“Oomph!” He grabbed her ankles before she could try to find the floor again. “I’ll move. I don’t want your feet landing on my balls.”
“Hurry up about it,” Mairi snapped.
Her hair was everywhere, and she fought to get it off her face, out of her mouth and away from her eyes. Why hadn’t she tied the unruly mop up before she fell asleep? The answer loomed in front of her, naked and very much aroused.
“Put that away before you take somebody’s eye out,” she said.
“I don’t remember that attitude last night. I remember somebody hanging on to my dick like it was a joystick and I was their favorite game.”
He grabbed his jeans and stepped into them as Mairi looked around for something to tie up her hair. There were days when shaving her head seemed like a really good idea, and this was turning into one of them.
“Go make coffee,” she told Keir. “I need coffee.”
“Get out of there!” Agnes shouted.
“Where’s the coffee?” Mairi shouted back.
“You are a Gorgon in the morning.” With a shake of his head, Keir shrugged into his t-shirt and walked out of the bedroom with his feet still bare.
“You had sex with my sister.” Mairi heard Agnes as soon as Keir left the room.
“It’s none of your business,” Mairi called out, wishing their apartment wasn’t so small that she could hear every damn word her control-freak sister said.
“She had sex with me,” Keir said, and Mairi groaned.
“How could you do this now?” Agnes demanded. “When she’s under stress and vulnerable?”
“I am not vulnerable,” Mairi shouted. “But I am pissed off that there isn’t a mug of coffee in my hand.”
“You calm her down,” Keir said, sounding resigned. “I’ll make coffee.”
The door opened as Mairi tugged the sheet around her naked body.
“You okay?” Agnes was in dark blue jeans, beige boots, and a red sweater that made her blonde hair glow.
“New jeans?” Mairi said.
“Got them on sale.” Agnes turned so Mairi could see the back. “They make my backside look great.”
“Definitely worth the money. Do you know where a hair tie is? This mop is driving me nuts.”
Agnes picked one up from the dresser and tossed it at Mairi, who tied her hair back in a mess behind her head. At least it wasn’t in her mouth anymore.
“Do you plan on answering me?” Agnes did that toe-tapping thing she loved to do. “Are you okay?”
“I have a bad-decision hangover that I don’t think will go away with coffee and a fried breakfast.” Mairi looked up at her sister. “Is there a hangover cure for stupidity?”
“Coffee’s ready,” Keir shouted.
“He’s still here,” Mairi said. “I was hoping he’d just leave.”
Agnes gave Mairi a look that made it clear exactly how stupid she thought that comment had been. “Yes, now that he’s managed to get you back into bed, after years of trying, he’s just going to waltz out of here and get on with his life.”
Mairi stared at her sister for a moment as her cotton-wool-filled brain tried to figure out if she was speaking sarcasm. “He isn’t going to do that, is he?”
Agnes threw up her hands and stalked out of the room. “Give her coffee and wake her up before I kill her,” she ordered Keir.
A couple of seconds later, he came into the room with a large, steaming mug. He handed it to her, and Mairi clasped it in both hands, not caring if the sheet fell while she was drinking.
He brushed a stray hair behind her ear as he smiled down at her. “You okay?”
Mairi scowled at him. “Why does everybody keep asking me that?”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said dryly.
“I regret last night,” she said, laying it on the line for him.
His eyes sparkled. “No, you don’t. You regret giving in to what you wanted instead of stubbornly keeping your distance and making us both suffer.”
The fact he was right didn’t change one thing. “It won’t happen again.”
“You sure about that?” He was so inflated with arrogance that she wanted to stick a pin in him and watch him pop.
Before she could think of a cutting comeback, Keir put a hand on each side of her face and kissed her. The kiss had magical powers. It completely defused the irritation she felt, and filled the world with rainbows. When he drew away, she followed, but he just chuckled, kissed the tip of her nose and sauntered out of the room, leaving her dazed, needy and aware that all thoughts of never repeating last night had fled from her brain.
She was still staring after him when Aggie’s dulcet tones rang through the room. “Get dressed and get out here. We have a situation.”
Mairi let out a groan, gulped the coffee and lamented her life. It had been too much to hope that Agnes would get the bus home instead of flying back from Glasgow. At least if she’d come back on the bus, Mairi would have had a few more hours to deal with her monumentally stupid decision to sleep with Keir. Now she had to deal with Aggie on top of everything else. As she berated herself, her girl parts protested that the decision hadn’t been stupid. Her girl parts thought it was the best decision she’d ever made.
Sometimes Mairi hated her girl parts.
Music started outside, and someone began singing another love song.
Mairi groaned and closed her eyes. For a minute there, she’d actually forgotten about the men camped outside her home. Life was closing in on her. Between dealing with losing her sister Isobel to London, having someone hack her life and set her boys on her, and sleeping with Keir—it was all getting a bit too much. It was time to plot an escape. If she climbed out the window and ran, she’d make the ten o’clock bus to Glasgow.
The bedroom door opened, and Agnes stalked in. “Don’t even think about it. I know you’re in here plotting to run. Just get dressed and get your backside into the living room. This is your mess, but I’m going to help you clean it up.” Agnes took the mug from Mairi’s hands.
“How do you always know what I’m thinking?” And didn’t that just irritate the hell out of her.
“You’re painfully transparent,” Agnes called as the door slammed behind her.
“Yay for me,” Mairi said as she reached for her underwear.
♦♦♦
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Agnes said to Keir as she came out of the bedroom.
Keir sat at their dining table, drinking coffee and eating the pastries Agnes had brought back from Glasgow. He really needed to get some decent food sometime soon. Something with a vitamin in it would be good. Since moving into Mairi’s flat, he’d only eaten junk.
“You back Mairi into a corner and she’s liable to make a really stupid decision,” Agnes said as she leaned against the kitchen counter. “That’s her MO. Dumb decisions made on the spur of the moment under duress.”
And didn’t he know it. He was hoping that one of those dumb decisions would be to give him a second chance.
“Need more coffee,” Mairi announced as she stomped into the room.
Agnes poured a mug and put it on the table beside Keir, while Mairi slumped into a chair. Her hair wasn’t so much tied up at the back of her head as it was captured there. It looked like it was working hard to break free and would take over the planet when it did. Mairi, meanwhile, was her usual morning ray of sunshine. She scowled at Keir while she reached for the pastries. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a pink t-shirt with the words You Speak, You Die—You Have Been Warned on it. Cheery. Keir hid his grin behind his coffee mug.
“What’s the big problem?” Mairi said around a mouthful of food.
Agnes stood beside the table, staring down at the two of them, and Keir felt like he was about to be given after-school detention. She folded her arms and tapped her toe while she frowned at them.
“The problem is,” she said, “that there are two TV crews set up in the street.”
“What?” Keir put down his mug, strode to the window, and pulled back the curtain.
Sure enough, there was a van emblazoned with the Scottish Television logo right in front of his garage, and another one with BBC Scotland written on it parked beside the local shop. There were folk with cameras and interviewers with mics talking to Mairi’s men, who appeared more than happy to tell them everything they knew. As Keir watched, the woman with Scottish Television tried to interview the Wookiee. It didn’t go well.
“What the hell are the TV people doing here?” Keir let the curtain drop and headed back to the table.
“They’re saying this is a real-life version of The Bachelorette,” Agnes said. “They want to cover the process of Mairi choosing a husband and film her announcement of the winner when she reaches a decision. In other words, they want to turn this fiasco into cheap reality TV.”
“I need a rope ladder,” Mairi said. “Keir, you must have a rope ladder in the garage.”
Keir and Agnes stared at her for a moment.
“Aye,” Keir said. “Because rope ladders are considered essential equipment for a mechanic.”
“You can’t run away,” Agnes said. “It won’t solve anything.”
“Are you kidding me?” Mairi said. “It will solve everything. Without me here, there will be no woman to fight over. That means the guys, and the TV crews, will go away. Then, once they’re gone, I’ll come home and start again.”
“Being an online girlfriend?” Keir asked, because he didn’t see that happening, now that her reputation had been shot to hell by the hacker.
“There’s nothing wrong with being an online girlfriend. It’s honest work.” She stuck her nose in the air.
“I wasn’t saying that. I was wondering how you’re going work like usual business when your website is stalled, and you have thirty clients who’ll either sign up again with you immediately or drive away your business because you broke their hearts. I’m no judge of good customer service, but running away from the guys who pay you, seems to be on the ill-advised end of the scale.”
Mairi blinked at him, then narrowed her eyes. “Why are you still here? Agnes is back. I don’t need a bodyguard anymore.”
Keir ignored that and took a sip of his coffee. If she thought he was leaving now, she was crazier than he’d ever imagined.
“He’s right,” Agnes said. “You can’t run away. For a start, you don’t have the money to live somewhere else for a long period of time, and we have no idea how long these guys will camp out here waiting for you to get back. Secondly, there are TV crews out there. Even if you run, your picture will be plastered all over Scotland, and with that hair, you don’t exactly blend with the crowd. As soon as somebody spots you, it will be all over social media that they’ve found the runaway bachelorette. And then these guys will pack up their caravans and come after you.”
“They have to give up at some point,” Mairi said, sounding painfully hopeful.
“You said yourself it could take months,” Agnes pointed out.
“Yes, but now I’m choosing denial.” Mairi reached for another pastry.
“Talk some sense into her,” Agnes told Keir.
Keir wasn’t sure he was the right man for the job. Sense would mean Mairi never giving him a second chance, because which sensible woman would do that after a guy took her virginity, then walked out on her and straight into prison?
“Rusty, this can be over in ten minutes. All you need to do is marry me.”
“I’d rather spend my life as Donald Trump’s hairdresser.” She glared at him.
“You are deeply disturbed,” Keir said.
“That doesn’t help!” Agnes threw up her hands in disgust as the front door opened and Donna rushed in.
“I’m going to be on TV.” She seemed shocked at the prospect.
Both sisters groaned.
“What did you do?” Agnes demanded as Donna fell onto the couch.
“Nothing.” Donna brushed her strawberry blonde hair out of her face. Unlike her sisters, she was dressed in work clothes—gray trousers, black shirt, black shoes. “I just answered the questions they asked me.”
“You gave them an interview?” Agnes strode to the sofa to loom over Donna.
Donna’s cheeks went red. “They asked me, and I couldn’t say no. Honestly, I tried, but the word wouldn’t come out of my mouth.”
Seeing as Donna was famous for her inability to say no, this was not a surprise to anyone in the room.
“What did they ask you?” Agnes said through clenched teeth.
Donna wet her lips and gave Mairi a nervous glance. “They asked me what Mairi was looking for in a husband.”
“And you told them?” Mairi was on her feet. “Couldn’t you have said I wasn’t looking for one at all and this was one huge, chaotic misunderstanding?”
“Well, yeah.” Donna bit her bottom lip. “I suppose I could have.”
Keir held up a hand. “Wait. I want to know what you think Mairi is looking for in a husband.”
“I, um, was nervous,” Donna said, her cheeks even redder now. “I don’t know what you want in a husband now. All I could do was tell them what I did know.”
Mairi paled and sat back down with a thump. “You didn’t.”
“What?” Keir and Agnes said in unison.
“I’m sorry, Mairi, I don’t deal well with pressure, and there was a camera pointed at me. That made it worse,” Donna said.
“What?” Keir and Agnes said, again at the same time, only louder.
Mairi groaned and put her head in her hands. “When we were kids, we wrote lists of all the attributes our perfect husbands would have, and this freak with the perfect memory never bloody forgets these things.”
“I am so sorry,” Donna said again. “It was the first thing that came to mind.”
“I wrote that list when I was thirteen,” Mairi wailed.
“Oh, this I’ve got to hear,” Keir said as he folded his arms. He’d given up trying not to grin. This was just too funny.
“Okay,” Agnes said. “Everybody get a grip. This can’t be too bad. Other than making Mairi look stupid on national TV, there can’t be anything on a list written by a thirteen-year-old that will make this situation worse. Right?”
Mairi groaned and rested her forehead on the table.
“What’s on the list, Donna?” Keir said through a wide grin.
Donna looked a bit worried about answering, but when Agnes started to tap her toe, she got right to it.
“Good hair, great taste in t-shirts, likes listening to McFly, can sing like Danny Jones, has a dog, plays in a band, buys her chocolate, smart but not a show-off, wants to see the world, is kind and funny and...” She gave Mairi a panicked look.
“Spit it out,” Agnes snapped.
“And doesn’t pick his nose in public,” Donna said in a rush.
“I was thirteen,” Mairi said. “There was a boy in my art class who was always picking his nose. It was gross.”
Keir grinned at her. “I don’t sing like Danny, but I can get a dog, and I never, ever pick my nose in public.”
Mairi narrowed her eyes at him, her head still rested on the table. “Why are you still here? Really. I want to know.”
“I’m here to protect you from the hordes of McFly fans who’re going to rush the building in the hope of convincing you that they’ll never pick their noses in public.”
“I hate you.”
“You’ll get over it.”
“Okay,” Agnes said loudly. “Did you tell the reporter that Mairi wrote the list when she was thirteen?”
“No.” Donna’s shoulders slumped.
“Did you tell them anything else?” Agnes said.
“No. That was all they asked me.” Donna looked up at her sisters. “Should I go downstairs and tell them that was when she was thirteen?”
“No!” three people shouted at once.
The karaoke speaker hissed outside in the street, then squealed loudly, makin
g everyone wince. “Mairi, I want you to know that I never pick my nose. It’s unhygienic. You never have to worry about this with me. In the meantime, this one is for you.” Then the speaker burst into a bad rendition of McFly’s “5 Colours in Her Hair.”
“Bet I’m looking pretty damn good round about now,” Keir said to Mairi, who closed her eyes and put her arms over her head.
“Make it stop,” Mairi shouted.
Agnes stormed to the window, threw it wide and shouted, “Enough!”
There was instant silence. Agnes was about to close the window when a small drone flew through it and headed straight for Mairi. There was a red ribbon attached to the drone, and a small box hung from the ribbon. It floated across the room and hovered over the table where Mairi was still lying with her head under her arms.
“Uh, Rusty, you need to deal with that,” Keir said.
She looked up, saw the drone and, with a groan, reached for the box. To no one’s surprise, it contained an engagement ring.
“Is that a real diamond?” Agnes said in awe.
“I think so.” Mairi looked at her sister. “I get to keep it, right? I mean, even if I say no, I still get to keep it. That’s the rule for this proposal thing, isn’t it?”
“No.” Agnes glared at her. “You don’t get to keep it.”
Mairi pouted and pulled a note from the box. Keir leaned over to read it.
Marry me. I won’t annoy you. John.
“Straight to the point,” Keir said. “I like it. He’s a keeper.”
Chapter 17
Of course, being the twenty-first century, the story of Arness’ very own bachelorette broke on the internet long before the evening news. Which meant the spectators started to arrive. Mairi looked out of her living room window to find the street in front of the building filled with people—and TV vans. Now there weren’t just representatives from Scotland’s news, but the breakfast shows had sent staff up from England as well. Edna’s shop was doing a roaring trade, and Mairi bet the evil old dragon would try to prolong the siege just to make more cash.
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