Page 19 of Scotch: Unraveled

“Christ, woman,” he grumbles, clearly exasperated, and he huffs in annoyance as he throws out a hand to the cart. “Are ya planning on buying out the whole fucking store?” I mean, he’s not wrong. We have five gallons of paint—cotton candy pink, lavender, sky blue, grass green and sunshine yellow. Then at least seven pints with various accent colors.

“Not the whole store,” I hedge, picking up a couple more small cans of paint. “But the gallons are the primary colors and the pints are the accents. You need accents or what are we doing this for?”

Right then, Mollie gives us a delightful squeal and grabs for Rory’s finger resting close to her carrier. He looks down at his girl, sighs instead of huffing, and says, “Do what you need to do.”

I swear my body goes into total organ failure as my heart melts and my ovaries simultaneously detonate for the second time in one day, falling to the bottom of my womb in a million tiny fragments of desire for the sexiest Scotsman in the state of Kentucky.

From there, the rest of the day goes easy. We move to a section of the store selling curtains and bedding. Women stop us to talk sweetly at the girls. Babies always garner attention, but with twin babies, it’s like they’re celebrities. Even men, especially the old guys with fifty thousand grandkids stop us to make faces at the girls. And the girls give back, giggling, squeaking and babbling.

More than once we’re told we have a beautiful family. I wish more than anything thatwedo. But in reality, I know thatwedon’t.Hedoes. I’m just a willing participant taking what I can get of them while I can get it. It makes me sad, but I won’t let it get me down. Not when we’re having this much fun.

Though, even fun has its limits. And even good girls go bad as Mollie does when we hear a squirting sound coming from her posterior and this caustic smell permeates the air. Rory looks at me like he expects me to take her.

I hold out the diaper bag to him and half laugh, half say, “It appears your daughter needs a change.”

He rips the bag from my hand, slinging it over his shoulder in order to pick Mollie up. Holding her under her armpits with his arms outstretched, her little legs dangling, griping under his breath at her and at me as he stomps off toward the bathroom.

“They have a family restroom here,” I call after him.

In response, Rory holds Mollie up high enough for me to see him flip me the bird, and I throw my head back laughing.

The man is getting better at the whole changing thing because he’s back with us, Mollie in different clothing than she went in with, after only ten minutes. “I had to trash the pants and onesie,” he informs me. “There was a gooey racing stripe up her back.”

Oh yeah, he’s getting to me.

I take the girls back out to the Truck to get them situated in their carriers while he pays for the paint, curtains and bedding. Then, in another surprise move, Rory stops at a discount store, runs inside, then comes back out carrying a blanket.

“What’s this for?” I ask, pointing at the blue microfiber.

“You’ll see,” he says. And it’s true, I definitely do see when he stops at a local deli to grab us sandwiches, chips, pickles and sodas to go. We eat them at a park on the blanket he spread out for us to sit on, letting the girls stretch out until we pick them up to feed them as we listen to a free concert.

A biker took us on a picnic.

Sooner than I’d like, the concert is over and we make the hour and a half drive back home. Rory drops me off at my apartment. I’m sad for them to go, but it’s the right thing to do.

Sunday morning I throw on a pair of old, ripped jeans and an older, even more ripped T-shirt, then head up to the compound because Rory and I have a nursery to paint. The project consumes most of the day. He orders us baked macaroni and cheese with breadsticks to go from an Italian restaurant one town over, sending a prospect named Butch to grab it for us. That’s the life, not having to run out to perform tedious errands if you don’t feel like it because there’s a guy willing to do anything you ask of him in order to earn the same patch you wear.

No wonder he likes the club life so well.

Rory had amended my original design at the home store yesterday, hence the need for so many accent colors. But now Mollie and Macie are the residents of not a fairy garden nursery, but a Lord’s biker fairy garden nursery. It took me a whole lot of internet searching and even more cursing under my breath, but I finally found Harley-esqe images I could paint. Badass fairies ride Harleys.

On one whole wall, the longest, uninterrupted-by-windows-or-closet wall we painted the brightest yellow sun, and a blue sky filled with fluffy clouds. Tall grass opened to an enchanted garden where the fairies popped wheelies and rocketed through the flowers.

The curtains are white with fairies floating and flying. The bedding has fairies, too, including the crib padding which looks like grass and the comforter looks like grass and sky. As I stand in the doorway admiring our work, I can’t imagine any baby having a better nursery.

Mollie and Macie seem to like it, as they fell asleep right away when we placed them in their new beds. Rory moves in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, and rests his chin on my shoulder. “Yar amazing, woman… Don’t know how ya did it, but ya sure as hell did.”

I so want to kiss him. I shouldn’t kiss him, but I turn my head to plant my lips against his anyway. Not smart, Frankie. Not smart at all.

***

Two weeks. I’ve now had two weeks of that beguiling man’s kisses and nothing else. Some of them have gotten a little steamy, I set the president on that Sunday nursery painting day, but he always—always—ends up breaking it off before we go too far and I’m not a hundred percent sure I want him to. I’m also not a hundred percent sure I don’t want him to. Basically, I’m a mess.

When he puts his hands on me—oh, lord. I have to fan myself. No man has ever touched me the way Rory does and I mean that in every sense of the word. But my favorite part is watching him interact with those girls. Big, bad biker Rory MacGregor, a.k.a. Scotch, has officially been wrapped around two tiny little pinkies. My heart might explode from the cuteness, not that I’ll ever tell him that.

It’s six o’clock, quitting time, and I’m about to do what I’ve done every night since he got out of jail. I’m going to pack up his girls and drive them up the mountain to the compound so the four of us can have dinner together.

I pick Mollie up first to pull her little Harley girl sweatshirt over her head and secure a little matching knit beanie over her almost completely bald head. She coos and smiles as I scrunch my nose and make little kissy faces at her. Mollie has such a calm demeanor. It’s no wonder Rory tends to go for her first. Macie likes to make her presence known, so when she obviously feels like I’ve spent enough time with her sister, she tells me in no uncertain terms and begins to cry her baby crocodile tears.

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