Highland Fling

by Emma Baird

  Highland Fling

  Emma Baird

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Highland Fling (The Highland Books, #1)

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

  THE GRATEFUL THANKS BIT

  Sign up for Emma Baird's Mailing List

  About the Author

  To Sandy and Freddie x

  First published 2019

  PRINT ISBN: 978-1-9997738-3-0

  Copyright © Emma Baird 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Enni Tuomisalo of https://yummybookcovers.com

  Published by Pink Glitter Publishing.

  https://emmabaird.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I didn’t mean to smash his heart into smithereens—and they were his words not mine—but if you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs, don’t you?”

  “Stop right there!” My best friend excels at bossiness. She gets up from the sofa and holds a hand out, traffic cop style.

  “Do NOT mix metaphors like that,” she begs. “Please. You’re hurting my ears.”

  She’s a copywriter and very fussy about what people say in front of her. If you ever dare utter, you know? at the end of a sentence, she jumps down your throat. No, I don’t know. That’s why you’re telling me. I cut that habit out after about the hundredth time she said it.

  “Katya!” I too am on the sofa in my soon to be vacated home. I love this sofa. It took me five visits to the SofasRUs (and all on the days when there were sofa sales, so I wasted a lot of bank holidays) to find my perfect one. This is it. Dark red velvet, super squishy and big enough to fit four people, five if you know each other well.

  And tomorrow I say goodbye to this sofa. Just like I wave farewell to the coffee table I rescued from a junk yard, sanded down and varnished myself, the bookshelves I built from flat packs accompanied by a lot of cursing, the laminated floorboards I laid one hot and sweaty weekend, the curtains...

  Gabrielle Amelia Richardson! My mother’s voice. This moping will not do. Katya backs her up. Not in real life, but in my head; the two of them competing to see who can order me around the most.

  Katya rummages through her handbag, and her hand emerges with a large bar of chocolate that she waves in front of me.

  “Okay,” she says, “if you promise not to mix any more metaphors and refrain from terrible clichés, I will break this bar in two and give you half.” She inspects the bar, checking the label. It’s the Oreo cookie one, tiny bits of biscuit crumb encased in thick slabs of chocolate, and it snaps with a satisfying crack.

  “The much smaller half.”

  I am not having that. I lurch forward and grab the bigger bit from her hands, dancing away from her as she shrieks and tries to get it back. My fingers move fast, ripping through purple foil while Katya howls, “No, no, no!” I jam it into my mouth, bite off a quarter and hand it back to her, tooth marks and all.

  All’s fair in love and war, or love and chocolate, right?

  “You pig,” she says, but bites off her own bit anyway, and sinks back into the sofa. I do too, seeing as me and this comfy hunk of red velvet are on the brink of a split. Best I make the most of it.

  We finish the bar between us. Katya holds chocolate-y fingers in the air and wiggles them. I raise my eyebrows, and she lifts the cushion underneath her and wipes them clean on it.

  Not my cleaning problem any more.

  “It’s so selfish of you to move to the ends of the earth,” she pipes up.

  “Hardly,” I say. “They do have public transport in Scotland, you kno- I mean, yes you can get there by train and bus, even plane if you want to.”

  “Not the same,” she says, and she is right. We have lived not more than fifteen minutes from each other ever since we were kids. Even when we went to university, we chose the same city.

  “You’re the one who cheered at the engagement party,” I add, sticking my ring-less hand out so I can place it on her knee. “Or rather, the not engagement.”

  “And I would cheer again. Every single time. I just didn’t think you would do something this drastic.”

  But I don’t have a choice. Not really. Ryan is still at his family’s place in France and he made it clear I was to be gone by the time he returned. He’s got a point too. Despite the lavish sofa and the hand sanded coffee table, this is his house. Ryan works in his family’s garage and car sales company. They had a few rough years during the recession, but car sales have peaked once more. He is fantastically rich, and he owns this house outright. I am a tenant the landlord now wants rid of. Fast.

  Katya gets her phone out and scrolls through the pictures I sent her. She moans about what I am about to do, but it was her idea.

  One week ago when I was still a teary, snotty mess, she marched round to the house, whipped out her laptop and put it in front of me.

  “Cat sitting!” she announced. “I wrote five articles for a website some months ago. You live in a strange person’s house and look after their beloved cat in exchange for free bed and boarding.”

  “But, but, but.” I had plenty of objections. One, you don’t get paid for it. Free lodgings are all well and good but not much fun if you can’t afford to eat. And two, I am, whisper it, not much of a cat fan. Please don’t hate me. I know cat lovers make up a decent percentage of the population and they could tell me plenty of reasons why I’m misguided or deserve to die because of my misguided opinions.

  Katya waved my concerns aside. If I spoke nicely to my boss, Katya said, she might let me work from home or remotely. I am a graphic designer, so I don’t ‘need’ an office only an iMac and an internet connection. And cats, Katya claims, are dead easy to care for. You feed them twice a day and that’s it. At least you don’t need to take them for walks. Or do the dreaded pick up poo after them.

  “And people let you stay in their homes, total strangers, all because they can’t bear the thought of their cat being on its own?” I asked.

  Katya nodded solemnly. She spoke to the people who run the cat sitting agency’s website. Cat owners, it seems, are a devoted bunch. Nothing is too much for dear kitty. They hate the thought of the little beast thinking it’s all on its lonesome. All I needed were references from reputable people—my boss and the minister from our local church who would happily add hers, even though I’m her least regular audience member.

  Neither of us expected my first search to be so successful. I uploaded a pic, wrote a bit about myself and told only a few white lies. I love cats. I have been looking after cats all my life and bam! A few hours later, my phone beeps. You have a n
ew message.

  Hey Gaby, my name is Kirsty. I am 26 years old and I have just split up from my boyfriend and need to get away. The only thing stopping me leaving immediately is my adorable little cat, Mena. She loves our cosy home, so I don’t want to uproot her. Can you help?

  “Fate,” I said to Katya. “She’s my age, and she’s also just split up from someone and needs to get away. It’s like my all-time favourite film, The Holiday, where Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swap homes because they are desperate to escape their ex’s.”

  My butterfly mind skipped ahead to the Jude Law bit where the Cameron Diaz character realises her house swap’s brother is this delightful dude. Could Kirsty have such fabulous relations? Then, I ticked myself off. Getting over Ryan, remember?

  Katya rolled her eyes at The Holiday reference. She isn’t a fan of that movie. “Okay then,” she said, “where does ‘Kirsty just split from my boyfriend’ live?” She zoomed in on Kirsty’s profile.

  “Whaattt! I’ve never heard of this place—Lochalshie. It’s zillions of miles away!”

  “Zillions,” I said. “That’s not a proper word is it?”

  Actually, the idea of moving miles away excited me so much I didn’t bother with any of the other responses. Talk about a fresh start. I’ve lived in Norfolk all my life, and Katya, and I proved what homebodies we are when we both ended up at uni in Norwich. My new ‘job’ would mean not only leaving my county but my country. I was about to ask Katya if she thought I needed a passport to cross the border when I zipped it. I have a habit of letting my mouth work before my brain engages. If that question had ever seen the light of day, Katya would never have let me live it down.

  When someone says Scotland to me, I imagine wild hills and mountains, lochs and out of the way beaches where waves crash against the shore. And I’m a quarter Scottish. Maybe I’ll find cousins up there, a mad, friendly bunch who drink tonnes of whisky and welcome me with open arms.

  I am reluctant to leave my friend, but I promise her we’ll Skype, WhatsApp, FaceTime and everything else that is available to the modern gal. Katya mutters I might be lucky to get internet access in the middle of nowhere, but I dismiss her fears. Blimey, you spot masts left, right and centre these days. We’ll be able to do our daily catch-ups no probs.

  It. Will. Be. Fine.

  She goes quiet, her face focusing on her phone screen.

  I snuggle up closer and check out what she’s looking at. It appears to be the town’s website—stuff to do, places to eat, and all that. She clicks on a link to the gallery and we scroll through pics of last year’s Highland Games.

  “Stop!” I shout before she fingers one of the pictures out of the way. “That one!” She flicks the picture back and blows it up. Who IS this vision? The photo shows a young guy in a dark green and black kilt standing in a field next to a giant log, his hands on his hips and a massive grin on his face. He’s got dark red hair, curls that touch his shoulders and a broad torso expertly displayed in a black, tight tee shirt.

  “That’s Jamie Fraser,” Katya twists her head so she can spot what my face is doing. The same as hers, I suspect—slack-jawed and wide-eyed in astonishment. We are big... No, scrap that. We are Outlander’s number one fans. We’ve read all the books and watched seasons one, two and three together on Amazon Prime, pausing it every time Jamie’s bare-chested. Ryan wasn’t around those evenings.

  I take the phone from her and peer at it closely. “No, it’s not Jamie,” I say eventually, reluctantly. “But pretty darn close.” I squint at the caption. “Says here he’s local resident Jack McAllan, and he’s just won the annual tossing the caber competition.”

  Katya’s eyebrows shoot so high at that I worry she’s about to experience the first non-surgical facelift. They revert to normal, and a grin spreads its way across her face.

  “So, my newly single friend. Off to the wilds of Scotland; where Jamie Fraser’s doppelgänger lives, a dude who is a strong man too. Do you think Kirsty would prefer two cat sitters to look after her precious Mena?!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You’re late.”

  Oof. That’s not friendly, is it? A pity too as when I saw who was waiting for me outside Kirsty’s home, I sent prayers heaven-wards. Katya, guess what? I imagined how the conversation I’d promised her as soon as I arrived would start. Only Jamie bloomin’ Fraser was waiting to greet me in the village. Kirsty had said one of her friends would be waiting with the keys, but she mentioned no names.

  And darn, if he isn’t even better looking than the pictures we saw of him on the town website. In those, he grinned at the camera and his dark-red curls touched his shoulder. Now, his hair’s been cut buzz-cut short. I’m not always a fan of hair you can’t run your fingers through, but the short length of it shows off his razor-sharp cheekbones and a jaw that is at this moment clenched tight. You can see his eyes better too, and they are so dark brown they are almost black. They flash with irritation, instead of laughter and immediately I’m reminded of school and the chemistry teacher who took a dislike to me after I blew up a lab.

  [Hey. You give teenage girls the means to create chemical combinations that are highly flammable and what do you expect to happen?]

  Jack’s dressed in combats too. Perhaps he really is a soldier. The cargo pants mould to his shape, and it looks like he’s giving that black tee shirt from the caber toss win another airing. His foot taps in irritation.

  “You told Kirsty you’d be here at two o’clock. It’s now half-past four,” he says, the eyes turning from annoyance to a full-on basilisk glare. I want to poke my tongue out at him, but I sense such an immature response would only inflame him further.

  “I stopped at Glencoe,” I say. “Isn’t it obligatory?”

  When preparing for my move to Scotland, I read lots of travel blogs. All of them told drivers heading north-west to stop at Glencoe. The A82 road took me that way, anyway. My journey started at eight thirty this morning—half-an-hour later than planned because my farewell to my mum and Katya proved more tearful than any of us had expected. Despite Katya’s jokey promise that she’d be coming too so she could check out Jamie Fraser, in the end, I was the only one to say goodbye to Great Yarmouth. I stuffed my tiny Toyota Yaris with everything I thought I might need—my iMac, my clothes, Wellington boots and a lot of toiletries and food as Mum and Katya both insisted that Scottish villages in the middle of nowhere have no shops—and set off. The minute I reached the Scottish border, the heavens did what everyone tells you always happens in Scotland. They opened and let it all out. Honestly, every cloud reminded me of me, post the engagement party and coming to terms with the non-Ryan future that now beckoned me.

  I made slow progress. Scottish drivers, I decided as I hunched over the steering wheel and peered through the windscreen wipers swishing back and forth, must develop specialist driving skills that make them good at this kind of thing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t master it at all as the occasional angry honk of the horn proved. “Yes, yes,” I muttered at the other cars on the road. “I know you’re allowed to go 60 miles per hour here, but 40 is fine in these conditions isn’t it? Learn some patience.”

  Something miraculous happened as soon as I got to Glencoe though. The travel bloggers all said the same thing. “Glencoe,” they announced, “is the most magnificent sight you will see. The problem is seeing it. Expect shyness from this glorious glen and its surrounding mountains. It rarely likes to peep out from behind the clouds.” Not so for me. A few miles before my car drove through, the rain stopped and the clouds cleared away. Honestly, it was like someone had taken a duster to the skies, rubbed hard and revealed a light polished blue and a bright sun that sent rays down to spots where it lit the whole place up. I had to stop.

  And the minute I did so, I got caught up with two coach loads of tourists, giddy with excitement. The first load had spent a week on the roads, and the rain hadn’t stopped once. They’d travelled to castles, cliff tops, ancient battlefields and more, accompanied all the
time by rain or at least drizzle. Like me, they clung onto the bar at the viewpoint and stared in wonder at the purple-topped mountains glistening in the sunlight. As they were Japanese, most of them had those top-of-the-range cameras and they shoved them at me. “Please, can you take our photos?”

  I don’t get asked that question often as most people use their phones or selfie sticks. It felt like a huge responsibility, so I had to take a lot of photographs. I wanted to make sure when the tourists got home and raved about Glencoe to their friends and families, they didn’t pull up a picture where I’d cut off the tops of their heads or made them so blurry it looked like an alcoholic going through detox had taken the shot. (That might also confirm stereotypes of Scots, my one-quarter only status notwithstanding.)

  Then, the other coach load moved in and didn’t they turn out to be American? I heard one woman excitedly tell her friend that they’d filmed part of Outlander here, and I had to butt in. Katya and I count ourselves as the number one fans of everything Jamie Fraser related, but the woman on this coach tour who introduced herself as Darcy had Wikipedia style knowledge of everything Outlander. She pointed at a particular bit of ground and swore that was where Jamie and Claire had galloped over in series one, episode four. I stared long and hard at it until she pointed out a stone and its proximity to a small stream of water. “That bit there,” she yelped. “Claire got off her horse and bent at the water to drink a little.” I took her word for it. After that, we had to compare our viewing experiences to the book. There, we were in agreement.

  “I love a good book,” my new friend Darcy said. “But Sam Heughan who plays Jamie is exactly how I imagined! Don’t you think?”

  And we were off again. I was on the verge of inviting her to come on a detour to Lochalshie with me when the coach tooted its horn, and a cross-looking tour guide emerged. Darcy’s chat with me had held them up for half-an-hour, and they were eager to get on their way so they could make the next stop on their tour.