Cathryn Parry - The Sweetest Hours

Real life is no place for fairy tales…

Kristin Hart has romantic notions of Scotland. Yet she never expects to find a real-life Scotsman in her Vermont hometown! Despite her instant connection with him, Malcolm MacDowell isn’t the Prince Charming she thought. Because no prince would shut down her factory—the one that means everything to her town.

Really, she has no choice. Kristin hops on the next flight to Edinburgh, determined to convince Malcolm her workplace should remain open. But the distraction of the man is almost too much. Still, the magic of the Highlands makes anything seem possible…even a happily ever after of her own.

She had trusted him, had brought him home to her family

Kristin turned back to Malcolm. He had kissed her, too. And for the first time in a long time, Kristin had actually let herself imagine…those kinds of thoughts about someone.

“Kristin,” Malcolm murmured. “Let me just explain.”

But her ears were buzzing harder. She couldn’t hear so well anymore. Malcolm was saying something to the receptionist, ushering her out, closing the door.

“Tell me the truth,” Kristin managed to whisper. “Who are you?”

His Adam’s apple moved up and down. “John Sage is my uncle,” he said quietly.

She felt numb all over. Maybe she was in shock.

He had betrayed her. All along, he had lied to her about who he was and why he was in her plant, and at her home. He had made a fool of her in front of everybody who mattered to her.

She clutched her stomach. So many emotions rose in her, she was being overwhelmed by them all. She had wanted to believe in him so much.…

Dear Reader,

Thanks for picking up The Sweetest Hours, my fourth book in the Mills & Boon Superromance line.

This story was inspired by my love for all things Scottish. In it, Kristin Hart, a young industrial engineer for a shampoo-and-body-products company, shows up in her Vermont factory one day to find a sexy, mysterious Scotsman in her office, sitting at her desk.

From there, it’s off to Scotland for an adventure of her lifetime. Along the way, she traverses the countryside, stays at a castle, attends a Scottish wedding and falls in love with Malcolm, the Highlander of her heart.

I hope you enjoy!

All the best,

Cathryn Parry

The Sweetest Hours

Cathryn Parry

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cathryn Parry is the author of four Mills & Boon Superromance books. A former engineer, she lives in New England with her husband and her neighbor’s cat, Otis. In addition to writing, she enjoys conducting genealogy research, working on her figure-skating moves and traveling as often as possible. Please see her website at www.cathrynparry.com.

To Lou, for everything.

To Karen Reid, my editor, for all the hard work and encouragement.

To my late grandmother, for providing the sword, the Scottish genes and the support during my childhood Highland Dance recitals. I haven’t forgotten.

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

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

KRISTIN HART HEARD the soft burr of a Scottish accent, and something inside her sang.

She crept closer to the edge of the open door and listened. A man spoke on the telephone. He was obviously not from around here. What was he doing in her small-town Vermont factory? And why was he in her boss’s office?

“...I cannot...I’m sorry you did not...” The man pronounced “cannot” like “canna” and “you” like “ye.”

Kristin missed most of the other words he said. But the man with the deep, rolling voice was Scottish—that was no mistake.

Her spirits brightened. For as long as she remembered, she’d wanted to travel and visit the country of her grandmother’s birth, the land of castles and Highlanders.

Take me away, she thought.

Kristin rubbed her arms and stared down the corridor, lined with boxes and the remnants of their labeling-machine going haywire.

Outside, it was a gray, late-January morning, threatening snow, and inside, the cold factory was dimly lit and quiet.

Besides her, there was only a skeleton shift: three hourly workers and Kristin. As production engineer she was supervising an emergency crew while they manually affixed labels to shipments that were already several days late. Kristin had opened the doors early that morning and let everyone in with a key not usually entrusted to her, since her plant was rarely open on the weekend.

At least her makeshift team was assembled from volunteers who wanted the overtime. Kristin was a salaried employee, and she had lost her day off. Like living in the movie The Breakfast Club, stuck in detention, Kristin had been ordered into the building on a Saturday. But she was determined to make the best of it and find the silver lining somewhere. The factory floor smelled great: like the jars of the honey body cream they labeled. The people she worked with were kind, too. Unlike Andrew, the plant manager, none of them gave her trouble.

Everything had been sailing along just fine, until she’d headed to the break room to grab a hot chocolate for Mindy from the managerial staff’s coffee machine, and she’d been sidetracked by the Scottish accent.

Now her feet seemed rooted to the wooden floor. She couldn’t see the man with the deep, sexy Scottish burr, but she heard him from her spot in the corridor.

“Goodbye, love, I have to go now.”

Kristin closed her eyes and sighed. Her imagination could very well conjure up a big, burly, kilted Highlander saying that to her.

Not forever, of course, just for...well, an afternoon would be great. With no worries or fears. Just enough fun to satisfy a sense of adventure that had felt squashed in Kristin lately—for far too long, actually.

Kristin sighed again. She wasn’t delusional. Her kilted Scottish Highlander was a fantasy. A nice fantasy, but a fantasy was all he was.

Oh, but that accent...

Daydreaming will give you only trouble, she chided herself. Move on. Go back to your crew in the factory....

She shook her head. No, she had to do something. The Scotsman was inside Andrew’s office. Her big boss. The manager in charge of the plant.

The guy who was very unhappy with her at the moment.

Kristin chewed on her thumbnail. Andrew’s door had been locked when she’d walked past an hour earlier. He was hypervigilant about keeping everyone out of his space. And now it was silent on the other side of the open door.

If Andrew found out that she’d been aware of an intruder inside the building and had done nothing about it...

Kristin rubbed her arms over her coat sleeves. Her throat seemed to close with fear.

Drawing in her breath, she grabbed her heavy metal flashlight from inside her coat pocket and then shrugged the garment off so that her arms were free in case she needed to defend herself. For a moment she thought of calling to Jeff on the plant floor as a backup, but Jeff was seventy-two years old, and he had diabetes and a bad hip.

Be careful. Be smart.

She grabbed her cell phone from the other pocket of her winter-wool coat—at least she had 9-1-1 on speed-dial—and then crept to the edge of the door.

He sat right out in the open as if he belonged there, though at present, his back was to her.