Finding Fraser (28 page)

Fraser Found…

4:00 pm, June 8

Nairn, Scotland

I’m not sure I believe in love at first
sight.

But I might.

And Sophia? I may never come home. Bite
that, will ya?

- ES

Comments: 70

Gerald Abernathy, Fort William, Scotland:

DETAILS!!!!

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here
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So.

Now that it had come to pass, I felt
strangely reluctant to blog about it. Like telling the story might let the
magic out, somehow. Even my longing to rub my sister’s nose in my success was
tempered by a sudden need to keep things private.

The massive number of comments over the week
following my reunion with Hamish was a bit daunting, as well. Most of them were
variants on Gerald’s theme. What does he look like? How does he act? Will there
be a hand-fast? A wedding? How was your first night together?

Things had changed. The blog had changed. I
had no intention of posting his picture. And describe what he looked like? How
we were together? It was—it was just not what I wanted to do any longer.

Besides—what if he ever saw it?

I began to think about taking the blog down.

He was away on deliveries for most of a
week before I saw him again. But on the Tuesday, there had been flowers waiting
for me on the front counter. And on Thursday, a very sour-faced Ashwin had handed
me a note.
 
The envelope it came in
was torn.

I read the note, (Miss U, cant wait to see U
soon, it said), and asked Ash about the envelope.

“It came that way,” he said, and stalked off
for a smoke behind the cafe.

I just smiled, and tossing the envelope,
tucked the note into my bra, close to my heart. I missed him, too, that I did.

That Friday, when Hamish stuck his head in
the cafe just before closing, and told me he had only one job to finish before
he was off work, and would I care to go for a walk again?

I had every table wiped in under a minute.

We’d headed out right after he finished
changing the transmission on the local vet’s van. I’d ridden my bike to work,
but we left it leaning against the back wall of the cafe and strolled down the
road, instead.

For just a moment, I closed my eyes, walking
beside him, and thought about where I was. In the most beautiful part of the
most beautiful country in the world, walking under the stars with Hamish.

I thought my heart might just stop beating
out of sheer happiness. But when I opened my eyes, my large Scottish male
companion was scowling up at the sky.

“Bad enough there’s now’t tae do in this
dull place, and now the weather’s gone smirrey.”

“Smirrey?” I said, as a smattering of
raindrops smacked me in the face.
 

He looked at me and rolled his eyes. “It’s
hell on mah hair,” he said, touching the blonde tuft in front gingerly. It did
look a bit more limp than usual.

I pulled up my hood, and he took my hand and
curled it in his.

“I hate the rain,” he said, and circled us
around back toward the cafe. “In California, it’s sunny most of the time, did
ye know?”

I shrugged. “I’ve gotten kind of used to it,
actually. Besides,” I added innocently, “I’m sure there’s lots of things we
could come up with to do inside.”

He nodded resolutely, and lengthened his
stride as we walked past the cafe door. “You’re right. I’m famished—I’d
slay an army for a bi’ o’curry. You?”

“I—uh, okay,” I replied, as he dropped
my hand and pushed open the door of the chippy beside his garage. I hurried in
behind him, relieved to be out of the wet, but disappointed that my hinting
skills seemed not to have improved since my long-ago relationship with
Campbell.

We’d stepped outside an hour later, and that
time Hamish held the door for me. It had been a spirited meal, as Geordie and
another mechanic had been inside and had waved us over to their table. Hamish
had taken a fair bit of ribbing over keeping company with the new American
waitress, but on the whole it had been—if not exactly what I’d hoped for
in a date—still pretty fun.

I stepped out into the rain, and Hamish
followed me across the street as I went to collect my bicycle. The gel spikes
had fallen out of his hair in the damp, and he pulled a baseball cap from his
pocket and jammed it on backwards.

“Hair’s ruined in the dreich, anyroad,” he said.

It had been a long time since I had walked
with a male wearing a ball cap on backwards, but I peered up at him through the
misty darkness. “California Angels?” I guessed, squinting back at the logo.

“Aye!” he answered, delightedly. “They’re
mah team.”

I flipped the switch on the bike lamp and it
created a damp puddle of light on the ground in front of us. “I guess I’d
better head home,” I said, reluctantly. “Thanks for dinner.”

He burped gently, smothering it in one large
fist. “Better up than down,” he said, cheerfully, and put his hands over mine
on the handlebars. “And why would ye ride, lass, when I can take ye?”

I pretended I hadn’t heard the burp and grinned
up at him. “No reason I can think of,” I said. I followed him over to his van
and waited while he loaded the bike in the back.

He came around the side, the rain creating
dark patches on both his shoulders. “Plannin’ to take the wheel, are yeh?” he
said, and gestured at the van.

I realized I was standing on the drivers’
side. “Old habits …” I muttered, and scurried around to the other door while he
grinned at me through the rain-speckled glass.

I slid in beside him and the warm air from
the heater enveloped me. Hamish wiped his long arm across the seat between us,
sweeping a collection of paper cups and wrappers onto the floor at my feet.

“Sorry ’bout that, luv,” he said. “Two
deliveries to Fort Augustus and one to Inverness.”

“Are you on the road often?” I asked, over
the roar of the engine.

He nodded and shifted gears, as the road to
Morag’s place lurched beneath us. “Aye, quite a bit, actually. No’ really my favorite
part of the job, but good practice, for all that.”

“Good practice?”

He shot me a shy smile. “For mah green card
application. Though’ I migh’ try mah hand at long-distance truckin’ in
America.”

“Ah.” My heart lifted a little. He so loved
America. Maybe that meant he could fall for
an
American girl?

I’d never really
pictured myself with a truck-driving guy, but
—
what was I thinking, anyway? That my Jamie and I would live
happily ever after in Scotland? I told myself to quit being so judgmental and
just learn to enjoy the moment.

Gravel crunched under the wheels of the van,
and he pulled off the motorway at the end of Morag’s lane.

“She’s locked the gate,” he said, peering
into the darkness. “I’ll wheel the bike up for ye.”

I jumped out and walked around to the back
of the van.

He flung open the doors and hoisted the bike
over the gate in one smooth motion, and then patted the seat. “Yer chariot
awaits, milady.”

I slipped through the swing door of the gate
and lifted my leg across the seat. He stepped through the gate and, with his
arms holding me safely in place, wheeled the bike up the path to the house.

The gray stone of the old farmhouse loomed
at the end of the drive. The rain had stopped, but a silvery mist crept up from
the damp hollows. A lamp burned low over the rear door of the farmhouse and
another over the barn door, but apart from those, the landscape was completely
dark.

“My room is in the barn,” I whispered, and
we skirted the pool of light from the farmhouse and headed for the
thatched-roof building off to the left. As we closed the distance to the barn,
my heart was pounding like an autumn drum.

I had my feet on the pedals, but Hamish was
essentially doing all the work, pushing my bike up the slight rise in the path.
We rolled up to the barn door, and I stood up to swing my leg off, but he
caught me under the arms and lifted me down. With no one holding the bike, it
teetered and fell, and inside the barn, one of the residents lowed, cranky at
being awoken at such an ungodly hour.

I glanced over my shoulder guiltily,
scanning for movement at Morag’s window. She had to be up at five—an hour
that was truly ungodly—but the window remained dark. I turned back to
look up at Hamish, and found his lips, warm on my own.

My gasp of surprise was nicely muffled, and
we stood there in the dark beside the fallen bicycle. He kissed me, and I
kissed him back without any trouble at all.

When we both finally had to pause to
breathe, he smiled ruefully down at me. “I’ve got to leave again tonight for a
delivery down in Fort William,” he said. “But I wanted to see yeh ‘afore I
left, even jes’ for a bit.”

“I’m— I’m so glad you did,” I managed.
I ran my hands over his jacket and up to clasp around his neck. “Would you—can
you come inside, for a few minutes?”

He pressed his mouth down to mine again, and
groaned softly into the corner of my lips. “Geordie’s waitin’ for me at the
shop, and I wouldnae put it past him tae come an’ haul me bodily away. I would
stay if I could—ye know that, aye?”

Um, yes. And knowing how he felt—
feeling
how he felt—did not make
his leaving any easier. It’s possible my desperation showed in my voice.

“Really?
Really?
Not for two minutes?”

He shook his head and stepped away, and the
cold swirled around me like a living thing.

“Never
want to say goodbye …”

He was through the gate before I realized he
was singing. It said something about the state I was in that even the fact he
was just a little off-key didn’t affect the level of my ardor.
 

The cow inside the barn lowed again, and I
only had time to lift up my hand before Hamish was gone.