Highland Inheritance

by Caroline Dunford

Genres: Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Lucy McIntosh is a city girl through and through. She works in an advertising agency in Edinburgh with her boyfriend Jake, and her life is a whirl of deadlines, corporate parties, and coffee shops. Then Lucy learns that she is to inherit a hotel in the Highlands from her long-lost Uncle Calum. At first insistent that she will sell it to fund her and Jake?s move to London, she arrives in her uncle?s village to find The Mormaer Inn, a huge, tumbledown place perpetually on the brink of failure ? and falls in love with it. Lucy is determined to restore the hotel to former glories. But her dream is blocked at every turn by obstacles. Rooms that need complete renovation, staff members who need personality transplants ? and Graham Sutherland. His family have been local landowners for generations, and he wants the Inn for himself. Graham wants to demolish the hotel to build a holiday park, and is so confident Lucy will sell to him that he has already applied for planning permission. He is furious to think that naïve newcomer Lucy might have her own plans for the hotel ? and adamant he?ll get what he wants ?

Release date: October 20, 2014

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 200

Sample

Chapter One

‘Big Data!’

The words flash up on the screen and Jake Harvey smiles, showing snow-bright teeth. Every inch of him shows he is the professional of the new millennium, from his exquisitely shiny Doc Martens brogues to his freshly clay-matted hair. He wears a jacket but no tie, and his designer jeans cost more than the average couple spend on a weekend break. He’s out of the box, but not enough to alarm. He’s edgy, but steady. That’s his catchphrase. It’s exactly how he wants to be; an innovator, but at the same time someone who can be relied upon. A new-meets-old guy in a charming ten out of ten package. All the faces in the room are turned to him expectantly, but it’s to me he gives his sexy half-wink. Against the odds he’s all mine.

Well, maybe not quite all mine. We haven’t officially told anyone we’re engaged and I don’t have a ring, but it’s not like we’re getting married soon. As Jake says, marriage isn’t ‘on trend’ at present. The demographics show more young career couples are living together and whether it’s right or wrong the data correlation still shows that cohabiting young women as opposed to married young women – late twenties, like me – do better in their careers than their hitched counterparts. Jake says 25-34 is still the time when the slow climbers have their kids, as opposed to the high climbers who wait till their late thirties to early forties to breed. He pulled up tons of data to show me how it is. He says it’s important for my career that we don’t get married yet. I don’t mind. There is something special about knowing that he’s loyal to me without a wedding ring. We’re so together we don’t need a registrar to licence us. May, my best friend, says I’m an idiot, but then her relationship record isn’t exactly glowing.

Jake’s still speaking. He’s on to why the company should invest in more servers, why we need to move to Big Data to capture the real picture. All around people are nodding. SkyBluePink, or SBP as it’s usually known, is one of the fastest-moving digital marketing companies in the world. We’re proud to be open to big ideas like Big Data. It’s a measure of our dedication that we’re all happily sitting here listening to Jake speak even though we know as soon as he finished the company party will begin.

As I listen to him a tiny part of me can’t help wondering if Big Data isn’t just a name for collecting lots of data and heaven knows we do that already. I’m a data analyst – or anal-yst as my friend May delights in calling it. What I can’t do in Excel can’t be done. And yet here’s Jake saying it’s not enough, we need to go bigger, wider, deeper.

I’ve heard it all before. He’s been practising this pitch for weeks. I turn to look out the dark window. It’s a rainy winter night. Since we moved SBP onto the Royal Mile, with the help of Edinburgh Council’s ‘revitalise the city centre’ incentives (that, ironically, we helped them market) the view out of the window is dangerously tempting. We used to be in a trendy warehouse space, but now we’re in refurbished old-style tenements. SBP has knocked out all the walls to make a huge open-plan office and we all hot-desk, but I always try to get a window seat. I leave programmes running on my computer overnight, so I have a reason to always come back to the same space. Jake says I have issues with territory.

Out there, I can see the brooding mass of St Giles, so black it seems to swallow light. The church squats halfway down the Mile, impervious to the comings and goings of humans and businesses for hundreds of years. Right outside is the Heart of Midlothian, the site of the old gallows, immortalised in a stone heart set into the pavement and the only place in the city where you are expected to spit as a sign of disgust for what used to go on there. And tucked in beside it is the glorious cobbled Georgian Parliament Square. I can see the lights of carollers as they stand outside and sing. There’s a tiny fair including a chestnut stand to one side. Families are beginning to gather, people at the end of their working day are stopping by and joining the celebration. I give a huge sigh. I wish I was down there. It’s a small part of the Holiday Festive programme, but it was my idea. A little bit of a Dickensian Christmas in the heart of the Old Town. Something to tear people away from the bright lights of Princes Street and the enchantment of discount shopping retail parks. It’s my little bit of holiday magic, but it’s very small potatoes in the fast-moving world of digital marketing.

I catch sight of my face in the window, a ghostly reflection against the happy scene. I look sad, which I have no reason to be. My shoulder-length dark curly hair is limper than usual and hangs forward over what I know to be an unusual heart-shaped face, not at all in fashion; demographics again. Big data doesn’t lie. I’m twisted and hunched forward to look out the window and I notice how thin my shoulders are looking. I think that’s good. Jake is always saying I could do with losing a few pounds. Not in a critical way, but our business is so image-conscious. I smile at myself, pull my shoulders back, and turn to the room again. Pretend to be confident and you’ll look confident, I recite in my head. I can’t help noticing as I tear my eyes away from the window scene that it’s started to rain stair-rods out there. The crowd doesn’t disperse. It’s Edinburgh. It’s expected. I love my city.

The contrast inside makes me blink. Ambient lighting is out, so SBP have installed bright halogen bulbs in the ceiling over each desk and a major lighting rig and projector system that turns the huge back wall into a presentation centre. Jake, his laptop discreetly hooked up to one side, is making the most of the effects. Thirty-three minutes in he’s coming to the end. It’s a perfect time. Demographics data shows people get bored by forty-minute presentations, but consider those under thirty minutes to be too lightweight.

He finished with the lines I’ve heard him recite over and over to the bathroom mirror, ‘This isn’t about what I think. This is what the data itself is telling us. It’s going to be a tough challenge, but I know SBP people thrive on big challenges. If we are to stay at the top of our game we have to embrace Big Data, invest in Big Data, and live Big Data.’

There is an awful lot of clapping. Our MD, Linda, forties, fabulous, and fashionable, declares the party open and draws our attention to the vodka ice luges that have been wheeled in at the back of the room and which no one noticed, they were so intent on Jake.

Half an hour later I’m under the ice luge shaped like a naked man. Guess where the vodka comes out? And someone is pouring pepper vodka for me. Shouts of ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ circle me as I wait for the cold shot to hit me. I reckon if I close my mouth fast enough most of it will go over my face, which will make everyone laugh and prevent me from getting so drunk my legs don’t work. I’ve been hit by these luges before. The coldness of the spirit takes away the burn and you think you can drink far more than you can. It was after one of these vodka luges that Jake and I got together three years ago. Of course that’s a good thing, but God, the day after I was so ill.

Jake’s been under already. He’s lost his jacket, but he’s only swaying slightly. Kelly Martin passed out completely, she was so keen to keep going. I can see her from the corner of my eye. She’s on the curvy red sofa. Someone has thoughtfully put her into the recovery position.

I wonder briefly if my Dickensian fair outside is going well then the first icy shot hits me. I mistime it and swallow the lot. ‘Lucy!’ cries the crowd. ‘Another’ shouts someone else. Other voices join in. I splutter slightly, swallowing the spirit and look up at the icy penis above me. Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound.

But five hours later it’s my head that’s pounding. I’m back at the flat. I have no idea how I got here. I’m lying on the sofa in the living area. Fortunately, it’s one of those wide ones from Sofa LifeStyle, one of our latest clients, that looks pretty much like a bed – only right now the flaming orange with lime green trim is making my eyes hurt. I roll onto my side and see the stainless steel bowl that has been left for me. ‘Jake,’ I croak, but my mouth is too dry for the words to come out properly. He’s left the gas fire on. One of those flueless ones that looks like a picture painted in flame. Not only is it drying me out even further, but the little licks of orange, yellow, and blue dance dizzily and nauseously in front of my eyes. My mouth floods with saliva and I know what’s coming. I lean over the sofa, my stomach constricts violently, and I vomit into the bowl. I swear I will never give in to peer pressure again. The only time I ever get drunk is at SBP Christmas parties. Drinking is part of the ethos there. Work hard, play hard. I duck out of all the other celebrations, but I can’t dodge Christmas. I’d lose my bonus. No, seriously, I would.

An hour later I’m lying on my back, gasping and ready to sell my liver for a glass of water. There’s no way my body is ever getting above the horizontal ever again. My ribs ache like I’ve been crushed in a vice. It seems that after the luge I must have eaten my bodyweight in Christmas goodies. I have no memory of them going in, but their leaving me will remain etched on my memory for a long time. I am never, repeat, never going under a vodka luge again. I don’t care if all the data in the world tells me it is the only way to survive, I’d rather die than go through that again.

I doze off into a fitful sleep, waking every half hour or so, to add to my bowl. At least I haven’t woken Jake.

Our big clock, embedded in the wall, no face, is showing 11 a.m. when I hear him in the shower. Half an hour later he appears, bright-eyed, smiling, gorgeous, and smelling of cologne, but I only have eyes for the elixir he is carrying, a large glass of water.

‘Oh, thank you, God,’ I say as I snatch the glass, drag myself up against a cushion, and start drinking from it.

‘Hey, slowly, Luce, or you’ll make yourself sick.’

‘Nothing left in me,’ I say between gulps. Jake registers the sick bucket with a look of disgust. He edges it across the polished laminate floor to the balcony window. A blast of winter escapes into the room and I yelp in protest.

Jake manoeuvres the bucket outside and closes the balcony door. He gives me a wicked grin.

‘Thought it might wake you up,’ he says. ‘We’ve got to be at my parents’ in an hour.’

I place one hand against my sweaty head like a heroine in an old-fashioned movie, though by now I reckon I must look like something out of Trainspotting. ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I just can’t.’

Jake frowns. He rarely frowns. He doesn’t want Botox and he doesn’t want wrinkles. ‘Honey, they’re expecting us.’

‘I know. I know.’ I’m remembering now that this is one of his big family parties. Jake has hordes of cousins, uncles, aunts, and twice-removed whatevers, and this year a whole load of them have come over from Australia for a festive get-together. I don’t think I’ll be missed by most of them, especially the ones that have never met me, but Jake is acutely aware if he has a space on his arm. It’s important to be a couple at Christmas. Jake says that people automatically feel both sorry for and superior to those on their own at Christmas. That’s not a very nice thought, but I thought about it and I do. I’m horrible! He’s absolutely right though. Being a couple at Christmas is a sign of success..

I try a final gambit. ‘Do you really want me there looking like this?’

Concern registers across his face as he realises maybe I won’t be able to look as gleaming and healthy as him in the next half hour. Personally, I doubt I’ll ever leave the sofa again. ‘But what will I say?’

‘Say I took a shift at a soup kitchen when someone unexpectedly dropped out,’ I joke.

Jake makes a little humph noise. ‘And you didn’t want me to miss seeing my long-lost Aussie relatives, so you insisted I still went. That might work.’

‘I was kidding. You can’t lie about something like that.’

‘Luce, a lie’s a lie. You don’t want me to say you got so drunk at the office party you were dancing topless on the tables last night, do you?’

My stomach shifts in an alarming way. ‘You’re kidding,’ I repeat weakly.

‘Are you wearing a bra?’ He asks. ‘You never could hold your drink, Luce.’

I feel under my top. Nothing. ‘Oh God, why didn’t you stop me?’

‘Hey Luce, I don’t control you. You’re a modern, independent woman.’

‘But you know I’d never do something like that normally. How will I face the office again?’

‘Everyone seemed to like it. You got lots of cheers.’

‘Oh God,’ I say again, imagining the scene. I can’t even remember if I was wearing one of my good bras or one of my ever-expanding collection of grey ones.

Jake pulls something out of his back pocket. ‘This came for you by special delivery,’ he says. ‘Good thing too. I’d slept through the alarm.’

And he hands me the letter that will change my life.

Chapter Two

Christmas passed in the usual manner, the most lingering effect being the tightening of my waistband. The weather was cold, wet, and miserable and I felt much the same. Jake and I had been at odds since that blessed letter arrived.

I sat in the warmth and cosy familiarity of my favourite coffee shop and nursed a sugar-ridden cup of coffee.

‘So he wants you to go?’ said May, all long platinum blonde locks and smoky eyes. A dozen silver rings, bearing everything from roses to snakes, intertwined on her long fingers. Her orange crochet top has slipped to one shoulder, revealing a lacy black bra strap. Jake hates May.

May is my best friend, despite returning Jake’s feelings in full. We were at school together and shared crushes on pop stars, leg- (and worse) waxing experiments, and generally rode the back of normal teenage traumas together. Then May went to art school and I went to study English. The mediocrity of our results meant that we had both ended up at Edinburgh University and not the Glasgow School of Art and Oxford as we had respectively intended. So instead we trawled student bars together, hung out in the sunny meadows under the cherry trees in summer, and whispered to each other of our first sexual experiments – a step on from waxing, which we had both now mastered. Not surprisingly, neither of us ended up with particularly good degrees. We were each other’s bad influence and proud of it. Now May was a poverty-stricken artist living in a tenement flat so shabby I didn’t know if she was squatting or actually paying rent. I hadn’t had the nerve to ask. May can be quite prickly about some things. Not least the fact that her parents have money with a capital M. As Jake is often pointing out, May can afford to slum it because one day she’s going to be rolling in cash. Unlike me. My parents do try to be supportive of my abortive attempts to find myself, but in reality they can only offer to be vague emotional props. I’ve always known I would have to make my own way in the world. Which is why the letter has blind-sided me so completely.

‘He wants you to head into the Highlands while he buggers off several hundred miles south? Is there something he’s not telling you?’ May lent forward both indigent and hopeful.

‘We are not splitting up,’ I said, putting my mug down with just a little too much emphasis on the wooden table. Frothy milk spilled over the side.

‘Hmm,’ said May and gave a little snort through her nose. ‘Tell me what the deal is again. I want to make sure I’ve got this right.’

‘Well, Jake said it would be good …’

‘Bugger Jake,’ snapped May. ‘Tell me about long-lost Uncle Calum.’

I shook my head. ‘He wasn’t lost, he was cut off.’

‘Oooh, a black sheep. Sounds like my kind of guy. What did he do?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Mum won’t talk about it and Dad leaves the room if his name is even mentioned.’

‘And he’s left you a hotel?’

‘Apparently. The Mormaer Inn. But I have to run it as a going concern for six months or it will be sold to endow a donkey sanctuary.’

‘But after the six months you could sell it, right?’

‘Well, yes, but I don’t know anything about running a hotel.’

‘How hard can it be? Where is it?’

‘In the middle of nowhere. Up north in Argyle.’

‘That’s hardly nowhere,’ bristled May. ‘My family have a holiday home up there. They have electricity coming in next year.’

I blanched.

May threw up her hands. ‘I’m kidding. They even have supermarkets in the Highlands now.’ She paused, ‘Although I don’t know where the nearest one of these is.’ She gestured around at the coffee shop.

‘You’re still kidding, right?’

‘Oh your face, hun,’ chortled May. ‘They’re too canny up north to pay this price for a coffee. And as for your favourite nail bar …’

‘Oh well, it will only be six months,’ I said, caressing my mug and admiring the French manicure I’d had done this morning. ‘I certainly intend to sell as soon as I can. And Jake is going to come up for the first three months before he moves down to London.’

‘And when you sell up, you’ll join him?’

‘It’s our dream, May,’ I said gently. ‘To be at the cosmopolitan heart of things. To really make a name for ourselves in the business while we’re still young. You’re welcome to visit any time.’

‘Ha!,’ said May. ‘I can just see Jake putting up with that.’

‘Well, with the new promotion there will be a fair amount of European travel …’

‘And you were hoping I could visit when he was away?’

The blood rushed hot into my face. ‘It’s not as if you like him either.’

‘And it’s not your dream. It’s never been your bloody dream. It’s his dream. Everything you do is what Jake wants.’

‘Look, May, when you’re a couple you make compromises,’ I began.

‘Jake’s idea of compromise is to have everything his own way.’

‘That’s not fair!’

We glowered at each other over our cinnamon mochas. As usual, I backed down first.

‘Let’s not argue. I’m not even sure if I’m going anywhere yet. I haven’t see the lawyer. It might all be one giant mistake.’

‘Then you’d be heading down to London, so it’s goodbye either way.’

I shook my head again. ‘Jake and I have agreed it’s important for my self-esteem that I pay my own way. I don’t have a job to go to in London, so without the money from the hotel I can’t go.’

May’s look spoke volumes. I did my best to ignore it. ‘I’m going to the Edinburgh office of the law firm next Thursday. Do you want to come?’ I offered an olive branch.

‘Will Jake be there?’

‘No, he’s got a big presentation to give to a new German client he’s taking on.’

‘That wouldn’t be the client you were telling me about, would it? The one you did all the groundwork for?’

‘It makes more sense for them to have a London-based account manager. Besides, I’m still a data analyst.’

‘Only because you keep giving Jake your best leads.’

‘We’re a team,’ I said with dignity. None of May’s relationships have ever lasted beyond three months.

May gave another snort. This one was distinctly scornful. I swallowed my scalding coffee, told her where we could meet, and made my excuses. I’d had enough of being picked on. I hurried home to Jake, thinking of him wrapping his warm arms around me and telling me it would all be all right. In his arms I always felt safe.

The thought of taking on the hotel terrified me, but with Jake at my side I knew I could face almost anything. He was just so good at sorting things out. He always knew the right thing to say, the right person to flatter to get a job done, and unlike me, no matter the emotional turbulence he w. . .