Highland Fling with Her Best Friend
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Becky Wicks
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CHAPTER ONE
Just an hour and a half from Glasgow, the Isle of Bute is a gorgeous island in the Firth of Clyde, where the hips and haws and the hum of the bees are all that interrupts the stillness...’
A CLATTER FROM the kitchen made Sadie look up from her laptop. Her good friend of a decade, Owen Penner, was bent over with his nose in her fridge, looking for something she’d probably forgotten to buy at the supermarket.
She carried on reading the guidebook, grateful it was a Saturday morning and they had nowhere else to be.
‘It says here it’s largely ignored by travellers to Scotland, who arguably miss its abundance of Scottish Isle beauty. Do you know how quiet it’s going to be there, Owen, compared to Chapel Hill...or Boston? Are you sure you’re ready for it?’
‘Where’s the orange juice?’ He was distracted.
‘There isn’t any.’
‘There’s always orange juice at your place.’
Sadie tutted. ‘Callum bought that, remember? Not me. Owen, it doesn’t sound like you’re very excited to be taking this position in literally two weeks’ time...’
‘Of course I’m serious.’ Owen’s tone changed abruptly as he closed the fridge and marched to her dramatically like a military soldier. ‘Checking in with full attention, Commander Mills.’ He saluted, sliding his six-foot frame back into the dining chair beside her.
Sadie pulled her newly styled honey-toned waves tighter into their ponytail, biting back a smile as his cologne hit her nostrils, plus that unmistakeable Owen smell—the personalised scent she’d missed the whole time he’d been gone in America, studying the intricacies of functional neurology and adding it to his repertoire. He might be one of London’s top neurologists, and undoubtedly had one of the biggest brains she’d ever known, but Owen was still a man. Therefore he sometimes found it tough to multitask.
She’d never admit it, least of all to him, but if you looked beyond the chiselled cheekbones and sculpted nose, and the wicked gleaming brown eyes that drove his female conquests crazy, he was still kind of an adorable kid in a buff adult’s body.
His biceps told her he’d spent a lot of his time in Boston working out at an expensive gym with the rest of the fit American colleagues she’d seen on his social media, and now that it was coming on for spring, he probably knew how good he looked in a new green shirt that she’d never seen before.
She’d complimented him on it. Men these days didn’t get enough compliments, which she’d read wasn’t good for their mental health—an area of huge importance and interest to her since...well, since her brother’s death. So she’d been making an effort to change that lately.
Not that it had changed anything with Callum.
It hit her with a jolt of pride that the sound of her ex’s name on her lips just now, and the thought of him leaving the flat with her beloved Larry the cactus, wasn’t still causing rafts of anger and humiliation and fear to bowl her over—not like it had done before. Thankfully Owen had returned home after his year away just days after the break-up, which had helped things immensely. But...ugh. Four years wasted.
Four years of planning a life with Callum McFarley, all for him to tell her, ‘It’s just not working out. I don’t feel a connection any more,’ right before she was due to leave for her coveted placement at Rothesay Recovery.
The high-end facility developed treatment plans to directly address each emotional, physical and psychological issue of its patients. She’d been all set to take a six-month placement in the role of occupational health consultant there, amongst the world’s most exclusive clientele, all of whom were paying an absolute fortune to stay at Rothesay. After the break-up, though, she’d almost backed out.
The facility was so remote. She’d had a feeling all that silence would wreck her head, and she wanted to be her very best self for her patients. If it hadn’t been for Owen suddenly announcing he wanted to go too, she would have cancelled.
‘So, show me more testimonials,’ Owen said now, his coffee steaming up his glasses.
She slid the laptop over to him and watched as he used his T-shirt to wipe the lenses before he leaned closer to read the testimonials from satisfied patients against a backdrop of the towering, castle-like mansion that housed the exclusive Rothesay Recovery.
She still couldn’t quite believe they were both going to be working there. Together. Before he’d left to boost his career in the US, he’d worked at St Thomas’s Hospital, while she’d been consulting at various places around London as usual. They’d actually never worked in the same facility before. And heading to this craggy, windswept part of Scotland’s west coast would be a world away from his former plan to take a well-earned break from work altogether in Thailand.
‘Southeast Asia will still be there later,’ he’d told her, when she’d asked him why he’d give that up to go to Scotland with her.
But hadn’t he said that nothing had ever worked him harder than the American health system?
‘It’s not the kind of island you had in mind when you showed me that resort on Kho Samui,’ she said, testing him further now, studying the hilly background to the text alongside him. This page detailed the comprehensive treatments offered in this safe haven for high-profile, high-net-worth individuals who were struggling with various physical and mental health issues.
‘It sounds like you don’t actually want me to go,’ he said, feigning a sorrowful look. ‘You don’t have to worry, Sadie, I’m committed.’
‘That’ll be a first.’ She couldn’t help a sly eye-roll—her way of teasing him, of course, no malicious harm meant.
Owen perched his glasses back onto his nose slowly and played with his phone for a second. For some reason the look that crossed his face at her words sent a spiky shard of ice through her heart.
‘I’m teasing you,’ she reassured him quickly.
He merely shrugged, and she felt worse.
Now that she thought about it, this notorious playboy who was her best friend in this entire city—OK, maybe in the entire world—hadn’t mentioned being with anyone in a while. If he’d met anyone in America, he hadn’t said so.
But seriously... Did she need to bring up the stream of women he usually enjoyed hovering around him like dogs in heat? She’d given up trying to meet his girlfriends over the years because they never lasted more than five minutes. He didn’t do relationships—which was his prerogative, she reminded herself. Not everyone was like her. Serial monogamy was her trademark.
Sadie watched his handsome profile as he clicked through the website. Then he asked her what she was smiling at.
‘You’re so paranoid,’ she said, nudging him, flushing.
She’d been thinking about how he had arms like a superhero now and wondering—with the strangest twinge of jealousy—how many women must have swooned over his British accent in America.
But she had also been thinking how proud she was to call one of London’s most highly rated neurologists her friend. Owen might be a player in his personal life, but he was a hero in his profession. He’d saved more lives than he’d admit—humble as he was, at least when it came to his career.
While conventional neurology was designed to spot diseases and pathology, often it couldn’t properly diagnose a problem unless it was already advanced. Owen had come back from Boston one of the most qualified doctors in his profession. He was now equipped to advise and treat people searching for treatments alternative to what traditional neurology might offer them. He could identify which areas of the brain were compromised and figure out how to fix them, and do it all with the same effervescent charm that had always made countless people fall in love with him.
She was probably the only woman in their circle of friends he’d never hit on.
Gosh, it was ten whole years ago now since they’d met at Imperial College, she thought, accepting his offer of a cup of coffee and watching his tall frame as he slunk across the kitchen in his socks to get it for her. He’d accidentally flicked a pen in her direction back then, and had got blue ink all over her white jeans. She’d yelled at him. He’d apologised, bought her lunch, talked her ear off, and made her laugh—and also wonder how it was they’d never spoken to each other before that. They’d been four years into their seven-year course, after all. But then, she’d been a bit of a loner for a long time, grieving for Chris, her brother.
She straightened her back, seeing Owen glancing at her sideways, probably trying to read her mind. He often looked at her the way he was doing now, when she was quiet.
Owen had been instrumental in urging her out of her shell again after they’d become friends aged twenty-two, but even now, ten years later, she still felt like a shadow of the person she’d been before Chris had died.
‘Like I said, it’s going to be very quiet there,’ she reminded him now, pushing thoughts of the past away with a mental broomstick and motioning to the screen before he could ask what was on her mind.
Scotland was exactly what she needed, for many reasons.
‘Maybe some quiet will be good for me,’ Owen replied with a shrug, but he was still looking at her with interest.
Owen didn’t know much about Chris—not all the details anyway. Certainly not the fact that her brother had taken his own life. When the topic of his recent death had come up not long after they’d met she’d let him think it was an accident. Her grief had been all-consuming then, even four years after the event, and talking about it with Owen had been the last thing she’d wanted.
But he’d swept into her life and eased the suffering almost instantly. In fact, Owen Penner was still the friend she called when jokes and light-heartedness were required.
So her brother had loaded up on booze and steered his motorbike into a quarry right before she was due to start her course at Imperial College... So her parents had got a sad, quiet divorce while she was burying herself in her studies... It didn’t mean she had to burden other people with her past, or have her issues picked apart and analysed.
She should’ve been a better sister—yes. She should’ve noticed sooner that her fun-loving, free-spirited brother had started showing signs of depleting mental health. She should have noticed her own parents slipping further and further apart after his death. But she hadn’t seen any of it.
Sometimes she thought that maybe her career choice was an inevitable product of her trying to assuage the guilt she felt over Chris’s death. Psychiatry hadn’t felt like a great fit—she’d wanted to study something more diverse—but assessing patients’ mental health was vital in her consultancy practice now, and she saw a part of herself—and Chris—in every patient.
‘Will I need a kilt?’ Owen asked now, breaking into her thoughts.
She snorted, imagining it suddenly. He’d look hot in a kilt. Really hot.
Why was she suddenly thinking things like this about Owen?
Because you missed him, she reminded herself, and you appreciate him, that’s all.
She’d been three seconds away from withdrawing her application for the occupational health consultant placement at Rothesay Recovery the night Owen had offered to apply there too—they’d still had a placement of the same length for a neurologist open at the time.
‘Why don’t I go with you?’
He’d said it so matter-of-factly, right there and then over the takeaway he’d bought her, as if he didn’t even have to think about it.
‘Unless you really don’t want me jumping in on your dream role?’
‘Why would I mind?’ she’d replied, quickly. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to mind—only that he might not actually mean it.
God, she’d missed him when he’d left for America. Things hadn’t been quite the same without him around.
‘We’ve never been anywhere together outside of London, really, have we?’ she said now, sipping her coffee, studying the three-day growth darkening his jawline.
He looked good with a bit of a beard, and a hint of his thirty-two years in the one or two flecks of grey she knew he hated. Owen was, without a doubt, the most physically attractive man she’d ever met. Callum—slimmer, shorter, never quite as successful, though not through lack of trying—had been intimidated by their friendship sometimes.
Make that the whole time, she thought now, remembering one afternoon out on the river in Richmond, when Callum had accused Owen of being in love with her. She and Owen had been having another one of their ‘accent competitions’, in which they competed to see who could do the best accents from around the world. Callum had called it stupid. Owen had rolled his eyes in her direction and whispered something in a very bad Mancunian accent and Callum had just exploded at both of them. Totally ruined the mood.
Owen had hooked up with some girl from Malaysia that very night in a pub. While she’d been in another corner, saying whatever she could to placate Callum on the subject of what he called her ‘blatant flirting’ with Owen.
That particular hook-up had been Owen’s way of proving to Callum he in no way wanted her as another notch on his bedpost. She knew that much. But when he’d ended things, less than a week later, Owen had also been showing everyone—yet again—that he definitely wasn’t the relationship type. He was there for all the fun, but Owen Penner just didn’t fall in love. He didn’t commit to anyone. It wasn’t him. And that was fine by her. She knew where she stood with Owen and that was all that mattered.
Owen’s eyes were still narrowed, as if he was trying to remember somewhere they’d been together that wasn’t London. Of course she remembered everywhere they’d ever been together. Just as their relationship had never gone beyond the friend zone, their friendship had never gone beyond Zone Five.
They talked on about the clients they might meet, and the fishing they might do in the lake on the Rothesay estate, and as the hours passed, as they always did so easily in his company, she allowed a little bubble of excitement to ripple through her nerves.
‘You’ve never been fishing in your life, Owen!’
‘Well, you’ve never hiked up anything higher than Primrose Hill, Sadie.’
He pulled his Shrek face at her then, which made his chin curl up into his neck while he bit on his lip, and she sniggered into her cup, thinking, as she always did, that even when he tried to look ugly he couldn’t.
She and Owen had fun wherever they went. Why should Scotland be any different? Mind you...they might have more alone time together there, she and Owen. Would their friendship be tested? she wondered suddenly, studying his slender fingers on the laptop keys. Didn’t remote living test people?
What about all those wilderness programmes on the telly, about people forced apart by difficult circumstances. She would never do anything to put her friendship with Owen at risk—ever. God knew she’d already lost enough important people in her life. To lose him too would be unacceptable.
