Finding It (23 page)

“Life can be bleak, but the alternative is much bleaker.”

“Amen, sistah!” Tava says, pumping her fist. “Preach!”

One by one, the rest of the group straggles over to the fence. The Chick Trippers are on a double-shot espresso buzz over the sheep shearing demonstration, practically vibrating with amped up adrenaline. It’s like being at Starbucks at eight in the morning.

Fiona and Calder, his collie trotting at his side, exit the barn and begin making their way to us.

“Life can be bleak”—Lisa leans close and lowers her voice so only I can hear her words—“but it can also be a fourth of July fireworks explosion of color and light and joy, especially if you have someone special to hold your hand through the darkness and light.”

“Now,” Fiona says, drawing our attention. “We have one last demonstration for you before we set you free for the afternoon. Calder is going to show you how we use a dog to help us round up a flock.”

“Good afternoon, lassies.” Calder smiles a broad, Colgate smile.

Someone behind me sighs. Literally, sighs.

Calder. Of course, it has to be Calder. It couldn’t be a fat, toothless, hairy, dimwitted man to lead the demonstrations, because toothless, ugly men don’t exist in the Highlands.

“Now then, a weel trained herding dog watches over th’ flock and can even prevent coyotes from attacking…”

Blah. Blah. Blah. He might as well be one of the adults on the Charlie Brown cartoons. His words make absolutely no sense. His good looks are distracting me, as is my annoyance with myself for even noticing his good looks.

He’s taller than I realized, towering over Fiona and every lady in our group, and more muscular, too. The stubble outlining his chin appears red in the bright afternoon sunlight and his blue eyes sparkle like polished turquoise nuggets.

Polished turquoise nuggets? Did I really just think that? My humiliation is near complete. What happens next? Do I start having fantasies about Calder calling me Sassenach while ravaging me on a bed of heather?

“…a weel trained collie can bring even the orneriest ram to heel. Isn’t that right, Shep?”

The collie sits obediently at Calder’s feet, but his tail thumps wildly against the ground.

“How old is Shep?” Poppy asks. “Is he still a puppy?”

“Aye.” Calder grins. “He’s a little over a year old, but he’s a clever boy.”

Shep waits patiently at his master’s feet, until a subtle flick of Calder’s wrist sends him bounding over the fence and flying across the field toward a distant flock.

It’s really quite riveting.

“Get a wee wee bye, Shep. Get a wee wee bye.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I am telling him to round up the flock”—Calder grins and pierces me with his sexy turquoise gaze—“starting with the wee ones.”

He whistles, and Shep reverses directions, running counterclockwise around the sheep, until they clump together in one wooly mass.

“That is very impressive,” I say to Fiona, who is standing beside me. “I’ve never seen such an obedient dog.”

“Calder has a way with animals.”

The Dog Whisperer/Sheep Wrangler whistles sharply twice, and Shep stops running, freezing in place with his head cocked to one side. Calder whistles twice again. This time, the precocious pup runs to a bush and hides behind it.

“Shep!”

The dog skulks from bush to bush like an African hunter stalking big game.

“Come to heel, you cheeky rogue,” Calder says, rolling the r in rogue. “Come to heel!”

Shep pokes his head out from around the bush, as if making sure the coast is clear, before running across the field and leaping over the fence. The errant collie ignores the chorus of females crooning over him and trots right over to his master.

“You’re a clever boy.” Calder scratches the dog’s head behind his ears. “A clever dog.”

I don’t want to like Calder, but even callous-hearted, puppy-skinning Cruella de Vil would find it difficult to resist his broad grins and easy manner. I am sucker for a man with a dog. Luc has two giant poodles. He found them when they were puppies, abandoned in a box on the side of the road near his chateau. Tall, dark, and extra shot of sexy Luc doesn’t look like a poodle man, but there it is…

The other women circle around Fiona as she describes the many ways we might want to spend the rest of the afternoon—from hiking to an Iron Age hill fort to touring Strathpeffer, a charming Victorian spa town a short drive from the farm.

“If you do decide to visit Strathpeffer, be sure to visit the chocolate shop in town,” she says, capturing my full attention. “The proprietors aren’t very friendly, but the chocolate is the best you’ll find outside Belgium.”

Chocolate? Did someone say something about the eighth deadly sin? I am so in! Fanny will have to do the mini-triathlon to the Iron Age hill fort, and Poppy will have to engage in her heavy sheep petting session,
sans moi
! There’s a cocoa-dusted truffle in Strathpeffer with my name written all over it.

“Vivia.” Fiona cranes her neck looking over the top of Tava’s head. “I figured you will want as much information about how the farm operates and the surrounding countryside, so I’ve asked Calder to allow you to ride with him as he does a survey of the flocks.”

Fanny looks at me and waggles her eyebrows.

“Ride?”

Please, God, when she says ride, please let her mean in a truck, convertible, 110-foot yacht, or even a souped-up golf cart. Just not a horse.

“You can ride a horse, can’t you?”

The last time I rode a horse was in Italy, and I very nearly died.

“You’re not afraid of horses, are you?” Fiona asks.

I consider telling Fiona about the runaway Italian stallion and my near-death experience when I realize the entire group is staring at me—Lisa, Kathy, Cindy, the other romance writers, and Calder.

Owning it: I know I sound arrogant, but I decide not to confess my fear of becoming an equestrian homicide victim because I am worried it will get out in the Twitosphere and affect my rep as an intrepid columnist. #NoStreetCred #TimidTraveler

“I am totally cool with horses.” I avoid making eye-contact with Fanny. “I ride all of the time.”

“Good.” Fiona gives one of her spooky I-know-more-than-you’re-saying smiles. “Even if you didn’t, Calder is an excellent horseman. You’ll be safe in his hands.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Cindy mutters, fanning herself. “Sho ’nuff will.”

The romance writers giggle as they turn to make their way back to their cabins. Poppy smirks and waves her hand in one of those stiff turning Queen of England waves. Fanny just gives me a thumbs up.

Why does Fate get off by sticking me in a saddle with a hot, foreign man riding my rear?

* * * *

Calder takes me on a sweaty, exhilarating, thoroughly-satisfying ride, through fields and black pine forests, over hills and past circles of ancient standing stones.

He’s polite, attentive, witty, and one hundred percent professional. No grinning (darn), no winking (double darn), and no flirting (triple darn).

He gives me a lot of interesting background information for my column.

When I finally trudge through the field to return to my cottage, heavy clouds hang low in the sky like an indigo canopy, and I ache in places that haven’t ached since I rode a bike from Provence to Tuscany. I fall into bed too tired to even think about Jean-Luc and his cryptic e-mail—much.

Goin’ Deep With My Hype Girl

Text to Camille Grant:

Dear Faithful Reader: Thank you for your confidence in my ability to write an article about neglectful daughters. It is an intriguing idea; however, I am far too busy writing The Guilt Trip: Parents Who Use Emotional Manipulation. Love, VPG

We spend the morning performing the countless, thankless tasks associated with caring for a flock of sheep. I would like to tell you that feeding, watering, deworming—eww, don’t even ask me to elaborate—and shearing sheep are deeply satisfying tasks, and that raising sheep is a great alternative career choice should this writing gig not work out for me, but I am not feeling Fiona’s furry flock vibe.

Poppy is, though.

When Angus asked for volunteers to help deworm Snow White and Baashful, two parasite-riddled ewes, Poppy eagerly raised her manicured hand. She didn’t even flinch when Angus pulled out a large curved wicked looking syringe/medieval torture device.

“I really don’t mind the messy bits,” she said, rolling up her sleeves.

If you had told me a week ago that Prada Poppy Worthington of the exclusive Worthington Boutique Hotels, the woman who shagged Tristan Kent and Britain’s hot-hot-hot multimedia titan, would be up to her elbows in sheep excrement and intestinal worms, I would have thought you were Mad Cow Disease-crazy. As bloody wrong as it sounds, she is in her element.

In the afternoon, while the others are getting hot stone massages and lanolin wraps, I interview Fiona for my
GoGirl!
column. I have decided to write two sidebars to run alongside my column—one about how Fiona, an American woman with no experience in animal husbandry, is succeeding in a male-dominated business in macho Scotland. I want to focus on the practical side of moving to a foreign country—what it’s like to be an expat, living and working abroad. I thought it would appeal to my career-minded readers.

The second sidebar is for my romance-minded readers. Filled with overblown language and poetic waxings about the rugged landscape, the sidebar will be about Fiona’s big gamble, how she gave up a well-paying career to follow her heart to Scotland, and how it led her to the love of her life, Angus.

After my interview with Fiona, I return to the cottage eager to begin writing my column. I am typing my notes on my MacBook when Fanny knocks on my door.

“Wanna give your Wellies a little workout?”

“That depends,” I say, frowning. “What were you thinking?”

For those of you who aren’t yet proficient in Fanny-speak, “a little workout” could mean anything from a bucolic hike through the heather to a thirty-mile march wearing a sixty-pound rucksack, reminiscent of the Baatan Death March.

“
Juste une petite promenade
,” she says, smiling innocently.

“Just a little stroll,” I repeat in English, narrowing my gaze. “You don’t fool me, Emperor Hirohito. I know all about your little strolls.”

Fanny laughs.

Despite all of the good-natured teasing she’s given me, my best friend hasn’t been herself this trip. She’s looked rawther glum, as Poppy might say. It’s time I get out of my head and into Fanny’s.

“Let’s do this thing.” I close my MacBook, shove my feet into my Wellies, and grab my iPhone. “It will give me some time to get the 4-1-1 on what’s been happening in your life lately.”

* * * *

We climb up a wooden A-frame ladder over the fence separating the grazing land from the cottages and begin a slow, steady hike toward a distant pap. My boots sink into the wet, spongy ground, with each step and make satisfying schloop-schlooping noises as I lift them out of the muck. I attempt to leap from one soggy patch of what passes as grass in the Highlands to another soggy patch, miss, and land in a boggy pool, the brackish water nearly spilling over the tops of my tall Wellies.

“Woo-hoo! This is way more fun than puddle stomping!”

Fanny chuckles. “Does that mean you want to climb to the top of that pap?” She points to a craggy mountain looming in the distance.

I stop leaping. I knew it! Didn’t I tell you the little Emperor would try to turn this into a death march?

“Nope,” I say, lifting my boot out of the primordial muck. “It most certainly does not mean I want to build you a railroad over the River Kwai.”

“What?” Fanny laughs. “What does that even mean?”

I should be accustomed to my best friend’s gross ignorance when it comes to movie trivia, but sometimes it still gobsmacks me. I stop walking and stare at Fanny.

“
Bridge on the River Kwai
?”

She shrugs.

“Sir Alex Guiness and William Holden?”

Fanny stares blankly. I might as well be speaking German or Spanish, except that Fanny speaks those languages, too.

“Academy Award-winning movie about World War II British prisoners of war at a Japanese prison camp who are forced to build a bridge through the jungle and over the River Kwai. Epic film.”

I begin whistling the iconic “Whistle Song” from the movie and march with my arms swinging at my sides. Fanny marches beside me, but doesn’t join in on the whistling.

“Wait a minute!” She stops marching. “Did you just compare me to a prison camp warden?”

I stop whistling and stare blankly.

“Nice, Vivian!”

“I was just kidding.” I resume marching. “You are not a prison warden.”

“I’m not!”

“You’re not.”

Fanny double steps until she catches up to me. “Am I really a warden?”

“You might be the teensiest, tiniest—”

“What?”

Bless her little French heart. She genuinely sounds bemused.

“—wardenish.”

“Wardenish? Is that even a word?”

I shake my head.

“So what does that mean—wardenish?”

I look at her sideways. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“
Oui
.”

“Because you’re not really good with negative feedback.”

“Vivian! Just tell me.”

“Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, you are—”

“Controlling? Exacting? Judgmental? Mean?”

“Wow!” I look at her full-on. “I was going to say exhaustingly competitive. Where’s all this coming from?”

Fanny shrugs and looks away.

“Uh-uh! I don’t think so. Out with it, Stéphanie Moreau. Who said you were controlling, exacting, and judgmental?”

“And mean. Don’t forget mean.”

Up ahead, there’s an upcropping of flat-topped boulders covered in lichen. I walk over to one of the boulders, brush the fuzzy green top with my hand, have a seat, and motion for Fanny sit across from me.

“What’s up, girl? Talk to me.”

Fanny climbs up on the boulder. She’s so short; her legs dangle like she’s a toddler in a highchair. With her sad basset hound eyes and pouty lips, I’ve never seen her look more vulnerable than she does right now.