I scrunch up my nose. “Really, Steph? You’re joining the mom club with Nicola?”
“It’s not so bad,” Nicola chides me. “You might change your mind one day.”
I glare at her. “You know how much I hate it when people say that.”
She shoots me an evil grin. “Oh, I know. That’s why I like to say it.”
“As I said,” Steph goes on. “We’re trying. Nothing exciting to report except lots of sex, and I know you’re all tired of hearing about that. But what’s exciting is this. You, Kayla. You better start packing.”
It feels like a million bolts of lightning strike me at once. Packing? To go follow Lachlan to Scotland. To live with him for three weeks. To see him play rugby, to watch him with Lionel, to help out with the rescues, to be in another country. To have endless sex for weeks. The prospect is so exciting, so frightening, I feel like I might shatter all across my living room.
“Come on.” Steph slaps me on the shoulder. “We’ll help while we wait for Linden to pick us up.”
My room is a mess, and packing for an impromptu trip across the pond is extremely overwhelming. Is the weather the same as in San Francisco? Is the city casual or upscale? Should I bring any of my vibrators (the answer is yes)?
Luckily Steph and Nicola are here to keep me organized and on track, and every few minutes I feel like jumping up and down for joy. I’m doing this. I’m actually doing this—the wildest, craziest thing I have ever done. And even though the future is uncertain and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, I have this feeling that it’s going to happen. That feeling is what scares me the most. Because shit. I know, I know if I go with Lachlan, I will fall head over heels in love with him. I’m already halfway there.
When Linden shows up at my door, it’s time for them to go, and I’m pretty much fully packed. Our goodbyes are kind of sad because I won’t be seeing them for three weeks.
“Say hi to my aunt and uncle,” Linden says, pulling me into a hug that actually feels genuine for once.
“Do you think he’ll be introducing me to the parents?” I ask.
Linden smiles dryly. “Kayla, if he’s invited you to Edinburgh with him, then he’s serious. So, yes. You’ll meet his parents and everyone else—his brother Brigs too, I’m sure. Damn. I’m really fucking jealous.” He looks at Steph. “Want to go to Scotland?”
She shakes her head. “I’m quite happy staying here. But you can live vicariously through Kayla.”
He grimaces. “I’m not too sure about that if she’s going to be shagging my cousin the entire time.”
“You know me,” I say with a shrug, and hug Steph and Nicola, saying my goodbyes. Nicola gets all teary-eyed and I have to smack her upside the head and tell her to stop that. Steph is a bit more subdued, more overjoyed for me than anything else.
Once they leave, I pick up my phone with shaking hands and call my mom.
“Hey sweetheart,” she says to me. “How was your trip to Napa? Did you have any good wine?”
“All the wine was good,” I tell her, leaning against the kitchen counter. For some reason my legs are shaking, and not in the way they were when Lachlan and I first had sex here. God, that was good fucking sex.
“And the hotel?” my mother asks, and I have to shake my head to get those sex thoughts out of my head. “Tell me about the hotel. I remember your father and I used to go to Napa all the time when he first came over from Iceland. We would always stay at the same place right in town. So pretty.”
I inhale deeply. Talking about my father isn’t making this easy on me. “The hotel was very nice. Had its own vineyard. We’ll go one day. A mother-daughter trip.”
“That would be very lovely. If I’m feeling better, of course.”
Ugh. It’s like I have one foot in Scotland already and I’m reminded of why my other foot needs to be here.
“Kayla?” she asks, and I realize I’ve been silent.