Hot Scot Summer, Paperback

The lane curves, the cottage appears, and I stop in my tracks. My body just quits, suitcase handles cutting into both palms, because nobody warned me this place would look the way it does.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

Oh. Oh, wow.

Tigh na Bruaich sits tucked against the slope, near where the land meets the water. White stone walls, a slate roof, a blue-painted door, and a garden. Next to it, the lake stretches long and still, mirroring the mountains on the far shore so perfectly it hurts to look at.

It’s idyllic, but also…lonely?

I flew over four thousand miles to a Highland hillside and now I’m standing in a glen full of silence. There’s no undo button. Fifty-fifty chance it’s the stupidest thing I’ve done thus far. But somewhere in that cottage are the eighty thousand words I haven’t written yet. I can feel them.

At least there’s nobody to disappoint out here. And no visible evidence of the twenty-first century, except for a shabby green Land Rover parked beside a woodshed. Nick mentioned the car and that I’m welcome to use it if I can drive stick.

I can’t drive stick. As in, I can’t drive at all. My licence expired during the depressive spiral of the past months and renewing it would have meant going to the DMV, which would have required putting on pants, leaving the house, and sitting in a plastic chair under fluorescent lighting for three hours among other humans. Insurmountable.

I’ll deal with transportation and logistics later. Right now, I need to pee with such urgency that the resulting light-headedness almost makes me faint. Or maybe I haven’t eaten enough, hard to tell.

The wooden gate is latched with a loop of blue baling twine. It catches, releases, catches again. Eventually, the universe has mercy, and the gate opens inward with a screech of rusty hinges. I drag the first suitcase over the threshold.

My bladder is about to explode and my eyes are watering, which is probably because it needs to go somewhere.

‘Okay. Okay. The second suitcase, and then the keys, and then I need the house, and then I need the… What’s first? Keys. Suitcase. No. Suitcase, then keys, then door, then toilet, then I can die in peace.’

Oh god. I’m actually bursting. Help.

Key. Toilet. Tinkle. Everything else is secondary.

I make for the front door, straight to the mat. That’s where the keys are ‘hidden’, according to Nick’s email.

I bend over to pick it up.

Huge fucking mistake.

The headbutt connects with my ass before I notice any movement.

I stagger forward and bang my head against the wooden door with a thud. A triumphant bleat cuts through the quiet garden.
Something squat, horned, and deeply committed slams into my ass for a second round. This time, I’m able to use my hands as buffer against the door. But I nearly pee myself.

‘Ouch!’ I whip around.

The goat.

Beyond the wheelbarrow, a wire-mesh enclosure runs along the far side of the garden. A section of fencing sags away from its post, the bottom edge peeled back in a gap big enough for a determined, compact body to shove through. So the goat broke out. Wonderful. Another problem for my to-do list, right behind ‘urinate’, ‘remain alive’, and ‘avoid impending financial ruin’.

He’s smaller than on Nick’s images. Maybe two-and-a-half feet at the shoulder, white and tan, with floppy ears. His horns are short, blunt, and currently being deployed against my thigh with the determination of a battering ram.

‘Hi. Hello. You must be… OW!’

He headbutts me again. Nick’s email said Dr Goatson was bottle-fed and hand-reared. Which evidently means he has no concept of personal space. His little goat mouth finds the end of my hair, and before I can snatch it away, he’s chewing. Actually eating my hair.

The audacity.

‘No. No no no. It’s beach blonde, not straw. Stop it. Dr Goatson. That’s attached to my head. No! Bad goat! Very bad goat!’

I peel his lips off my tips. He bleats once, offended, and canters back toward the overturned wheelbarrow, where he mounts it in a single leap and stands balanced on the metal pan, surveying the garden from his new summit.

Keeping one eye on him, I lower my torso sideways and reach for the mat with my outstretched arm. The keys are there. My hands are jittery from caffeine deficit, the goat assault, and a spasming bladder that’s about ten seconds from making the decision for me.

I slot the Yale key into the lock and turn. It clicks. Yes! The door swings open into a large dining kitchen with narrow, U-shaped stairs straight ahead and a small living room through a door on the right. I abandon all composure and bolt upstairs.
Three doors. Right, left, straight ahead.

I fling the right one open. Bedroom. Brass bed frame, patchwork quilt, a window overlooking the loch. Lovely. Useless. Can’t pee here.

Left. A cramped storage space. Two bunk beds stuffed with cardboard boxes and an ironing board. My bladder contracts so violently I double over in the doorframe.

Straight ahead. Please. Please be a bathroom. I’m not ready to go looking for an outhouse.

White tile. Toilet. Salvation!

I don’t close the door. There’s no time, and also, I’m alone in the Scottish Highlands with nobody for miles except a goat and a cat that has yet to show itself. I don’t take my coat off. I wrench my jeans and my panties to my thighs, collapse onto the seat, and pee. And pee. And keep peeing with the jet of a high-pressure cleaner. The world blurs to a haze at the edges and I genuinely wonder if a person can pass out from relief.
Aaah… Sweet baby Jesus.

My head tips back as I close my eyes. A long moan escapes that belongs in a very different context. This is the most satisfying moment of the last three months of my life, and the first time in twenty-seven hours nobody’s watching.

‘Excuse me?’ An indignant baritone hits my eardrums.

My eyes flash open.

Sneakers. That’s the first thing.

Sneakers in the bathroom doorway.

I look up. Jeans. White linen shirt. Leather jacket. A face that’s trying to process what it’s seeing with about as much success as mine.

We deadlock for two full seconds.

I scream.

My hand finds the toilet roll holder. I rip the roll free and hurl it at his face.

‘GET OUT!’ I grab the second toilet roll from the basket and throw it in his general direction. ‘GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE!’
A black-and-white cat rockets out of nowhere with a hiss, launches itself at the man’s jacket, and he staggers backward with the cat on his shoulder.

I sit on the toilet with my jeans around my thighs, my coat bunched above my hips, panic-panting so fast the room wobbles.

A man. In the house. A stranger walked in while I was peeing. While I was peeing with my eyes closed and my head thrown back, moaning like a porn star, on a toilet with the door wide open. Why didn’t I hear him come in? What does he want?

Oh no. Oh no no no no no.

A hot, sick flush shoots up my neck.

This is how it ends. This is how I…

Wait. I’m in charge here. Nick gave me the keys. This is my house for the summer. I have to defend myself, Nick’s animals, and this cottage. So I snatch my jeans up and fumble the button closed while scanning the tiny bathroom for a weapon.

The toilet brush. I’ve yet to meet a man who isn’t afraid of that.

• Romance
• Humor & comedy
• Enemies to lovers romance
• Small town romance
• Scottish Romance
• Action & adventure
• Literature
• Relationships

23 June 2026

9781919184555

Print books are shipped from my independent printer in the UK & US. Shipping times & costs may vary.

Ebooks are delivered by email through BookFunnel. Check your email and then download or read/ listen on your favourite device.