Back at Eilidh’s cottage, she and Zac could get to know one another. Find a way forward. Create a magical Christmas. Something…
Or was she completely daft? Naïve bordering on delusional, as her friends liked to laughingly say? Life doesn’t work like that, Laurel.
But it could, Laurel would say. It should.
Suppressing a sigh, she grabbed a box of groceries from the boot of the car and headed back to the house.
Zac was sprawled on the sofa, its rusty springs squeaking under his weight, as he glared at the screen of his phone. “There’s no Wi-Fi,” he flung at her accusingly.
“No, I don’t imagine there would be.” Eilidh had never been one for any kind of tech, and even if she had Wi-Fi, Laurel wasn’t about to find out how it worked. That was definitely not the point of this holiday.
“Are you serious?” Zac demanded. “I didn’t expect a signal out here, but no Wi-Fi?” He lifted his gaze from his phone to glare at her instead of the screen. “That’s, like, child abuse.”
“I don’t think that would hold in a court of law,” Laurel returned as lightly as she could. “And in any case, it might be nice not to have Wi-Fi for a bit. We can do other things.”
Zac snorted. “Like what?”
“Board games. Getting ready for Christmas. Walks…” She trailed off, cowed by Zac’s sneering look despite her determination to be upbeat. “Why don’t you help me get the rest of our stuff from the car?”
Zac opened his mouth to retort something assuredly unsavoury, but then his eyes and mouth both rounded, his face draining of colour. Before Laurel could make a sound, she heard a click behind her. It almost sounded like a gun being cocked, but of course it couldn’t be that, that only happened in movies…
Then a low voice, with the thickest Scottish burr Laurel had ever heard, growled at them. “Put your hands up in the air, ye choring skellums.”
Chapter Three
Her heart pounding, Laurel put her hands in the air. Zac followed, his face sheet-white as his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
Slowly Laurel turned around, bracing herself for whatever Highland lunatic had entered the cottage. Why had she left the door open? Because, of course, she’d thought being in the middle of bloody nowhere meant they were safe. Clearly not.
The man standing in the doorway of the sitting room had a hunting rifle aimed directly at her heart, which was alarming to say the least. He was dressed in indeterminate, mud-splattered clothes—a baggy parka, waterproof plus fours and Wellington boots barely visible beneath a thick layer of caked-on mud. A flat cap was jammed on his head, his craggy face set in a narrowed expression. He looked terrifying—and insane.
“What do you want?” Laurel asked in a shaking voice. “Money? I have some in my wallet…”
“Money?” The man’s voice was derisive. “It’s you who’ll be wanting the money, I should think! What are you doing, trying to break in here? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
It took Laurel a moment to make out his words through his thick Scottish brogue. “We’re not breaking in,” she protested. “This is my aunt’s cottage. And can you please lower that gun before someone gets shot?”
“Your aunt?” The gun didn’t move.
“Eilidh Campbell. My great-aunt, actually. The gun.” Now that she was starting to believe she wasn’t in any present or pressing danger, Laurel wanted the hunting rifle taken out of the equation. Slowly she lowered her hands. “We’re staying in her cottage over Christmas.”
The man lowered the gun a few inches, so Laurel would be shot in the groin rather than the heart if it accidentally—or not so accidentally—went off, which was not a particularly reassuring thought. “Eilidh said naught about it to me.”
“Well, trust me, that’s the plan. I rang her yesterday and made the arrangements. She’s in Spain and she told us the key was under the flowerpot, but it wasn’t.”
“Oh, aye,” the man said, finally, thankfully lowering the gun so neither she nor Zac were in its line of fire. “I’m meant to put the key in the pot for visitors, but she didn’t tell aught to me about it.” The gun bobbed up again but thankfully was lowered once more.
“You must be her neighbour.” Laurel searched her memory for the man’s name, and thankfully came up with it. “Archie…MacDougall.”
“Aye.”
“Well, now you know we’re not burglars, and we know you’re not some deranged lunatic wandering the coast road.” Although, actually, the latter remained to be seen.
“Eilidh tells me when she’s having visitors.” He still sounded suspicious.
“She said she’d let you know yesterday. Did you get an email?”
Archie frowned. “I don’t reckon I