Page 63 of Priceless
His heart sank. “We just need to distract her. She’s in no condition?—”
“Jacob, she’s fine. She’ll never be ready for the blow she’s about to take. So it might as well be now. That will leave ye both time to reconcile and still have some days left. Ye don’t think ye can convince her to stay longer?”
“I think hearing the truth will send her home without another thought.”
“Well, then, she was unworthy of ye in the first place.” She reached for the doorknob.
He put a hand on her arm. “Dinnae say that. Dinnae say that.”
She noted the passion in his eyes. “Alright, my friend. All right. I will find a way to get Banner out of the room and we’ll leave ye to it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“The bastard struck her,” Banner was explaining, when Jacob and Jess returned to the hoogah. “And I came off the bed with my skean dhu in my hand and tucked Jessica behind me...”
Laira held up her hand to warn them both not to interrupt. Her attention was focused on the former ghostie, and if Banner was at the end of the story, it was too late. She would have figured it all out. There was nothing left to do but see where the chips would fall.
“What’s a skean dhu?”
“A wee blade a Scot keeps in his sock,”
Laira nodded. “Go on.”
Banner’s chest puffed out. “I said,Touch her again and die. Then I gave him a choice.Sack or hand, I said. Did he want to take his ballocks home in their sack or in his hand.” He glanced down at his sporran.
“Ballocks? Oh, got it.”
“We never saw the bastard again.”
“Wow,” she said, then shook her head. After staring at the floor for a moment, she looked up. Her gaze skimmed right pastJacob and found Jess. “Jess. Oh my gosh.” She shook her head again, as if she had no words.
Jess hurried over to sit and put an arm around her.
Laira looked confused. “I’m fine. It’s just…”
“A shock, I reckon.”
“I guess you already know, then.”
Jess bit her lip and scowled. “What is it I know?”
“That you’re famous.”
“Famous?”
“Yeah. You and Banner. The way you fell in love, your whole story. It’s out there.” She rolled her eyes. “Almost a week ago, I asked AI to tell me the most romantic Celtic story it could, and it told me yours. It had changed the names, but the story was pretty much what Banner just told me. Only they’d made it a ghost story, saying the hero, Brodie, had once been a ghost that was brought back to life by a witch.”
She frowned again, then turned to study Banner from the toes up. His boots, thick knit socks with a knife handle showing at the top, the kilt, the sporran, and the rest. Finally, she looked him in the eye.
“I know Scotland is a pretty magical place, but you wouldn’t happen to be an old ghost, would you? I mean, considering the song Jess was singing at Jocko’s…”
Banner grinned and scowled at the same time. “Who are ye callin’ old?”
She smiled, tempted to laugh, but not quite there. “You want me to believe a witch brought you back to life, just out of the blue?”
“Hardly out of the blue, but aye. There are rules, o’course.”
“Rules?”
