Faith (Beach Brides Book 11) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Faith

  Beach Brides Series

  By

  Helen Scott Taylor

  Copyright © 2017 Helen Taylor

  The right of Helen Taylor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act, 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner.

  Edited by Pam Berehulke

  Bulletproof Editing.

  www.BulletProofEditing.com

  Cover Design by Raine English,

  Elusive Dreams Designs

  www.ElusiveDreamsDesigns.com

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Prologue

  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

  About the Author

  Excerpt

  Introduction

  Grab your beach hat and a towel and prepare for a brand new series brought to you by twelve New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors…

  Beach Brides! Fun in the summer sun!

  Twelve heartwarming, sweet novellas linked by a unifying theme.

  You’ll want to read each one!

  BEACH BRIDES SERIES (Faith)

  Twelve friends from the online group, Romantic Hearts Book Club, decide to finally meet in person during a destination Caribbean vacation to beautiful Enchanted Island. While of different ages and stages in life, these ladies have two things in common: 1) they are diehard romantics, and 2) they’ve been let down by love. As a wildly silly dare during her last night on the island, each heroine decides to stuff a note in a bottle addressed to her “dream hero” and cast it out to sea! Sending a message in a bottle can’t be any crazier than online or cell phone dating, or posting personal ads! And, who knows? One of these mysterious missives might actually lead to love…

  Join Meg, Tara, Nina, Clair, Jenny, Lisa, Hope, Kim, Rose, Lily, Faith and Amy, as they embark on the challenge of a lifetime: risking their hearts to accomplish their dreams.

  This is Faith’s story…

  A single dad receives a message in a bottle from his son for Christmas. He tells himself there’s no room in his life for a woman—and then he meets her and everything changes.

  Find all of the Beach Brides at Amazon!

  MEG (Julie Jarnagin)

  TARA (Ginny Baird)

  NINA (Stacey Joy Netzel)

  CLAIR (Grace Greene)

  JENNY (Melissa McClone)

  LISA (Denise Devine)

  HOPE (Aileen Fish)

  KIM (Magdalena Scott)

  ROSE (Shanna Hatfield)

  LILY (Ciara Knight)

  FAITH (Helen Scott Taylor)

  AMY (Raine English)

  Prologue

  Faith’s message in a bottle.

  Greetings from Enchanted Island in the Caribbean.

  I’m Faith, a twenty-nine-year-old army veterinarian from England.

  Applications are now open for the position of my dream hero!

  If you are blond, charming, and wealthy, please toss the bottle back in the ocean as you are not my type. Ha-ha. (Previous bad experience!)

  Joking aside, whoever you are, it would be great if you could message me on my Facebook page. I’d love to know where this bottle ends up.

  Chapter One

  On some level, Fergus Mackenzie had always known there was something wrong with his dad, yet it was only recently he’d realized what the quiet sadness in his father’s eyes meant—he was lonely.

  How was this possible? He and his dad lived in a fantastic place on the edge of a Scottish loch with his aunts, uncles, and cousins just down the road.

  When Fergus asked his aunt Meg if his dad might be lonely, she went quiet and stared off towards the snow-capped mountains on the other side of the loch, sadness in her eyes.

  “Aye, lad,” she said. “Your dad needs a girlfriend, but he thinks he doesn’t want one. I’d love to see him happily married, but there’s nothing like a Mackenzie man for being stubborn and bullheaded.”

  Fergus pledged to himself he would make his dad happy. Together, they went kayaking, climbing, bird watching, and skiing, and his dad often laughed. Yet in quiet moments, the sadness always crept back into his eyes.

  Finally out of ideas, Fergus decided that maybe his aunt Meg had it right and there was only one thing that would cure his dad’s loneliness—Fergus must find him a wife.

  • • •

  “Dad, open the present from me first,” Fergus shouted over the happy chatter in the drawing room at Kindrogan Castle on Christmas Day. His eager brown eyes sparkled with mischief beneath his unruly thatch of dark hair.

  Relaxing back in the leather sofa by the roaring fire, Hew Mackenzie nodded to his son. After the wonderful Christmas lunch his sister-in-law Naomi had cooked, he was ready for a wee dram of local whiskey. From the bottle-shaped gift in his son’s hands, things looked promising.

  “Did you choose this yourself, lad, or did you have some help?” It concerned him a little that someone in Kinder Vale might have sold a bottle of spirits to a ten-year-old.

  “Sort of.” Fergus shared a conspiratorial glance with Hew’s sister, Megan, suggesting she’d had a hand in choosing the bottle, which laid Hew’s concerns to rest. Megan knew her whiskey, so it would be a good brand.

  The log fire cracked in the huge fireplace. The smell of pine needles and wet dogs drying after a game in the snow filled the room with the reassuringly familiar smell of a Mackenzie Christmas Day.

  Hew’s two seven-year-old nieces, Heather and Holly, skipped in front of him wearing sparkly pink dresses and tiaras while waving star-tipped wands in time to a Christmas song playing on Holly’s new iPad.

  Carefully holding the bottle-shaped present, Fergus sat on the sofa beside Hew and passed the gift to him. Then he flapped his hands for quiet.

  “Shush, everyone. Dad’s going to unwrap my present.”

  The room fell silent as others paused in unwrapping gifts and looked their way. Hew lifted his eyebrows as he glanced at his son. This must be a darn good bottle of whiskey to deserve such a fuss. He cast Megan a questioning glance, and she motioned for him to hurry up.

  “Come on, Hew. Don’t keep us waiting.”

  There was something he was missing here. Come to think of it, the gift felt a little light to be a bottle full of whiskey. Curious, he tugged away the shiny holly-patterned paper and slid the bottle free. Stoppered with a discolored old cork, the bottle was weathered,
a faint smell of the ocean coming from it.

  With a quick mystified glance at Fergus’s grinning face, he held the opaque bottle up to the firelight and squinted. There was something inside, not liquid but a folded piece of paper.

  “What is this?”

  Fergus bounced on the sofa beside him. “A message in a bottle, Dad. Read the note.”

  “What does it say?” Hew could sense his sister’s hand in this, some new matchmaking trick of hers. She was always trying to pair him off with some woman or another.

  “You have to read it to find out. I found the bottle myself on the school trip to Stonehaven. It was just lying among the seaweed on the beach.”

  Hew turned the bottle over in his hands, assessing its condition. The erosion of the glass suggested it could have been in the water a long time. On closer inspection, the cork was damaged at the side, as though it had been levered out and put back in recently.

  “Did Auntie Meg put the note in here?” he asked his son.

  “No, Dad.” Fergus rolled his eyes. “The note was in the bottle when I found it.”

  “So you’ve already read it?”

  “Of course we have,” Megan said. “Stop procrastinating and read the blessed note, Hew. You’re driving me crazy with anticipation.”

  Hew’s eldest brother, Duncan, chuckled, and Hew gave in and tugged out the cork. He upended the bottle and a tightly rolled piece of paper tumbled onto his lap. It appeared to be cream-colored card tied with a length of discolored white ribbon.

  When he pulled on one end of the ribbon, it came undone, allowing the roll of paper to loosen. He spread it out. Beneath a small watercolor print of an idyllic sandy beach fringed with palm trees, it said, “Courtesy of Hideaway Cove Resort, the most romantic place in the world.”

  “That’s in the Caribbean,” Fergus said. “Auntie Meg and I looked it up on the Internet.”

  Hew nodded mutely. He was starting to think this might be genuine, and that seemed worse than Megan faking it. His lips pressed tightly together, he turned the piece of card and read the small, neat handwriting on the back.

  Greetings from Enchanted Island in the Caribbean.

  I’m Faith, a twenty-nine-year-old army veterinarian from England.

  Applications are now open for the position of my dream hero!

  If you are blond, charming, and wealthy, please toss the bottle back in the ocean as you are not my type. Ha-ha. (Previous bad experience!)

  Joking aside, whoever you are, it would be great if you could message me on my Facebook page. I’d love to know where this bottle ends up.

  At the top of the note were a date and the woman’s Facebook page address.

  “This bottle has been in the ocean for nearly three years.” Hew mentally traced the journey it must have taken across the North Atlantic, from just above South America to the British Isles. “It’s had an impressive journey. I reckon it must have come about four and a half thousand miles.”

  Fergus tapped the Facebook profile name on the paper. “Get out your phone, Dad, and send her a message.”

  Hew nodded, although he had already decided he wouldn’t bother. He had no interest in striking up a chat with some woman he’d never met, especially one who was looking for a dream hero. His brothers were the heroes in this family, and they were both married.

  “It’s a fun gift. Thanks, Gus.” He ruffled his son’s hair affectionately.

  “Send her a message now, Dad. Look.” Fergus pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and showed him the screen. “This is the woman who wrote the message.” He flashed an image of a smiling woman with long blond hair, her arms around a black spaniel. She was certainly attractive, no denying that.

  Hew gazed at the photo for a few moments until he became aware his family was still watching him. “I’m not going to message her now. It’s Christmas Day.”

  “Excuses,” Megan jeered.

  “I can message her for you, Dad. Shall I give her your phone number so she can call you?”

  “No!” The word came out more harshly than Hew intended, and he tried to soften the impact by putting an arm around his son’s shoulders. “Just leave it be, lad. Don’t message her. I’ll do it in my own time.”

  Megan folded her arms and gave him a knowing look. “Hew Mackenzie, you can’t stay single forever.”

  Oh yes, he jolly well could.

  Chapter Two

  Captain Faith Wallace was either imagining things or she was being shadowed by a boy who looked to be no more than ten or eleven. She walked behind three Royal Army Veterinary Corps dog handlers around the perimeter of the shopping center in Edinburgh, Scotland, supervising the training of the dogs to handle terrorist threats in the UK. Her group seemed to have picked up their junior stalker a few minutes ago when they crossed the covered parking area.

  “Follow the planned route,” she said to Lieutenant Shepherd. “I’ll catch up with you back at the vehicle in due course.”

  The young woman nodded in acknowledgment. All dressed in black with no insignia, they purposely didn’t flaunt that they were military, partly so as not to cause alarm, but mainly to avoid becoming targets.

  The boy had paused in the shadow of a van and was peeping out at her. Faith couldn’t really believe this boy had nefarious intentions, but three years in the army had taught her to check and double-check anything suspicious. She stopped, letting the three dog handlers stride ahead, and pretended to fiddle with her phone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the boy creep closer.

  She turned and strode the short distance back to him, fully expecting him to bolt. Instead, he stepped out from behind the vehicle where he’d been hiding and stood his ground.

  “Are you following me?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fergus Mackenzie. Am I in trouble?” Despite his question, he didn’t look worried. He looked as though he was relishing every moment of this.

  “That depends on why you’re following me.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Faith narrowed her eyes, wondering if she ought to recognize him. “Have we met before?”

  “No. I saw your photo on your Facebook page and looked you up on the Internet. I found a newspaper article about you training army dogs here to hunt terrorists, so I came to find you.”

  This was getting weird. Why would the kid be researching her?

  “This all sounds very strange.” And stalkerish. If he were older, she’d be seriously worried.

  The boy dragged off his green-and-brown camouflage backpack, loosened the top, and rummaged inside.

  Faith held still and told herself not to overreact, he was only a kid, but her heart rate picked up. She’d seen the aftermath of a bomb that devastated a market in Africa, and the suicide bomber there had been no older than this boy.

  With a smile of triumph, the youngster pulled a bottle from his pack, and she took a step back as he brandished it at her. “You’re the message-in-a-bottle lady. I found the bottle on the beach at Stonehaven.”

  Faith pressed a hand to her heart, her lips parting in surprise. It had been two and a half years since she tossed that bottle in the Caribbean Sea during a vacation with her reading buddies in the Romantic Hearts Book Club. That felt like a lifetime ago. She had still been getting her life back on track after the disaster of her relationship with Liam. The army had felt like a lifeline back then. How things changed.

  She’d included her Facebook page address in her message in the bottle. That explained things, sort of.

  Faith relaxed a little. “So you found my bottle, did you? How come you didn’t just message me like I asked in the note?”

  “Dad told me not to.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “So you tracked me down in person.”

  She had to give this kid marks for being resourceful. With his dark hair and brown eyes, he’d be a heartbreaker when he grew up—a shame the kid wasn’t twenty years older. Some of her friends i
n the romance reading group had married the guys who’d found the bottles they tossed in the ocean.

  “Well, Fergus Mackenzie, it’s not advisable to stalk a military training op. Someone might think you’re the enemy. Isn’t there an adult around who should be supervising you?”

  “Dad’s at the university checking in with the research team about radio tracking the golden eagles at Kindrogan Estate. I was meant to stay with Auntie Meg while she’s clothes shopping.” He pulled a face as if the thought gave him a bellyache. “I sneaked off when she went in the changing room.”

  “How long ago was that?” Faith had been aware of him for at least ten minutes, and he must have spent a while looking for her. “Your aunt is going to be frantic with worry.”

  “No, she won’t.” He shook his head sagely, as if imparting ancient wisdom. “Dad says women lose all sense of time when they’re trying on clothes.”

  “Yes, well, despite your dad’s masculine insight, I guarantee your aunt will be worried by now. Do you have a phone so you can call her?”

  He shook his head. “I was playing games on the train and the battery ran out.”

  “Do you remember her mobile phone number so you can call her on my phone?”

  Another shake of his head.

  “Right, then, the only thing to do is get you back to her immediately.” She took a few steps and beckoned. “Come on, young man, quick march.”

  Faith didn’t have much experience with children, but guessed dealing with them must be pretty similar to commanding troops. Not that she had a lot of command experience, only being responsible for a group of veterinary technicians and dog handlers.

  She led him out of the staff car parking area, where he shouldn’t even have been, and back into the busy shopping mall.

  “She was in that shop.” He pointed at the glossy shopfront of a high-end clothing retailer.