Page 77 of Devotion: Isn't What It Seems (Love Isn't What It Seems 1)

“Oh,” I mumbled. What else was there to say?

“I told you older Scotts are very superstitious,” Lachlan said, shrugging his shoulder.

“Why do you call your grandfather by his first name?” I repeated my earlier question.

“When I was a kid, I had trouble with certain words, both in Gaelic and English. Grandfather was one of those words. So he taught me his name and it stuck.”

That made sense, although with Lachlan’s determination, I was surprised to hear he struggled at anything. I felt like he was relentless when he decided to overcome a problem.

His grandfather took my hand and supported his body partly with the cane and partly on my hand. We walked in silence till we got to the little house that stood on the edge of the castle’s garden.

“I hope he is not staying here because we came here for our honeymoon,” I asked Lachlan. The home was beautiful and reminded me of an old victorian vicar home.

“No, he moved out of the castle when my grandmother passed away.” Lachlan’s voice was sad and I laid my free hand on his arm to comfort him.

His grandfather spoke up.

“Wiliam wants us to have tea with him,” Lachlan translated and there was surprise evident in his voice.

“Okay,” I agreed. “I like tea.”

Rest of the afternoon, we spent with his grandfather who shared a few pictures of his wife, Lachlan’s parents, and Lachlan as a boy.

“How did your parents die?” I asked Lachlan softly. I didn’t want to cause him pain and I knew how hard it can be to talk about death.

“My mother died in an accident about fifteen years ago,” he answered, our gazes locked. “My father took his life a few months later.”

A sharp inhale was the only thing that followed that statement, and it was mine. He told me someone close to him committed suicide. I just never guessed it was someone that close.

As if his grandfather sensed what Lachlan just told me, he took my hand and patted it with a light brush against my scar. He looked at Lachlan and mumbled in Gaelic.

“McLaren’s hearts are given only once,” he repeated his earlier statement.

I wondered if that was a promise, warning, or just a statement.

His grandfather lived as a shell of a man separated from the world since his wife’s death, his father killed himself following the death of his mother, and here I was… an emotionally wrecked wife to Lachlan McLaren.

I don’t want to pull him under… ever, I prayed to anyone or anything that was listening.

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