The Calum Read online

  THE CALUM

  Xio Axelrod

  THE CALUM Copyright © 2014 Xio Axelrod LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  “Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

  ~Anais Nin

  A Sound Plan

  Lovie Grant wished like hell that she had paid the five dollars for the airline headphones. But that balloon had popped, and now she was stuck listening – again – to Joana’s latest “brilliant” plan. She hunched her shoulders and buried her face in the in-flight magazine. Anything to avoid one more word about their freaking trip.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Her shrill tone bounced off the airplane window and directly into the oh-my-God-let-me-off-this-sky-bus-before-I-kill-her section of Lovie’s brain.

  “What is it now, Jo?”

  “You’re not paying attention. And you keep sighing like you’ve been left home on prom night.”

  “I’m just tired, and I can’t sleep on planes.” And I should be relaxing on a beach instead of chasing after you.

  Flip. Flip. Flip.

  Page after page taunted her with one photo of crystal blue waters and palm trees after another. There would be no palm trees where they were headed.

  Which asshole decided to put that magazine in her seat-back pocket?

  “You’re upset.”

  How very astute. “It’s a scientific fact that a lack of sleep causes a decrease in the neurotransmitters that regulate mood.” Flip. “Otherwise, I’m fine, Jo. Let it go.”

  “I call bull. You’ve already convinced yourself that this is going to suck.” Jo’s bottom lip poked out in her signature pout. With her blonde locks twisted into two braids, and her bright pink Juicy sweatpants, the picture of a bratty twelve-year-old was nearly complete.

  Lovie’s best friend, roommate and constant damsel-in-distress had a plan. A good plan, she’d said. A sound plan, if you dared to believe her. Lovie didn’t, but the plan was this:

  Go to Scotland

  Find “The Calum”

  Marry him

  Jo had been saving up for this particular trip for three years – ever since Lovie picked up a dog-eared copy of A Laird to Love at a used book store. It was a great read, sure, but why the hell did that one have to fall out of the stack?

  Like millions of other women around the globe, Jo had fallen in love with its hero, Calum MacKenzie.

  Unlike most of those other women, Jo believed that someone like him was just across the ocean, waiting for her.

  “The Calum,” Jo explained to anyone that stopped long enough to listen, was the perfect man. A lover and a fighter, he was a chivalrous, six-foot-four redhead with a six-pack and a penchant for languages. You could find variations of him in the pages of Jo’s vast collection of romance novels.

  Campbell. Covington. Cage. Colton.

  She had shelves filled with ideal men, but somehow The Calum stood out to her from the rest. Enough to convince Jo that she needed to go to Scotland and find him.

  Each year since college, they’d flipped a coin to see who would pick their Christmas vacation destination. This year, Lovie lost. So there they were, thirty-five thousand feet above the Atlantic, on their way from Philadelphia to Brigadoon…er…Inverness.

  Lovie couldn’t believe she’d agreed to spend her measly handful of vacation days tailing Jo through the Scottish Highlands. It was going to be cold and damp.

  And damp.

  And fucking cold.

  There was a beach somewhere with her name on it, and that name was getting washed out to sea. Or sat upon by German tourists. Her lungs deflated in a heavy sigh as her dream of endless mojitos drifted away on the clouds below.

  “You didn’t have to come with me, you know.”

  Yeah right. Lovie laughed. “You get lost in Chinatown. I can’t even imagine you on your own in another country. Of course, I had to come with you.”

  “Your confidence is inspiring,” Jo deadpanned. “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.” She drew her tiny feet up into the seat and hugged her knees to her chest. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Okay, how about a bodyguard?”

  Jo snorted. “You’re not much of one.”

  Lovie turned, her brow arched. “I’ve got four inches and twenty-five pounds on you. Put on your seatbelt.”

  “Yes mom,” Jo said. “I’ve got it all worked out.” She fumbled with her seatbelt. “When I meet The Calum, and I will meet him, I’ll just play it cool and casual. Like I’m not into him at all. Show just enough of the girls to make him pant after me.” Jo smacked the ends together like she was trying to force a size ten foot into a size six shoe. “What’s wrong with this thing?”

  “Oh, for the love of…” Lovie reached over and untwisted the contraption, closing it with a snap.

  “I had it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyway, as I was saying, I’ll be like a piece of candy that he can’t wait to unwrap.” Throwing her blonde locks over her shoulder, she batted her eyelashes in demonstration.

  “So your plan is to lustrate him until he falls in love with you?”

  “Good word, lustrate.” Jo grinned. “I’ll have him eating out of my hand. You’ll see.”

  ****

  Yep, Scotland was freaking cold. Colder than the blood of a Bond villain, but there was no denying the beauty. Even in winter, Scotland shone like a jewel. There were shades of color Lovie couldn’t even name.

  After a short layover in Manchester, they’d boarded the smallest plane she’d ever seen. It didn’t look like it could get off the ground, much less make the – thankfully - short flight to Inverness. A taxi dropped them off at a hotel so steeped in quaint-but-quirky that it could have been a set from a Wes Anderson film. There, they were greeted with a cup of tea and some kinda oat cookies. Tasty, but ultimately unsatisfying.

  One deliciously hot shower and a change of clothes later, she was a new woman. A starving woman. The weather wasn’t awful, as long as you didn’t mind a few raindrops, so they decided to walk a bit and find a place to eat.

  “What did I tell you?” Jo ran into the middle of the road and spun in a Mary Tyler Moore-esque circle. She might have been better off just shouting “tourist” at the top of her lungs. “I can practically smell the history.”

  “I think what you smell is that pub. Get out of the street before someone runs you over.”

  “Pubs have history too.” Jo floated back to the sidewalk, a dreamy smile on her face. “I bet this one is older than our apartment building.”

  MacKinnon’s Pub sat on the river in the picturesque heart of Inverness. Lovie spied a castle on the hill across the way and made a mental note to double-check their itinerary. She loved these historical towns and didn’t want to miss a thing.

  According to the gold-lettered signage above their heads, MacKinnon’s was also two doors down from some renowned kilt-maker or other. Jo screamed with delight when she saw it.

  “Oh my God, it’s fate! We have to go.”

  “Why? Do you expect The Calum will be in there getting fitted for a new kilt?”

  “Shut up,” Jo laughed. “He might be.”

  Lovie rolled her eyes but smiled. “You really are delusional.”

  “Yeah, well, you are a humbug.”

  “What I am is starving.” A peek at the specials in the pub window had
her thinking twice. “What the heck are Scotch eggs? Do they have different chickens over here?”

  Jo grabbed Lovie by the elbow, pulling her toward the door. “Maybe they’re just super patriotic about their chickens. Let’s go inside. I wanna get warm, get a bite, and get some hot guy to talk Calum to me.”

  “Fine, fine. Let’s eat and scout the locals.” Hopefully, they’d have some Scotch bacon in there too. Breakfast for dinner was a vacation must.

  Home Again

  C.J. MacDuff gripped the phone so hard his knuckles crunched. He strained to keep his voice calm as the man on the other end explained why he couldn’t come around to patch the roof for another two weeks. In the dead of fucking winter.

  “One o’ my guys is down sick with flu, and the other’s got a bairn due any minute. I just dinna have the man to do it.”

  Duff ran a rough hand over his face. “And how much would it cost to free up a man to do it sooner?”

  “Well...” He pictured the wanker totting up the profit in his head. “I could call up me nephew. Have him come ‘round, say...Thursday?”

  “Thursday?”

  “Aye, but it’ll cost ye.”

  “Fine. Thursday.” Duff pulled out his smartphone and opened his bank’s mobile application to move some money around.

  “Alright, then. Though why ye’d even bother with that old ruin, I’ll no understand. Yer wasting yer money, if yer wantin’ my opinion.”

  “I’m not interested in your opinion.”

  Undeterred, the idiot blathered on. “You know, if yer grandmother had sold the place ten years ago-“

  “One thing has nothing to do with the other, and none of it is your concern. See you Thursday.” He hung up. Carefully, because his instinct was to rip the phone out of the wall, but that wouldn’t do.

  Five roofers. He’d called five roofers and got the same bullshit story.

  “Too busy.”

  “Canna do it ‘til next week.”

  “...next month.”

  “...the end of the year.”

  Was it always like this? No wonder the bed-and-breakfast was operating in the red. No doubt the place would go under, were it not for the money he sent home regularly.

  It had been five years since Duff had stayed in Inverness for longer than a day or two. Only his best friend’s wedding could bring him back now. That and his grandmother, who was clearly in more dire straits than she’d let on in their weekly phone calls.

  The state of the place was shocking. There were cracks in the plaster, dangerously loose floorboards, and they should have replaced the kitchen cabinets ages ago. The roof was the worst of it, sporting a gaping hole right over her bedroom. The place needed sorting out. Or burning down.

  Gran would rather sell the fillings from her teeth than admit she needed help, never wanting to burden him. She was never a burden, but it meant extending the two-day trip into two weeks.

  It wasn’t her he’d been avoiding.

  Two weeks in Inversneckie was thirteen days too long. The city of sixty thousand made him claustrophobic, with its small town mentality and ancient superstitions. Privacy was as foreign a concept as blue cows.

  Every familiar face contained some shadow of judgment. There goes that thievin’ Gregor’s boy. Like father, like son. He could see it in their squinting eyes. Hear it in their self-righteous voices. Still, it was a chance to spend time with his gran, and he had missed her.

  “Oh, darlin’! You’ve got this all fixed up already?” She shuffled into the kitchen, smelling of lavender and Flexitol balm. Her hand shook as she pushed her glasses to the top of her snow-capped head.

  “Yeah, gran. It’s all sorted.” Duff tested the hinges on the newly repaired cabinets. The fresh coat of stain on the wood was still a little tacky to the touch. “These shouldn’t give ye any more trouble, but we’ll give it another day to dry.”

  Her face lit up with such pride. It warmed and embarrassed him at the same time. “Aren’t you a dear?”

  Being back at the Golden Thistle Inn was the closest thing he had to a homecoming. The place was empty these days, no doubt due to its run-down state. Gran herself was getting on in years. She was still the lively, rosy-cheeked bearer of biscuits and warm milk that used to tuck him in at night, but she moved much slower now. It had become impossible for her to keep up with the B&B on her own. He needed to find permanent help for her. That, or convince her to sell it.

  “Yer such a big help to me.” When you’re around. She would never say it, never begrudge him his freedom, but guilt niggled at his conscience.

  “It was nothin’, gran. I’ll check on the roof, and then I’m off for a bit.” He shrugged into his jacket, the well-worn leather molding to him like a second skin. “Need anything from the shops?”

  “Och, no. I’m all sorted, dear. Will ye be back for tea?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. I’m meetin’ up with the lads at the pub.”

  Her worried frown was slight. “Weel, you have a good time. Try an’ stay outta trouble.”

  “Dinna fash, Gran.” He kissed her warm cheek, giving her the cheeky grin she loved so much. “I always try.”

  ****

  “I’m stuffed.” Jo sat back in the booth and rubbed her non-existent tummy.

  “I’ve never seen you eat so much.” Lovie had polished off a fair bit of food herself. It was absolutely the best food she’d ever eaten. That or she was just super hungry.

  “I think Scotch eggs are addictive.” Jo groaned. “I’m tempted to order more, even though I don’t have room in these jeans.”

  “We’ll walk it off tomorrow.” Lovie pushed her plate away. “I figured, after the morning tour, we could hike up to-”

  “Ohhhh, no.” Jo waved her off. “I am not hiking anywhere. The only hiking I wanna do is my skirt.”

  “Eww.”

  “Over my head, as The Calum grabs my-”

  “Okay!” Lovie had to stop her before she could go any further. The girl could go far.

  Jo’s satisfied grin remained, even as she took a sip from her pint glass. “I’m just saying.”

  “I’ll go by myself. I’m not going to miss it because you’re lazy.”

  “Me? Lazy?” Jo feigned outrage. “I’m the hardest working person you know.”

  “Hardliest working.”

  “Hmmph, that’s not even a word.” Lovie tossed a wadded napkin her way, but a group of men settling in at the bar torpedoed her aim.

  “Hellooo nurse. Hottie McHottersons at six o’clock.”

  “What?”

  Lovie leaned in. “Don’t turn around, but there’s a group of potentials behind you.”

  “Ohhhh!” Jo’s eyes lit up. “Any Calums?”

  “No redheads, that I can see but-” Lovie’s jaw dropped to the floor.

  “But what?”

  She had spoken too soon. It was a bona fide Calum. In the flesh.

  “But whaaat?” Jo grabbed her hand. “Can I look?”

  “Uh, wait a sec.” The guy had to be at least six-foot-five and was built like a tank. His hair was a bright coppery red and just brushed the tops of his shoulders.

  “Ugh.” Impatient, Jo released Lovie’s hand and turned to look. Her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, it’s...”

  “Yeah.” Lovie couldn’t believe it. He smiled, and it was as if someone had turned on the bright lights. Goodness gracious. She was hurtled back down to earth by the loud thud of Jo’s purse as it landed on the table.

  “I look like shit.”

  “No you don’t.” Joana Lindley never looked like shit. She was Barbie, without the absurdly ill-proportioned body. Blonde hair, ice blue eyes, fit but curvy - any guy’s dream. But her dream guy only existed in novels, or so Lovie had thought.

  She kept one eye on The Calum and another on her friend, who was fixing her makeup and fluffing her hair.

  “He still there?”

  “Oh yes.” He was the center of the group. Even from a distance, Lovie could s
ee the way the others orbited around him. He laughed, they laughed. He drank, they drank.

  Definitely some introjective identification going on there. Understandably so, he was magnetic. From his deep, resonant voice to his chiseled jaw, right down to his sizable feet, it was as if he’d walked right out of the pages of A Laird to Love. The only thing missing was a kilt.

  Apparently finished with her adjustments, Jo flashed her patented knock ‘em dead smile. “I’m going to get another drink.”

  “Your beer is still full.”

  Jo poured her ale into Lovie’s empty water glass. “And now it’s empty.”

  She slid out of the booth and sauntered – literally, hand on hip and ass swinging side to side - over to the group of mostly men. It would have been comical had she not looked so freaking good doing it. Seriously, she could’ve given lessons.

  On cue, they parted like the Red Sea, tongues hanging out like thirsty poodles.

  The conversation stopped immediately as Jo snaked her way to the bar, making sure to brush against her target in the process. The Calum and his buddies all checked her out and signaled one another in some silent brospeak, probably deciding which one would take a crack at her. None of them made a move or appeared inclined to speak.

  Except The Calum.

  Whatever he said had Jo tittering like a schoolgirl. She turned her back and rested her elbows on the bar, putting “the girls” on prominent display. How had she squeezed her double-Ds into that sweater?

  The suitor chosen, the rest of The Calum’s crew slid away. The entire event took less than two minutes. It might have been a record.

  After an hour of watching them smile and flirt, Lovie was silly with boredom. Jo hadn’t even brought her conquest over to meet her. A real, live Calum. He was practically a unicorn!

  She needed some air.

  By-passing the court of Laird Calum and soon-to-be Lady Joana, Lovie pushed through the packs of rowdy locals scattered around the pub and stepped through the swinging door into the crisp night air.