Lingerie Wars (The Invertary books) (13 page)

"Yeah, now. We'll pick this up tomorrow."

He went upstairs to get changed.

"I'm sorry," Rainne said through sobs.

It seemed that the only things she did these days were cry or apologise.

"Come here," Alastair said, and pulled her in through the door of his tiny house.

"Who is it?" his flatmate Stephen shouted from the kitchen.

"Rainne," Alastair called back.

Rainne was about to say that she would leave, that she couldn't face anyone else.

"We'll be in my room," Alastair shouted.

He took her hand and led her up the narrow staircase. At the top were two doors. He opened the one on the left. Rainne hesitated on the threshold.

"It's okay," he said, and tugged her gently inside.

The walls were grey, the curtains were standard rental house brown and the carpet was a colour she couldn't describe. The closest she could come was baby-poop green. There was a double bed wedged in the corner under the sloping roof, an old wooden wardrobe, a desk covered with fishing gear and a laptop sitting on a chair. The place was surprisingly clean and tidy.

"Sit down," he said.

She looked around but didn't know where to sit. The bed seemed like the wrong place.

"Ah, okay, wait a minute," Alastair told her.

He disappeared. She heard pounding on the stairs, then he reappeared with a large beanbag. He plopped it in the middle of the poop-coloured carpet.

"Sit, I'll get soup. Stephen made potato."

Then he was gone again.

Rainne lowered herself onto the beanbag and instantly felt better. No matter where they'd lived growing up, she'd always had a beanbag. It felt comforting and familiar. Brushing a tear from her cheek, she studied the room. The posters on the walls were science-fiction-based, mainly
Star Trek
, and from her position close to the floor she could see that the space under the bed was stuffed with books. It made her smile. Alastair was a geek.

"Here," he said as he entered the room. "This will make you feel better."

He handed her a large mug filled with steaming potato soup. Then put a plate with bread and a spoon beside her. She picked up the spoon and stirred the soup. Alastair crouched in front of her. He reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, but he didn't say anything. More silent tears slid down Rainne's cheeks. She was so incredibly lost.

"I didn't know where else to go," she said in a small voice she didn't recognise.

"You came to the right place." His voice was so strong and soothing.

"I don't always cry," she said to her soup.

"Good to know."

It sounded like a smile in his voice. Rainne felt herself relax for the first time in weeks. She looked up into her boy's eyes and nothing else mattered. Somehow she knew, in those few seconds, that Alastair would make everything better.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lake wasn't stupid. If he planned to get through the days before the relaunch of his shop without further sabotage, then he needed to know what Kirsty was up to. He waited patiently until the early hours of the morning, when people were in their deepest sleep, to act. Carrying a torch, a knife and his iPhone, he crept around to the back door of Kirsty's shop. One swipe of his knife and the door was open. He shook his head in disgust. She needed to get better locks; a kid could break into this place.

Years of training enabled him to move silently through the office space. There was no noise from the flat above him. Kirsty was sound asleep. He was surprised to find that she was designing her own lingerie. Surprised and kind of impressed. He fingered one of the bras. They were pretty. He shook his head to clear it. Spending all his time around lingerie, and mad women, was affecting his brain.

He rifled through the desk, making sure that everything was put back exactly where he found it. He smiled when he came across her plans for a Christmas fashion show. Now that was interesting. He could do something with that. He booted up the laptop and wasn't even surprised to see that there was no password to protect it. Her browser bookmarked her bank account and, lo and behold, she'd let the browser save her password. He cursed under his breath as one click let him have access to her financial information. He seriously had to do something about this woman. She was completely vulnerable; anyone could come in and rip her off.

Her bank details made for grim reading. She was in a worse spot than he was. Looking around him, he couldn't figure out why that was. She had a nice shop, good merchandise and a decent business plan. As far as he could see there was no reason she shouldn't be raking in the cash. It didn't make any sense. He clicked on the other bookmarked site and grinned—her new website. He'd heard rumours. Obviously, it was now up and running. The visitor counter at the bottom of the page read thirteen. He cringed. She wasn't going to sell through the site if no one was looking at it.

He flicked open his phone.

"I need you to do something for me," he said by way of hello.

"Great to hear from you too, Lake," said his army mate.

Lake grinned.

"No time to chat. I need you to hack a website and make the same pop-up message appear every time someone clicks on something."

"That sounds simple enough. Why don't you do it yourself?" John said. "I'm busy doing proper work. As in work that will make us a lot of money when the business is up and running."

"You can spare ten minutes."

"So can you."

"Are you going to do this or not?"

"Are you going to stop screwing around in Scotland and sell that business so we can get on with our lives?"

"Trust me," said Lake. "There is nothing I would like more. But until the place shows a profit, I'm stuck with it. Now, if you want to speed things up, how about you help me sabotage the competition?"

He picked up some beads in a dish beside the monitor. Ugly pink paper things.

"Fine," John grumbled.

Lake let the beads slide through his fingers as he listened to the grumbling in his ear.

"What's the address?" John said at last.

Lake rattled off the website address as he held the beads in the palm of his hand. They were heavier than they looked.

"What do you want the pop-up to say?"

Lake grinned as he put the beads back in the dish.

"I want it to say, 'Buy your lingerie from Lake Benson's shop', and put the phone number." He told him what it was.

"Yeah, I can see you're being really productive," his friend said drolly. "When you're done messing with your girlfriend's website, how about you spend some time thinking about what you could be doing? I leave for Singapore on Monday to babysit some prince. All expenses, plus hefty fee and I get to wear a gun. Wouldn't you rather be doing that?"

Hell yes, Lake thought, but before he could answer John had hung up.

Another few minutes poking around the place and it was clear that Kirsty planned her sabotage elsewhere. He glanced upwards in the direction of her flat and then headed for the stairs. The lock on the door to the flat hadn't been turned—obviously Kirsty thought it was enough to lock the shop downstairs. The more he wandered around her home, the more he worried about her. This might be Invertary, but it didn't mean she could give up on safety. As soon as this war was over, he was going to take her in hand and sort out her security. Until then, it would drive him crazy knowing that she was wide open for any nutter to walk right in.

Her home was exactly as he'd expected—stylish, soft and understated. Just like Kirsty. The place was neat, as a home should be. As his home would be, if he had one. Even the pictures on the wall were tasteful. He made his way through the small rooms, noticing that there were no photos anywhere. Strange, but not unusual. Not everyone put their family pictures on the wall; some people preferred albums. Out of curiosity he checked the shelves in the living room—no photo albums. There was also no evidence of her latest plot against him.

It occurred to him that the plotting might be taking place somewhere else entirely. Then it slowly dawned on him. The day he was fixing the plumbing, she'd said she knew who did it. Not that
she
did it. He hung his head. Her mother. He should have checked the mother. Still, it wasn't a wasted trip. The website should keep her out of mischief for a while at least.

As he turned to leave the flat, he heard a little moan coming from the bedroom. He stilled. There was no reason to go in there. None at all. His feet didn't pay any attention; they walked towards the noise. The door was ajar. Soft light filtered through the thin curtains. Lake felt his heart pound at his ribcage as he looked for Kirsty. She was lying on her belly in the middle of her bed. The duvet had slipped to her hips. One foot dangled over the edge of the bed. Even covered in long-sleeved pyjamas, she was beautiful. The fabric had pulled tight around her as she'd moved in her sleep. He could make out the slender curve of her back and the gleam of creamy skin at her neck. Her full lips parted as she moaned again. The soft, intimate noise of sleep. His chest tightened and his fingers actually hurt from wanting to touch her.

Instead, he used all of his self-control to turn away. He felt lightheaded as he made his way down the stairs and out of her home. Every instinct he had told him he shouldn't have left. It told him he should have crawled into bed and let her curl up against him. And wasn't that beyond twisted? She'd have screamed the place down. He was losing his mind. Invertary, Kirsty; all of it was robbing him of his senses.

As he locked the doors behind him, he frowned grimly. He'd learned a lot more than he'd bargained for during his little break and entry. Kirsty not only covered herself from neck to toe during the day, but at night too. He let out a long, controlled breath. Kirsty wasn't hiding her scars from the world.

She was hiding them from herself.

"I'm going to kill him!"

Kirsty shot up from her desk on Friday morning, grabbed her laptop then stormed through the shop and out into the street, leaving a grinning Magenta in her wake.

Lake was standing in the street, in a T-shirt, oblivious to the icy wind coming off the loch.

"You," she shouted as she strode towards him. "What the heck do you call this?"

He turned as she thrust the laptop under his nose. His lip twitched when he saw the pop-up window with his name and photo—on her website.

"Why Kirsty, how very neighbourly of you to help me out with my advertising," he drawled.

She hefted the laptop.

"I wouldn't use that to hit me," he told her. "You'll just have to find the money to replace it."

Something stilled within her. It was the way he said it, as though he knew exactly how much money she had—or in this case, didn't have. Her eyes narrowed. Meanwhile his face was doing that thing where no emotion got through that thick skin of his. He couldn't fool her. His bloody eyes were laughing at her again.

"You did this." She pointed at the screen.

"To quote your own words back to you, I'm not responsible, but I may know who is."

"This is wrong. It's mean. It's underhanded." She ran out of words.

"And the stuff you've been throwing my way is all above board?" He cocked his damn eyebrow.

"Stop that thing with the eyebrow. You're not James Bond. You're nothing like James Bond."

"Funny you should mention that."

He cocked his head towards the shop, where a work crew was putting up his new sign.

"You have got to be kidding me," Kirsty said. "You named the shop after a Bond movie?"

Silver letters on a black background said
For Your Eyes Only
.

"Brilliant, eh? You'll have to wait for tomorrow to see the rest of it. No peeking."

Kirsty flipped the lid of her laptop shut, swung it hard and hit him in the stomach. He barely flinched.

"You're going to regret that," he told her.

"I've regretted every single thing that's happened since I met you. This"—she pointed at the laptop—"is just the latest on the list."

She lifted it to swing again.

His arm sprang out and hooked her around the waist. He pulled her tight against him, making the men chuckle.

"Stop it," she hissed at him.

"There are better ways to get rid of that anger, Kirsty Campbell," he told her.

"Like dynamite under your building."

"I'd rather do this."

Then the fool kissed her. And she stupidly let him. In the street. In front of the work crew, who didn't help by wolf whistling and applauding. And damn if her body didn't relax against him as his tongue slipped over her bottom lip. To make matters worse, he was the one to end the kiss and release her. Her eyes narrowed. Her leg shot out to kick him, but the tight ankle-length skirt made it impossible. Instead she almost fell over.

"Stop kissing me," she told him.

"No."

Kirsty wanted to jump up and down like a toddler having a tantrum. The man was driving her crazy. Nothing she did had any effect on him.