Magenta blinked hard before she gave a wicked little smile.
"Been a long time since I saw you this wound up," she said.
Kirsty felt the wind go out of her. It had been years since she'd felt wound up about anything. That sort of passion belonged in her old life. She worried her bottom lip for a moment as she felt the will to fight drain out of her.
"You okay?" Magenta asked.
"Fine," Kirsty said. "I just have to figure out how I'm going to stop Betty's Knicker Emporium stealing what little business we do get."
Magenta's smile took on a pitying turn. Kirsty looked away from her.
"I'll be in my office," she told her. "Working on a marketing plan."
With that, she fled.
Lake woke with a grin the following morning. This was fun. He should have made his way to Scotland months ago instead of wandering around Europe annoying his old army mates. Although, to be fair, that had turned out quite well for him. But it wasn't as much fun as playing lingerie war in Scotland.
He folded the bedding on the couch into a neat pile, arranged his belongings symmetrically and went into the tiny kitchen to make coffee. Rainne was still asleep in the only bedroom; he could hear her gentle snores echoing down the hall. As the coffee brewed he examined his surroundings. Faded wallpaper that screamed 1970, furniture that been attacked by cats at some point and orange Formica everywhere. He'd lived in worse. If he was going to be in town any longer than the three months he needed to be there, he'd have put flat renovation on his to-do list. But for three months he could live with orange patterned carpet and old Bay City Rollers posters.
As the coffee brewed he flicked open his cell phone and dialled his army mate.
"Got my money yet?" John said cheerily when he answered the call.
"It's coming," Lake said with a grin.
"It'd better be," John said. "I have other guys begging me to get in on this deal. If you don't want to partner with me on this, let me know. I'll pick one of them."
"Go ahead," Lake said as he poured himself a mug of thick black coffee.
There was muttering that made him grin.
"I need you to send me my kit," Lake told his friend.
"You working?" He could almost hear John's ears perk up.
"I'm waging war," Lake told him.
There was a sigh.
"I know that tone. You've found something that amuses you and now you're farting around instead of focusing on the plan."
"Are you going to send my kit or not?"
"Sure, because I can see why you'd need night-vision goggles for selling knickers," John said. "Look, stop messing around in Scotland. You're needed here. We've got business piling up. I've already paid a designer to make the business cards—Prentice and Benson, International Security."
"You mean Benson and Prentice," Lake corrected.
John ignored him.
"This is what we talked about, remember? You, me, doing what we do best. Only this time we get money and fame." He paused. "And some of those tall, sexy women that hang around with billionaires."
Lake barked out a laugh.
"If they're hanging out with billionaires, they aren't going to go for the hired help, are they?"
"Not hired help. Highly skilled security consultants," John said snootily. "Plus, it's the trend to go for the bodyguard. Even Heidi Klum is doing it."
"Have you been reading women's magazines again? What did I tell you about that? It shrinks your..."
"Yeah. This coming from the guy who's selling pretty pink undies."
"Only until I get this shop in the black again. Then it's a quick sale and on to better things. I won't be here long enough for anything to shrink."
"Three months," John reminded him. "If you don't have the money to buy into the partnership by New Year's Eve, I'm going to have to offer it to someone who does and that would break my heart."
"Yeah, I'm sure it would," Lake said with a grin. "Send my gear," he ordered.
There was a grunt at the other end of the line. Lake wasn't worried. They both knew that John would be hard pressed to find someone with better skills than Lake. But that didn't change a deadline. Whether Lake was in or out, the business would have to start in the new year—there were clients waiting.
As he hung up the phone, the door to the tiny kitchen crashed open and Betty tottered in. Lake raised an eyebrow slightly.
"You still have a key?" He reached for another mug.
"I own the building. You lot just lease the shop," Betty said as she thumped a plastic carrier bag on the counter.
"You and I are going to have a little talk later about what exactly owning the business means," he told her as he handed her a mug of coffee.
If Betty was bothered by the implied threat, it didn't show. She sniffed the coffee and scrunched up her nose.
"This isn't tea." She handed back the mug. "What do you think I am, a Yank? Make me a cup of tea."
Lake flicked on the kettle. He'd been a warrior long enough to know that picking your battles was the key to victory.
"I brought breakfast," Betty said.
She opened the plastic bag and the room was filled with the smell of hot, spicy meat pies. She thrust a Scotch pie at him.
"That's a heart attack waiting to happen," he told her.
"That's the kind of rubbish I get from your sister." She mimicked Rainne's voice. "My body is a temple." Betty rolled her eyes.
Lake took the pie.
"I didn't say I wasn't going to eat it," he said. "But you can't live on this crap."
Betty scoffed.
"I'm eighty-six, son, and I've had a pie a day for as long as I can remember. You bloody well can live on these."
She took a huge bite to make her point. Lake smiled slightly as he made Betty a cup of tea. They took their breakfast into the living room.
"So, what's the plan for today?" Betty said.
She plopped into an old armchair that seemed perfectly moulded to fit her form.
"Paint. Decorate. Buy better underwear."
"There's nothing wrong with my underwear, son."
"Maybe not on you, but women who want to have sex may have a problem with it."
"Cheeky wee fart, I'll have you know that there's nothing wrong with my sex life. Why, just the other day..."
Lake held up a hand.
"You tell me anything about your sex life, I mean even one word, and I'll bury your body where no one will find it."
Betty grumbled into her mug of tea. He was glad he couldn't make out any of the words.
"One more thing," he said. "We're changing the sign."
Betty struggled to sit up straighter. It looked like the chair was trying to swallow her whole.
"You can't change the sign. It's in the contract. My nephew is a lawyer in Edinburgh. He says there are no holes in it. It's tin."
"You mean ironclad."
Lake kept his face blank. He wanted to grin widely, but was worried Betty would perceive that as some form of affirmation. In all honesty, he was a little impressed. In another life she would have made a great leader of a terrorist cell. Or a dictator of a small country.
"Who cares what metal it is?" She waved her knobbly fingers at him. "You can't change my sign. Aren't you changing enough anyway? We ripped out half the shop's fixtures last night. What are we going to do for furniture? What will we hang all this new underwear on? Have you thought about that, genius?"
"As a matter of fact, I have. The new fittings are coming from Glasgow in a couple of weeks, and we are changing the sign. Take it up with your nephew if you like, but the one we have now is going in the bin. Once we're through with this place women will be queuing in the street and I'll get my money back."
"What's the new decoration going to be, hotshot?" Betty ignored the comment about her precious sign, which made him wonder what else she was planning in her tiny head.
"Male. We're going to focus on what's unusual about this shop—me," Lake said. "It's the male p
erspective. Something Eye Candy can't provide."
"It must be lovely to be so full of yourself."
"You should know."
Betty gave him a wide, toothless grin, which made him wonder where her teeth had gone.
Rainne wandered into the living room. She was dressed in Care Bear pyjamas and was rubbing her eyes.
"Why is Kirsty open this early?" she said before yawning.
Lake looked at Betty.
"She was shut when I came in."
Rainne plopped down on the couch, upsetting Lake's perfectly folded bedding. He clenched his jaw to stop from telling her off. He had to keep reminding himself that she was a grownup—even if she didn't act like one.
"There's people out there now. Looks like Kirsty is giving away food."
"Cake?" Betty struggled out of the chair and practically ran to the window.
"I knew it," she said. "She's made fairy cakes." She turned to Lake. "She makes the best wee cakes in Invertary. Rubbish at loaves, but great cakes. I better go over the road and see what she's up to."
"I don't think so," Lake told her. "You have a tendency to make things worse, and that's bad strategy. You never send in the man who will escalate the conflict."
"Your lips are moving, son, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah. There's no war. The only conflict I see is the one with me over my sign. This is the most boring war I've ever been in. I thought being on your side would be interesting. But now that Kirsty has cake, I think I would be better off on her side."
"You can't change sides," Lake told her as he shrugged into his jacket. "As you keep telling me, you own the building and you have some sort of dubious role in the business. So suck it up. I'm doing recon on this one."
Betty's shoulders slumped before she fell back into her chair. She pulled another pie out of her handbag.
"At least bring me back a cake," she said as she rooted around in her bag. A second later she popped her teeth back into her mouth and took a bite of her pie.
CHAPTER TWO
Kirsty had a plan. It wasn't brilliant, but it was workable. As far as she could see, she had a small window of opportunity before Betty's shop reopened. In that time, she had to make as many sales as possible. Which meant the meagre amount of money she had in her account was now marked for advertising. It wasn't enough to make an impact. Heck, it was barely enough to buy an advert in The Invertary Standard. She'd spent most of the night awake and worrying about how to make her money stretch and attract the attention she needed. In the end, Kirsty resorted to a tried-and-true method for drumming up business—give away cake. It was an unwritten town law that the women of Invertary would do pretty much anything for cake.
"What's this, then?" asked Agnes Patterson.
Her five-year-old twin boys had stopped talking long enough to stuff their mouths with a cake each.
"Advertising," Kirsty said with the brightest smile she could muster at eight in the morning. It had seemed like such a good idea to get out early and catch people on their way to work and school, but after three hours' sleep it was already wearing a little thin.
"If you come back to the shop with the leaflet," she said, "you'll get a twenty percent discount on the new season's range."
Kirsty handed her one of the leaflets she'd printed during the night and pointed to her newly revamped window display—complete with skimpy Victoria's Secret lingerie.
"It's pretty, Kirsty, but really—when would I wear it? It's not like I get to wear anything nice these days. I put on that green silk dress I have for church a couple of weeks ago and by the end of the service it was covered in mucky handprints, and Michael had drawn on the hem in blue marker."
Little Michael didn't appear to be bothered by that fact. Agnes, on the other hand, looked like "bothered" was her permanent state. Her hair was tied back into a messy bun, there was no makeup on her face and she'd been wearing the same uniform of black T-shirt and blue jeans for the past five years. Everything about her screamed practical. She might as well have had "no sex ever again" printed on the T-shirt.
"You deserve to treat yourself," Kirsty said lamely.
"Maybe I'll get a nice box of chocolates for when the boys are in bed," Agnes said as she flicked a glance at the window. "Underwear that pretty would be wasted on me."
"That's because it isn't for you," Lake said as he came up behind Agnes.
Kirsty glared at him, infusing the look with as much animosity as she could muster while holding a platter of iced pink cupcakes.
"I'm sorry," Agnes stuttered. "Are you talking to me?"
Her eyes went wide as soon as she saw Lake. Then her cheeks flushed. Kirsty waited for the woman to swoon. For some bizarre reason she felt like giving Agnes a quick kick in the back of her knee.
"I'm Lake Benson," he said as he stuck out a hand. "I own the lingerie shop over the road."
Agnes practically passed out as she held Lake's hand. It took all of Kirsty's self-control not to shout "get a grip" at the woman.
"Betty's shop?" Agnes said.
"We're renovating. Changing the name. There will be a launch soon."
He raised an eyebrow in Kirsty's direction. She assumed it was to remind her of the challenge. She narrowed her eyes at him. If there weren't potential customers around she'd have given him an earful of just what she thought of his stupid shop and his stupid war.
"As for the underwear, you don't buy it for you. You buy it for your husband."
Kirsty had heard enough.
"Rubbish," she told him. "Women buy lingerie for themselves." She turned to Agnes. "You wear it to make yourself feel sexy, to make you feel beautiful. That's why you buy it."
Lake stepped towards Kirsty. That calm demeanour of his never shifted, but his eyes sparkled at her, letting her know how much she amused him.
"But." He lowered his voice. It was deep and intimate. "Don't you feel sexier, feel more beautiful, knowing that someone is going to see you in it?" He took another step towards her. "Knowing that someone will touch you in it?" He inclined his head towards her. "Knowing that someone will want to see you out of it?"
Kirsty swallowed hard. Agnes cleared her throat loudly. Kirsty felt her cheeks flush against her will.
"When did you say you open again?" Agnes said in a breathless voice Kirsty hadn't heard her use before.
Lake smiled slightly. It was smug. He turned to Agnes.
"Couple of weeks." He flashed her a movie star grin that made Kirsty suck in a breath, even though she knew he was faking it. "I hope I'll see you there."
Agnes was nodding so hard it must have caused brain damage.
"Wonderful," Lake told her, oozing false charm.
Kirsty elbowed her way between the two of them, biting her words as the twins helped themselves to another cake each.
"In the meantime, don't forget to use that voucher. The deal isn't running forever and you wouldn't want to miss out."
Agnes's eyes flicked from the leaflet she had clutched in her fist to the store window, then to Lake. She blushed again.
"I'll be seeing you," she told Kirsty with solemn certainty.
As she herded her children towards the primary school, she actually fanned herself. When Kirsty turned towards Lake, he was leaning casually against her front window munching on a cake he'd stolen when she wasn't looking.
"What are you doing over here? Shouldn't you be over there scheming?"
"I'm all done with the scheming for today. Now I need to paint some walls."
Kirsty puffed her fringe out of her eyes. It was time for a trim, but who knew when she would fit that in? Another reason to be annoyed with Lake Benson.
"You thought you'd come spy on me first?"
Lake did that eyebrow raise thing that she assumed made him feel like he was James Bond.
"You need to look up the definition of spying. There's nothing covert going on here."
Lake reached for another cake. Kirsty snatched them out of the way. He smiled a little, making her stomach
clench.
"I like you, Kirsty Campbell," he told her. "You're the most fun I've had in a long time."
"See, that's my point exactly. This isn't fun for me."
"No?" He pushed away from the window and sauntered towards her. He leaned in to whisper in her ear. "It could be, Kirsty. It could be a lot of fun for you. Trust me on that."
Her jaw hung open as she felt his breath on her skin. Then he was gone. Taking two more cupcakes with him.
"Honestly, Kirsty love, there isn't any story here. Maybe we should just run your advert and leave the editorial for another day."
Kirsty chewed on her lower lip as she glanced around her office. The pity in the local newspaper editor's eyes made bile form in her stomach.
"No, we need the coverage," she said. "There must be an angle we can work."
He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his overlong black hair, making it stand up in odd places.
"We could write about this lingerie war, that's interesting."
"And pointless. It will give Betty's shop just as much exposure as mine. Why, exactly, should I pay for that?"
Unconsciously, Malcolm patted his beer belly to help him think. It'd been a rumour in Invertary that his brain was stored in his gut and needed the stimulation.
"How about the 'ex-model makes good' angle?" he said at last. "We can talk about how far you've come since the accident and how well the shop is doing now."
Kirsty shook her head as she fingered the string of papier-mâché beads that sat in a bowl on her desk. They were the last tangible item from her previous life and a bitter reminder of all she had lost.
"It's old news. Nothing that the town doesn't already know. Honestly, Malcolm, if the shop was doing well I wouldn't be sitting here begging you for a write-up. I wouldn't be jumping through Lake Benson's hoops either."
"I can't very well write that your business is struggling and you're desperate for customers."
"At least that would be honest."
"Readers don't want honest, Kirsty—they want sensationalist."
She pursed her lips grimly. That was something she did know.
Lingerie Wars (The Invertary books) Page 2