Page 10 of A Flower for Angus

“Why did ye come to Scotland?”

“Corey,” Darro scolded gently. “We don’t ask personal questions. Remember?”

Angus would have liked to hear Macy’s answer to that question himself.

Macy hesitated. “I was in Dublin once, many years ago, Corey. My cousin and I visited Scotland and I fell in love with it. I always vowed if I ever got the chance to return, I would. And so, here I am.”

When Darro tweaked an eyebrow at Angus and shot him a wicked grin, Angus snorted and rolled his eyes. So, he’d known a woman from Dublin, who hadn’t? It was a popular hotspot.

“You don’t believe me?” Macy’s tone was suddenly frigid, causing the two men to look away from each other and directly at her. Her face was red with embarrassment and something else, as if she were holding in boiling lava.

Lucerne hastily intervened. “Oh nay...it isn’t that, Macy. It’s a private torment between Darro and Angus. Those two are always pestering each other as ye shall see once ye’ve been here for a bit. Pay them no attention, please.”

In his innocence, Corey had to ask. “Did ye meet Macy in Dublin, Angus?”

Angus gawped like a fish out of water and a flush started creeping up his throat. Darro couldn’t help laughing like a recalcitrant schoolboy. Dal hooted, and Lucerne glared at all three of them in embarrassment.

A flash of understanding burst into Macy’s eyes and a sudden wicked grin began creeping into the corners of her mouth. Her eyes started sparkling with pure mischief as she replied sweetly, “It must have been another woman, Corey. I can guarantee if Angus had met me in Dublin, he would never have forgotten me.”

And that’s when Angus fell in love.

“I-I got chores to get to,” he muttered, practically falling backwards over himself as he hastily turned and left the room. As he rounded the corner, a caroling laugh followed him as Darro apologized on his and Angus’s behalf. He stopped, entranced for a moment at the lovely sound, and then grinned as he continued on his way. His Macy had a wicked sense of humor. Maybe he’d rename her Violet in his mind. As he closed the door behind him, he decided Violet didn’t really fit her nature. She was quiet and reserved like a beautiful violet, but with a hidden fire beneath that could reach up and burn you when you least expected it. Nay, she was no shrinking Violet. He’d have to come up with a different flower.

“That Macy is something else. A right wicked sense of humor, that one. I like a woman with some fire in her.”

Angus turned to face Dal. “She’s more woman than ye can handle, lad. Ye had best set yer sights elsewhere.”

“She sure is pretty,” Dal teased. “For an older woman of course. Over in the states she’d be what ye call a cougar.” He growled low in his throat and raked his hand at Angus like a paw. “She can lay her claws into me anytime.”

Angus stopped and did some growling himself. “Ye are bordering on complete disrespect, Dallas MacIntosh. Don’t make me have to set the seat of yer britches on fire with old Whipcord’s horsewhip. Not another word about the new housekeeper. Do ye ken me?”

Dal backed down and held his hands up in surrender. “Aye, aye, sir. She’s all yers.” The cheekiness twinkled in his eyes. When Angus started advancing with his hands on his belt, Dal turned and ran like a highland chicken, laughing all the way.

Angus grinned and lowered his invisible hackles. Dal really was a good lad, but another one with a wicked sense of humor. The trouble with the young ones was that they didn’t know when to quit pushing.

***

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUcan’t find her?”

Vince Gallo winced as Adrian Condoloro roared his displeasure from across the desk in his Chicago office.

Condoloro had hired him to keep an eye on his stepmother’s rental home in Toronto, Canada. His thick black mustache wiggled over his lip like a gaunt-faced version of Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther detective series, except there was nothing humorous about him. He was an intense young man with a weak chin from where a small bit of spittle slowly crawled down from his bottom lip. Desperate was a good word too if Vince had to give a description of his behavior.

“I send someone to check on my stepmother, he comes back reporting that no one appears to be living there, and you tell me you can’t find her? What have I been paying you for all this time?” he asked with a menacing glare.

Vince shifted uneasily in his chair, his lean, muscled figure tense as he watched the mustache with distracted fascination. The man’s obsession with his stepmother made him appear unhinged, but he paid well, and the job seemed easy enough. It hadn’t taken him long at all to track Mrs. Condoloro, under the fake name of Macy Kennedy, to a rental home in Toronto. In retrospect, he hoped he hadn’t made a dumb mistake by taking the additional pay to stay in the area and keep an eye on her movements. When he’d realized she’d somehow slipped away from him, he’d returned to his Chicago office.

He pulled the limp, damp collar of the faded orange and black Chicago Bears t-shirt away from his sweaty neck. It was already hot in his mid-town office even though his ratty window air conditioner was barreling away. The gray sprinkled in his dirty blond short cut felt like they were sending sweat beads trickling down in front of his ears.

The pointed ends of the paper mess on his desk were flipping up from the steady stream of air that barely felt cool. He made a mental note to have the air conditioner unit checked out, he might need to spring for a new one this year. After spending a good part of the last six months in Toronto, his office was a mess of dust and unwashed coffee cups, thanks to his business partner. Bald-pated, round-bellied Ernie Sanchez was crap at housekeeping, but he paid his share of the rent on the office. And he was a whiz on computers.

The vibes Vince was getting from his current client weren’t good ones. He was beginning to appear more like a homicidal maniac.

“What I mean is that I’m working on it. I know she booked a flight out of Toronto to Heathrow in London under her real name, but after that, she just disappeared. There are no reservations anywhere out of Heathrow under her real name or her fake name. I’ll find her, it will just take a little more time.”

The silence was deafening, then Condoloro finally grated out a reply. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Any idea at all?”

“I do have an idea, but I don’t know for sure,” Vince replied slowly, thinking of the things he’d seen while going through the woman’s belongings in her Toronto home. She only had a few scrapbooks, but from a couple of photos in those, he knew she had relatives in Dublin, Ireland. Research told him the cousin in the pictures was dead now, but what about the rest of the family? It was a place to start anyway.

---