My Heart's in the Highlands

by Angeline Fortin

  My Heart’s in the Highlands

  Angeline Fortin

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2012 Angeline Fortin

  My love is like a red, red

  rose

  That’s newly sprung in June:

  My love is like the melody

  That’s sweetly played in tune.

  How fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

  So deep in love am I;

  And I will love thee still, my dear,

  Till all the seas gang dry.

  Till all the seas gang dry, my dear,

  And the rocks melt with the sun;

  I will love thee still, my dear,

  While the sands of life shall run.

  And fare thee weel, my only love.

  And fare thee weel awhile!

  And I will come again, my love,

  Though it were ten thousand mile.

  ― Robert Burns

  You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

  ― Mae West

  Chapter One

  Glasgow, Scotland

  September 2012

  His lips brushed across hers, a thrilling combination of tenderness and aching passion. From beneath her lashes she watched his face. Passion and awe were written there, and she was sure that if he opened his eyes, he would see that very same expression on her face. Never had she felt anything like this. Not just passion, but heart-rending need mixed with something she had never felt before, but it made her chest tighten, her throat close, and her eyes burn with tears. She felt like sobbing, yet at the same time she wanted to sing with joy.

  She ran her hands up his back and over his shoulders, feeling the muscles playing beneath his smooth skin while his lips moved against hers, searching and exploring. She wanted to beg him to never stop, to let her remain forever in the circle of his arms.

  Pulling back, she stared up at him, her eyes begging him with the words she couldn’t say. He brushed the hair back from her temple, curling a lock of hair around his finger. His dark gaze, warm as caramel, melted into hers. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice carrying a wealth of emotion. Her heart ached at his words as he bent his head to kiss her again. “God, how I love you.”

  A single tear slipped down her cheek as her heart burst with joy. “And I lo…”

  Mikah Bauer woke with a start to the incessant beeping of the alarm she had set on her cell phone. Reaching out, she hit the dismiss button on the screen and lay back against the pillows with a sigh, trying to entangle herself once more in the sensual tendrils that had ensnared her moments before. But the dream was gone.

  “Come back,” she whispered aloud, her voice quivering with longing, her body still aching with desire for him.

  The dreams were getting worse … or better, depending on how one looked at it. Mikah had dreamed of this man on and off for almost her entire life, but the innocent dreams of her childhood had taken a sensual turn during the past week. Now they delivered passion more intense than Mikah had thought herself capable of imagining, much less experiencing. But imagination it must be, for emotions so powerful were not part of reality. Real people weren’t capable of the depth of love that she had felt in her dreams … that she had felt from him.

  No man had ever told her he loved her that way, as if the words had been wrenched from his very soul. Was it any wonder that she wanted nothing more than to sleep forever and lose herself in her dream man?

  But he was gone and Mikah didn’t know when he would come again.

  Rolling over, Mikah squinted against the sunlight beaming brightly through a narrow gap in the drawn curtains of her hotel room. The poignant ache in her chest was fading away and she felt sadness creep over her as it did. “Damn,” she whispered into the silent room.

  An hour later, Mikah stepped out onto the street outside the Carlton George Hotel in Glasgow. The day was hot and humid, the normally clouded skies clear, allowing the sun to beat down on the pavement … and her … with unseasonal fervor.

  Forget walking, she thought as she waved a cab down. Chalk it up to global warming or whatever, but she had always heard that Scotland wasn’t supposed to be hot, even in the summer. Yet summer was long gone and it was hot.

  Pulling open the door of the taxi that stopped in front of her, Mikah held out hope that there might be an air conditioner running in the car but was sadly disappointed to find the cabbie sitting inside with only the windows down for ventilation. “Where to, lassie?” he asked.

  “Queen and Ingram,” she answered, patting at her damp forehead with the back of her hand. She had spent only a few moments on the curb, yet already her silk blouse was clinging to her back. “GoMA.”

  “It’s only a few blocks walk away,” the driver pointed out, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Are ye sure ye don’t just want to walk it?”

  “Very sure,” she answered, mentally willing him on with wild hopes that he would build up enough speed during the short trip to create a breeze.

  The cabbie just scoffed and accelerated into the busy traffic in a way that seemed the norm in the UK but tended to terrify her. Gripping the armrest tightly, Mikah held on as he broke speedily into the noontime traffic. As she had hoped, some small amount of air began to move about the vehicle, creating enough of a breeze to momentarily provide some relief from the heat.

  Everyone she had talked to had insisted that it just wasn’t normal, the current weather. The heat wave was causing fits and starts all across Scotland, where the average September temp was typically in the high fifties Fahrenheit with cloudy skies. Mikah had packed her bags for this trip accordingly with a selection of cardigans and wool jackets, but it was in the nineties now and the sun was roasting the town and her as well in her black silk blouse and charcoal pencil skirt. She didn’t even have the tiniest pleasure that might be taken from an open-toed shoe.

  Even back home in Milwaukee, with the continual breeze off Lake Michigan, it didn’t normally get this hot. Especially in September.

  Only once in her life could Mikah remember being so hot. She’d been about six years old and sick with the flu, feverish. She’d been burning up with a fever and been kept home from school. While she was napping on the couch with her head in her father’s lap, she had woken, dazed and delirious, and become aware of the movie that her dad was watching on the TV through the haze that surrounded her. Nothing of the city-set scenes had interested her and she’d been just about to drift off to sleep once more when the scene changed to a rocky landscape that caught Mikah’s attention. She didn’t listen to what the characters were saying, but focused on the backdrop. Even when the men broke into battle, their swords ringing against one another, their shouts loud and awful, her gaze remained on the lone mountain in the background.

  “I know that place, Daddy,” she whispered drowsily.

  “Mikes, I thought you were sleeping!” her father scolded, using the remote to pause the movie.

  “I know that mountain,” Mikah slurred, still staring at the television. “I’ve been there.”

  Mikah’s father looked back at the still frame of a dramatic pyramid-shaped mountain that backdropped the initial battle scene between Connor MacLeod and Victor Kruger in the movie Highlander. He couldn’t recall seeing another like it, and this was the first time they had rented the movie since its release on VHS.

  “I’m sure it’s just your imagination,” he said, standing and scooping his daughter into his arms. “Come on, Princess, let’s put you to bed.”

  Mikah wrapped her arms around her father’s broad shoulders and laid her head against his chest. “Buachaille Etive Beag.”

  Sean Bauer frowned as the strange words emerged from his daughter’s
mouth. “What’s that?”

  “That’s the name of the mountain.” Mikah had never wondered how she knew that, whether she was feverish or delusional.

  “You, sweet princess, have a wonderful imagination.”

  “I want to go there someday.”

  “Then someday you will, but right now you need to go to bed.”

  “Okay, Daddy. Maybe I’ll dream of it some more.”

  “Maybe you will,” he said, thinking nothing more of it.

  She’d been miserably hot and in love at the same time. Just as she was now. She’d fallen in love with Scotland that day, and over the years that fascination had never faded. She’d had posters as a teen and read travel guides through college. She avidly collected movies set in Scotland and sometimes she caught sight of familiar places in films that weren’t even set there.

  For years, Mikah had been saving up for a trip to Scotland. It was the culmination of years of longing to visit this place now and she’d hadn’t even had to dip into her savings to do it because her job had sent her here! In her position as a collections curator with the Milwaukee Art Museum, Mikah had in recent years taken trips to other museums across America, gathering works from those museums for special exhibits, but this was her first major trip abroad. When her boss had recently announced that they would be putting together an anthology of the early Pop Art movement, Mikah had lobbied fiercely to be the one to take lead on the project.

  While Americans like Warhol and Lichtenstein didn’t get started until the 1960s, the Pop Art movement had its birth in Britain in the 1950s with artists like Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Richard Hamilton. She’d been all across Britain in the past week, collecting works from some of Britain’s best modern art museums.

  Though it was technically a business trip and despite the unusual temperatures, Mikah had felt an odd sense of contentment upon landing first in England and now in Scotland. The views, the sights, the people; everything seemed so familiar. Comfortable. Like a long-lost friend.

  The first lift of her hair by the summer breeze had caressed her skin familiarly. The smell of the Highland air had roused vague images of people and places she’d never known. Though Mikah was single and considered herself happily so, the rugged romance of the Scottish highlands surrounding her made her think that it would be nice to have someone to share it with. She found herself longing to walk hand in hand with a man she loved with the scent of heather surrounding them.

  Oddly enough, she felt as if she had come home.

  This was a home where she had never lived, much less visited. But the feeling was heartwarming, nonetheless.

  Though not so warming as the weather, Mikah was reminded as the cab too quickly arrived at their destination, stilling even the feeble draft its movement had generated. Mikah paid the man for his services, levering herself back out onto the radiant concrete of the street. Shading her eyes against the bright sunlight, she stared up at her destination. GoMA, or for those not in the know, the Gallery of Modern Art.

  It, like everything else she’d seen in the past three days, was easily recognizable to Mikah. She knew the neoclassic building with its marble columns and tall cupola on the roof as if she’d walked through its doors a dozen times before. Shaking her head at what she considered a burgeoning bit of insanity—most likely brought on by the stifling heat wave—Mikah shook her head with a self-derisive chuckle. Of course, she had seen the building before, just like everything else she’d seen so far. After all, she’d been scouring the web for weeks in planning this trip.

  And if that wasn’t a reasonable excuse for the déjà vu moments that had been flying every which way since her arrival, her lifelong fascination with Scotland and, indeed, all of Britain could easily explain it. She’d read books, posted calendars, and searched websites on the topic for enough years to make it all achingly familiar.

  Certainly that was all it was.

  Pushing her scattered thoughts away, Mikah considered the building that had housed the Glasgow Exchange a century before. Historic Scotland, the historic preservation organization that was a driving force behind much of the cultural life in Scotland, must have had a bit of a laugh placing a modern art museum in a building that was reminiscent of a Greek temple … or the Lincoln Memorial. It was an interesting juxtaposition.

  Rushing past a bronze statue of a military man on his horse—both oddly wearing orange construction cones on top of their heads—Mikah made it through the doors of the museum in a record time for four-inch heels and into the blessed chill of the well air-conditioned building. She drew a deep breath of relief.

  Thank God! she sighed and pulled her blouse away from her chest several times to air out her damp skin as she glanced around the lobby. It was incredibly easy to imagine the place as a busy hub of investments and trade. Almost too easy.

  All the feelings of familiarity were beginning to make her uneasy.

  The muffled chorus of Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” sounded, and with a grin Mikah pulled her phone from her purse, answering the call with a bright, “Hey, Kris!” without even looking at the screen. “You must be up early.”

  “Haven’t been to bed yet,” Mikah’s longest and dearest friend yawned out. “I just wanted to wish you good luck with your meeting. This is the big one, isn’t it?”

  “Aww, Kris, you really do listen,” Mikah teased. “That’s so good to know.”

  “Funny, Mikes,” Kris yawned again. “I’m going to get some sleep, but call me when you’re done.”

  With mock astonishment, Mikah answered, “And rack up your cell phone bill?”

  “No, I said you call me; that way we can rack up yours,” came the playful reply.

  “K, I’ll call you later,” Mikah said. “I’ll want to hear all about what must have been one hot date, too.”

  Saying her good-byes, Mikah tucked her phone away, feeling a little more cheerful. There was nothing like a good friend to do that. Now, with a smile, she strode to the front desk, catching the eye of the young man at the counter.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Mikah Bauer here to see Myles Gordon.”

  Her smile faded and turned to a frown when the young man gave her the appreciative glance up and down that Mikah had come to view with annoyance in her professional years. It was difficult enough for people to prove themselves in the workplace these days without being looked at like that, and she wondered, as she often did, how the men she worked with would react if she were to give them that same inappropriate assessment.

  Clearing her throat, she caught the young man’s attention once again, drawing his eyes upward. She arched a brow incredulously, and the man flushed. “I’ll take you to Mr. Gordon. He’s been expecting you.”

  “Good idea.” Mikah followed him down a hall, wishing she could recapture the good mood of moments before.

  Myles Gordon, the museum’s curator, took care of that, though. Through their long day together, he was nothing but professional and pleasant. And almost as interesting as GoMA itself.

  They talked art and debated the merits of certain styles as they slowly toured the museum. They got so carried away that it was almost noon before they even turned the discussion to her mission and the pieces GoMA had that would best demonstrate the early Pop Art movement of the 1950s. Hours of touring the collection with the knowledgeable curator had put temptation before her at every turn. Mikah wanted to take them all and strip this strangely traditional building of all its modern goodies.

  The young man from the front desk, Kevin, who Mikah learned was a student from the University of Glasgow interning at the museum, brought them lunch while they went through the museum’s assets and worked out the loan of a large number of exhibits. GoMA, the most visited modern art museum in Scotland, was a gold mine for Mikah in that respect, and she felt well satisfied with the nearly two dozen works she had chosen. It was with a sense of accomplishment that she managed to obtain the loan of Paolozzi’s sculpture Four Towers (a 1962 work that Mikah p
ersonally thought resembled something a five-year-old might make out of Lego bricks), one of the same artist’s collages called Mr. Peanut, a mobile by Kenneth Martin, as well as works by Turnbull, Passmore, and Tilson.

  Their frequent conversational tangents turned what was meant to be a meeting into a full-day event. Still, it wasn’t until the museum was closing for the evening that Myles asked Mikah if she would care to continue their lively conversation over a celebratory dinner.

  He’d take her out to a “real” Scottish tavern, he said, for some local delicacies. A part of Mikah felt certain she shouldn’t overly examine the ingredients of any given dish, knowing, as she did, the true ingredients of haggis. The larger part, however, knew that the food would be wonderful, and her stomach growled in anticipation.

  Good food and excellent company. What more might a girl ask for?

  Exiting the museum, Mikah waited at the curb while Myles found his car and came around to pick her up, taking in the sights of the square that surrounded the museum as she waited. Once again, she was taken aback by the familiarity she felt for Glasgow. She knew its layout like the back of her hand, and felt as if she might have a thing or two to say herself about where the oldest Scottish taverns might be found.

  Even this square seemed familiar to her. The museum seemed to float alone in the center of the square, walled in by long four-or five-story buildings on each side. It was all very Georgian, historic. Mikah shook her head, beginning to feel a bit uneasy once again.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed as she waited. It was still light out, though it was nearly nine o’clock. Much like home in the summer. Thankfully, though, the ravaging heat of the afternoon had slipped a few notches, leaving the city cooler though still warm.