Page 2 of Summer in the Scottish Highlands (The Scottish Highlands #5)

‘So, what are our plans for the first day of our holiday?’ asked Faye.

Jake raised his eyebrows. Plans? Other than winning Faye’s heart, he hadn’t a clue.

He’d spent the last week in London, avoiding Marcus’s texts and enjoying the first week of the school summer holidays having days out with Faye and Natty to the London museums and London Zoo, and babysitting Natty so Faye could attend the last session of her course before she achieved the qualification she needed to apply for a headship.

He hadn’t had time to think about their holiday in Scotland other than hoping something didn’t crop up which would mean they didn’t end up going.

The toast popped up in the toaster. Jake put it on two plates and took them to the table. He sat buttering his toast, watching Faye do the same. She was looking at him expectantly.

‘Well, um … I thought this morning we could go into Aviemore.’

‘The little town that we arrived in by train yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh good. Aviemore looks a lovely place. There are some nice shops I wanted to browse.’

Natty sat up the table, joining them for breakfast. ‘Can I buy a toy for Olive?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Faye.

Natty poured some milk over her cereal and picked up her spoon. ‘When we get a dog, I’m going to buy it lots of treats and toys.’

Jake looked sheepishly at Faye, who’d chosen to ignore the comment.

He chose to ignore it too, and to avoid mentioning just yet his idea that he could buy Natty a puppy, but it would live at his house.

He already had a plan. When they returned from Scotland, he had the rest of the school summer holidays to spend time with the puppy, house training, that sort of thing, before the school term started.

He’d have to think about doggy day care when he returned to work, but the expense of owning a dog wouldn’t be a problem for him because of the money he had tucked away from his very lucrative past career.

Jake frowned when he remembered what could scupper that plan over the summer – his promise to Marcus to return to the Ross Corporation while he went into rehab.

He could so easily slip back into his old life from before the accident last Christmas, working as a corporate lawyer in the Ross Corporation.

He was lucky, after he’d been orphaned, that he’d grown up in the care of the Rosses, one of the wealthiest families in the UK.

He’d always felt he owed William Ross, the head of the Ross Corporation, a huge debt for taking him in as a young child after his parents had tragically died.

He’d always felt he’d been destined to join the family firm, a multinational giant in construction, working his way up the corporate ladder along with Marcus – William Ross’s son and Jake’s best friend.

Jake had never been adopted by William Ross, and when he had married William’s daughter, Eleanor, they’d chosen to join their surnames, so he had officially become a Ross.

‘What are you thinking?’ Faye asked.

Jake didn’t want to bring up his old life.

He regretted promising Marcus he’d return to the corporation while he checked himself into rehab.

But what choice did he have? The problem was that William Ross had lost interest in the business after what had happened to Eleanor.

He spent most of his time on the golf course.

Jake had left too, starting teacher training on the job, which was where he’d met Faye, his mentor in the school.

That left Marcus in charge, on his own, working like no sane person could without some help of the chemical variety.

But things had changed. Jake hadn’t been able to foresee that after he’d made that promise to Marcus an unexpected chain of events would lead him to a holiday in Scotland with the two people he cherished most in the world: the woman he was in love with and her young daughter.

He glanced at Natty. If it wasn’t for Faye’s daughter, they wouldn’t be there, sitting at the table in Gayle’s kitchen, in Lark Lodge, looking forward to spending the week together.

On the last day of school, just over a week ago, Faye’s nine-year-old daughter had done something completely out of character.

Faye had dropped her off at breakfast club and watched her walk into the playground.

But she had never arrived at the club. It had turned out that she’d had had it all planned.

She was going to catch a National Express bus to Scotland to see Jake.

Of course, they found her before she’d got very far.

But finding out she was missing had meant Jake had cut short his trip to Scotland, returning to London to help with the search.

He still had unfinished business there. He didn’t want to bring it up with Faye. This was meant to be a holiday. This was meant to be him looking to the future, not the past. Even so, he knew that in going there, he couldn’t escape the past.

He didn’t want to take time out of their holiday, but there were some things he needed to take care of. Jake finished eating his toast, and said, ‘While you’re doing some shopping, I just have a couple of things to do in Aviemore.’

‘Anything I can help with?’ Faye asked.

Jake shook his head. He wanted to visit Duncan Gillespie’s general store.

Faye was right: Bonnie probably would not be at work that day, or most likely next week.

It would take time for her to process getting her memories back, and finding out that she wasn’t who she’d thought she was.

But it wasn’t just Bonnie he wanted to see.

He was thinking about what David’s father, Duncan, had told him about what he’d heard; what a lot of local people thought they’d heard on Christmas Day – a gunshot up on the Cairngorm Mountain.

It might have played a part in the avalanche that had buried them in the snow.

But that wasn’t all Duncan had told him.

When the snow had thawed in spring, they’d found a body with, according to Duncan, a gunshot to the head.

Suicide, they’d concluded. This had all been news to Jake.

They knew the date and time because the man’s car had been traced.

It had turned out that he’d parked his car in the car park and bought a ticket at a pay and display machine.

Duncan had pondered why a man who was intent on taking his own life would buy a parking ticket.

Jake supposed the poor man hadn’t been thinking straight, and had bought the ticket just because that was the thing you did. Duncan hadn’t known who the man was.

If Duncan had wondered why this revelation had caught Jake completely off-guard and appeared so important to him, to Jake’s relief he didn’t ask.

Jake didn’t want to go into the blame he’d placed on Marcus’s shoulders over what had happened to Eleanor on that mountain on Christmas Day.

Jake had been dug out of the snow first, before Eleanor.

She’d been left too long, starved of oxygen.

He’d always blamed Marcus for that, even though Marcus had insisted it wasn’t him who’d dug Jake out.

He’d maintained all along that there had been someone else up there with them. Jake hadn’t believed him.

Jake hadn’t been aware of anybody else on that mountain skiing off-piste, until Duncan had dropped his bombshell – not only had there been that poor soul who’d taken his own life, but someone else had been up there too.

Whoever they were had dug Jake and Eleanor out of the snow and phoned mountain rescue, who’d sent a helicopter to winch them to safety.

It all made sense now, how mountain rescue had found them so quickly – something that, in the aftermath, Jake had never thought to question.

He’d always assumed they’d been lucky and a rescue helicopter had happened to fly over and see them.

Duncan had put that assumption to rest. Someone had made that call.

But who? They had never come forward to take the credit for saving the Rosses.

And that had meant that all along, Jake had presumed Marcus was lying when he’d said it wasn’t him who had dug them out after the avalanche.

But it was true that there had been an anonymous tip-off that there were three skiers off-piste who needed help.

Duncan knew this because his other son, Joe, was a local police officer, and although he hadn’t been on duty that Christmas, word had got around about the tip-off leading to the rescue.

It meant Marcus had been telling the truth all along.

Jake didn’t just want to know the identity of the guy who’d fired the shot, and potentially caused that avalanche, but who else had been up there with them.

And a peculiar thought had popped into his head – was the guy who saved them somehow connected to the poor guy who had lost his life up there?

That was the reason he wanted to find out who the dead guy was.

There was a possibility they were connected, and he might find the person who had saved them.

Of course, it crossed his mind they could be one and the same person – the guy had done one last selfless act, saving their lives before taking his own.

It would have been a possibility, but for one glaring fact – the dead man’s mobile had been found in his car, apparently. There was no way he’d made that call.

Duncan had suggested Jake should talk to his son, David, who might know the identity of the body they’d found on the mountain through local town gossip – or perhaps Joe might have mentioned it to him.

David had worked in his father’s store since his ice hockey career had gone south, and Jake had an ulterior motive for going into Aviemore that morning – to see if by chance David was working that day.

He wanted to find out who else had been near them on the mountain when the accident had happened.

Faye said, ‘I know you have unfinished business here, Jake. If there’s things you need to do …’

Jake stared at her. He didn’t want to bring up the accident, and what Duncan had told him, and certainly not in front of Natty.

This was meant to be a holiday. It occurred to Jake that perhaps he should seek his answers on a separate trip by himself.

The problem was that when he returned from Scotland, he couldn’t envisage when he’d be back.

He had obligations. And then there would be something else, the thing he dreaded – finally going to see Eleanor after all these months.

Jake looked at Faye. ‘Yes, it’s true, I do have unfinished business.’ He didn’t want to lie.

‘Is it about that photo? ’

‘Photo?’

‘The one of the boy – Ralph. Remember, when we arrived yesterday, the first thing Gayle did was give you the photo that you’d left behind in your room here by accident.’

Jake remembered. He’d been in such a hurry to leave after that phone call from Faye telling him that Natty was missing that he’d left the photo behind – the one an old lady, Martha, had given him to try and trace her son.

Jake guessed she’d given her son up as a baby, but that at some point, when he was a young child, he must have visited his mother, because the photo was taken at Cedar Grove, a grand stately home, now a hospice, where she lived in an apartment.

The young boy in the photo would be an adult now. Although Jake had promised Martha he’d find her son, whether he could or not was another matter. He realised he’d made a promise he might not be able to keep.

Jake did recall, when Gayle had handed him the photo, an awkward pause when it had appeared she had something she wanted to say. He was still wondering what had been on her mind – he had a feeling it was something to do with the photo.

Thinking of the trip to Cedar Grove reminded him of another discovery that had surprised both him and Marcus – Marcus especially – because it had proved that despite what he thought, Marcus did not have a complete handle on what was going on within the company.

The Ross Corporation had bought a piece of land on the outskirts of Aviemore and was building something, according to the local gossip, courtesy of the receptionist who worked at Cedar Grove.

Jake believed that had been the tipping point when Marcus had realised it really was time to check into rehab and get on top of his health.

Jake winced at the guilty feeling about prioritising being there, on holiday with Faye and Natty, over returning to the Ross Corporation. Jake really hoped that Marcus would make other arrangements at the company and just check himself into the clinic anyway.

The other thing he’d discovered was that Martha had a brother, also called Ralph, but that he’d gone by a different name for as long as Jake had known him, which was practically all his life – Aubrey Jones.

He worked for the Ross Corporation, and was William Ross’s right-hand man, but no one really knew what his job was at the Ross Corporation, apart from doing the jobs no one else wanted to do – like fire people, and escort them from the luxury apartment building where employees in London could choose to live.

Perhaps he’d know where the younger Ralph was.

But it was tricky. Did he know that his sister had had an illegitimate child and had given the child up for adoption?

Jake had no clue. That was the reason he had not brought it up with Aubrey just yet.

Faye added, ‘Of course, I don’t mind if you want to visit Cedar Grove and see Martha again while you’re here. I’m sure there are lots of things Natty and I can do together.’

Natty said, ‘I want to play with Olive while Jake goes to see Martha.’

‘I’m not sure I’ll visit her this time,’ Jake said.

He felt a little guilty, but he had other priorities.

‘I want to spend time with you guys.’ It wasn’t the idea that they went off and had a holiday on their own.

He wanted them to spend the holiday all together.

He just had a couple of places to visit first while they were shopping in Aviemore.