Beyond Highland Sunrise (Special Ops Scots #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

CALLUM

“Oi! Callum. Are you waiting for an engraved invitation, mate?” From the back of the work van we’d pressed into service for the move, Finley Patterson wiggled his fingers in a give-it-here gesture.

I shoved the box I was carrying at him. “Just letting you finish rearranging. We all ken you treat this as a giant game of Tetris .” It was easier to sling shite back rather than admit the truth—that I hadn’t seen he was ready because he’d been on my bad side.

Not waiting for a reply, I headed back up the stairs to Alex and Ciara’s apartment over The Stag’s Head, the pub owned by her brother Ewan, our former squad leader and one of my best mates. Although that position was in question given he’d somehow weaseled his way out of helping them move. The sneaky bastard. The rest of us were on deck because Alex was our brother in all but blood. And there was a bottle of excellent single-malt Speyside whisky for each of us on the other side.

I moved through the mostly empty main room, hunting for the next box, and caught a glimpse of Alex and Ciara through the open bedroom door. As if they’d both forgotten we were in the middle of loading every bloody thing they owned into a van, Alex had his woman backed against a wall, one hand hitching her leg around his waist as he devoured her mouth.

For a moment I stared, feeling like a voyeur, not because they were half a dozen steps from shagging, but because they were so totally lost in each other. Their mutual joy fairly radiated off them. Alex had been through a lot, and I was happy he’d found someone who understood him, who wanted to spend her life with him. But I couldn’t deny the whisper of envy twisting through me. I’d never have that. I didn’t deserve that. Not now. I was far too surly and short-tempered. No woman should be saddled with my piss poor attitude and all the issues I’d brought with me into my retirement from the Royal Marines.

Taking a deliberately heavier step, I moved toward another stack of boxes. “Echo, the point is to christen the new place, no’ the one you’re leaving.”

Alex shot up a middle finger and took his time finishing the kiss. By the time he lifted his head, Ciara’s cheeks were as flushed from embarrassment as from the snogging.

“If you didn’t insist on walking like the bloody ghost we named you for, perhaps you wouldn’t end up with an eyeful.”

An eyeful. I turned away at the sight of his wince. I was tired of everyone tiptoeing around the issue. I’d lost my sight in one eye. I’d been damned lucky not to lose my life. Objectively, I knew that. But it didn’t do a damned thing to dampen my rage over feeling like a broken man. And my friends knew it. They wouldn’t lighten up until I did, and I just… couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Hence the tiptoeing.

Damn it.

I hefted a box labeled Kitchen and headed for the stairs. Though this was at least the twentieth trip just today, I hesitated at the top, hating the need to check the location of the first step down. But I’d misjudged the distance on the first day and narrowly avoided taking a header all the way to street level. Thankfully, it had just been a box of clothes that had crashed instead of my skull. I had enough to deal with without adding brain damage to the list.

Angling my head to better see with my one good eye, I eased my foot down. Assured I had solid footing, I swung into motion, trotting down to the alley that ran behind all the shops on this side of the high street. Even knowing there shouldn’t really be anyone else around, and that any of those who were hardly represented the kinds of threats I’d faced in the field, I kept my head on a swivel, constantly scanning, as if that could make up for losing half my field of vision. I barely registered the beauty of the Highlands stretching up behind the village proper, not beyond automatically noting vulnerabilities and tactical advantages. A low-grade headache was building in the back of my head, a sure sign I needed to give my eye a rest. But it would have to wait until we were finished. I’d take my whisky home and sit in the dark like the embittered hermit I was on my way to becoming.

Half an hour later, we’d finished with the flat and relocated ten minutes away to the house they’d leased on the other side of Glenlaig. I breathed a silent sigh of relief that it was only a single level. No more stairs to navigate. We congregated at the rear of the van. Finn opened the back, as Alex went to unlock the front door of the cottage.

“Oh! Ciara, hello! Finally moving in with your young man?”

I turned and spotted an older woman with a sweep of silver hair tucked into a bun. She had a wee black cocker spaniel on a leash.

“Mrs. Buchanan, hello. Yes, tonight will be our first in the new place.”

I’d long ago learned that Ciara seemed to know everybody in the village. Partly because she’d lived here most of her life, partly because she’d worked as a server in Ewan’s pub for her first few years after uni, and partly because she was a sociable creature who actually liked people. As the two of them fell into easy conversation—how the hell did Ciara do that?—I grabbed up the nearest box.

At the sudden motion, Mrs. Buchanan glanced toward me. She did a double-take, her eyes going wide before she took an unconscious step back. That step was a punch in the gut.

Fighting the scowl that wanted to set in, I moved around them and marched toward the house.

Good job, Quinn. You look so terrifying, you’re scaring little old ladies.

I wished I could say it was the first time, but the locals had been giving me a wide berth since I moved to Glenlaig to go into business with my mates. It was no doubt a combination of the resting ogre face, as Finn called it, and the fearsome scar that ran down the left side of my face, right through my eye. No one ever knew how to react. The deliberate avoiding of it was just as bad as the stares, and there really was no in between. I had a permanent reminder of exactly how not normal I was. On top of the fact that I hadn’t peopled well to begin with, it meant I wasn’t fit for human company most of the time.

It was why I’d chosen to buy my own house well out from the village, away from everyone and everything. In my own home, I didn’t have to worry about how I looked or what I said. I didn’t have to interact with anyone at all. If I sometimes found that lonely, well, I offset it by all the time I spent with Alex and Finn at the outdoor adventure company we’d opened or being dragged to group dinners organized by Ciara or Ewan’s fiancé, Isobel. They could handle my bark and my bite without batting an eye.

Damn it, why were so many idioms sight based?

The adventure company had been my idea. A way we could all utilize the skills we’d gained in the military and keep active, which I knew would be key to us all staying sane. Finn and Alex had been all in, and through all the build-out we’d done to the building and setting up of things, everything had been fine. But the moment we’d opened the doors to actual customers, I’d felt out of my depth. I was struggling with a key part of our business, and I knew I was letting my business partners down. I couldn’t abide that. I never wanted to let my team down. Ever. It might not be life and limb at stake now, but it was our livelihoods, and I couldn’t be the one to tank that. My mates didn’t have a fallback like I did if Out of Bounds Scotland failed. So I had to find some way to make this work. To be better. For them.

And I didn’t have the first fucking clue how.

Alex passed me on the front walk. “You alright, mate?”

“Fine.” I snapped the word, accidentally shoulder-checking him as I misjudged the distance when I moved by.

Rattled and a little ashamed, I wasn’t properly focused on where I was going, and I rammed straight into the door frame. The box in my arms promptly collapsed, the bottom springing open and disgorging the contents all over the front stoop.

Fuck!

I wanted to scream it to the sky but managed to choke the words back down as I closed my eyes, breathing through the rage and embarrassment. When was I going to get used to having only one eye? The doctors had told me my brain would adapt to monocular vision, that depth perception wouldn’t be as difficult as it had been right after the injury. But of course, they hadn’t put any kind of time frame on it, and I was starting to think the whole thing was just a crock of shite they’d cooked up so patients didn’t lose all hope. It hadn’t done that for me.

At the sound of footsteps, I jerked my head around to see Finn and Alex approaching with far more caution than friends ought to. Fuck. Even my best mates were wary of me.

“I’ll get another box,” Finn offered. “Looks like that one’s done for.”

Alex started to reach for some of the scattered items.

“I’ve got it. It’s fine.” I was aware that my rage was creating a bubble around me, repelling everyone, but I couldn’t seem to rein it in.

“Um, I think Ciara would prefer I gather it up.”

At his careful tone, I glanced down to see what had been in the box. Toys. Of the kind kept in a bedside table that nobody outside the relationship talked about.

My lips twitched and a little of the rage bled off. “Aye, right. I dinna think I need to be touching that.”

I turned toward the truck.

Ciara moved past, carrying a box. “What was in that one?” Her choked noise told me the moment she realized. “That’s it. I can never look any of your friends in the eye ever again.”

No one wanted to look me in the eye as it was. And that was something I was still learning how to live with.