Page 14 of Merging Wright

“Ma,” he groans as his nose scrunches.

“Slàinte mhath.” Camilla raises her glass.

“Good health.” Mach lifts his own and tips it back.

As I lift my glass, the strong smoky oak scent of scotch gives me pause. Not wanting to insult Camilla, though, I tip back my glass and choke at the flame cascading down my throat. Mach is quick to come to my aid, offering a strong but awkward back slap. I wave him off. He said no touching. Even in his weak attempt to assist me from dying by fire ingestion, I don’t want his hands on me.

Especially when I don’t understand one bit why I’m here.

Camilla steps away from the table and returns with the stew in a cast-iron pot, setting it forcefully on the table. She disappears and returns once more with three bowls and spoons. “Sit,” Camilla directs to me. Then turns to Mach. “Make yourself useful and get your acushla some water.”

Mach narrows his eyes at his mother before reluctantly following her order.

“Og-u-what?” I whisper-choke, the liquid flame still burning my throat.

“Acushla.” Camilla winks at me when Mach disappears around the corner. “It’s Gaelic, meaning darling. It literally means pulse. You are his heartbeat.”

Oh my. My heart ridiculously flutters at the possibility and then my chest clenches at the truth. “Oh, I’m not—”

“I see it in his face.” Camilla’s fierce gaze holds mine as her fragile fist thumps once over her left breast. “He feels it in here.”

Thankfully, Mach rounds the corner in time to save me from this unrealistic explanation. He gives me a look, questioning what his mother might be telling me.

I shake my head, dismissing both the romantic notion in Camilla’s words and the reality that I’ve never been anyone’s heartbeat.

Swallowing a new kind of burn in my throat, which has nothing to do with the heat of alcohol, I blink several times and focus on eating a stew dinner among people who are not my family.

+ + +

“I don’t know what Ma said to you, but she obviously upset you,” Mach says to me before we climb the stairs to the upper level. After dinner and clean-up, I admitted to his mother that I’d love a shower. I’m ready to end this day. We’ve been up since before dawn, and the day has passed with little conversation and tons of unanswered questions. My brain is habitually one step ahead of me working on the next move, the next project, the next agenda. Tonight, I’m too tired to care what the plan is.

Tomorrow. I’ll consider the mistake I’ve made tomorrow.

“It was nothing.” I don’t want to tell him what his mother said about heartbeats. I’m not even certain I can explain why it bothered me. Maybe it’s that I’d been in a long-term relationship in the past, and never once did I feel the depth of that man’s heart when I’d given him all of mine.

I don’t expect to be the beat within Mach’s heart either.

Reaching for my suitcase at the base of the staircase, Mach practically slaps my hand away from the luggage and picks it up. I walk up the questionable staircase and find his mother in the upper hallway.

She waves at a room to her right. “I’ve put you in here.”

“Where do you want me?” Mach asks, surprising me by his nearness behind me.

His mother scoffs. “Don’t be daft. You sleep together.”

Panic immediately sets in. Surely, Camilla knows Mach and I aren’t actually married.

“Uh, Ma—”

“In,” his mother states, with a determined look. She points once again toward the bedroom, adding a firm nod for emphasis.

Something in her eyes unnerves me, but I don’t wish to argue with the hostess. Placing a hand on Mach’s forearm, I speak to his mother. “I’m certain it’s lovely.”

Mach can sleep his ass on the floor. The position will serve him right for his cold behavior and grumpy attitude throughout the day.

I step past him and enter a room too pretty to describe. If I didn’t know better, I’d call this room a honeymoon suite. The bed is made up with a white coverlet. A sheer canopy drapes the crème-toned wrought iron headboard. A dozen white roses, cut short and stuffed into a vase, stand on one nightstand while a glowing milk-glass lamp illuminates the other. The room is inviting and . . .romantic.

And panic returns.