Ms. Meadows took her hands and squeezed, giving back the comfort Claire had offered earlier. Holt slipped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into a hug. The three of them stood connected for a long moment.
Finally, Claire laughed softly. “If I cry and get all stopped up, I won’t be able to sing tonight.”
“Let’s get the star on top,” Holt said.
Claire stood on a kitchen chair and placed the star on top. Holt turned the lights off, and even with the afternoon sun through the window, the lights twinkled merrily against the tinsel. It would be magical come the night.
Claire hopped off the chair, slipped her hand into Holt’s, and whispered, “Thank you.”
He merely gave her hands a squeeze. “I’ll leave you ladies to get ready for Burns Night. I need to get kilted up, but will be back in an hour to pick you up. Sound good?”
Claire took care getting ready, even though her choice of outfits was limited. She topped her well-worn kilt in Glennallen colors of red and green with a white blouse and cozy woolen jumper. The temperature was likely to plummet as soon as the sun set, and she didn’t want to freeze.
She styled her hair into artfully messy waves with drugstore mousse and her fingers. If she’d been playing with the Scunners, she would have molded it into a fauxhawk and applied copious amounts of glitter, but that look belonged to someone else entirely. Someone who didn’t exist anymore.
Ms. Meadows dressed in comfortable trousers, sensible orthopedic shoes, and a shirt, jumper, and jacket. A knit hat and gloves poked out of her jacket pocket. Color flooded her cheeks, and her eyes were bright. Barring the hospital visit, it was the first time she’d been out of the house since Claire had arrived several months earlier. The excitement was understandable.
“We’re not climbing Mount Everest, Ms. Meadows.” Claire shot her a teasing smile while checking out the front window for Holt.
“Come talk to me when you’re my age, you whippersnapper.” The effect of her arch tone was ruined by her good-natured laugh.
Holt pulled into the drive. Her heart skipped like a stone when he walked toward the house in his kilt, his bare knees flashing. Who knew men’s knees were so attractive? She sighed.
“Goodness, you’ve got it bad, don’t you, girl?” Ms. Meadows elbowed Claire aside and twitched the curtains. “My Samuel had nice legs too. I never could get him to wear a kilt, though. Back in our day, the summer festival wasn’t what it is now.”
Claire opened the front door for Holt before he had the chance to knock. Holt offered his arm to Ms. Meadows and lifted her into the passenger seat of the truck without needing any help from Claire even though she hovered like a mother hen giving him useless directions. After he folded and stowed the wheelchair and Claire settled in the backseat, they were off.
Ms. Meadows pointed at various landmarks with comments on how things had changed. Woods cleared to make way for a small housing development. An old barn replaced by a new house with a stone facade. The creep of commercial businesses around Highland that spoke of progress. Ms. Meadows grew more fretful the closer they came to town.
Holt and Claire exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. Change came to everything and everyone. Claire refused to transcribe the truth to her own situation or she might become as uneasy as Ms. Meadows.
Ms. Meadows pointed to a white-columned house advertising a law office. “That was my best school friend’s house. She died a decade ago. I thought her son was living there.”
Ms. Meadows craned her neck to watch the house disappear behind the oak trees. Her melancholy turned the earlier excitement bittersweet.
The traffic slowed as they approached the main drag through downtown. Police barriers had been erected to block traffic. People wandered up and down the street already socializing. Holt lowered his window, and mouthwatering scents from the gathered food trucks called like the Pied Piper. Recorded music played over speakers, but an empty stage sat ready for the live performances.
A spate of butterflies took flight in her stomach. Excitement with just a tinge of apprehension, but from experience, she expected even the tinge to disappear as soon as she opened her mouth to sing.
Holt drove straight up to the police barrier and gave a brief, but piercing whistle. A grim-faced policeman with a prominent nose turned around, adjusted his gun belt, and moseyed toward them. Claire tensed for a confrontation. The policeman put his hands on Holt’s window, peered inside, and grinned. The transformation was startling.
“Why, Ms. Meadows! Holt texted he was bringing you to the celebration tonight. You probably don’t remember me. Cameron Sackfield. You taught my Sunday school class when I was in elementary. It’s awful nice to see you.”
Ms. Meadows blinked and patted her hair. “Cameron Sackfield. My stars, but you’ve grown up to be a fine young man. I’ll admit, I had my doubts. I remember having to sit you in the corner a time or two.”
Cameron only laughed. “ROTC and a stint in the army got me straightened out. Come on through and park in Wayne’s lot, Holt.”
Cameron jogged to the barrier and shifted it, waving as Holt inched by to park.
Ten minutes later, Ms. Meadows was comfortably situated in the wheelchair, and Holt was pushing her into the blocked-off street. The atmosphere was festive and fun. Christmas was days away and a roving Santa passed out candy canes to children and adults alike.
Jessie Joe and Jessie Mac stepped off the sidewalk and intercepted them.
“Ms. Meadows!” Jessie Joe rubbed his hands together. “Do you remember us?”
“The Sawyers cousins. My goodness, how could I forget? I’m only surprised you remember me.”
“What? You were our favorite teacher, right, Jessie Mac?” Jessie Joe tapped his cousin on the chest.
“Yes, ma’am. You sure were.” Jessie Mac’s manner was as soft as his cousin’s was bombastic. These were the first words Claire had heard him speak, and even Holt’s eyebrows rose at the pronouncement.
“Can we buy you a piece of pecan pie, ma’am?” Jessie Joe asked. “I know of some other folks who’d love to say hello.”
“That would be lovely.” Ms. Meadows glanced back at Claire and Holt. “You two go and have fun.”
Jessie Mac took control of the wheelchair while Jessie Joe walked alongside, chatting nonstop, pointing out the various shops along the way, and waving people over to say hello.
“It’s going to be good for Ms. Meadows to be part of Highland again, don’t you think?” Claire asked. “She’s been hiding out too long.”
Holt tucked her hand into the crook of his arm like a gentleman of old as they strolled. “I do indeed. And she’s not the only one who’s been hiding out too long.”
She rolled her eyes in Holt’s direction. “I’m getting ready to sing in front of all these people. That doesn’t qualify as coming out of my shell?”
“Coming out of your shell is not the same as facing your problems.”
Her sadness over the coming day of reckoning, aka her birthday, had grown heavier the closer she’d grown to Holt and Ms. Meadows. Leaving Highland would be unbearably painful.
He pulled her to a stop in the middle of the street and stroked a finger down her cheek. “I understand you have to leave, but don’t forget you always have a place to land here in Highland.”
Was he asking her to stay? A flicker of hope was smothered by reality. “I’ll come back.” She tempered the crumbs of a promise she wasn’t even sure she could keep with a reluctant qualifier. “Someday.”
“What if I come find you?”
Heedless of the festivalgoers streaming around them like a river around a rock, she slipped her arms around him and lay her cheek on his shoulder. Shoulders that bore the weight of expectations and responsibilities with ease.
She closed her eyes against the tension and emotion battling in her chest. Her bruised heart cried out, and her lips moved against the skin of his throat. “I love you.”
He jerked slightly against h
er. “What did you say?”
Her eyes popped open, but she didn’t raise her head. She was a total ninny. Why had she said it out loud? What now? Denial or acceptance? Wasn’t that one of the steps on the 12-Step program for addiction? Addiction to Holt. That sounded about right.
“What do you think I said?” she asked, buying time.
“I think you said you … love me?” On the plus side, he didn’t sound horrified.
She knit the threads of her confidence into something she could either hang on to or hang herself with. Lifting her head, she met his gaze head-on. “Turns out the Christmas miracle you promised happened early. You are the best man I’ve ever met. I didn’t mean to fall for you, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“Of course it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does.” His stubbornness in the face of her contrariness only made her love him more.
She opened her mouth, but no words came.
“There you are, Claire! It’s time for our first set.” Iain stopped a dozen feet away and waved her over.
“You go on. We can talk later,” Holt said. “I’m going to find a good vantage place to enjoy the entertainment.”
Feeling like a prisoner given a dawn reprieve on the way to the gallows, she slipped out of Holt’s arms to follow Iain toward the stage at the far end of Main Street. Iain’s excitement was contagious.
The Highland Jacobites were announced and a familiar zip of energy had Claire bounding onstage to take up the mike like the lead singer she had been with the Scunners. They launched straight into “Coming Through the Rye,” an up-tempo Burns favorite.
Searching for Holt through the first verse, she finally spotted him leaning against a lamppost on the right side of the stage, his smile proud as he watched her. The warmth flooding her was reflected in her voice as she hit the chorus.
The crowd gathered around and like any good Burns Night celebration, it turned into a sing-along of the better-known songs. The Jacobites put a twist of bluegrass into the traditional tunes that suited the Southern town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Claire held out the last note of “Green Grow the Rushes, O” before stepping back to make room for Iain Connors to read “Address to a Haggis,” a famous Burns poem. Hearing the familiar cadence of the poem recited in a true Scots accent tumbled Claire through nostalgic memories.
No longer the center of the crowd’s attention, she studied the town and the people spread out before her. The stately library and the quirky Brown Cow Coffee and Creamery. The Drug and Dime and Wayne’s Fix-It shop. Besides Holt, she crossed gazes with Ms. Meadows and Jessie Joe and Jessie Mac and Preacher Hopkins. This was a town where happiness seemed to brush her fingertips, but she feared grabbing hold would be impossible.
She etched details in her memories. The extravagant Christmas tree with the crooked star on top. The lampposts bedecked with red ribbons and bows and gaudy Santas and Rudolphs and Frosties.
Her gaze flitted over a man and woman standing in the back of the crowd before recognition shot ice through her. She blinked rapidly. Her parents were in Highland. It was incongruous. Highland didn’t exist in the same world as her parents—or at least, that’s what it had felt like these past months. But of course it had only been a matter of time until her worlds collided like a dinosaur-killing asteroid.
Chapter Seventeen
Claire didn’t wait for Iain to finish his recitation. Like a robot, she clipped the mike to the stand, descended the stage steps, and weaved her way through the crowd toward her parents.
They stood next to each other but didn’t touch. Theirs was a partnership that had lost any affection, if affection had ever existed.
“Mother. Father. How are you?” It was all her dumbfounded brain could come up with.
“Well enough. How are you?” Her mother leaned toward Claire, who awkwardly went in for a hug. Except her mother bussed Claire’s cheek instead. Claire’s momentum took her into her mother for the world’s weirdest hug. They pulled apart, and Claire knew her cheeks were as rosy as her mother’s.
Claire tried to study her parents without meeting their gazes. Her mother’s face was still unlined—probably due to regular Botox injections—and her hair was the same auburn as Claire’s with no trace of gray. In fact, if Claire hadn’t lived the intervening years, she wouldn’t have guessed her mother had aged a day.
Her father’s thin-lipped mouth was bracketed by lines she didn’t recall. His skin was more weathered and his paunch had grown, but his hair was still thick and his clothes well tailored.
Her father cleared his throat in a way that transmitted his discomfort with the reunion. “We watched you sing. You sounded good. Is that your new band?”
“No. I’ve been singing with the Jacobites for fun.”
Her mother ran a practiced eye from Claire’s choppy hair to her scuffed boots, cataloging and assigning a value to every square inch. “It’s a good thing we came when we did. You need us.”
“I don’t actually. I found a job, and I’ve got friends in Highland.”
Her parents exchanged a glance. Her father spoke. “You will be twenty-five on Boxing Day. You know what that means.”
“I do.”
“We’ve given you as much freedom as you wanted the last few years. Are you ready to come home?” her mother asked.
She darted a look between her mother and father. She would never be ready to go back to Scotland, but she would do it anyway. Before she could formulate an answer, another too-familiar voice spun all three of them around.
“Not so fast. Not until I have a say, anyhow.” Lachlan Glennallen strode toward them from the sidewalk and met them in the middle of the street like a scene from some old American Western. His dark-gray suit was rumpled, his hair disheveled, and dark stubble dotted his normally clean-shaven cheeks. He nodded at her parents. “Aunt Mathilda. Uncle Lewis.”
“Lachlan.” His father’s voice was full of familial disappointment. “What are you doing here?”
“My assistant found out about your travel plans.” Lachlan turned his attention to her, his red-rimmed eyes narrowed and suspicious. “Claire and I have an understanding regarding her allegiances.”
Her father barred his teeth at Lachlan in the facsimile of a smile. “That was years ago. Situations change. People change. And Claire has every right to vote with me, her father.”
The power struggle between Lachlan and her father was a tangible tension binding them.
“What vote? What’s going on?” Claire asked.
“Dennison is here with us. Let’s go somewhere private to talk.” Her father stepped forward, took her hand, and tucked it into the crook of his elbow, the pressure subtle but inexorable.
It was fitting her father’s first overture wasn’t a hug but a gesture of control. Now that the moment she had dreaded and anticipated was upon her, she felt numb and disconnected.
Over her shoulder, she searched the crowd for Holt or even Ms. Meadows. Imagining Ms. Meadows pulling her shotgun on her father lightened the gathering sense of foreboding. No one was riding to her rescue. And she didn’t need them to.
Dr. Jameson trotted over. “Someone has rented out the back room of the pub, but the office at my clinic is available, Mr. Glennallen.”
Dr. Jameson flashed a starstruck grin. Claire hated the fact her family name had this effect on people. It had always felt icky to be deferred to for no other reason than an accident of birth.
“It’s Sir Glennallen, actually. The queen conferred a knighthood some years ago.” Her father spoke with the same amount of bland coolness he’d use to impart how he liked his tea. “Lead on, Doctor Jameson, we would be most grateful for the privacy.”
While Dr. Jameson’s smile had faltered at the correction in title, he recovered and gestured toward the barrier at the opposite end of the street from the stage. “Right this way.”
Dennison, the Glennallen family solicitor, waited at th
e barrier, carrying a briefcase and wearing a pin-striped suit.
“Dennison. I can’t believe I warranted a trip across the pond.” She smiled and barely kept herself from hugging him. Such a show of emotion would have embarrassed him terribly.
“The complications of Glennallen Whisky have put my children through university.” He winked, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, and held out a lemon sweet.
She took it and popped it in her mouth. The nostalgia was as sweet and sour as the candy. Throwing propriety to the wind, she hugged Dennison around the neck. He smelled of expensive black tea and shaving tonic.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered.
When she pulled away, he did indeed look terribly embarrassed but also pleased.
Dr. Jameson fell into step next to her. “I wish you had told me you belong to the Glennallen Whisky dynasty. It would have been a good excuse to host a tasting. Do you think your parents will be in town long enough to—”
“No,” Claire said brusquely before softening her tone. “My parents won’t be staying in Highland. And neither will I.”
Confusion drew Dr. Jameson’s bushy brows in. “But I thought you and Holt Pierson were…” His voice trailed off into nothing.
Were what? she wanted to ask, mostly because she was unsure herself. Friends, yes. Lovers, definitely. Could they have been more under different circumstances?
Dr. Jameson fumbled for his keys as they approached the cabin-like building that housed his practice. The clinic sat on a dead-end offshoot from Main Street. Her mother’s clacking heels filled the tense silence between Lachlan and her father.
Inside the clinic, animal scents overlay a clean, bleachy smell. It reminded Claire of Holt’s farm.
Her mother’s nose wrinkled in distaste, but she said nothing. When Dr. Jameson turned to leave, Claire put a hand on his arm, stepped close, and spoke in low tones. “Could you let Holt and Ms. Meadows know I’m with my parents and cousin? Also, Iain. I’m not sure I’ll make it for the second set with the Jacobites.”
A Highlander is Coming to Town Page 22