Highland Heart

by Emma Baird

  “Aye, well ah’ve never liked that place,” he said. “The money they charge for a pint in there and they dinnae let me take in Scottie.” Contrary to health and safety regulations, Jamal allowed the dog in his shop because Stewart claimed he was an assistance dog vital for his owner’s mental stability.

  Jamal spotted Katya and cleared his throat. The stares both of them gave her were not welcoming or friendly. She picked out a carton of almond milk from the fridge and a loaf of wholemeal from the shelves and took them to the counter. There, on the surface in front of Jamal was one of the bigger Sunday newspapers, its glossy weekend section open. A photo of Zac dominated the centre spread, arms folded and that grin he always managed to make look as if filthy thoughts were running through his head. Behind him, the Royal George towered—the photographer having captured its Victorian splendour without making it look as shabby as it usually did.

  Jamal tapped the second page. Oh, heck... There she was, having said ‘yes’ weeks ago to appearing in publicity pictures for Zac’s new business, the one where he held a venison burger to her mouth, her eyes closed in what was clearly ecstasy. The camera had zoomed in on their faces, the picture intimate and intrusive at the same time.

  “Well,” Jamal said, taking the almond milk carton from her, “you willane be needing this, will you? Seeing as you seem to have thrown aside all your plant-based principles. And every other one at the same time.”

  “But... but...” The hostility puzzled her. Was Katya not being a vegan such a big deal? A quick glance at the feature’s headline told her there was a lot more to this than a woman eating venison when she’d told everyone a plant-based diet was best for the planet. Unable to face buying the newspaper, she muttered an apology, returned the bread to the shelf and fled back to the flat where she could check the story out online.

  In the living room, Mhari’s phone beeped furiously—her flatmate in the shower. The Lochalshie WhatsApp group must be very cross with Katya for eating venison. She’d find out soon enough. Mhari, her hair wrapped in a towel, wandered in and swiped the phone, asking Katya if she wanted toast.

  Katya nodded absently, forgetting to tell her toast-making was out the window seeing as they had no bread. She opened her laptop and searched for the newspaper, swearing once she realised the article lay behind a firewall. Still, the prospect of returning to the general store and buying the paper daunted her. She opened her PayPal account and coughed up the subscription. Voila—the article appeared in front of her.

  Oh. Oh. Oh, dear.

  “Make your own toast!” The shout came from the kitchen and Mhari stormed past her, phone in one hand, a large mug sloshing hot liquid over the top in the other. The bedroom door slammed behind her and she heard a hissed and furious phone call take place.

  “Aye, vegan my arse!”

  “A traitor in our midst!”

  But if the villagers felt betrayed, so did Katya. A pop-up food business that would complement the Lochside Welcome? Not so. Zac was to be the new executive chef at the Royal George, currently undergoing extensive renovation. The aim was to turn the place into a boutique hotel, run by Hammerstone Hotels, whose proven success in turning lacklustre establishments to dizzyingly profitable places was bound to succeed.

  “The new breed of boutique Hammerstone Hotels,” Lois outlined in the article, “will offer experiences—from silent retreats, to sober gatherings for the new booze-free millennials, dog-pampering weekends, and yoga. We are even offering dating boot camps led by the one and only Christina the Dating Guru and Lochalshie local girl, who will coach people through what it takes to make a relationship succeed.”

  And yes, they were confident this concept would work outside of London and the home counties area.

  Zac’s biography was there—his years of private cheffing and how well equipped he was to deal with the new-style business model for hotels. Yes, there would be exclusivity and weekends that offered the stressed-out executive yoga, gourmet food and hill walks. But the time had come for the Royal George to compete for the local market too. Fish and chip Fridays, Taco Tuesdays and...

  ... wood-fired pizza Wednesdays.

  In addition, Hammerstone Hotels had applied for planning permission. The company wanted to extend the hotel and use the field behind it for a glamping camp site. The extension would eat up public land behind the Royal George—the old playing fields where the Highland Games usually took place.

  And Katya stood next to Zac, eyes closed in ecstasy and appearing to endorse what he was doing. Little wonder everyone hated them.

  Something else pinged into place. The ‘interview’ in Starz magazine where a ‘source’ said “Dexter works all the hours God sends for Caitlin and he’s devoted to her...”

  No wonder the flaming words sounded so familiar. She’d said them to Lois and Angeline all those months ago. Them pumping her for information about anything they thought could profit them.

  Her phone went. Gaby.

  “I didn’t know!” Katya exclaimed. “Honestly, Zac told me he was doing a pop-up business. When those pictures were taken, he was vague about that photo and where it would be used and I didn’t question it.”

  Mhari had wandered back through, and she sat down opposite, top lip curled contemptuously. Small, out-of-the-way villages often contained generations of people going back decades who were all inter-related. Mhari was a second cousin once removed (or something) to Ashley.

  “But the Royal George,” Gaby said, and the guilt surfaced. Katya couldn’t claim complete ignorance. She’d known Lois and Angeline wanted the Royal George. They’d said nothing about making it the Lochside Welcome’s competition too, and that Zac was part of it all along.

  Boutique hotels—that was what she understood about the acquisition of the Royal George. No one mentioned yoga retreats, dating boot camps (run by Jack’s ex-girlfriend and the woman who’d spectacularly failed to find anyone herself) and, worst of all, targeting the local market too. Even if the Lochside Welcome’s regulars boycotted the Royal George as she expected they would, they didn’t make up a substantial number of people. Visitors, tourists, incomers. All of them would come to Lochalshie, see the splendid, refurbished Royal George with its wonderful fish and chips, pizza offers, etc., and be seduced.

  “I didn’t think...” she began, but got no further as her best friend hung up on her. The first time she’d ever done so in all their years of friendship.

  Bleeps and pings from Mhari’s phone continued to pierce the silence. Luckily for Katya, nosiness motivated Mhari every time. And as she doubled as the village oracle or town crier, it would be useful to get her onside.

  “Well?” Mhari said, wandering back through and making it clear that this would not be easy. “What did ye know?”

  “Lois and Angeline—Hammerstone Hotels—told me they wanted the Royal George,” Katya. Complete honesty from now on was best. “But I thought they wanted to turn it into a boutique hotel, a place where rich tossers hung out. I didn’t think they intended to provide any competition for the Lochside Welcome.”

  “You should have said,” Mhari sniffed.

  “I know, but Zac said Lois and Angeline wanted to tell the villagers themselves. I took it for granted he meant having a meeting where they told everyone in person, rather than an article in a Sunday supplement.”

  “Aye,” Mhari said, her voice softening slightly. “Kick in the teeth, isn’t it?”

  And Zac? Katya's first concern had been the hotel and what the company had planned for it. But the man who’d been chasing her for months, talking in that sincere voice of his about wanting to make a difference, sustainable food production, blah, blah, blah... had obfuscated at every turn.

  Surprised, Katya? the inner voice said. The man who didn’t admit upfront he was still married. They’d had conversations about her relationship history, its path strewn with disasters. Why didn’t he pipe up then? Oh, yeah... bad splits. I know all about them. I’ve been married.

  Every o
pportunity to tell her why he was really in the village had been there. Not a word.

  It didn’t matter now what he said about Mena and the accident. This was too much.

  She explained it to Mhari. The scowl remained but now she didn’t direct it at Katya.

  “I said he was an eejit right from the start,” she said, “turning up here in that poncy car of his, revving his engine and everything. Running over wee Mena. I bet he sent you dirty pictures. And he used Photoshop to make it look bigger.”

  “Um...”

  “Knew it. All big co—”

  As she talked her fingers flew over her phone screen, nails click-clacking, and Katya leapt to her feet ready to snatch it off her. “You aren’t telling everyone about that, are you?”

  “No!” Mhari tucked the phone by her side out of Katya’s reach. “I’m saying he’s a smarmy liar. And you didnae know the half of it.”

  Not quite how Katya would have put it, but Mhari’s updates might dig her out of a big hole. She’d only been in Lochalshie a few months. She didn’t relish returning to Great Yarmouth and El Crappo Villas tail between her legs.

  The doorbell sounded and Mhari jumped up.

  “Don’t answer it,” Katya said, “or tell whoever I’m not in. It’s probably a lynch mob.”

  “A what mob? Okay then, I’ll say you’ve left town.”

  But she didn’t, returning a minute later, hard-faced scowl back in place and Zac in tow, hair tousled as if its owner had run his fingers through it so many times he’d created static electricity.

  Katya said nothing.

  “Mhari, please,” he said. “Can I talk to Katya alone?”

  As if. Whatever he wanted to say, Katya told him, he could say in front of Mhari, her dear, loyal—emphasis on the second word—friend. But, and this must be a first, Mhari shook her head and said she was going out. Destination the Lochside Welcome, Katya guessed, where people would have gathered to reassure Ashley they would never abandon his establishment for the Royal George. As Katya’s flatmate, they’d want the gen from Mhari, the woman who loved being the bearer of top-quality gossip, good or bad.

  “Don’t tell them,” Katya pleaded as she left. What? That she was in the flat alone with Zac and that they were welcome to storm the building and burn it down with them in it?

  “I willnae,” Mhari said. “You’re not the...” The rest of the description was so colourful, Zac turned red and muttered something about it not being his fault either, a statement Mhari greeted with derision. To further her point, she slammed the door on her way out.

  Alone with Zac, Katya turned to face him, taking him in—ratty hair, the sweatshirt and jeans that looked thrown on and haunted eyes. Or where they shifty? Perversely, he’d never looked better.

  Katya said nothing. It was not her job to make things easy for Zac. When he sat down on the couch next to her, she got up and took the armchair opposite.

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  Katya snorted.

  “Okay, it is. I got myself into a mess earlier a few years ago—a real mess. Natasha and I were brilliant chalet chefs. We took it for granted, we could pitch up in London, open a restaurant and make it work. You can probably guess the rest.”

  Katya was reminded of her words to him months ago—the food industry, notorious for failure. Especially for anyone trying to set up a restaurant in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It astonished her he’d managed to find the backing to finance it in the first place. The question must have shown on her face.

  “As you probably worked out, we’re both from wealthy families,” he said, shifting forward so he could rest his forearms on his thighs, and taking his phone out of his front pocket. “I’m the proverbial ‘selling snow to the Eskimos’ guy. We talked a lot of people into investing in us. Then, we made every mistake people who have never run their own business make—miscalculating food costs, so we didn’t charge enough. Not allowing enough money for food orders and the payroll, so we didn’t have enough money for wages. Not paying our taxes.”

  She winced at that.

  “It limped on for two years,” he continued, staring out of the living room window. His cheeks had tinged pink, and she realised he found this shaming. It couldn’t have helped either that the money they wasted came from family and friends.

  “Everything was in my name so I ended up declaring myself bankrupt.”

  “Which rules you out from starting up any other business in your name or borrowing money without the permission of the courts.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Natasha did, though. She runs a smaller-scale version of the London restaurant at a Hammerstone Hotel in Brighton. It’s wildly successful because she learned from our mistakes. We did it back to front. I should have started somewhere like this first and then moved it to a bigger city.”

  “And that’s why you have to work for Lois and Angeline.”

  “Yes,” a half-smile there, bittersweet. “I moan about them, but my godmothers were among the original investors and they wrote the debt off. Since then, I’ve worked for their hotels all over. When they said they wanted to start a new venture in Scotland and offered me the chance to be part of it, I jumped at the chance. They suggested a pop-up, and offered me the position of executive chef cum pop-up manager. They wanted to expand their portfolio, and they said why not make a brand-new start away from everything? They offered me free rein. I’d be the one running the business. I couldn’t say no.”

  “Why weren’t you upfront from the start?” Katya butted in. “Wouldn’t that have been better?”

  He sat back in the chair, hands resting on knees. “I meant to be. No, I did,” when he saw her expression. They’d shared the flight to Scotland when he’d first moved to Lochalshie and then several hours in a car. The perfect opportunity for truth and explanation, Katya would have said.

  “Lois and Angeline didn’t want the villagers to know. They banged on and on about keeping it quiet until they were ready to let people know. They had credit arrangements to put in place so it was important not to jump the gun.

  “I thought they meant leaflets or to go around people’s houses and tell them. Or even hold a meeting in the library where they stressed the Royal George wouldn’t hurt the Lochside Welcome.”

  Katya’s own thoughts earlier.

  “There are big investors involved,” he added. “Russians. The Chinese. That’s why the article was in the Sunday Times. That sort of thing impresses them.”

  He got up and walked over, crouching in front of her.

  “Lois phoned me this morning to say the article was in the paper. I hadn’t expected it to go in so soon, but the feature meant to be there was dropped at the last minute so they replaced it with the Royal George piece because it was already written.”

  Katya’s words from the press release neatly interspersed throughout because the journalist had been too lazy to do anything else.

  He placed a hand on her knee. She shifted it off.

  “Katya, when I saw it I wanted to cry.”

  Clear blue eyes fixed on her. A plea for understanding and/or forgiveness.

  “I’ve wanted you right from the start. I saw the article this morning and thought, ‘I’ve blown it—I’ve blown it yet again.’ I’m so sorry.”

  Genuine tears. And guys crying counted as one of Katya’s weaknesses. When her mother wasn’t too busy falling for losers and moving them in, Katya had grown up in an all-female household. And five women often turned on the tears easily. She still subscribed to the school of thought that men didn’t cry. When they did, its unfamiliarity felt much more powerful.

  He tipped his head forward so his forehead rested on her knee. She stroked his head. What lies mattered and what ones didn’t? Dexter hadn’t lied to her, but if actions spoke louder than words (thanks, Gaby’s nanna for the home-spun wisdom once more) he had not tried to spend much time with her either.

  “The journalist took the competing for the local market bit out of co
ntext. And I can persuade Lois and Angeline the Royal George shouldn’t try to nick the Lochside Welcome’s customers.”

  Said oh-so sincerely.

  “And we’d make an amazing couple,” he added, the words warm on her knee. “I can’t, I mean couldn’t wait to...”

  The words stopped, and the mouth fastened on her knee, a cloth-covered kiss that still set off sparks. And he’d got form for doing miraculous things to her through her jeans. She should stop him, but she froze. The mouth moved further up her leg and his hand sneaked under her, caressing her bottom. She kept up with the hair stroking, locks of it soft and thick in her hand. He moved to her waistband, fingers sliding from the back to the front and stopping at the button of her jeans. He unfastened it and tugged at the zip.

  Months of pent-up frustration, exquisite sadness when Dexter disappeared to LA and didn’t bother getting in touch, loneliness and the years of singledom that seemed to label her a loser... They mingled and frothed together in a potent mix. Common sense left the building.

  Katya raised her bottom, allowing Zac to pull her jeans down and she yanked at his too, trying not to flashback to when she and Dexter used to do this and how easy it was to persuade him to part with his. Zac’s body was a complete contrast to Dexter’s, stocky and muscular and a scar on his leg he told her was caused by spilling boiling water down it a few years ago while working in a chalet in Zermatt. She touched it lightly, the skin there bumpy and shiny compared to the rest of him.

  By now, they were on the floor, the carpet scratchy underneath her. She slid her hands up under his shirt and admired the hardness of his chest. Zac kissed her lightly, moving from her face to her throat and making her arch her back. Once more, it was heavenly, enough to make Katya consider offering Psychic Josie free web copy in reward for her prediction about Zac’s NSFW status.

  Too right, you old fraud you and now that Zac’s mouth reached her... oh dear heaven, she was this close to...

  Lois and Angeline. The planning application she’d seen on the coffee table in Zac’s house. The one they’d let her believe was about Hammerstone Hotels acquiring the Royal George. Not expanding it. Not encroaching on land nearby and erecting posh tents for nob-ends with too much money who wanted to pretend they were at one with nature.