Chapter 2
Two
SARAH
“Are you sure about this?”
Closing the boot of my car where Jared had just placed my suitcase, I turned to look up at him.
When my cousin arrived on the farm almost five years ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Never in my wildest imaginings would I expect us to become best friends, for Jared to be like the younger brother I’d never had.
Even if he acted like my big brother most of the time.
The thought brought a tender smile to my face, and I reached out to squeeze his arm in reassurance. “I’ll be fine.”
He gazed down at me with green eyes the exact shade as mine. We’d inherited the unusual color from our fathers, who’d inherited them from our grandmother. “I don’t like you being so far away by yourself.”
“I’ll be two hours away.”
Jared’s handsome face tightened. “Aye, in a cottage, by yourself.”
“I hate to break this to you, Jar, but I’m thirty-one years old and I can take care of myself.”
“I know. But I worry.”
With the staggering new fortune I’d amassed in the last year, I’d purchased a small cottage in a coastal village in the North-West Highlands, in a pretty, wee village called Gairloch.
It had a beach like Ardnoch but was much smaller, and the waters turned turquoise like the Mediterranean.
Our grandpa used to take me to that beach every summer when I was a wee girl.
Now I’d packed my bags, intent on spending a few months there writing the next book in the Juno McLeod series.
What Jared didn’t say, yet I knew was behind part of his agitation, was that he’d miss me.
I was twelve years old when I officially moved in with my grandpa and Nana.
Their eldest son, my father, died in a farming accident when I was a baby.
Afterward, Mum left Ardnoch and took me home with her to Dundee.
But she was devastated after losing my father, and she struggled with depression and substance abuse.
I spent summers with my grandparents, but when I was twelve, things got so bad at home, I plucked up the courage to call my grandpa.
He didn’t just come to collect me this time.
Grandpa brought the police and social services.
After that, Mum didn’t put up a fight. Custody was granted to my grandparents. A few years later, Nana died, and it was just me and Grandpa. He was my whole world.
Over the years, my cousin Jared would stay with us during the summer holidays, but he was a very angry young man, six years younger than me.
We didn’t have much in common. Or so we thought.
My uncle, my dad’s younger brother, hadn’t wanted anything to do with the farm and left Ardnoch at eighteen.
He’d spent most of his life abandoning anything that required responsibility and commitment.
Including Jared. And we discovered Jared’s life with his mum in Glasgow wasn’t easy in a very similar way to mine.
Jared called Grandpa when he was twenty-one and asked if he could come work on the farm.
He was heading down a dangerous path and was smart enough to know he needed to make a change.
Grandpa didn’t even have to think about it.
Jared moved into the farmhouse a few days later. And he threw himself at the work.
I think even he was surprised by how much he grew to love the farm. Grandpa left the farm to both of us. Fifty-fifty. However, I gave my half to Jared. The farm to me was Grandpa. And he was gone now. But the farm was in Jared’s blood, and I wanted him to have it.
“I’ll miss you too,” I promised him. “I’ll call and then I’ll be back at Christmas.” Our first Christmas without Grandpa. Tears stung my eyes at the thought, and Jared’s face softened with understanding.
“Come here.” He pulled me into his strong embrace, resting his chin on top of my head as we held on to each other. “If you get lonely out there, you come back. No persevering through it because you think you should or because you think I need space.”
I smiled against his chest. “Okay, big brother.”
He snorted at that, kissed the top of my head, and released me. “And don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty here to keep me busy.”
My brow furrowed. I doubted many people realized that farming was one of the most stressful jobs ever.
When your income depended on the climate and you lived in the Scottish Highlands, it could be utterly soul-destroying.
We’d seen crops fail because of inclement weather, crops my grandpa and Jared had poured their sweat and blood into.
“I’ve got Georgie and Enzo,” he reminded me, referring to the farmhands who’d worked on the farm for the last three years. I’d seen a few farmhands come and go, but Georgie and Enzo were closer to Jared’s age, and the three of them worked well together and enjoyed each other’s company.
“And whatever girl you take a fancy to this week,” I teased.
Jared had a bit of a reputation in Ardnoch for being a player.
It didn’t matter if he was no longer quite so much the playboy he’d once been, especially as he had such little time to do so now.
He’d garnered the reputation during those first few years when he’d slept with every eligible woman in the village and beyond, from here to Inverness.
Jared rolled his eyes. “Aye, like I’ve got time for that.”
“Make time.” I patted his arm. “You know what they say. All work and no play …”
He grinned. “Aye? You planning on taking your own advice, Sister Sarah?”
I punched his arm this time. “I’m not a nun!”
“If you say so.”
Grimacing, I turned to round the car. “That’s my cue to leave.”
“Have you got everything?” he called after me.
“Yup.” I pulled open the driver’s door and glanced back at him. “I’ll phone you when I get there.” Melancholy threatened, a deep, yawning loneliness that I knew was mostly born of grief. “If you need me to come back, tell me, aye?”
Sadness tightened Jared’s features. “Aye, wee cuz.”
“Big cuz,” I countered, my smile wobbly.
His return smile was forlorn. “I’m proud of you, Sarah. Grandad would be proud too.”
“I’m proud of both of us. We’re doing Grandpa proud.”
Jared nodded and hit the roof of the car before stepping back.
He wore his usual work gear of flannel shirt, jeans, and green farm boots.
The farmhouse I’d grown up in stood behind him.
The two-story home was built a hundred years ago in sandstone brick with slate tile for its roof of multiple pitches.
Grandpa had gone into the attic space so he’d added dormer windows and a third floor.
Jared had taken that space for himself when he came to live with us, but I’d finally talked him into taking the primary bedroom now that Grandpa was gone.
That third floor got too hot during the summer.
Knowing it would be strange for him, I used my earnings to have my grandparents’ bedroom furniture removed and put in the attic.
I bought a whole new bedroom suite for Jared and redecorated the room.
He cried quietly when he saw it. Jared had rarely cried in all the years we’d known each other, but we’d both been extremely emotional these last few months since Grandpa’s death.
And poor Jared had been with him. Had held him in his arms as he died. Heart attack. No time to save him.
The two of us were like a raw wound; the slightest thing reopened the pain and tears.
For not the first time, I questioned leaving Jared so soon after. It had only been six months since we lost the only real father we’d ever known.
“I can stay,” I whispered.
Jared swallowed hard but shook his head. “He’d want us both to start living again.”
Pushing down the tears in my throat, I nodded and gave him a wee wave. “Off I go, then.”
He smiled. “Go write another bestseller, superstar.”
“Talk soon?”
“Call me as soon as you get there.”
“Love you, Jar.”
His mouth trembled and he looked away, composing himself, before he turned back to me. His words sounded like stone under sandpaper. “I love you, too, Sarah.”
Afraid I might burst into painful sobs, I hurried into the car and slammed the door shut.
About a year after Jared arrived, he got a phone call from his mum that had set him off.
He was acting like a shit to everyone, and he did something stupid and dangerous with the tractor.
Yet Grandpa didn’t yell at him, didn’t rage.
He knew something was eating away at Jared, and at dinner that night, he’d told him that he could destroy the whole farm if he liked, but it wouldn’t stop Grandpa from loving him.
Jared turned as white as a sheet, and it was the first and only time I saw my cousin cry—until our grandfather died.
Grandpa had got up from the table and pulled Jared into his arms, holding him tightly as he promised him nothing could make him stop loving him.
Jared cried like a small child and returned the sentiment, though the words sounded wrenched from him.
He’d never been able to say those three words easily, but Grandpa had made it safe for him. For both of us.
Knowing that man who’d protected and loved us as fiercely as any good father would was now gone from the world still tore through me like a serrated knife.
I hit the gas and drove faster down the drive than I should because if I didn’t, I wasn’t sure I would leave the farm or Jared behind.