Faith

By Helen Scott Taylor

During a vacation with some friends, as a wildly silly dare during her last night on the Caribbean island, Faith stuffs a note in a bottle addressed to her “dream hero” and casts it out to sea! Two-and-a-half years later, Faith’s bottle washes up on the Scottish coast.

Single dad, Hew Mackenzie, lives in the shadow of his successful siblings, always the odd one out. A terrible experience with a woman shaped his life, and he turned his back on romance and dedicated himself to working on the family estate in the Scottish Highlands. He’s certain he and his son, Fergus, are best off alone. Fergus has other ideas. When he finds Faith’s message in a bottle on a Scottish beach he gives it to his dad for Christmas. Might Hew be the dream hero Faith is searching for?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helen Scott Taylor
• Release date: Mar 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463240380

Helen Scott Taylor

Helen Scott Taylor's first novel, The Magic Knot, won the American Title contest in 2008, was a Golden Heart® finalist, and was chosen as one of Booklist's top ten romances of 2009. Since then, she has published other novels, novellas, and short stories in both the UK and USA. Her published works have been finalists in a number of contests including the Holt Medallion, the Lories, the Prism Contest, the Write Touch Award and the Maggies. Helen lives in South West England near Plymouth in Devon between the windswept expanse of Dartmoor and the rocky Atlantic coast. As well as her wonderful long-suffering husband, she shares her home with a Westie and an aristocratic chocolate-shaded-silver-burmilla cat who rules the household with a velvet paw. She believes that deep within everyone there's a little magic. www.helenscotttaylor.com

Book preview

Faith

Army Doctor’s Baby #7

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

This story is #7 in the Army Doctor’s Baby Series and also part of a series with twelve other authors called Beach Brides.

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…

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.

Read all of the Beach Brides!

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)

(Not all books are available at all online retailers.)

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