Kirsty hung her head and counted to ten. It didn’t help. There was humiliation and then there was this.
“Things that make me anxious,” Lake read aloud.
“That’s private,” Kirsty told him, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference.
“Lack of money. Lake. Lingerie war. Lake’s steroid-induced muscles. Marketing.” Lake read the list with a grin in his voice, while Kirsty closed her eyes and pretended the evening was a figment of her imagination.
“Lake’s lips,” he continued. “Lake’s backside. Lake’s lips again. Lake’s hands. Lake’s lips, yet again. Lake seeing my scars. Lake naked. Lake in a tux. And again, Lake’s lips.”
He turned around slowly. She couldn’t even begin to describe the look on his face. It was somewhere in the middle of mystified, amused and delighted.
“You’ve written ‘Lake’s lips’ four times,” he pointed out. “They must make you really anxious.”
Kirsty finished wiping up the ice cream and sat on one of the kitchen stools. She may as well endure it. There was no escape. It wasn’t like she could send him packing while her mum was breaking into his shop.
“For the record,” he told her as he stood up, “I have never taken steroids.”
He flexed his muscles to make the point and Kirsty’s fingers tingled to get a hold of the board marker and add “muscle flexing” to her list.
“You weren’t meant to see that,” she said.
“Kind of stating the obvious there, babe.”
He folded his arms over his faded blue shirt and stared at her.
“We need to do something about the list,” he said.
“It’s a coping mechanism,” she said pointlessly. What it was, was a sign of insanity.
“It’s a helluva long list. You’re running out of door space.”
Kirsty rested her elbows on the counter in front of her and put her face in her hands.
“They say,” Lake said, “that if you confront the things that make you anxious and think them through logically, then they won’t upset you any more.”
Kirsty’s head shot up.
“Who says that? Who exactly is ‘they’?”
“I did psych courses as part of my training.”
He walked around the counter, never breaking eye contact. Kirsty checked her exit—it was behind her, there was still time to bolt. If she was fast she could lock herself in the bathroom until the evening was over.
“Now, seeing as my lips feature quite a bit on your list, I think we should start there.”
“I don’t need your help. I’m perfectly fine. See? No freaking out. What I really need is a lock on the cupboard door.”
He stepped right up against her.
“What you need to do is realise that the world isn’t going to end if my lips touch yours. Sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss. It doesn’t need to lead to anything. I think that’s what’s really freaking you out. And the only way I know to stop that is to kiss so long that you stop worrying about what comes next.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Ready?” he said as he stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles.
She shook her head.
“Glad to hear it,” he said with an evil twinkle in his eye. “Pucker up, Kirsty—it’s for your own good.”
And then he leaned forward and kissed her. He kissed her long. He kissed her slow. He kissed her in ways she’d never been kissed before. She clung to him, feeling waves of desire wash through her body as his lips kept coming at her. And, sure enough, he was right—soon she could think of nothing but kissing Lake. Kirsty wasn’t sure how long she’d been lost in him, but when he stepped back she felt like every bone in her body was made of jelly.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” His voice was heavy with desire.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Kirsty conceded.
Kirsty’s mobile phone rang. Lake looked at it.
“You’re not answering that, are you?” he said. “We’re in the middle of something here.”
They were in the middle of something, all right. Kirsty just wasn’t sure what that something was.
“I have to,” she said with genuine regret. “It might be important.”
He leaned against the counter and gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. Kirsty picked up the phone, told him she would be one minute and headed for the bedroom.
“What?” she snapped into the phone.
“We talked about your tone, Kirsty,” said her mum.
Kirsty sighed loudly. She pulled back the bedroom curtain to see her mother standing in the middle of the road again, looking up at her.
“What’s going on?” Kirsty said. “I don’t have much time to talk.”
“You think we want to be dilly-dallying? Jean is here with her grandson and he says that it will take too long to get into Lake’s laptop. He also said there are other computer things and the list of competition entries might be on them instead. So, what do we do?”
Kirsty chewed her bottom lip. This had been so simple in her head. They broke in without causing a mess, or a scene, and sabotaged one teeny-tiny email list. No problems. She should have known it would never go that smoothly.
“Okay, you’ll have to take it with you and work on it at home,” she said at last.
“Take what?” her mother said.
Kirsty bit her tongue to stop from saying what was in her head.
“All of the computer stuff.”
“That’s stealing, Kirsty Campbell!”
“Mum, do you really think we should worry about that? We’re already breaking in to his shop. Plus it’s not really stealing. We’ll return it all tomorrow once Jean’s grandson hacks the list.”
She could see her mum thinking. Kirsty waited while tapping her toe on the carpet. She needed to get back to Lake. She had no idea where he was or what he was getting up to, and she didn’t like it one bit. Something caught her eye in Lake’s shop window.
“What’s Heather doing with the life-size picture of Lake?”
Her mum turned around and shouted at Heather. Kirsty hit her head gently on the window. They were shouting in the street now. Her mum came back on the phone.
“She’s taking it home,” she said.
“She can’t! That’s not what we planned.”
“So stealing all that expensive computer stuff is okay, but taking one wee picture isn’t?”
“It isn’t a wee picture, it’s the same size as Lake. Don’t you think people will notice it in Heather’s house? Someone will tell Lake. Tell Heather to put it back.”
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”
Kirsty made a strangled noise.
“Fine. I need to go. Just get the computer equipment and make sure you lock up after you leave. We don’t want any real thieves getting into the place.”
“I take offence at that,” her mum said with a frown. “We might not be real thieves but we’re getting the job done.”
Kirsty didn’t have time for her mother’s logic.
“I need to get back to Lake,” she said.
She waved goodbye, snapped the phone shut and took a deep breath. As she walked past the small mirror above her dressing table she was disgusted at what she saw. She looked like a woman who was losing her mind. With resignation she went back to the kitchen to deal with Lake and whatever fun idea he was planning now. When he wasn’t there she was almost relieved, thinking he’d given up and gone home.
No such luck. She found him in the living room. He was sitting on the couch with a grin on his face.
“What’s so funny?” she said with suspicion.
“Nothing. Just happy to see you.”
Kirsty’s eyes flicked to the curtains. They were still shut.
“Finished with the phone calls, then?” he asked.
“I blooming well hope so,” Kirsty grumbled as she threw the phone on the coffee table.
He patted the couch beside him. Kirsty’s eyes narrowed. She went over to the dining
table and sat stiffly on a wooden chair.
“So suspicious,” he said with a shake of his head.
She didn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t suspicion, it was self-preservation. She was in over her head and had no idea how to swim.
“About your list...” he started.
Kirsty held up her hand to stop him.
“I’ve had enough of that for tonight.”
“We haven’t even made a dent in it,” he said with a wicked smile that did funny things to her resolve.
“It will still be there tomorrow. I can wait. The kissing worked fine, let’s quit while we’re ahead.”
“Glad to hear the kissing worked,” he said as his blue eyes darkened. “But the night is young and I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Yes.” He stood up slowly and walked to stand in front of her. “You do.”
Kirsty swallowed hard as she looked up at him.
“Now, what else was on that list?” he said with a smile that could tease paint off a wall. “Oh yeah, my steroid muscles and the fact you’re worried about scars.”
Kirsty jerked up straight.
“If you think I’m showing you my scars, Lake Benson, then you have another think coming,” she said.
Lake leaned forward and kissed her again. It was gentle and sweet. His hand trailed down her cheek before he stood away from her.
“No, you’re not showing me your scars. I’m showing you mine.”
Kirsty’s eyes went wide as Lake kicked off his boots.
“You’re doing what?” she squeaked.
He shrugged with a heavy dose of false humility.
“I’m helping you,” he said. “Focus, Kirsty—this is just like therapy. Only better. You obviously have a thing about muscles and scars. So I figure the best way to help you get over it is to let you look at mine.” He grinned widely. “Let you touch mine.”
Kirsty felt a pull deep in her body.
“And you won’t touch me?” she said suspiciously.
He shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be therapy if I did.”
He pulled his shirt out of his jeans and unbuttoned it, all the while watching her, watching him. It was surreal. The first time she asks a man to dinner in her home and she gets a private strip show in her living room. Kirsty swallowed hard at the sight of him half naked in the middle of the room. The maleness of him was completely at odds with her soft feminine decor. He reached for the button on his jeans. Kirsty’s hand shot out to stop him.
“I’m not ready for this,” she said.
She felt like her heart was racing hard inside her and was going to crash against the wall of her chest any minute.
“Yes. You are. You can do this. Just like the time you posed in the street. It’s no big deal.”
“I’m not the person I used to be. I’m...” She faltered. “I’m not ready for anyone to see me.”
“I’m not asking to see you,” he said. Then he thought about it. “I’m not asking right now. But yeah. I want to see you. I want to touch you. Every damn inch of you. I want to eat you up like dessert and come back for seconds.”
Kirsty stopped breathing. His dark eyes were so intense she felt the words as he spoke them. He took a deep breath and she watched the muscles of his chest ripple with it.
“Right now, we’re working on your list. So you stay there. Stay fully dressed. I’m not coming for you.”
The way he said it made Kirsty hear the rest of his thought. He wasn’t coming to get her—this time. But he would. She saw the way his jaw clenched and she knew he would. As much as she wanted him to, she was terrified that he would.
Lake unzipped his jeans, pushed them down his legs and stepped out of them. He flicked off his socks and Kirsty felt a new wave of panic when she looked at his Calvin Klein briefs.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I don’t have any scars in there.”
Kirsty sat frozen in place. Her life was beyond surreal. There was a naked man in her house wanting her to touch him, and her mother was breaking into the shop over the road. The stress of it all was going to send her right to hospital. Or jail.
“So,” Lake said as though he stood pretty much naked in front of women every day. “This scar I got in a knife fight in Eritrea.”
Slowly, the words began to penetrate Kirsty’s brain. She looked at where he was pointing, aware that he’d been waiting for her to catch up. He showed her the spot on his arm under his elbow where a faint white line cut through his tan.
“Oh,” she said as his words sunk in. “Did it hurt?”
He lifted one eyebrow. Kirsty flushed.
“Stupid question, huh?”
He pointed to the hollow of his left shoulder.
“Bullet wound,” he said of the puckered dot.
Kirsty tried to stay focused on where he was pointing and not let her eyes wander over the rest of him. It was all a little too much to handle.
“Where did that happen?” Her voice was strained.
He smiled knowingly.
“Training. With live ammo and the Belgians. One of their guys couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”
“You must have been mad.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
A little smile played around his lips and she could only imagine what he’d done to the guy who shot him. He turned slightly; she could see his left side under his ribcage.
“Knife again. Hostage rescue. Things got out of hand.”
The scar was large—it curved around to his back where his kidney sat. Kirsty reached her hand out, without thinking, to touch it. She stopped, her hand suspended in mid-air. Lake took it and pressed her fingers to the line. Kirsty stood and stepped towards him. Gently, she traced the line on his skin.
“Did you lose your kidney?” she said.
“No. I didn’t.”
The way he said it told her that he knew she’d lost hers.
Kirsty was mesmerised by the scar. He wore it so proudly and it was obvious that he didn’t think it made a difference to how he looked.
“But then, you’re a man,” she said out loud. “This sort of thing makes you more manly. Scars don’t do that to a woman.”
“Well,” he said with a smile, “if your scars made you more manly, I’d be seriously cheesed off.”
“Smart arse.”
Her fingers seemed to have a mind of their own now that they’d started touching him. They curved round his side and over his stomach, counting the ridges of muscle up to the curls of blond hair on his chest. She cleared her throat.
“No steroids?” she said teasingly.
“Never.” His voice was barely a whisper, as though he was afraid he’d scare her off and she’d stop touching him. Which she might have done.
“How, then?” she said as her other hand joined the first and together they explored his stomach and chest.
Her hands worked their way towards those wide shoulders of his that drove her mad. Nothing screamed power like Lake’s shoulders. It mesmerised her that he had so much strength and she had so little.
“Hard work and perseverance,” he told her.
“Huh?” She’d lost focus for a moment.
“The muscles. No steroids. Just hard, hard work.”
“Oh.”
She felt the heat from his skin flow through her body, straight to her toes.
“More?” she said.
It took him a minute to realise that she was asking about scars.
“This one,” he said as he cleared his throat.
He pointed at a faint jagged scar that went up the centre of his left thigh. Kirsty bent slightly to run a finger down the line.
“How did you get this one?”
“Ripped it open on a piece of wood with a nail in it during under water exercises. Didn’t see the wood. Broke my shoulder on the same exercise. It was in Scotland. In winter. And the water was black. Couldn’t see a damn thing.”
> She looked back up at him while her hand stayed on his thighs. His skin burned her palms.
“You must have been a really rubbish soldier to keep getting injured during training.”
He grinned.
“Training is the best time to get injured, lots of hospitals and doctors nearby. You don’t want to get injured on an operation. There you could be stuck with only the medic for help - if you’re lucky.”
Her heart pounded for him.
“Did that ever happen to you?” she said softly.
“No, but I’ve seen it happen. It isn’t pleasant.”
She trailed her hands over his hips to his waist, not wanting to take her hands off him and break the connection, even for a second.
“Is that it?” she said at last.
“Why don’t you explore and find out for yourself?” His voice was a deep rumble that went through her body.
Kirsty hesitated.
“I’ll keep my word,” he said as though reading her mind.
He wasn’t going to come and get her. Not tonight. Not unless she wanted him to. And, she had to admit, she was beginning to want him to - very much.
“Okay,” she said.
She walked around him, trailing her fingers in her wake, letting them slide over hard warm muscle. Feeling him react to her touch with hitches in his breath and a slight tension in his muscles. She stood behind him and ran her palms, flat and open, up his back. Tracing the line of his spine with her thumbs before fanning out over his shoulders.
“This?” she said breathlessly.
She touched a finger to a tiny white scar on his right shoulder.
“I was pushed into a wall with a nail sticking out.”
“Training?”
“Afghanistan.”
Her hands were on the move again. Over his shoulders and down his arms, feeling the strength in his biceps. Her mouth was dry.
“How do you work out here, in Invertary?”
“I put some kit in the back room at the shop.” She could hear his breathing. She knew it was speeding up. “Come over and spar. I’ll teach you a thing or two.”
He was already teaching her a thing or two, she wasn’t sure she could handle much more. Her hands moved back up to his shoulders. The feel of him was making her light headed. And she wanted more. Badly. But she wasn’t sure that she could return this. She wasn’t sure she could be this open with him.
“Lake,” she said timidly. “You promise you won’t touch me?”
He made a strangling noise.
“You promise you won’t make me undress?”
“I gave you my word,” he said. “Therapy. Remember?”
It was obvious that he was trying to keep things light, and failing.
“But you promise,” she hesitated. “No matter what I do?”
She felt every muscle on his body tighten.
“I promise,” he growled.
Kirsty leaned forward and kissed the shoulder muscle that drove her wild.
He made a strangling noise as he clenched his fists.
“You’re driving me crazy here, babe,” he told her.
Kirsty smiled against his skin, which made him groan. She kissed her way around his shoulder until she stood in front of him.
“If I say I want to kiss, but nothing else, will that be okay?” she said as her fingers traced circles on his pecs.
“It’s okay as long as you promise to resuscitate me when I die of frustration.”
“It’s a deal,” she whispered as she stretched up to kiss him.
Lake’s arms folded around her, crushing her to his chest, and Kirsty melted inside. She ran her tongue over his lips, listening to his grunt of need, and smiled against his mouth. She was in serious danger of forgetting all about her problems and giving herself to this man. Even the thought of it almost sent her over the edge. Digging her nails into those shoulders, she kissed him passionately.
And then there was a scream.
The scream worked like a bucket of ice water on Lake’s head. He dropped Kirsty and was at the window in two seconds flat. He pushed back the curtain as Kirsty came up beside him.
“Oh no,” she groaned.
Lake shook his head in disbelief at the sight of Kirsty’s mother running out of his shop with what looked like his laptop under her arm. She was screaming like a banshee. Lake assumed that, with the black face paint and hat, she thought she was in disguise. Hot on her heels came two other women, one dragging the new cardboard cut-out of him in a tux that he’d just bought. The lights in the shop went on.
He opened the window and leaned out. The cold air reminded him that he was pretty much naked but there was no time to put clothes on. This had to be seen to be believed.
“That’s Betty,” Kirsty gasped before covering her mouth.
And sure enough, Betty was propelling herself through the shop with what looked like a cricket bat in her hands.
“Run for it!” screamed one of the women outside the shop.
Then he noticed that there were still people in there. A kid ran out clutching Lake’s iPad. He spotted a woman in the window, again dressed in black. She held her hands up as though trying to reason with Betty. There were shouts, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. Then Betty charged. The woman inside the shop screamed an ear-splitting scream and turned and ran.
Straight through his shop window.
Everything stopped still as the woman landed in a heap on the ground. Even Betty stopped. Then the woman sprang to her feet.
“Are you okay?” Kirsty’s mother shouted.
“Run like hell!” shouted the woman who’d just destroyed his shop window.
She appeared to be fine. Which was more than could be said about his shop. Betty, meanwhile, was picking her way through the debris, wielding a bat that was almost as big as her.
Four women, one boy and a cardboard cut-out headed down the high street towards the loch. Lake watched them disappear into the darkness in disbelief. Then Betty spotted them.
“What the hairy hell are you doing up there?” she shouted up at them from the middle of the street.
Kirsty squealed and disappeared into the room.
“You’re naked,” Betty shouted indignantly.
People were beginning to gather in the street, called out of the pub by the commotion.
“I’m out here defending our business from thieves and hooligans, and you’re up there having your way with Kirsty.”
Kirsty shot past him to the window.
“He is not having his way with me,” she told the growing crowd.
“Yeah, that’s the most important part right now,” Lake said.
“It is to me, Lake Benson.”
“Absolutely. We wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea, would we?” he said drolly.
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said so primly it cheesed him off.
Lake turned back to Betty.
“I’m not having my way with her, she’s having her way with me,” he said loudly.
The crowd whooped and whistled. Kirsty had disappeared back inside the room, but not before smacking him first.
“I don’t care who’s having who,” Betty shouted. “My shop is a mess! Get your backside down here and sort this. I’m calling the police.”
“No! Don’t!” Kirsty was back beside him.
“Give me a minute,” he told Betty. “And for the record, it isn’t your shop. Put the bat down, you’re scaring people. What are you doing with a cricket bat anyway? You’re Scottish.”
“You want me to brain the thieves with a rugby ball?” Betty demanded. “Numpty,” she called him before stomping back into the shop.
“What’s ‘numpty’?” he asked Kirsty once he’d shut the window.
“A numpty. An idiot.”
She was pacing on the rug in front of the sofa. Lake retrieved his clothes.
“You want to call your mum and tell her to bring back my gear?” he said as he pulled on his jeans.
> It almost made him laugh when she looked surprised that he knew who had done this.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Kirsty,” he said as he shrugged into his shirt, “I know who was there. I need my computer. Call your mum.”
Her green eyes were wide and pleading.
“How about we return it in the morning?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But we need time to...” She bit her bottom lip.
“Spit it out.”
He stood with his hands on his hips, regretting that he hadn’t pulled the plug on her activities earlier in the evening. It was his fault. He was having too much fun. Now he had damage control to do.
“We need to hack your computer,” she mumbled.
Lake sighed.
“You do know that you don’t actually have to have someone’s computer to hack it, right?”
“That’s not what my hacker led me to believe,” she said miserably.
“By the look of it, your hacker is ten years old.”
“Thirteen.”
Lake ran a hand over his face as he tried to remember what his life had been like back when it was normal.
“Why, exactly, did you want to hack my computer?”
She glared at him.
“To put a stop to your stupid competition. You can’t sell yourself off to some woman. It’s indecent to spend the weekend with someone you don’t even know. All to sell underwear. It’s bad for the town.”
She folded her arms in a huff. Mad at him. Unbelievable.
“Bad for the town?” He started to smile.
“You’re getting us a terrible reputation.”
He ran a hand over his hair.
“Let me get this right. You planned this so that I wouldn’t spend a weekend with another woman?”
“Well done. You caught up, Einstein,” she said angrily. Then she thought about it. “For the town’s sake. Not mine.”
“Right.” He tried not to a grin. “For the town.”
He zipped up his boots and stepped towards Kirsty.
“I’m going to sort that out.” He pointed to the front window and watched her wince with guilt. “You call your mum.”
She frowned at him.
“As for you,” he said. She gulped. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Before she could object, he leaned towards her and kissed her hard.
“Crazy women,” he muttered as he went to sort out the damage.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN