Must Love Highlanders Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the intruder. Louise sensed no threat from the guy, no menace, though the cinnamon scone was rapidly becoming history.
    “Did you find the butter?” she asked.
    “Aye, thank you, and the coffee’s on. I’m Uncle Donald. Welcome to Dunroamin Cottage. I expect you’re Jeannie’s latest American?” He passed her the box of scones, which held one plain and two raspberry.
    Louise had never had an Uncle Donald. Now might be a fine time to acquire one. “If you made coffee, you’re welcome to stay,” she said. “Did you catch anything while you were fishing yesterday?”
    “I’m in the river most days, though I seldom call it fishing. What brings you to Scotland?”
    A need to see fairy lights at dusk, and find strange old fellows making coffee in the morning? The coffee maker hissed and gurgled, and a heavenly aroma filled the kitchen.
    “I wanted to get away,” Louise said, “and I’ve never been here before. Shall we sit?”
    Uncle Donald put whole milk on the table and a bowl of white and brown lumps of sugar. Dougie sat before the fridge, switching his plume-y tail, until Uncle Donald took down a quarter-size green ceramic bowl from the cupboard and filled it with milk.
    “The beasts train us, poor dumb creatures that we are,” he said, passing Louise the milk and setting out two plates. “You Americans like your orange juice, am I right?”
    “Please. Are all Scottish men so well trained?”
    “I’m a bachelor,” Uncle Donald said. “One learns to fend for oneself.”
    For an instant, blue eyes focused on Louise, not unkindly, but as if the statement had some significance she wasn’t awake enough to figure out.
    “Do you drink coffee?” she asked.
    “Perish the notion. I drink tea, and whisky, of course.” He produced a flask covered in green and blue plaid. “Shall you have a wee nip?”
    Whisky in the fudge and whisky for breakfast. No wonder people loved Scotland. “No, thank you.”
    He tipped back the flask, his wee nip not so wee. “I do love a good island single malt. What’s your name, Yank?”
    Louise was torn between a sense of privacy invaded, and the novelty of having company for breakfast.
    “Louise Cameron, attorney at law, sort of.” She could go a-lawyering again if she had to, couldn’t she?
    “Camerons are thick on the ground here, though they haven’t always been popular. Eat, child. Are you and Jeannie off to the city, then? Fine day to see the sights.”
    Louise dipped a corner of the raspberry scone in her coffee.
    “Liam is taking me into Edinburgh today. We’re supposed to see the portrait gallery, then tool out to Rosslyn Chapel, and finish with a climb up Arthur’s Seat.”
    Another not-so-wee nip. “Busy folk, you Americans. Shall you put butter on that?” He nudged the butter dish to Louise’s side of the table.
    She nearly said, “Aye,” such was the Scottish gravitational pull of Uncle Donald’s company. “The butter here is good.”
    “The food here is good,” he countered. “We don’t go for those android crops you make in your laboratories. Our dairy is mostly organic, as is much of our produce. You must also try the whiskys, though Liam won’t be much help in that regard.”
    “You’re his uncle?”
    “I’m the Cromarty uncle-at-large, more or less. You mustn’t mind Liam.”
    Family was family the world over. Aunt Evangeline had probably said those same words about Louise to half the bachelors in Atlanta.
You mustn’t mind Louise. She went to school Up Nawthe.
    “What does that mean, I mustn’t mind Liam?” Louise liked Liam, right down to his t’s, and d’s, and the crow’s-feet fanning from his eyes.
    “We try to include him,” Uncle Donald said, “but the boy’s not very includable. Hasn’t been since—”
    A sharp rap on the door interrupted whatever confidence Uncle Donald had been about to inflict on Louise. Lawyers probably heard more dirty family laundry than therapists did, and she certainly didn’t want to