live cheerfully.
Sir Walter Scott
Rob Roy
Overlooked by a surly red Highland bull watching from beneath a shaggy forelock in a nearby pasture, Anna bumped Elspeth’s old Volvo station wagon along the single-track road toward the village. Loch Fàil, the long, narrow loch, sparkled on her right, and puffs of white clouds drifted above the braes that ringed the valley.
“Mind the sheep ahead,” Elspeth said as they passed the bright turquoise Braeside Hotel on the hill and approached the bend by the rowan tree. “Davy Grigg never can seem to keep them contained. In part because they’re smarter than he is, and in part because he takes the entire day delivering the mail and gabbing. Most of all because he’s got paralysis of the trousers and can’t abide a lick of farm work.”
“I’ve met his sheep, thanks very much,” Anna said, “and since I almost ran into a bog trying to avoid them, I’m not so sure that people in the village are going to believe I’m halfway competent.”
“You’re not the first those sheep have done in, believe me.” Elspeth chuckled and reached over to pat Anna’s hand on the steering wheel. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that Davy’d cut a deal with Brice MacLaren up at the garage to tow tourists out of the muck. You’re only lucky Connal called me first.”
Anna’s thoughts about Connal’s behavior that first night had little to do with luck, but since he’d apologized and explained, she couldn’t hold a grudge. She’d lain awake half the night thinking about him and Moira and the whole situation, and she couldn’t decide who was right. She felt responsible, though, because it had been her own setbacks that had given Elspeth the idea of bringing her to the glen in the first place and gotten the village’s hopes up about increasing tourism. She was here to organize the festival—that had to be her first priority, no matter how much she understood Connal’s concern for Moira.
They were two people. Two. In a village of over a hundred.
The problem was, Moira was incredibly sweet and vulnerable, and when he was being kind and worried about his daughter, Connal MacGregor was intriguing. Charming.
Dangerous to Anna’s thinking.
Pushing the thought away, Anna forced her concentration back onto the road.
Seen in daylight, there were fewer buildings than she’d expected for the size of the population. Apart from the white harled stone homes along the road and those dotted throughout the valley and surrounding hillsides, there was only the modern church beside the ruins of the old one, the shop with an array of breads, pastries, muffins, and scones in the front window, the Library and Tea Room in its look-at-me shade of Pepto Bismol pink, and The Last Stand Inn at the very end of the lake.
“Turn here.” Elspeth pointed to the other single-track road that led past The Last Stand, where the village meeting about the festival was being held.
The L-shaped inn was vaguely Tudor-looking, its white stone walls topped by a steep-pitched roof and its windows framed in wood stained dark by age. Cars and mud-splattered trucks packed the shoulders on both sides of the lane in front of it. Anna searched for a spot to park.
“Watch out!” Elspeth cried, her arm flashing out as if she could pin Anna to the seat.
An enormous golden retriever bounded into the road, tongue lolling and tail wagging.
Anna swerved and headed straight into a blue Toyota parked beside her. She jerked the wheel back and jammed the brake, but that only lessened the angle at which the two cars scraped with a sickening screech of metal. The Volvo shuddered to a stop straight in front of the inn, where people were already pouring from the entrance.
“Shame, you idiot,” Elspeth muttered, glaring at the dog then turning to Anna. “Are you all right, love?”
Anna sat there shaking, and she wasn’t the one on the side of the Volvo that had hit the other car. “I’m sorry. Yes, I’m fine. I’m an idiot, but I’m fine. You? Are you hurt?”
“I didn’t mean you were the idiot. It’s Shame—Seumas—the blasted dog that belongs to Duncan Macara.” Elspeth gestured at the retriever who now sat in the center of the road with his head cocked, staring at the car as if waiting to see if it would do something else as interesting as the crash. “I swear, Davy’s sheep are smarter. And easier to keep corralled.”
Someone tapped on Anna’s window. Intent on the dog, she jumped in her seat and found Brando standing at her window. Still wearing his kilt and tactical boots, he had no jacket this time, only a pale blue T-shirt stretched taut across his arms, chest, and shoulders. Beyond him, people spilled out the door of the inn, many of them familiar to Anna already from her encounter with the sheep, including Davy Grigg and the innkeepers, Flora Macara and her husband Duncan, who owned the dog.
With a sigh, Anna rolled the window down. “I don’t suppose you’d believe,” she said to Brando, “that I’d never had an accident in my entire life before I got here?”
His green eyes laughed at her. “I’ll be happy to pretend I believe you.” He leaned down to address Elspeth across in the passenger seat. “You want me to take the car into town or let Brice have it? Either way, he’s likely got a car you can borrow in the meanwhile.”
“No car,” Anna said. “From now on, I’m walking everywhere. Or I’ll take a cab—if you have cabs here.”
“For you? I’m always good for a lift.” Brando grinned again, waggling his eyebrows at her.
Elspeth groaned and leaned her elbow on the Volvo’s center console to shake her head at him. “Whose Toyota is that? Tell me it’s not Rhona’s new one. What in the world’s the bloody woman doing driving here when she lives a hundred yards up the road?”
“Trying to make sure everyone sees what she’s bought,” Brando said.
“And now she’ll be demanding a new one at the expense of my insurance.”
“My insurance,” said Anna.
“Not on your life—it ought to be Duncan’s insurance if it’s anyone’s, but we’ll worry about all that later.” Elspeth let out a hiss of breath. “Aye, take the car to town tomorrow, please, Brando. If you can spare the time. Park it for now so we don’t miss the meeting.”
“The meeting’s moved out here, it seems to me.” He waved a hand to indicate the gathering crowd and opened Anna’s door, stepping aside to let her out.
Red-faced, Anna considered insisting that she was perfectly competent to park on her own, but who was she kidding? She’d already proven her incompetence the past few days. Really, it was time to crawl back into bed for a week and pull the covers over her head.
She climbed out of the car and had to stand watching, furious with herself, while Brando slid into the driver’s seat without so much as ruffling his kilt. He backed the car away from the Toyota with another ear-jarring screech of metal. A well-preserved woman with an hourglass figure and streaked blond hair emerged from the pub. Shrieking at the sight of the car, she rushed forward on precarious stiletto heels, the flowing fabric of her red dress wrapping around her legs in the wind. Two surly and identical teenage girls followed in her wake.
“What did you do to my car?” she demanded.
“Only a little scrape, Rhona,” Elspeth called out the window as Brando set the car in drive again and lurched it forward. “Terribly sorry, but I’ll make it right—”
“You’d better.” The woman glared as Brando drove away, then she turned to gape at the damage to her car, clutching her small black cashmere cardigan around herself more tightly in the cold. Her expression hardened, and she set off after the Volvo with a determined stride and her daughters trailing behind her.
Anna stood at the side of the road, uncertain what to do. Cheeks burning, she didn’t want to turn to face the assembled crowd.
Flora Macara came over and squeezed her shoulder with a beaming smile of reassurance. “Don’t you worry about Rhona. Elspeth and Brando will sort her out.”
“I should at least go and admit that it was my fault,” Anna said.
“Don’t you feel one whit bad about any of this. There isn’t a soul in this glen that Seumas hasn’t gotten into trouble at one time or another.” Flora’s gaze shifted to where her husband had seized hold of Shame by the collar and was wrestling the retriever back inside the inn from whence, presumably, he’d escaped.
Tall and big-boned, with no makeup and a shapeless dress that had seen too many washings, Flora might have been considered plain except for the fact that her smile was clearly a force of nature. She was the type of woman, Anna suspected, who could wield kindness like a weapon.
“I keep threatening Duncan I’ll give him away one of these days,” Flora continued. “The dog, I mean, not my husband. Though no one’d take either one of them off my hands, and that’s a fact. But come on inside. I’ll get you a drink. You’re shivering.”
Anna didn’t dispute the need. She waded through the villagers in Flora’s wake, murmuring an embarrassed “hello” to the people she recognized—the people who had managed to witness the aftermaths of both her accidents—and nodding and smiling at the unfamiliar faces who pressed in to introduce themselves. They were universally amused, but not unsympathetic.
A sandy-haired barrel of a man with a wind-burned face opened the door to the inn for them as Flora and Anna approached. Inside, the lobby was off on the right, while to the left a wide doorway revealed the half-timbered pub fitted with booths and tables, many of them already occupied. Flora slipped behind the bar. “What can I get you, Anna?”
“My dignity back?” Anna suggested, prompting a laugh from the people who’d come in behind her.
“How about a Scottish coffee instead?” Flora asked. “It’s like Irish, except with Scotch, and I throw in a dash of citrus liqueur.”
“Sounds lovely, but it’s barely noon. A bit early for me to start drinking.”
“Nonsense. Never too early to start when you’ve been Shamed.”
Shamed.
It was, Anna thought, the perfect way to describe the last week of her life. And after her two accidents, how was she supposed to stand up in front of all the people who were watching her with equal parts curiosity and amusement to explain the plans she and Elspeth had spent half the night working out?
Turning to look for Elspeth, she found Connal MacGregor instead, entering the pub to the accompaniment of bells and ducking his head to keep from banging it on the low lintel above the door. He was backlit with a faint shimmer around the baseball-style cap he’d pulled low over his forehead, and he was already staring back at her as he started across the room. As if she wasn’t already mortified enough, Anna felt her cheeks heating. She raised her hand in a lukewarm greeting.
Eyes still locked on hers, Connal made his way through the crowd, stopping here and there to exchange a few words with people along the way. Anna couldn’t help watching him, and not just because the light V-neck sweater he wore made it clear he hadn’t let himself go one bit since giving up his acting career. He had the same compelling presence, too, the way he offered a smile each time someone stopped him, the way he leaned down to listen in the noisy room, the way he tipped his head in concentration when people spoke and clasped a shoulder or a forearm or a hand in greeting as if he was genuinely glad to see someone. He was nice.
He was trouble. No two ways about it.
Anna turned away, answering a couple of questions herself and trading a few jokes at her own expense with the villagers who had gathered around her. Despite not looking at him, though, she couldn’t help being aware of Connal approaching, as if the air around her had charged itself up, molecules exciting, pushing her toward him.
He slipped in beside her at the bar. “I hear we’re going to need to hire a chauffeur to keep you out of trouble. I’m not sure there’s any other way to safeguard the livestock.”
“Ha,” Anna said. “I’ve already told Elspeth I’ll be walking from here on out.”
“I’ve just arranged to take you both home when the meeting’s over, but you’re all right? You didn’t get hurt in the accident?”
Anna shook her head and accepted the glass mug of coffee Flora slid toward her, taking an overly-enthusiastic sip. The coffee was hotter and stronger than she’d expected, but also as sweet and smoky and creamy as Connal MacGregor’s voice, with that deep, sexy quality to it.
No. She wasn’t going to think about Connal MacGregor like that. She wasn’t going to notice his sexiness. She’d work with him to find a compromise about the festival—for Moira’s sake and for the sake of the village—which was what she’d agreed to do. Strictly in a professional capacity. Because he was trouble, and if she thought about him in any other way than professionally, she might as well hang a sign above her head: trouble welcome here.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Connal was watching her, staring at her mouth. “You like it?”
She wiped a smidge of cream off her top lip and blinked at him in confusion before realizing he meant the coffee. “It’s delicious.” She whipped around to Flora. “This drink might be my new best friend,” she babbled. “You may need to pry me away from here with a crowbar after the meeting.”
“I can offer a tire wrench and a willing shoulder if you like,” Connal said, smiling down at her again. That smile. “But I’m fresh out of crowbars.”
She blinked at him like an idiot. “It was a joke.”
He leaned closer. “I know that,” he said, his breath fanning across her cheek. “So was mine.”
This was flirting. He was flirting with her, wasn’t he? Or was he?
Maybe, like Henry, he said things like this to every woman.
See? This was why it was treacherous to be around a man like Connal.
Anna couldn’t come up with a single word to say. Mercifully, the bell jangled again above the door, and he glanced across the room. “Here’s Elspeth,” he said, sounding relieved. “I suppose we should go through and get the meeting started.”
Anna blinked again and took another long, slow sip of spiked coffee that scalded her tongue, seared warmth down into her stomach, and left her disoriented. At least, it must have been the whiskey’s fault. Another explanation would have involved admitting that it was Connal as much as the Scotch, and that was inconceivable. Men hadn’t had this kind of an effect on her since high school. Since college.
Since Henry.
She’d grown up since Henry. Grown more rational since Henry. And she’d learned a thing or two about not taking actors at face value.
Actors lied. Their charm, their seeming sincerity and devoted attention, those were all an act. Underneath the pretense, they were always looking out for their own best interests, and the moment a better deal or opportunity came along, they would drop you like a bomb and turn their back on every promise they’d ever made.