One Day (A Valentine Short Story) (2 page)

It was about eight years old and not the prettiest looking thing ever. Still, it was comfortable inside. Along with plenty of sleeping space, it had a sink to wash in, a burner to make tea on, and to heat up soup and beans on.

I thought about Liam in his little tent in the cold. If I were wise I’d get in my van and leave. However, I seemed to be plagued by a sense of gratitude toward the American, and an even weirder feeling of not wanting to say goodbye to him just yet.

Which was ridiculous because I’d spent the last week avoiding men and loving every minute of it.

“Wait there,” I said, striding past him to my van. I climbed in the back and opened the drawer under the burner. Grabbing the penknife I had inside it, I clambered back out of the van with the knife switched open.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” I said casually.

His torch swung from me to the knife. “How do I know you’re not a homicidal maniac planning on killing me for my handsome pelt?”

A smile prodded the corners of my mouth at his teasing. “I keep this at hand for protection and you get a hot cup of tea, or you can wander back into the woods to your cold wee tent. What’s it going to be?”

“I’ll have the tea, thanks,” he said, striding toward me.

The light from my van spilled over his face.

Holy fuck.

He had a chiseled, stubbly jawline, and short, closely-cropped dark blonde hair and he was… well he was hot.

Really hot.

He wasn’t joking about his handsome pelt.

I gave him a weak smile and gestured for him to climb on in, suddenly rethinking this idea. I wasn’t exactly immune to a pretty face and I had sworn off men for the time being.

“I hope you realize how much of a chance I’m taking,” he said, somehow managing to gracefully get his large body inside my van. “You could do anything to me in here.”

I grinned at his teasing, charmed already (and inwardly cursing myself for it!) and climbed in after him. After pulling the doors shut to block out some of the cold, I placed the penknife on the unit by the burner and hurriedly slipped on my jacket. As I did my eyes clashed with Liam’s and in the bright overhead light of the van I saw his eyes were gorgeous. Light green and expressive.

He was unfairly good-looking.

I set about boiling my kettle over the burner, a little self-conscious because I could feel him watching my every movement.

He suddenly reached out to touch my arm and I jumped.

“Your hand. You’ve got a cut,” he explained.

I turned it over to look at it and saw he was right. It must have happened during one of my falls. “It’s not too bad.”

“You should clean it. Use some of the hot water from the kettle and a cloth. Have you got a first aid kit?” He said, looking around the van.

“Behind my rucksack.” I pointed to large bag I’d placed behind the driver’s seat and watched as Liam crawled over to it. His jacket shrugged up his body and his walking trousers tightened over his arse.

I felt a little build up of saliva in my mouth.

That is a very, very good arse.

“Got it,” he said and I dragged my gaze away before he caught me ogling him.

Damn it.

“Fucking Valentine’s Day,” I muttered, rummaging through a plastic carrier bag I kept tea towels in. I found one and carefully poured a little of the hot water on it.

“Here.”

I looked up at Liam.

“I’ll do it.”

Deciding to trust the apparent sincerity in his beautiful eyes I crawled over to him and held out the cloth. He gently took it and my hand, and began to clean my cut.

I stared determinedly at what he was doing rather than at his face. “Thanks,” I murmured.

“You’re welcome,” he murmured back, his voice deep and far sexier than any man’s voice had a right to be.

A flip in my lower belly caused a shot of tingles to rush between my legs, and at the same time my nipples tightened against my bra.

It’s the cold! I assured myself, even though I knew it wasn’t.

Of course I’d meet the most attractive man ever on Valentine’s Day. It was official: Cupid hated me.

It seemed to take forever for him to clean my cut, put antiseptic on it, and then seal the cut with a plaster. Or a bandaid, as he called it.

“You’re all good.” He stroked his thumb over the top of my hand and my eyes flew to his.

His gaze roamed over my face in this interested, appreciative way I knew too well.

I yanked my hand from him. “Tea?” I said, hurriedly crawling away from him.

I thought I heard him chuckle behind me before he said, “Tea would be great.”

“I have milk in a chill box,” I said, pulling it out and opening the box filled with ice. Nestled in the ice was the fresh milk I’d bought the day before, along with some cans of Diet Coke.

“Milk would be great.”

“Sugar?” I threw over my shoulder.

For some reason that made him grin. “No thanks.”

I made us both tea (mine with milk and two sugars), and handed him his mug. Our fingers brushed as I did so and I felt that rush of awareness flood me again.

Jesus Christ.

Liam took a sip, as he looked casually around the place I’d been living in for a week. “So… you know my name,” his gaze swung back to me, “But I don’t know yours.”

Deciding there was no harm in giving him my name I said, “Hazel.”

“Hazel. It suits you.”

“It would have suited me even better if I had hazel eyes.” My mum had hazel eyes. I’d seen the photos. And all my siblings had hazel eyes. Instead I got my dad’s eyes. Big, dark eyes, so dark brown they glittered like jet in a certain light.

“No.” He shook his head, but didn’t elaborate on what his ‘no’ meant.

“So…” I searched for something to ask him. “Are you just visiting Scotland?”

Liam stared into his mug, his hands wrapped tight around the heat of it. “No, I live here.”

“In a tent?”

“No. I’m just doing a camping trip thing right now.”

“Me too. Except in a camper van. I don’t think I could sleep in a tent in this weather.”

“It’s not too bad. I’m from Gunnison, Colorado. Believe me, I know cold. This isn’t it.” He grinned.

He had a good smile. No, a great smile. His teeth were white, but they weren’t perfectly straight, and his smile was a little crooked. Somehow… it was boyish and sexy.

Fuck.

I ignored the sudden heat in my skin. “How cold does it get there?”

“Minus seven.”

That didn’t seem so bad.

He must have read the thought on my face because he said, “In Fahrenheit not Celcius.”

I winced. “Bloody hell. Note to self: avoid Gunnison, Colorado.”

Liam laughed. “At least in the winter.”

“So why Scotland?” I said, intrigued to know more about him. Far more intrigued than I’d like to be.

“I studied here. My postgrad. The University of Aberdeen. Liked it so much I stayed.”

I smiled because it was inherently Scottish to be pleased when a foreigner said they liked our country. We were such proud creatures, we Scots, easily flattered when an outsider understood the beauty of our land.

A beauty I’d just spent the last week getting to know better, developing a deeper bond with the highlands.

It had all been going so well until now.

No work, no men, nothing but the stunning lochs, valleys and mountains, and my own thoughts.

Until Liam Brody.

To my utter annoyance I wasn’t upset about meeting him (now that the initial shock of our unusual meeting had worn off), which was exactly why I needed to get away from the American as fast as possible.

“So how long have you lived here then?” Yes, because more questions will get rid of him.

He blew air out of his lips as he thought about it. “About… ten years.”

“That makes you…?”

He smiled at my nosy question. “Thirty-two.”

“So, what did you study? At uni?”

“Forestry.”

I raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t every day I met someone who studied Forestry. “And what does one do with a postgrad degree in Forestry?”

“Become a Forest Engineer.”

I suddenly had an image of him in an open plaid flannel shirt, his rippled torso gleaming with sweat while he swung an axe at a tree. I squashed the delicious lumberjack fantasy, but my words were a little hoarse when I said, “What does… what is that? What does that involve?”

Almost as if he knew what I was imagining, his eyes gleamed with amusement. “Log removal from timber harvesting areas.”

The sexy image fluttered across my eyes again. “Physically? By yourself?”

Liam grinned. “No, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

Knowing he’d been in Scotland so long seemed to make me more aware of his accent, and I realized that he ended some of his words with a Scottish burr. That was hot, too.

“How?” I was actually interested to know.

“I survey the timber harvesting area. That means drawing maps of the topographical features of the land using a computer program, planning and directing construction of roads and rail networks that we need to transport the logs from the harvest area to a safe storage and loading area. I ensure the safe and efficient removal of the logs by planning and overseeing the construction of campsites, loading docks, bridges, equipment shelters and water systems. And I select the methods and equipment we’ll use for handling the logs.”

There wasn’t anything about that that wasn’t interesting or appealing to me, and I couldn’t explain why.

Okay, maybe it was the lumberjack fantasy.

“Forest engineer.” I nodded. “Good job.”

He laughed. “Glad you think so. What do you do, Hazel?”

As good as my name sounded on his lips, it wasn’t good enough to dig a real answer out of me. I did not want to tell this big handsome forest engineer that my job sucked. “I’m a journalist,” I evaded.

“What kind of journalist?”

“The kind of journalist that takes a break from her life by borrowing her brother’s camper van.”

The kind of journalist that didn’t want to talk about it.

I threw back the rest of my tea.

Liam seemed to get what I wasn’t saying and followed my lead by finishing his drink. He handed it to me, something like disappointment in his eyes. “I guess I better get out of your hair then.”

Feeling rude and guilty since he’d offered answers to my inquisitiveness, I took his mug without meeting his gaze. “Yeah, I should get moving.”

“Okay.” He slid toward the back of the van and I opened the doors for him, watching as he climbed out.

He looked back at me as he turned his torch on. “It was nice meeting you, Hazel.”

I wished he’d stop saying my name like that!

Ignoring the sudden urge to ask him not to go away, I gave him a tremulous smile. “Thanks for not murdering me, Liam.”

His eyes seemed to flash at my words in a way that gave me the tingles again. With one last crooked smile thrown my way, Liam Brody disappeared into the dark woods by Loch Alvie, leaving me with this strange ache in my chest.

He was gone for good.

“It’s for the best,” I whispered to myself, closing the van doors. “Fucking Valentine’s Day.”

***

A while later I had a quick, cold wash over my sink, brushed my teeth, put a little make up on, changed into clean clothes (as fast as possible), and got into the driver’s seat of the van.

According to my brother, Johnny, who’d done this highland trip a few times in his camper van, there was a great place for breakfast near Newtonmore. It was kind of a middle of nowhere diner where lorry drivers stopped to eat.

Apparently the breakfast was good.

Following my brother’s directions, I made my way there in what was turning out to be a beautiful sunny but crisply cold morning. It had been raining for the past few days, but of course the sun would come out on Valentine’s Day.

I thought of Liam in his tent by himself, wondering what he was planning on eating for breakfast. I also wondered about his method of travel. There wasn’t another car in the layby… was the idiot walking everywhere?

Well that was a sure way to get killed by a passing vehicle.

But that wasn’t any of my business. I frowned.

Maybe I should turn back and get him.

Or maybe not!

Ignoring my concern for a complete stranger, I found the diner and parked up beside an artic lorry.

It wasn’t the most attractive place inside. Everything was grimy beige in color. The floors had rubber marks all over it, and the leather on the booths had seen better days. But it was clean. And it was busy.

I took a seat at the first empty table I could find.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” a waitress said to me as she took down an order from the guys at the table in front of me.

I nodded and stared at the menu, even though I already knew I wanted a great, big, fat, Scottish breakfast.

My belly rumbled in anticipation.

“Coffee, tea?” the waitress appeared at my side.

“Tea, please. And some orange juice if you have it.”

“Aye, sure. Ready to order?”

“The full Scottish breakfast.”

Her gaze raked over me. I was not only little in height, but small-boned, slender. “It’s a big portion, mind.”

I may be small, but I could pack it away when I wanted to. I grinned. “Perfect.

“Eggs?”

“Scrambled.”

She strode away with my order just as the door to the diner opened.

A small bearded man walked in, and I was just about to drop my gaze when it snagged on his companion.

Liam Brody.

No. Fucking. Way.

As though he sensed me his head swung in my direction, his eyes widening in recognition and surprise.

So… it would seem the universe was determined to put this American in my path.

Johnny, who was a bit of a hippy and believed in the spiritual world, fate and destiny and all that nonsense, would say this was kismet.

With his voice in my head, I thought, oh what the hell. I smiled at Liam and gave him a wave.

He accepted my invitation, clapped the small, bearded man on the shoulder in what appeared to be thanks and made his way over to me.

Liam grinned as he slid his big body into the small booth. His jacket was open, and peeking out of it was a red flannel shirt like the one I’d fantasized seeing him in earlier.