“Can we have a ceilidh?”
“Highland dancers!” a woman in the front row said, shaking her hand for attention. “My daughter’s troupe would be glad to do it.”
“Oh, that’ll be lovely,” Isla said.
“Nah!” Tam called. “No one wants to see a bunch o’ youngsters tripping over their feet! We need to showcase real Highland dancing!”
“What are you blathering about?” Jo cut in. “Everyone loves the wee ones.” Heads nodded in agreement. “Don’t be such an old fart.” Jo waved off Tam’s response before he could argue. “Go on, Lena, put it on the list.”
“Can you add your name and number here?” I requested, passing the woman in the front row my clipboard for her to scribble her information. “Let’s move on to food if we can. That seems to be where the bulk of the planning starts. I’ll need all vendors to submit their details so we know how many stands to set up.”
“Do not let them talk you into a gin-tasting event,” one woman called. She wore a cardigan as red as her hair.
There was a series of grumbling disagreements.
“It’s tradition!” a man yelled.
“Cormick!” the woman shouted, getting to her feet, hands on her hips. “Last year you stumbled right into my stall and flipped the whole display of Scotch eggs.”
“Did everyone a favor, I did!” Cormick said, running a hand over his salt-and-pepper beard. “Hard as rocks. D’you bake those eggs on the surface of the sun?”
The woman turned a pointed finger on Cormick, huffing indignantly, and the next thing I knew, everyone was yelling.
“So, what I’ve taken away from this,” I whispered to Weston, “is that Cormick should be kept away from the gin.”
He smirked down at me, shaking his head. “There’s always something with this crowd.”
“Coming from the guy who apparently used to steal pies.”
“I’m a changed man,” he teased as the din of arguing voices crescendoed. “Right, quiet down now!” His voice boomed across the hall. He’d never had trouble commanding attention around the boardroom, and it was no different here. “The gin tasting will proceed as usual.”
A series of cheers and groans sounded.
“But,” Weston continued. “It will be a ticketed event. Three tickets. Three gins of your choosing. After that, if you want to get pissed, you can take yourself down to the pub. Now let’s get back to the vendor list.”
Another hand shot up in the air. The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I pointed her out. “Go ahead.”
“Can we maybe get someone under sixty on the haggis judging panel this year?” she asked. “I’m not sure their tastebuds work properly.”
A myriad of voices popped off again—mostly the older members of the committee—and I couldn’t help but grin as Isla dropped her head into her hands, hiding silent laughter.
“Is it always like this?” I whispered as more people started arguing.
She gave me a playful little shrug. “I mean, I’ve only been back in town for three years. But Pete did use to say prepping for the festival was like going into battle.”
By the time the conversations wound down, we’d covered funding, weather contingencies, music selection, andvolunteers, plus I’d generated a list of vendors from surrounding towns to contact to gauge their interest in participating.
“It’s almost like having Pete and Ellen back again,” Tam was saying to someone as I made my way over to the edge of the hall for some water. A small table of drinks and pastries had been set up, and as the meeting concluded, most people had stuck around to chat.
“Those Kincaid men always knew how to pick the most amazing wives!”
I flushed, gulping my water.
It was odd to hear myself spoken about as somebody’s wife—as Weston’s wife. But more than that, envisioning what people saw when they looked at us caused a flurry of emotion I didn’t know what to do with.
I supposed I should be proud I was selling it so well.
Truth was, playing the part of his wife was easier than I’d anticipated.
