“Everything was fake. It was an arrangement to fool Maggie. The idea was to pretend to be a couple so she’d stop harassing me and the village would accept Finn.”
I glance up expecting shock.
Instead, the three of them exchange looks.
“We kind of guessed,” Keira says gently.
I blink.
“What? Since when?”
“Honey,” Jane says with a sad little smile, “we’re McGregors. We can spot one of Maggie’s schemes from fifteen miles away.”
“The dinner where you two suddenly ‘announced’ yourselves?” Emma adds. “It was a little too perfect. And way too sudden.”
“And Maggie had that look,” Keira continues. “You know the one. The smile she gets when she thinks she’s won.”
I suddenly feel ridiculous.
“So you knew. Everybody knew.”
Jane takes my hand.
“We knew it started as an arrangement, yes. But we also saw it stopped being fake. At least for you.”
Tears threaten again.
I suck in a deep breath trying to hold them back.
That’s when a stocky little figure suddenly bursts into the room.
Hamish charges in like a wool-covered missile.
He storms across the living room with alarming determination, something clamped in his mouth.
He stops directly in front of me and solemnly drops his treasure at my feet.
It’s…
A dark green sock.
“Am I hallucinating, or did he just bring you… a sock?” Emma asks incredulously.
Jane tries not to laugh, cheeks turning pink with the effort.
“Maybe this is his version of a comfort gift?”
“I’m mostly wondering whose sock it is,” Keira says.
I stare at the sock.
Then at the sheep.
“Hamish, what exactly am I supposed to do with this?”
Hamish lets out one satisfied bleat.
Then he marches to the corner of the room, settles down comfortably, and keeps his eyes fixed on the front door like a sentry guarding the perimeter.
