“It was the stabbing,” Josh said. “It changed his life, and he realized he didn’t want to die old and alone. He had an epiphany.”
Matt snorted. “He didn’t have an epiphany. He had morphine. A man doesn’t decide he wants a relationship just because he gets stabbed.”
As usual, they were getting off track. Mitch held up a hand to get their attention. “Even though Dr. Phil over there thinks my relationship is some form of PTSD—”
“Dude,” Josh interrupted. “You don’t have a relationship. You have booty calls. That’s why we’re here.”
“—I just want more of a commitment from Jodie than hit-and-run sex.”
“Can’t we Google the answer to wooing Jodie?” Matt said. “There’s got to be a site somewhere that lists ways to romance a woman. I’m sure all you need to do is buy her some flowers and chocolate then declare undying love. Women love that crap.”
If only it were that simple. “Romantic gestures won’t work. Jodie hates them.”
“Women say that, but they don’t mean it,” Flynn said. “It’s a trap.”
“You’re all idiots,” Lake said, and he wasn’t wrong. “Mitch can’t do what you guys did. It wouldn’t work for him. He needs to go with his strengths. He needs to formulate a plan of attack and treat this like another business deal he’s putting together. He’s known for his sharp negotiation skills and for getting what he wants. Do the same with Jodie. Research. Plan. Execute. That’s the way to go. Preparation wins the war.”
The men stared at him for a few minutes, dumbstruck by the volume of words that had just come out of his mouth.
“How many sentences was that?” Josh looked around at the others. “Ten? Twelve? I think that’s a new record.”
Grunt, or Samuel Dayton to those who took their lives into their own hands by using his given name, strode up to the table. The American was built like a tank, used even fewer syllables than Lake and was wrapped around the finger of Matt’s younger sister Claire.
He slapped a folder down in front of Mitch.
“What’s that?” Josh reached for it, but Mitch smacked his hand away.
“It’s a background report on Jodie. I need all the help I can get.”
“As a cop,” Matt said. “I’d like to point out that you are seriously skirting the stalker laws.”
“As a lawyer,” Mitch said. “I’d like to point out that I have a degree in skirting the law.”
With a shrug that said he’d tried, Matt turned to his brother-in-law. “You staying for breakfast?”
“Claire’s pregnant,” was Grunt’s reply.
“Claire’s been pregnant for weeks,” Flynn said. “She’ll be pregnant for a whole lot longer before the babies pop out. You’ve got time to eat.”
“Priorities,” Grunt said. “Got to look out for my wife.” With that, he turned and stalked back out the door.
“I seriously worry about him.” Flynn watched the big guy go.
“You know,” Josh said as Mitch flicked through the folder, looking for an angle to use to get through to Jodie. “You’re missing one obvious play here.”
“What’s that, oh wise one?” Mitch didn’t look up from his reading.
“You have an agreement with Jodie,” Josh said. “Friends with benefits, right?”
“So?” Mitch said.
“So,” Josh said. “Seems like she’s only keeping half the deal. You need to enforce the other half. How can you be friends with benefits if you don’t have the ‘friends’ part? And what is dating but a form of friends with benefits? Just tell her you want to be friends, then hang out, get to know her and worm your way in when she isn’t looking.”
Four men stared at Josh with open mouths.
“What?” Josh shrugged. “I have a brain.”
“Said the scarecrow,” Flynn muttered before turning to Mitch. “The guy who makes a living singing love songs has a point.”
“Could it be that simple?” Mitch felt his heart lurch at the thought. “I just make her spend more time with me? I invoke the friends’ clause?”
“Right now, what you’ve got,” Josh said, “is a booty call arrangement. It isn’t friends with benefits. You need to up the friends part. And what happens when a woman becomes friends with a guy?” There was silence. Josh looked at them like they were idiots. “Emotional attachment. They become attached. The physical stuff becomes confused with the friend stuff and the next thing they know, they’re falling in love. They can’t help themselves. It’s in their DNA.”
“I hate to say it,” Matt said, “but he makes sense. You need to invoke the friends’ clause.”
“Did Josh just come up with a plan?” Flynn said.
The rest of the men stared at Josh, who was grinning widely. “I am the man.” He puffed out his chest—just as Caroline stalked into the bar.
“Josh McInnes, what did we agree about fried food?” She aimed straight for her husband.
And Josh’s eyes flew to Mitch. “Asshole. You sold me out.”
Mitch didn’t even bother to deny it. He just grinned and settled in to watch the fireworks while he plotted how to rope Jodie into a friendship with a man who wanted so much more.
The Reverend Morrison’s Last Christmas in Invertary
This story takes place after Callum and Isobel get married, which happens between Rage and Ransom.
During his forty-seven-year tenure at Invertary’s Presbyterian church in the Scottish Highlands, Reverend Morrison had seen it all. And most of it he wished he hadn’t. Which was why, on his eightieth birthday, he’d decided to retire to Spain and spend his last few years in a country that wasn’t wet and freezing for eleven months of the year.
He’d planned his escape right down to the last detail and made it clear to all and sundry that he didn’t want any farewell parties, he just wanted to leave. It had been his intention to give his last sermon at the Christmas morning service—mainly because that was an easy one to prepare—then slip away quietly at the end. As usual, the folk of Invertary completely ignored him. Which is how he found himself taken hostage by his congregation and forced to sit through the longest goodbye since the von Trapp family escaped Austria.
“Reverend Morrison,” Caroline McInnes said when she took over his service. “We know you wanted to sneak away, but we couldn’t let your many years of service to this church and community go unmarked. Please, take a seat. We have a few things we’d like to say to you, and then we’ve put on a wonderful buffet lunch for everyone afterward as a thank you.”
“Do you know what would have been a proper thank you?” Morrison said as the singing fool Caroline had married dragged a huge, throne-like chair into the middle of his platform. “If you’d listened to what I told you and let me leave in peace.”
“We all know you didn’t mean that.” Caroline smiled at him.
“Aye,” his nemesis piped up from the front row, “I told her how you’d secretly confided in me that you were hoping the church would make a fuss.”
Betty McLeod gave him a toothless grin. He’d told her no such thing. This was just another attempt at payback for all the years he’d rebuffed her advances. Bloody demon of a woman. If Saint Peter had been around at the same time as Betty, he’d have performed an exorcism on her.
“I did not say that,” he told Caroline as she took his arm and led him to the chair.
“I know.” She patted his shoulder and then proceeded to ignore him. “Now, since you’re heading off to Spain, the children have prepared an appropriate Christmas song for you.”
The kids were still dressed in the costumes for the nativity play they’d put on during the service. One of the wise men was picking his nose and wiping it on his crown, while it looked like an angel had spilled orange juice down the front of her white robes—at least, he hoped it was juice, and not vomit stains.
“You.” He pointed at a teenager in the front row. “Go to the office and get my angina medicine. I’m going to need it.” When the teen did
n’t move, he barked, “Now!” That got him running.
Morrison was jealous. There was a day, long ago, when he would have sprinted out of the church after the teen. As it was, he was too old and stiff to make a run for it, so all he could do was endure the kids’ tuneless rendition of ‘Feliz Navidad.’ Some fool had given them castanets to play during it. They clicked them randomly and used them to snap at each other. And then, halfway through the song, Mary Johnson—who believed every service should have some dancing in the aisle, and had the biblical evidence to prove it—appeared beside the children. Dressed in Spanish national costume, she performed the Flamenco to the last verse of the song.
It was hell.
It didn’t help that Josh McInnes and his breakfast club buddies were sitting right in his line of sight, laughing so hard they had to hold each other up. That’s when Morrison realized Josh was as much behind his torture as Betty. It was payback for those marriage lessons he’d made him sit through years earlier.
“Well, wasn’t that wonderful?” Caroline said as the singing ended. “Let’s give them a round of applause.”
That’s when the scream went up.
“James is peeing!” wailed the back half of the donkey as the front half lost control of his bladder. Parents ran and the donkey, both halves, was whisked away to the toilets.
“Moving along,” Caroline said. “The women of Knit or Die have something they’d like to give you.” She motioned to Margaret, the leader of the subversive knitting group that had once yarn bombed his pulpit in protest over having to sing the new tune to ‘Amazing Grace’ instead of the old one that they were used to.
“Great,” Morrison muttered. “Just what I need. Woolen crap for a country where the sun always shines.”
He stared out of the side window, watching the gray sky as snow fell softly to cover the town. Bloody Scottish winters. They were the bane of his arthritis.
“Reverend,” Margaret said as she stood on the platform, flanked by her cronies. “We realize that you don’t have much need for blankets and such in Spain, so we made you a wall hanging. Please accept it with our gratitude.”
He tried to get out of the damn chair, but his legs were a tad too short and the seat of the chair too deep. All he could do was rock back and forth, getting nowhere.
“There’s no need for the reverend to get up,” Caroline said. “But before you give it to him, why don’t you hold it up for all of us to see?”
“Oh, aye, good idea.” Margaret and Shona unfolded the hanging and held it up.
It looked like a Sunday school craft project in wool. Just what he wanted to take all the way to Spain.
“As you can see,” Margaret said. “We’ve knitted scenes from the town.” She pointed at the top. “These are the hills, with the old mine. This is the High Street and the church. That’s the Scottie Dog pub, and that’s the loch.”
“And,” Jean said, stepping forward with a large plastic bag. “We also knitted everyone in town and added Velcro to their backs so you can place them wherever you want.” She rummaged in the bag and came out with a short, grumpy-faced man, dressed in black with a white dog collar. No prizes for guessing who that was.
“Look.” She stuck the knitted version of him to the front of the church and then beamed at him as though she’d done something miraculous.
The congregation must have thought so too because there was applause.
“But wait,” Shona said. “There’s more.”
Oh God, please, no more, he begged, but clearly, God wasn’t inclined to give him relief.
“I made you this.” Shona held up what appeared to be a lime green knitted bag with long straps. Maybe a plant holder? “It’s a mankini,” Shona said, as though reading his mind, or possibly the confusion on his face. “Like a bikini, only for men. You put your…privates…in the pouch and the straps go over your shoulders. It’s for wearing on the beach.”
“That looks wonderful,” Caroline said with a smile that was clearly forced. “And you chose a pattern that offered plenty of ventilation, which is good, seeing as Spain is so hot. Why don’t you put it all in the bag and we’ll move on to the next item? We don’t want the food getting cold.”
The women did just that, patting his hands and hugging him before returning to their seats.
“I’d like everyone who has been baptized by Reverend Morrison to stand up,” Caroline said, and a good half of the packed church stood. “Now I’d like everyone who’s been married by him to stand.” More people joined the first group. “Now anyone who’s had him perform the funeral of a loved one.” Yet more people got to their feet.
Caroline turned to him. “Look around you,” she said. “How many people can say they’ve touched so many lives in one lifetime? And these are just the ones who could be here today.” She pointed at Dougal, who stood holding a microphone in the center aisle.
The pub owner was wearing a red shirt with an ivy pattern on it and a shiny green waistcoat over the top. With his white beard, he looked like Santa had raided Elton John’s wardrobe for the morning. “Reverend,” he boomed, making Morrison wonder why anyone had given him a mic. “You performed both my marriage ceremonies, laid my dear departed wife to rest and faithfully visited my mother in the hospital until she passed away. You’ve also propped up my bar on occasion, offered unwanted advice to anyone who would listen, and you’re a terrible dominoes player, isn’t he boys?” The Domino Boys cheered. “You will be greatly missed.”
He passed the mic to Matt Donaldson, the town’s police force. “You performed my dad’s funeral, married me off to the woman of my dreams after letting her claim asylum in your church.” He smiled down at his wife Jena, who had her arm in a cast after her latest DIY disaster. “And you made time to talk to each of us regularly after dad passed away, just to make sure, as you put it, that we weren’t suicidal or fighting the urge to turn to drink.” He grinned. “You will be greatly missed.”
He passed the mic to Kirsty Benson. The ex-model and current underwear designer beamed at him, and he felt his heart melt a little. He’d always had a soft spot for Kirsty. “You were at my christening, you sat through all my terrible Sunday school plays, you were there to comfort us when my dad died, and you came to Spain to visit me in hospital after the car accident that ended my career. All of this was done with your usual bad cheer, but you did it with love. You will be greatly missed.”
Morrison cleared his throat and fidgeted in his chair. Beside him, the lights on the Christmas tree flickered as the vast church seemed to grow smaller. He wanted to shout out that they could stop now, that this wasn’t needed; he hadn’t gone into the ministry seeking recognition or thanks. But there was no stopping them now. The microphone passed from person to person, each one finishing their list of memories with “You will be greatly missed.”
Until Betty McLeod got her hands on the mic.
“Okay, you old bas—” Betty started, but Lake Benson, who was standing beside her, smacked a hand over her mouth.
“This is a church,” he said. “You’re already going to hell, try not to take the rest of us with you.”
She glared up at him as she shoved his hand away. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the morality police, Reverend Morrison, you old basket case you.” She gave Lake a smug look that said she thought she was smarter than him. But then, Betty thought she was smarter than everybody. “Morry, you’ve been a pain in my arse for decades. Just when I had things how I liked, you’d turn up and tell everybody it’s morally wrong, or illegal, or some other such nonsense. Unlike the rest of the idiots in here, I won’t greatly miss you. I will miss our games of hide-the-salami though. I enjoyed having a toy boy.”
That was it! He launched himself out of the chair that had a death grip on his backside and stalked across the platform to snatch the microphone out of Caroline’s hand.
He pointed at Betty. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
“Oh, dude, no,�
� Josh McInnes groaned as he climbed onto the platform. “This is not the time to invoke Clinton.”
“And another thing,” Betty shouted with glee, still holding her mic. “His first name is Shirley.” There was a gasp, followed by smothered sniggers. “That’s right,” Betty said. “His full name is Shirley Thomas Morrison,” she paused, “the second!” And then she burst into a witch’s cackle.
“Give me that.” Lake pried the mic from her hands. “Sorry Rev,” he said before switching it off and tossing it to Josh.
“Okay, everybody, calm down,” Josh said, flashing that famous smile of his that seemed to turn smart women into fools. “We all know that the Rev hasn’t had sex with Betty.”
“Yes.” Caroline took the mic out of the Reverend’s hands and led him back to the chair of doom, while he kept his scowling eyes on Betty. “Because he’s a man of the cloth and they don’t do that.”
“Or,” Josh said, “because he has enough sense to keep away from Gollum over there.” He grinned at the crowd. “See what I did there? Lake calls her his Hobbit, but really, she’s the corrupted version of those lovable shire creatures. Evil has turned her into Gollum. Smart, eh?”
There were groans. Caroline shook her head and stepped in front of her husband. “Josh is now going to stop talking, and start singing.”
There was a cheer. Morrison suspected it was more for Josh shutting up than for his singing. He looked at the American. “If this is ‘White Christmas,’ I will make it my duty to pray daily that you lose your voice mid-concert.”
Josh just grinned as the music started and he launched into a rendition of ‘Hit the Road Jack.’ Smart arse. Although, it did bring a smile to his face when they got to the part about the meanest old woman he’d ever seen, and the church sang it to Betty. It would have been perfect if she hadn’t taken a bow and cackled as though they were giving her adulation. Oh, but he couldn’t wait to get away from that woman.
A Little Something Extra: Short Stories from the Invertary and Benson Security World Page 5