Chapter 10
10
Harper’s Guide to Inspiration
Books, books, books
Boat trip
Fairy Trail (?)
Yoga (?????)
Hiking (why does inspiration involve so much exercise?)
Castle ruins
Harper examined her new list, compiled with the help of Cam and Fraser, and also the internet. She wasn’t sure how, exactly, all of these things were supposed to open up her brain enough to transform her into a competent novelist, but the logic seemed sound.
“Why is there a question mark next to ‘Fairy Trail’?” Fraser’s voice behind her made her jump. He’d arrived to grab some tools bright and early this morning, and she’d stationed herself on the couch with a cup of strong tea while waiting for him to leave. Apparently, he had firewood to deliver around town. Bernard nestled beside her, his chin balanced on his crossed front paws.
She twisted around with a glare. “And you say I’m the snoop.”
He feigned being hurt, holding a hand to his chest. “Don’t you trust me and my tour guide expertise?”
“I’m just very surprised that at your big age, you believe in fairies.” Harper shrugged, propping her socked feet up on the coffee table.
He swatted them off quickly with an “Oi”, then perched on the opposite arm of the couch. That explained why one side was so much lower. “You’ll understand when you see the trail. It’s gorgeous. Why is yoga on the list now?”
“According to my mother, who thinks she is a seasoned yogi after one class last week, I need to meditate and ‘reconcile my body and mind’. Also, I bought yoga pants in a sale last month and need an excuse to wear them.”
He cast her a sideways glance. “Interesting.”
Unconvinced, Harper could only hum. She’d tried yoga, and pilates, and spin classes, and tai chi, and meditation, all with Kenzie, but she wasn’t known for her fitness and her instructors usually shouted at her for doing it wrong. Exercise had been tainted for her since high school P.E. classes, when she’d been teased for jiggling as she ran. She’d long since stopped caring about her shape and weight, but the rest of the world hadn’t caught up with her fight for body positivity. Now, she preferred to focus on things that made her feel confident, like dancing in the shower and doing handstands in the garden after a few too many glasses of wine.
But perhaps she could find a peaceful spot in the woods to do yoga, all on her own. There were plenty of instructors on YouTube, including her favourite plus-size one, Meditate With Melanie. If she could stay within range of the newly installed Wi-Fi, she might manage.
“I’m just trying to take the pressure off,” she decided eventually, “like you said. Find inspiration from the world around me.”
He clasped his hands between his thighs, which were spread wide across the couch’s arm. It was impossible not to notice those long legs, with their hard planes of muscle clearly defined through his jeans. It surprised her, really, how… decent he was. Most attractive straight men in Manchester strutted around like peacocks, vying for women’s attention only to mess them around. Fraser was the most gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on, and he just… minded his own business. Looked after his sisters. Chopped wood. Occasionally stared at her ass, then got flustered when she caught him, which she didn’t mind one bit as long as he wasn’t judging her. As long as he liked what he saw, which he seemed to.
There had to be more to him. Nobody was this… together. This perfect. Why was he single? Why did he keep to himself in the middle of the woods when he could be dazzling the world with his good looks and decent sense of humour? It made no sense. Maybe the forest should have come with a warning. Caution: sinfully handsome woodcutter resides here. May induce heart palpitations.
When she broke out of her thigh-induced haze, she found him smirking at her with those piercing eyes. It was easy to believe that he knew exactly where her thoughts had taken her.
“There are other ways to take the pressure off,” he said finally, voice raspy as gravel scraping under heavy boots.
Her thoughts immediately descended into chaos. Images of his lips on hers, hands all over her, raised goosebumps on her skin, and she gulped as her breath came out jagged. “What…” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her tight throat quickly. “What do you mean?”
His eyes dipped to her lips. They only lingered a moment, but she felt them there like hot coals.
Quickly, he tore away from her, standing up and finding a slab of wood on his workbench to sand down. “Have you ever been wild swimming?”
She shook her head, then realised he couldn’t see her with his back turned. “No, but it sounds like a quick way of catching some exotic infection. I’ve watched too much Grey’s Anatomy to like the sound of that. If a worm crawled into my hoo-ha and made a home in my digestive tract, I’m not sure I’d ever recover.”
He snorted, turning back around and perching on the bench to face her. “Do you always jump to the absolute worst-case scenario?”
“Yes. It keeps me safe,” she replied bluntly. “And parasite-free.”
He pursed his lips. “I know something about that. The safety thing. Not the parasite. The good news is our loch is probably cleaner than your public pool. People have been swimming in Teàrlag longer than either of us have been alive.”
“Wouldn’t it be freezing this time of year?”
He grinned wickedly, making Harper’s pulse stutter a new rhythm. “It’s not for the faint of heart. Depends if you’re daring enough.”
“I knew it. You really are trying to kill me. You just want to make it look like an accident.” She shuddered at the thought of dipping into icy, open water teeming with god only knew what. Bacteria and rotten fish and duck poo. The boat trip was daring enough for her.
But Fraser chuckled. “I’m just saying, when I want to sort my head out, the loch does the trick. It’s like a natural reset button for the body.”
That gave her pause for thought. I need a reset button for my entire life , she thought. “I will tentatively put it at number seven on the list.” She scribbled it down with ten more question marks and then, in brackets: “ (probably not)” .
“Well, I shall leave you to your wood,” she decided, closing her notebook firmly. “ Chopping your wood,” she hurried to clarify as he lifted his brows. “As you are a woodchopper. Cutter. Your tree wood, I mean.”
She shook her head, shrinking as she backed into the bedroom. Nobody in all of history had ever been as terrible at talking to people as her.
But Fraser seemed to like it nonetheless, the sound of his laughter following her through the walls.
The cabin was quiet when Harper returned that afternoon, and she hated the disappointment that welled inside her at the fact. She’d wanted to tell Fraser that she’d Done the Thing, crossed off the first item from her slowly growing list – and all by herself, no less. She never used to book things alone, always asking if Kenzie or Mum would fancy accompanying her. If the answer was no, she would cancel.
The boat trip itself had been fairly boring, mind. The loch was beautiful, no question, but the woods looked the same no matter which side of the water they were facing and she’d been the only passenger. The old silver-haired captain had offered her a sixty-minute lecture on the many different species of trees they could see. She’d waved at Cam on her way past the café, then popped in for lunch after escaping Angus’s monologue. Now she was back and lost once again. More so because the person she was quickly growing accustomed to bouncing her ideas off wasn’t here.
Or maybe he was.
The sound of banging and clattering emerged not from the cabin, but from the shed around the back. The shed that was off-limits because, apparently, the dozens of saws and axes visible from here weren’t enough tools and he still had more to store.
Harper hesitated. She shouldn’t interrupt him…
But she wanted to.
“Oh, Fraser!” Harper called into the slatted old wood, then grimaced when she spotted a cobweb across one of the hinges. Ick .
The bangs ebbed to thumps, and then a predictable, disgruntled sigh muffled through the grotty door. “I’m not home.”
“Don’t you want to hear about my riveting boat trip with Captain Angus?”
“Nope. Don’t come in.”
Well, that was weirdly insistent. Harper had joked before about how strange this whole thing was, but was he hiding something in there? Or maybe he was just working in the nude... A mental image that – to her utter mortification – made her breathe audibly. Don’t be a pervert, Harper .
“Will you ever feck off?” Fraser shouted. “I’m trying to work in here!”
She took a step back, feeling bruised. She knew she’d promised not to interrupt him. She’d just thought…
They’d been getting along so well that she’d thought perhaps they were friends.
“Okay. Sorry.” She trudged away, the sound of Bernard’s whines on the other side of the door doing nothing to lift her spirits. She knew when she wasn’t wanted. She would just have to spend the rest of the day following her list, and since she didn’t feel like being too adventurous today, an afternoon of reading sounded just fine.
Or, so she told herself.