CHAPTER 13

ISOBEL WAS PUTTING DINNER ON the table when Callum arrived. He had a sports bag over his shoulder and a grim look on his face.

“We’re having spaghetti bolognaise.” Isobel threw the door wide for him to come in. “There’s plenty. Come eat.”

“You don’t need to feed me.” He followed her into the house.

“Have you had dinner?”

He paused as he put his bag on the sofa, where the bedding from the night before was still neatly folded. “No.”

“Then don’t be an idiot and come eat.”

Callum grunted something that Isobel wasn’t interested in and followed her down the narrow hall. As they entered the kitchen, Jack looked up and frowned at Callum.

“Behave,” Isobel told him.

She grabbed an extra place setting before taking her seat at the table. She handed the plate and cutlery to Jack to put in the spot for Callum. He looked like he was handling a nest of wasps.

There was a large pan of food in the middle of the table, and Isobel reached for the spoon to dish it up. Callum was still standing in the doorway, watching them all as though they were a science experiment he had to monitor. Isobel glanced at Sophie and saw she was looking at Callum in exactly the same way.

“This is Callum,” Isobel told her daughter. “He’s a friend of mine and he’s going to eat with us, if he ever sits down.”

“Clalumm,” Sophie said, her eyes still on him.

“Callum,” Isobel corrected.

“Claaaauuuum,” Sophie said.

“Whatever,” Isobel said as she reached for her daughter’s plate.

With the same sort of caution a bomb disposal expert would employ, Callum pulled out the last chair at the table and sat down. Sophie continued to stare at him, and Callum did his best to avoid her eyes. Isobel dished out food for everyone, making sure the boys got plenty, before she sat back in her chair. It’d been a long time since they’d had a man at the dinner table. It felt strange, and the tense atmosphere wasn’t helping to make it better.

They ate in silence as Sophie stared at Callum, Jack glared at him and Callum ignored them both and looked around the room. Isobel let her gaze scan the room and tried to imagine what Callum saw. The kitchen cupboards had been installed sometime in the eighties and were dated and worn. Their burnt-umber colouring was the fashion of the time, but now it just looked dirty. Since her landlord wouldn’t let her paint them, she’d concentrated on trying to brighten up the rest of the room.

She’d painted the walls a pale blue, bought cheap white curtains with blue daisies on them for the windows and found some blue pottery at the second-hand shop in Campbeltown, which she displayed on the counter. There were chips in the pottery, but Isobel didn’t think anyone would notice. The floor was clean, but the linoleum was curling up in places—another thing her landlord wouldn’t fix. The table and the chairs they sat in were another thrift store find. None of the set matched, but Isobel had painted it all white to make it look like it belonged together. Overall, Isobel thought she’d done an amazing job with very little. She was proud of what she’d achieved. She’d made a home for her family. It might not be the richest, or the most sophisticated, but it was cute and welcoming, and that was all that mattered.

“You’re making my mum self-conscious,” Jack said.

Isobel stopped eating. “No, he isn’t.”

“He’s looking at the place as though it’s a dump,” Jack said.

Isobel looked at Callum, who had yet to touch his food. She cocked her head and considered him. “I don’t think so. I think he’s probably stayed in places that were a whole lot worse than this. I’d say he’s either thinking about how fast he can run from the table or about how secure the house is.”

Callum’s eyes bored into hers. “You should have replaced that window. Glass is more secure than wood. Glass makes a noise when someone breaks it.”

“Security, then,” Isobel said. She looked over at the narrow, boarded-up window beside the back door. “I asked the landlord to replace it. He never got around to it, so I painted it white and hoped for the best. I don’t think it looks so bad.”

He scowled. “It isn’t about looks. It’s about safety. A two-year-old could get into this house.”

“I’m three,” Sophie told Callum proudly.

Callum considered her for a long moment, as she waited for his response. “Well done?” he said at last.

Jack shook his head.

“Eat your food,” Isobel told Callum. “We don’t waste food around here.”

Callum obediently picked up his fork and started to eat.

“What’s you got on your face?” Sophie leaned towards him as though she might grab the stubble covering his chin.

He backed up. “Hair.”

Sophie frowned at him. “It’s in the wrong place.”

Isobel smiled at her daughter. “Men can grow hair on their faces, baby.”

“Why?” her three-year-old demanded of Callum.

For a second, his badass outer shell slipped and he looked genuinely flummoxed. “I don’t know.”

“Huh.” Sophie wasn’t impressed.

There was a heavy silence as Callum, Jack and Isobel finished their food and Sophie painted her face with hers.

“I went to the pawnbroker in Campbeltown today,” Callum said.

Isobel stilled, unsure where he was going with this. “Oh?”

“I managed to piece together a little more information on the visitors to the cove. I didn’t like any of it, so I called in some help. I’ve got a member from my old security team coming in tomorrow.”

“Security team?” Jack said, and Isobel appreciated that he was talking. She was too busy worrying about dragging yet more people into her mess.

“I worked for a private security firm in London before I came here.” Callum’s face gave nothing away about how he felt about his job.

“You were a security guard?” Jack said mockingly.

“No. I was a security specialist. My area of expertise is hostage extraction and personal protection in hostile environments.”

“You were a bodyguard?” Now Jack sounded more impressed than mocking.

“When I had to be. Mainly I supervised a team, worked on the logistics of operations and made sure my people got out in one piece when we went into situations that were dangerous.”

Jack looked eager for a second, before he remembered he was a cool sixteen-year-old. “So you know hand-to-hand combat and stuff?”

“I have military training and a black belt in Krav Maga.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. “I have a brown belt in kung fu, but I’ve always thought Krav Maga was better. Is it?”

Callum looked like he was seriously considering his answer. “Krav Maga incorporates some kung fu moves. You’d do well in a fight with either. But if you still wanted to move over into Krav Maga, your experience would make a good foundation.”

“Krav Maga is mean. If I knew that, I’d be deadly,” Jack said wistfully. “It’d be seriously cool to be deadly.”

“There’s nothing cool about being deadly.” Isobel glared at her son. “We’re pacifists. I think. Unless we’re attacked. Then we aren’t. Just you concentrate on schoolwork and forget about being deadly. Now clear the table while I get Sophie ready for bed.”

Jack rolled his eyes but did as he was told. Isobel scooped Sophie up and carried her from the room. As she passed through the door, she thought she heard Callum say, “It is seriously cool to be deadly.”

By the time Isobel had put Sophie into bed, Callum had secured the house for the night. She’d spotted him going from room to room, checking windows, with Jack trailing behind him. It was obvious that Jack was interested in everything Callum was doing. It was also obvious that he was trying hard to hide his interest.

“Homework time,” Isobel said as she walked into the living room, where Callum was raking through his bag. “Don’t spend the time chatting online with your friends.”

“As if.” Jack made a detour to the kitchen to stock up on snacks before heading upstairs.

Isobel knew he wouldn’t hang out online. They had the cheapest internet connection they could find and had to be very careful about how much data they used. Basically, their connection was enough to allow him to do his schoolwork and not much more. She turned back to Callum.

“You got everything you need?”

“Aye.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t want to say in front of the kid, wasn’t sure how much he knew, but I spoke to the pawnbroker about the amount of money he gave you for the camera equipment.”

Isobel felt her stomach plummet. “Did he tell the police I sold him stolen goods?”

Callum gave her a look that said he was questioning her IQ. “He bought those stolen goods, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Now she felt like her IQ needed questioning.

“Anyway, the guy fleeced you, but he was happy to rectify his mistake.”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a huge wad of cash and tossed it to her. Isobel caught it reflexively. It was heavy and didn’t quite feel real. She stared at the bundle. She’d never seen so much money in her life.

“How much is here?” Her voice was a silly croak.

“Three thousand pounds.”

Isobel actually felt faint. Three thousand. It was nowhere near enough to pay off the loan shark. But it was more than enough for them to get from Arness and start somewhere else. She was looking at petrol money, the deposit on another rented house and food money for a couple of weeks until she found another job. He’d just handed her the chance to start again. And he’d done it as though it was nothing.

“I don’t know what to say.” She stumbled over the words as she tucked the money into the front pocket of her jeans and made a mental note to find somewhere more secure to stash it.

“Don’t say anything.”

“Okay.”

But seeing as she still wanted to say thank you, she did it the way she’d been wanting to do all through dinner—with a kiss.

With no warning, she launched herself at Callum, and he caught her easily, his strong arms tightening around her as she assaulted him with her mouth. There was no hesitation on his part. As soon as their lips met, it was electric. Never in her life had she felt the way she did when she was touching Callum. Everything else fled her mind. Nothing else mattered other than touching this man.

They kissed with a desperation that bordered on pain. Tongues, lips, teeth. Isobel couldn’t get enough. He was her addiction. She felt herself falling forward, and it barely registered that Callum had sat back on the sofa, with her straddling his lap. His mouth never left hers as his hands slid under her T-shirt and his palms covered her breasts. She moaned into his mouth, circling her hips and grinding herself against his hard length. More. She needed more.

As if reading her mind, Callum tugged the neck of her shirt down over her breasts and bent his head to suckle her nipple through her bra. She hated that bra. It needed to go. Now.

“Mum.”

The small voice vaguely registered for Isobel—she was still deep in a fog of need—but Callum stopped instantly.

With his hands firmly on her hips, he lifted her off him and put her on her feet. Isobel was shaking like a junkie needing her fix.

“Mum.” Sophie’s voice penetrated Isobel’s daze, and she realised her daughter was calling for her.

“I’m coming,” Isobel shouted. She cleared her throat and looked down at Callum.

His hair was tousled, his eyes were dark and his lips were swollen. She saw the same desperate need in his eyes as she felt burning inside her.

“Woman,” he said in that husky voice of his, “you don’t have any sense.”

Isobel couldn’t agree more. When it came to Callum, all sense and logic flew out the window. Without another word, she tugged her shirt back into place and, even though every cell of her body wanted to be back on the couch with Callum, made herself walk out of the room and upstairs to her daughter.

Callum stayed seated on Isobel’s deeply uncomfortable sofa and wondered, yet again, what had just happened. There was no middle ground with her. Either they were keeping their distance from each other or they were all over each other like a poison ivy rash. She was the itch he continually wanted to scratch, and he was going insane with it.

But he wasn’t there to get physical with Isobel Sinclair. He was there to protect her. It worried him that there had been people snooping around the other houses on the bluff. It was too much of a coincidence to dismiss. Which meant there were people out looking for the body. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the houses overlooking the cove were the most likely place to find it. And even if the body didn’t turn up in one of them, Arness was tiny, and they were bound to find it if they kept on looking.

Callum picked up the remote and flicked through channels on Isobel’s tiny TV. It looked to be about a million years old and only had the free-to-air programmes. Which meant there was nothing on that he wanted to see. If he’d been back at his house, he could have watched a football game while he waited the night out. But no, he’d been leery about letting them invade his space, worried Isobel might take it the wrong way and think he was looking for a relationship. Now he wished he’d stopped being a coward and taken them home. At least there he could protect them properly, and he had the sports channels.

“I’m going to bed,” Isobel said from the doorway.

He almost laughed at the sight of her nervously keeping her distance. He could have told her it didn’t matter. He’d spent months getting hot just from the glimpses he’d seen of her through his kitchen window.

She seemed to be waiting for a response, so he said, “Okay.”

“There are snacks and coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself.” She shuffled from foot to foot. “If you’re cold, you can put on the fire.” She pointed to the ancient gas heater with the bottle poking out the back. “Or I can get you an extra blanket if you’d like.”

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t about to tell her that since losing his legs, he never felt cold. It had something to do with heat trying to disperse over less surface area. All he knew was that he didn’t need any sweaters.

“I don’t know why I keep jumping you,” she blurted, and then flushed a deep shade of red.

“Because I’m irresistible?” He arched his eyebrows and wondered what else there was to say.

Her smile was wide, and her shoulders relaxed. “It must be that. But”—she pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth—“I don’t want a relationship, Callum.”

For some reason, that statement irritated him. Even though he’d just been thinking the same thing. “We’re on the same page. No relationships.”

Her whole body relaxed at his agreement, which was kind of insulting.

“Good, that’s good. I’ve got enough to deal with, and I’m obviously rubbish at relationships. I’ve decided being alone forever is the way to go. It fits me.”

Her words could have come straight out of his own mouth. Hearing them come back at him made them seem ludicrous. “I never asked for a relationship.” Now he sounded irritated with her, when really it was irritation with himself.

“I know.” She held up her hands. “I’m glad we’re on the same page. I’ll try to control myself around you. I promise.”

Now that really annoyed him. When he scowled at her instead of answering, Isobel let out a little sigh.

“Okay then.” She backed up into the hall. “Guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

Callum grunted and she disappeared. He reached for the TV remote again, before remembering there was nothing to watch. All he could do was clean his gun and hope he got a chance to use it. The short conversation with Isobel had really gotten under his skin. Logic told him that they understood each other, that neither of them wanted the baggage of another person in their lives. But logic didn’t explain the need riding him, a need that only Isobel could satisfy. It also didn’t explain why his first reaction at hearing her say she didn’t want him, was intense disappointment.

With a growl of frustration, he started dismantling his gun.