One Day (A Valentine Short Story) Read Free

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.