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Kelly there. I’m Leith Cameron at your service. Yer not all that familiar with a manual, are ye?”
    “Not really. This is . . . was . . . my first attempt.”
    Leith’s eyes swept over my faulty transportation. “The transmission is fouled up a bit. That extra pedal on the floor is a clutch, in case ye were wondering.”
    “I know that. I had a lesson before driving off.”
    “Must o’ been a wee one.”
    “I told the rental person it was a big mistake not to make more effort to locate an automatic for me.”
    We both looked at my big mistake. I’d been right—as usual—when it came to my lack of mechanical abilities. When they’d passed out those brain connections, I must have been in a far corner reading a book.
    “Where are ye heading?” he asked next.
    “Glenkillen.”
    “Let’s grab yer things, then,” Leith said. “Glenkillen is right around the bend, and it’s where I’m goin’. I’ll see tae the car, but I’ll need the hire agreement.”
    I fished around in the front seat and handed over the paperwork.
    Leith pulled the keys out of the rental car’s ignition, popped the trunk (or rather the “boot,” as the rental agent had referred to it), and transferred my bags into the backseat of his Land Rover, moving so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to pitch in and help.
    “Ye don’t mind sharing a seat with Kelly, do ye?” he asked.
    “Not at all,” I said, climbing in.
    “Ye’ll be staying at the Whistling Inn?”
    “How did you know?” I asked warily.
    “Only place around these parts to stay.”
    Ah. True. Research had told me tourists usually made Inverness their home base and traveled from there on day trips to take in the sights. But I’d wanted more total immersion. In spite of Glenkillen’s popularity as a coastal town, it didn’t encourage overnight revelers. In fact, I’d read that it closed up relatively early each night. It was exactly what I’d been looking for, and Ami had agreed.
    “You won’t be able to run to the comfort of other Americans in a place like that,” she’d said with a wicked little grin.
    She’d certainly been right about that. And if only she could see the Scot who’d come to my rescue. She’d absolutely flip with glee.
    “Well, Eden Elliott,” Leith said, “let’s get ye to yer destination.”
    And we were off, heading through the rolling hills of the Scottish Highlands. I finally had an opportunity to sit back and enjoy the scenery. Right outside my window, which I rolled all the way down to enjoy all the sensory delights, were glorious purple-hued heather-covered hills on both sides of the road. Mountainous peaks rose in the background. The air smelled very much of honeysuckle, sweetly and powerfully fragrant.
    Sheep dotted the hills and valleys like clumps of cotton, some all white, others black-faced but with white bodies, as well as the occasional proverbial black sheep, all grazing contently. Hand-built stone walls edged both sides of the road, sometimes branching away and meandering off over the tufted grass, crumbling here and there with age.
    “Did ye come for the funeral?” Leith asked rather loudly, since we both had our windows down.
    “What funeral?”
    “James MacBride’s. Should be quite the turnout for it,” he said.
    He must be talking about Vicki’s father
, I realized, deciding to feign total ignorance, curious what Leith would say about James MacBride and the rest of the family.
    “An important man?” I asked.
    “Ye could say that.”
    That was all the prompting he needed. The gist of it, if I understood right (which was questionable, considering Leith’s brogue and my unfamiliarity with several Scottish idioms he threw in), was that the elderly James MacBride had been an important community member who’d recently suffered a rapid series of strokes. The last and final one had stopped his heart for good. He’d owned a large hill sheep farming operation where, not only were sheep raised for their