Real Men Wear Plaid! Read online

  Look what people are saying about this talented author…

  “Well plotted and wickedly sexy, this one’s got it all—including a completely scrumptious hero. A keeper.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Ranger

  “This highly romantic tale is filled with emotion and wonderful characters. It’s a heart-melting romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Letters from Home

  “Wonderfully written and heart-stirring, the story flies by to the deeply satisfying ending.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Soldier

  “Totally entertaining, emotionally satisfying and very sexy, this is a super-strong book.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Blazing Bedtime Stories, “Sexily Ever After”

  “If you want a sexy, steamy set of Christmas tales, guaranteed to make you blush and giggle, then you need to read Better Naughty than Nice. You won’t regret it. I give this collection 5 books.”

  —Long and Short Reviews

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for picking up Real Men Wear Plaid! This book holds a special place in my heart because the idea for it was conceived during a trip to Scotland with fellow writers and friends. (Check them out at the writingplayground.com.) I absolutely loved the country—the lochs and mountains, the shaggy Highland cows, the thistle and sheep. And the history… I felt like I was breathing it in as we visited all the castles and ruins. I couldn’t think of a better place to set my first Blaze Encounters. I also couldn’t come up with any sexier men.

  But these guys aren’t just hot—they’re brothers! Ewan MacKinnon finds the woman of his dreams wandering on the West Highland Way. Cam MacKinnon’s soul mate blows him away at a murder mystery weekend at his Highland castle. And Alec MacKinnon meets his match when his mentor’s daughter takes up residence in his seaside town.

  Nothing brings a smile to my face faster than hearing from my readers, so be sure to check out my website at ReadRhondaNelson.com. Also, the Blaze authors have just started up a cool Pet Project. Be sure to visit blazeauthors.com to see what we’re up to and how you can help.

  Happy reading!

  Rhonda

  Rhonda Nelson

  REAL MEN WEAR PLAID!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A Waldenbooks bestselling author, two-time RITA® Award nominee and RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice nominee, Rhonda Nelson writes hot romantic comedy for the Harlequin Blaze line and other Harlequin imprints. With more than twenty-five published books to her credit and many more coming down the pike, she’s thrilled with her career and enjoys dreaming up her characters and manipulating the worlds they live in. As well as a writing career, she has a husband, two adorable kids, a black Lab and a beautiful bichon frise. She and her family make their chaotic but happy home in a small town in northern Alabama. She loves to hear from her readers, so be sure and check her out at www.ReadRhondaNelson.com.

  Books by Rhonda Nelson

  HARLEQUIN BLAZE

  255—THE PLAYER

  277—THE SPECIALIST

  283—THE MAVERICK

  322—THE EX-GIRLFRIENDS’ CLUB

  361—FEELING THE HEAT

  400—THE LONER

  412—THE HELL-RAISER

  475—LETTERS FROM HOME

  481—THE SOLDIER

  545—THE RANGER

  549—BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY

  “The Prodigal”

  557—THE RENEGADE

  579—IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE MISTLETOE…

  “Cole for Christmas”

  586—THE REBEL

  594—THE WILD CARD

  To my Scotland travel buddies.

  Most specifically to Kim, for all her planning,

  wonderful in-laws, her car and her ability to

  drive on the wrong side of the road.

  To Kira, for the unforgettable horseback riding

  excursion across the Highlands. (You know I didn’t

  type that with a straight face.) To Andrea, the

  ultimate navigator who made sure we were

  never lost. And to Danniele, who patted my back

  while I emptied my full Scottish breakfast

  onto the sidewalk a block off the Royal Mile.

  Contents

  THE WANDERER

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  THE WARRIOR

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  THE WAYFARER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  THE WANDERER

  Prologue

  GENEVIEVE MACKINNON OFTEN marveled over the fact that brilliance and stupidity could occupy the same body—the same mind—and a perfect example of that phenomenon was seated at the desk in front of her.

  “Sons,” her father, Hamish MacKinnon, railed for what felt like the upteenth time. “I’ve got three of them—three,” he repeated, as if she weren’t aware of how many brothers she had. “And not one of them willing to take on MacKinnon Holdings so that I can retire properly with your mother and spend our golden years fly-fishing and vacationing in Majorca.”

  Genevieve dutifully handed over another paper that required her father’s signature. She cast a glance out the window, observing passersby three floors below in Edinburgh proper. “I wasn’t aware that Mother wanted to take up fly-fishing,” she said mildly, her lips twitching with humor.

  Her father shot her an impatient look. “You know very well what I mean,” he told her. “I’m sixty-five. It’s time for me to enjoy the fruits of my labor, to hand over the reins. With three sons at my disposal I never worried about not being able to pass the torch, as it were.” He grimaced, his face settling into one of heart-breaking disappointment. “Instead I’ve spent my life building a family business that none of them seems to want.”

  Genevieve wished that she could disagree, but her father was right. Her brothers—Ewan, Cam and Alec—were all either carving their own path, or in Ewan’s case, still looking for it, and weren’t the least inclined to continue along the road their father had built.

  They weren’t…but she was and always had been.

  Pity that her father didn’t see it.

  She handed him another document and inwardly sighed. How much harder could she work? How many hours must she log in before he realized that his company was her life, the only one she’d ever wanted? She was in her element at MacKinnon Holdings, had a knack for making good investments and had a better understanding of the business world than any of her dear brothers ever would. And yet they were better qualified in her father’s eyes because they had a penis? Ridiculous. Utter stupidity.

  “Marshall Anderson will be here at one,” she said, trying to get a handle on her temper.

  Her father’s keen eyes instantly found hers. “You’re ready for him, I presume?”

  “I’ve reviewed the past ten years’ financials, interviewed all pertinent staff—” not to mention the non-salaried workers, who tended to give a better picture of a man’s character “—and am confident that the company is sound. It is not, however, worth what he wants us to pay for it.”

  “Then I’ll leave the negotiations to you,” he said. “I’m meeting your mother for lunch.”

  She nodded, presuming as much. He often “left things to her” yet seemed inexplicably reluctant to leave her in charge of the company.

  “Don’t worry, Genevieve,” he said, sending her an indulgent smile. “At some point one of your brothers has to come round and when they do, I won’t depend on you so much.”

  Could he hear the enamel grinding off her teeth? she wondered as it resonated through her own ears. Not trusting herself to speak, she merely managed a weak smile and left the office.

  Obviously a talk with her brothers was going to be in order.

  1

  “SOME BEST friend,” Gemma Wentworth muttered between clenched teeth.

  He’d left her? Here? In the wilds of Scotland, a little over half-way along the famous West Highland Way?

  Gemma felt the impact of what he’d done fully smack into her. She stared at the young Irish couple who’d delivered his message.

  “Are you certain?” she asked faintly. Her stomach gave a sickening little pitch. “You saw him leave?”

  The girl nodded sympathetically. “We did. He climbed right into the lorry and took off, he did.”

  But—but she’d only gone to the bathroom, Gemma thought, her mind gauzy with shock. She turned toward the little store, then scanned the parking lot and surrounding area just to make sure that Jeffrey—her oldest and dearest friend—wasn’t going to magically appear.

  “He said to give you this,” the guy chimed in, handing her Jeffrey’s backpack. It felt lighter, meaning he’d taken his clothes and pounds of grooming products. Her friend was more particular about his appearance than she was, the great jerk. “Said he wouldn’t need it anymore and that…he was sorry,” the young man finished, evidently finding the message and the words distasteful.

  Sorry? Anger
bullied the initial shock aside as she considered what he’d done to her. Sorry? She gave a grim laugh. Oh, he’d be sorry all right. What sort of friend abandoned another so-called best friend without so much as a goodbye in the middle of a foreign country? One entirely too sure of her devotion, obviously. One who was certain he’d be forgiven. One who had met an attractive Scot ten miles back and, given the choice between her company and that of a handsome stranger, chose the latter. Argh!

  In retrospect, she should have predicted this. After all, hadn’t Jeffrey disappeared at many a ball game and party over the years? Particularly when the possibility of romance had presented itself? She whimpered low under her breath. Still, the coward should have had the nerve to tell her he was leaving, not just disappear and leave it to this couple.

  “You’re welcome to walk with us,” the girl offered with a pitying smile that confirmed she was under the mistaken impression that Jeffrey had been Gemma’s boyfriend. They were often mistaken for lovers, but aside from the fact that she’d never felt romantically interested in him, Gemma lacked something Jeffrey needed in a partner—a penis. The girl looked up at her companion. “Isn’t that right, Willem?”

  Red-headed, gangly and freckled, Willem nodded. “Spot on, Jenny. It’s better to be with a group than off on your own,” he said.

  “You are going to continue, aren’t you?” Jenny asked anxiously, as though the thought had just occurred to her. “You’ve come so far. It’d be a shame to quit now.”

  That was true, Gemma knew. Still… The West Highland Way was a ninety-five mile hike that began in Milngavie and ultimately concluded at Fort William in the Scottish Highlands. Both her grandmother and mother had made the walk. It had been a rite of passage, so to speak, for the Wentworth women, who were of Scottish descent. While everyone had their own reasons for treading the path, according to her mother, Wentworth women had never failed to find clarity and peace on it, a sense of their higher purpose. They insisted that, for whatever reason, walking this trail had some sort of mystical way of putting their feet on their life’s proper path.

  Truthfully, Gemma didn’t know if she bought into the hocus-pocus aspect of it—she was definitely dissatisfied with her life at the present—but she’d felt compelled to make the journey all the same, had felt this bizarre need to do as the Wentworth women before her. Though she would admit to feeling a strange sense of homecoming upon landing in Scotland, a loosening in her chest as it were, she was still no closer to discovering what it was that was going to make her life worthwhile, a credit to the world.

  She grimaced. But she did know that her position at the bank, where she worked as a loan officer, wasn’t doing it for her and if she didn’t make a change soon—the right one—she was going to suffocate under her own skin.

  Initially Gemma had imagined that she would have rather traveled the country in a car or luxury coach, but she had to admit she was happier making the actual walk. There was something about knowing that her feet were walking the same ground as her mother and grandmother, that they were seeing the same things—albeit generations apart—and that, while the actual journey was the same, their experiences were wholly unique. She’d met a host of interesting people, all of them of the same mind with the same ultimate goal—reaching the end of the journey—and the breathtaking views of moors and lochs were something she knew she’d never forget.

  Though there were several people who were camping along the way—in designated areas, of course—most were like her, looking for an open room at a bed and breakfast or hostel. It was nothing to pass someone at one juncture of the journey and later have them pass you, sling-shotting across each other’s path over and over again. That’s what had happened with Willem and Jenny, which was probably why Jeffrey had entrusted them with his message and pack. The traitor, she thought again. She still couldn’t believe that he’d actually left her. That he’d bailed in such a cowardly fashion, gallingly, via proxy.

  They’d also been crossing paths with a beautiful, bold Scotsman she wished she hadn’t noticed. Ewan MacKinnon had first caught her attention on day one from the corner of her eye and her heart had given a strange sort of jolt. Before she could get him properly in her sights, he’d vanished behind a small crowd of people, leaving her curiously dejected, as though she’d had a present snatched out of her hands. By the end of day two she’d been covertly watching for him with a keen sort of unprecedented anticipation, she’d been gratified to catch him watching her. Jeffrey’s gimlet eyes hadn’t missed it, either, and he had tried to get her to act on her obviously mutual interest.

  An incurable romantic, Jeffrey had cited the once in a lifetime opportunity to “bag a Scottish hottie” and had reminded her entirely too helpfully about her non-existent sex life. She and her last boyfriend had parted ways eight months ago—oddly enough, she didn’t like sharing and fidelity turned out to be beyond Andrew’s grasp—and, despite Jeffrey’s insistence that she needed a little orgasm therapy, she simply hadn’t been in the mood.

  Until now.

  Until him.

  She’d been having fantasies about Ewan, dreaming of him at night and daydreaming about him come the dawn. Wicked, depraved scenarios which had involved lots of heavy breathing and copious amounts of clotted cream. It was insane and yet completely undeniable. Her belly clenched, remembering, and she felt heat sizzle over the tips of her breasts. The need was secondary to the strange expectation she felt, though, this bizarre sense of destiny all tangled up with the desire.

  Neither of which she had time for, especially now.

  With effort, she pushed his distracting image aside and told herself to focus. She’d just been abandoned by her best friend, quite unceremoniously, on foreign soil. She grimaced.

  Clearly she had bigger issues.

  A quick inspection revealed that Jeffrey had left her a first-aid kit, a package of granola and quite a bit of cash. Guilt money, she thought, but it would spend just as easily and now that she’d be footing the bill for her room by herself she was going to need it.

  No doubt he’d be seeing Scotland the way he’d wanted to see it to start with—in grand style, touring all the places she’d like to see as well. Rosslyn Chapel and the Royal Mile, Sterling Castle, Culloden Battlefield, Loch Ness. Though she hadn’t had a chance to talk to him about it, she’d planned on asking him about changing their return tickets and spending another week in the country. It seemed a shame to leave when there was still so much she wished to do. And curiously, the idea of going back to Jackson, Mississippi—even to the quaint little farmhouse she called home—filled her with varying degrees of dread and panic.

  Bizarre.

  Regardless of anything, she refused to become Willem and Jenny’s third wheel. Though she and Jeffrey had started on the trail early in the week, planning ahead so that the end of their walk would fall on the more congested weekend, there were still plenty of people along the way. Sticking strictly to the path, she would be safe. Or as safe as she could be, at any rate.

  Perhaps this was for the best, Gemma told herself. Neither her mother nor her grandmother had taken a friend along when they’d made their walk. Maybe this was a journey she was meant to make on her own. Her gaze took in the beautiful, lush green landscape—the shaggy highland cows in the field across the street, the enormous rhododendrons—they were more like trees here than the decorative shrub variety she was used to seeing at home, the lovely thistles bobbing in the breeze—and a little sigh slipped past her lips.

  Determined to think of the glass as half full, she couldn’t imagine a better setting.

  2

  NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, Ewan decided. The animated hand-talking American guy had left her. Gemma—he’d overheard her tell someone in that lilting southern drawl. Something about her name conjured a soft warming in his chest. Caused a bizarre shift that made the balls of his feet tingle and his heart race.

  Ridiculous.

  He muttered a few choice expletives under his breath and passed a hand over his face. This was not his concern. She was not his concern. He shouldn’t care that her happy-go-lucky boyfriend had abandoned her and yet…