PROLOGUE
EREDINE
Eight years ago
Los Angeles, California
United States
Staring at the map of Scotland on the laptop screen, I tried to picture myself in the place labeled Ardnoch, right on the northeastern coastline of the mainland. Having never been there, it wasn’t a simple task.
“Ardnoch,” I murmured, trying out the sound of it in my mouth.
So foreign.
And yet, what Lachlan Adair offered was a life there, not completely unlike the one I lived now. Just safer. Much, much safer.
You trust him? the voice, a memory, asked in my head.
Yes. Despite everything I’d been through, I trusted Lachlan Adair. I trusted my gut. If there was something I’d always been able to trust, it was my gut instinct. Granny called it my sixth sense, said I inherited her gift of perceiving a person’s goodness or wickedness. My friends used to say I caught a person’s “vibe” because, eventually, my instincts about someone usually turned out to be true. I’d only been wrong once or twice in my entire life.
Those people I’d been wrong about had a gift too—they could make you believe in their goodness, so you never saw their wickedness coming.
It unnerved me to know that my sixth sense didn’t always get it right, but I knew deep in my soul I was right about Lachlan Adair.
Life was so surreal. One minute, I was hopeless, feeling angry and powerless, and the next, a Hollywood actor, of all people, offered me a chance to start over. It wasn’t like he and the bodyguard who went everywhere with him were my saviors. Nah, screw that. They were just presenting an opportunity. I’d pay them back.
I’d work my ass off to live life on my own terms again.
Granny always said there was no shame in taking help when you needed it, as long as you had exhausted all other avenues. Well, I’d exhausted them all.
This was what I had left. And I hated it. I hated I had to rely on a wealthy man to get me the hell out of Dodge, especially when it was a rich male (he wasn’t a man) who had—
Furious tears thickened my throat, and I threw the thought of him out of my mind.
He’d taken too much already.
I wouldn’t let him turn me into an angry, bitter woman.
Concentrating on the map, I scrolled over Scotland, taking in the place-names I’d never heard of, some beautiful, some unpronounceable … all thousands of miles away.
A knock sounded on the door. “It’s Lachlan,” he called out in his lilting brogue.
“Come in.”
My pulse picked up as the hotel room door beeped and Lachlan entered with Mac, his bodyguard, at his back. Well, not his bodyguard anymore. Mackennon Galbraith was now the head of security at Ardnoch Estate.
Lachlan had explained that he’d renovated his family’s castle and estate in the Highlands and turned it into a members-only club for TV and film professionals. It only opened a few weeks ago, and Lachlan was in LA to spread the word among his peers. Our meeting had been by chance, and thank the Lord, because I didn’t know what might have happened if he and Mac hadn’t appeared in my life when they did.
I didn’t know why Lachlan was so determined to help me, but he offered me a position at his estate. He needed a yoga/Pilates instructor, and I was one.
Both men wore small smiles as they sat across from me in the hotel suite’s living room. Lachlan hid me here after I’d uncharacteristically blurted my entire story to him. With everything I’d been through, I wanted to fight against my instinct and remind myself that no one was this kind. Yet, that wasn’t true. Granny was. She’d have helped a stranger on the street.
What other choice did I have? So many had been taken from me.
Lachlan sighed and leaned forward. “How are you feeling?”
A little tired of that question. “Okay. What now?”
“We’re ready to get moving.”
“Just one last thing,” Mac said, searching my face with a concerned frown. “Name change. You need to do that before we can get you out of here.”
“Do you have a new name in mind?” Lachlan asked. “Something far removed from your real name or any family member’s name. Something he can’t figure out.”
Name change.
My stomach flipped unpleasantly as I stared down at the laptop screen. This was it. I really was rewriting my life. Leaving everything behind. So much pain and grief … but it also meant leaving behind who I’d been before the horror overtook everything. And I’d liked that girl. She had a good life.
Tears stung my eyes and nose as a pretty-looking place-name caught my attention on the map. I turned the laptop and pointed to it. “How do you pronounce this?”
Lachlan leaned forward to peer at it. “Eredine? It’s pronounced Ery-Deen.”
My lips twitched. He pronounced it differently from how it looked, but I liked it. Weirdly, somehow, it fit. “That’ll do.”