Free Someone Like You by Barbara Bretton Page A

phone ringing on the other side of the world.
    Six rings and he was transferred to voice mail. His heart slammed hard into his rib cage. Where were Joely and Annabelle? Bloody hell. It had to be after midnight in Scotland. They wouldn’t still be up on the hill. He dialed again. Same result.
    Something had happened. Solstice or no solstice, you didn’t keep a seven-year-old child out until midnight. Think, he ordered himself. There had to be a reasonable, benign explanation. One that didn’t include blood, broken bones, or worse. Maybe the phone lines were down. That was Scotland, after all. The Highlands. Winds blew hard up there. Weather turned nasty without warning, even on the official start of summer.
    Or maybe she had left him.
    It would explain a lot. The distance between them. The way she ducked his attempts to sit down and talk about the future. How many times had he approached her with his heart beating right there on his sleeve for the world to see, only to have her retreat behind the wall of glass that kept her just beyond reach?
    And how many times had he let her go?
    Just like now.
    So try her mobile number, fuckwit . Like him, she kept her mobile on 24/7 and, unlike him, she didn’t drop hers in public lavs. He pressed the numeral one, then Send, and waited.
     
    Loch Craig
     
    “I know this isn’t much notice,” Joely said for at least the third time in fifteen minutes, “but it’s an emergency. I need a car to take me to Glasgow for an eight a.m. flight.”
    She propped the phone between right ear and shoulder and fixed herself another cup of tea. It was well after midnight. Annabelle was asleep upstairs, blissfully unaware. Joely was trying desperately to keep her mind focused on the Byzantine network of reservations she was piecing together for the trip back to Maine.
    “Hold please,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “I might be able to call in a favor from one of our drivers.”
    Of course that was said with the thickest Scottish burr this side of the Spey, and she had to run a simultaneous translation in order to understand what the disembodied voice was saying.
    It took another twenty minutes, but by the time she hung up she had her itinerary nailed. In four hours a car would roll up to the front door to take them to the airport in Glasgow, where she and Annabelle would board a plane for Boston. Once they landed at Logan they’d jump on a shuttle and—
    She grabbed for the phone before it could ring a second time. “Please don’t tell me the driver changed his mind.”
    Her words were met with silence, but not the kind of silence that meant a dead connection. This silence had some heft.
    “It’s William, Joely.”
    She wasn’t sure which made her happier: the fact that it was William or that it wasn’t the car service canceling out on her.
    “Thank God you got my messages,” she said. “Why didn’t you call sooner?”
    “I’ve been trying for thirty minutes,” he said. “I left three voice mails. You had me worried.”
    “I was on the phone,” she said.
    “It must be after midnight there.”
    “Almost one.” They sounded like two strangers waiting for a bus. She drew in a breath and pushed forward. “I was making plane reservations.”
    She had never realized William’s silences could speak louder than his words.
    She drew in another breath. “I have to go home for a little while,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I shouldn’t be gone more than a few days. We’ll probably be back before you get home.”
    “Is there something wrong?”
    “No,” she said with a quick laugh. “We’re fine.”
    “I mean, at home.”
    “My sister called. There was a fire at my mother’s house, and since we own the property jointly—”
    “How is your mother?” he broke in.
    She tried to find a way to dodge the question, but there wasn’t one. “Hospitalized,” she said at last. “She has some broken bones . . .” She let her voice trail off, the