Long Shot

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.

Aimee took a bite of sandwich and talked with her mouth full. “When’s your meeting with the mayor?”

Jen flicked on her phone to check the time. “About ten minutes.”

Which, if she remembered correctly, gave her about six minutes to eat, since it took four minutes to walk to Town Hall. They ate in silence, Aimee’s past disappointment hovering around them. Then Jen fixed her hair and makeup, grabbed her purse with her trusty laptop, and headed for the front door.

A hard wave of memory slammed into her. This moment felt like all those other summers, leaving for job after job after job, her college-fund bank account growing with every hour worked. It was as though ten years hadn’t passed. Even the feel of the front door’s oblong brass knob brought back memories. She’d drown in them if she wasn’t careful, and she’d only been in Gleann for an hour.

She opened the door, the scent of thyme and rosemary wafting in. The herb garden, surrounding little metal breakfast tables, was new. She couldn’t, for the life of her, picture Aimee having planted that, but apparently she had.

“Jen.”

She turned around to find Aimee standing in the hallway, at the foot of the narrow, creaking staircase leading up to the guest rooms, her eyes filled with emotion.

“I want you to know that I feel bad asking, for taking you away from the city.”

“Don’t. It’s no biggie. Came at the perfect time.” Jen’s eyes swept over the foyer and she smiled. “Anything for this place. Anything for you.”

She hadn’t told Aimee about the impending partnership or the risk she’d taken coming here at this particular time in the year. There was no point. She’d been taking care of Aimee her whole life. Back when they were growing up, it had been a responsibility Jen had assumed with drive and determination. Now she accepted it with bittersweetness, but still with love.

Aimee blurted out, “I’m older. I should’ve been taking care of you, instead of the other way around. And here you are again.”

The first time Aimee had said anything of the sort, and it struck Jen like a bell. She covered it with a smile, as reassuring as she could make it. “It’s okay. I’m going to do what I can,” she said, and then headed downtown.

Gleann legend claimed that its founders had used Celtic magic to transport a chunk of old Scotland into this out-of-the-way valley in the new world, from its stone-facade shops crowding the narrow sidewalks, to the meandering paths of its streets. The Stone Pub stood at the center, beckoning everyone under its thatched roof. Jen had always found this place magical, despite no truth to the legend. Even as a doubtful eight-year-old, the first glimpse of Gleann had set her at ease.

Now, however, the place was practically deserted. She remembered buckets of bright flowers spilling from window boxes and street lamps, and the shop that had once sold granny sweaters and wool pants. All gone. Kathleen’s Kafe, with its row of six-paned windows, still stood though, and that made her sigh with some measure of relief.

The ice cream parlor where she’d scooped out orders one summer had long since closed, but she could see that at the building’s last use, it had been a scrapbooking store. The Picture This sign still hung over the door. A faded poster was taped inside the window, one corner curling back, proclaiming: Gleann’s Great Highland Games! Don’t Miss It!

Looking around town, she realized it was the only mention of the games anywhere, and the thing was supposed to happen in two weeks. It matched what Aimee had told her over the phone, that the games had faded into an annual event with very little enthusiasm and dwindling participation, yet the town clung to it out of tradition. If this was the kind of hill she’d have to scale while here, she was in deep shit. But then, that’s what she excelled at: climbing her way out of that deep shit and putting on the best events any amount of money could buy, in any amount of time, no matter how short.

Then she looked closer at the poster.

Leith. His brown hair longer than when she’d last seen him, wet and clinging to his forehead and cheek. His rugged face contorted in exertion, his body even bigger and more muscular than she remembered. He clutched a hammer in his great fists, thick arms sweeping the thing high around his head. The hammer wasn’t an actual hammer at all, but a large metal ball on the end of a long handle. The thrower twisted it around his body several times, then released it backward over one shoulder.

In the picture, Leith looked powerful and focused. Badass. And he wore a kilt.

Good God, a kilt.

She’d seen him wear his family’s tartan before, back in high school when the whole town had turned out for the annual games. But a kilt on a boy was a much different thing than a kilt on a man. In the photo the wind had kicked up the hem, displaying the hard lines of his thigh muscles set in a wide stance. Black kilt hose—knee socks, she’d once called them and had been quickly corrected by Leith’s dad—showed off bowling balls for calves.

None of the men in New York were that kind of gorgeous.

The pseudoshrine out on Route 6 declared he’d last won the heavy athletics competition five years ago, the same date on the poster, which would age him in that photo at twenty-three. What did Leith look like now? Seeing how much he’d improved from age eighteen to twenty-three, the curve for hotness progression over time indicated he should be approaching godhood right about now, at twenty-eight.

Her phone blared a warning heralding the time, and at first she didn’t recognize the sound. She was never late. Ever. She hurried down the street, past the half-filled Kafe, to the small brick house that served as Town Hall. Ringing the doorbell to the locked front door, she couldn’t help but feel like an underappreciated teenager all over again—as though she’d accomplished nothing in the past decade and had nothing to show for herself. It was an odd feeling and one she annoyingly couldn’t attribute, until the door finally opened and a silver-haired woman in braids, jeans, and a gigantic Syracuse T-shirt frowned down at her.

That expression Jen remembered with painful clarity.

“Hi, Mrs. McCurdy.” Jen pasted on a smile.

Mrs. McCurdy, Jen’s old manager at the ice cream parlor and also a former steady dog-walking client, looked Jen over with awkward appraisal. The mayor stepped back and opened the door wider, her fleshy arm jiggling. “Here. Let me show you the mess you’ve inherited.”

Jen took a deep breath. “Um, great. Thank you, Mrs. McCurdy. It’s great to see you, too.”

“It’s Mayor Sue now,” the other woman threw over her shoulder as she headed down the hall.

“You . . . you want me to call you that?”

“Everyone else does.”

“I’m glad Aimee called me,” Jen said. “I would hate to see the games die.”

“Well, you agreed to work for free and Aimee said you know what you’re doing.”

The thing was, Jen knew Sue must have had some form of confidence in her, otherwise why would the older woman have continued to hire her in the past, job after job, summer after summer? Still, would it have killed her to say, just once, “Nice job, Jen. Thanks so much”?

Sue turned in to what must have been a bedroom at one time, but was now a tiny corner conference room with a giant box fan whipping warm air around. A laptop sat on the table. Sue hooked loose strands of wiry hair behind each ear and spun the laptop around so its screen was visible.

Jen bent over and squinted at the spreadsheet, specifically at the tiny number in the bottom right rectangle. “That’s what’s left? Where’d DeeDee run off to again?”

“France, we’re told.” Sue snorted, and Jen wasn’t sure if the disgust came from the fact that the longtime organizer of the Highland Games had run off with a sizable chunk of the town’s money, or that she’d run away to a place that wasn’t Scotland with a man who didn’t have a drop of Scottish blood in him.

Jen wasn’t remotely Scottish either, which might have accounted for some of Sue’s snobbery over the years. In Gleann, there were the descendants of the original founders . . . and everyone else. Sue McCurdy was the former. Years ago, the joke had been that Aimee and Jen Haverhurst were Irish twins in a Scottish town. Also, there was the fact that Aimee had been a hellion during her summers here, and Jen had had to skip out of work on more than one occasion to bail her out. Maybe Sue had never gotten over that joke or Jen’s sister-related absences.

Jen tapped the spreadsheet on the screen. The amount left in the games’ account wouldn’t even have covered her fee back in the city, but she wasn’t here for the money. A part of her got way too excited at this challenge. It was, quite simply, a matter of pride. Aimee’s income, Aunt Bev’s legacy, and Jen’s own childhood memories were at stake.

“I read that the other games across the state are doing amazingly well.”

Sue narrowed her eyes. “Did your research, did you?”

“Always.”

Sue nodded, braids swinging. “They get bigger every year, more commercial, more notoriety, pro athletes. We get smaller. The society doesn’t like giving resources to something that doesn’t even really compete. But we have more history. Better atmosphere.”

Jen hadn’t been to the other games, but she nodded with Sue’s assessment about Gleann’s. It was too bad, however, that they seemed to have lost that history.

“Think you can do it?” Sue crossed her arms under her generous boobs. The Syracuse printed on the front looked like yracus.

Jen pulled her hair back into a ponytail and took a seat. “I think so. Yes.”

Sue frowned at her before leaving, as though she’d had hundreds of other event planners lined up around the block to take this gig for free, and Jen still had to prove herself.

The thing was, she would prove herself. To Aimee, who’d been so clearly disappointed in Jen’s absence the past decade. To dear Aunt Bev, whose love and encouragement had brought her to Gleann and changed her life for the better. To Leith, who’d been so hurt and angry when she’d left. And to her mom, who’d laughed when Jen said she wanted to go to college.

Jen spent the next two hours flipping through old files and memorizing spreadsheets, committing totals and rearranging numbers in her head. There were very few resources, even less money, and practically no organization or innovation. No wonder the society was about to pull out. The timeline to pull this thing off—and to make it better than in years past—would be extremely tough. She couldn’t turn the games into the grand affair she’d like to, but there were lots of small, special things she could add to or improve in the time allotted that would make a nice difference.

She needed to take inventory. She needed to contact vendors and perhaps wrangle some short-notice sponsors. She needed to learn how the hell to run a heavy athletic competition or get someone to do it for her, and, in looking at the scant number of entrants, attract more athletes. She needed—

Her phone rang. Aimee.

“Hel—”

Screeching and sobbing filled her ear.

“Calm down, Aim, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

“Oh my God, the whole place, Jen!” There was splashing and squishing in the background. “The toilet or the bathtub or something up in your room. Something must have burst. Water everywhere. Totally flooded.” A sob, a sniffle. “It’s dripping through the floorboards, into the main room downstairs. Oh my God! I don’t know what to do!”

Despite her earlier vow to give this thing her all for the next two weeks, Jen’s first instinct at hearing Aimee’s panic was to run. To swim like hell far, far away from her sister’s mess. Why the hell was her sister calling her now? Ah, of course. Because Jen was here, and when Jen was here, she took care of things.

All her clothes and toiletries were in that room, sitting right outside the bathroom. Probably floating down the hall by now. Crap.

She ground fingers into her temple. “Maybe you should, I don’t know, turn off the water at the source and then call a plumber?”

“What? No.” More crying, more splashing.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I can’t call him.” It came out like hiiiiiiiim, and Jen finally got it. Aimee had probably slept with whoever hiiiiiiiim was and they hadn’t moved past the After-Sex Awkwardness.

Lovely. Jen Haverhurst to the rescue.

“Just hold on, Aim. Be there in a second. Can you at least find the water shutoff?”

“Okay. Yes. I think so.”

Jen hung up and sighed. She pushed back from the table and poked her head out of the conference room door. “Mrs. McCurdy?”—because she could never, ever bring herself to call her Mayor Sue—“Know of any places in town I can rent? Like, today?”