The snow had stopped falling and, thanks to Caroline’s beautifully coordinated decorations, Invertary looked like something straight from a Christmas card. There were thick green garlands with red velvet bows wrapped around the lamp posts. Old-fashioned lanterns, which held real candles, hung from every shop eve. There were large tartan banners, and golden bells, and holly, and wonderful sparkling white lights strung across the street. Although the whole thing looked like fairyland in the dark, it was still beautiful in the soft morning light. Kirsty sighed contentedly as she looked out of her window onto the frosted white street.
Usually Kirsty had a stall in the market like everyone else, but this year there was too much to get done. For a while there, she honestly didn’t think she would make it. She smiled at the thought. She’d made it all right. Not only did she have her best collection yet, she had not one, but four professional models to wear it. Helena had mustered up some help, fought her way through the Highland weather and turned up to rescue her friend. Kirsty’s heart grew at the thought. She hadn’t known there were so many people who cared about her. As she waved at Dougal, who was setting up a stall with hot toddies and even hotter chips, the window above Lake’s shop opened and he stuck his head out. Kirsty’s whole body hummed with need at the sight of his wicked grin and mischievous blue eyes. She opened her window too.
“You ready to concede?” he shouted over the road.
People setting up in the high street looked up at them and grinned. Kirsty blushed. He’d said those words to her in the middle of the night, but under very different circumstances.
“To the English?” she called back with her own naughty grin. “Never.”
He shook his head.
“You’re only going to be embarrassed when I win,” he told her. “Think about it now—a lingerie expert beaten by an army guy.”
Kirsty giggled.
“It’s not going to happen. You might as well pack up and retreat over the border.”
For once, she really believed her words. She knew that she wasn’t going to lose her shop. In fact, she felt crazy for ever worrying about that in the first place. She’s even go as far as to say that she was excited about the future and for the first time in years—she was having fun.
“I was trained never to retreat,” Lake called over to her. “The special forces don’t retreat. They regroup and pop up where you least expect them.”
“Well, pop up in London,” she shouted back.
They shared a look that was so hot, Kirsty half expected the snow between their shops to melt.
“I’ll deal with you later,” Lake promised with a grin before he went in out of the cold.
Kirsty actually felt a little lightheaded at the thought. Since their first night together, Lake had strolled over the road each evening as though he had every right to be in her house. She let him in, as though he had every right to be there. And although they spent their nights in the dark, Kirsty never asked him to leave before daylight. He did that all on his own. Not once had he pushed her to put on the light. Her heart pounded at the thought of a man with so much power who never pushed. To her shame, she missed having him around. He’d been gone only a couple of hours and her feminine flat seemed far too empty without him.
Kirsty looked at her watch. It was early. The shop was shut for the day so they could get on with last-minute preparations, but no one was due to arrive for another hour. The clothes were ready. Magenta was in charge of makeup and had sworn an oath to keep it normal. The local hairdresser had provided a stylist each for Lake and Kirsty. The accessory shop had lent them a heap of jewellery to use on the runway, and Donald’s shoe shop had provided the shoes. Everything was ready. Especially since Caroline was in charge.
Caroline had decided that it was too cold for an outdoor show, so she’d put up a marquee. There were heaters installed and chairs laid out around a low runway that some of the men had built. The large tent was decorated beautifully. The local high school had spent hours stringing up thousands of fairy lights on the ceiling. When they’d checked out the lights the evening before, it was stunning. Like a sparkling sky over the catwalk.
Of course, it might have been warmer in the tent than outside, but it still wasn’t warm, which meant her mother had spotted a business opportunity. She got the ladies of Knit Or Die to pull out all the woollen blankets they’d knitted over the years, and they planned to rent them out for the evening for people to cover their knees. Dougal had jumped on that idea, and now intended to sell hot drinks and warm snacks at the entrance to the tent.
There were two large caravans sitting outside the back of the marquee for the models to use while they waited, each loaned by a supportive citizen of Invertary. Kirsty was pleased she’d managed to get first pick and nabbed the Spencer family van. It was bigger, more modern and wasn’t decorated in shades of brown. Each of the shops had sorted music for their show and tossed a coin to see who went first. Kirsty won. Dougal was going to MC the event and had been preparing lingerie-themed jokes that he wouldn’t let anyone hear, which didn’t bode well. Kirsty was too nervous about her own part in the events to care about whether Dougal made a fool of himself.
The market stalls were set up on the side of the marquee that faced the town. And as the tent was taking up so much space, the stalls filled the lower part of the high street and went up past Kirsty’s shop. Kirsty honestly couldn’t remember the last time the town had been this exciting. The place was buzzing with tourists, and in the last couple of days members of the press had joined their numbers. It was the biggest thing to hit Invertary since the failed declaration of independence in 1832—although most people were pleased that had failed. It would have been stupid if Invertary was independent of England and the rest of Scotland wasn’t.
Kirsty honestly couldn’t think what else there was to do. Everything was organised. Everything had been checked a million times over. In theory, she had an hour to relax before everyone arrived. She chewed her lip. There was only one thing she wanted to do. She picked up her cell phone and dialled.
“Calling to concede?” Lake said.
Kirsty smiled as her heart did the happy dance at the sound of his voice.
“Actually, I have an hour to kill and I’ve blacked out the window in the bedroom.” She heard a sharp intake of breath. “I thought I’d try making a booty call. I hear they’re all the rage.”
“I’ll be there in ten seconds.”
The line went dead. Kirsty grinned widely at her phone.
“This is so exciting,” said Rainne as they gathered the lingerie to take down to the runway. “Just think, in a couple of hours we’re putting on a fashion show!”
Lake counted the outfits again and tried to think if there was anything he’d forgotten. It was worse than going over your gear before an overseas operation. At least then he knew what was supposed to be in his kit. Here he was guessing. Ex-special service men should not be putting on runway shows. He shook his head at the thought. Anyway, he had the lingerie and all the other crap the models had to wear and he was paying some women to sort out makeup and hair. That was something he wasn’t going to touch with a barge pole. A man could have a healthy interest in lingerie without his testosterone levels plummeting, but he was pretty sure that if he even touched a lipstick, his package would shrink. It was bad enough that the only calls he got these days from old army buddies were to rib him about frilly knickers. He really didn’t need to hear any makeup jokes.
“Are you listening to me?” Rainne prodded him in the back.
“I am now,” he said as he tried to rub the spot she’d poked. “You need to cut your nails, that was sore.”
She rolled her eyes.
“The whole town will be at the show. This has brought the community together and brought business to the area. It’s amazing.” She beamed at him. “We should do this every year.”
Betty made a choking sound from her armchair by the changing room, as Lake felt his stomach sink.
“What do you
think?” Rainne said. “Should we talk to Caroline about making this an annual thing?”
Betty gave Lake a look. He could practically hear her think. As much as she liked to torture Rainne, Betty didn’t approve of stringing people along. She’d made that clear every time she nagged him about the shop. Lake rubbed his hand over his chin. The hopeful look on Rainne’s face made him want to run.
“Look, Rainne,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
The last thing he wanted was to hurt his sister, but this couldn’t go on. He didn’t want to run a lingerie shop and she wasn’t capable of doing it.
The bell above the door rang and he turned to see his parents. Perfect timing as usual. Betty gave them the evil eye, but even that didn’t boost his mood.
“Eric, Joyce!” Rainne bounded over to them like a big puppy.
There were hugs all around. But not for Lake.
“There’s a lot of people out there,” his mother said. “Eric and I have printed up some leaflets to hand out to the crowd. Otherwise this is a wasted opportunity.”
She waved a leaflet headed Stop The Greed. Lake watched as Rainne’s smile faltered. She heard the same message he did—supporting their children wasn’t reason enough to make the trip worthwhile. He clenched his jaw.
“Glad to see you’re getting into the spirit of things,” Betty said dryly.
Rainne turned towards Lake.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” she said.
Lake looked at his naive sister, with her trusting smile, and his heart sank.
“It can wait,” he told her.
At this rate, he would never tell her. Betty frowned. She did not approve.
“No,” Rainne said. “This isn’t the first time that you’ve said that to me. You obviously have something to tell me.”
He glanced at his parents. His mother’s eyes had narrowed as she took her position against the enemy—him. His father looked like he was doing calculus in his head. As far as Lake could see the man might as well have stayed in the bus.
“I’ll tell you another time,” he said.
This wasn’t a conversation for his parents.
“No.” Rainne took a step towards him. “Tell me now.”
Her eyes had darkened. She was picking up on his signals with that uncanny intuition of hers. She knew he was hiding something.
“Let’s go through to the back room,” he said at last.
“Here,” Rainne said, being stubborn for the first time in months. “These are our parents—surely we can talk in front of them?”
Maybe you can, Lake thought.
“Fine,” he said. There was no getting out of it. He took a deep breath, but made sure no one saw him do it. “I’m putting the shop up for sale on Monday.”
The colour drained out of Rainne’s face, which made her multi-coloured hair all the more luminous. His mother smirked. As far as she was concerned, Lake had handed Rainne back to her family.
“You’re what?” Rainne’s voice was barely a whisper.
Lake ran a hand over his hair.
“I have an army mate with a security business. He’s looking for a partner. I need the money to buy into the business.”
Rainne’s mouth opened and closed for a moment.
“I thought you were getting the place up and running for me,” she said.
Lake felt on about the same level as muck on the bottom of a shoe.
“I gave you six months, Rainne. The business went from bad to worse in that time.”
“But...I had plans!”
“That’s all you had.” He tried to keep his voice soft and non-threatening. “I should have helped you out in the beginning. You really didn’t have a clue what you were doing.”
“You mean I wasn’t doing it your way?” The tears started to pool in her eyes. “Just because I wasn’t doing it your way, doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing it.”
“You weren’t making any money,” he said.
“Money!” Her cheeks burned red. “That’s all you care about.”
“I told you,” said his mother. Her eyes flashed with smug superiority.
Lake shot her a steely glare.
“Business is about money,” he told Rainne. “You can’t implement any new ideas unless you have money to back them. That’s why things need to run properly first. I thought you understood that now?”
“It doesn’t matter what I understand now, does it?” Rainne rubbed the tears off her cheek. “Because you aren’t doing this for me, you’re doing it for you.”
“Look,” Lake said. “I’m sorry that I don’t have so much money that I can finance a business for you at the same time as sorting out what I’m going to do with my life. I have a set amount of funds. If you wanted to run an experiment, why didn’t you ask dad to dip into his trust fund?”
“Huh?” said his father as he came back to the planet.
“I did ask them,” Rainne said. “They didn’t want me to do it.”
“That’s not true,” his mother said, stepping towards Rainne. “We wanted you to have a better sense of the purpose of the shop. Selling knickers wasn’t enough. Not for you. You’re meant for so much more. We always support you, you know that.”
Lake had heard enough.
“Is that right?” It was time to call his mother’s bluff. “Well, the shop is for sale. Do you want to buy it so that Rainne can get on with her earth-friendly plans?”
Rainne looked at her mother so hopefully that it almost tore Lake to pieces. Even after all these years she couldn’t see them for who they were—users. His mother’s lips tightened.
“Of course, we can talk about it,” she said.
She was going to sidestep the whole thing.
“No. You need to tell me now. Do you want to buy it or not? If not, I put it on the market Monday. This is your only chance. How badly, exactly, do you want to support Rainne?”
There was a tense silence. Betty’s frown was so deep you couldn’t see her eyes. His mother looked cornered. For one hopeful moment Lake thought she might step in and do something for her kids instead of expecting them to do everything for her.
“All our money is tied up,” she said at last. “It wouldn’t be possible to sort things out that fast.”
“I can wait until the new year,” Lake said.
He knew he was pushing at Rainne’s expense, but just once, he wanted her to see them for who they were. Maybe then she would be able to let go and be herself. His parents shared a look.
“Not possible,” his father said at last, and all the hope went out of Rainne’s eyes.
“Do you mean it isn’t possible,” Lake asked him, “or that you don’t want to do it?”
“I have better things to do with my money than to buy a shop like this,” his father said in disgust.
The words were a slap. Lake took a step towards Rainne, meaning to comfort. She held up her hands to stop him.
“I guess I know where I stand,” she said at last.
Tears poured down her face.
“You stand on your own two feet, lassie,” Betty told her.
Rainne nodded.
“You lot.” She motioned to her family. All of them, Lake included. “You only want me around to do what you want. You aren’t interested in helping me.”
“That’s not true,” Lake said.
She gave him a cold look.
“I’ve had enough of all of you,” she said.
Slowly, she turned and walked out of the shop. Lake took a step to follow her, but Betty put her hand on his arm to stop him. She shook her head slightly. Lake knew she was right. Rainne needed to deal with this her own way. But he hated that. He clenched his fists.
“Well,” his mother said snidely, “looks like your attempt to convert Rainne to your capitalist ways has failed.”
Lake stared at them for a moment. The parents who weren’t parents. The family he didn’t have.
“It’s time for you to leave,” he said.
“Yes,” his father said, completely unaffected by the emotion around him. “Let’s go get Rainne and get out of here.”
“No.” Lake broke free from Betty’s touch. “Leave Rainne alone. Go to your bus and leave Invertary, or you won’t like the consequences.”
His mother’s eyebrows shot up.
“Are you threatening us?” she said with shock.
“Yes. If you don’t leave, right now, all that government training you despise so much will rain down on you like a thunderstorm. That’s a promise.”
His parents went white.
“You are dead to us,” his father said.
Lake nodded. He’d always suspected as much. He watched as they turned on their heels and scuttled from the shop. Lake hoped they did as he told them. He wasn’t sure what he would do if they didn’t. It scared him to think what he could be capable of.
Betty came to stand beside him. Her mouth was pinched.
“Don’t worry, son,” she said firmly. “You still have me.”
Rainne had stopped crying by the time she’d reached Alastair’s house. She felt numb from the betrayal of her family. Both sides were telling her that the other side was selfish and wanted to use her, when in reality, that’s all they both wanted. They were as bad as each other. So she fled to the only place in Invertary where she felt safe, to the only person who wanted her for her—and not for what she could do for him.
Alastair opened the door with a look of bewilderment.
“The show’s in an hour, Rainne,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
She looked up at her beautiful boy with her tear-reddened eyes.
“Oh,” he said with comprehension.
He stepped towards her and wrapped her in his arms. He kissed the top of her head and cooed to her, but Rainne was beyond tears. This wasn’t the kind of comfort she sought.
“Come on.” He held her hand and led her up the stairs to his room.
Once the door was shut behind them, he smiled at her. His face so full of love and acceptance that it almost undid her.
“Aren’t we going to the show?” he asked.
Rainne shook her head. They stood in the middle of his bedroom. Rainne was cold from the run to his house, her coat was still back at the shop.
“You want to talk about it?” he said.
Rainne shook her head again. Alastair glanced around the room as his mind flicked through the things he should be asking, or doing, in his current situation. It was clear that he wasn’t sure what to do with her.
“What do you want to do?” he asked at last.
Rainne stepped in to him, stood on her toes and kissed him. She put her whole soul into the kiss. She wrapped her arms around his shoulder, plunged her fingers into his hair and kissed him until the breath left him and he became the only thought in her mind.
“Rainne,” he said, his voice hoarse from wanting her. “What are we doing?”
She still couldn’t trust herself to speak. She was sure that if she started the whole horrible story of her pathetic life would tumble out of her mouth. She was sick hearing herself, sick thinking about all of it. She was sick of everything. So instead, she unbuttoned the straps on her purple dungarees and let the bib fall to her waist.
Alastair’s eyes went wide. Rainne bent over, pulled at the bows on her Doc Marten boots and kicked them off. She finished unbuttoning her dungarees and let them fall to her feet, where she calmly stepped out of them.
“Rainne,” Alastair said. “You’re upset, this isn’t the best time. You’re not thinking straight.”
She gave him a look.
“I mean,” he stumbled over his words for a change. “I mean I want to. But you don’t know what you’re doing right now.”
Rainne raised an eyebrow in challenge to that, then pulled her Wombles T-shirt over her head. Alastair gulped. Rainne was standing in front of him, in her underwear and thanks to the shop, it was a lovely matching pink set. But she didn’t want to think about the shop. She wanted to think about Alastair. Slowly, she turned her back to him, lifted her hair and waited for him to unclasp her bra. She could have done it herself, but it was time for him to get involved. There was a long pause, for a second she wasn’t sure if he was going to give her what she wanted and then she felt his gentle touch on her skin. There was a snap and her bra fell loosely. She shook it off and let her hair fall.
Slowly, she turned towards Alastair and watched him gasp. She just stood there, waiting as his eyes ate her up. At last, he looked at her face. Rainne nodded once. He smiled softly. And then he pulled his jumper up over his head. His T-shirt and jeans disappeared faster than she could blink. Alastair grinned slowly, the confidence she knew and loved shining from his eyes.
“Come on, Rainne,” he said as he held out his hand. “I’ve been dreaming about getting you into bed. I don’t want to waste a minute.”
And with a smile, Rainne followed her boy.
CHAPTER NINETEEN