Page 70 of Gift-Wrapped in a Kilt

Jamie's thoughts returned to the present, in which Gavin held her hand for the journey up the staircase. They hadn't spoken after the Trevor incident. Gavin had made love to her with an odd intensity like he needed to brand her with his body. Afterward, he kissed her cheek and left.

Today, he showed up in a good mood, smiling and holding her hand.

She would never understand men.

Aidan ushered them out of the stairwell and into the great hall. A long wooden table occupied the center of the room with the MacTaggart clan arrayed on either side of it, seated in high-backed wooden chairs with posh silver and china in front of them. Mrs. Darroch sat at a smaller table positioned near the tall windows, babysitting the bairns with help from her new love, Tavish the gardener. Lachlan and Erica's son, Nicholas, perched in a high chair with his feet dangling while Mrs. Darroch cradled baby Sarah, Aidan and Calli's daughter, in her arms. A bassinet had been placed beside the table in case Sarah needed a nap. Tavish, on the opposite side of the small table from Mrs. Darroch, wrangled Madison and Mackenzie, Emery's twin nieces.

A plethora of ornaments decorated the room. The American Wives Club had insisted on festooning the great hall and the table with harvest-oriented decor and Thanksgiving-specific items too. More garlands like the one in the vestibule draped over the windows and hung from the sides of the table. Baskets placed at intervals on the table held fake but realistic decorations — fall foliage, pumpkins, apples, pine cones, and a tiny scarecrow at the center of each arrangement. The tablecloth featured fall-colored plaid.

"Take your seats," Aidan said, waving toward two empty chairs.

On opposite sides of the table, three chairs away from each other.

Jamie gave her brother a questioning look.

Aidan shrugged. "Emery thought it would be fun to jumble us up. That way, we'll have to be sociable with everyone."

Emery would cook up a scheme like this.

While Aidan took his seat, Gavin made his way around the table to the seat designated with a folded card that had his name scrawled on it in elegant script. Two chairs were empty — the one at the end, across from Gavin and one spot over, and the chair at the head of the table.

Jamie sank into the seat designated as hers, right next to Aidan's chair. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach, a recurrence of that sense of impending disaster. Emery had gotten up to something, and Jamie wasn't sure she wanted to find out what.

"Our first Thanksgiving, eh?"

She looked up at the man who'd spoken.

From his seat directly across the table, Iain nodded at her. His lips twitched upward the slightest bit. "Relax, lass. We won't starve like the Mayflower pilgrims did in their first winter."

"Not starvation that worries me."

He threw a significant glance in the direction of Gavin and the conspicuously empty chairs at the end of the table. "Imagine it's the seating arrangements fashing you."

Emery and Rory were the only ones not here, which meant the empty seats belonged to them. Emery had positioned Gavin close to Rory with only one chair between them. Jamie surveyed the length of the table, noting the seemingly random placement of each adult. To her left sat Cole, husband of Emery's sister, and beyond him Jamie spotted her father and her sisters. On the other side of the table, beginning at the far end, she counted Erica's father, Calli, Emery's father, Erica, Iain, Emery's mother, Erica's mother, Gavin, and Sorcha MacTaggart. The matriarch of the clan caught her daughter's gaze as Jamie reached the table's end in her visual survey.

Her mother winked.

Jamie had no bloody clue what that meant.

She continued her survey, skipping over the empty chair at the head of the table and the one next to it on this side of the table. Beside Emery's empty chair, Lachlan was engaged in conversation with Hadley, Emery's sister. Aidan sat between Jamie and Hadley, though he gazed longingly at his wife seated near the opposite end of the table.

Aidan sighed with mock wistfulness. "Why did Emery have to put Calli way over there? Cannae kiss my wife while we celebrate our first family Thanksgiving."

"You'll survive," Jamie said, giving him a sarcastic pat on the arm.

Iain nodded with mock solemnity. "Aye, and some of us don't care to watch you ravish your wife right here on the table."

As the men launched into pseudo-taunts about their love lives, Jamie's attention drifted down the table to Gavin and the ominous empty chair at the table's end.

"Don't worry about Rory," Erica said from her position at Iain's right. "He won't wreck Thanksgiving. His wife would not be happy about that, and Rory values Emery's happiness over everything else."

True, but Jamie couldn't shake the unease that had taken root inside her.

A sharp whistle pierced the din of conversation.

Every gaze swerved to the doorway.

Rory held a silver platter with a giant turkey on it while his wife removed her fingers from her mouth, her whistle having done its job.

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