Too Scot to Handle, ebook

It’s almost midnight, and I’m lingering outside a stranger’s cottage in a bedraggled wedding dress, velcro rollers dangling from my hair. I’m the opening scene of a horror film.
I pace. Four steps left, four steps right. A normal person would knock and say, ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, my phone is dead, could I use yours to call a cab?’
But I’m not, as we have established, a normal person.
I lift my fist and hold it six inches from the wood. Knocking means answering the question out loud. Why are you here?
I just pissed off everyone I know and blew up my whole life.
I let my hand fall. I can’t do it.
That’s when I spot it. A small wooden shed beside the house with a conifer crowding one flank, ivy over the roof. The door is ajar.
Five minutes. I’ll sort myself out, breathe, practise my non-threatening ‘hello, I’m not a murderer’ speech, and then I’ll knock. For real.
I push the weathered timber open.
Inside, it smells of sawdust, rust, and damp earth. I stop and let my eyes adjust. A faint wash of street light off the road comes through the gap behind me, and I start picking out shapes: firewood stacked against one wall, a large log in the centre for splitting wood, the silhouette of a lawnmower, bags, shelves for tools. Something brushes my cheek and I recoil into the doorframe before I realise it’s a cobweb.
A scream gets halfway up my throat before I swallow it. Oh, God. Giant spiders. Please no.
The log is the only place to sit, so I perch on it and stay there. My dress pools around me and a puddle forms on the floor. The first velcro roller comes out tangled in a clump of wet hair. I pull it off and drop it onto the concrete.
I’m so tired I could sleep right here, using a bag of fertiliser as my pillow. I close my eyes. Just for a second.
The shed door swings open with a confrontational creak, and a beam of light hits me square in the face.
‘Are you a bogwitch?’ The voice behind it is small and high-pitched.
A child.
No. I had a mental list of worst-case scenarios for tonight. Hypothermia, search parties, hostile wildlife. A small Scottish person with a flashlight was not on it.
Can I trade back to the giant spider?
‘No?’ I squint against the dazzle.
‘What are you doing in my da’s shed?’
Definitely a boy.
The edge of the beam catches dinosaurs on his pyjama legs. It’s hard to tell much else with the light searing my retinas.
‘What are you doing in your dad’s shed? Shouldn’t you be asleep or something?’
‘I was sleeping.’ He stretches each syllable. ‘Then I was hungry. Then I ate cereal. And then I thought I saw a ghostie.’
‘And you thought it was clever to follow the ghost into the shed? That’s how horror movie characters die, you know.’
‘My da doesn’t let me watch horror films.’ He lowers the flashlight a fraction. Large blue eyes blink at me. ‘Are you a witch or a ghostie?’
‘Neither. Bogwitches have better hair and ghosts don’t drip.’ I swipe a curl off my cheek. ‘Go back inside, kid. It’s freezing.’
He ignores me and steps closer. His hair is flaming red and sticks out at sleep-crushed angles. His front teeth haven’t finished growing in and his pyjama top is on inside out.
He reaches out and pinches the destroyed lace between two fingers. ‘Is this a costume?’
‘Don’t touch that.’ I snatch the fabric away.
His eyes go enormous. ‘Wait. Are you a princess?’
‘No. It’s complicated.’ Why am I explaining my life to a child? ‘Go inside. Your father is going to wonder where you are.’
He seems to consider it for two seconds, but then he plops onto the floor beside the log, crossing his bare feet at the ankles. The flashlight rests on his knee and casts both our shadows up the walls.
‘You can’t sleep in here,’ he announces. ‘There are spiders.’
‘Oh, I’m well aware.’
‘Da says they’re harmless, but…’ He digs into his pyjama pocket and thrusts something out. A potato chip. ‘Want one? You look hungry.’
I stare at it. ‘No. Thank you. That’s…a little gross.’
‘Okay.’ He shrugs, eats it himself, and wipes his hand on his thigh. ‘I’m Alfie.’
I don’t respond. I’m not equipped for social interactions right now. Especially not with someone who is still in the process of growing teeth. Have you ever seen an X-ray of a child’s jaw? Row upon row of tiny adult teeth crammed above the baby ones, waiting. It’s unsettling.
‘What’s your name?’ he insists.
I cave. ‘Lily.’
‘That’s a flower.’
‘I know. And?’
‘Flowers are pretty.’ He grins, all new teeth and unreserved charm. ‘I think you’re pretty too.’
He is deploying better lines than Tom managed in three years.
‘You don’t sound Scottish.’ His freckled little face clouds over. ‘Are you hiding from the polis?’
‘No. But I could be lying. You shouldn’t trust people who sneak around in the dark and hide in sheds.’ I raise an eyebrow. ‘Have your parents taught you nothing?’
Mine sure didn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.
The grin fades and he shakes his head slowly. ‘It’s only me and my da. And my gran and my grandda next door.’
Something snags in my chest. I don’t want it to. But the quiet way he says it. It’s only me and my da. As if he has recited it before, to teachers and playground mums and people who asked.
I know that cadence. I perfected my own version at his age. My parents are very busy. I’m independent for my age. No, I don’t mind.
‘And your mother?’ I don’t know why I’m asking. But his interrogation buys me at least one counter-question.
Alfie leans in and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial tone. ‘She’s a…spy.’ He whispers the last syllable extra-loud.
I snort. ‘A spy?’
‘Aye.’ He nods, solemn as a funeral. ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone. It’s top secret.’
‘Right,’ I manage. ‘That’s—’
‘You’re shivering.’ He tilts his head. ‘Are you cold?’
I nod. One nod. That’s all it takes for my face to betray me. Tears cut through the dried dirt on my cheeks and there is nothing I can do about it.
‘Don’t cry, princess.’
Princess. This boy with the inside-out pyjama top and pocket chips is calling me princess. Not a joke or the way my mother says darling when she means you’re embarrassing me. He means it. He looked at the waterlogged couture gown, the hair fiasco, and the mascara carnage, and he arrived at princess.
My throat locks. The tears come harder and I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until I see sparks.
He puts his hand out. Palm up. Waiting.
Kids have sticky hands. Jam, snot, pee, glue. God knows what else.
My parents barely touched me unless a photographer prompted them for a Christmas card. And now I’m hiding in a stranger’s shed with nowhere to go and no one coming to find me and… I don’t do this. I don’t accept comfort from children.
I don’t accept comfort from anyone because I don’t know how.
But I take it. His fingers are warm and small and pleasantly unsticky. The tiniest lifeline.
‘Come inside.’ He scoops the flashlight off his knee and pushes up off the floor, still holding my hand. ‘I can give you a blankie and share my cereal. And you can meet Purriarty and Miaowcroft!’
‘Who now?’
‘My cats! They’re named after detectives.’
I assess my options in roughly two seconds. He lives alone with his father, who may or may not be a murderer. But he owns cats named after fictional detectives, which almost feels like a character reference and not something a murderer would do.
I need warmth, a phone, and to get my teeth to stop chattering long enough to form a plan that doesn’t end with me on the ten o’clock news. Solid logic, not the hypothermia talking.
Alfie hustles me out of the shed and around the house. ‘Careful of the step,’ he instructs, and pushes the back door open.
The kitchen is small and warm and L-shaped. Vertical timber panelling on the walls, dark grey countertops, white tiles behind the sink with grouting that’s seen better decades. A fridge covered in drawings held up by letter magnets spelling ALFIE. Not the showroom my mother installed, where every surface gleamed and the fruit bowl was decorative. This kitchen is being cooked in. Lived in.
Alfie grabs a tartan throw from the back of a chair. ‘Here. Sit.’
He points to the kitchen table, scarred with pen marks and ring stains. I sit down and Alfie drapes the throw over my shoulders. Then he pushes a plastic bowl across the pine with both hands.
‘You can have the rest,’ he declares generously.
Coco Pops. The milk has turned chocolate brown and only a few soggy survivors float on the surface.
I wrap my fingers around the bowl. Children don’t share food with me. Children point and whisper and run to their mothers. This one is sliding soggy cereal across a table at midnight.
My eyes sting again and I have to blink at the ceiling because I refuse to cry over a midnight snack.
Alfie climbs onto the chair opposite me, kneels on it, and rests his chin on both fists. ‘How come you’re so sad?’
‘I’m not sad.’ The last word wobbles. ‘I’m just cold and wet and tired.’
He nods slowly. He doesn’t believe me, but he lets it go.
‘Listen, does your dad have a phone? I need to call a taxi.’
‘What? Naw. I don’t think we have taxis in the glen.’ He says this the way you would say we don’t have a volcano. A geographical fact.
‘What about a landline?’ I mime pressing a receiver to my ear.
He scrunches his nose. ‘What’s a landline?’
Think, Campbell. You’re twenty-three. You have a degree. In Art History. Which qualifies me to date this table to late IKEA, not to summon transport in the Highlands.
Alfie is watching me with his head cocked, and he opens his mouth to say something when the kitchen doorway darkens.
‘Alfie.’ The voice is rough, Scottish, and rusty with sleep. ‘It’s half twelve. Why’s the light on?’
Alfie goes rigid. He looks from the cereal bowl to me to the trail of mud I have deposited across the floorboards. The expression of a boy who knows he has been caught snacking, and who is rapidly calculating whether the presence of a stranger in a wedding dress helps or hurts his case.
The man rounds the corner.
He is tall. That registers first. Sandy brown hair. A white T-shirt, strained across enormous shoulders and solid pecs. Grey sweatpants slung low on his hips. Stubble along a broad jaw. His eyes are barely open, squinting against the kitchen light with the pissed-off air of someone who was unconscious ten seconds ago and would very much prefer to return to this state.
Those eyes find me.
They are grey, and they sharpen fast, scanning me from Alfie’s tartan to the destroyed dress heaped on his floor.
I should say something. Introduce myself and apologise. Offer a reasonable explanation for why a woman in a disintegrating wedding gown is sitting at his kitchen table at midnight.
My mouth bypasses my brain completely.
‘Hi. Hello. Sorry about the floor. And the…general situation.’ I gesture at myself, the dress, the puddle under my chair, Alfie’s cereal bowl. ‘Your son invited me in. I didn’t break anything. Also, Coco Pops are a fantastic cereal, by the way. Not that you asked. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not dangerous, I’m not drunk, and I’m sorry for waking you.’
I’m babbling because he hasn’t decided what to do with me yet, and nobody throws a woman out mid-sentence. He is also, without question or competition, the most devastatingly handsome man I have ever seen in my life.
And he is eyeing me the way you would stare at a rat that got into the pantry.
The phone. Stop talking. Ask for the phone. That’s all you need. A phone and an exit.
‘What the fuck,’ he says slowly, ‘is happening in my kitchen?’
Alfie beams up at him, vibrating with pride. ‘I found a princess! Can we keep her?’

• Single dad romance
• Age gap romance
• Small town romance
• Scottish Romance
• Family
• Action & adventure
• Humor & comedy
• Relationships
• Romance
• Literature

29 October 2026

9781919184586

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