Kiss of the Highlander

She should have known that fourteen days in Scotland for a thousand dollars had to be a senior citizens’ bus tour. But she’d been so frantic to escape the drudgery and emptiness of her life that she’d only cursorily glanced through the itinerary and not given her possible traveling companions a second thought.

Thirty-eight senior citizens, ranging in age from sixty-two to eighty-nine, chatted, laughed, and embraced each new village/pub/bowel movement with boundless enthusiasm, and she knew that when they returned home they would play cards and regale their elderly and envious friends with endless anecdotes. She wondered what stories they would tell about the twenty-five-year-old virgin who had traveled with them. Prickly as a porcupine? Stupid enough to try to give up smoking while taking the first real vacation in her life and simultaneously trying to divest herself of her virginity?

She sighed. The seniors really were sweet, but sweet wasn’t what she was looking for.

She was looking for passionate, heart-pounding sex.

Sex that was down and dirty, wild and sweaty and hot.

Lately she ached for something she couldn’t even put a name to, something that made her restless and anxious when she watched 10TH Kingdom or her favorite star-crossed lovers’ quest, Ladyhawke. Were she still alive, her mother, renowned physicist Dr. Elizabeth Cassidy, would assure her it was nothing more than a biological urge programmed into her genes.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Gwen had majored in physics, then worked briefly as a research assistant at Triton Corp. while completing her Ph.D. (before her Great Fit of Rebellion had landed her at Allstate). Sometimes, when her head had been swimming with equations, she’d wondered if her mother wasn’t right, if all there was to life could be explained by genetic programming and science.

Popping a piece of gum in her mouth, Gwen stared out the window. She certainly wasn’t going to find her cherry picker on this bus. Nor had she entertained even a modicum of success in the prior villages. She had to do something soon, because if she didn’t, she would end up going back home no different than she’d arrived, and frankly that thought was more terrifying than the idea of seducing a man she hardly knew.

The bus lurched to a halt, pitching Gwen forward. She struck her mouth on the metal frame of the seat in front of her. She cast an irate glance at the rotund, bald bus driver, wondering how the old folks always seemed to anticipate the sudden stop, when she never could. Were they simply more cautious with their brittle bones? Strapped into the seats better? In cahoots with the ancient, portly driver? She dug in her backpack for her compact and, sure enough, her lower lip was swelling.

Well, maybe that will entice a man, she thought, poking it out a little more, as she dutifully followed Bert and Beatrice off the bus and into the sunny morning. Sucker lips: Didn’t men fixate on plump lips?

“I can’t, Bert,” she said, when the kindly man tucked her arm in his. “I need to be alone for a little while,” she added apologetically.

“Is your lip swollen again, dear?” Bert frowned. “Don’t you wear your seat belt? Are you sure you’re okay?”

Gwen ignored the first two questions. “I’m fine. I just want to go for a walk and gather my thoughts,” she said, trying not to notice that Beatrice was regarding her from beneath the wide brim of her hat with the unnerving intensity of a woman who had survived multiple daughters.

Sure enough, Beatrice pushed Bert toward the front steps of the inn. “You go on, Bertie,” she told her new husband. “We girls need to chat a moment.”

While her husband disappeared into the quaint, thatch-roofed inn, Beatrice guided Gwen to a stone bench and pulled her down beside her.

“There is a man for you, Gwen Cassidy,” Beatrice said.

Gwen’s eyes widened. “How do you know that’s what I’m looking for?”

Beatrice smiled, cornflower-blue eyes crinkling in her plump face. “You listen to Beatrice, dearie: Fling caution to the wind. If I were your age and looked like you, I’d be shaking my bom-bom everywhere I went.”

“Bom-bom?” Gwen’s eyebrows rose.

“Petunia, dear. Booty, behind,” Beatrice said with a wink. “Get out there and find a man of your own. Don’t let us spoil your trip, dragging you about. You don’t need old folks like us around. You need a strapping young man to sweep you off your feet. And keep you off them for a good long while,” she said meaningfully.

“But I can’t find a man, Beatrice.” Gwen blew out a frustrated breath. “I’ve been searching for my cherry picker for months now—”