Summer on Honeysuckle Ridge (Highland Falls Book 1)

by Debbie Mason

  “We have. It feels like we’ve known each other forever.”

  “Abby seems to have that effect on people. And seeing as you’re her friend, you might want to dissuade her from reenacting her run-in with Wolf and the pond.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t have to rescue her. She’ll pretend she’s falling in the pond, and then I’ll edit the video to make it look like she did. We’ll throw a few weeds on her then hose her down.” She glanced at him. “If you’d agree to appear in the video and come to her rescue, I can almost guarantee she’d throw herself in the pond.”

  “Yeah, not happening.”

  “Abby said you wouldn’t agree.”

  It didn’t seem to matter if he’d agreed or not. On the fourth take, Abby’s fake falling in the pond ended up being the real thing. “Sadie had better not be filming this,” he muttered as he hauled Abby from the pond.

  An hour later, she sat on the swing wearing one of Hunter’s T-shirts and towel-drying her hair. “This shampoo smells so good, I want to eat it. My hair feels amazing too.”

  It also looked amazing, not that Hunter would share the observation with her.

  She smiled up at him, placing the towel on her lap before accepting the glass of water he handed her. “Thank you, and thanks again for letting me use your shower and your shampoo. I think I might have to steal it from you.”

  “You forgot to thank me for rescuing you.”

  “I appreciated the help, but I could’ve climbed out by myself.”

  He figured she might not have been so blasé about it if leeches had used her for lunch, but they hadn’t.

  “You should be thanking me. I got Sadie to promise she’d delete you from the video.” Abby sighed. “That’s a huge sacrifice on my part, you know. Having you in the video would’ve guaranteed thousands of subscribers as soon as it went live.”

  “I’m sure Dylan would volunteer. He could wear his kilt.”

  She laughed. “He’s cute, but not in the same league as you.”

  “Is that right.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head, but it’s the truth.” She took a sip of water, then glanced up at him. “I know you don’t want to appear in the videos, but would you consider—”

  “No.”

  “Hunter! You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do, but it’s probably a good idea that we clear all this up right now. I’m not making yurts, and I’m not wearing a kilt and pretending to be a highlander, and I’m definitely not playing the bagpipes. I’m going fishing on the Fourth.”

  “Oh come on, please don’t go. I can’t pull this off without you. I won’t ask you to play a hunky highlander, but I really need help with the yurts. There’s no way this particular group of women will enjoy literally sleeping under the stars.”

  “Abby, do you have any idea how much it’ll cost to build just one yurt?” When she shook her head, he told her, “Thousands of dollars.”

  “What about tepees? I saw a couple of them at the Summer Solstice Festival. They shouldn’t be too hard or expensive to make.”

  “Good, then you and Sadie should be able to handle it, because I don’t want any part of it.” He turned to walk away.

  “Hunter, wait. The bachelorette party probably doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but it’s really important. Mallory Maitland, our client—”

  “Mallory Maitland? You don’t mean Mallory Maitland from Highland Falls, do you?”

  “I think so. Sadie said she grew up here. Why?”

  “Because the Mallory Maitland I know does her best to avoid Highland Falls. Her dad is Boyd Carlisle.”

  “The man you had to go talk to the night of Summer Solstice?”

  Her voice dropped a bit at the end, and he imagined she was remembering why he’d left the festival and the kiss they’d shared that night. They hadn’t talked about the kiss or what Sloane had said. It didn’t mean he hadn’t thought about it; he had. Even when he didn’t want to, it was there.

  “Yeah, the man who makes moonshine is Mallory’s dad.”

  Abby moved back and forth on the swing. “It makes you wonder why she decided to have her niece’s bachelorette party here, doesn’t it?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  She rolled her eyes. “All right, I know you don’t think this is a big deal. But Mallory promised her husband on his deathbed that she’d give his niece the wedding she dreamed of, and Mallory doesn’t have the money because Mrs. Maitland the First is tying up the will in court. And it’s not just Mallory this is important to, Hunter. It’s Sadie. Highland Tours is having a horrible summer so far. Something I feel partially responsible for. And the bachelorette weekend is going to turn it around. Just FYI, you should feel a little bad about Sadie’s lack of business because you’re partially to blame too.”

  “You don’t want to go there, Abby.”

  She made a face and began slowly pumping her legs. The memory of her soaring high in the sky yesterday had him moving behind her so he could control how high she went. He gave her a light push, and she laughed. “You can do better than that.”

  He made a noncommittal sound and then said, “You’ve told me why you want the bachelorette weekend to go well for Mallory and Sadie, but you haven’t told me what’s in it for you.”

  “It all ties in to my new YouTube channel. I’m hoping to gain a bunch of subscribers as well as get some great content. If everything goes the way I expect it to, by the end of the summer, I’ll be back in LA living the good life.”

  “The money, the fame—that’s important to you, isn’t it?” He didn’t know why that bothered him, but it did.

  From the beginning, Abby had been open about who she was and what she wanted. But spending as much time with her as he had, he’d seen another side of her. Or maybe what bothered him didn’t have anything to do with her need to be rich and famous. Maybe what really bothered him was that she could walk away from the farm so easily.

  “I can hear the censure in your voice, you know.” She tipped her head to look back at him, and he retreated a couple of steps. “There’s no way you can understand because of who you are. Everyone looks up to you, wants to be like you. You probably were voted most likely to be an American hero. I wasn’t. I was voted most unlikely to succeed. So yeah, call me shallow, but fame and fortune are important to me. People treated me differently when I had money. They respected me. I mattered.”

  “You matter to…a lot of people, Abby.” He’d caught himself before he said me. Because as much as he didn’t want to admit it, she did.

  Chapter Twenty

  Thanks for doing this, you guys. I really appreciate it,” Abby said to her sisters via FaceTime.

  “Are you kidding?” Haley said. “This is the best job ever. We’re judging hot men in kilts.”

  This was the final audition for Hottest Highlanders, and Abby wanted a second and third opinion. Hunter was no help at all. He’d been grunting, snorting, and sighing from the top of her roof for a little more than a week, and she was positive she was as annoyed with him as he was with her. Although, since he was up there repairing her roof, she had a really hard time staying mad at him, especially when he’d also put up three tents for her last night. They weren’t yurts, but she planned to glam them up.

  So while it might be hard to stay mad at him after everything he’d done for her, it didn’t relieve her hurt at his obvious attempts to avoid her for the past ten days. She didn’t understand why he seemed distant. Still, there was a chance she was being overly sensitive and reading more into him not hanging around to chat. Maybe, like her, he was just busy. Between driving the tour bus, working on her YouTube channel and website and getting organized for the bachelorette party’s arrival, she’d been a little overwhelmed herself.

  Sadie was supposed to help at the audition today, but she was at the garage with the tour bus. They had less than twenty-four hours before they picked up the bachelorette party at the As
heville airport, so of course the bus would choose to start stalling while going up hills yesterday afternoon.

  Abby prayed it was nothing more than a clogged fuel filter or they’d better hope the mechanic was willing to take an IOU. Between her and Sadie, they were swimming in a sea of red.

  Abby’s hair fell forward as she bent over to place Bella in the gated portion of the living room before turning on the TV. “I promise you won’t have to stay in there for long, Boo.”

  As Abby had discovered, not all hunky highlanders were macho men who also loved dogs. Bella had terrified several of the contestants on day one of auditions last week.

  “If you feel really bad about us giving up our morning to help you out, Abs, you can send us some of your shampoo. Your hair looks incredible.”

  “Haven’s right. Does it smell as amazing as it looks?”

  “It does, and I swear it’s repairing the damage that dying it blond for all those years caused. I’ll send you some, but it won’t be much. There’s only one bottle of shampoo and conditioner. My great-aunt made it so it’s not like I can go out and buy more.” Now that she thought about it, she’d give small samples to Josie and send some to Kate too. Maybe between them, they could recommend a similar shampoo to Abby.

  “You said your aunt left journals. Maybe she wrote down the recipe? If she did, you could try making it yourself,” Haley suggested.

  “If she did, it’ll be in the last journal. I know this sounds weird, but I don’t want to skip ahead.”

  “No, I get it,” Haven said. “Haley likes reading the ending first, but I don’t. You’ll get to it soon enough, so no worries.”

  At the speed Abby read, it would probably take her a year.

  “Okay, ladies, let’s get this show on the road.” Abby opened the door to step onto the porch. “Just remember, they’ll be able to hear you so keep your voices down.” Abby smiled at the fifteen men in kilts who were gathered in the gravel driveway.

  “Hey guys, thanks for coming out this morning. As you know, you’re here because the subscribers on my YouTube channel, all one hundred thousand of them—yay—voted you to the final round!”

  She still couldn’t believe they’d hit a hundred thousand subscribers in under ten days and that her channel continued to grow by the hour. It was an incredible achievement, and one she couldn’t take credit for.

  She had Sadie, the citizens and shop owners of Highland Falls, the contenders for Hottest Highlanders, her sisters, Elinor, Kate, and He Who Shall Not Be Named—because if he ever found out his video went viral, he’d kill her—to thank for the groundswell of support in the early days.

  It also helped that word seemed to be spreading among her old subscribers that Abby Everhart had reinvented herself as Abby Findlay Does Highland Falls. She just had to pray that Juliette and Chandler never found out. Thankfully, Elinor was keeping a close eye on that end of things for her.

  Elinor may no longer be working at the Bel Air mansion, but she was close friends with the majority of housekeepers, groundskeepers, maids, and nannies, who—shockingly (at least to her)—were in Abby’s corner, especially after the way Chandler had treated Elinor.

  Abby waited for the high-fiving and backslapping among the men to stop before continuing. “Because tomorrow is the big day, and we have to make a decision right away, the subscribers won’t be picking the winners. My sisters will.” She turned the screen. “Say hi to Haley and Haven. And just FYI, they’re as wonderful as they are gorgeous, and too young for all of you.”

  “Hey, don’t lump us in with them.” Dylan, who wore a red-plaid bandana tied around his head (his way to stand out in the videos, Abby was sure), said of himself and his two twentysomething companions, jerking his thumb at thirtysomething-year-olds, forty-year-olds, fifty-year-olds, and a sixty-year-old who made up the final contenders.

  Abby didn’t tell Dylan she trusted the older guys way more than she trusted him, but she learned via their clapbacks that she’d been right to keep the flirtatious blond with the cute dimple at arm’s length. He was way less harmless than he looked, or than she’d suspected.

  “Okay, no laughing, but I can’t hold my phone and video at the same time so I had to get a little creative.” Besides a shower cap, the only hat Abby had been able to find was straw with a red daisy in the band, which she wore with her denim shorts, white shirt tied at the waist, and wedge sandals. She tucked the phone in the band, adding a piece of electrical tape at the top to keep it in place.

  “Can you see all right?” she asked her sisters. They nodded, and Abby fit the straw hat on her head. Then she said to the men, “Okay, so I’ll just go over how this is going to work one more—”

  A familiar deep voice from up on the roof cut her off, and she bowed her head, nearly losing her phone.

  “Jamie and Ewan, what are you doing down there when you’re supposed to be up here helping me?” Hunter yelled at his cousins.

  Catching the sheepish glances her top contenders exchanged—they were almost as hot as their cousin—Abby stepped farther out onto the path and tipped her head back to glare up at him. “Hunter, Jamie and Ewan are—”

  He cut her off again, not by yelling this time but by laughing.

  She knew what she looked like so she understood a smile or chuckle, but not a deep laugh that sent shock waves all the way to the tips of her toes. It was incredibly annoying that, even when Hunter was laughing at her, she found the man toe-curling hot. His hotness factor diminished somewhat when the other men joined in his laughter, all expect Dylan, who came to her defense.

  “I don’t know what you’re laughing at. She looks hot. Doesn’t she, guys?” He elbowed his laughing friend.

  Abby groaned inwardly, praying that Hunter wouldn’t decide to respond. Her sisters saved the day by squealing his name, clearly happy to see him.

  “Hey, Haven and Haley,” he responded, the rumble of amusement still in his voice.

  “Why aren’t you auditioning for Hottest Highlanders? Abby’s followers love you,” Haven said.

  Crap! Abby lifted her hand to disconnect the call or at the very least mute her sister.

  “Abby, take your hand away from the phone.” There was no trace of amusement in his voice now, just a terse command that she couldn’t seem to disobey. “And how exactly do Abby’s followers know about me, Haven?”

  “Don’t you ever go online, man? You went viral. No accounting for taste, I guess,” Dylan said, and everyone, including Abby, stared at him.

  “Kid’s got a death wish,” Hunter’s cousin murmured to his brother.

  “That or balls of steel,” his brother said.

  She had to get ahead of this now. “It’s fine, Haven. Hunter knew I was going to put the video online, eventually.” She bit her bottom lip and glanced up, but he’d disappeared from view. She heard the rattle of metal against the side of the house and cringed. He was coming down the ladder.

  “Okay, we better get going,” she said, unable to keep a note of hysteria from her voice. If he yelled at her in front of her sisters and these men, it would be all over Highland Falls in minutes. His aunt would find out, and so would his brother and Eden. Oh gosh, what if Hunter made her take the video down?

  No. He wouldn’t confront her now. It wasn’t his style. He’d wait until they didn’t have an audience. Anytime he’d been ticked at her or someone else, he went off on his own.

  Still, she had to hurry this along and turned on her camera. “All right, Haley and Haven, do you have any questions for the guys that will help you make your decision?” She’d suggested that her sisters study the contenders’ social media accounts last night to make this morning’s job go faster. The majority of men weren’t retired or on vacation and had to get to work.

  “We do,” her sisters said at almost the same time.

  At the giggles in their voices, Abby thought Hunter might not be the only one she had to worry about.

  “We read a survey that said fifty-five percent of kilt-we
aring men wear underwear, thirty-eight percent go commando, and seven percent wear shorts. So Haven and I want to know if that’s statistically accurate. Who here is commando and who isn’t?”

  Abby had wondered the same about Hunter’s brother and cousins the day she’d first met them so she couldn’t blame her sisters for asking, but she didn’t trust Dylan and his friends’ cheeky grins. Sure enough, the three of them turned and mooned the camera while the rest of the men shouted their answers. Abby now realized her sisters were even more brilliant than she gave them credit for. The video would go viral, and Dylan and his friends were now out of the running. She didn’t want her hunky highlanders mooning tour guests.

  “Okay, let’s move on to the pipers.” It would help them weed out more contestants. Along with being hunky, she needed a couple of the winners to have musical talent. “The winner will be asked to perform at a very special event, but the rest of the finalists will have an opportunity to play for the ladies throughout the tour. So everyone’s a winner.”

  She smiled, but none of them smiled back. They were looking beyond her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Hunter leaning against the post with his arms crossed over his chest.

  From the top of her head she heard Haven whisper, “He really is the hottest highlander.”

  Before Abby could say anything—and what could she say since it was the absolute truth—a now-familiar sound came from the edge of the woods. She turned to see Owen Campbell in full Scottish regalia walking toward them as he began to play “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. But playing the pipes and the hymn like she’d never heard before. Certainly none of the contenders played half as well as Owen.

  A ball of emotion swelled in her throat as the haunting music touched her. A glance around showed she wasn’t alone. She followed the older man’s progress as he marched proudly onto the gravel drive.

  As the hymn came to a close, her sisters clapped, and Abby did the same, smiling when Owen took a small bow. She had opened her mouth to announce him as the winner when someone approached her from behind.