Finding It (27 page)

“Puh-leez,” I roll my eyes. “With all of your grinning and winking, you know damned well the effect you have on women.”

He just grins and opens the door for me.

“Where are we going?”

“Trust me.”

Strangely, I do.

“Wait!” I start to turn back toward the pub. “I can’t leave Fanny.”

“Text her and tell her you are with me.” He hands me my phone and pulls his out of his back jeans pocket. “I will text Connor and ask him to make sure she gets back to the farm safely. Dinnae worry. I would trust Connor with my life.”

I don’t respond well to men bossing me about, but Calder does it with confident authority, as if he is accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Text to Stéphanie Moreau:

Hey, babe! Calder is going to take me—

“Where are we going, exactly?”

He stops typing and looks up from his phone, and the broad, dimpled grin is back. “Somewhere special. A place I like to go when I need a wee bit of clarity.”

“Okay.”

I finish typing and wait for Fanny’s reply.

Text to Vivia Perpetua Grant:

Tell that cocky cowboy if he does anything to harm my girl, I will wrestle him to the ground and use those big old rusty sheep shears on his… And please be careful, V. Luc hasn’t said he doesn’t want to be with you (not in words, anyway) and you don’t want to do anything you’ll regret.

“Fanny says if you aren’t a gentleman, she will castrate you with your brother’s sheep shears.”

Calder chuckles and keeps typing.

I slide my phone into my jacket pocket. He finishes sending his text.

“Are ye ready, Bùtais?” he says, holding out his hand to help me into the low-slung sports car.

“I’m ready,” I say, trying to ignore the way Calder’s hand feels wrapped around mine and the longing in my heart for Luc. “Lead the way, Master.”

“Ha! I knew it wouldn’t take long before ye were calling me Master.”

“I meant to say Jedi Master.”

He grins. “But ye dinnae say it, did ye, Bùtais?”

He closes the door before I can answer.

The inside of the car reminds me of a fighter jet cockpit, with glowing dials, molded leather seats, and a sloped windshield. If someone had told me sheep farming could be such a lucrative business, I would have skipped journalism classes and joined Future Farmers of America instead. I could rock a pair of overalls.

Calder opens his door, slides into the driver’s seat, and secures his seatbelt. He revs the engine and we are off, looping around a dizzying series of traffic circles until we leave Strathpeffer behind. I would be a lousy liar if I said watching Calder operate the powerful machinery with crazy skill isn’t a bit of a turn-on.

“What does Bùtais mean?”

Calder chuckles. “Boots.”

“Why would your friends call me Boots?”

Calder glances over at me and grins. “’Tis my fault. I’ve been calling you Boots because of your Wellies.”

Calder has been talking about me to his friends? My pulse does a strange little fluttery thing.

A few minutes later, he pulls his sleek sex machine off the side of the road at the edge of a dark forest, pushes the button to kill the engine, and looks at me.

“Ready?”

He grins one of his irresistible, make-the-girls-sigh grins and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.
Relax, just because he’s driven you to some romantic secluded spot deep in the heart of the Highlands doesn’t mean anything more than a brisk hike is going to happen. Does it?

Kissing Season

When a tall, sexy Scot calls you bonny and drives you to a romantic secluded spot atop a hill in the Highlands, it’s probably not going to be for a round of golf. Just sayin’.

Calder’s special place is a pap with a breathtaking view of the Scottish countryside and the MacFarlane Sheep Farm. It doesn’t get dark in the Highlands, not like it does back home, so we can see Loch Ness in the distance, glimmering deep purple in the dying light of the gloaming.

Like a scene from
Outlander
, we reached the top of the pap to find a rocky outcropping of ancient stones standing sentry over the valley below. Calder is a wonderful guide, telling me about the history of the area and the legends of the stones.

“I can understand why you chose this spot to be your special place.” I lean against one of the stones and stare out over the valley below. “It’s beautiful.”

“Aye.” He comes to stand near me.

“I’ll bet you’ve gotten lucky up here more than once.” I look at him and waggle my eyebrows. It’s another stupid attempt to divert him, because he’s making me crazy nervous. “Well played, sir.”

He focuses his intense gaze on me and I know what he’s about to say will melt my heart as much as his grin.

“I’ve never brought a lass up here.”

“Never?”

“You’re the first.”

“But probably not the last,” I tease, bending over and plucking a yellow bloom from a thorny clump of flowers. “What are these? They’re all over the hills.”

“It’s gorse.” A slow, easy smile spreads across his face. “Have you ne’er heard the auld Scottish saying about the gorse?”

I shake my head.

“Weel, I believe it goes something like”—he moves so close I can smell the piney scent of his cologne—“whin the gorse is in bloom, kissing’s in season.”

“Are you flirting with me, Calder MacFarlane.”

“Would ye like me tae be, Vivia Grant?” he says, rolling the r in my last name.

Would I? That’s a good question. Calder is so sexy, he could charm the knickers off a nun, but he’s not Luc. I wish Luc could be here, kissing me in the golden gorse, but he’s too busy slow-grinding his sketchy ex-girlfriend to even call me back.

I am lost in a sticky web of thoughts when Calder leans in, traps me against the stone with his solid body, and kisses me gently, sweetly. It’s not a bow-chicka-wow-wow kiss, but it is pretty fantastic.

I am about to wrap my arms around his waist when I feel a moment of panic. I’m not ready for this! I still love Luc, even if he is slow-grinding Miss Thong, and I’m not ready to give my heart to another.

Calder must sense my hesitation because he stops kissing me and moves back just enough so I can look at him without craning my neck.

“Am I movin’ tae fast for ye, lass?”

I hold up my thumb and forefinger, leaving an inch between them. “Maybe just a wee bit.”

He brushes an errant lock of hair from my cheek and smiles a leisurely smile that would have sent my heart flipping before I met Luc.

“Is there someone else for ye then?”

I nod.

I tell him about Luc, the Bishop Raine mix-up, our break-up, and I even tell him about Angelina von Teese, Luc’s paddleboarding, pastry-baking, perfect ex-girlfriend—I leave out the little bit about her wearing a thong.

“I don’t know how long it will take for me to get over Luc—or if I will ever get over him—and I can’t ask you to wait around.”

“Ye’ll find I am a verra patient man. I am not going anywhere, Vivia. When ye are ready, I will be here.” He steps back and holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s sit for a while. Unless you want me to take you back?”

I shake my head because I don’t want him to take me back. Not yet. I don’t want to return to the world below this pap, a world of unreturned calls, unrequited love.

The morning dawns with flat gray clouds and an icy-cold driving rain, so Fiona cancels the sheep demonstrations/lessons, leaving us to our own devices.

Poppy uses the reprieve from the chain gang to catch up on work, sitting at the kitchen table tapping away on her laptop, Bluetooth headset stuck in her ear.

Fanny stays in bed, nursing a wee bit of a whisky headache. She staggered into my room late last night, long after Calder dropped me off at the cottage door, giving me a tender, friends-only kiss on the cheek. Fanny was chatty—she’s also chatty when she drinks too much. It’s comical, really. Her mouth becomes this super-charged vehicle of destruction, careening from topic to topic without caution or care, switching between English and French the way a NASCAR driver shifts gears. She told me about Duncan trying to grab her ass, Connor teaching her how to play darts, and her
peu l'engouement
. I had to Google Translate the word after she left to go to her own room.

Un peu l'engouement
means a little infatuation. This revelation stirs up the guilt that had settled in the pit of my stomach like sediment in a riverbed. My best friend is crushing on the man who is crushing on me, while I am crushing on a man who is so over me. It’s a confusing, warped little ménage à trois we’ve got going on here. Now, this is a French film.

I couldn’t sleep after Fanny’s mini-bombshell, so I stayed up and worked on my column, turning it in just before dawn. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when fueled by shame and hope. Though, the fumes of my hope are evaporating as the hours pass without a call from Luc.

I try to divert my mind by doing jumping jacks, reading the comments in the cottage guest book, organizing my unmentionables according to color, watching the rain trickle down the window, and conduct research for my upcoming interview with David Tennant. My research raises more questions than answers, like: As a classically trained actor, did you cringe at your Dr. Who catchphrase, ‘Timey Wimey is Wibbly Wobbly?’

Finally, I call my long-suffering mum.

“Hello, Mum!”

“Who is this?”

“Vivia!”

“Vivia?” She hums thoughtfully. “That names sounds vaguely familiar. Where did we meet?”

“Mum.”

I’m not in the mood for inane banter and my intuitive Mum picks up on it instantly.

“What’s wrong, luv?”

There’s no fronting with my mum. She can detect a forced happy tone faster than anyone I have ever known, so I unload my whole sordid, sad story on her. She listens without interrupting, which is wholly unusual.

“So let me see if I understand you, luv,” Mum says after I’ve run out of words. “You love Luc desperately, but you aren’t sure you want to marry him because you are afraid you will end up like me, a pathetic, boring, middle-aged divorcée?”

It sounds so much harsher coming from her lips.

“I’m sorry, Mum. That’s not what I meant to say at all.” I take a shuddering breath and give it another go. “You gave up your career and moved to another country to marry Dad, and look where it got you.”

“Yes, look where it got me: Nearly thirty years of marriage and a beautiful, talented, darling daughter.”

“A neurotic, deceitful daughter, with the legs of an extraterrestrial, you mean.”

“I mean a wounded young woman who is terrified of being abandoned again, with beautiful, long legs.”

My throat clogs with emotion and it takes me a minute before I can speak again. “Don’t you regret giving up your life in England, your art career?”

“Life is about choices, my girl.” She goes quiet for a second and I know she’s doing that thing where she presses her hand to her mouth to keep herself from speaking before really thinking about what she wants to say next. “Thirty years ago, I made the choice to give up my career and follow your father to America. I did it because I loved him and because I couldn’t imagine spending a day without him. Now, I realize it was because I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I had to spend a day without him keeping me centered and focused.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying, luv, that you inherited your tendency to go off the trolley rails from me, your silly old mum.”

“Silly old mum I love. I do love you, Mum.”

“I know you do.”

We both fall silent. The Italian dinner music she likes to play when she cooks dinner plays softly in the background and homesickness plucks at my heartstrings, sending echoing notes throughout my soul.

“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you regret marrying dad? Regret having me?”

“Absolutely not!” She switches the call from speakerphone. “I regret that I let one choice dictate a thousand other choices. I could have made the choice to go back to painting, to teach, to show in galleries around California, but I didn’t. I let the fear that comes with possibility cripple me.”

Wow. It’s strange to hear my mum taking accountability for becoming the downtrodden, powerless June Cleaver to my father’s stern Ward Cleaver. It never occurred to me that my mum was once young and as hopelessly in love with my dad as I am with Luc. It never occurred to me that she wanted to become his June Cleaver.

“I am actually glad we are having this conversation now”—she clicks the music off—“because I have something important I need to tell you.”

“Oh my God! Please don’t tell me you have cancer.”

“No, I don’t have the cancer.” She laughs, letting my blasphemous reference to our Savior slide. “With you traveling the world, I have decided to move back to England.”

“What? Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Won’t you miss California?”

“No.”

“What about your friends?”

“I’ll make new ones.”

“Who is this confident, free-spirited woman and what have you done with my stay-at-home mum?”

“I’m still your mum; I’m just tired of staying at home.” She says it plainly and without accusation. “Besides, I want to be closer to my grandbabies.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t even have a husband!”

“You will.”

“Someday.”

“Someday soon, if I know my girl. I know you will fight for Luc. You won’t let your fear stop you from being wholly, spherically happy, will you Vivia?”

“I guess not.”

“Pardon me, luv? What did you say?”

“No,” I mumble. “I won’t let fear stop me from being happy.”

“That’s right! Because you’re who?”

“Vivia.”

“Vivia Perpetua Ass-Kicker Grant.”

“Mum!” I’ve never heard my mum curse before—not when she stubbed a toe, not when I flashed my Wonder Woman bathing suit to our congregation during a Nativity Play when I was supposed to be playing a robed Mary, not even when my father told us he was shacking up with the kooky vegan. “I can’t believe you just said a curse word.”