Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Ramsay McRae is a man with secrets. He prefers the company of his dog to people and silence to any semblance of politeness. He says I’m too young, too sweet, too innocent.
Only he doesn’t know the truth. That I’m haunted by a crime that tore my life apart two years ago. I’ve come to Half-Light Harbor not just to start over, but to bring the monster who killed my parents to justice.
The last thing I need is a tortured Scot distracting me from my mission. But when his restraint snaps and my walls crumble, the results are explosive.
We say it’s only a no-strings-attached affair. A temporary moment to burn out this fire between us.
However, when my search for the truth brings danger to my door, it’s Ramsay stepping in to protect me. But it might be the secrets from his past that tear us apart forever
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But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
—Robert Burns, Ae Fond Kiss
Prologue
Tierney
The restaurant was crowded. People were squeezed together like strands of multicolored dry spaghetti shoved into a jar as they waited for a table to become free.
A guy at the next table was on his phone loudly berating a colleague for a screw-up at work while his lunch date studied her menu, mortified. On my other side, two women spoke over each other as they discussed their latest failures in the dating scene.
“I mean, if your penis is pierced, you’re basically advertising that you’re good at sex!” the brunette yelled over the noise of the other diners to her friend. “Well, I have a severe case of buyer’s remorse. I was scammed!”
Once upon a time I might have laughed at that with London, but I felt crowded by all the people. And outside the restaurant windows, Manhattan was abuzz with foot and road traffic. There was noise and lights and smells and feelings everywhere.
So many feelings I could barely feel my own.
My chest grew uncomfortably tight, and I breathed a little sharper, a little faster to alleviate it.
“You’re not happy,” my best friend, London Wetherspoon, said.
I tried to focus on her pretty face and drown out the surrounding chaos. “Am I supposed to be?” I asked.
She flinched. “That’s not what I mean. No one is saying you need to be over your grief. I only mean … you’re not happy here.”
She was right.
The itch to leave New York had started long before the death of my parents. But family was what mattered most to me. My parents were here. London was here. And, I reminded myself because I constantly needed to remind myself, Hugh was here. Hugh, my boyfriend of eighteen months.
He’d seen me through losing my parents. A lot of new partners might have bailed at having to support someone through something so big so soon.
I wasn’t very present with him these days.
But he didn’t seem to mind.
Maybe I should mind that he didn’t seem to mind.
“You’re the only family I have left,” I told London truthfully.
She reached across the table to cover my hand with hers. “And I will always be your family. Even if you need to be somewhere else to be happy.”
“Somewhere else?”
“Scotland.” She gave me a melancholy smile. “I know you’ve missed it since your grandmother died. You should go. Even if it’s just to visit for a while. Get out of the city. Figure out what you want.”
The thought of Scotland scored a new ache across my chest, and it was the first positive spark I’d had in a while. I’d been numb for months, going through the motions, not doing anything. Sure, I could afford not to do anything, but that didn’t mean I should mindlessly laze about.
For four years, I’d worked as the general manager of a five-star hotel on the Upper West Side. It was a boutique hotel, not part of the Silver Group. However, my parents’ reputation and standing in the hospitality industry snagged me the job. At the time, I was the youngest general manager in New York. But I’d kept the job because I was damn good at it.
Until the two people who mattered most to me died in a helicopter crash.
I returned to work two months after my parents’ funeral, and I made a lot of mistakes. Losing my shit at an entitled guest was the final straw for my boss and he “let me go.”
Now I was aimless.
Lost.
Yet the thought of Scotland cut through the noise.
“What about you? What about Hugh?”
London rolled her eyes. “Who gives a fuck about Hugh? As for me, I’m here, babe, whether I’m sitting across a table from you or an entire salty ocean.”
Gratitude was the second positive emotion to pierce my numbness that day. “Scotland.” I nodded. “I’ll think about it.”
My best friend smiled. “That’s all I ask.”
After lunch with London, I was supposed to go to a job interview with the Silver Group. The CFO, Ashlyn Waters, had reached out to invite me to interview for general manager at their hotel in Midtown. It was a favor to my parents, I knew that.
Despite the kindness behind the offer, I couldn’t make myself go.
Now that London had planted the idea of Scotland, the thought of burying myself in another job here in Manhattan made me more numb than usual, which was saying something. Instead, I returned to the apartment that belonged to Hugh. The truth was Hugh was different from any guy I’d dated. Confident, more forthright. Arrogant. He was a nepo baby too. Son and heir of one of the biggest automotive brands in the world. Now Hugh was CFO of the electric vehicles division, and once his father stepped down, he hoped to become CEO.