Stormaway House

The McGuire doughnut empire is great and diversified. It not only sells doughnuts but owns and operates a number of other businesses including golf courses around the world, along with a skyscraper in downtown New York. This is where the story begins. Donald McGuire, like King Lear, has three daughters, triplets, and he wants to give his empire to them. This will happen on the thirty first of October, when they turn twenty one.

A smooth transition of power? Not likely. Jaimie and Iona are constantly at war with each other and Maisie is more interested in dancing her life away than finding meaning to it. Still, Donald McGuire is determined to give everything away, however, his wife, dead for fifteen years, had foreseen this train wreck coming. Gloria, in a message from the grave, has given Eddie (Donald’s best friend and former MI-6 agent turned lawyer) instructions on a sealed video tape. His job is, when he sees Donald about to do something incredibly stupid (like giving away his empire while still alive), to show the tape to Donald and the girls. The instructions reveal the following; One: they have to all move to Stormaway House in the Highlands of Scotland, and two, they must find someone to love and marry or else there is no inheritance.

At Stormaway, Jaimie meets James, the man she has hired to manage the rundown Stormaway Golf and Country Club. Jaimie, not content to let any relationship develop, starts interviewing for candidates to marry. Despite this, James and Jaimie find themselves attracted to each other even when they’re fighting, which is often.

Maisie meets Gregor, a former SAS Commando turned Gillie for the Stormaway property. Gregor, a recovering alcoholic, is haunted by his past. In an accident Gregor almost drowns but is rescued by Maisie. They seem to be the most compatible of the couples, perhaps because both Maisie and Gregor bear an uncanny resemblance to Laird and Lady McLeod, original owners of Stormaway, who were killed by their own kin during the Jacobite rebellion, and who now haunt the property with their children.

Iona isn’t too certain on this entire marriage thing, so she finds a cause to champion. The declining numbers of the red squirrels gains her attention. She takes this on and also continues tormenting Jaimie. Along with James, she conscripts the aid of the local bartender, Julie, who has a secret. She is in transition from male to female.

Things get even more complicated when Eddie’s past catches up with him. He left MI-6 because of the Jihadi Jock affair. A terrorist action that didn’t amount to much, except that the incident was sanitized and Jihadi Jock vanished. Eddie discovered that Jihadi Jock was a descendant of Princess Louisa’s (one of Queen Victoria’s children) love child and has deep connections. This is why Eddie left the UK for America, and left Katherine Vaganova, also a spy, behind.

Jihadi Jock is now the Minister of Defence at Whitehall, abuses his authority and connections with MI-5 and hires an assassin to kill Eddie.