Meet Me in Scotland by Patience Griffin Page A

taming his somewhat wild wife and making her,
well
, manageable.
    Emma did as she was told and grabbed her coat. When they walked back downstairs, Emma saw Claire glancing around for Dominic. His swearwords rang out from the kitchen. Claire stomped out the front door.
    Outside, the sky was gray and the air thick with moisture. They picked their way carefully along the boardwalk coated by last night’s sleet and snow. White birds circled above and every few minutes they’d swoop, snatch a fish, then take it to the snowy shore to eat. Ah, a lovely mottle of entrails and blood on the beach.
A picturesque Highland scene.
    Emma glanced over at Claire as they trekked along. “How exactly are we getting to Inverness? Did you and Dominic buy a car?”
    â€œNo,” Claire said, not offering more.
    By now they’d reached the parking lot at the edge of town. Claire didn’t go to one of the parked vehicles but went to an ancient postbox painted green instead.
    â€œOch, Claire,” Emma said in her best snarky Scottish imitation, “are we mailing ourselves, then?”
    Her friend smiled sarcastically and opened the small red door on the front of the postbox. “Ye’re not as smart as ye think you are, Emma Castle. It’s not the post. It’s where we store the keys to the community autos.”
    Sure enough, five sets of keys lay in the innards of the green postbox.
    â€œWho maintains the autos?” Emma asked.
    â€œThe village. We pay as we go. There’s a sign-out sheet at the grocery.”
    â€œClever.”
    Claire retrieved a set of keys and plodded off to the blue Subaru. “Come on. We’ve got a lot to do.”
    Emma got in the car, rehearsing in her head the speechshe was going to deliver to Claire:
patience, compassion, and compromise
. Emma had spent the past three years being in the middle and it was very unpleasant.
Especially when divorce was inevitable
. A sick feeling swept over her—the sticky feeling of a broken marriage and what that ultimately meant.
    Dominic and Claire—
together
—had been a constant in Emma’s life while she’d been drowning in a sea of breakups. The Russos had given her a small inkling of hope that marriage could survive. Not like her parents’ marriage of convenience, but one of love, commitment, and possibly even happily-ever-after. With Dominic and Claire not being
Dominic and Claire
, Emma’s world felt precariously off-balanced, tilted. She just might drop off the edge and never find her way back.
    Claire reached over and squeezed Emma’s hand. “I can feel it. Dominic and I are going to be fine. This little errand is going to remind him just how
fine
we really are.” She slid the key into the ignition. “I just need to remind that Italian Stallion what he loves most in life.”
    â€œAnd what’s that?” Emma dared to ask.
    â€œMy body.”
Claire revved the engine and they were off.
    But it was slow going up the hill because of last night’s sleet. “Tonight I’ll get Dominic straightened out,” Claire said cheerily. “By this time tomorrow, everything will be back to normal. Better than normal,” she added emphatically. “Ye’ll see.”
    Emma did not
see
. She opened her mouth to say so, but Claire derailed her.
    â€œHow long do you think you can stay in Gandiegow with me? It’s been ages, years really, since we’ve had a proper visit.”
    â€œIt depends,” Emma hedged.
    â€œOn what?”
    On how stubborn you can be. How long I can stand being in the middle of this mess.
    And then there was the other factor Emma didn’t even want to examine.
Gabriel
.
    The auto made it to the main road and she breathed a sigh of relief.
    â€œI’m waiting,” Claire reminded her. “How long can you stay?”
    For Emma, it was safer to go back to the rehearsed speech in her head. The problem was, she’d