While I’m usually the MacTavish who thinks things through, the one who makes careful decisions, this was not always the case. A (very) few poor life choices come to mind:
Leaving the Ares Academy at nineteen to becomea firefighter in the Pacific Northwest without mentioning it to my parents. That came back to bite me in the arse.
Then, there was not knowing that Patsy Conner-Jones and Melinda Ridgeby were friends and both unaware I was sleepingwiththe other. This ended when Patsy and Melinda picked the same night to be “spontaneous,” and then ran into each other at my front door, both naked under their coats as a “surprise” for me. It was an uncomfortable reunion for us all.
Especially since I already had a girl half-undressed in my bedroom.
I might regret agreeing to torching the vintage Porsche 914 belonging to my cousin Kenna’s boyfriend after he announced his engagement. To someone else. He and Kenna ended up getting back together on the very night I’d turned his high-performance sports car into a hulk of blackened steel and melted rubber. Bad timing, that.
But my unforgivable? That will forever be immolating the Banner office building with Scarlett still inside.
Stonner - Scottish slang for an erection
Chapter Sixteen
In which this awkward wedding day goes from weird to weirder.
Scarlett…
I cannot understand Wallace.
The same man who shoved me up against the door of the meeting room and essentially terrified me into marrying him is now also the man who kissed my hand when I started spiraling and carried me in here.
When he walked back out of the door, it looked like it cost him something to leave. He did leave though, and I’m standing alone in the middle of a wildly Gothic bedroom with an overnight bag I didn’t pack sitting on a bed so high that it requires a stepstool to get to it.
Climbing up onto the Mt. Everest of mattresses, I do the only logical thing. I call Morgan.
She picks up on the first ring. “Are you dead? What’s happening?”
"Wouldn't it be kind of hard to call you if I was dead?”
“You’d be surprised,” she says. “But moving on. All I got was a text from you this morning, telling me that you were safe. I’ve been casting spells all day, trying to find you.”
“How would casting a spell- Never mind.” I shake my head. “I’m okay. Do you want the good news or the bad news because I’m a little wobbly right now.”
“Start with the bad,” she says firmly. “We’re New Englanders. We like bad news. It builds character.”
“I’m married.”
Pulling the phone away from my ear, I wait until the barrage of expletives has slowed down. “What the actual fuck is happening?” Morgan shrieks.
“That was exactly what I said. Wallace lured me into The Witchery by the Castle-”
“Okay, I’m beginning to wish he’d kidnappedme,”she says, “because you know I’d stab anyone but you to stay at that place.”
“He hustled me into a room and a government-type guy was standing there, looking pretty unhappy about it and Wallace had the audacity to announce that we were getting married.”
“Oh, that fire-setting son of a bitch, tell me this gets better,” she snarls. I can hear her clangingand crashing around and another curse. It sounds like she dropped her cauldron on her foot.
“Maybe you should sit down, honey.” I settle back against the pillows, staring at the bits and pieces of Edinburgh’s night sky that I can see from the stained-glass windows.
She’s humming some kind of incantation and I wait until she’s finished. “Go on.”
“It gets worse,” I admit, wishing Murder Mittens was here, a comforting weight on my lap. I tell her about why I went through with it. That Kyle and Marlena were looking for me, how he’d tried to sell me off to the Russian, how monstrous the Kholodov Bratva is.
“And that stupid bastard Kyle thought he’d moved up to the big leagues,” she finishes bitterly. “So where does Wallace stand in all this?”
Slipping off the bed in the most ungainly possible way, I walk over to the sideboard, where there’s yet another ice bucket offering champagne. Tucking my phone under my chin, I open it. “Wallace said that if I married him, both sides of his family - the MacTavishes and the Taylors - would protect me.”
