Mad About Plaid (The MacLaren Brothers Series 1)

Chapter 1

She was lost.

And from the look of things, stuck on the shoulder of a single-track road deep in the Scottish countryside, it was doubtful another soul would be passing by soon. Unless sheep counted. There were plenty of those to go around, dotting the green hillside like hundreds of fluffy marshmallows under an ominous gray sky.

Lucy's stomach clenched into a hungry knot, a bag of marshmallows sounding pretty good right about then. With a wistful sigh, she returned her attention to the map. The last town was nearly five miles back.

Five. Long. Miles.

Perfect.
Once again, she'd allowed Riley to talk her into another wild scheme, and this time it had been covering for her cousin at work. What did Lucy know about travel writing? She'd never been beyond the Eastern seaboard—a failure in and of itself seeing as how she'd once planned to see the world.

"Damn it, Riley," she muttered, wondering how many times she'd said those words in relation to her cousin? Thousands probably.

She knew it was wrong, but part of her hoped Riley was having a craptastic day too. It was the least she deserved.

And while Lucy was at it, she might as well add the woman who'd met her at the airport to the growing list of offenders. The lovely Grace Lindsay who'd bought her lunch, taken her shopping for real Scottish clothes, and had rented Lucy her very own mini car for the trek to Balmorie Estate & Guest House.

"I put together the Lindsay and MacLaren Tartans," Grace had said beyond the changing room door during their shopping detour. "We'd be honored if you wear them."

Hurting someone's feelings and country pride was the last thing Lucy had wanted to do her first day in Scotland, so she walked out of the shop in blue and green checkered slacks criss-crossed in black, yellow, and red, paired with a green, red, and blue sweater.

Grace Lindsay, with her cool Scottish accent, bright red hair, freckles, and faulty directions was the reason Lucy was currently dressed like Willy Wonka out for a day of golfing. In the case of the matching plaid cap with the fuzzy red pompom on the top, which Grace had also bought for her, Lucy had shoved it into her backpack vowing silently that hell would freeze over before she'd wear it.

Could be worse.

It could always be worse. In fact, Lucy and 'could be worse' were intimately acquainted. Yet another often-used phrase in her life.

Resigned to the fact she'd have to leave her gas-deprived rental—whose gas gauge was obviously shot since it still indicated a full tank—and walk back to the last town, she grabbed her backpack off the passenger seat, praying that the remainder of her vacation would be just as she'd envisioned; peaceful and inspiring—the total opposite of the adventure Grammy Lin and her cousins envisioned with a string of hunky Scotsmen. It had been over a year since her last relationship. If there was a perfect time for a wild, irresponsible fling, it was now, or so they'd claimed, even going so far as to tuck several condoms into her carry-on bag.

Lucy didn't even want to think about the look on Reverend Atwater's face, the friendly missionary who sat next to her on the plane, when she'd pulled out a shiny foil-wrapped Mammoth Man while looking for her eye drops to which he'd asked hopefully, "Ooh, is that chocolate?"

Having to explain it wasn't exactly chocolate, she'd quietly searched her carry-on for more surprises, vowing to strangle both Gram, Kate, and Riley when she returned home. A fitting punishment, she decided, after discovering a handful of the shiny foil chocolates in her carry-on.

And not a single Median Man or Mini Man.

Mammoth Mans were a joke. If they were that desperate for her to find a man, they could have at least been realistic.