The Wellspring (Kaitlyn and the Highlander #12) - Diana Knightley Page 0,10
I would explode joy all over the bedroom. We’d have to call in a cleaning crew to solve it. “I have a board book, want to hear it?”
Isla settled her big diaper butt right on my pillow and waited expectantly.
Archie lay down beside Magnus. I got out the book Jamberry and began to read. Isla looking from the page to me and back at the page. Then bored, she crawled off the bed and toddled out of the room, all cuteness and joy and a very short attention span.
Archie let me continue, even reciting it along with me, and then said, “Breakfast ready!”
“Thank you for waking us up.”
“Welcome!” He climbed off the bed and hustled from the room.
Magnus put his arms around me and pulled me closer, nuzzling into my shirt. “Tis good tae be home.”
“You keep saying it and every time it’s so true.” I kissed the top of his head, chuckling. “We’re never going to have morning alone time again.”
“Aye, but I daena want tae lock the door.”
“Me neither, we’ll have to sneak away at other times of day or something. I’ll meet you here during naptime.”
He chuckled, squeezed my breast, and then flung himself away. “Now I am too verra hungry tae concentrate on explorin’ yer gardens, the breakfast is calling me.”
“Me too.”
Our job was to help Chef Zach prepare the Thanksgiving feast while also staying out of his way. Quentin joked, “You’d think you’d be better at Thanksgiving dinner by now, you’ve been doing it long enough.”
For that Zach banished him to the living room and turned the music up as loud as it would go. We all decided to remove ourselves for being more ‘hurtful than helpful.’
Magnus, Fraoch, Quentin, Hayley, and I drove to the stables with the boys. Magnus and Fraoch assigned Archie and Ben stable chores and they accomplished them like little boys with sporadic helpfulness combined with enthusiastic incompetence.
Cynric and Hurley seemed happy parked in front of a trough of hay.
Magnus was thrilled to see Sunny, and a little torn about how much admiration he had for Cynric. As they saddled the horses up, he said, “Och, I am havin’ a hard time decidin’ who tae ride first.”
They went for a ride while I took the boys home. I had had plenty of horse and not enough of my bairn.
I really wanted to be there to scoop them up whenever they needed me.
I was snapping the ends off green beans, and cutting potatoes, while Beaty was folding napkins and moving drinks into the cooler. We had our whole family, plus Michael and his new girlfriend, along with Zach’s parents, and James by himself, which seemed his way these days. Quentin had extra security to surround and protect while he relaxed with the feast. The monitor was going. The television was broadcasting football as it should, and the laptop was running local weather.
I found Hayley in the kitchen. “I’m worried about James, he seems bummed.”
“Me too.” She added, “He needs to get laid. I just don’t know if it’s eighteenth century laid or twenty-first century.”
“Both seem too complicated for him, maybe I should introduce him to France in the twentieth century, Picasso could introduce him to some girls.”
She held up a Mexican Coke bottle and we clinked our drinks. “Maybe he needs to settle down.”
We looked out the doors at our guests on the back porch, laughing at James who was making a lewd gesture as if he was jerking off.
I said, “I’m not sure he’s the type to settle down, but I would like to see him fall for someone just so I could nod and smile and be superior about it. Speaking of superior, what do you think about Michael’s date?”
She sighed. “He’s giving Fraoch all these mean-ass looks. I told Fraoch it was going to be weird, but you’d think the size of Fraoch would have Michael acting more respectful. Fraoch would literally kick his ass if he had a violent temper, thank God he doesn’t.” We looked out the doors again, Fraoch was laughing happily about something.
“What’s her name again?”
“Ainsley.”
“And Quentin’s vetted all of them, right? No surprises? She’s kind of looking around like…”
“Vetted, all but patted down. Michael asked me if I was okay. He’s looking at Fraoch suspiciously, at everyone, like he’s in a drug lord’s house. She’s just thinks we’re all beneath her.”
“That’s because she’s got a degree in business. I’ve heard it three time already. Like Michael knowing literally everything there is to know about