PRAISE FOR SARIAH WILSON

  Cinder-Nanny

  “Diana and Griffin’s slow-burn closed-door passion is authentic.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Cinder-Nanny is a definite must-read. This cute play on the age-old fairy tale will surely worm its way into your heart and leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy.”

  —Harlequin Junkie

  “Wilson’s ability to weave a sweet tale of two people, each of whom needs what the other has to offer, is magical.”

  —Bookreporter

  The Paid Bridesmaid

  “Combining a fast-paced plot with a slow-burning romance, this is sure to give readers butterflies.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Wilson’s (Roommaid) funny, sweet stand-alone about marriage, friendships, and mistaken identities is full of witty dialogue, endearing characters, and fast-paced narrative. Will appeal to fans of feel-good romances, rom-coms, and plots about weddings and social media.”

  —Library Journal

  The Seat Filler

  “Wilson (Roommaid) balances the quirky with the heartfelt in this adorable rom-com.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Friend Zone

  “Wilson scores a touchdown with this engaging contemporary romance that delivers plenty of electric sexual chemistry and zingy banter while still being romantically sweet at its core.”

  —Booklist

  “Snappy banter, palpable sexual tension, and a lively sense of fun combine with deeply felt emotional issues in a sweet, upbeat romance that will appeal to both the YA and new adult markets.”

  —Library Journal

  The #Lovestruck Novels

  “Wilson has mastered the art of creating a romance that manages to be both sexy and sweet, and her novel’s skillfully drawn characters, deliciously snarky sense of humor, and vividly evoked music-business settings add up to a supremely satisfying love story that will be music to romance readers’ ears.”

  —Booklist (starred review), #Moonstruck

  “Making excellent use of sassy banter, hilarious texts, and a breezy style, Wilson’s energetic story brims with sexual tension and takes readers on a musical road trip that will leave them smiling. Perfect as well for YA and new adult collections.”

  —Library Journal, #Moonstruck

  “#Starstruck is oh so funny! Sariah Wilson created an entertaining story with great banter that I didn’t want to put down. Ms. Wilson provided a diverse cast of characters in their friends and family. Fans of Sweet Cheeks by K. Bromberg and Ruthie Knox will enjoy #Starstruck.”

  —Harlequin Junkie (4.5 stars), #Starstruck

  OTHER TITLES BY SARIAH WILSON

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Hypnotized by Love

  The Hollywood Jinx

  The Chemistry of Love

  Cinder-Nanny

  The Paid Bridesmaid

  The Seat Filler

  Roommaid

  Once Upon a Time Travel

  The End of the Line Novels

  The Friend Zone

  Just a Boyfriend

  The #Lovestruck Novels

  #Starstruck

  #Moonstruck

  #Awestruck

  The Royals of Monterra Series

  Royal Date

  Royal Chase

  Royal Games

  Royal Design

  The Ugly Stepsister Series

  The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back

  The Promposal

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2023 by Sariah Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781662516498 (digital)

  Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson

  Cover images: © BojanMirkovic / Getty; © Oleh Donets / Getty; © Olga Naumova / Getty; © SKIF_Production / Getty; © Anastasiia Veretennikova / Shutterstock

  For my Stewart Scottish ancestors,

  and for Alison, who loves Brigadoon even more than I do

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Maren, do you have service?” my best friend, Penny, asked as she held up her cell phone, swinging it left to right in an attempt to make a connection. The rental car I was driving badly continued to feel out of control. As it turned out, I wasn’t so great with a stick, and driving on the wrong side of the road in Scotland still felt completely unnatural.

  “I should have paid for the upgrade to an automatic,” I muttered. It had been years since I’d driven manual, and it was showing.

  The heavy, sprang-up-out-of-nowhere snowfall wasn’t helping matters.

  Especially since Scottish roads were terrifying. Once you left the highway, there were small one-lane roads that were somehow supposed to accommodate traffic going both directions. The speed limit was ridiculously high, and there were so many blind corners—we’d nearly been flattened by a truck just five minutes ago.

  And that was when the road was clear.

  Now the snow was thick and sticking to the ground.

  Penny reached for my phone and studied the screen. “You don’t have any bars, either.”

  Right then, my app announced, “GPS signal lost.”

  “I don’t even know how long we’re supposed to stay on this road,” I said. There might be a turn or a crossroads just up ahead, and without the GPS, I wouldn’t know it.

  “Why don’t you pull over and I’ll check the map?” she asked. At my mom’s insistence we had stopped in at the Park Authority station when we entered the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park. We’d shared our plans with an older ranger clad in a green coat, who solemnly informed us that this was the wrong season to be heading up into the Highlands.

  “You might be caught in a sudden storm,” he’d said. “We’ve had a great deal of rain that can sometimes turn to snow. There’s a reason we dinnae have many visitors this time of year in that particular area. I’d advise against it.”

  “Thank you . . .” I looked down at his nameplate. “Callum. But we’re still going.”

  “I tried to warn you,” he said with a shrug and handed us a paper map. “You’ll need this. Best of luck to you.”

  Turned out he was right. About the map and about the storm.

  And the luck, apparently.

  Navigating off the road was difficult. The roads didn’t have a shoulder like I was used to in America. I fervently hoped that I wouldn’t puncture the tires because in addition to not springing for automatic, I hadn’t paid for extra coverage, and I wasn’t sure if my auto insurance from back home would cover any damage.

  It was odd pulling off to the left side of the road, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I navigated the terrain successfully while keeping all of the tires intact.

  Penny had the map opened up and was using her phone as a flashlight to read it. “Your uncle was headed here,” she said to the spot the ranger had marked. “It looks like it’s a few miles up the road. We keep going straight.”

  The snow seemed to be getting heavier and thicker by the minute. I didn’t want to slide all over these dangerous roads. “Maybe we should turn around.”

  She frowned. “That’s a shame given that we’re so close. But you might be right. Let’s head back to the inn and we can try again tomorrow.”

  At that exact moment, the car died.

  One minute the engine was purring and hot air was pouring in through the vents, and the next, silence.

  Penny and I exchanged confused glances, and I tried to start it up. Again. A third time.

  Nothing.

  “That’s not good,” I said.

  “And I still don’t have any service. What’s the emergency number here?”

  “Nine-nine-nine,” I told her. Another thing my mother had made sure I knew before traveling internationally for the first time.

  Penny tried dialing and sending the call through, but her phone just beeped at her several times.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “I guess we sit here and wait for somebody to pass by,” I said, trying to fight off the rising sense of panic that currently threatened to engulf me. I didn’t know anything about fixing cars and knew even less about potentially surviving
a serious snowstorm.

  “Do you think the ranger will come looking for us?” she asked as she pulled out the guidebook she had purchased from the gas, er, petrol station, along with some snacks. She took those from her bag and handed one to me. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly. One was called oat cakes, and the other had chips that were haggis- and black-pepper-flavored.

  “Callum? I hope so. We should wait here until the snow dies down.” I didn’t know, though. Would we have to be missing for a certain amount of time before they’d search for us? I usually prided myself on my ability to stay calm in a crisis. It certainly helped in my chosen field—I was going to graduate from veterinary school in a few months—but those were situations that involved my expertise. I knew how to care for wounded and sick animals. I did not know what to do about being stranded on the side of the road in a foreign country during a freak snowstorm.

  We ate the oat cakes first, and Penny made a face. “These are so bland. They taste like beige. Do they not have sugar here?”

  “I think they’re fine.” Not the worst thing I’d ever had.

  “You and your cast-iron stomach,” she said. It was true. I could eat almost anything and be satisfied. Meanwhile, Penny had been struggling with Scottish cuisine and almost wept when she realized that she could use the Deliveroo app and get McDonald’s delivered to our inn.

  We ate all of the snacks she’d purchased and tried to ignore the cold. It was something I’d noticed since we’d arrived—the way that the cold of the Scottish Highlands hit differently. It was a cold that seemed to seep into my bones, like I’d never feel warm again.

  Penny read to me from the guidebook, keeping us distracted. “Did you know that the Highlands are one of the most sparsely populated areas in all of Europe? Currently there’s about eight people for every square kilometer.” She read ahead a bit. “Huh. Nobles cleared out or evicted most of their tenants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the population never really rebounded.”

  That was not making me feel any better. While historically interesting, it spiked my worry about whether or not a car would pass by us.

  Minutes turned into hours, and we were getting colder and colder. Not a single car had appeared. Penny had long stopped reading as her teeth had started to chatter. We huddled together for warmth, both shivering. We tried our phones several times as well as restarting the car. Nothing worked.

  I wondered how long it would take to freeze to death as I watched the snow forming into big piles around the car.

  Feeling drowsy, I let my eyelids flutter shut. Images of my mom flashed in my head, and I thought about the last time we were together. She had looked so frail and tiny—the chemo was really hard on her.

  “I don’t want to go to Scotland without you.” It was a trip we were supposed to take together. I’d held her hand, her skin paper-thin. I was worried I might hurt her if I squeezed too hard.

  “You have to go,” she said firmly.

  “But what if . . . what if you . . .” I couldn’t finish my sentence. I didn’t even want to think it.

  Her eyes were sympathetic and full of love. It had always been me and my mom against the world, and even though I didn’t say the words, I didn’t have to. She knew. “What if I die while you’re gone? I won’t.”

  I shook my head, not wanting to cry in front of her. I should be the one comforting her, not the other way around. “You can’t know that.”

  “We have done so many amazing things together,” she said. “And the only thing I have left to do is to find out what happened to my brother. You have to go to Scotland for me.” She was far too weak to travel, and the doctor had absolutely forbidden her from taking this trip. It was one of the reasons I was scared to leave. If she passed while I was gone . . . I didn’t think I could live with that. Not being with her for her last moments would haunt me for the rest of my life, and I’d never forgive myself.

  Her brother had been missing for more than two decades. I seriously doubted I’d be able to find any clues, but I knew how important this was to her, so I had to go. Even though I didn’t want to.

  When I didn’t respond, she asked, “Do you remember the epic tale of how I met your father?”

  That got me to smile. My mother had told me the story so many times that it was practically seared into my brain. “You fell into a pool at a party, and he rescued you and it was love at first sight.”

  “Even though we’d never met, standing there sopping wet, it was as if I’d always known him. Like we’d been in love in some other life. He saved me in more than one way that night,” she said. “I’d waited my whole life to find someone just like him.”

  “But then he died.” I immediately felt bad for bringing that up, but she squeezed my hand to reassure me. He’d been in a car accident not long after I was born; I’d never even known him.

  “He did, but I’ll always be grateful for the time we had together. And I’ll always be thankful that he gave me you, the world’s most perfect daughter.”

  I let out a laugh. I was the furthest thing from that.

  She gave me a soft smile. “I’m reminding you about your dad because I want you to know that magic is real. And more than anything, I want you to go to Scotland with Penny, and I want you to have laughter and love and to let yourself get caught up in all the magic and whimsy it has to offer. Maybe even find yourself some handsome Highlander to have a fling with. I love you so much, and you deserve to have those experiences. To really live.”

  “But I want to stay here with you,” I whispered, trying one last time to get her to change her mind.

  “No. Go. Do this for me.” She didn’t say it, but I knew this was the last favor she’d ever ask of me, so there was no way I could refuse.

  “Maren!”

  Hearing my mother call my name loudly woke me up. I gasped as my heart pounded hard in my chest and I sat straight up. Penny had nodded off next to me, and I blinked a few times out into the gloom. I tried the car for the millionth time, but it still wouldn’t start.

  Then I noticed flickering lights in front of us, in the forest. Like flashlights. Hope welled up inside me. Maybe someone was looking for us. I had left the lights of the car on, and I located the horn and honked it. The lights bobbing in the forest held still for a moment and then, inexplicably, seemed to move farther away from us.

  I’d been warned repeatedly about fairies playing tricks on people since my arrival in Scotland, but my rational brain told me that wasn’t possible. I wasn’t going to get sucked into that kind of superstition. My mother had told me to look for the whimsy and magic of this country, but I didn’t have time for either one of those things.

  Right now, I just needed to survive and get back home to her. I shook Penny, and she immediately woke up.

  “Come on,” I told her. “There’s lights out there and I’m going to see if they can help us.”

  “Shouldn’t we stay here?” she asked with a yawn.

  I didn’t tell her how worried I was about staying put. I’d worked part-time as an EMT for a couple of years during college to help put myself through school, and I had seen a person who’d frozen to death. My much-more-experienced colleague had told me that it was a nice way to go—that you would just fall asleep and were unaware. I didn’t want that to happen to us.

  Especially given just how easily we’d both fallen asleep already. “No. Let’s go let those rescuers know we’re here.” Opening the car door, I started chasing after the lights. “Hello?”

  Penny came up behind me, grabbing on to my hand, which was a good plan so that we wouldn’t lose each other in this storm. The snow was falling so fast that it made it hard to see. I felt like my eyelashes were going to freeze shut, and I kept my head down as I pressed forward, calling out for help.

  We went deep into the forest and the ground started to slope up. Penny and I struggled up the incline, but I was determined to reach the lights, which always appeared to be just beyond the next ridge.

  Penny collapsed beside me, and I got onto my knees, shaking her. I called her name several times. After a few moments where my heart nearly stopped from fear, she finally opened her eyes. “We have to keep going!” I told her.

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep.”

  “That’s the one thing we’re not going to do,” I told her. “Let’s go.”

  “Leave me,” she said. “Get help and come back.”