Men in Kilts

by Katie MacAlister

  I frowned back. “You needn’t look at me like that, you knew I was married before.”

  One glossy brown eyebrow rose.

  “Oh, all right, I admit I should have remembered to tell you that he was my landlord, but it just never came to mind.”

  “Are you really divorced, then?” Iain asked.

  “Oh, yes, now . It all got straightened out when Kevin’s new wife, a charming woman named Gail, was pregnant with their first child. That’s when Kevin’s lawyer, who was dealing with a trust fund set up by his parents, noticed that the final divorce never went through. Fortunately, Kevin and I had remained friends, so there was no problem in getting the divorce finalized and Kevin married to Gail a few hours before she went into labor. When I moved back to Seattle, Kevin kindly offered me the tiny attic apartment over Gail’s flower shop.”

  Iain didn’t say anything to that, just rubbed his jaw.

  “I’ve been e-mailing him from Scotland every couple of weeks, keeping him apprised of my intentions, and asked him to drop by to meet you, and to get all the info from me about vacating the apartment.”

  Iain turned and looked out over the counter that opened into the living area.

  He eyed Kevin warily. Kevin, deciding our private little confab must be over if we were looking at him, popped up and chatted merrily about his daughters and wife, how my trip was, and how he had enjoyed seeing Braveheart . I knew the Where’s your kilt? question was next on Kevin’s tongue, so I hauled him over to the loveseat and told him to sit while I wrote out instructions regarding the movers, Iain’s address, etc.

  “Kathie,” Iain said quietly as I was digging through my desk trying to find a working pen.

  “Just a second, Iain. I know I have a pen here, I have millions of pens. I’m always stumbling over them, but would I have one when I need one? Oh no, not then!”

  “Kathie,” Iain’s voice dropped in pitch. That got my attention.

  “What?”

  “Ye might be wantin‘ ta poot on some clothin’ noo, aye?” Ooops. He was a bit more upset than I had first thought. I smiled at Kevin.

  “One moment, please. Iain, sweetie, might I have another word with you?”

  “Aye, I’d be likin‘ a few more with you, too.”

  We adjourned to the bathroom. It held us both, just barely, but offered more privacy than the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked Iain as soon as the door was closed. “You’re not jealous of Kevin are you? Because if you are,” I continued without allowing him to answer, “you’re nuts. There’s nothing to be jealous of. Kevin is a friend—I told you I was still friends with him.”

  “You never told me he was liable to walk in on you whenever he pleased.

  That’s more than a wee friendship.”

  I got all huffy for a minute over what he was implying, then reason raised a finger and pointed out that Iain was not overly possessive, and thus there must be something behind his distress.

  I pushed him to the only available seat and stood between his knees. “OK, mister, just what’s this about?”

  He frowned and crossed his arms over his bare chest. Not a good sign.

  It took me a while to pry it out of him. I had to pop my head out of the door twice and tell Kevin that we’d be just a few minutes longer. Kevin didn’t care.

  He’d found my stash of M&Ms and was happily watching Ren and Stimpy.

  “Iain, I know you’re not the jealous type,” I said, exasperated after fifteen minutes of going around in circles with him. “So what is it about Kevin being my landlord that is bothering you so much?”

  “I don’t care if he owns the whole bleeding town,” Iain fumed, his chin obstinate. “I’m thinking a woman wouldn’t allow such liberties as letting a man walk in on her whenever he pleases unless she wants to encourage him.” I was still confused. He didn’t make any sense.

  “Do you think we’re still sleeping together, is that it?” He stared at me for a moment. “No, I don’t. You said you haven’t since you left him, and I trust you.”

  Warning bells went off in my head. Trust. That was clearly at the heart of the issue, and that could go back to only one thing—his first wife, Mary.

  I put my hand on his cheek and said the words I had no idea I’d be repeating later. “Iain, I’m not Mary. I won’t treat you like she did. I won’t betray you, ever.”

  I didn’t know why I found it hard to believe Iain still carried around scars from his marriage to Mary. I guess it was because my own ended so amicably that I forgot not everyone was so lucky. Despite his reticence in expressing his emotions, Iain was a man whose feelings ran very deep, and I knew Mary’s betrayal of him with a man she had been engaged to before marrying him had cut him to the bone.

  Trust was not an easy thing to give to anyone, and it was even more difficult when you’ve given it and had it abused. Iain said he trusted me, and I think for the most part he did, but I suspected there was a little tiny bit of him that was holding back, watching me, waiting to see what I would do when given the opportunity to deceive him.

  It was to that small unsure part that I said simply, “Iain, I love you more than anyone I’ve ever loved before, more than anyone I ever will love. You’re everything to me. I will never hurt you. Oh, my Iain, my sweet Iain, tha gaol agam ort .”

  He didn’t say anything to that, just pulled me up close and leaned his bristly cheek against my breast. I wrapped my arms around him.

  Trust was not an easy thing to give, but I knew Iain was trying.

  By the fourth day of our trip to Seattle, we were both ready to go home. This came as a bit of a revelation to me— not that I wanted to leave, but that Seattle was no longer home to me.

  Home wasn’t a comfortable, if tiny, apartment; home was Iain and dogs and sheep and a drafty house with a crotchety charwoman. Home was the place we curled up together at night before the fire to read, home was where we argued in the barn over the cat beds I made, home was where Iain chased me around the house in payback for tickling him. Home was were we argued and laughed and cried and made love. Home was where I woke up lying on Iain, listening to his heart beat, trying to separate it from mine but thankfully not succeeding.

  “I don’t belong in Seattle anymore,” I told him. “I am just another tourist, like you, only I have a few bits of baggage to be rid of.” He just looked smug, and although he didn’t come right out and say I told you so, he did agree that he was looking forward to going home as much as I was.

  But first I had to take care of the one last important task.

  I had to break my mother’s heart.

  We drove out to her house, stopping twice along the way so Iain could talk to farmers. The first place we stopped had an owner who was very suspicious of Iain’s motives, and kept asking what it was he wanted to sell. Iain gave up trying to talk sheep and we hit the road again. The second farm he spotted (the man had an uncanny ability to see sheep at great distances) was a small livestock farm that seemed to have just about everything—cows, sheep, pigs, llamas, and even emus.

  “Maybe you’d better let me do the talking,” I mentioned as we pulled up with a flourish to a small cadre of barking dogs. “I thought that guy at that last place was ready to pull out his shotgun when you insisted you just wanted to find out what sort of castrator he used. I think a woman’s light touch is what’s needed here.”

  Iain just grunted and carefully unfolded his legs from the car. He snapped an order to the barking dogs, who surprised me by obeying. I guessed there was something universally recognizable in an authoritative voice, no matter what the command.

  A blond-haired woman who was probably in her late twenties opened the door, a chubby baby balanced on one hip, his face covered in what I sincerely hoped was yellow baby food.

  I explained that Iain was visiting from Scotland for a short time and was interested in exchanging ideas with fellow farmers. The woman’s pale gray eyes grew rounder and rounder with each word until she stood th
ere, oblivious to the baby blowing yellow bubbles all over the side of her T-shirt. She stared at Iain as if he were God himself come down to have a quick jaw.

  “You’re from Scotland?” she asked finally. “The Scotland?”

  “I only know of the one,” he answered, and chucked the baby under his yellow chin.

  Her eyes got even bigger. I thought they might pop right out and tried to recall my first aid training, but when the look took on a familiar glint, I relaxed.

  Everything would be OK. I recognized that look in her eye. It was the kilt look.

  “Scotland like in Highlander ?”

  Iain gave me one of the here we go again rolls of the eye. “Aye, we live in the Highlands.”

  “Oh my gosh!” the woman said, gasping. “Oh my gosh. Wait till I tell Jim!

  We love Highlander ! Jim wants to get one of those big swords so he can learn how to use it just like Duncan! Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re really standing here!”

  “You’ll notice he’s not wearing a kilt,” I pointed out helpfully. “However, he does have a claymore.”

  Iain grabbed me with one hand and hauled me over next to him. “What my fiancée is trying to say is that we’re on a wee bit of a schedule, and we’re wondering if your husband might be about to talk with us?”

  “Oh!” she squealed and did a little excited dance. “Oh, Jim will be thrilled to meet you! Just thrilled! A real Highlander!”

  The baby squealed with her and chuckled to himself as he was jogged up and down. I watched his mother’s antics with a worried eye. I hadn’t had much experience with babies, but I knew that they sometimes exploded if you shook them up after eating. I didn’t want to be around if that happened.

  “Um, is Jim around? As in nearby?”

  “Oh!” She jumped again. The baby squealed again too. I backed up a couple of steps. He looked to me like he was going to blow. Suddenly she stepped to the side and bellowed, “Jiiiiiiiiiiiiim! Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim! ” A slight man in a Pearl Jam T-shirt and dirty jeans appeared in the doorway of a barn. She waved him over, and soon Iain was being invited to see the barn, examine the livestock, try Cyndi’s cream cheese raspberry coffee cake (for which she won a ribbon at a fair), and to answer hundreds of questions about the Highlands, Highlanders in general, and the historical aspects of Scotland that interested them the most: military history and swords for Jim; clothes and food for Cyndi.

  Two hours later we managed to escape, but only after exchanging addresses and promising to visit them if we ever came to the area again. I also had a sizeable chunk of Cyndi’s coffee cake and a blob of dried baby goo where Charles the baby had drooled on my blouse.

  “It was wonderful meeting you,” Cyndi gushed as we got into the car. “I’m so glad you stopped by. Although we were wondering—”

  She looked at Jim. He looked back at her. They both looked at Iain.

  “Why aren’t you wearing your kilt?”

  When we arrived at my mother’s house, we were an hour late. She greeted us with that worried mother look, and read us both the riot act for making her envision all sorts of hideous accidents. Iain, who knew what I was about to do, promptly made himself scarce.

  “Mom, I have some bad news for you.”

  “Oh my god! I knew it! When’s the last time you had a pap smear?”

  “This isn’t about pap, mom, it’s about Iain and—”

  “Good lord, when’s the last time he had a prostate exam?”

  “Mother!”

  She eyed my bosom critically. “You had a mammogram last year, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact—”

  She clutched my forearm. “Iain doesn’t have mad cow disease, does he?

  Working with all those sheep?”

  I stared at her. “They’re sheep, Mom, not cows. How could they get mad cow disease?”

  “Sheep aren’t stupid, Kathie! If they wanted to get mad cow disease and give it to Iain so you couldn’t many him after months of living together, I’m sure they could do it.”

  “Yes, Mom, sheep are stupid. Very stupid; trust me on this, I know. Sheep are—” I stopped. What the hell was I doing arguing over the intelligence of sheep? I took a deep breath. “Iain doesn’t have mad cow disease, and neither do I, if that’s what you’re about to ask next. It’s just that we’re expecting—” My mother leaped up from the table with a shriek. “You’re pregnant!” she bellowed. That brought Iain into the room at a run.

  “Didn’t I tell you to use protection? When will you listen to me? I don’t just tell you these things to hear myself talk!”

  “I’m not pregnant,” I reassured her—and Iain. “Mom, if you would just sit down and listen to me for a minute, I’ll be happy to tell you what the problem is.”

  Iain took one assessing glance at the situation, and decided he’d be better off in the living room with my mother’s two cats and a book on gardening.

  “It’s nothing to do with my health. Or Iain’s health,” I said before she could interrupt again. “It’s to do with the wedding.”

  “Oh, saints preserve us, he’s already married! I knew it! Didn’t I tell you to check him out before you shacked up with him? Honest to Pete, Kathie, you don’t have the common sense God gave a gnat!”

  I refrained from grinding my teeth. She was prone to dramatics, a fact with which I was very familiar. “No, Mom, Iain’s not married.” She gasped and clutched at her chest. “Dear heaven, don’t tell me that second divorce Kevin arranged didn’t take either?”

  “No, Mother, neither of us is married. I just want to talk to you about the wedding—”

  “Don’t tell me you’re planning on pulling an Aunt Sissy!” My family was very big on weddings. My mother was one of six daughters, all of whom argued and bickered amongst themselves, but there was one thing that they all agreed on, one thing that bonded them together: weddings. It was my mother’s everlasting shame that three of her children eloped, and the fourth, my sister Mo, married in Germany without familial presence. She had never been able to hold up her head about this to her sisters, and for years I was her only hope. I took another deep breath and prepared to shatter that hope.

  “No, Mom, I’m not going to convert to Buddhism and be married in Nepal. I just want to tell you that Iain and I have decided that we’re not going to have a big wedding.”

  She looked relieved as she gently smacked my hand. “Katherine Anne, don’t you ever scare me like that again! Mercy, if it’s just a modest wedding you want, that’s fine with me. We’ll limit the guest list to just family.” She thought for a moment. “And Iain is welcome to invite a few people as well.”

  “That’s awfully generous of you,” I replied, wondering if perhaps my mother hadn’t been right about me having been left with the milk years ago. It just didn’t seem possible that I could share her genes. “Um… we were actually thinking of having a small wedding. Quite a small wedding. Just a few close family members… at a registry office.”

  I almost ducked when I said those last words. My mother froze with a coffee cup midway to her mouth. “What?”

  I squirmed. She was giving me the same look she had when I was twelve and had stood out in the front yard and yelled out as many swear words as I could think of. “Well, both of us have been married before, and we’re both older, and neither of us wants a big wedding, and you know how I am about churches, and Iain doesn’t care either way, so we thought we’d just get married quietly at a registry office. With his sons and brother and you and whoever in the immediate family wants to come to Scotland.” She digested that bit of rambling discourse, then immediately discarded it for happier thoughts. “Don’t be ridiculous! A girl only gets married once; you need to do it right.”

  “I’ve been married once already,” I pointed out.

  She waved my elopement away. “That didn’t count, you were an idiot then.

  No, honey, you’ll just have to trust me that about this, a mother does know best. We’ll keep the wed
ding on the small side if you insist, but there are just certain things you must have.”

  “Such as?” I asked warily.

  “A small chapel, an heirloom wedding gown, lots of flowers, a nice catered luncheon, and, since it will be in Scotland, a horse-drawn carriage.” Ah, we were to the bargaining stage. I was pleased we had come this far without a big scene. I had to tread softly here, however, lest I push her too far too fast.

  “How about a registry office, a nice dress that I can wear again, corsages, lunch at a restaurant, and a tour through the whisky factory?” She didn’t even hear me. Her eyes were focused dreamily on the curtain at the window, and she was tracing hearts on the table with her spoon. “I wonder where you can hire one of those bagpipe and drum marching bands?” Chapter Seventeen

  Negotiations with my mother over our wedding broke down quickly. I made the stand that we were going to have the wedding the way we wanted, and she pulled the mother guilt trip on me. We ended up, after two days of intermediaries and go-betweens, agreeing that Iain and I would find a location other than the registry office to have the wedding, but I nixed all of her other ideas. Or so I thought.

  Our return trip home was much nicer than the one out, despite my cast still setting off all of the alarms, and having three times as much luggage. A week after we left for the States, we were back snug in Iain’s house, the dogs happy to see Iain (all but Rob still viewed me as an interloper), Iain happy to see his farm, and me happy that we were back home where we belonged.

  Things were in a bit of a turmoil for a while. We had to fill out the marriage notice forms as soon as possible, as it could take up to six weeks for the registrar to arrange for a marriage schedule. In addition, since we wanted to be married on Valentine’s Day, a very popular day for weddings, it meant we had to find a registrar who had time left in his schedule. Then we had to agree on a venue. I called a few wedding consultant places and played them up for their glossy brochures. A short while later Iain and I sat down to look them over.