Beauty from Pain (26 page)

Yes, but only what my mom is making for me.
“My father’s son was killed in a snow-skiing accident.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
He’s a half-brother I’ve never
met and my mom is acting like I should be in mourning. Hell, when
she said his name, it took a minute for me to realize whom she was
talking about. He’s a stranger to me. I’m sorry for his family’s
loss, but I don’t feel anything more. Is that wrong?”

“
No, Laurelyn. You’re not wrong
for the way you feel. Please, don’t let your mum make you feel
guilty.”

I’m certain he thinks she is a terrible mother
after everything he’s learned about her today. “You must think even
worse of my mom now.”

“
She doesn’t make the top-ten list
of my favorites today. You, however, make the number-one position.”
He pulls me close to kiss the top of my head. I love the way he
makes my worries disappear.

How can this be? This man, almost a stranger,
brings me comfort and makes it easy for me to bare my soul to him.
As I ask myself how it’s possible, I know the answer. I don’t have
to guard my heart with Lachlan. I’m safe with him. And it’s
nice.

30

Jack McLachlan

Laurelyn doesn’t know it’s my birthday or that
the only wish I have is to stay home with her. But I can’t. I have
to go to my parents’ house for my annual birthday dinner with the
whole family. What a ripper day this will be.

She’s been living with me for two weeks and
I’m surprised by the way I feel as I drive away, leaving her at the
house. I want to go back for her. I consider whipping the Sunset
around, but I remind myself of the rules I have in place and why
meeting my family is one that can’t be broken.

I haven’t seen my family in almost
three weeks, not since my mother sent me back to
A
valon to be with
Laurelyn on Christmas Day.
Thank you, Mum.
It was the best gift you could have given me.

My mum has made a point to speak to me weekly
about my relationship with my “girlfriend” and I’m not looking
forward to showing up without her again. Margaret McLachlan is
going to be very put out with me over Laurelyn’s absence. I
shouldn’t have told her I’d bring her to my birthday dinner, but I
didn’t have a reasonable excuse to give her when we discussed
it.

I walk through the door and Mum flies into the
foyer. She’s smiling and her eyes are wide with anticipation, but
then I see them fill with disappointment when she notes the
emptiness beside me. I feel like a shitty son. “Where is
she?”

“
I’m sorry, Mum. Laurelyn wasn’t
feeling well. We think she has the stomach flu. She told me to tell
you how sorry she is that she couldn’t make it.”

She gives me a look of disapproval and I know
I’ve done all wrong. “And you left her alone while she’s
sick?”

Shit. I didn’t think of that. “I’m paying Mrs.
Porcelli to take care of her.”

Now, she’s really giving me her disapproval.
“What kind of message does that send if you leave her when she’s
sick, Jack Henry?”

I feel like a cur, although I’m guilty of
nothing. Almost. “I didn’t think of that.”

“
You boys never do, but it’s not
from lack of me trying.” Mum stalks out of the foyer into the
kitchen. She’s pissed off and I want her to know her lessons
weren’t in vain. She’d be proud of how considerate I am with
Laurelyn, but I can’t tell her, so I’m forced to endure her
disapproval instead.

I go into the living room where my dad and
brother are, hoping to find neutral ground among them. I have no
doubt Mum is in the kitchen telling Chloe and Emma what I did. Soon
I’ll have the whole adult female household against me. I’ll be
lucky if my nieces, Celia and Mila, aren’t included in the
pact.

Evan is sitting in the floor with his kids and
laughs at me when I plop on the couch. “I heard Mum fussing at you
all the way in here. What did you do?”

“
Fussing? That’s your vocabulary
now?”

My brother points to his three-year-old.
“Delicate ears, Jack, and little mouths repeat interesting words.
You’ll understand what I mean one day.”

Yeah,
when hell freezes over
. “Mum is mad
because I left Laurelyn while she’s sick.”

My dad is shaking his head. This is my
mistake, but he’s the one who’ll have to hear about it when I’m
gone. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

He sighs. “Jack, you don’t know how much she’s
been looking forward to meeting this woman you’re dating. It’s all
I’ve heard since Christmas and now all I’m going to hear is her
carrying on about you screwing it up.”

“
Dad, I can’t do anything about it
now.”

“
You can fix this by telling your
mum you’ll bring her for a visit.”

I can’t lie to my mum again. “You know how
things pick up this time of year. I might not be able to get away
from the vineyard.”

“
Don’t forget how well I know the
business, son. You’re in charge and you have very capable staff.
You can get away for a couple of days to bring that woman here to
meet your mum.”

Dammit! “Fine. I’ll tell her.”

We hear a slamming cabinet in the living room.
“Tell her now, Jack.”

Fuck! I don’t want my family
interfering in my personal life.
I get off
the couch and walk into the enemy’s territory. Two new pairs of
rebuking eyes, those of my sister and sister-in-law, cast upon me
in support of my mum’s grievance. My sister flashes her signature
hand gesture in the shape of an “L” in my direction as she
mouths
loser
.

“
Mum, I’m sorry.
Will you forgive me if I bring Laurelyn for a visit? Maybe sometime
next month, depending on how things are going at
A
valon?”

She stops her physical abuse of the poor
potatoes. “I will, but do try to bring her sooner if you
can.”

“
Of course I will,
Mum.”

She’s smiling because she’s hoodwinked and I’m
a lying sack of shit. My false promise is a temporary fix for this
situation. I’ll soon have to dupe my mum again, and I’m not looking
forward to it.

The conversation at dinner is pleasant, much
more so than it would have been had I not made nice with Mum, so
I’m glad about that much. My dad is especially interested in
hearing about the progress I’m making with my grafts. No one else
gives a shit, but they assuage Dad by pretending to
listen.

After dinner, I’m sitting in the living room
watching Mila hold the coffee table for support and then she
bravely removes her hand. She’s trying to decide if she wants to
take a step and I think I’m about to witness her valiant attempt to
walk. “Bro, I think your kid is about to take her first
step.”

Evan’s standing in the doorway and his head is
buried in his phone, as usual. “Did you hear me, Evan? Mila looks
like she’s about to walk.”

He lifts his head for a quick peek at his
daughter and is unimpressed. “She teases us like that all the
time—acts likes she’s going to do it, then grabs back onto
whatever’s in front of her.”

I don’t know. She seems pretty serious to me,
but I see Evan isn’t interested. I wonder if I should call Emma to
watch. I’m sure she’ll want to see her daughter’s first
steps.

“
What exactly
have you been doing at
A
valon, Jack?” Evan
asks.

At dinner, I talked for ten minutes about the
grafting and he didn’t listen to a damn thing I said. Now he asks
me what I’m doing. What a dick. “I’m not explaining all of it
again. You should’ve listened at dinner if you were
interested.”

“
No, bro. That’s not what I mean.”
He’s holding my phone and it clicks in my mind what he’s talking
about. He’s going through my pictures of Laurelyn—the nearly naked
ones.

I dive off the couch and reach to take my
phone from him, but he snatches it from my grasp. “Why the hell are
you looking at the pictures on my phone?”

He’s leaning away from me so I can’t reach it,
but he continues to scan Laurelyn’s pictures. “We have the same
phone. I thought it was mine when I picked it up. I wanted to show
Mum some pictures of the girls. Good thing I didn’t call her over
to take a gander at these.”

“
Give me my phone. Now!” I hiss
through gritted teeth.

He
twists
the phone to see a picture
from a different angle. “Damn, Jack, are you screwing her in this
picture?”

“
No!” I don’t know. Maybe. Depends
on which picture he’s talking about.

I jerk it out of his hand and he has this look
in his eyes. I think it’s admiration, but I can’t be sure. “You
lucky bastard. Emma would never let me take pictures like that of
her. Not even before she had the kids. And there’s no way she’d let
me take a picture of her getting screwed. How did you talk her into
letting you do that?”

I’m pissed off at my brother for invading my
privacy—and Laurelyn’s—but I roll with it rather than start a
fight. It wouldn’t go over well to beat his ass in front of his
wife and kids. “Just lucky, I guess.”

I don’t want to talk about Laurelyn this way
with him. She’s my secret—one I don’t want to share—and my family
is showing way too much interest in her.

“
Are you serious about this
girl?”

Has my brother lost his mind? I give him my
“are you fucking kidding me?” face while I laugh. “I’ve known her a
month. What do you think?”

The little shit is laughing at me. “I think
you don’t like it that I saw nudie pictures of your
girl.”

That part I can’t deny. It makes me sick that
he saw what was supposed to be for my eyes only. “She’s not
naked.”

“
Bullshit.”

Emma comes into the living room and sees the
glares passing between us. “What are you two fighting
about?”

“
Baby, my big brother was just
showing me some pictures of his American girlfriend. Go ahead,
Jack. Show Emma your girlfriend.”

The fucking traitor wants to sell
me out? I’ll fix his ass so he doesn’t get any naughty all
month.
I thumb through the pics until I
find one portraying us as the doting couple and hold it up for
Emma. “Evan told me she’s a hot piece of ass and he’d do her. I
can’t believe he’d say that about my girlfriend.”

Evan: score zero. Jack: score thirty. As in
the number of days my little bro was going to be cock blocked. Hah!
Take that you little fucker!

Emma stares him down. “Em, I didn’t say
that.”

“
Jack’s thirty years old. Am I
supposed to just believe he made that up because he has nothing
better to do?”

“
Yes, he does shit like that to
get me in trouble. He doesn’t have a wife so he finds it
entertaining to mess with mine.”

Her eyes shoot daggers in his direction. “I’m
not discussing this with you now, Evan.”

That’s right, little bro. While you’re not
screwing your wife, you can spend the next month with your hand
around your dick thinking about how to not fuck with me.

Emma reaches for my phone to take a better
look at Laurelyn. “Jack, she’s beautiful. May I show
Margaret?”

It’s probably safer for me to hold onto the
phone so I can ensure there are no more peep shows. “I’ll show her
when she’s finished in the kitchen.”

Emma isn’t going to let me get away without
showing Mum pictures of Laurelyn, so I check the camera roll to see
where the sexy ones start. The first twelve are all clear, but I’ll
only show her the first ten to be safe.

Mum comes into the living room when she’s
finished in the kitchen and Emma doesn’t let it slide. “Margaret,
Jack has some pictures of his girlfriend on his phone.”

My mum is ecstatic. “Wait, I need my eyes.”
She scurries to the kitchen and returns wearing reading glasses.
She takes the phone from my hand and holds it where she can see it
better. “Oh, Jack Henry. She’s a lovely girl. She’d have beautiful
babies.”

Oh, hell. Here we go.

She thumbs to the second picture
and it’s Laurelyn holding her Martin guitar. The third is her
playing my piano at
A
valon. “And she’s a musician. She’d teach your children to
play instruments and sing.”

I can hear the wedding bells in my mum’s
head.

The next several pictures are random candids
Laurelyn doesn’t know I took. Some smiling, some solemn, but always
beautiful.

31

Laurelyn Prescott

Mrs. Porcelli kept me company after Lachlan
left. She stayed and joined me for dinner, per my request, but now
she is gone to her quarters for the evening and I’m alone in the
house at night for the first time.

I’m not scared. I’m bored. And lonely. I want
Lachlan here with me.

I call Addison, but don’t get an answer, so I
leave a voicemail. “Hey, Addie. I thought we might get together for
lunch tomorrow. Give me a call if you’re up for it.”