Highland Heart Read online

  Highland Heart

  The Highland Books, Volume 2

  Emma Baird

  Published by Pink Glitter Publishing, 2019.

  First published 2019

  PRINT ISBN: 978-1-9997738-4-7

  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. Entirely.

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

  Published by Pink Glitter Publishing. If you would like to receive (infrequent) email newsletters from the author, please email her at [email protected]. In return, she’ll send you a free short story that documents the first time Katya and Dexter met. (Warning—it is a bit spicy.)

  https://emmabaird.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  List of characters:

  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

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT...

  THE PROPOSAL

  THE GRATEFUL THANKS BIT!

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  To Lucy and Sally—the best sisters!

  List of characters:

  Katya—a freelance writer and unofficial Pilates teacher with little money and too much time on her hands to mull over things such as...

  Her relationship with an American workaholic, Dexter, a man who says super-awesome a lot.

  Zac—posh, blonde and one of the world’s most flirty guys.

  Gaby—Katya’s best friend, newly moved to the opposite end of the country and totes loved up.

  Jack—Gaby’s boyfriend. Mean, moody, magnificent. Also bears a resemblance to Jamie Fraser stroke the actor Sam Heughan. His much better-looking younger brother, as Jack would tell you.

  Mena—a fabulous, and fabulously spoiled cat.

  Mhari—a ‘friend’ of Gaby’s and a potential flatmate. Only move in with her if you don’t mind every bit of your life being examined.

  Dr McLatchie—a GP who has a side hustle as a psychic, one she freely admits is a complete fraud.

  Caitlin Cartier—a ‘self-made’ reality TV star billionaire at the age of 21, thanks to the beauty company she set up. Some of you might think she is based on a real-life person. The author refers you to the front of her book where she tells you everything in this book is fiction and any resemblance to real-life characters co-incidental. Entirely.

  Lois and Angeline—two m’wah, m’wah lovey types who cannot be trusted.

  Jolene—a pregnant New Zealander with weird taste in boyfriends.

  Stewart—said boyfriend of the above. Part-time coder, full-time bore.

  Scottie—his dog. Loves food, walkies and watching humans do Pilates.

  Ashley—the owner/manager of the Lochside Welcome, where you can find the world’s most Instagrammable toilet.

  Jamal—owner of a general store in which you can buy anything and everything.

  Enisa—his wife, runs a mobile beauty service and specialises in hair removal from anywhere and everywhere. Doesn’t draw the line at anal bleaching.

  Madeline—a mentor who wants to help young women succeed in whatever they do. Goes above and beyond.

  Lachlan—an international man of mystery. Dodgy.

  Laney—a woman who hates oysters.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hey, what a coincidence! I was about to call you! There’s this totally amazing, beyond awesome announcement the Blissful Beauty board made today at work—”

  Katya zoned out, mouthing the all-too familiar words to herself. Beyond awesome. Totally amazing. When she’d first met Dexter, she found his hyperbole irritating. Then it became cute and now it had zinged back to making her want to scream.

  She put the phone on speaker and opened her laptop, deciding to finish a blog she’d been working on for a client. Dexter multi-tasked all the time, anyway. Doubtless while he phoned her, he was checking his emails, updating his Outlook calendar and making an appointment with his over-worked dental hygienist. Those super-white American teeth didn’t stay that way by accident.

  “So what do you think? Isn’t it the most exciting thing ever?”

  Whoops. Caught out not listening and with Dexter, the ‘most exciting thing ever’ could be anything or nothing. The man was an enthusiasm machine, ratcheting it up to levels so high she often worried about his blood pressure. Mind you, Dexter also tempered his enthusiasm with plenty of suggestions. He could declare anything as awesomely amazing and add ten ideas for changes which would make the said thing ‘beyond brilliant’. And Katya believed you should use hyperbole sparingly. If a person routinely came out with the words ‘amazing’, ‘fantastic’ and ‘utterly brilliant’, where were they left to go?

  She let out a sigh. “Sorry, the phone cut out there. You know what the reception is like in this place.” Fine most of the time, seeing as Great Yarmouth had its fair share of masts. The reception excuse was the one everyone used when they pretended they’d been listening all along.

  “What were you talking about?”

  Go to the bottom of the supportive girlfriend list, she told herself. And do not leave there until you are a much nicer person. He sighed back, or it might have been a harrumph. Had he put her on FaceTime and spotted the lack of attention? In case there was a sneaky tech way of spying on someone she hadn’t worked out, she turned her phone face down. And to be doubly sure in case he could still see her, she plastered on a smile so wide her jaw ached.

  “Blissful Beauty’s UK launch was such a success,” he said. Work talk once more. “Caitlin wants to conquer Asia and specifically South Korea. South Koreans spend $13 billion on skincare and make-up every year. I mean, man—what potential. It’ll be super-amazing if we crack that market.”

  Amazing, she said to herself. Do not say ‘super amazing’. It’s up there with beyond awesome in terms of phrases I loathe. When they make me the Prime Minister—and any like-minded person would agree it’s a position I’m overqualified for—I will make it death by firing squad to anyone who ever adds qualifiers to amazing, awesome, brilliant and all those other words that are fine on their own.

  Even though the thoughts remained unsaid, Katya guilt-tripped. Was she too horrible to be someone’s girlfriend? Her best friend Gaby was the sweetest person in the world. As someone with the aforementioned dislike of hyperbole the opinion served as proof she didn’t use the word
s lightly. Which was why Gaby was loved up and blissfully happy, and Katya sour and discontent, too busy picking holes in her relationship and quibbling about other people’s use of language.

  Katya knew her friends envied her too. Dating the UK-based marketing manager of reality TV star Caitlin Cartier’s Blissful Beauty make-up and skincare company did that to girlfriends. “The freebies!” they said, followed by, “Um, so can you get us that glow serum/sparkle bronzer/lip plumper? I tried online and it’s sold out at the moment.”

  Her handbag, propped on the desktop next to the laptop, spilled its contents—said glow serum and lip plumper among them. The bright pink and silver packaging, stars and all, seemed to wink at her—a sign the products themselves realised how desirable they were. Every single twenty-something wanted them in their handbag, beside their bed and tucked away safely in a locked bathroom cabinet. When the glow serum first came out, it crashed the Blissful Beauty website.

  When that happened Dexter was, to quote, “beyond stoked”.

  “So... this weekend?” His enthusiasm quotient ratcheted back down and she tensed. Once upon a time, she’d attributed Dexter’s almost permanent keen tone to his American upbringing. Now, she wondered if it was unique to him, or something ingrained in marketing managers. They needed to show a strong belief in the product they were put on earth to promote. Still, no mistaking that change in tone, which signalled...

  “I know we were supposed to meet up this weekend, but I gotta work. Make a start on what we will promote and where. South Korea is a whole different ballgame. We gotta think much smarter than we did for the UK launch, and if I don’t get going on it, some dude in the LA office will wing his or her way in there with beyond awesome plans that will blow Caitlin—”

  Enough already, to borrow American phraseology.

  “You’re cancelling.” Someone had to be direct in this relationship.

  “No! I’d love for us to meet in London, but it would need to be for one night only. And I’d have to catch a later flight than I planned, and to get away super early on the—”

  “It’s fine, Dexter. Let’s cancel.” No one could accuse Katya Bukowski of not being able to take the hint. A weekend where she spent several uncomfortable hours on an overcrowded coach to get to London from Great Yarmouth, and then another few grabbed hours with a man too distracted to pay her attention? No. Thank. You. And, I did not sign up for this.

  Long-distance love. Gaby’s grandmother, a woman people ought to elect as the leader of the UK and the US so overqualified was she, had lots of homilies about relationships. If she contradicted herself with them, she didn’t care. So, if the wise old bird said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” one time, she had no problem uttering the words, “Out of sight, out of mind,” another day.

  Dexter was based in Scotland, Katya in Norfolk. For the first few heady months of their relationship, Katya couldn’t believe her luck. Years of disastrous dating and now this guy she clicked with straight away. They did crazy stuff. He got the train to Newcastle, as did she, giving them three hours together. Then, she paid well over the odds for a last-minute flight to Glasgow from Stansted, and they spent two days tucked up in a hotel room, totting up a bill that continued over seven pages. If specified, it might have outlined weird things done with Mars bars.

  Ahem.

  Another time, he met her in Exeter when Caitlin’s private helicopter dropped him off at an airfield. There, they decided that qualification for the Mile High Club included doing it in a hangar while pilots and small aircraft came and went, awkwardness, giggles and the world’s most intense orgasm (Katya’s) turning it into one of those stories destined to achieve urban myth status, talked of enviously by others for years to come.

  Heady days? And now already bygone days?

  “Babe, I’m sorry,” he said now. The flip side of overuse of hyperbole was never knowing the truth of sincerity. She weighed up every word. ‘Babe’ wasn’t her nom de plume of choice, but the ‘I’m sorry’ had substance and gravitas. Still, did a girl ever find it flattering when her still-recent beau decided his work was more interesting than her?

  They ended the phone conversations with those kissing sounds. M-wah, m-wah, as the mouth widened and moved to goldfish open and closure. Katya hovered above herself and shook her head. Really, Katya? Her forehead and nose wrinkled, and the dreaded list materialised in front of her.

  Katya loved pros and cons. As the oldest of four girls, organisation—her sisters would call it bossiness—came naturally. Or perhaps the pros and cons thing was thanks to an e-book she’d written for a life coach once upon a time.

  “Detach yourself from the situation and write out the yeas and nays to help you make your mind up when it wobbles,” the expert on sorting yourself out advised.

  Dexter: Reasons to dump him.

  If he says ‘beyond awesome’ one more time, I’ll bite off his tod-tongue.

  He can do the lotus position with his knees on the floor AND get his feet flat doing a downward dog. (And a man doing yoga; it’s wrong of me to despise it, but... jeez, yuk.)

  He’s a workaholic. Times one hundred. Times one thousand.

  Dexter: Reasons to keep going out with him.

  The ‘thing’. I’ve never felt this strongly about anyone before.

  When I see him in front of me, my body forgets ANYTHING my mind says. (Hyper-flexibility is a handy skill for a bloke to have.)

  The hangar. Newcastle.

  When I get over the hyperbole, our conversations entertain me. Like, enough not to want to make me put my phone down.

  And the ‘thing’? Most people would agree. What made people attractive to others was undefinable. And individual. Katya couldn’t explain Dexter and why her mind and body reacted so positively to him to her best friend, the aforementioned super-sweet Gaby. The two of them had been friends since they were kids, so close their thought processes synced all the time. And yet, the relationship Katya had with Dexter still mystified Gaby.

  “But he’s such a...” she would say and then shut up. Their fifteen-year friendship wouldn’t survive complete honesty on both sides. Katya, after all, had maintained a heroic silence throughout Gaby’s ten-year relationship with her ex, douche bag Ryan.

  So far, Katya gave Dexter's boyfriend criteria on the pro side heavier weighting. Given her low boredom threshold, a fascinating guy was a must—and Dexter surprised her all the time. But it was only a matter of time until the points slid down. And then, then Dexter ended up the way of every guy she’d ever dated since discovering the joy of boyfriends at the age of thirteen. Dumped.

  She doodled their names next to the list, enclosing them in a heart, and then shook her head. How teenage!

  Making herself a cup of tea and taking it into the living room, Katya sighed at the mess. The flat’s tidying rota, drawn up by Katya, had been ignored yet again. Dirty cups littered the coffee table. Next to the sofa, empty pizza boxes stacked up, a tower of cardboard that threatened to topple over any time soon. Beer cans lay on their side rolled into the back of the sofa. She moved them to the table and sat down gingerly, hoping not to sit on spilled lager or worse.

  She switched on the TV and flicked through the options. Too many choices, hmm? Click, click, click—flicking through programmes like they were Tinder profiles. Watching a series for one or two episodes before boredom set in. Choosing the next one and hoping this time it might work out... Her mother was on marriage number three. Katya didn’t blame her. Her father was a loser and her sisters’ sperm donor no better. The memories of him still made her shudder. Now, her mum’s third marriage looked as if the end was nigh, her mother muttering that Danny bored her to tears these days.

  I don’t want to be like my mum.

  Dexter didn’t bore Katya. Wasn’t ennui impossible when someone’s job kept snatching him away from you? The everyday details about Dexter eluded her. On an ordinary night when he finished work—what did he do? Where had he gone to school, or college for that
matter? How long had he worked for Blissful Beauty? How come he could get his feet flat on the floor when he did downward-facing dog? Not many people could do that.

  Whirlwind dates. They allowed no time for the exchange of mundane information.

  Her phone went. Dexter again.

  “Hey, you!” he said, those silky vowels of his soothing to the soul. “I’m sorry I had to put you off but I’ve been thinking. It’s time I visited Great Yarmouth, right? We’ve been dating, what, eight weeks and I’ve never been.”

  “Er... I suppose so.”

  Her surroundings did not lend themselves to romantic rendezvouses. She looked at the view in front of her and sighed. But as Dexter started to detail what he’d do to her when he visited, she forgot the mess, the shabbiness and the lack of privacy. And him coming here. A big step. She reorganised the pros and cons list once again, the cons slipping down once more.

  “And you promise?” Lightly said, heavily meant.

  “Hell, yeah.” Her phone beeped—pic coming through. “I can’t wait. And it’s only seven days away.”

  She hung up, checked out the picture he’d WhatsApped her and stared at it far longer than necessary. Dexter blowing her kisses and winking so suggestively she blushed, miles away. Her message back—“I’m counting down the days.” In her head, the weekend took shape. Perhaps she might even introduce Dexter to her mum and sisters...?

  Another ping. A second WhatsApp message caught her eye. Madeline. Its contents so unexpected, she had to read it five times to be sure. The evening that had started with disappointment ended with promises on all fronts.

  Katya grinned. Her life was about to change for the much, much better.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Madeline’s WhatsApp message had been brief. “Can you get to London on Monday? I’ve fixed up an interview for you with a literary agency who want to discuss ghost-writing?”

  Too right she could. Madeline owned a huge online recruitment agency and she mentored people on the side. A few weeks ago, Dexter mentioned her to Katya and suggested she get in touch. Madeline needed someone to mentor, he said—a young woman, preferably.