No one could deny Bethia when she was at her sweetest, but the nurse gave it a weak try.
“But I’ve got to take Mr. McDonnell’s vitals.”
“Right. Right.” Bethia patted her. “Can we have another moment?”
The nurse nodded in agreement.
Bethia ushered her out.
Max still held the phone to his ear. “The ring?” He smiled down at Pippa and pulled out a box.
That smile always did make her breath catch.
“Hold on a second, Mom.” Max put the phone on speaker and laid it on the floor. While he was down there, he dropped to one knee and held out the opened ring box. “Pippa, I didn’t get your answer before. Will you be my wife and make me the happiest man in the world?”
A sob escaped from Pippa. Engineers don’t cry. But maybe this one did, especially since her heart was so full.
“Aw, Yank, of course, I’ll marry ye.” She looked over to see her da, who wiped the mist from his eyes as well. Cheering resounded on the other side of the phone. She helped Max to his feet, took the ring from the box, and slipped it on her finger. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s the reason for my errand earlier,” he said.
The design was perfect, a simple wide gold band with a single diamond. Her man understood her so well. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him soundly, sealing the deal for all time.
Deydie pushed past them. “Stop accosting him and get yere arses down the hall. I’m hungry and the food will be too cold to eat. Or the nurses will’ve reived it all before we get any, or the rest who are coming.”
“The rest?” Pippa asked.
Freda touched Pippa’s arm. “Those from Gandiegow who don’t have family close by. We were planning a Christmas Eve feast at Quilting Central, but we moved it to the hospital. Abraham is driving a van full here right now.”
“Aye. So hurry it along,” Deydie said.
It didn’t take long to finish setting up the waiting room into a buffet. In the end, Pippa, Max, and Freda made their plates and took them back to her da’s room.
Love was definitely in the air. Neither she nor Max could keep from gazing at each other, and Da and Freda couldn’t keep from staring at each other either.
Freda left for a few moments and came back with Deydie, Bethia, and a bag of presents. “I had Abraham stop by my cottage and yeres to pick them up.”
Pippa was glad she’d had the foresight to wrap her packages days ago and slip them under the tree. She dug in the sack and pulled out the first one to give to her da.
“For me?” But before she could answer, Da ripped off the paper and a dozen engineer notebooks spilled out.
She picked them up and set them in his lap. “I’m a practical lass. I expect yere help with the factory. I need ye to fill those up with new ideas for us to try.”
Her father beamed at her, but it was Freda who spoke up.
“Not until after the honeymoon. Do ye hear me, Lachlan?”
“Aye,” her da agreed.
They all laughed.
Pippa dug out Freda’s present next. She could see the question in her future mama’s eyes as she sized up the package with her hands.
“No. It’s not a cookbook,” Pippa said. “Go on. Open it.”
Freda carefully undid each tape strip as if to savor the moment. When she pulled out the pillow and flipped it to the front, she gasped. “Oh, Pippa, it’s beautiful.”
“Better than a cookbook?” Pippa was pretty happy with how the quilted house block pillow had turned out.
Tears ran down Freda’s face. “I love it.”
Bethia handed Freda a tissue, but Deydie pounded her on the back. “It’s not truly Christmas until someone cries.”
Everyone laughed again.
Freda grabbed a box and handed it over to Pippa. “I’ve got yere present right here.”
“What is it?”
Freda smiled at her warmly. “I had a feeling I needed to hurry it along. And I was right.”
Pippa pulled off the ribbon and opened the box. Inside was the English paper piecing quilt top that Freda had been laboring over—on and off—for years. Pippa held the unfinished quilt up, the perfect size for a baby. “But how did ye know?”
Deydie grabbed the quilt top and checked the stitching. “I might’ve let it slip.”
Pippa carefully took the quilt from Deydie and held it to her chest. “Does that mean the whole town knows that I’m pregnant?”
“Nay,” Deydie said. “I just didn’t see any harm in letting Freda know as she’s going to be yere mama.”
Pippa wrapped an arm around Freda’s shoulders. “Thank you. It’s perfect. And I am so happy about you and Da. Ye deserve all the happiness in the world.”
Freda glanced over at him. “I know. And now I have it in ye two.” She glanced down at Pippa’s belly. “Well, three.” Then she looked at Max and laughed through her tears. “Our family is growing quickly.”
There was more laughter as other presents were handed out. Pippa went to sit beside Max. She took his hand and squeezed it. “I got ye a present, too.”
“Oh?”
“It’s not something ye can unwrap here.” She raised her eyebrows, giving him a knowing gaze. “But maybe we can steal away later and I can show ye.”
He kissed her. “I’m going to love being married to you.”
“Aye. I’ll do my best to keep it interesting.”
“Pippa?” Da said, interrupting them from making bedroom eyes at each other. “Lass, it’s time for me to give ye my Christmas present.”
Pippa looked around, but all the gifts had been unwrapped.
Her da noticed. “It’s not here. It’s back in Gandiegow.”
Freda stood beside Da with her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and smiled.
“Freda and I talked about it, and we’re giving ye and Max the house.”
Pippa stood, maybe a little too quickly, because she felt woozy. Max steadied her, standing, too, wrapping an arm around her waist.
It took a second, but Pippa finally found her voice. “Where are you going to live?”
“I’ll move in with Freda.”
“After we’re married, of course,” Freda clarified.
“Which will be soon,” her da added.
Pippa still couldn’t believe it. “But why? It’s yere home. Why give us the house?”
Her da smiled playfully. “To fill it with grandbabies.”
Max hugged her, squeezing her middle and whispering into her hair. “That we can do.”
Epilogue
Pippa lay on the cold table as Max stood beside her. They both stared at the screen in disbelief. It had been a crazy couple of months. Their double wedding with her da and Freda had been quite the undertaking, especially with Deydie as the head wedding planner. At the end of the day, though, she and Max, Da and Freda were married. How happy everyone was now, and the best news of all was that her father was responding well to his new treatment. But this . . .
“Deydie was wrong.” Max’s voice held wonder.
“Sort of.” Pippa couldn’t quite wrap her brain around what she was seeing, and what the technician had said. She thought about their bedroom back in Gandiegow, with the quilt from the auction hanging on the wall behind their bed, and the cradle sitting at the foot, the cradle that had been hers as a baby.
Max gazed down at her with complete love and devotion in his eyes. “Deydie was right about one thing; we are having a girl.”
“Aye.” Pippa tugged Max’s hand until he got the hint and gave her a quick kiss. “But we’re having a boy, too.”
“Sonograms never lie,” Max said.
Pippa smiled up at the love of her life. “We’re going to need another cradle.”
Continue reading for a preview of the next
book in Patience Griffin’s Kilts and Quilts series,
The Trouble with Scotland
Coming from Signet Eclipse in April 2016.
Chapter One
A light Scottish summer breeze deposited a leaf on the hood of Ross Armstrong’s red truck. He brushed it aside, dropped the rag he’d been using into a bucket, and stepped back, admiring his masterpiece—a newly restored 1956 Ford F-1. Ross hadn’t done it all by himself, not by a long shot. His brothers, John and Ramsay, had helped, and Doc MacGregor had been invaluable, from rebuilding the engine to the new paint job. But Ross felt a sense of accomplishment anyway.
As if the wind had dropped something heavier than a leaf—perhaps an anchor—a thought hit him, crushing his good mood. Now what am I going to do?
For the last seven months he’d spent every spare second on his truck when he wasn’t working on the family commercial fishing boat or helping out at NSV, the North Sea Valve Company. He’d filled his time, hoping to keep the women, and men, of Gandiegow from bugging him, trying to set him up with their daughters and granddaughters. Now that Pippa—his ex-long-intended—was married, the town thought he should be hitched, too.
But Ross had other plans. With Robert and Samuel out of school for the summer, the teens could take his place on the family fishing boat while Ross did something else.
He just didn’t know what.
“There you are.”
Ross groaned as he glanced back at Kit, the town matchmaker, barreling toward him. She might be his sister-in-law, but it didn’t give her the right to meddle in his nonexistent love life. Sure as shite, she held her damned matchmaking notebook to her chest, and right beside her was Harry Dunn looking intently at him, too.
Ross tossed the bucket into the bed of the pickup, pulled his keys from his pocket, and hopped into the front. “Gotta run.”
“Wait up,” Harry hollered. “My niece is coming in today for the quilt retreat. She wants to meet you.”
Ross turned the key and revved the engine. “Sorry, Harry. Can’t hear ye over the noise.” He cranked the window up as fast as he could and pulled out.
“That was a close call,” Ross said to the refurbished gray interior of the truck.
He wasn’t being rude, only preserving what little sanity he had left. He’d done what the town had wanted. He’d waited years for Pippa to return so they could marry. She’d returned, all right, but instead of marrying him, she’d met and married her true love, Max. Max was a hell of guy, and Ross wholeheartedly gave his blessing to their quick wedding. That should’ve been enough to satisfy Gandiegow. But no. The second Pippa was married, Kit started pestering Ross to take out the new schoolteacher. Against his better judgment, and to get Kit and everyone else off his back, he’d gone to dinner a time or two with Kirsty. She was okay—nice-looking and everything—but his time would’ve been better spent chopping bait for the family fishing boat.
As he drove from the community parking lot and up the bluff, he caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror of Kit with her hands on her hips. There’d be hell to pay for foiling her plans. He was going to have to talk to his brother Ramsay about setting his wife straight. Ross couldn’t be tied down right now. This was his time to play the field. Hell, he wanted to wear it out!
Maybe he should drive to Lios or Fairge to do just that. But first he had to pick up some goat cheese at Spalding Farm for Dominic and Claire, Gandiegow’s restaurateurs.
Farther up the road over the bluff, just past NSV, a coach bus came into view. Ross eased his truck to the side to let them pass. Harry’s niece was most certainly on that bus headed for the quilt retreat. He pulled back into the road and kept going.
But going where? Have I wasted my life up until now? His little brother Ramsay, for gawd’s sake, owned his own business! Ross had always worked on the family fishing boat. And that was fine, but shouldn’t he want more? What did he own besides this truck and a few shares in NSV? He’d wasted his life doing what was expected.
As if a thick fog had lifted, everything became clear. He was done doing what everyone else wanted, and he wasn’t going to do what was expected anymore!
He glanced over at the quilted grocery bags beside him. Except today. He would run errands for the village. But later . . .
Later he would make a stand and take back his life.
* * *
Sadie Middleton didn’t like zombie movies, but as she stepped off the bus a mile out of Gandiegow, Scotland, she felt like the lead in her own dreadful film. Sadie of the Dead. Not some glamorous zombie, either, but a plain zombie who wanted to vanish. The other women around her were excited, giddy about their first evening at the quilt retreat. Sadie only felt waylaid. Shell-shocked. Miserable. If she were still at home in North Carolina, she would have been sitting on the porch with her grandmother Gigi, drinking sweet tea and waiting for the July Fourth fireworks to begin.
Except they weren’t in the U.S.
And Gigi was dead.
The gravel crunched under Sadie’s feet as she made her way, along with the other quilters, to the North Sea Valve Company’s factory door. Their bus had died and coasted into the parking lot, and they were to wait here until she and the others could be transported into the small town. She leaned against the building, unfolded the printed e-mail, and read it again:
Dear Sadie and Gigi,
Pack your bags! Your team has won the grand prize in the quilt block challenge. Congratulations! You are coming to Gandiegow! For complete information regarding your free Kilts and Quilts Retreat and all-expense-paid trip to Scotland, please e-mail us back.
Sincerely,
Cait Buchanan
Owner, Kilts and Quilts Retreat
Having read the note a hundred times, Sadie shoved it back in her pocket. It seemed a cruel joke from the universe—to receive this letter only hours after Gigi’s funeral.
At hearing the news about the retreat, her brother, Oliver, had gone into hyperdrive, using his grief to propel him into action. Insisting Gigi would have wanted Sadie to fulfill their dream of a quilt retreat abroad, Oliver had made all the arrangements and had brought her to Scotland—packing her bags and having her out the door before Sadie had known what had happened. His bullying made the trip feel more like a kidnapping than a respite.
Sadie’s grief had the opposite effect, immobilizing her, making her want to crawl under a quilt and never come out. She waffled between feeling despondent and angry. But the one constant was her guilt for the part she’d played in her grandmother’s death.
Her quilted Mondo bag slipped from her shoulder . . . She and Gigi had made matching bags at their last quilting retreat together. Memories of that glorious weekend were stitched into Sadie, the moments long and meaningful. She pulled the bag up, held it close, and squeezed her eyes shut.
The last twenty-four hours were wearing on her. Sadie was exhausted, depleted. But she had to keep it hidden at all costs. She glanced over at her ever-helpful brother as he assisted the rest of the women off the bus. Good. He was being kept busy. She was sick to death of Oliver’s fussing over her and telling her what to do.
At that moment, two vans pulled up. A tall nice-looking man got out of one and a clearly pregnant strawberry blonde got out of the other. As they spoke to the bus driver, the woman handed over her keys to him.
Oliver, who had only just finished unloading the last quilter from the bus, hurried to the couple who’d brought the vans. “Excuse me.”
“Yes?” answered the man. He clearly had an American accent.
Oliver pointed to Sadie. “My sister needs to be in the first group into town.”
Embarrassment radiated from her toes to her scalp. Dammit, Oliver. Sadie ducked behind another woman as the two newcomers turned in her direction.
“Sure,” the man said. “We can take her in first. I’m Max, by the way.”
Oliver in
troduced himself, too, and unfortunately felt the need to explain further. “My sister is ill.”
The couple’s curious gaze transformed into compassion. The women around Sadie spun on her with pity as well, staring at her as if they hadn’t just spent the last couple of hours with her on the bus in quasinormal companionship. To them, Sadie had been just another quilter, a fellow retreat-goer. Now she wasn’t. She was to be flooded with sympathy and compassion. No longer included. On the outside because of her disease.
Oliver spoke to Sadie but pointed to the vans. “Get in. They’ll get you to town.” He’d said it as if Sadie’s problem was with her ears and not her kidneys.
Without a word and anxious to hide her red face, Sadie walked with a compliant exterior to the van. On the inside, though, she was raging. She climbed in and took a seat in the back. A minute later, others were climbing in as well. No one sat next to her, leaving her alone to look out the window at her overly responsible brother.
The couple climbed into the front seat of the van and began chatting with the other quilters. Sadie found out the couple’s names and their connection to Gandiegow—Max and Pippa were engineers at the North Sea Valve Company and were recently married. They kept up a steady conversation, asking the quilters about themselves, but thankfully left Sadie alone.
A few minutes later, when they reached Gandiegow’s parking lot, a group of men and women were waiting for them.
“We’re a closed community,” Pippa explained. “No cars within the village. Everyone is here to help carry yere things to the quilting dorms.” Sure enough, many of the women had wagons beside them, while the men had their muscles. “Deydie will want everyone at Quilting Central as soon as possible. She’s the head quilter and town matriarch.” Pippa made it sound as if they’d better do as Deydie bid or there might be trouble.
One by one, they disembarked from the van. When Sadie got out, a young woman in a plum-colored dress moved forward.
“I’m Moira. I’ll help ye get settled into the quilting dorm.”
The Accidental Scot Page 30