Long Shot hg-1

by Hanna Martine

  Long Shot

  ( Highland Games - 1 )

  Hanna Martine

  Jen Haverhurst is on the verge of becoming a partner in New York City’s top event-planning company when her sister calls begging for help. The New Hampshire town of Gleann—where they spent many happy childhood summers—is in danger of losing its main attraction, the Highland Games. Jen reluctantly agrees to take over running the Games, as well as helping with their aunt’s failing B&B. But she didn’t count on Leith MacDougall.

  Before Jen left town ten years ago, Leith was a summer friend who grew into something much more. Since then, he’s become a legend of the Highland Games, winning three years in a row. Now retired, he’s just about ready to skip town to chase his own dreams of success.

  But when Jen tries to convince Leith to stick around and help revive the Games, their youthful romance is revived into a very grown-up Highland affair...

  Long Shot

  Highland Games - 1

  by Hanna Martine

  For anyone who has ever been reunited.

  Acknowledgments

  This book never would have been born if it weren’t for the extraordinary plotting power of Erin Knightley, Heather Snow, and Eliza Evans. What a magical plotting session that was!

  Additional heartfelt thanks to my beta readers, Lynne Hartzer, Clara Kensie, and Erica O’Rourke, who helped me with the fine-tuning.

  A hearty chuckle to Chuck Wendig, who likely thought he’d never be thanked in a romance novel, for the awesomely bad joke Leith tells in chapter twenty-two.

  I did a large amount of research using the websites of the North American Scottish Games Athletics (www.nasgaweb .com) and Scottish Heavy Athletics (www.scottishheavyath-letics.com). They are terrific sources of information, particularly the NASGA web forums.

  Thanks to my agent, Roberta Brown, who didn’t blink when I told her I wanted to write contemporary romance with kilts, and to my editor, Cindy Hwang, who took yet another chance on me.

  Chapter

  1

  Jen Haverhurst swerved onto the gravel shoulder of Route 6 and braked the rental car with a jolt. Just out the passenger window, on the other side of a fence that didn’t quite look sturdy enough to contain them, Loughlin’s Highland cattle swung their giant horns and orange, hairy heads toward her. It seemed as though they remembered her and weren’t exactly happy she’d returned.

  She’d had the whole drive up to New Hampshire from New York City to come to grips with the fact she was going back to Gleann, but it didn’t really hit her until the last stretch of empty rural route spun her around the mountains, spit her into the familiar green valley, and she came face to face with those damned beasts.

  Beyond their gently rolling field, across a cracked, weed-filled parking lot, rose the sparkling silver and vacant Hemmertex headquarters, which had just started construction her last summer in Gleann and now stood like a scar among the trees.

  Directly ahead, tucked into the last bend in the road before the town proper, sat a familiar, tilted produce stand.

  That’s where Leith had parked his dad’s boat of a 1969 Cadillac convertible that summer night ten years ago. The moon had been a sliver, the stars each their own atmosphere. And Leith had given her the first orgasm that wasn’t from her own hand.

  Jen punched up the weak air conditioner on that hot early-June day and whipped out her phone, pressing the single button to connect her to her office. She needed a dose of her real world. Fast.

  Her assistant picked up. “Gretchen, it’s me.”

  “Oh, good. You’re alive. Didn’t get eaten by a bear or anything?”

  “No bear. A cow, maybe.” One of the Highland cattle had wandered closer to the fence and eyed her, warning her off its turf. “But yeah, I’m here.”

  And here she was. Back in Gleann, New Hampshire, after all this time.

  Jen stuck the Bluetooth earpiece into place and slowly pulled back onto Route 6, following its curve down the hill and into town. “What’d I miss today?”

  Gretchen started talking, but Jen inadvertently drifted off, her mind following the narrow, meandering town streets she’d gotten to know so well after spending nearly every summer here growing up. Though it was clear Hemmertex had been gone for a while, no one had replaced the sign welcoming people into the small downtown: Gleann, a wee bit of Scotland in America. Home to Hemmertex Corporation. Sad.

  Once upon a time, the Scottish immigrants who’d settled the valley knew how to pronounce Gleann with a proper brogue, but the name had since been American-bastardized to “Gleen.” As an eight-year-old new to town, Jen had needed a good month to get used to it.

  She instinctively knew the way to the Thistle, the Tudor-style B&B once owned by Aunt Bev. Jen parked in front of it, under the low, heavy branches of a tree, but couldn’t bring herself to get out of the car.

  Down the block, past the playground, she glimpsed the stumpy Stone Pub with its gorgeous thatched roof, its faded sign still swinging out over the sidewalk. She and Leith had waited tables there during her last summer here. He’d purposely brushed up against her one shift, sparking a quick transition from old friends to sneaky, desperate teenaged lovers.

  Gretchen let out a singsong whistle. “Yoo-hoo. Jen.”

  Jen shook her head. “Sorry. What was that?”

  “I asked if I can switch a few things around for the Umberto Rollins cocktail party. The table pattern doesn’t quite work, I don’t think. And I question some of the menu choices for the type of attendee.”

  Work snapped Jen away from the past and back into the present. “No, no. Don’t change a thing. Everything is all taken care of. This is the same annual party they throw for their employees, and I had to make do with a drastically reduced budget this year. They’ve approved everything. All you have to do is see it through and take care of hiccups.”

  “All right. If you say so.” But Jen could hear the reluctance in her assistant’s voice.

  “Gretchen, I’m serious. They’re very particular and traditional. They trust me, they trust Bauer Events. Just follow my directions for Rollins and then we’ll tackle the Fashion Week party when I’m back in the office in two weeks.”

  “I thought it was three.”

  “Nah.” She peered out the side window, at the ivy creeping up the side of the B&B she’d once considered home. “This should be a piece of cake. In and out.”

  “Tim is okay with you taking vacation now?”

  “Vacation time is stacked up and Rollins is set. It’s all good.”

  At least that’s what her boss, Tim Bauer, had told her two days ago when she’d proposed her last-minute leave. She’d worked her ass off for him for six years, almost single-handedly tripled his client list, and snagged a prestigious fashion house account.

  He’d strongly hinted that he was considering her for a partnership in his company. As her mentor he’d given her opportunities she’d always dreamed of having. There was a chance he’d even send her to London to be a part of his branch over there, and if that’s what it took to get to the top, she would volunteer to swim across the Atlantic.

  She deserved a partnership. She needed it.

  Once it was hers, she could finally kill the heel-biting fear of mediocrity that had chased her all the way from Iowa.

  “I still can’t believe you left the city to go watch guys in skirts throw heavy stuff around.”

  Jen suppressed a laugh. “They’re called the Highland Games. Gleann needs them.”

  And Gleann, her life’s savior, needed Jen.

  Someone, a familiar shape, moved behind the curtain in the front room of the B&B. “Listen,” Jen told Gretchen, “I gotta go, but call me if you need me. For anything. I’ll check in from time to time.”

/>   “You’re on vacation.”

  “Oh, honey. In this business, you’re never really on vacation. Nor do I ever want to be.”

  She disconnected and stared out at the hushed, empty streets of Gleann. Reaching over to the passenger seat, she lugged her giant purse across the center console. It hit the car horn hard, sending a loud and nasal blast echoing up and down the curving streets. In New York, a single horn meant nothing. Here, it was a day’s excitement.

  So much for a quiet arrival.

  The front door to the Thistle flew open and Aimee Haverhurst bounded out, her hair, as dark as Jen’s but much longer, streaming behind her. Jen stepped out of the car, hoisted her bag higher onto her shoulder, and headed for the taller and eleven-month-older sister she hadn’t seen in three years.

  Jen’s foot struck something and she toppled forward, all balance and grace and professionalism gone.

  Aimee lunged, catching Jen and hauling her to her feet. “Whoa. You okay there?”

  Jen righted herself and frowned at the slab of cracked concrete poking up from the sidewalk. “That wasn’t there before.”

  Aimee gave a little laugh, but there was familiar strain in the sound. Her sister looked incredibly different without all the makeup of her youth. She looked . . . grown up.

  That wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Jen eyed the tree in the bed and breakfast’s fenced front yard, the one whose boughs now hung over the street. “That thing’s enormous now.”

  Aimee winced. “Did you expect the place to stay the same? Waiting for you to show up again after ten years?”

  Maybe not to that extreme, but the distance between northern New Hampshire and New York City had stopped time in Jen’s mind.

  Unexpectedly, Aimee pulled her into the tightest hug they’d ever exchanged. Or maybe that was just distance and time again, pushing them together instead of pulling them apart, as had been happening between them for so long.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Aimee said into her hair, in that serious, pleading way Jen remembered well. The one that usually preceded Jen scraping Aimee out of one of her messes. Only this time, the mess Jen had been called in to fix wasn’t Aimee’s. “Thank you. Thank you for helping us.”

  Jen awkwardly patted her sister’s back then stepped away. “I said I’d try. Even I can’t guarantee how it’ll all turn out.”

  Aimee nodded. “I know.” But there was hurt and worry behind her green eyes, the same shade as Jen’s. They had different fathers, but both physically took after their mom.

  If Jen didn’t succeed here, if she couldn’t fix and put on the local Highland Games, and keep the Scottish Society from dissolving all support, there was a chance Aimee could lose the B&B. The town could lose a lot more. The games were pretty much all it had left.

  Jen glanced at the Thistle. “Where’s Ainsley?”

  Aimee rolled her eyes as she smiled. “A friend’s. Who’s a boy. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “She’s what? Ten?”

  “Oh, God. Nine. Please don’t make her older than she already is.”

  When Jen had been ten, she’d been great friends with a certain boy. It had been wonderful—and then not so wonderful—but she wouldn’t bring that up to Aimee now.

  Her twenty-nine-year-old sister had a nine-year-old daughter. Wow. There went time again, churning up dust as it zoomed past.

  “Come on.” Aimee took her arm with a small smile. “I’ll show you your room.”

  It was a small guest room in the front of the B&B. Not the room Jen had slept in all those summers ago, from age eight to eighteen, but she remembered it well: frilly and soft and pale. She dropped her bags outside the connected bathroom, took a few minutes to run her hands over the pillows and curtains that screamed of Aunt Bev’s influence, and went back downstairs. She could hear Aimee clanking around in the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Jen asked, stepping into the kitchen that hadn’t changed at all, with its shiny red refrigerator and everything.

  “Cooking.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Sure, I do. You’re a guest.”

  A guest. Right. A guest in the house that had once been the only place she’d considered home. But then, she’d been the one to go away to college and leave it all behind. She’d been the one constantly working when Bev was sick, and then out of the country working on an incentive event during the funeral. Bev had left the place to Aimee, a fact that still stabbed Jen’s heart with a dull knife laced with guilt.

  Jen pushed a smile onto her face and tried to make a joke. “It’s lunchtime. Your sign says Breakfast.”

  Aimee pressed her palms to the countertop. “Please, Jen. Let me do this.”

  Jen got it. She’d spent her life taking care of her older, crazier sister, and now Aimee had something to prove.

  “Okay,” Jen said, lowering herself into a familiar wood chair around the heavy kitchen table. She fingered the watermelon-shaped placemats. “So I, uh, saw that sign out on Route 6.”

  Aimee slid a cutting board onto the counter. One dark eyebrow twitched. “Which one was that?”

  Jen hated the way she felt her neck heat up. “You know.”

  “Ohhhhhh. That one.” Aimee craned her neck to peek at the clock. “Wow, only twenty minutes.”

  “For what?”

  “For you to mention him.”

  Jen supposed it had to have taken coming back here to finally ask Aimee about Leith, considering neither of the sisters had brought up his name in ten years. “They put up that huge sign?” Jen asked. “Just for him?”

  Aimee took out a roast from the refrigerator and started to carve thin slices from it. It looked like she actually knew what she was doing, and Jen tried not to gape. This being the sister who’d once needed Jen to boil water for mac and cheese.

  “It was a big deal then,” Aimee said, “a local who wasn’t a pro winning the athletics in the games so many years in a row. And after his football season and those state track championships and all . . . It’s a small town. He’s a bit of a celebrity.”

  “Huh.” Jen had forgotten about the football and track. She’d only come to Gleann in the summer, so she’d never seen him do those things. But she had watched him turn the caber and throw the hammer and toss the sheaf, and do all the other heavy athletic events in the games.

  “He doesn’t compete anymore,” Aimee said, “but they still love him like he won the Olympics or something.”

  “I’d say. That sign was like a shrine. An effigy shy of a temple.”

  Aimee gave her a weird smile and started to assemble sandwiches.

  Jen gazed out the window, into the backyard that sloped down to the creek. Old images of Leith came back to her, and she felt more than a little dirty picturing his eighteen-year-old body, big even back then, moving on top of her in the back of that Cadillac. How cliche to have lost it to each other in the backseat of a car.

  How wonderful to have lost it to him.

  Aimee ducked into the pantry, her muffled voice floating out from inside. “You should ask him to compete again.”

  Jen felt like she’d tripped over something, and she was still sitting down. “Wait. What?”

  “You know. Get him to come out of retirement or something. DeeDee tried before she took off, but it didn’t work. I bet the town would love it.”

  Suddenly her chest felt tight. “You mean he’s still here?”

  Aimee tipped down a bag of pretzels from the top shelf. “Sure. He owns a landscape business, though word is he’s hurting, like everyone else, now that Hemmertex is gone.”

  But he was still here. Oh, God, Leith was still in Gleann. Jen didn’t feel guilty for leaving him ten years ago—it was what her life and dreams had demanded of her—but the possibility of seeing him again . . . “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Aimee shot her a hard look that was way too familiar. “Because everyday news about Gleann hasn’t interested you in a decade. Until
you learned it was dying.”

  Jen swallowed and dropped her head in the face of the truth.

  She’d chosen to keep her memories as just that: particles of the past drifting around in her mind. They weren’t allowed to affect her life in New York. She couldn’t afford to move backward, not even an inch. To live in the past was equal to stagnancy and laziness, and that, to Jen, was a fate worse than death.

  It meant she was no better than her mom.

  Jen lifted her eyes to the backyard again. Leith had once kissed her under the giant maple tree, up against its trunk that leaned over the creek. That particular event had led to sex on a blanket, with a tree root gouging into her back. How could something she hadn’t thought about in so long now feel so fresh?

  “Has he ever, um, said anything? To you? About me?”

  “How old are you again?” Aimee shoved a plated sandwich in front of her. “No, he hasn’t. When we run into each other, it’s smiles and small talk. You remember how he was, like nothing could ever faze him. He’s like a walking good mood.”

  A little piece of Jen’s heart crumbled off and knocked around inside her chest. She’d managed to faze him all right, the night before she’d left Gleann for good and he’d begged her to stay. Told her he loved her with his soul in his eyes. But what was she supposed to do? Sacrifice college and career, and risk suffering the drunken, aimless, bitter lifestyle of her mom?

  “So he doesn’t know I’m here?”

  Aimee shook her head. “No one does except the mayor and me. What if you’d said no, Jen? We didn’t want to get our hopes up and then be denied.” A pregnant pause. “I’ve had enough disappointment.”

  I, not we. Jen knew Aimee wasn’t talking about today as much as her and Ainsley’s disastrous visit to New York three years ago. It had coincided with the same week the fashion house had called, and Jen had had to drop everything to secure the prestigious new client, including entertaining her sister and niece. Without their reason for visiting, Aimee and Ainsley had left the city.