Page 18 of Wild Scottish Beauty

You could have asked for the name of the intern.

“She’s not a good fit.”

“She?” Sheila perked up, dropping her chin onto her hands, and fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Tell me more.”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, Ramsay. Have a wee gossip with me. I’m bored.”

“How can you be bored? You date a different guy every week and go out every night.”

“Och, that’s nothing interesting. Tell me about her.”

She’s perfect.

I couldn’t believe that thought landed in my head, and once there, it burrowed in like a bear getting ready to hibernate for the winter. Horror filled me. Willow wasnotperfect. Sure, she was a stunning woman, but certainly not perfect. At least not perfect for me. Perfect for someone else. Away from me. Far, far, away from me.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Ramsay. Come on, give me something. I’m your manager, after all. I prepared an entire training program for this intern. You can’t just call it off and not tell me why.”

I grimaced. Why had I hired a family member again?

“She’s Miles’s sister.”

“Oh. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Sheilacrinkled her nose as she thought about it, and then her eyes widened. “Ohhhhh.Oh. You fancy the lass, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Ramsay! You do, don’t you?” Sheila’s eyes lit and I growled, literally growled, as a smile widened on her face. “You’ve never had a problem hiring friends before.”

“She’s not suited.”

“Why? Does she hate clothes? Criminal history? Passes wind a lot?”

At that, I rolled my eyes and reached for the top of the computer.

“It’s not happening. Goodbye, Sheila.”

“You’ve got a crussshhhhh,” Sheila sang just as I slammed the computer closed and buried my face in my hands.Great. Now I’d never hear the end of this.

Fighting down the irritation that threatened to make me call Lachlan and tell him to rein in his woman, which I knew would go over about as well as a fart at a funeral, I picked up my phone and called Miles instead. I might as well deal with this sooner than later, and the last thing I needed was to have him chew me out because I’d canceled his sister’s internship.

“Ramsay! I was just talking about you today. How’s it going, man?” Miles’s face filled the screen, and a knit cap pulled low over his head, snow blanketing the yard behind him.

I still remembered the first time I met Miles, attempting to skip rocks on the banks of Loch Mirren. Instantly hearing his American accent, I was intrigued and had decided to show him how a real Scot skipped a rock. Except my rock had only gone two hops and his three, and beforeI’d known it, we’d entered an epic competition that had secured our friendship. Now we saw each other once a year on an annual trip somewhere, and though I didn’t talk to him weekly, Miles was still an important part of my life.

“Hey, mate, how goes it?”

“Yeah, good enough, doncha know? Business is good, even in this weather.”

“Cold?”

“Shit, man, another foot of snow forecasted for tomorrow.”

“I don’t know how you do it.” I’d visited Minnesota twice, once in the summer and once in the winter, and I far preferred the summer. The winter wind had felt like someone was trying to carve into my face with an icy scalpel. My nose hairs had frozen instantly, my eyes had watered, and I’d, quite literally, gasped for breath when I’d stepped outside. All while the neighbor jogged by with a fuzzy hat on and had waved cheerfully like it was a balmy summer’s day.

Don’t get me wrong, growing up in Scotland had thickened my skin against cold weather. It wasn’twarmin Loren Brae by many standards, but it wasn’t Baltic. The days at least reached zero degrees Celsius. The lot of them in Minnesota were mental, I’d concluded. Nobody could survive, let alone thrive, in such conditions. Or I suppose with the right gear you could, butwhy? Why would you want to?

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