Some Like It Scot. Donna Kauffman
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know what—or who—will make me happy. But you do.” She looked pointedly at the man standing behind him, who, by all rights, should be standing where she stood. “I want the chance to find out. Right now is your chance—which means this is our chance. Possibly our only chance.”
“Katie, please,” he begged, breaking her heart. “Don’t. Don’t ruin this. Don’t ruin me. If you’ve ever loved me”—he framed her face with his hands—you can’t do this,” he said, his tone somehow fierce and shattered at the same time. “I won’t allow it.”
To his shock, and certainly to hers, she smiled. It was as if a sudden, otherworldly calm descended over her. Her heart slowed, her mind cleared—like she was having an out of body experience and was floating overhead with the angels and cherubs, looking down on the travesty that her wedding day had become. Had always been, actually. “You don’t get to allow or disallow. No one does. Just me. If you do trust me, then believe me when I say I’m doing us both a favor.”
She turned then and faced their gathered families and invited guests…along with a certain uninvited one. She purposely looked beyond the front pews, where her parents, and Blaine’s, were making noises that indicated her moment to finally stand up for herself was going to be very short-lived if she didn’t act swiftly. She honestly had no idea what they would do, as she’d never risked finding out before. There always was too much at stake. Or so it had seemed. Funny, how standing there, with her own life and her very future at stake, it felt, for the first time, like hers was the more important one.
She looked past her family, and Blaine’s, and found Graham. She spoke directly to him. “Did you mean what you said?” Her voice sounded far more steady and confidant than she felt. Her gaze remained locked on the Scot, who was easily head and shoulders bigger than pretty much everyone in the room. Her port, she thought, and felt oddly steadied by it. By him. She could certainly do worse.
He was still wielding some crumpled piece of paper, like a proclamation, in front of him. “Aye,” he stated, that deep, gravelly burr ringing clearly and quite commandingly throughout the chapel, despite the fact that the hushed silence of a moment before had already begun erupting in small, little volcanoes of chatter…with the biggest eruption surging to the surface in the front row as her parents stood and took their first steps toward her.
“Then I accept.”
Vesuvius McAuley-Sheffield blew approximately one second later as the entire chapel rose to its feet, as one, and looked ready to descend upon her. She went into survival mode, working off some instinct she’d never known she had. It was purely self-preservation, but when had she ever considered that an option?
When she finally put her own self first.
She turned to Blaine and slid the engagement ring off her finger. “You know I love you,” she said, quietly and fiercely, as she pushed it into his palm. Then she stepped past the gape-mouthed Blaine, and thrust her ridiculously over-the-top bouquet straight into Tag’s chest. She lowered her voice so only he could hear her. “You’ve officially caught the bouquet. You’d better stand by him and love him the best way you know how. Or I’m going to come back and personally kick your ass.”
She turned back to Blaine, grabbed his face in her palms and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “I love you, Sheffie. More than life.”
“Mac,” he choked out, using his own childhood endearment for her, tears swimming in his beautiful brown eyes. “Don’t leave me.”
She held his cheeks more tightly. “You don’t need me. You only need you. Now go, be happy, dammit.”
Her mother rushed toward the stairs as Katie turned, a rather terrifying expression carved into her already rigid features. Her father was right behind, looking equal parts exceedingly angry and deeply disappointed. He’d had plenty of experience with both of those expressions where Katie was concerned—where all the women in his life were concerned, actually.
Well, she was about to give him one less woman to concern himself with.
She made a quick sidestep and danced around the pulpit. “Sorry, Father Flaherty, I really, truly am. Say prayers for me. I’m going to need them!”
Her Scot—at least he wasn’t anyone else’s—had worked his way quite easily through the guests thronging into the aisle and had made his way to the base of the deep blue carpeted steps leading up to the altar. She hadn’t noticed, in the prayer garden, how big he truly was. So tall. And brawny. She might have thought it a trick of the plaid that cascaded over one shoulder, only he made everyone in the growing chaos surrounding him look small and ineffectual by comparison. There had to be something to that.
“Katie,” he said, his voice rising easily above the din. He reached for her.
Without a second’s hesitation, she launched herself off the top step, knowing he would catch her. And he did.
“Oh!” she gasped, as strong arms closed instantly around her. He shifted her into his arms, dress cascading over his arm, as if they’d rehearsed it dozens of times, to get the timing so perfectly right. If it weren’t for the abject terror starting to creep in around the defiance and righteous moxie she’d been filled to overflowing with the past few minutes, she might have felt positively princess-like. “We need to get out of here,” she whispered fervently. “Fast.”
“Wait just one minute there!” Her father, sounding superior and autocratic. Like a king, ruling his subjects, expecting total obeisance—or off with their heads. He’d had lots of practice with that.
To her surprise, her rescuer actually paused. “No, no! Keep going. This is my only chance.” She looked up at the length of chiseled jaw, then he looked down, and their eyes met, close up, and just like that, the rest of the world fell away.
“You are a woman grown, aye? Of legal age to decide for yourself your course of action?”
“You don’t understand, it’s…complicated. So very, very complicated. I need you to get us out of here, before—”
“Katherine Elizabeth, what on earth do you think you’re doing? Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve made a spectacle of yourself. And of us. That’s what you’ve done.” Her mother had somehow managed to wedge her svelte, size two frame squarely in front of her daughter’s Scot. How a woman who was easily a full foot and a half shorter—even in her one-of-a-kind, Ferragamo, hand-dyed satin pumps—than the man presently towering over her, managed to look down her perfect, aquiline nose at him, Katie would never be able to figure out. Her mother was a force of nature. Rather like a tsunami. Or a monsoon. Sweeping in, blowing down, and drowning anything that got in her path.
“Now you’ll kindly get back up on that dais, apologize—profusely—to everyone here, and proceed with this wedding. I’ll make certain none of this…incident…remains digitally viable with any of our photographers.”
She turned slightly and raised her voice. “If anyone here even thinks about using their phones, or breathes a word of this outside this chapel…well, surely that’s not something anyone has any interest in doing.” She looked back to her daughter. “We can salvage this. I can salvage this. But it will take some doing. Now, for heaven’s sake, let’s get back to business here.” She clapped her hands together, as if expecting time to spin backwards and all to be as it was five minutes prior. Katie wasn’t entirely sure her mother couldn’t do just that.
“You’ll kindly use a different tone when speaking to your daughter,” Graham quietly informed Mrs. McAuley, making the room gasp collectively. “She’s made her decision, and while I understand your disappointment, you’ve naught to do but accept it. Now, if you don’t mind. We ’ve a plane to catch.”
“A plane!” her father blasted. He was more thunderstorm than monsoon. Lots of wind and booming noises. Occasionally incinerating things with blistering bolts of lightning. “If you think you are taking her out of this chapel, much less out of this town, you are—”
“Going to be late,” Graham replied, seemingly