(This scene takes place 5 years on from the end of Tormented (Wild Mountain Scots, #5).
On the afternoon of Thanksgiving…
Brodie
In my delivery van, I rolled into a sleepy village for one final job before I could call it a day. We weren’t far from home which was good as in the passenger seat, my four-year-old son Cormac was about done with driving around.
With his two big sisters in school and his ma busy organising her first Thanksgiving dinner, it was either he come with me or go out with Blayne, his other father. And as Blayne wore suits and had to talk engineering speak to businesspeople, a ride with me was the better idea.
Besides, I was enjoying having my little buddy along. He was already showing an interest in carpentry, if his love for smacking wood with hammers was anything to go by.
Outside our target address, I parked up and turned to my son. “Last one, then back to Ma.”
Mac squinted at my phone on the dash. “Look, she’s calling.”
I swiped to answer the call, putting it on loudspeaker as I unbuckled Mac then hopped out of the van to jump him down.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said into the phone.
Clattering sounded on the line followed by Casey’s inventive and child-friendly swearing. “Motherflipping flaps! Brodie, do you have any idea where the pie dish has gone?”
I opened the back of the van, checking over the handcrafted table I’d made to order. “What does it looked like?”
“A flat, shallow baking dish. It has crinkled sides with a chip on the edge and it was out on the counter last night. I’ve turned the kitchen upside down and it is nowhere. I have an hour and a half left before I need to take everything over to the castle and that’s just enough time to put this pumpkin pie together and bake it. It’s the last thing on my list. Everything else is foil wrapped and ready to go apart from this flapping pie. The whole day is going to be a disaster.”
For years now, there had been an annual Thanksgiving celebration on the estate, thanks to the fact we had more than a few Americans who’d relocated over.
Casey was taking charge for the first time, but with the McRae family and add-ins numbering over fifty people strong, several others were contributing dishes.
I liked the new tradition. It gave us an excuse to decorate for Christmas a wee bit earlier than usual, and then there was the food. While some of the combinations were weird to this Scotsman, such as marshmallows on sweet potato, I gave it all a go, And it was nice for our kids to experience a little of their foreign roots.
I was about to open my mouth and suggest places to look when I picked up on our son’s wince. I narrowed my gaze at him and Mac flushed red, turning away with his shoulders up around his ears.
Huh. I knew a guilty shrug when I saw it. “I’m not sure,” I told Casey, “but how about this, I’ll call around and get someone to bring one over.”
We were surrounded by family. Even in our remote location in the Cairngorm Mountains, someone would have a pie dish.
Beeping came from the other end of the line and Casey fake-swore once again. “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”
I chuckled and repeated it back, hanging up to try a few neighbours.
“Hey,” Raphael answered. My sister Effie’s brother-in-law was a keen chef as well as a helicopter pilot in training. At twenty, he was making moves to join the bodyguard business that operated from the estate.
The lad knew flying, gun handling, and could bake a mean cake.
“No sweat,” he replied after I’d explained the problem. “I have a dish but I’m not in the tower. I’ll tell Ariel to run it over. She’s home today.”
The siblings shared the tower apartment after Effie and Gabe had finally moved out to their own tiny cottage. I thanked him and hung up, texting Casey with the update.
Crisis averted, I rounded the van and eyed Mac. “What happened to Ma’s dish?”
The youngster toed the ground. “Broke it this morning when I threw a boot at Bea.”
“Ye threw what?”
“My slipper boot. She ate the last bowl of Cheerios. They were mine.”
“What happened to the pieces of crockery?”
His bottom lip trembled. “In the outside bin. Are ye cross with me?”
I knelt and held his shoulder, tipping up his wee chin so he could look me in the eye. Where our eldest Callie had my colouring, and Beatrice had Blayne’s, Cormac was somewhere in between. The fair hair he’d been born with had turned darker, and his eyes were a dove grey. None of us cared about the parentage of our children, but with our other two, there was less of a mystery.
His DNA was never going to be a problem, but he had developed a bad habit of breaking things and concealing the evidence.
I hugged him, wanting his miserable expression to lift. “Ye know better than to hide things like that. And to throw objects at your sisters. Breaking things isnae a problem, but being sneaky is. When we get home, you’ll tell your mother about what happened and apologise. Same to Beatrice.”
“Yes, Da.” He slipped his hand into mine and we strolled to the house.
It was a high hope that he’d listen. This was probably the third incident in a week.
At the door, I knocked, and a middle-aged woman answered.
“Brodie Longstaff McRae,” I introduced myself. “Here to deliver a table.”
She held the door and beamed. “Wonderful. Do ye need a hand bringing it in?”
I waved her off and told Mac to clear the way then collected the heavy table from the back of the van. It wasn’t so unwieldy that I couldn’t handle it myself.
Inside the house, I deposited it on the living room rug, as directed by the homeowner.
From an armchair in the corner, an elderly man watched. He considered the table then nodded. “Solid oak?”
“Aye, it is.”
“Nice jointwork. I told ye the McRae name was to be trusted,” he informed the woman who I guessed to be his daughter. Then he gestured to me. “Whose bairn are ye? I know Callum McRae.”
I gave him a ready grin. “Married in. Callum’s my father-in-law.”
The man peered at me through bleary eyes. “Then ye married Skye? Unusual for a man to take his wife’s name.”
“Nope. Blayne,” I replied cheerfully.
I’d always wanted to be part of the McRae clan, and Blayne had badly wanted me to take his name. I’d added it to my own with pride, only really keeping Longstaff because of my business. In all other forms, I was Brodie McRae, same surname as my husband, wife, and bairns, and nothing made me happier.
“Blayne McRae? A boy?”
“Don’t mind my father,” the homeowner said. “Shall I sign the delivery form?”
I handed the paper over, but the old man wasn’t done with me.
“Ye married his son?” He looked between me and Cormac. “How did ye get this we’en, then?”
“Da!” My customer passed back the signed form with a glower at her da.
The old man raised his hands. “I’m just asking. Bairns don’t grow on trees.”
“You’re being rude!”
“How? It’s an honest question.”
I tried to hide my grin, but it wasn’t happening. My family wasn’t the norm, that was for sure. We were two husbands and a wife with three kids. There were eyebrows raised whenever new people happened upon our setup. Most people were fine about it, though.
But this time, I didn’t need to do the answering. Mac rounded on the man, standing in front of him with his hands on his hips.
“I have two das and a mom,” he said, mixing up his naming conventions. “We’re lucky and happy and I didn't grow on a tree. Anything else is none of your business.”
The old man gave a wheezing laugh of his own. “Right ye are, lad. I meant nothing by it. Kin is kin.”
A chuckle burst out of me and my temporary worries about Mac hiding things evaporated. It didn’t matter if things got broke. The boy knew his own mind and had his head screwed on right.
My phone buzzed again, and I pulled it from my pocket to see Casey’s name on the screen once more. “On that note, my wife’s calling. Enjoy your new table.”
The homeowner saw us out, and I listened into Casey’s new panic--her running out of time to do the school run.
"I've got it," I assured her. "We're all finished up anyway."
"I swear to god, tonight, I'll make it up to you."
That thought warmed me to my bones and I drove a little faster to my task.
I had Bea and her little group of cousins to collect from the infants school. She was besties with Ava, Lochie and Cait’s middle child, and with Finn and Jamie-Beth making up their tight group of four. The wilder set closest in age to them were Max’s and Maddock’s boys, Cailin and Asher, who along with Zander, Cameron’s lad, were looking to be a group of wee tearaways.
So many kids, so many tired but devoted parents.
Life was good.
We had a lot to be thankful for and a party tonight under the rafters of Castle McRae to tell each other so.
—
Intrigued by the happy three-person marriage of Brodie, Casey, and Blayne? Read how it all began in Stubborn Spark (Wild Scots, #5)
or read their ultra smutty short story here - warning, it’s a one-handed read.