamish, and Malcolm as well. It helps that all of us have a military background, having served in the Crusades over in the Holy Land in another time. The three of them might be younger than me by a decade, but there’s a camaraderie there that we’ve all found, which also has the benefit of bringing all of our lands together in a sort of alliance, for a stronger Scotland.
“You’ve been quiet.”
Tor snorts. “He’s always quiet.”
I chuckle along with him and Hamish, and Callum grins, shaking his head. “Just trying to put myself in your boots, Lachlan, with all of this.”
“And how are you doing with that?”
He chuckles. “I’m quite happy being in my own shoes, thank you very much.”
I smile, shaking my head as I tap my glass to his. For a small while there, after things went off the cliff with Darcy, I think Callum had some guilt that he’d been the cause of it. After all, it was Darcy trying to seduce him and sow lies in order to destroy his wedding to Catriona that ended up being the final straw with me. Callum of course didn’t act on Darcy’s poor attempt at flaunting her “wiles” on him—for one, because he’s a good, honest man, and loves my daughter. And for two, because Darcy is a transparent witch of a woman. I was never angry at him, nor did I ever blame him, though I knew he still felt guilt for it all. Eventually though, I finally got it through to him that if anything, I owed him—a debt for finally getting me to get out from under the perpetual darkness of having Darcy around.
“You know it’s a political move,” I nod, taking a heavy sip of my whiskey to cover the lie on my tongue.
And it is a lie. Because I can tell myself that marrying Iona is purely a chess move, but I know damn well it’s more than that. I know damn well that it’s also, if not mostly, about the feelings for her I’ve tried so hard to bury. And I’m not foolish enough to think those reasons will stay buried forever once she and I are married. But that’s a bridge I’ll come to when I get to it. Telling the world, and my friends, and my daughter that I’ve married a girl less than half my age who damn well grew up under my eye not so much for political reason, but because I crave her, and need her, and want no one else but her?
That’s a conversation I’ll have to find answers to soon.
Tor chuckles, shaking his head, which is a good few inches above the rest of us, and that’s saying something. The huge Norseman and feared Viking was once a scourge on these lands, marauding up and down the coast. But as of late, he and most of his crew have given up the ravaging life to settle on these shores. It’d didn’t hurt that he and Catriona’s other friend, Rhona, and him fell in love and married. It’s funny the way the world works out sometimes. There was a time when Tor Odinson in my halls would mean we were at war and fighting each other to the death. But after his help with a good many troubles involving Callum, Hamish, Malcolm, and myself, he’s a friend now. And the settlement his people are building on neighboring lands is coming along nicely.