“Oh hell.” Mairi let out a breath. “Cosmo said that a cheeky gift would be welcomed after the couple got to know each other a little.”
“I am this close to sitting on you and torturing you until you spit the damn thing out.” Agnes took a step toward her.
“Don’t! It’s sex toys. Okay? Happy now?”
Agnes gaped at her.
Keir groaned. “They’re going to send you sex toys?”
“Only if we get to that stage.” Mairi looked at the flowers. “Toys were number ten on the list. And let’s face it, where would they get them around here? You need to be realistic. You can order flowers to be delivered, maybe even chocolate, but sex toys? I don’t think we need to worry.”
Agnes pinched the bridge of her nose. “Have you told the men this is all a mistake?”
“Not exactly. First, I called Isobel, only to find out that Callum has taken her and the kids to Disneyland Paris, as a honeymoon treat—although, seeing as they haven’t had a wedding, I’m not sure you can call it a honeymoon.”
They glared at her with clear impatience.
“Moving on,” Mairi said. “I didn’t feel right asking to speak to their company hacker, so instead, I spent the day trying to get onto my web page myself. Turns out I have no hacking skills and the site is still locked down tight.
“After that, I spent some time trying to post a rebuttal on the fake Mairi’s Wedding Facebook page, but I’ve been banned. I created another identity so I could post under that, but whoever was running the page realized it was me and banned that one too. So, then I started my own Facebook page, called Mairi Will Never Get Married, and posted a rebuttal on there. Unfortunately, nobody knows the page exists, so I don’t think the guys have seen my message.”
Keir and Agnes just stared at her, and there was a couple of minutes of awkward silence.
“It’s a miracle you can walk and talk at the same time,” Agnes said, with a shake of her head.
Mairi ignored her. “Oh, and when Donna left, she told some of the guys that they shouldn’t be here. So, word did start to get out about this being a mistake.”
Keir did that snorting thing that was supposed to be taken as a mocking laugh. Instead, all it did was remind her that all men were pigs.
“You can leave now,” Mairi told him. “Thanks for the delivery.”
He smirked at her, and Mairi felt her irritation rise. Keir was good at that. Around him, she was always annoyed.
“Donna told them to leave?” Agnes said. “Our sister Donna? The sister who was so worried she’d hurt the feelings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who turned up on her doorstep, that she ended up spending a weekend at a religious retreat? The same sister who is a member of the Bacon of the Month Club, because she couldn’t say no to the telemarketer, even though she’s vegetarian? The woman who works at a job she didn’t apply for, and isn’t qualified for, because she turned up at the owner’s house at the wrong time, and he told her the job was hers? That sister told your men to leave town?”
“You get tiny wee lines between your eyebrows when you’re being sarcastic.” Mairi pointed at Agnes’ face. “Now that you’re thirty, you might want to watch that.” The lines deepened, and Mairi shook her head. “Fine, don’t take my advice, but I hear lines are easier to avoid getting than they are to get rid of.”
Agnes made a low growling sound that would have been scary if Mairi hadn’t heard it all before. Agnes took a step toward Mairi, but Keir’s hand snapped out to restrain her.
“You know,” he said to Mairi, “my offer to help still stands. We can be married in the morning.”
She blinked at him. He was the burr under her saddle. The pebble in her shoe. The thorn in her side. Why he’d come back to Arness, she really didn’t know. It wasn’t like there was enough business to keep him here. His garage only survived because he gave a discount for cars sent to him from Campbeltown. It would be so much better for them both if he moved himself, and his garage, over there.
“I have a plan,” Mairi told Agnes, ignoring the groan she got in reply. “I’m going to hold a meeting, with a whiteboard and bullet points. These guys understand bullet points. I’m going to list all the reasons why I don’t want to get married and make it clear that this is the sick hoax of a bored hacker. All I need is a hall for the meeting, and a whiteboard.”
Keir leaned a shoulder against the wall, his ankles crossed, and his hands in his jeans pockets. He was amused. Which was really annoying, because she wasn’t being funny. Agnes let out another growl, stomped to the living room window and threw it wide open. She put her fingers to her lips and let out a shrill whistle. Silence descended over Arness’ main street.
“Get over here,” she shouted. “Mairi has an announcement.”
Mairi grabbed her sister’s suit jacket and tried to pull her away from the window. “What are you doing? I don’t even have a whiteboard.”
The look Agnes gave her made her think that her sister was considering throwing her out of the window, as a sacrifice to the hordes.
“Fine. I’ll talk. But this isn’t going to go well without visual aids.” Mairi knew her men. They needed diagrams.
She heard murmuring and shuffling from the street below and peeked out from behind the curtain. Sure enough, the men were gathering, just as Agnes had ordered them to. She had a gift for bossing people around. Mairi had long thought it was because in Agnes’ head there wasn’t even a sliver of doubt that she was in charge.
“Get on with it,” Agnes snapped.