Secret Things and Highland Flings

by Tracy Corbett

  He closed his eyes. He was an idiot.

  Without another word, she headed downstairs. It didn’t take a genius to work out she’d already discovered the painting.

  He followed her down.

  ‘Not to worry,’ she said, reaching the bottom. ‘I’m heading up to Rubha Castle in the next few days to evaluate the rest of the family’s collection. I’ll happily take the painting with me and return it to the family, if that’s what they wish.’ She held the rear door open for him.

  Well, that was something.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, holding out his hand in an attempt to repair the damage he’d inflicted on both his reputation and her gallery. ‘I appreciate that.’

  She ignored his offer of a truce. ‘No problem.’

  ‘And thanks for the tea and cake.’ He rubbed his arm. ‘And not calling the pol—’

  The door slammed shut in his face.

  So much for trying to ‘charm her’. Far from retrieving the painting without arising any suspicion, he’d managed to cast even more doubt over the honesty of his family. And got stabbed in the process. Good one.

  To top it all, he was now stranded in Windsor without a place to stay.

  Sighing, he collected his rucksack from behind the bins and mulled over his options. His arm was throbbing, he looked a bloody mess and he couldn’t imagine he’d be welcomed at the prestigious Castle Hotel in the high street. And then he remembered the advert in the tattoo parlour’s window. He’d try there. Plus, it meant he could keep an eye on the gallery and ensure the owner did as promised and took The Cursed Man back up to Scotland.

  It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the best he could come up with tonight.

  He backtracked to the front of the building. Tainted Love Tattoos had closed for the night, but the lights were still on inside. He cupped his hand and peered through the glass. A woman was sitting at a table. When he tapped on the glass, she looked up. He pointed to the sign hanging in the window.

  She stood up. He could see she was wearing a tight black skirt with matching corset, fishnet stockings and a pair of black patent shoes. The heels alone looked capable of causing serious damage. Around her neck she wore a black choker with tiny rubies hanging from one side that looked like droplets of blood from a puncture wound.

  Bloody hell. Talk about intimidating.

  She walked towards him, her onyx eyes blinking from beneath her Pulp Fiction hairdo. She released the bolts on the door and opened it. For a good few seconds she just looked at him, not saying a word.

  Unable to take the silence any longer, he said, ‘I was wondering about a room for the night?’

  She didn’t respond.

  He pointed to the sign. ‘It says you have a room to let.’

  She leant against the doorframe. ‘I know what it says.’

  ‘Right.’ He rubbed his arm. ‘Do you have a vacancy?’

  She eyed him cautiously. ‘You on the run?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What’s with the arm?’

  He followed her gaze. The dressing was already soaked with blood. ‘I fell off my bike.’

  Her expression indicated she didn’t believe him. ‘No drugs.’

  He frowned. ‘Excuse me?’

  She sighed. ‘As in, I don’t want anyone shooting up on my premises. Comprendo?’

  He tilted his head to one side. ‘You remind me of someone.’

  ‘Fascinating. You want a room, or not? Forty quid a night, two fifty per week, seven hundred for the month. Cash. No tenancy agreement. No refunds. Payment upfront.’ She narrowed her gaze. ‘Food not included. Phone off limits. Touch my stuff and you’ll die a slow and painful death.’

  He visibly swallowed. ‘Good to know.’

  ‘We got a deal?’

  He scratched his head and then shrugged. ‘Deal.’ He held out his hand.

  She ignored him and stepped back to allow him inside. She locked the door behind him. Should he be worried?

  ‘Sit,’ she said, pointing to a black leather chair that wouldn’t look out of place in a dentist’s surgery.

  ‘Excuse me …?’

  Placing her hands on her hips, she stared at him. ‘You’re contaminating my sterile working environment. I don’t appreciate threats to the safety of my clients’ well-being.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m a softie like that.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, I can tell.’ He sat down, fearful of what might happen if he didn’t.

  She pulled out a first-aid kit. He was struck by a sense of déjà vu.

  ‘HIV positive?’

  He blinked up at her. ‘I’m sorry?’

  She sighed and then repeated very slowly, ‘Are you HIV positive?’

  ‘Oh, right. Err … no.’

  ‘Hepatitis B?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Any other diseases I should know about?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’ He tried not to stare at the tattoo on her left breast, a dagger piercing a heart. ‘Shouldn’t we get to know each other a little first?’

  She snapped on a pair of latex gloves. ‘I’m not one for small talk.’

  ‘I’ve noticed.’ He watched her peel away the bloodied dressing applied by his previous first aider. ‘You know what you’re doing?’

  She dropped it into a sanitised disposal unit. ‘My job dictates I draw blood. Occupational hazard.’

  ‘I imagine you’re very good at it.’

  She almost smiled. ‘Funny guy.’

  The way she’d said ‘funny guy’ gave him another strong sense of déjà vu. There was something oddly familiar about this woman. But if they’d met before, he’d definitely remember. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man forgot.

  He looked around the parlour. In contrast to the white gallery next door, this place was jet black. There was a sign on the wall that read: THINK BEFORE YOU INK. It was hung next to the image of a naked woman with a creeping vine entwined around her torso.

  ‘Your designs are exquisite.’

  She rubbed something over his cut that stung. ‘I know.’

  Modest, too. He winced when she pulled the edges of the cut together and taped it.

  Unlike the woman who’d tended to him a few minutes earlier, this nurse wasn’t offering cups of tea or homemade cakes. Still, if it enabled him to get his painting back, he didn’t care.

  He looked up at her. ‘I may need the room for a couple of nights, if that’s okay?’

  She tightened the strapping. ‘Money upfront.’

  He tried to breathe through the pain. ‘No problem. Just the room, you understand?’

  She snapped off the latex gloves and placed her hands either side of his head. ‘I unnerve you, don’t I?’

  Instinctively, he pushed back against the chair. ‘Hell, yeah.’

  ‘Relax, sweetie.’ She patted the side of his face. ‘You’re not my type.’ She straightened and held out her hand. ‘Money.’

  ‘Money, right.’ He got out of the chair and removed his wallet. ‘Thanks for the first aid.’ He handed her the cash.

  She took the money and tucked it into her corset. ‘Keep the wound covered. Bleed over my equipment and you’ll—’

  ‘… die a slow and painful death. Yeah, I remember.’ He pocketed his wallet.

  A faint smile played on her lips. She turned and walked away, the sway in her hips disturbingly hypnotic. ‘Follow me.’

  He did as he was told. He suspected his landlady wasn’t quite as scary as she made out. But then, he’d never been smart where women were concerned.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday 2nd June

  Lexi jolted when the train braked suddenly. Not that she’d been asleep. She rarely slept these days. Even if she hadn’t been lying in a cramped bunk inside a tiny cabin, she’d still be wide awake staring up at the ceiling. Or in this instance, the empty bunk above.

  She pushed back the covers and eased herself out of the bunk bed, ducking her head so she didn’t bang it on the bed
above. Talk about poky. She edged sideways past the ladder to reach the narrow door and escape into the corridor, which wasn’t much wider.

  Maybe she should have put a jumper on; she felt somewhat exposed walking down a public corridor dressed only in a nightshirt. Not that there was anyone about. It was four a.m. Everyone else was fast asleep. Lucky them.

  She used to sleep just fine, but everything had changed that fateful night eighteen months ago when her life had been upended. In hindsight, she should have seen it coming. The signs were all there. The secrecy. The excuses. The elaborate stories that didn’t quite ring true. Not to mention her sister’s concerns about Marcus’s erratic behaviour. Nonetheless, it had still come as a shock.

  Marcus had been restless all evening, refusing to come to bed, claiming he was dealing with ‘important business stuff’. She should have realised he was up to something when he closed his laptop so she couldn’t see what he was typing. Instead, she’d shrugged it off and gone to bed, only to be woken in the early hours when a door slammed below.

  Realising Marcus wasn’t in bed, she’d headed downstairs to find the house empty. And that’s when she’d found his note, propped against the coffee jar. A sense of foreboding had enveloped her. Tears had blurred her vision as she’d read about his affair with Cindy … the business going into receivership … the investigation by HMRC for tax avoidance.

  There’d been no heartfelt apology for dropping her in it, or promises to make everything right, just a load of half-hearted excuses for his behaviour. There’d certainly been no mention of his gambling addiction, or emptying of their bank account. That information had only come to light in the days that followed.

  Sleep had eluded her ever since.

  She shook the memory away and continued down the corridor. A door slammed behind her. She turned sharply, falling against the window as the train rocked from side to side. But there was no one there – not that she could see without her lenses in. Just an empty corridor.

  Her paranoia was increasing. Ever since her encounter with the blue-eyed thief, she’d sensed she was being followed. It was crazy, of course. Her imagination was working overtime. But thanks to Marcus, she could no longer trust her instincts.

  She used the facilities and returned to her cabin, ignoring the sensation of someone peering out from behind a cabin door. She really needed to dial down her stress levels. It was probably another passenger waiting to use the facilities.

  When she was safely back in her cabin, she bolted the door and checked the painting was still tucked under the sink. It was. See? No one was after her.

  Shivering, she climbed into bed and pulled the blanket over her.

  Feeling jittery was only to be expected. She was travelling with a potentially valuable Renaissance painting. Although whether it was genuine or not remained unknown.

  After her encounter with the blue-eyed thief, she’d phoned Eleanor Wentworth’s daughter, who’d confirmed that she did have a brother called Oliver and yes, she’d like the painting returned. Louisa had apologised for any inconvenience caused and claimed she hadn’t realised the painting wasn’t one of her mother’s. However, she’d also sounded extremely confused and unsure as to why there was an issue, so it didn’t take a genius to work out the brother was up to something.

  Tempting as it was to enlighten Louisa, she’d decided a better approach would be to wait until she was in Scotland. She didn’t want to badmouth the brother or ruin her chances of evaluating the rest of the family’s art collection. Plus, there was a reason why the brother didn’t want her looking too closely at the painting. Once she was in Scotland and away from the stresses of her life, she might be able to discover what that was.

  Thinking about the blue-eyed thief made her agitated.

  She rolled over, whacking her elbow on the ladder.

  She still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened the other night. One minute she was in the storeroom cataloguing a new arrival, the next she was witnessing a man stealing the Woman at the Window. Or so she’d thought. Her assumption that Marcus had sent one of his idiot cronies to harass her into returning his money had been incorrect. Unfortunately, she hadn’t realised this before stabbing the man with a Stanley knife. Unintentionally, of course. Mortifying, nonetheless.

  Just thinking about it made her shudder. She could have killed him. Well, maybe not killed, but seriously injured him. He could have reported her for ABH. In fact, why hadn’t he? If he was genuinely there on behalf of the family to collect one of their paintings and the gallery owner had randomly attacked him, why wouldn’t he have reported her to the police?

  At the very least he’d have withdrawn the offer for her to evaluate the rest of the collection. She hadn’t exactly acted professionally. The fact that he hadn’t only added to her suspicions that something dodgy was going on.

  And she’d had her fill of dodgy men. She wasn’t about to get involved with another one. No matter how blue those eyes were …

  She rolled over, more awake than ever.

  In among the panic she’d felt at seeing an unauthorised man in her basement, she’d also felt a frisson of heat, which wasn’t welcome.

  She reasoned that it was her hormones having a laugh at her expense, throwing a tall, cute guy in her direction to mess with her instincts. But instead of making him trustworthy and decent, recompense for having been scammed by a cheating liar in the past, the gods had made him a carbon copy of her ex. A good-looking charmer, after whatever he could get, and doing whatever was necessary to ‘close the deal’.

  Well, she hadn’t fallen for it. She’d confronted him. Challenged his motives. Resisted his attempts to charm her … and then stabbed him.

  Oh, God. She buried her head under the pillow.

  She’d been so mortified by her actions she hadn’t even told Tasha what had happened. By the time her sister had arrived home the blood had been mopped up, the Woman at the Window had been returned to the showroom and she was in bed pretending to be asleep. If she’d told Tasha, then her sister would have wanted to know why she hadn’t called the police. More significantly, why she’d gone on to invite the blue-eyed thief into their flat and fed him cake. As she didn’t know the answer herself, it’d seemed better to keep quiet.

  Her alarm buzzed. It was six thirty a.m. and she hadn’t slept a wink. She sighed and blinked as the faint Scottish sunlight seeped through the small cabin window, obscured by a thick pleated curtain. She climbed out of bed and spent the next thirty minutes attempting to wash and dress in the cramped space.

  A guard knocked on the door. He handed her a breakfast parcel and recommended she head to the lounge car to enjoy the views.

  After thanking him, she locked the cabin door behind her and made her way down the corridor. Her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep. A sensible person would have opted for glasses today instead of lenses, but they were packed at the bottom of her suitcase and she hadn’t fancied unearthing everything.

  As she entered the lounge car, the sight that greeted her more than made up for a sleepless night. They were travelling through the Cairngorms.

  She found a seat on a couch and took a moment to absorb the wash of purple heather speeding by. The early morning mist hadn’t quite lifted and in the distance she could see snow-capped mountains, at odds with the onset of summer.

  She opened her breakfast parcel, delighting at the smell of hot porridge. The tightness in her chest momentarily eased. This was an adventure. She needed to stop focusing on life’s stresses and enjoy the experience. After all, where else could you look out of a window and see a stag standing proud just a few feet away, his antlers backlit in the morning sunlight. It was breathtaking.

  Her elation briefly dipped when she sensed someone watching her. She turned to see a man disappearing into the corridor. Had he been watching her? She caught herself. It was much more likely he was returning to his cabin to fetch something. Yes, that was more plausible.

  She resumed eating her porridge, follo
wed by a banana and a hot cup of tea. She pocketed the mini shortbreads for later and settled in for the remainder of the journey.

  The rocking train helped to relax her stiff muscles. She slid lower on the couch and rested her head against the window, admiring the views as they sped past. Green fields filled with sheep, cows and deer. The horizon dominated by huge mountains, the ground covered in dense yellow gorse and clusters of trees. Beautiful.

  The train passed through numerous stations without stopping. She caught glimpses of signs in both Gaelic and English, the old station buildings built from grey slate. They travelled over the Glenfinnan Viaduct, the location for Harry Potter and his flying car. Her tummy flipped as the train climbed higher and the landscape disappeared below, almost as if they were airborne.

  She was so mesmerised that she startled when the guard announced they were pulling into Inverness. She had to run back to her cabin to collect her things.

  A few minutes later, she was ready to disembark. Lifting her suitcase onto the platform while trying not to drop the wrapped nineteen-inch painting tucked under arm proved harder than anticipated. She could have used a courier to return the painting to its rightful owners, but the cost of insuring a potentially valuable Renaissance painting would have been astronomical. Plus, there was no guarantee a courier would take proper care of it. It was safer this way.

  Thankfully, she wasn’t trying to contend with heels. She’d opted for her 1940s blue-spotted sailor jumper, three-quarter-length jeans and red ballet pumps in an effort to appear ‘casual’. But she was still making a meal out of trying to unload her luggage. A friendly guard came to her rescue and wheeled her suitcase towards the exit.

  Something made her glance back. Once again, she had the sensation of being followed, but there was no one there. She focused on finding the car hire place, which was situated inside the adjacent shopping precinct.

  Having filled in the paperwork, she sent Tasha a quick ‘I’ve arrived’ message and made her way down to the car park.

  When she spotted her ‘budget’ vehicle in the allotted space, she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. It was a mint green Fiat 500. Would her luggage even fit inside? It was going to be a squeeze.