by Anna Larner
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Highland Fling
Eve Eddison describes her ideal woman to her best friend, Roxanne, over pints in their local pub a few days before she travels to the Scottish Highlands. There she falls head over heels for an enigmatic local, Moira Burns, and the usually reticent Eve wants more than a holiday romance. Forestry officer Moira Burns has no intention of letting go—either of past pain or for present pleasure. If that means she misses out on her chance at happiness, so be it. Convinced Eve is headed for heartbreak, Roxanne advises her to let Moira go…but has Eve found her ideal woman at last?
From the breathtaking Highlands of Scotland to the buzz of a Leicester gay bar, family and friendship are tested to breaking point, as letting go proves painfully hard.
Highland Fling
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eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
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eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
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Highland Fling
© 2017 By Anna Larner. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-854-2
This Electronic book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: April 2017
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Ruth Sternglantz
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
Acknowledgments
A novel isn’t the work of one person but the joyful result of many people’s contribution.
A heartfelt thank you to the BSB team, in particular, Len Barot, Sandy Lowe, and Ruth Sternglantz.
To my awesome beta-readers, Bridget, Jen, Kay, Lis, Rita, Sue G, Sue L, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your amazing support.
To my wonderful family and friends—thank you for your love.
Highland Fling would not exist without my partner, Ang—for whom thank you is not enough.
Dedication
For Ang
Chapter One
“Hottie alert! Two o’clock.” Roxanne ran her hands through her hair and brushed away the debris of prawn-cocktail flavoured crisps from her chest.
“Where?” Eve looked around the heaving pub, trying to tease out individuals from the entangled mass of jeans, T-shirts, and hair gel.
Roxanne grabbed Eve’s arm. “Don’t look round.”
“Right, so I’m supposed to look without looking?”
“Uh-huh. That’s right, Evie—like how you get dressed in the morning,” Roxanne said with a smirk.
“Yeah. Anyway. Don’t let me forget to give you my spare keys. Rox?” Eve poked Roxanne in the ribs to get her attention.
“Ouch. What?”
“My holiday. You haven’t forgotten already, have you?”
“Oh, yeah.” Roxanne flicked at the rings of wet on the table, spritzing Eve in eau de lager.
“Nice, Rox, really nice.” Eve screwed her face in disgust at her beer-stained shirt. “Remind me again why I’m letting you stay in my flat while I’m away.”
Roxanne shrugged, her gaze straying, like a tomcat, in the direction of the hottie. “Because you feel sorry for me living in nurses’ accommodation and you need someone to water your plants.”
“Yeah, one of those is true. So you remember what we discussed? No sex in my bed.” Eve watched a mischievous smile break across Roxanne’s face. “Bin day’s Tuesday. Best to put the rubbish out Monday night as they come, like, super early. Oh, and Rox, the funny noise you hear when you run the bath—”
“Completely normal.”
“Exactly. Oh, and the washing machine door—”
“Sticks and I’m not to overwater the cactus, or leave the television on standby, or flirt with the neighbour but one, or forget to check your postbox, blah-blah-blah.”
“Well…yes—”
“Oh God, she’s coming over. Casual, Eve, casual.” Roxanne’s voice strained to an octave higher than usual.
The approaching woman was somewhere in her twenties and had chosen to complement her cropped vixen-red hair with a low-cut blouse and denim skirt, which every so often she tugged at to prevent from riding up.
“Oops, nearly.” The woman giggled, smoothing her skirt back in place, as she perched one hip on the edge of their table.
Roxanne was enthralled. Eve suspected by Roxanne’s wide eyes that she was thinking, Please God let her drop something.
Roxanne cooed, “Hi, gorgeous, how’s things?”
Eve raised her eyebrows at Roxanne, who ignored her.
“I just thought I’d say hi. So hi.” The woman dragged out hi as if she was striking the first note of a song. “I’m Belinda.”
“I’m Roxanne—feel free to call me Roxy.”
Eve couldn’t help but notice that despite a valiant effort to make polite eye-to-eye conversation, Roxanne couldn’t quite manage to raise her eyes above Belinda’s ample chest line.
“And I’m Eve, pleased to meet you.” Eve gave a closed-mouth smile in Belinda’s direction.
“Well, it was nice to meet you both. So, see you around.” Belinda winked at Roxanne, drifting her hand across Roxanne’s shoulder, the tips of her fingers lightly caressing the nape of her neck.
Utterly spellbound, Roxanne’s entranced stare followed every hypnotic sway of Belinda’s curvaceous hips as she slipped back into the crowd.
“Wow,” Roxanne gasped. “I need another. You’re nearest. Two more pints and don’t forget the crisps.”
“Oh my God, Rox, I can’t even see the bar.”
Roxanne glanced at the thronging, pressing crowds and then at Eve. “Elbows out and show no fear.”
Standing on tiptoes, Eve shouted her order to the barman. Her trip to the bar left her dishevelled and mildly traumatized. Eve looked back at the crowds, at the faces she saw each Saturday night.
It wasn’t that The Brewer’s Arms was the only gay pub in the Midlands, it just seemed to be the place everyone gravitated towards, the familiar life-worn face in a world of strangers. It felt like every important event, each birthday, any cause of celebration in Eve’s life had been marked by a pint in The Brewer’s. And now Eve was older and so was her favourit
e pub. Eve looked at the carpet, which once had a pattern of sorts and now appeared plain. The uneven walls, once bright white, would likely be described in Farrow & Ball’s paint chart as Tobacco Yellow. Tufts of royal blue velour fabric, sticking out from between seat and arm, merely hinted at the luxurious upholstered seating of the past. And the loos—well, Eve sighed—in many ways it was a shame that the toilet in best repair was the one without the lock. And if it was Saturday night and you had not claimed a seat by nine o’clock, then Eve was all too aware that you’d likely be standing, leaning on something sticky, for the rest of the evening.
She was thankful for Roxanne’s unstinting dedication to drinking and to watching Saturday afternoon sport on the pub’s television, for this meant that more often than not they secured their favourite booth in the bay of the front window.
A slow smile drifted over Eve’s face, as she wondered what she would do without her best mate.
Eve Eddison had first met Roxanne Barns at the age of nine. Roxanne had shown her precisely where she could hang her pump bag, which teacher was nice, and who to avoid. As they grew older, it was Roxanne Eve turned to with her worries—she was her ally against the mad world.
Eve, in turn, had always been there for Roxanne: from homework and job applications; to food and frequent shelter; to gentle words of consolation, many mornings after many misspent nights before. Eve knew they were more than just best friends, they were family.
Eve weaved her way back to her seat, crisp bags dangling from her mouth, her cheeks tingling with the concentration of carrying two overflowing beers.
Eve slid next to Roxanne. “I swear there’s more beer in my shoes than in the glass.”
“Yeah, whatever. We, my lovely, are hatching a plan.”
“Really? That sounds exciting.” Eve was intrigued, if a little nervous as to what exploits she was about to be dragged into.
“To find you a woman,” Roxanne firmly asserted.
“What, I mean, why?” Eve felt herself blush and took a long glug of her beer.
“When did you last have a date?”
“A date?”
“Yes, a date. You know—agree to meet someone. Have a drink, meal maybe. Go back to theirs. Lez on.”
“Lez on?” Eve giggled. “Well, a couple of months back—you remember, Janie. You know, Gym Janie, who can lift her own body weight with one arm.” Eve proceeded to give an impression of someone lifting weights. “Although, come to think of it, it was less sexy than wrestle-y, one-er, two-er, three-er.” Eve shook her head at the memory.
Eve had always joked about the women she had fancied. On reflection, she could never imagine falling in love with any of them. Romances had ended before they had begun and Eve worried that she’d spoken with more affection about her childhood pet goldfish than any former lover.
It didn’t help that Eve was also absolutely oblivious to those who fancied her, prompting Roxanne to often tease Eve for her lack of gaydar skills. Conversations would frequently end with Roxanne exasperated, complaining, “What do you mean she’s just being friendly. She didn’t offer to buy me a drink.”
Seeing Roxanne’s I can’t believe you bought us cheese-and-onion crisps when I’ve just pulled expression, Eve said, “They’re my favourite. I’m sorry, Rox. I didn’t think.”
Roxanne shook her head. “That’s not your problem.”
“What’s not my problem?”
“Not thinking. You think too much,” Roxanne declared in a spirit of intervention.
“I don’t get you.” Eve crunched in reply.
Roxanne moved the crisps away. “You think too critically about the girls you like and not enough action. You’re too, how can I put it—”
“Appropriately selective?” Eve suggested with a shrug.
“Reticent.”
“Reticent!”
“You overthink things, mate—you seem to be looking for the one, when you should be looking for the many.”
“Well thank you for that observation, Nurse Barns,” Eve said, smiling.
“Don’t you go thinking that that advice is free, just because I work for the NHS. It’ll cost you a pack of plain crisps.”
Eve went a little quiet, serious.
“Look, I have a fab idea, Evie. Let’s list down what you want in a woman. You know—physical features, personality, et cetera.” Turning over a dog-eared beer mat to the less stained side, Roxanne divided the small card space into two, with looks on one side and personality on the other. “Right, what do you want her to look like? Her, of course, who is one of many.”
“I don’t know, Rox.”
“Think, Eve.”
Eve could discern a certain frustration in Roxanne’s voice. “Okay, well…I don’t know, maybe—”
“Spill,” Roxanne asserted. “This is no time for shyness.”
“I quite like an older woman.” Eve spoke the words into her beer. It felt very much as if she was revealing the details of a guilty crush.
“Please don’t say Nigella Lawson, as I can confirm there are no Nigella lookalikes in this bar this evening.”
Eve shook her head slowly. She thought Roxanne’s game was kind of fun.
“Right, well, older woman, that’s a start.” Roxanne looked at her two columns.
“It’ll probably need to go into both,” Eve suggested, as she leant over her friend’s shoulder.
“Will she have her own teeth?” Roxanne added without a hint of a smirk.
Eve gave Roxanne a withering expression in reply.
Roxanne held her hands up. “Just checking, mate. Okay, hairstyle.”
“Curly.”
“Curly? Since when has curly been a hairstyle?”
“What can I say, I like curly hair.”
Roxanne gave Eve a look that said You’d better not be taking the piss. “Right, old with curly hair—that’s narrowed it down, narrowed it down to my gran’s care home.”
“I didn’t say old, I said older. And I like someone who’s brave and intelligent, yet intriguing and private.” Eve could sense Roxanne was already getting bored. “Rox?”
“Yep.” Roxanne nodded as she wrote the words under the right-hand column.
Eve continued, “Sort of broody, maybe, with a clear sense of herself—but not a sulky big gob. And she has to be kind, and honest, and trustworthy.” Eve nodded to herself.
Looking down at the list and doing a surveying sweep of the room, Roxanne quipped, “I think hair straighteners are in.”
Eve looked around. “Okay, I don’t want to alarm you, but I reckon we are amongst the oldest in this bar.”
“Nonsense.” Roxanne shook her head, as if refusing to accept any suggestion that they were past it. “We’re only twenty-six.”
“I didn’t know you were nearly thirty,” Belinda remarked with a surprised tone, reappearing at their table as surreptitiously as the draft from an open door.
“Like I said, we’re twenty-six and in the mix.” Roxanne clambered from the booth, slung her arm over Belinda’s shoulder, and gave her a squeeze, adding, “What are you drinking?”
Belinda slipped seductively into their booth as she requested, “Cider—a pint, honey.”
“I’ll come with you to the bar,” Eve said, taking care to tuck the heavily inked beer mat into her pocket.
As they waited to be served, Eve leant in to Roxanne to confess, “I like outdoorsy types—Land Rovers, that kind of thing.”
“Really?” Roxanne giggled and then looked puzzled, shortly followed by an expression of concern. “What, like the Queen drives? Oh my God. Please don’t tell me you fancy the Queen.”
The barman looked at Eve.
“No. Why would I fancy the Queen?” Eve spoke as much to the barman as Roxanne. “In any case, I’m not overly keen on corgis.”
“You’re a worry, Eddison.” Roxanne shook her head, paid the barman, and took a deep intake of breath in Belinda’s direction, exhaling, “I’m going in.” Before she could add, You can hav
e my k.d. lang collection if I don’t make it out alive, Eve was turning away to head to the loo.
*
Although the toilets of The Brewer’s Arms were not a place to loiter any longer than absolutely necessary, what Roxanne had suggested was making Eve linger and think. She couldn’t help but wonder: Was she too reticent? She really liked women, and it wasn’t that the women out there weren’t fun, or nice, or in any way not good looking, it’s just that they left her feeling kind of empty.
The dim lighting in the toilet just about gave Eve enough light to check her look in the cracked full-length mirror. She couldn’t decide whether the twenty-six-year-old woman looking back at her would be considered good-looking or not. Was her short brown hair, with side parting, too tidy to be trendy? Did her favourite scarf, casually draped around her neck, evoke dusty travels across Asian continents or the onset of middle age? Eve couldn’t decide. She thought her fitted grey T-shirt, white linen shirt, faded blue jeans, and beaten-up canvas shoes looked kind of cool, and gave her just enough of the confidence she needed to step back out into the crowded bar.
Their table was now packed with Belinda’s friends. Roxanne and Belinda were pinned up a corner—not that they seemed to mind. The thought of staying any longer, the third wheel once again, was frankly depressing.
“I’m going to head off.” Eve nodded to the door. “I’ve got packing and stuff to do. Rox?”
“Yeah, I’ll call you later,” Roxanne said, without taking her eyes off Belinda and her low-cut top.
Pulling on her jacket, the doors of The Brewer’s Arms swinging closed behind her, Eve made her way out into the street. A few yards down the road she heard, “Eve. Evie wait.”
Eve looked behind her to see Roxanne striding up the street towards her.
“Hey, Rox. You didn’t want to stay after all?”
Catching her breath, Roxanne said, “You forgot to give me your keys, plonker.”
