Isobel started to laugh, and felt his chest move under hers. He kissed her head.
“You need to move. I have to deal with this condom.”
Isobel moaned, pressing her forehead into him. “I can’t believe I forgot again.”
She struggled to sit up and climbed off him. She was still wearing her sweatshirt and bra, and Callum still had his jeans on. But at least he’d managed to remember to protect them. It was almost as though she wanted to get pregnant. She looked at Callum to find him watching her.
“I lose my mind around you,” she confessed.
He stroked his hand over her hair. “It isn’t only you. I haven’t forgotten to glove up since I was a teenager. I blame you. You need to stop jumping me. I can’t think straight.”
“Me?” She climbed off the bed. “This insanity is all your fault. Stop…” She waved a hand at him to signify everything that was Callum. “Stop being you!”
For a second he looked stunned, and then he burst out laughing. Isobel was so shocked by the sound that she almost forgot she was mad at herself. And then something else occurred to her.
“Are you clean?” she asked as her stomach lurched.
Callum grinned at her. Why he suddenly thought this was funny, she had no idea. Because it wasn’t funny. Not at all.
“Sexually. Are you clean?” She pointed at him. “Do you have any sexually transmitted diseases?”
“Woman, these are the things you ask before you jump a man.”
Isobel lifted her jeans and underwear and glared at him. “I’m being serious. Are you clean?”
“Aye. Are you?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Of course I am! I don’t have sex. Ever. The last man I slept with was my ex-husband. Before that, it was Jack’s father.” She waved her jeans at him. “I am the most responsible person I know. I don’t take chances. I can’t afford risk. I’m a mother. And then you come along! And every sensible thought in my head disappears. Seriously! Why is that? It’s like I want to sabotage my life. Well, what’s left of my life.” She pointed at him. “You mess with my mind. You…you…seducer of common sense, you!” She stomped towards the bathroom, slamming the door behind her on Callum’s laughter.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that bruise on your side,” Callum called after her.
“Idiot,” Isobel muttered as she ran the shower. And she wasn’t talking about Callum. Teenagers had more sense than she did. She’d almost had unprotected sex. Again. She shook her head in disgust and squealed when the door opened behind her.
“Do you mind? I’m trying to shower here.” She wasn’t. She was standing in the middle of his bathroom, castigating herself while wearing a sweatshirt and nothing on the bottom.
“Let me see.” Before she could stop him, he reached out and tugged up her sweatshirt, exposing the bruise.
Isobel didn’t look at it. She was of the firm belief that if you couldn’t see something, it didn’t hurt. Instead, she stared at Callum’s illegally hot bare chest and tried to come up with a way to immunise herself against the sight. She shivered when he gently traced the mark Ray had left.
“Punch to the ribs. Looks like the guy wore rings.” Callum looked up at her. “You need an x-ray.”
“It’s fine. Just bruised.” She hoped.
“Who did it?” His voice was soft, but Isobel wasn’t fooled.
“That’s got nothing to do with you. I only asked you to help with the body. Now that the body is gone, you don’t need to be involved at all. You can call your team and tell them we don’t need the help anymore.” It made her sick to give him the out, but it was the decent thing to do. She hadn’t invited him in to fix her life. She was pretty sure that wasn’t even possible anyway.
“This isn’t over. The body might be gone, but you’re on the radar of some seriously bad people. People who tried to kill you tonight,” he said evenly.
“And they probably think they succeeded, which means we’re safe.”
“As soon as you surface again, they’ll know they didn’t get you, and that safety will come crashing down.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. I only asked for help with the body. The rest has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m in this until it’s finished. You need my protection even more than you did when you asked for my help.”
“Fine, do what you like.” She threw up her hands and took a step back. “Now get out. I want to shower.”
“Not until you’ve told me who hurt you.”
“It’s not your problem.”
“I’m making it my problem.”
“What are you going to do? Pull my fingernails until I give up the information? Go away and let me shower in peace.”
Callum’s eyes narrowed. “I think I’ll just call your sisters and ask them who hit you.”
“They don’t know.”
“I bet they could make an accurate guess.”
“Why do you insist in knowing this? Are you so dead set on making all of my problems your problems? Haven’t I complicated your life enough? You don’t need to know who did this. I’m handling it.”
His palm slid over her hip and down to rest over her lower abdomen. “This makes your problems my problems.”
“You don’t even know if there is a baby. Why are you even waiting around to find out? Why aren’t you running as fast as you can?” She held her arms wide. “I mean, look at me. I’m in my thirties with a teenager and a toddler. I have a crappy job that I probably lost today because I couldn’t keep my problems out of my workplace. I don’t have a house. Or belongings. I don’t even have a change of clothes. And on top of all that, I don’t have the sense to have protected sex.”
“You aren’t the only one that made that mistake. I didn’t protect you.”
His willingness to taking responsibility for his part in their mess melted her frustration, but she had to make him see reality. “Callum, think about this logically. What will you do if there is a baby?”
“I’ll take responsibility for it.”
“And what does that mean exactly?”
His eyes shifted, looking around the room. When he looked back at her, there was only resolve in his face. “I’ll look after you and our child.”
Her heart actually melted, and part of her soul jumped towards him, desperate to have him look after her. Desperate for a partner to help raise her family. Desperate for a role model for her son. But she’d done this before. She’d married Rob thinking he’d be a nice, stable influence on Jack, thinking he’d never leave her and that she’d live a content, perhaps a little boring, life with the man. She wasn’t making that mistake again.
“You’re obviously a good guy, Callum. And I appreciate that your honour won’t let you walk away. But it wouldn’t just be me and the baby. It’s Sophie and Jack too. It’s my three sisters and my crappy life. You don’t want that.” She snorted. “Heck, there are days when even I don’t want it. Don’t worry, I’m sure there isn’t a baby. But if there is, and you want to be a part of things, I’ll let you contribute and I’ll make sure it spends time with you too. Now, I really need to get cleaned up.”
“We’ll talk about the baby later. Right now, I need you to tell me who hit you.”
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
He just stared at her.
“Fine.” She was worn out by everything, including Callum. “The loan shark paid me a visit today. He wants the balance of what’s owed to him by the weekend. Or…” Her eyes went wide. There were things Callum really didn’t need to know, and tiredness was making her talk without thinking. She hurried on, hoping he didn’t notice the slip. “One of his guys, Ray, reinforced the message with his fist. So there you have it. Can I shower now?”
“Or what? You started to say something and stopped. Tell me the rest. Now.”
Isobel almost went breathless at the sight of him. This was the Callum who’d fought circles around the guy outside her house. This Call
um was brutal, deadly and unstoppable. And although she knew he’d never hurt her—not physically, anyway—she also knew he would never stop until he got what he wanted.
“If I don’t have the money, I get to repay the loan on my back.” There. She’d said it. She’d even said it as evenly as possible, in the hope she wouldn’t betray just how horrifying that thought was.
Callum stilled and his fingers tightened at her nape. “Name. I need his name.”
“Eddie Granger.”
“Home base?”
“He works out of Glasgow.”
Callum nodded. Curtly. As though making a decision. “He won’t be a problem for you again. Him or this Ray guy.”
He dropped his hand and turned to leave. Isobel reached out for him, grasping his bicep. When he looked back, she could see the barely-contained rage burning deep inside of him.
“You can’t kill him. They’ll put you in jail.” She was terrified that was exactly what he had planned. “I don’t want you getting into trouble because of me.”
His face softened slightly. “I know other ways to deal with this. Trust me.” He glanced at her belly. “It’s the least I can do. Now get showered and catch some sleep. Use one of the bedrooms in the basement. They’re more secure. I’ve taken the middle one, but the other two are there for you and the kids. I’ll talk to you later.”
Isobel wanted to ask him what he planned to do, but he was already gone, leaving her shivering at the loss of his heat.
CHAPTER 16
FOR SOME REASON, RACHEL HAD arranged a flight to Scotland for the middle of the night. Elle thought it was because she was just as eager to get there and get Callum back to the office as the rest of them. They arrived at Campbeltown airport as the sun came up, stopped briefly at a little café so Ryan wouldn’t turn feral and eat the rest of the team, and then drove straight to Arness. Since there was no sign of Callum, Elle bypassed his alarm and they made themselves at home in his house. The general consensus was that if he called for their help, he’d expect them to move in with him anyway.
Yeah, Elle was pretty sure that was going to go down well with Callum when he returned.
“This place might as well be a cell in a monastery,” Megan said as she dumped her holdall on Callum’s kitchen table. “There’s no evidence that anybody lives here.”
“I don’t think they call the rooms in a monastery cells.” Elle swept Megan’s bag onto the floor and set up her laptop in its place. Elle didn’t care how Callum lived. All she cared about was that he was still alive. For a while there, she wasn’t sure that would be the case.
“They do. I saw it on TV. They call them cells because living in them is a prison sentence,” Megan said as she started opening and shutting Callum’s kitchen cupboards.
“I can’t stay here,” Rachel announced as she strode into the room. Her Gucci bag was slung over her arm and her feet were shod in her usual red-soled pumps. With her sleek auburn hair, Chanel suit and Rolex watch, she looked so completely out of place that it wasn’t hard to agree with her.
“There’s a tent in the garage.” Megan gave her an evil smile. “You could always pitch it in the backyard.”
“I don’t mean in this house, although that too. I mean Arness. It has all of five houses and one shop. We might as well be in stranded in Greenland.”
“Greenland?” Elle said.
“There’s nothing there either,” Rachel said. “I mean, have you ever met anyone from Greenland? Ever? No. That’s because there’s nothing there. Nothing.”
“Feel free to leave, then,” Megan said. “We’ll manage fine without your brand of encouragement.”
Rachel pointed a talon at Megan. “Remind me why I haven’t fired you? Again?”
“Please.” Megan rolled her eyes. “You were fired along with me. If you didn’t have the money, and the balls, to buy into the company, you wouldn’t be here either. Plus”—Megan flicked her long blonde hair over her shoulder—“I like to think of myself as the positive force that balances your influence on the planet. The angel to your devil. The yin to your yang. The antimatter to your matter. The world needs both of us. If we separate, bad things will happen. Mark my words.”
“Oh, for the love of Prada,” Rachel muttered. “I don’t have time for this. We actually have real, paying clients that need our attention. Callum asked for one person and some of Elle’s time. Why are we all here?”
Elle let out a sigh. Rachel knew damn well why they were there. She’d even insisted on coming and leaving Joe and Julia in charge of the London office. Rachel had said that she was the only person able to deal with Callum’s temper, and they needed her to get the job done quickly. She’d even gone so far as to hire a private plane to get them to Campbeltown airport in record time. Although Elle was certain if Rachel was quizzed about her generosity, she’d have some other horrible reason why she had to do it. The woman was an alligator—she did everything she could to protect her soft underbelly, even if that meant snapping at everyone around her.
“Why are we here? Because,” Megan enunciated her words, “we care about Callum and want him to come back to London.”
Rachel shook her head as though mystified, before sitting beside Elle. She crossed her long legs and drummed her red nails on the table. “Where is he, anyway?”
“I don’t know. He disabled the cameras after he spoke to me.” Elle’s fingers flew over her keyboard, but she paused to look out the window. There was still smoke drifting in the distance. “Anybody else notice the burned-out house on the way here? That didn’t have anything to do with Callum, did it?”
“Nope, that was a gas accident,” Megan said. “I made Dimitri stop the car and ask the cops. Faulty gas bottle. Thankfully, the family were away at the time.”
“Is this the wall where Callum had sex?” Ryan called from the hall. “I think we should put up a plaque or something to commemorate it for him.”
“Will that boy ever grow up?” Rachel sneered.
“That boy is the same age as you,” Elle said.
“Yes, but I’m decades older when it comes to maturity,” Rachel said.
Elle couldn’t argue with that. “I have more information on Isobel.”
“Let’s hear it.” Dimitri followed Ryan into the room. “Make coffee while you’re over there, will you, babe?” Dimitri said to Megan.
“Do I look like your servant?” Megan’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m your wife, not your slave. Make your own damn coffee.”
“Baby,” Dimitri crooned. “You make better coffee. And if you do it for me, I’ll do that other thing for you later.”
Megan clapped her hands and beamed at him. “Really?”
“Promise.” Dimitri pressed a hand over his heart solemnly.
“Then you get coffee.” She blew him a kiss before she reached for the coffee pot.
“Before anyone makes the mistake of asking what they’re talking about,” Rachel said, “know that I forbid it.”
“We don’t need to ask.” Ryan’s eyes were on Elle’s laptop. “It’s sex. They’re all about the sex. They don’t think about anything else.”
“Hey,” Megan said. “We’re newlyweds. It’s our right.”
“Yeah, but does it have to happen right under our noses?” Ryan grumbled.
“You’re just jealous,” Megan said.
“As much fun as is it to listen to you bicker like children,” Elle said, “I have news on Isobel. As far as I can tell, she’s clean. No run-ins with the police, no parking tickets, nothing. She does, however, have sucky taste in men. She left school at fifteen because she got pregnant and the boyfriend did a runner on her. She hasn’t heard of him since, which isn’t surprising, since he OD’d in Edinburgh six years ago—heroin. Her second attempt at happy-ever-after ended miserably too, but this time she made it to the altar before she got pregnant. Unfortunately, this guy was worse than the last. He ran out on her as soon as the baby was born.”
“What a dick,” Ryan muttered.<
br />
There was general agreement before Elle brought up the rest of the report. “The husband filed for divorce from Glasgow and hasn’t been back to Arness since. But, and this is where it gets really nasty, he didn’t tell the rest of the world that he wasn’t married to Isobel anymore. So when he borrowed money from his friendly neighbourhood loan shark, he made certain the guy knew Isobel was good for repayments. And then, guess what? He suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.”
“Leaving Isobel with the debt,” Megan said in disgust.
“How much are we talking?” Dimitri asked.
“Thirty-four thousand pounds, give or take a few hundred,” Elle said.
“That’s a lot of money for a woman like Isobel,” Rachel said.
“That’s a lot of money for everyone except you, Rachel,” Ryan said.
Rachel’s eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth, no doubt to spew acid all over Ryan, but Elle got in first.
“The point is,” she said, “the ex, Robert Argyle—not his real name, by the way—has disappeared and the loan shark is making regular visits to Isobel to extract payment.”
“We need to find this arsehole and make him repay his own debt,” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Elle said to Ryan, “but as much as I’d like to make Isobel’s ex pay his own debt, we can’t. I managed to track him down. He’s currently serving fifteen years at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Armed robbery. I thought I had bad taste in men, but Isobel takes first prize. She’s attracted to serious losers.”
“And Callum,” Megan said. “He isn’t a loser, he’s just…”
“Lost?” Elle said.
“Suicidal?” Dimitri said.
“Seriously bad-tempered?” Ryan said.
“A coward who ran away from his responsibilities?” Rachel said.
“Standing right here,” Callum said.
All heads snapped to the doorway where Callum was standing, his arms crossed over his usual Henley, and his face in his usual scowl. Elle had never seen a better sight.
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