by Laurel Kerr
“Would you like to work on your stuttering?”
Magnus paused, his blue eyes flitting to hers. He seemed to wage an internal debate before he nodded solemnly. “Aye, lass.”
“I have a file of our first attempt to record your vlog,” June said, pulling it up on her tablet.
“And why is that, lass?”
“I promise I didn’t look at it. I kept it in case it would come in handy. Think of me like a coach going over old plays.”
“You can’t help but help people, can you?”
June shook her head. “It’s who I am.”
“Aye, it is,” Magnus said with a soft grin. “Well, if you’re going to m-m-make me view that shite, put it on.”
As the video played, June laid her hand over Magnus’s. Self-analysis wasn’t easy for anyone, and she knew his disfluency made him uncomfortable. Each time he watched himself during a hard block, he visibly winced.
“I d-d-didn’t know I jerked that b-b-b-badly,” Magnus said as he scowled at the screen. “M-m-my d-d-d-da always did say I looked like a numptie.”
Pain for Magnus lacerated June. She was beginning to form an intense dislike for his father. His daddy might be the one person June could actually hate, and she didn’t believe in that emotion. Knowing any attempt at comfort would only conversely make Magnus uncomfortable, June spoke matter-of-factly. “It’s not unusual for people with disfluency to develop secondary behaviors. August used to tap his thigh with his finger, and I remember my speech pathologist telling me not to pull my ear.”
“So, I need to keep myself steady then, lass?”
“It would help,” she said. “Do you want to say one of the words you usually block on? There’s a mirror right across from us so you can see what you’re doing.”
Magnus complied, and they both watched his articulators carefully. She wasn’t trained in speech pathology, so it was harder for her to pick up on the subtle tensions in his body. Flashbacks to her own therapy sessions popped into her head as she remembered trying to understand what she was doing when she spoke. It was challenging, being so in tune with her speaking habits.
“I think I hold my chest tight, and my tongue gets snirled against the roof of my mouth,” Magnus finally concluded.
“I remember my speech pathologist telling me to focus more on the sides of my chest out at the ribs. If you concentrate on the sternum, you’re not drawing in enough breath.”
“I’ll try that, lass.”
“Do you think this helped?” June asked, feeling uncharacteristically nervous.
“Aye, lass, I do,” Magnus said.
* * *
“So, there’s no instruction manual?” Bowie asked Magnus the next day as he stared at the box of parts spread on the floor of June’s tea shop.
Magnus shook his head. Perhaps he should have bought a new stair lift rather than finding a used one on the internet. The doctors planned to release Clara Winters in a couple days, and June was worried about maneuvering her grandmother up and down the narrow flight of stairs leading to June’s flat above the tea shop. Instead, she and her da were planning on setting up a room for her nan in the sizable pantry off the scullery, which meant June was planning to sleep on the floor.
Magnus didn’t like the idea of June bunking down in a sleeping bag each night, even if she was going to buy a piece of foam to put under it. That’s why he’d purchased the stair lift without telling June. If he’d asked, she never would have let him pay for it. His royalties were just sitting in the bank, and he was a man of simple tastes. His only luxury was his small London flat, and he didn’t even live in a very posh neighborhood.
He’d told June and her father he’d move the boxes from the back room and put them in the attic with Bowie’s help. The two of them had already done that, since June’s nan would need a place to sit during the day. Along with hanging light-blue curtains on the small window, they’d even put a fresh coat of paint on the walls, which Katie had picked out. Now, they were tackling the stair lift…or at least trying to tackle it.
Magnus shifted through the supplies once again. Nothing. He shrugged and pulled out his mobile. He looked up the manufacturer’s website. Luckily, they had instructions and a handy video. He held the phone out to Bowie and said, “Looks easy enough.”
Bowie raised an eyebrow. “If you say so.”
Magnus chuckled. He’d been doing a lot more of that lately. He blamed June. “T-t-t-try keeping an old tractor from the thirties running in the dreich climate that is B-B-B-Bjaray.”
“Dreich?” Bowie asked.
“D-D-D-Damp,” Magnus explained. He’d gotten accustomed to June understanding his slang. Normally, he tried to limit it around the Yanks.
“Remind me to have you take a look at my old truck,” Bowie said with a smile.
Magnus snorted as he grabbed the tape measure from the floor. “I’ve seen it. Even I’m not that good.”
“Har. Har,” Bowie replied.
The installation went surprisingly smoothly. Magnus liked working with the other man. Although Bowie wasn’t as quiet as Magnus, he wasn’t a talker either. They made an efficient team with Magnus mostly directing and Bowie helping. When he’d screwed in the last bolt, Magnus stood and wiped his hands. He glanced at Bowie. “Do you want to give it a go, or should I?”
Bowie bent a little and gestured toward the seat like a maître d’ at a high-end restaurant. “Be my guest.”
Magnus sat down and pressed the button. As expected, the chair moved at a glacial rate, but it got the job done. Magnus rode it up and down a few times, but couldn’t find any glitches. Satisfied, he brought it back to the bottom and climbed off.
“So, you learned how to do all this stuff back on the farm?” Bowie asked.
“And as a roughneck,” Magnus said. “Anything that b-b-broke, we fixed. The wind in the Arctic will freeze your arse off in a second, so you learn to be quick.”
Bowie was quiet as they both packed away their tools. When the zookeeper lifted his head, his expression was serious. “It’s nice what you’re doing. It will mean a lot to June and Clara.”
Magnus nodded brusquely and then concentrated on organizing his wrenches neatly in his toolbox. His da had been a meticulous man, and Magnus had learned early to return everything to its rightful place. The simple task also gave him an excuse not to respond to Bowie’s compliment. Praise had always made him as uneasy as a guillemot protecting its nest from circling gulls.
When they finished the job, Magnus made one quick sweep over the stairs to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. He flicked off the light. Bowie exited first, and Magnus locked the back door with the key June had given him.
When he turned, he found Bowie studying him. “So, you and June, huh?”
Magnus froze. He hated personal questions, but Bowie didn’t seem like he was pressing for gossip to spread like manure in spring. Instead, it felt like something a friend would ask. Magnus glanced at Bowie sideways, debating whether to answer. He was a Gray, and Grays were notorious loners. His schoolmates had never accepted him. The silent laddie from Bjaray with a hermit for a da and a mum who didn’t care enough to stay. The whole isle of Tammay had considered him an odd sort from a long line of odd sorts.
When he’d signed on as a roughneck, he’d learned to live in close quarters. He’d gotten along well enough with his bunkmates, but he’d never become one of them. He’d kept to himself, clicking away at his keyboard when he wasn’t working. They’d called him the Scrivener and mostly let him be. Since then, he’d lived alone. First in Glasgow and then in London. He hadn’t wanted or needed companionship. Now, June had wormed her way into his life. After spending the last week sleeping with her, he couldn’t deny they’d formed some sort of relationship.
And now this. This gesture of friendship from Bowie. He’d brushed off overtures like this before. He shou
ld now. After all, he wasn’t planning on staying in Sagebrush, and he didn’t want to become any more embroiled in this village than he already was.
But he found himself nodding in response to Bowie’s veiled question. “Aye. June and me.”
* * *
June felt as nervous as a possum treed by a bluetick hound. They were finally bringing her nan home. They’d hired a transport service, which had cost a penny so pretty it could’ve won a beauty contest, but her grandmother was too weak to ride in the car. Although Nan had stopped talking about hellfire and the devil, her mind was still as mixed up as scrambled eggs, and it broke June’s heart.
As much as she wanted her grandmother home, June worried something fierce. In the hospital, her nan had a battery of nurses and aides to care for her. In another week, it would be only June. That was as much vacation as her daddy could take from his civilian job at the Pentagon, and her mama needed to return to her job as a director of a charity for at-risk youths. Her friend, Josh, promised to come in a few weeks, but although June would appreciate his support, he wasn’t the nurturing type. His specialty was computers, not people. And there was no telling when August would manage to visit.
But as June kept reminding herself, she had Katie, Bowie, the townsfolk, and, most surprisingly of all, Magnus. The man had stuck by her side the whole time—a steady rock as the foundation of her world had cracked. Even now he sat beside her in the SUV, his hand resting on her thigh as they followed the medical transport van that carried her nan and her parents. He always seemed to sense when she needed his silent support. June was a talker, and so was her mama. She was accustomed to hashing out her problems, but there was something undeniably comforting about Magnus’s quiet strength.
He glanced over as they turned off the main highway into town. “Are you doing all right, lass?”
She sucked in an unsteady breath. “It’s going to be hard. It was difficult watching Nan lying on that hospital bed, but it’s at least a place where people who are sick go to heal. Back home…I just think it’s going to hit me harder.”
There. June had finally put words to the tension simmering inside her since the doctors had mentioned her grandmother would be released. June hadn’t quite found a way to define it before. Understanding the emotion made it a little easier to handle.
Magnus patted her leg, but he didn’t try to placate her. She liked that about him. He didn’t dismiss her feelings. He just offered her his steadying presence. That, more than any false assurances, grounded her.
When they pulled up to the tea shop, tears stung the back of June’s eyes as she spotted the sign hanging in the window that read: Welcome home, Clara & June! She did love this town. Magnus leaned close and told her, “Katie’s doing.”
“I love it,” June said as she unbuckled her seat belt. But as she reached for the door handle, the enormity of the situation slammed into her. A sob escaped her throat, and those pesky tears dripped down her face.
Magnus gently turned her in his direction. Using his callused thumb, he brushed away the wetness. “You are a strong woman, June Winters. So is your nan. You’ll both get through this.”
June nodded, sniffing back more tears. He was right. She could manage. Taking another deep breath, she turned and resolutely opened the door. She straightened as she exited the car and marched straight into the tea shop. It would take a while to bring her grandmother into the house from the transport van, but she needed to make sure the place was ready. She knew Katie, Bowie, and Magnus had prepared the pantry, but she wanted to make sure everything was in place.
She walked through the main room, trying not to notice how empty it felt for this time of day. The chairs were all pushed under the tables, the display case bare, the blackboard behind it blank. She swore the place even smelled musty after being shut up for a week.
June moved quickly, and not just because Nan needed her. She practically charged through the kitchen and had just started to pass the stairs to reach the back room when she spotted it. The chair lift.
More tears filled her eyes. She turned to Magnus wordlessly. He’d done this. She knew it.
“B-B-Bowie helped,” Magnus told her. “We installed it three days ago.”
She stood on her tiptoes and touched his cheek, his beard bristly against her palm. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then she kissed him. Soft and sweet. His hand rested on the small of her back, warm and steady. She pulled away and finally managed one of her trademark smiles. What was it about this man that made her feel so good when everything else was going so wrong?
“It was nothing, lass,” he said. “I like t-t-t-tinkering. It was no t-t-t-trouble.”
June knew Magnus didn’t accept compliments easily and noticed his disfluency had increased. Gently, she held his face and forced him to stare into her eyes. She let her warm gratitude show. “I love it, Magnus. It will mean so much for Nan and me. We would’ve been like sardines stuffed into that back room.”
Beneath the discomfort in Magnus’s eyes, she spied warm pleasure. Leaning forward, she sneaked another kiss…this time on his nose. His eyes widened with surprise.
“I’d give you a better one, but we don’t have the time, darlin’.” She patted his cheek one last time before heading to the back door. When she opened it, the driver of the transport was helping her grandmother down from the van under the watchful eye of June’s parents. Both men assisted Nan up the steps and into the tea shop. Although her gran could walk, she remained unsteady and weak.
When her grandmother entered, she looked around in confusion. “Why are we here? I thought I was going home.”
June reached forward and squeezed her grandmother’s hand. “You’re going to stay with me for a while. Won’t that be fun!”
Nan appeared entirely unconvinced, and June tried not to take it to heart, but she felt a little twinge anyway. She’d been getting better, though, at accepting her grandmother’s unfounded doubts and criticisms.
June’s dad patted his mother’s shoulder as he led her to the comfortable armchair that Magnus and Bowie had moved from Nan’s house. “June is going to take good care of you, Mum.”
Nan brushed her hand over the fabric of the armrest before she allowed her son to ease her into a more comfortable position. She’d lost weight during her hospital stay, and she looked frail and a little lost perched in her wing chair. There was an innocent look on her face as she watched them owlishly. “I am cold.”
“I’ll get a blanket,” June said brightly. Too brightly. Using the task as an excuse, she turned quickly, hoping no one saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. She grabbed a warm afghan folded neatly on a nearby rocking chair. It was Nan’s favorite, and another torrent of tears threatened to fall as June realized Katie must have remembered and instructed the guys to place it there.
Once covered up, her nan promptly fell asleep, her mouth agape. The blanket slipped, and June watched as her father gently rearranged it. June turned before she started bawling like a newborn and woke her nan.
Slipping from the small room, she found Magnus waiting for her in the kitchen. He watched her, his blue eyes solemn and supportive. “Has she settled in, lass?”
June nodded. “Yes. She’s asleep already.”
“That’s good, right?”
She nodded, but the tears started to bubble up again. Before they spilled over, she walked straight to Magnus and buried her head against his chest. It felt so good, holding all that coiled strength. He didn’t say anything, but he brushed his large hand over the back of her head, the gesture undeniably tender. Magnus could convey more in a caress than most men could in a thousand text messages.
Her parents exited the back room, and Magnus pulled away. He was shy about touching her around her parents. Considering the newness of their relationship, that didn’t surprise June. But over the past few days when she’d really needed his strength, Magnus had always give
n it.
With her grandmother in the hospital, her parents hadn’t asked her too many questions about her new beau. They’d just accepted his presence. June knew her mama had a million, though. Once her grandmother got settled, her mother was going to corner June. Not that she minded. Despite the distance between Sagebrush and DC, she chatted with her mother every day on the phone, and they’d always talked about relationships.
She’d rarely talked to her dad about boys. But she’d never forgotten what he’d told her after her first breakup when he’d found her crying in her room. He’d looked at her and said matter-of-factly in his gravelly voice, “June, that boy was only a stepping-stone in your life. He helped you grow, but it’s time you moved on to another. If you keep standing still, you’ll never find your path. And one day, you’ll meet a man who isn’t a stepping-stone, but a cornerstone.”
That advice had steadied June through the years. Her friends always told her she had the healthiest outlook on dating, and she credited her daddy’s wisdom.
Her father hadn’t spoken to her about Magnus, nor had he made a big deal about grilling him. Unlike the stereotypical, strict military dad, he trusted June to make her own choices, especially when it came to men. But although her daddy hadn’t given his opinion, she sensed his silent endorsement. After all, June didn’t know what son wouldn’t approve of a man who’d pitched in to help his mum, even if that man was also dating his daughter.
But that didn’t stop Magnus from acting as nervous as a chicken with a hawk circling overhead when her daddy caught them touching. June found it sweet—this bashful side of Magnus. Since he otherwise seemed so stoic, so in command, she liked watching him shift from foot-to-foot like a teenage boy about to take a girl to the prom.
“Daddy,” June said, pulling her father over to the stairs, “look what Magnus installed.”
