Triplet Babies for the Scottish Mafia Boss by Rosalie Rose

1

Emma

Is this all that I am?

I touch the pen to my lips, gazing out the schoolroom window. It’s thrown wide, admitting a pure, sweet, blossom-touched spring breeze. The kids are gone for the day, their empty desks lined up in rows before me. But before I walk home, I want to get down this thought.

It’s not a poem—not yet. It’s a ponderance. A question. A notion.

I touch pen to paper.

Is this all I was to you?

The words are lonely and terrible, scraped from a deep, raw place within me. I lay the pen down and sit back, savoring the splash of sunlight that falls off my desk and into my lap. Gingerly, I press both palms to my belly.

Flat. No, worse—empty. I can hear Trevor’s words still, even though it’s been over six weeks since he broke off our engagement.

I’m sorry, Emma. But we’ve wasted enough time trying.

Tears burn in my eyes. If I’d gotten pregnant like we wanted, like we’d been trying for for so long, Trevor would still be here. There’d still be an engagement ring on my finger, and a wedding set for the end of summer.

But now, because of me, it’s all gone.

“Oh, God, Emma. You look dismal.” Lilly Claire, fellow teacher and lifelong best friend, observes me from the open classroom door. Her long blonde waves catch the breeze, and she appraises me with sparkling blue eyes. “Are you writing poetry? Again?”

The humor in her voice, despite everything, brings a smile to my face. I roll my eyes and close my notebook, packing up my bag. “You act like it’s some kind of sin.”

“Sin? You? Come on. You are quite literally the model citizen.”

I meet her at the door, warmed when she wraps an arm around my shoulder. “I’m OK, Lil,” I say seriously. “I swear.”

“I know you think that. And that’s totally fine, babe.” Lilly leads me out into the dazzling sunlight. “But as your best friend, I can’t let you say you’re OK, then go home and mope and write poetry all night.”

Oh. No. I realize where this is going. “No, Lilly, I’m not ready—”

“It’s been six weeks, Em. Six weeks you’ve been hiding your face from the whole damn town, letting Trevor parade all over the place like he didn’t do anything wrong. No more. It’s Friday night, and we are going out.”

Everything in me goes cold and skittish. Waterford, Scotland is a town about as big as a postage stamp. If we go out tonight, to one of only three local pubs, we’re almost guaranteed to run into Trevor.

And worse—his new girlfriend.

“Lilly,” I plead. “I can’t.”

“Look.” She stops when we reach the teacher parking lot, and grabs me gently by the shoulders, her familiar eyes piercing into mine. “I know you feel like your life is over. But Emma, it’s just starting. OK? I have a feeling.”

I bite my lip. “A feeling?”

“Yes. I have a feeling that tonight your whole life is going to start again.”

I smile sadly. I know she’s just saying whatever she thinks I want or need to hear, but something about those words really does resonate with me. A little spark of hope, or want, or even desperation, awakens in my heart.

“OK,” I finally concede. “One drink. And if we see them—”

“If we see them,” Lilly says, her eyes blazing, “I will personally punch them both in the face.”

I grin. Then jolt. “Wait. Lilly. It’s been so long—I mean, I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Oh, please.” She winks, trouble in her voice. “I can help with that.”

* * *

The little red dress is astonishingly tight, hugging every slight curve and putting me on display in a way I’m distinctly not used to.

But it’s no use running. I know Lilly—and my best friend isn’t going to relent until I’ve had at least the one drink we agreed on. So I shuffle nervously into a corner booth, too aware of all the eyes on me, and order a glass of red wine while I wait for her to come back from the bathroom.

“Hey, Em,” says Mrs. Dill, a frumpy old local artist who seems to know everyone’s business before they do. “It’s been a while. How are you holding up?”

“Oh, uh, fine. Actually, I’m good.” I give her a smile. The one she gives back is full of pity. “Really, I’m great.”

“Sure you are, sweetie. It’s so lovely to see you.” She pats my shoulder awkwardly, then joins a group of older women a few tables away. They whisper, eyeing me openly.

My face burns. I quickly down a few desperate gulps of wine. When Lilly finally returns, I’m so relieved I could hug her.

“Fuckers,” she says vehemently, scowling. “You’d think you were the queen or something.”

This is exactly why I’ve been staying in. There’s hardly ever anything interesting happening in Waterford. But Trevor and I were a staple. We’re both locals, and we’d dated since university. Worse, his family owns the biggest real estate firm in this corner of Scotland. Our wedding wasn’t exactly the Met Ball, but it was big.

And now it’s canceled, and everyone in town knows my secret—that no matter how much we tried, I couldn’t conceive.

The shame of it makes me feel sick. I quickly finish my wine and order another. “It’s fine,” I say, in response to Lilly’s prompting look. “I’m fine.”

She grimaces. She feels guilty, I realize. I quickly take her hand.

“Seriously,” I say, forcing a smile. “I had to come out of hiding one way or another.”

Lilly smiles, squeezing my hand. Then her eyes go over my shoulder. “Oh. Shit.”

I know even before he’s spoken that Trevor is behind me. His cologne is still so familiar—nostalgia-tinged and applied just a little too heavily. It turns me liquid with all of the fear, regret, and despair of our last few weeks together.

“Emma!” He comes around the table, and I swear, the whole pub goes quiet. His new girlfriend, a local bartender named Brooke, whose shining black hair and huge blue eyes would make any man’s breath catch, is at his side. “God, it’s great to see you out. We were—well, you know, we were starting to worry.”

My face is so hot it almost hurts. Lilly opens her mouth, already sneering, and I squeeze her hand hard to cut her off. “Hey,” I manage, barely meeting Trevor’s eyes. “No need to worry about me. I’m great! I’m—better than ever.”

“Oh?” Trevor sounds genuinely surprised. “God, that’s a relief. I mean…” He lowers his voice, eyes skirting the pub. “Honestly, if you could tell more people that, you’d be doing me a huge favor. I think I’m going down in history as Waterford’s first villain.”

He laughs. Brooke does too. I manage an awkward titter that earns daggers from Lilly.

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, sure. I’ll tell people. You know. That I’m OK. That I’ve moved on.”

Trevor’s eyebrows go to his hairline. His arm around Brooke’s slender waist tightens ever so slightly. “Moved on? You mean—you’re dating?”

Oh. Damn. I’m suddenly conscious that every eye in the pub is on me. Lilly tightens her grip on my hand—a warning? Oh, God. What have I done? I’m obviously not dating anyone. All I’ve been doing since the breakup is obsessively cleaning, gardening, and writing poetry.

Then again—nobody here knows that. To them I’ve just been AWOL. Maybe that could mean I have a boyfriend. A fantasy boyfriend that would put everyone at ease, sop up some of their pity, and divert Trevor and Brooke’s attention from me.

But I can’t lie about something like that. It’s pathetic, isn’t it?

Lilly meets my eyes. Hers, after a lifetime of knowing each other, are easy enough to read: Well? Lie already!

When I don’t immediately respond, Lilly gives me a swift but discreet kick under the table. “Yes!” Oh, no. This is a bad idea. “Yeah, I—have a boyfriend.”

“That’s incredible,” Brooke says, looking and sounding just a little too eager. Trevor is a little slower to reply.

“Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, that’s great to hear, Emma. Really great.” Then, after a thoughtful, maybe calculated beat. “What’s his name?”

“You don’t know him,” Lilly volunteers. “He’s from out of town.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a name,” laughs Trevor. We laugh too. For a minute, no one says anything. The awkwardness is so tangible it could be cut with a knife. Luckily, Trevor gives before I do. “Well, anyway. We should head. But it was great to see you, Emma. I hope everything works out with that mystery boyfriend of yours.”

“Thanks,” I say, hoping he doesn’t read the falseness of my smile. He and Brooke wave politely and disappear deeper into the pub. I wait until the eyes have peeled off me to down the rest of my wine in a desperate gulp. “Oh my God.”

“Well done, Emma,” says Lilly eagerly, swatting my arm. She’s grinning. “Deceit comes shockingly easy to you!”

I shudder. “I need another drink.”

“Hey, for what it’s worth, I actually think that helped.” Her eyes go around the pub, appraising. “Nobody’s really looking at you anymore.”

“Yeah. OK. Even so. I’m gonna step out. I need some air.” I scramble for my purse, wine-flushed, suddenly drowning in the heat of the pub. “Order me another?”

Lilly winks at me. “You got it.”

I manage to keep my smile up all the way out into the back alley. Then the humiliated, agonized tears start flowing. I root through my purse for the contraband pack of cigarettes I quit years ago, but took up again after the broken engagement. It’s almost full. I’ve only had two or three, and even then, couldn’t get through the whole thing without feeling guiltier, faultier, and more broken than usual.

But right now, I’m desperate. Thunder sounds in the distance, spring rain on the way. I struggle with the lighter as the wind blows.

Somewhere down the alley, an aluminum can bounces off the pavement, skittering to a stop. I scan the dancing shadows and thrown stars of lamplight, but no one is there. No one, at least, that I can see.

I shake myself, my wine buzz starting to really kick in, and light the cigarette. This time it catches, and I inhale a deep, desperate cloud of smoke. The release it triggers is instant, and I sag against the pub wall, closing my eyes, releasing the smoke through my nose.

A faint rain starts, half-hearted and wind-tossed. For a moment, there’s almost a sense of peace in the dark and solitude. I feel my guard drop.

And that’s when a hand clamps hard over my mouth. I open my eyes, but the assailant already has me spun around and pinned to the pub wall. I try to scream, but it’s no use—the hand over my mouth tastes cloying and acidic. I realize in dawning horror that there’s a cloth pressed to my mouth and nose. And it occurs to me, just before the black tide of unconsciousness comes soaring over my head, that what I taste is chloroform.

Is this all that I am?

The words of the poem stick in me like a knife as my body crumples. I expect to hit concrete, but I’m caught instead in powerful arms, and lifted.

There’s a face above me—a familiar one. I think. But the dark is closing in, and my mind is loose as smoke. The last thing I’m aware of is a heartbeat; my ear against a man’s strong chest, and the drumming sound of his life.

Impossibly, it’s a comfort.