Rage

by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

  “You’ve slept with three men,” Donna pointed out. “Including Callum. And the only reason you didn’t finish school is because of Jack.”

  Isobel ignored her. “I’m one of those women on daytime TV. On those chat shows where they use polygraphs to find out if the boyfriend is sleeping with his best friend’s wife. I’m one of those people. I mean it. What else would you call a person who has children to three different partners?”

  “Unlucky in love?” Donna said.

  “A slut?” Agnes said.

  “Mr President,” Mairi said.

  There was a second of silence, before they all burst out laughing. Isobel sat back down at the table with her sisters and pulled the rest of the chocolate cake towards her.

  “Guess I have no other choice but to wait and see if baby number three is on the way.”

  “To be fair,” Donna said, “babies one and two are totally awesome.”

  “There is that,” Isobel said. But she wasn’t encouraged. She knew nothing about Callum McKay, other than what he ordered at the shop, and what the rumours said about him. She didn’t know if he’d be another deadbeat dad who ran out on his kid the first chance he got. Did she even want him in her children’s life? He was sexy, and terrifying, and dangerous, but was he honourable? Probably not. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have jumped her in his hallway and he wouldn’t be hiding in Arness.

  “This is a mess,” she said around a mouthful of cake.

  “Aye, and it gets worse every day.” Agnes reached for the pot of tea to top them all up.

  “I don’t like any of this,” Donna said. “I think we should pool our money and move away. Start again, somewhere new, together.”

  “We don’t have a lot,” Mairi said, “but it would be enough to get us all settled. I’ve always fancied living in a city. You know, somewhere where there’s work and I could get a job where I didn’t talk rubbish to men online all day long.”

  “You love talking rubbish online,” Agnes said. “We’d need to move somewhere cheap, though; a city would be expensive. I hear Wales is cheap. We could probably buy a whole town there for a couple of pounds.”

  “Oh, I hear Welsh guys are hot,” Mairi said with a grin. “I can move to Wales.”

  “Mmm, probably best if we kept away from the hot men,” Agnes said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Our eldest sister can’t keep her pants on. We wouldn’t want to exhaust her by providing too many options.”

  “Funny, oh so funny,” Isobel said.

  Isobel’s three sisters reached over and covered her hands with theirs.

  “Whatever happens,” Donna said, “we’re in this together. You won’t be alone.”

  “I love you guys,” Isobel said as she fought back tears.

  “We know,” Agnes said.

  “Aye,” Mairi said, “we love you too. Even though you’re a loose woman. Maybe one of us should spend the night while Callum is here? Just to make sure you keep your underwear on. I vote for Agnes.”

  Agnes threw a tea cosy at her head.

  There were four women waiting for Callum when he returned to Isobel’s house. Four women, and one very angry teenage boy. Jack Sinclair stood at the bottom of the staircase, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and his dark eyes filled with resentment. Callum didn’t blame him one bit.

  “Later,” Callum said to the boy, who nodded tersely. They understood each other.

  “Later what?” Isobel’s worried gaze flicked between the two of them.

  “Never mind that,” the woman beside her said. “I’m Mairi. I’m the youngest sister. And we want to know if you plan on keeping your pants on overnight, or if someone has to stay here to chaperone?”

  “Mairi!” Isobel spun on her sister.

  “What?” Mairi said. “I’m just saying what everyone is thinking.”

  “Not me,” the one beside her muttered. “I was thinking that he looks like he could kill a man with his bare hands.” Her eyes shot to Callum’s, and she blushed. “Which is good. You’ll keep them safe. Right?”

  “Donna,” Isobel said.

  For a second Callum thought it was a rhetorical question, but Isobel’s three sisters seemed to be waiting for an answer. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “So you’re not here to sleep with Isobel, then?” Mairi said. “Just to clarify.”

  A low growling noise came from Jack, and Isobel smacked her hand over her sister’s mouth. “Ignore her. Her mouth works independently from her brain.” Still holding her sister’s mouth, Isobel gestured to the angry-looking blonde. “That’s Agnes. The only sister I have who knows how to keep her mouth shut.” She looked back at Mairi. “Stop licking my hand! Are you going to stop talking or do I have to tape your trap shut?”

  Mairi nodded and Isobel removed her hand. Which didn’t make any sense, because technically she’d agreed to both options. Callum decided that mental health issues ran in the family.

  “How exactly do you plan on protecting my sister and her kids?” Agnes asked. “There are lots of rumours about you. We don’t know what’s true. Are you even able to protect them?”

  “I take it back,” Isobel said to the ceiling. “None of my sisters know when to shut up.”

  “I was an SAS soldier. I can handle myself in an altercation. Is that enough information for you?” He kept his eyes on Agnes, who wasn’t the least bit intimidated by him. It wasn’t a reaction he came across often, and he respected it.

  “Are you involved in anything illegal?” Agnes said.

  “Aggie,” Isobel almost wailed.

  “No,” Callum told Agnes. “Unlike you four.”

  Agnes cocked her head in acknowledgment. “Do you have any criminal convictions? Are you on any watch lists? Were you kicked out of the armed forces?”

  “No.”

  “Kill me know,” Isobel said as she sat on the steps beside her son. “You might as well. I’m going to die of humiliation anyway.”

  “Oh, get a grip,” Mairi said, “she’s only asking what we all want to know. Although there is one more question I think is important.” She looked up at Callum. “Will you take responsibility for your kid, if Isobel is pregnant, or do you plan to run like every other rat bastard we know?”

  “Out!” Isobel was on her feet and storming towards the door. She threw it open and waved her sisters towards it. “Out now. He answered your questions. You don’t have to worry. Now leave.”

  When no one moved fast enough, Isobel came up behind them and started shoving her sisters towards the door. They complained and shouted more questions, but Isobel was ruthless. She slammed the door after them.

  “No more chocolate cake for you!” someone shouted, but then Callum heard their footsteps echo down the path.

  “Interesting family,” Callum said when Isobel turned back to him.

  “Don’t start.” She strode past him and into the living room, Callum and Jack following her. “This is the couch.” She pointed at it, in case he was confused. “It isn’t very big, but you’ll have to make do. There are only two bedrooms in this house. I share one with Sophie, and Jack has the other.”

  “I don’t share,” Jack snapped.

  That wasn’t a surprise. “The couch is fine. I’ve slept on worse.” Callum put his bag on it. He didn’t plan to sleep anyway. He planned to stay up and keep watch. He glanced around the room—it was small, with only a couch, an armchair, a wooden coffee table and a chest of drawers with a TV on top of it. Heating was a cheap gas bottle heater, which couldn’t do much to warm the place during a Scottish winter. On the walls were photos of Isobel with her kids and her sisters. They were in mismatched frames, but in each and every one, they looked happy.

  “I’ll get bedding.” Isobel gave them a worried look. “Be nice to each other while I’m gone.”

  Jack and Callum stared at her until she left the room, muttering about men as she went. As soon as she was out of earshot, Callum turned to Jack.

  “Let’s hear it.”


  “You mess with my mother, I’ll mess with you.”

  Callum was impressed. The boy stated his threat as though it were fact. There was no posturing. No emotional outrage. No inflection at all. Only confidence.

  “How are you going to do that, exactly? I have a lot of years and a tonne of experience on you.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll find a way.”

  Callum nodded. He had no doubt that the boy would do exactly what he said he would. “Fair enough. I don’t intend to mess with your mum.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. This time I’m big enough to do something about it.” Jack took a step closer to Callum. The boy was almost tall enough to look him in the eye, and he hadn’t finished growing yet. There was evidence of muscle building, too. In a few years, Jack Sinclair would make a formidable foe. “Don’t think you can use her for sex. She isn’t some cheap night out.”

  Callum stilled. “Do people say that about her?” If they did, he was going to put a stop to it pretty damn fast.

  Jack searched Callum’s eyes, looking for something he obviously found, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. “She has two kids to two fathers. Both men ran out on her. People talk.”

  Callum’s fists clenched. “They talk to you?” About his mother?

  Jack shrugged, like it was nothing, but he couldn’t quite keep the emotion from his face. It wasn’t nothing. It was a huge bloody deal. “I handle it. But people will talk if you’re here. And don’t think they won’t know. Someone will notice. Rumours will spread. You need to be gone before that happens.”

  “I plan to be gone in the morning.” Although, for some reason, the words seemed to stick in his throat as they came out.

  Jack nodded and his eyes hardened, but not before Callum saw a flash of vulnerability that reminded him that Jack was still very much a boy. “And if there’s a kid on the way?”

  Callum opened his mouth to say that he’d never turned his back on a responsibility in his life. Then he remembered walking out on Benson Security and closed it again.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jack sneered. “You’re just like the rest.”

  There was nothing Callum could say to that. He couldn’t make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. He couldn’t tell the kid that he was a reliable bet when he knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t offer him anything at all.

  “Let’s see what the future brings first,” Callum said, and heard exactly how pathetic he sounded.

  “Sure.” Jack turned away. “Whatever.”

  Callum felt the boy’s obvious dismissal like a blow. He wasn’t entirely sure why Jack’s opinion of him mattered, when the opinions of most people didn’t, but he had to bite his tongue to stop from making promises he couldn’t keep. To stop from trying to convince the boy that he was a better man than he knew himself to be.

  “Here you go.” Isobel walked into the room, her arms full of folded bedding, and looked at them both. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Jack said. “I’m going to bed.”

  He kissed his mother’s cheek, which, from the look of shock on her face, wasn’t something he did every night, and then sauntered from the room. Isobel placed the bedding on the couch, and her fingertips brushed the spot where Jack had kissed.

  “You have a good boy,” Callum said.

  “I know,” she whispered before clearing her throat. “I’ll show you around.”

  “Good. I need to get a feel for the place. And I want to make sure the house is secured.”

  “I thought you might. Do you need to go upstairs? Sophie’s asleep, but we could peek into the room if we’re quiet.”

  “I want to check all the windows and doors.” He’d already noticed that she had no alarm system and that she didn’t even own a dog. The lane leading up to her house was only lit by one low-wattage orange lamp, and the path to her front door was flanked by overgrown bushes. It was a security nightmare.

  “Callum.” She hesitated in the doorway. “I know you didn’t want any of this. But thank you. I mean it. Thank you for being here tonight.”

  She looked so earnest and vulnerable standing there with her hair wild about her face, and that oversized purple cardigan pulled tight about her. She looked like she was drowning in the thing. Or hiding in it. And Callum had never seen a sexier sight. Without thinking about it, he took a step towards her. Her eyes went dark and the tip of her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips.

  Callum had never wanted to taste a woman more than he wanted Isobel right then. Her gaze flickered between his eyes and his lips, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. He knew she was feeling the same intense pull.

  “Callum?” she whispered.

  For one second, it felt like time had stilled and there was nothing else in the world except him and Isobel. He knew, without a doubt, that if he kissed her right then, she would return the fire he felt burning inside of him. He knew she wouldn’t reject him, wouldn’t turn away. He knew because he could see the same desperate need in her eyes as he felt growing inside of him.

  But they couldn’t.

  He took a step back. There were tremors running throughout his body. The need to touch her, to take her, was so great that it almost brought him to his knees. But he couldn’t lose his mind over her. Not again.

  “Show me the house.” His voice was husky and low, a declaration of what he desperately wanted, but a reminder of what he wouldn’t allow.

  She swallowed hard, her cheeks flushing a pretty pink. “Of course.” Her dark eyes met his. “I… We… I mean…”

  “No.” Callum strode towards the doorway, making her follow him. “Show me the house. There is nothing else. There can’t be.”

  For a second, he thought she might argue. Instead, she nodded and followed him into the kitchen. Callum felt strangely bereft. He knew there was no future for them. Their brief past had been a huge mistake. And yet…and yet her soft scent had him mesmerised, and the memory of her body pressed to his, had him in agony. He suspected that Isobel Sinclair had managed something that morning that no other person had ever managed with Callum. She’d managed to get inside of him. And he was very much afraid she could never be removed.

  CHAPTER 10

  CALLUM WAS GONE BY THE time Isobel got up the following morning. The bedding sat on the couch where she’d put it, untouched. There was a tersely-written note on top of it.

  Investigating.

  It was followed by his cell number. He didn’t say whether she could call him, he’d just given her the number. Isobel wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she tucked the number into the front pocket of her jeans.

  “He’s done a runner already, then,” Jack said as he came into the room.

  The look of pure disgust on his face made Isobel ache for him. All of the male figures in his life so far had been unreliable. Of course he’d assume Callum was the same. And Isobel didn’t know Callum well enough to reassure Jack that he was different.

  “I told you he wasn’t staying. He only spent the night because I was worried about sleeping with a body in the garage.”

  She shivered, then pushed the thought into the back of her mind, locking it behind the door labelled denial in big red letters. Her denial closet was beginning to bulge, and Isobel knew there was a limit to how much more of her life she could pretend didn’t exist.

  “We don’t need him. If you’re worried, you can rely on me. You should have told me. I would have watched over you and Soph last night.”

  Isobel looked at her son with a mixture of pride and sadness. “I know you would have. But you shouldn’t have to. I don’t want you to grow up too fast.” Like she’d had to.

  “Mum, I hate to break it to you, but I’m already there. In a few months I can leave school, get a job, drive, get married if I want to. You need to let me help. I can’t stand around and do nothing. This is my family too. You. Sophie. You’re it.”

  He was so earnest, so sure of his own abilities, and he wasn’t even fully gro
wn yet. Memories of caring for him as a baby, when she was the same age as he was now, came flooding back. She’d been so young. So desperate. So hopeful. She remembered the long hours trying to work part time and take care of him. She remembered her mum helping out as much as she could, behind her dad’s back. It still smarted. Over sixteen years and her dad had yet to say one word to her. She’d shamed him coming home pregnant at fifteen and he’d never forgiven her.

  “I’ll make more effort to include you, okay?” It was the best she could do. “Now hurry up and get ready or you’ll miss the school bus.” And she didn’t have the petrol money to get him into Campbeltown if he did.

  “I’m ready.” He picked up his bag. “Be careful with this Callum guy. We don’t know him, Mum, and the rumours around school are heavy. I’m not sure he’s someone you can trust.”

  “I know.”

  Although she wasn’t sure there was anyone she could trust. She was just as leery as her son when it came to bringing a man into her life. It was best for all of them if she kept Callum at a distance.

  With a wave, Jack headed for the door, stopping briefly to say goodbye to Sophie, who was watching the Wiggles in the living room and dancing along.

  Isobel was washing up the breakfast dishes when Mairi let herself in the back door. As usual, she was texting.

  “Hey you,” Mairi said. “Did you manage to keep your knickers on last night?”

  Isobel threw a wet cloth at Mairi and it smacked her on the forehead.

  “That was uncalled for,” Mairi said. She stopped looking at her phone long enough to notice Sophie wasn’t in the room. “Where’s the monster? I thought we’d hang out at my place while you’re at work. Agnes has gone to Glasgow for her exam, which means Sophie and I can make a mess without disturbing grumpy bum. Plus, I get the heebie-jeebies thinking about the guy in the freezer so I don’t want to spend the day here.”

  “She’s watching TV.” Isobel dried her hands. “I’m hoping Callum will have a plan for moving the body later today. I’d feel a whole lot better knowing it wasn’t here.”