And so to last night...

Jack had appeared at the flat at five o'clock just as I was putting the finishing touches to yet another product page for Blissful Beauty. Since the 'do you like me, Gaby' question, we'd spent every evening together, him cooking for me while I kept up a stream of prattle, and then curling up together on the sofa watching TV and sometimes letting our hands and mouths push the limits of what they could explore.

"Want a night out, Gaby-sketch?" he asked, leaning against the living room door, the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window picking out the coppery bits in his hair. He'd swapped the Highland Tours 'uniform' for dark jeans and a tie-dye T-shirt, the muscles in his arms flexing as he folded his arms. Would I ever tire of the sight?

"Ooh, where?"

"There's this new nightclub in Oban where Sam Heughan and the Outlander crew hang out when they're no' filming, and I've got a VIP pass. Lachlan's offered to take us there in his helicopter."

Good grief! My mind did that mental flick through my wardrobe, trying to work out what might be suitable for a club and such exalted company. That vintage Mary Quant dress perhaps, if I belted it and wore those cork wedges, applied some fake tan and eyelashes and...

Jack's lips twitched. "Sorry. The most Oban can manage in terms of nightlife are pubs and the town hall where they hold the occasional ceilidh. And Lachlan had tae give up the helicopter when it failed its MoT."

Bah. Jack had already sussed out one crucial bit of me. That I am, and always have been, criminally easy to wind up.

He held his hand out. "But in the absence o' TV stars, would a night out at the Lochside Welcome do instead? Ashley's promised free pizzas, and everyone wants tae celebrate the fact that you saw sense and decided to make Lochalshie your home."

I flung myself at him, my heart doing that pitter-pattering thing it did whenever we were close together. "Oh, you! I s'pose I can put up with that."

Truth to tell, a night in the Lochside Welcome sounded much better than a nightclub. I wouldn't need to dig out that dress, for a start and could swap out the murderously uncomfortable cork wedges for my Converse sneakers.

Shower completed in record-quick time, we made our way to the pub hand in hand. As it was inching towards September, tourism was dying away and the few faces we saw all called out cheery hellos.

Ashley had set up his barbecue in the hotel's beer garden and it belched out heat fearsome enough to keep the early autumnal chill at bay. Jack, in deference to my soft southern status, positioned my chair close to it. The others joined us—Stewart and Jolene, Stewart's dog Scottie weaving his way under tables and chairs on the scrounge for any food that anyone had dropped, Mhari, Lachlan, Caroline and Ranald.

"Aye, so," Caroline said, holding up her glass, "we better raise a toast to wee Gaby! It's awfy nice o' her to tak on ma son."

Lachlan snorted. "'Specially with him being that ugly."

There were titters, more so when I leapt to Jack's defence. I had yet to get used to the way Scots showed affection to each other, which was principally through outright rudeness. Now that I thought about it, Mhari must love me a great deal, given how often she disparaged my hair, clothing and make-up.

Jolene raised her glass back. "To incomers!"

As a New Zealander, she'd blazed the trail for me.

"To English people. No' half as bad as I've always thought." Mhari. (See above comment).

Jack slung his arm around my shoulder, and I leant my head against it. Ashley dumped a ginormous pizza on the table, and everyone pounced on it, vulture-like.

"You don't mind, do you," he whispered in my ear, "a communal night out and no' a trip to a nightclub?"

"No, but promise you'll take me to Edinburgh some time. I've never been."

Vow solemnly made, we got on with the rest of the evening. Mhari handed me one too many Pimms and Stewart insisted on teaching me the words to Flower of Scotland. Most people only knew the first verse, he said, but here in Lochalshie the villagers knew every line.

Around me, people shifted on their seats and cleared their throats.

"We do, aye?" he said. "Come on, now sing along."

He started up, a warbling that grew stronger as other voices joined him. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

"Oh, Flower o' Scotland, when will we see your like again, who fought and died for your wee bit hill and glen. Who stood against him. Proud Edward's army."

At that, all of them stamped their feet.

"And sent him homeward tae think again."

But as Stewart started on verse two, there was a suspicious lack of actual words from everyone else. More of a humming thing. Didn't matter. They all repeated verse number one again, adding it two more times until they were sure I at least knew those words, and could now call myself an honorary Scotswoman.

Mhari, a champion Highland dancer in her childhood, attempted to teach me the basics. By that point, the Pimms had really kicked in. After I'd collapsed on the ground for the third time, Jack, his face wreathed in smiles, offered to walk me home.

As he fetched our coats from inside, Caroline caught hold of my hand. "D'ye ken, Gaby, Jack hasnae looked that happy for a long time. I'm awfy obliged to ye."

The words made me glow. "What are you grinning at?" Jack asked when he returned, helping me into my coat.

"Nothing. Everything. Come on then."

We left accompanied by cat calls—our audience suggesting that we might not be heading in the direction of my shared flat. Jack's pace had a determination to it. As if a magnet was pulling him in the opposite direction and he was doing his best to resist it.

"Never mind them," he said. "Once you've lived here for thirty years, you might, might grow used to what it's like when everyone watches your every move."

We got to my front door. I leant against it. He bent closer—our faces mere inches apart.

"Well," I drew the word out, "thank you for a fab evening."

"Thank you." He kissed the tip of my nose. All beer, pizza and wood smoke smells.

My fingers acted of their own accord, plucking at the zip on his coat. His lips landed on mine, soft and then insistent. One hand cradled my face as the other wrapped itself around my waist.

"Let's go to yours," I said when we broke apart, breaths coming in gasps.

Off we hurried, indecent in our haste. The temperature in Jack's house made me shiver, though the trembling could be attributed to other causes. That kiss we'd left off started up again as the two of us collapsed onto the sofa.

My phone chose that moment to interrupt into life.

"Leave it," Jack murmured, his mouth meeting mine once more.

He stopped. "Mebbe you better answer it. It's after midnight. Might be a family emergency."

Heck. I swung my legs around and grabbed the phone. "Hello?"

"Gabrielle Amelia Richardson. When you were you planning to tell me you've moved to Scotland full time. Are you living with that young man? That one you told me months ago was a rude, horrible git."

Whoops. Nanna Cooper. I'd assumed my mum passing on the message would pass muster with her. Not so. And did she have to repeat those words, especially when the settings on my mobile phone made both ends of a conversation loud and clear?

Jack smirked.

"Sorry, Nanna. Phoning you was at the top of tomorrow's to-do list." A teeny-tiny lie. "And no, I'm not living with him and actually he's rather nice."

"Rather nice," Jack said, sotto voce. "Don't you mean awesome and amazing?"

But Nanna who often pretended selective deafness heard him, anyway. "Is he with you? Hand me over," she ordered me, "so that I can speak to him. At once."

"Nanna, I don't th—"

Jack reached for the phone. I surrendered it reluctantly.

Infuriatingly, I couldn't hear whatever she said to him, and all Jack did was nod along and say the occasional 'uh-huh' and 'no, not at all'. The conversation went on far too long. Nanna appeared to be giving Jack my life story.

Just as I was on the brink of snatching the phone off him, Jack wished Nanna goodbye and gave it to me. Nanna told me to take good care of myself and suggested I browse the Jarrold's department store's online shop and stock up on thermal vests, knickers too if they had them, as I was going to need to wear a lot of layers in Scotland.

"Do you want a cup of tea?" Jack asked, getting to his feet. I let out a sigh. Nanna had well and truly murdered the mood.

"Yes, please. Um, what did Nanna say to you?"

He popped his head back around the kitchen door, amused smile back in place. "A lot of things, Gaby-sketch. Are my intentions honourable, for one thing? Also, that she's awfy fond of her granddaughter and any man who doesnae treat her right she will personally rip from limb tae limb."

Very good, Nanna. The woman who looked as if a too strong puff of wind might blow her over and who always made my mum unpack all her shopping as she claimed lifting all the bags and tins exhausted her.

He pulled me in for another cuddle—this one much more chaste than the one Nanna had interrupted. "She's right, though, isn't she? I don't want to rush you."

"You're not," I muttered into his shirt. But Nanna might be right, and anticipation is a glorious thing when you let it sit there and ripen. Imagine the sparks that would fly when we did finally...

"Why on earth was she calling so late?" I asked, "it's almost as if she knew."

"Bingo, apparently. She and her friend Kathleen had a big win, and they had a little party to celebrate. It's too late for you to go home, but what about if I take the sofa and you sleep in my bed?"

I refused at first, saying that I should be the one to sleep on the sofa, but he insisted.

"Okay, I will. And thank you."

In the morning, movements in the kitchen below woke me. I scrambled for my bag and re-touched the make-up I hadn't taken off the night before, a skincare crime my best friend claimed resulted in spots and premature wrinkles. (I know; it was just that as Jack and I were so new to each other, showing him my make-up free face horrified me.)

"Morning!" he said, as the smell of toasting bread wafted around us. "D'you want breakfast?"

He presented me with a massive portion of fluffy scrambled eggs, grated cheese on top and served on slabs of toasted bread.

"No regrets?"

"None," I said, "but I'm not sure anyone in the village will believe us if we insist nothing happened last night."

At that, he grinned once more. "Sometimes Gaby, there's a lot o' fun to be had when you live in a village of nosy folks letting people think one thing when you've done something else." To add to the effect, when I left his house minutes later, we indulged in a graphic public display of affection on his front door.

And that was that. The tale of Gaby and Jack's first night together and the one I will not be sharing with Mhari, however much she tries to torture the information out of me, as she is doing now.

"Laney Haggerty says," Mhari's thumbs fly over her phone screen. She's a demon for that Lochalshie WhatsApp group, "when you came out o' Jack's house this morning, neither of you looked as if ye'd slept last night."

I give her my best Mona Lisa smile. "Is that so?" As it happens, I slept like a baby. Jack's bed, the sheets that smelled of him, moulded itself to me as if preparing for a future when I might be in there every night.

"C'mon! Tell me!"

She's relentless, I'll give her that. The doorbell goes.

Downstairs, Jack stands on the doorstep. He nods at Mhari, face grave.

"Well," she says. "Gaby willnae tell me anything! Did you or did you not—"

"Gaby will be keeping schtum," he said, "and so will I, because it's no-one's business but our own."

He twists his head, shielding his expression from her. It's one hundred percent pure mirth. This must be what he meant by the fun of keeping secrets from the world's nosiest people.

"If you keep bothering Gaby wi' questions," he continues, "I'll tell Lachlan everything."

Mhari gasps. "You wouldnae!"

"I would," he says, and with that he winks over the top of her head at me. "See you later, Gaby? And you can tell me then if Mhari pesters you wi' too many questions."

And with that, he wanders off.

The threat, whatever it means, works. Apart from one or two sulky remarks about how flatmates bond by sharing stories about their lives, the bombardment of questions about what Jack and I did last night ceases.

Later, Jack picks me up in the minibus. The night is gentle; pinky-orange skies, no hint of a breeze and the sun settling down over Maggie Broon's Boobs, the locals' affectionate name for the hills at the other side of the loch.

We drive to the other side of the loch. I brought food—enormous bags of Doritos and dips. A bar of fruit and nut chocolate that'll do as dessert. Jack settles his head in my lap, and I stick the tortilla chips in hummus and feed them to him. The first time we've picnicked together. The last seven, eight, nine days have been a series of firsts—the kiss, discovering all the little tics that make Jack Jack and me Gaby, the night out with other people as a couple, staying the night together...

All glorious. And yet as his eyes meet mine, bright, clever and fascinating, his jaw working on those tortilla chips, bits of the future dance in front of me.

The first time I introduce him to my mum in person. Nanna Cooper too, who has since rung me several times to inform me that Jack seems 'a decent sort'.

The time when we disagree on something, argue furiously and then hug and make up.

A holiday or a trip somewhere. Edinburgh, perhaps, where hopefully we discover that we like the same things when we have time off—lazy mornings, big brunches, galleries, people watching.

And the last big first...? You know this one. The ripened anticipation. Every day, it ramps up—the excitement, the longing. I stroke Jack's cheek. He smiles at me.

"Awright?"

Awright, I have discovered, is a Scots term that covers almost everything. Happy, healthy, content, warm, comfortable, fine to stay in the same position as the sun sets, the darkness closes in and the chill that threatened earlier boldens.

"Yes," I say, dipping my head so I can dot a butterfly kiss on his forehead. "Awright."

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE - thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little story... I tell myself all the time that I'm finished writing about Gaby and Jack, but they refuse to leave my head. I'm thinking about another novel, perhaps it might be my NaNoWriMo project for this November.