Page 112 of Gift-Wrapped in a Kilt

"Ech!" Jamie exclaimed. "He's my brother, Emery. Ahmno watching him… do that."

"Neither am I," Fiona said.

"Count me out too," Cat agreed.

Emery threw her hands up in surrender. "Sorry, I forgot for a second. But I did get Jamie to do something other than moan and mope. Righteous disgust is a step up."

"It is," Erica agreed.

Disgust was the only thing that broke through Jamie's malaise. Her brothers and sisters kept eying her like she might collapse into a lump of weeping gelatin on the floor at any moment. Rory insisted she stay with Aidan and Calli instead of "haunting the castle like a forlorn spirit." Staying with Aidan and Calli hadn't helped. Sure, she had more company and less room to sequester herself in a dark corner. She got to play with baby Sarah too, but none of it helped.

She wanted Gavin.

Trevor wouldn't let her have what she wanted. Somehow, he managed to derail her every attempt to renew her passport. The paperwork got lost, repeatedly. Then it got misplaced, buried in a pile of papers on the desk of the wrong person at the Home Office. Last she'd heard, someone was reviewing her request. That had been yesterday. Even the fast-track option took a week.

Phone conversations and text messages with Gavin didn't fill in the hole in her chest. Not even when he texted her a picture of him in the kilt Rory had given him — the kilt and nothing else. The sight of his muscular chest should've bolstered her spirits, but it only made her long to have him with her, pressing that body down on hers right before he stripped off the kilt and made love to her for hours.

She cried for ten minutes after seeing the picture.

On the twelfth day before Christmas, a package arrived for Jamie. Aidan brought it to her in the living room. He didn't even smirk when he set the box on her lap.

"It's from Gavin," he said. "I'll leave you to it."

"No suggestive jokes? Or nosiness about what's in the box?"

Aidan shrugged. "I hope whatever it is makes you feel better."

Oh God. For Aidan to treat her with sensitivity meant she was worse off than she'd realized.

Tears gathered in her eyes as she ripped the tape off the box and folded back the flaps. Inside, nestled among crumpled bits of newspaper, lay a box wrapped in colorful Christmas paper. A large gift tag was attached to the box. She read the note scrawled on the tag in Gavin's masculine hand.

"Happy first day of Christmas," he wrote. "Day one is supposed to be a partridge in a pear tree, but I don't know what a partridge is or where to get one. Not sure why one would live in a pear tree, either. Instead, I got you the next best thing. Call me after you open your present."

Jamie ripped the paper off the box and tore it open. Tears stung her eyes anew as she lifted out the two items inside, a pair of plush toys, one an avocado and the other a black-and-white bird. The half avocado had a smiley face on its brown pit. She hugged the toys to her chest, burying her face in them, hoping to find a hint of Gavin's scent on them. They smelled like nothing in particular.

Still hugging the toys, she grabbed her phone and dialed Gavin's number.

"Hey, babe," he said when he answered. "Did you get the package?"

"Aye." She blinked to clear the tears from her eyes, but new ones emerged in their wake. "I love the gift. An avocado and a bird. They're so sweet, Gavin. You are so sweet."

"You hate pears, but I remembered how much you liked avocados when we had guacamole at my favorite Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis."

"Never had one before then." She petted the little stuffed bird. "What sort of bird is this? I don't recognize it."

"A chickadee. They're American birds. I see them in the tree outside my bedroom window." He exhaled a weary sigh. "Didn't think I'd be stuck in this apartment again, alone. Got used to being your sex slave."

She nuzzled the plush chickadee. "I miss you, Gavin."

"I miss you too, Jamie, so bad. Won't be long till we're together again."

"Need my slave back soon."

"Maybe later we can try phone sex. I hear it's hot."

She giggled. "Emery swears by it. She says a woman shouldn't let a man forget what he's missing when he's away."

"I know exactly what I'm missing."

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