Page 8 of Gift-Wrapped in a Kilt

"Do you want him back?" Emery asked, her spooky-cat shirt glittering in the light streaming through the windows.

Jamie hunched her shoulders. "Donnae know."

"Yes you do." Emery rose and crossed to the table in front of the sofa where she sat down on its shiny surface. "You're a smart girl, Jamie. You know what you want. So, do you want Gavin?"

"I do." Jamie grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her tummy. "And it's awful."

He'd humiliated her and made her feel as pathetic and small as Trevor had five years ago. No, Gavin had made her feel even more pathetic and so small she expected she might fall through a crack in the floorboards.

"Listen," Emery said, "I know what it's like to love a man who's damaged on the inside. Rory didn't want to love me. He did everything he could to make me dislike him, but I saw what he was really doing. It's a protection mechanism. Gavin's doing the same thing, though I know nothing about his reasons. If you really love him, if you want to be with him, you need to help him work through his issues."

"What if he won't let me? I can't force him to tell me all his secrets."

"Force isn't required." Emery said with a devious glint in her eyes. "I found sex to be an excellent tool for loosening up a man's inhibitions — and his mouth."

Jamie flattened her lips, feeling her brows lower. "Ye cannae be serious. I'm to seduce Gavin in hopes he'll open up to me about his problems?"

"Exactly."

"It won't work." Jamie clutched the pillow tighter, head down. "I can't get in the right mood when he's hurt me the way he did."

"Don't try it today," Emery said, her tone implying that was a silly idea. "Stay here with me and Rory for a spell. Relax, take a nice bubble bath in the claw-foot tub, go for walks, whatever makes you feel better."

"Then what?"

Emery tapped her chin, squinting as if thinking hard. "Let me think about it. I'll come up with something."

"I should smack him in the head with a hammer. Nothing else will loosen him up."

"You're hurting right now. Don't make any decisions until you've cooled down."

Jamie let her head fall back against the sofa and moaned. "You're right, I know. But I don't like feeling so… miserable."

"We have that in common. Being unhappy isn't in our nature, so we tend to feel cast adrift when someone makes us miserable."

Emery really did understand. Maybe Gavin wasn't Rory, but Emery's experiences with her wounded husband might prove the best inspiration for Jamie to save her man.

Save him? Och, did she want to do that? Should she do it?

Never a fool again.

A knock sounded at the door, and they both swung their attention to Mrs. Darroch hovering on the threshold of the open doorway. The gray-haired woman lowered the hand she'd used to knock on the doorframe. "Jamie, ahmno sure if ye want to see him but… Gavin Douglas is in the vestibule. He's asking for ye."

Jamie's stomach flipped and flopped and did a pirouette. Anticipation raced over her skin, an electrical current that raised every hair. She should not be excited to see Gavin mere hours after he'd shattered her hopes and dreams. She shouldn't want to see him, but her heart had other ideas.

"Let him in," she told Mrs. Darroch. "Send him here."

Mrs. Darroch left to retrieve the scunner.

Jamie winced inwardly. Even thinking the word scunner in association with Gavin made her a bit queasy. She'd never done well with nastiness. Besides, until recently, Gavin had been sweet and thoughtful. Since they couldn't see each other often — twice a month, maybe — they talked on the phone, Skyped, texted, emailed. He sent her gifts for every holiday. For the American holiday known as Flag Day, he'd sent her a stuffed bear wearing a T-shirt that said "USA" on it and holding a little American flag in its chubby fingers. He sent her real maple syrup from Minnesota on National Pancake Day. Gavin had noted UK holidays too, sending her a tiny, smiley-faced stick man and a picture of a bonfire for Guy Fawkes Day. Cigarette lighters and matches, he'd explained, couldn't be sent via mail. She'd been touched he remembered what she told him about how people burned effigies of the traitor Guy Fawkes on every November 5 and tried to commemorate it with her in his own way.

Gavin paid attention to everything she said. How, then, had he misread her so terribly today?

Emery touched Jamie's knee, pulling her out of her reverie. "I'll be in the kitchen. Call me on the house phone if you need backup. I'd be happy to whoop his ass for you."

Jamie couldn't help smiling, though her lips quivered a wee bit. "Thank you, Em. You're my favorite sister, even if we didn't grow up together."

Emery winked. "I won't tell Cat or Fiona you said that."

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