“Utterly mad, and utterly brilliant… if you really want to.” He looked at her seriously as Laurel’s heart thumped a hard, staccato beat. “I’ve been cursing myself a stupid, frightened fool for letting you go. Practically pushing you away. But I was scared, lass, I have to admit it. I was scared to admit how much I’d come to care about you, scared of being left again.”
“I shouldn’t have left. I didn’t want to. I care about you, Archie.”
They stared at each other with wide eyes as the kirk’s bells began to ring.
“Oh, kiss her already, you great, bliddy fool,” someone shouted, and Archie laughed, a question in his eyes. A question Laurel answered easily, wonderfully with her own look.
And then his arms were around her, and his lips were on hers, hard and soft, wonderful and right, and she knew she’d come home. To Orkney, to Archie. To everything.
“I would have come,” Archie said as they broke apart. “If you hadn’t first. I would have come and found you. I was just working up the courage.”
Laurel laid her hand against his cheek. “I know you would have,” she said, because now she did.
And then they kissed again, as everyone around them cheered and the bells rang in the new year, with all of its hope and joy.
Epilogue
One year later
“The potatoes are burning!”
“I’ve got them, lass.”
Archie slotted Laurel a loving, laughing look as he whisked them off the top of the Aga. Aon, or maybe Dha, or Tri—Laurel still couldn’t tell them apart—sniffed hopefully at his feet.
It was Christmas Day, four months after their wedding at the kirk in Stromness, and they were having everyone over for dinner. Abby and Zac, who were living in Kirkwall, and Laurel’s father, who had come up for the week from Scarborough. Archie’s father was coming too, a day trip from his nursing home, and Eilidh had decided her joints could manage a winter in Orkney and would be walking across the paddock any moment.
The kitchen—and their hearts—were full.
It had been a wonderful, crazy, and sometimes difficult year, learning to live in Orkney, and falling in love with Archie. Laurel had moved to a rented cottage in Stromness with her cat Mistral, missing her friends back in York but knowing deep in her bones that she was doing the right thing. She and Archie had started dating, even if it had felt like they were miles beyond chitchat and movie nights.
Then, three months after Laurel had moved to Orkney, over dinner in Archie’s cluttered kitchen, he’d laid down his fork and given her a serious look.
“I can’t do this anymore, lass,” he said, and Laurel had stared at him in disbelief and a little concern.
“What…”
“This dating business. I’m forty-five now, and you’re thirty-six. We’re too old for this.”
“What… what are you suggesting?”
“Let’s do it properly and get married. I know I want to marry you, and I hope you want to marry me. I want to start a real life together, not this faffing about.” His expression softened. “And I want a bairn or two, if God wills it.”
Laurel’s heart had somersaulted as she’d let out a wobbly laugh. “Was that a proposal?”
Archie looked abashed. “Not very romantic, was it?”
“It was perfect.” She threw her arms around him. “And very you. The answer is yes.”
They picked out a ring in Kirkwall the next day, a local piece of twisted silver and freshwater pearls. And they started planning their wedding, a community celebration,
a joyous occasion that was everything Laurel had wanted and more.
Over the last year she’d got firmly involved in the small Orkney community—knitting circle, book club, food bank volunteer, church member, Archie’s wife. She’d made friends, and she’d travelled to York a few times to visit her old ones, and over the last four months Mistral had learned to tolerate Aon, Dha, and Tri, who, rather inexplicably, treated the cat like a little sister.
And now Christmas. The best Christmas yet, with stockings full of treats by the fire in the sitting room, and a roast turkey glistening on the kitchen table, nearly bowed under the weight of all the food.
“Anyone home?” Eilidh called as she opened the kitchen door, and Laurel hurried to greet her.