Here Comes the Rainne Again Read online

  “She’s doing great.” Abby scowled at Margaret. “Don’t mind them, Julia. You’re doing great.”

  “Lake says you’re the best assistant he’s ever had,” Kirsty added.

  Joe pinched the bridge of his nose. They were giving him a migraine. “Ladies, there are men with guns out there. How about we focus on what’s important here?”

  There were grumbles, but they stopped discussing Julia’s lack of a backbone, which was a step forward.

  “Okay,” he said. “Megan and Claire will go for help. Take the baseball bat. It’s better than nothing.” He handed it to Megan.

  The twins nodded their agreement—with matching looks of determination.

  “Everybody else will hunker down in the tower room while Ryan scopes out the situation. Got it?”

  “No,” Margaret said. “We’re not going to hunker down. I don’t even know what that means. If it means hide like a bunch of children, then no, we won’t be doing that. There are people out there threatening the women of Invertary. People trying to ruin my daughter’s wedding and assault Caroline’s home. We’re going to do what Scottish people do best. We’re going to defend our castle.”

  The women cheered, completely ignoring Joe’s protest. As far as they were concerned, he was invisible and the leader of Knit Or Die was running the show.

  “To the tower,” Margaret shouted. “Bring any weapons you can find.”

  The older women charged from the room.

  “At least they’re defending the castle from inside the tower room,” said Caroline. “Maybe once they’re in there you can convince them to hunker?”

  Yeah, and now Joe’s head was really throbbing. He asked himself, yet again, why he’d decided to stay in Scotland when his best friend, Grunt, fell for Claire. He could work anywhere. With anyone. He didn’t need to work with Lake’s security company. He didn’t need to deal with the crazy women of Invertary.

  He turned to see Jena helping the very pregnant Abby up the stairs. What were the chances stress would bring on early labour? Shit, he hoped not.

  “I wish we had hot oil,” one of those crazy grey-haired women shouted over her shoulder as she scurried from the room. “We could tip it on their heads like in the old days.”

  “I have olive oil,” Caroline called as she hurried after them.

  Jean stopped to talk to Caroline. “How much?”

  “A couple of bottles.”

  Jean sighed. “Not enough.” She brightened. “Bring the alcohol.”

  “We can’t drink and fight,” Heather scolded.

  “Not to drink. To make Molotov cocktails.”

  “You’re a genius. Women, the alcohol.” They changed direction and hurried to the cabinet in the corner of the dining room that housed the bar.

  “Wait,” Rayan shouted after them. “You don’t use alcohol in a Molotov cocktail.”

  It was pointless. They weren’t listening.

  “You’re wasting your breath,” Joe told him.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” Megan said as she came back into the kitchen.

  The twins were decked out in matching snow gear, all of it red. So much for their argument against sending Magenta. They weren’t any better at blending with the snow.

  “You stand out too much,” Joe said.

  “It’s the best we can do,” Megan said. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep to the shadows. No one will be expecting us to go for help. We’re just a bunch of helpless women.” She grinned, and it was kind of scary.

  “Good luck keeping them in line,” Claire told Joe while she pointed at her mother. “I’ll make sure Grunt doesn’t kill you.”

  Joe grabbed the hood of Claire’s jacket as she headed for the door. The twins were acting like this was an adventure. It wasn’t. And he was an idiot for letting them go. But they needed all the help they could get, and he was out of options.

  “Stay low to the ground,” he said. “Go out the door at the side of the house. Most people don’t even know it’s there, and it’s shielded by those hedges we kept telling Josh to cut down. They’ll help with cover. If anything comes at you, swing the bat. Otherwise, run like the wind.”

  “Got it.” Megan saluted, and then the twins were gone.

  “I am so freaking dead.” Joe groaned.

  The beams from flashlights scanned over the glass of the new conservatory. Time had run out.

  “Upstairs,” Joe shouted.

  There was a thunder of footfalls as the women ran four flights of stairs to the tower.

  6

  * Rainne and Alastair *

  There was a pulse.

  Thank you, God. There was a pulse. Rainne brushed the hair from Alastair’s forehead as tears streamed down her cheeks. He still hadn’t opened his eyes. Why wouldn’t he open his eyes?

  She looked around them in dismay. The truck was resting on its side. Snow fell fast and thick in the black night. Only the dim lights that came on when the door was damaged illuminated the interior of the truck. Rainne was lying half on, half off Alastair, her back squeezed against the steering wheel.

  “What now?” she asked the silence.

  She couldn’t leave him lying in the broken glass, but could she move him? What if he was injured? What if his neck was broken? What if moving him killed him?

  She took a minute to slow her breathing. To force herself to calm down. It was time to be practical. She could do practical. She wasn’t the same airy-fairy woman who’d left Invertary three years earlier. She could do this. She could be useful. She just had to think.

  Help. They needed help.

  She rooted around in her pocket until her hand hit her mobile phone. No signal. And very little battery left. She’d forgotten to charge it. As usual. She could still use it as a flashlight, but only if she was desperate.

  She eyed the back of the truck. Alastair had put his tools in a locked box on the flatbed. She’d bet there was a better flashlight in there. Key. She needed the key.

  “Sorry,” she whispered as she rooted around in Alastair’s pockets.

  His jeans were snug. The heat from his body and the solid feel of his muscle under her touch made her cheeks flush. A totally inappropriate reaction to an unconscious man. But then, he was Alastair, and just being in the same town as him made her flush. His pockets were empty. No key. She let out a wail, cutting it off as fast as it erupted. She was an idiot. She wasn’t thinking straight. The keys were in the ignition.

  She leaned around Alastair and wiggled the key free. Alastair moaned as she jostled him. She froze. Was he waking? Please please please...

  He didn’t open his eyes.

  Rainne took a deep breath, struggled up towards the passenger door and pushed it open. It was strange to exit the car the same way you’d come out of a submarine hatch. But then, nothing about this experience was normal.

  Her climb out was awkward and graceless, ending in her landing on her backside in the snow. She didn’t care. In a minute she was around the truck, staring into the back where the toolbox was secured to the flatbed. She used the flashlight app on her phone to find the locked box. It took several tries and lots of creative cursing to find the right key and get it into the lock. At last the box clicked open and the contents spilled out around her. She almost whooped with joy. There was a flashlight. A huge one with more bells and whistles than it probably needed.

  She switched off her phone and used the space-age flashlight to examine the contents of the box—all the while terrified that the guy with the gun would see the light and come to investigate. She really didn’t want to see that guy, or his gun, ever again. She stuffed her pockets with everything she thought might be useful, then scrambled out and back around to the cabin.

  She leaned over the open door and shone the light inside. Alastair hadn’t moved. There was blood on the snow beneath his head. Not good. Bandages. She needed bandages. She shone the light around the interior, hoping to find a first-aid kit, and spotted a small one strapped underneath the passenger
seat. She let out a squeal of triumph as she reached for it. Alastair groaned in response. Adrenalin and hope shot through Rainne in equal measures. She dropped the kit and climbed awkwardly into the cab beside him, leaning on the side of his seat to stop herself from landing on top of him.

  “Alastair, honey, you need to wake up.” She reached over and brushed his hair off his forehead. “Alastair. Please. I need you.”

  He groaned again and moved his head. Rainne gasped. Should he be doing that? Should she have immobilised his neck? It made her furious with herself that she didn’t know. All these years proving she was independent and it never once occurred to her to take a basic first-aid course. If they got out of this situation in one piece, she was so signing up for one. Along with a self-defence course. And a class on what to do if a crazy man shoots at your car in a blizzard.

  Alastair grunted and turned towards her. His eyes flickered open, as though it took great effort to get his eyelids to work.

  “Rainne?” His gaze was unfocused and the word was slurred.

  That wasn’t a good sign, was it? She needed to remember how you checked for a concussion. She’d seen it done on TV so many times. How did House do it?

  He blinked at her as though she was coming into focus. “Rainne? Am I dreaming again? Why can’t I get you out of my dreams? We both know you don’t want to be there. You just want to run away. Why are women always running away from me? You can’t be trusted. None of you. And why are you upside down?”

  Huh? He was definitely out of it. Oh, she hoped there wasn’t brain damage.

  “It is me. I’m really here.” She allowed herself a gentle caress of his strong jaw while he was too out of it to stop her, and shoved the fact she was taking advantage of an injured man to the back of her mind. “Someone shot at us. The truck went out of control. You hit your head. You’ve been unconscious.” She hated how her voice trembled.

  “Aye, now I remember.” He groaned as he tried to move.

  “No, not yet. I need to check for concussion and a broken neck.”

  “What?”

  She did the only thing she could think of and flicked the beam from the flashlight into his eyes.

  “What the hell?” Alastair scrunched them shut.

  “I’m assessing you. Follow the light with your eyes.”

  “Get the light out of my face, Rainne.”

  “But I need to see if you have brain damage. How am I going to do it without the light?”

  “I don’t have brain damage, but I am being blinded. Turn the light off.”

  She flicked the flashlight off, leaving them with only the faint glow from the door lights. Alastair seemed relieved. Rainne cast around for other ways to assess his injuries. She held up two fingers.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “It’s dark in here, Rainbow. I can barely see your face.”

  “Oh, yeah. Okay, that won’t work. You need to answer some questions. What’s your full name and today’s date?”

  “My name is Alastair Stewart and it’s the twenty-eighth of February. Want to give me a clue why we’re playing twenty questions while I’m trapped in a broken truck with my face in the snow?”

  “They always ask questions on TV when someone has a brain injury. Who’s the current president?”

  He opened one eye to stare at her. “Of which country?”

  “I need to watch less American TV,” she mumbled. “Who’s the prime minister of Britain?”

  “I really don’t care.”

  That made her back snap straight. “How can you not care? Please tell me you voted in the last election. People fought and died for your right to have a say in how this country is run. To waste a vote is to spit in the face of their sacrifice. You shouldn’t just care who’s running the country, you should be interested in what they’re doing. They’re making decisions on your behalf. How can you not care about that?”

  His lips twitched as though he was fighting a smile. “And there’s the Rainbow I used to know. I wondered if you were still in there under your dull, generic clothes and plain brown hair.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my hair. You can’t work in an office with multi-coloured hair. I like it brown. I don’t think it’s plain.” She teased her bottom lip with her teeth. “Is it plain? Really?”

  “Okay, are you sure you aren’t the one with brain damage? Because if you think I’m going to lie here in an upturned truck, in the snow, and discuss your hair, you’re seriously deluded.”

  He had a point. She was being inconsiderate. She should be thinking about him, not her hair. “I’m sorry, but there’s a lot of blood on the snow under your head and I was worried.”

  “Head wounds bleed.” He sounded as though he knew that for sure. Which was either really worrying or reassuring, depending on how you looked at it.

  “Do you have pain anywhere?” she said.

  For a minute she didn’t think he would answer, and when he did his voice was tight. “Head. Neck. Right wrist. Ribs.” He sounded like he was reciting a shopping list rather than injuries.

  “Oh.” Her hands began to shake. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was the least capable person she knew. She was useless. No good to anyone...

  No. Those were old thoughts. She wasn’t that person anymore. Now she had skills. She was able. She could think for herself. She was useful.

  Okay, so she didn’t have the skills for this particular situation, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have options. She’d just do what she normally did when she was stuck and terrified—she asked herself what Lake would do. Suddenly things were clearer.

  “We need to get out of the truck. We need to get out of the snow. Warm up. Patch you up. Get help.” The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other before Alastair could tell her the plan was stupid.

  She frowned. He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t her parents. Being back in Invertary was making it hard not to slip into old habits. Into old thinking.

  He didn’t move for a minute, and she thought he’d lost consciousness again. At last his eyes opened and he stared up at her.

  “You’re right. Can you unlatch the seatbelt? And I’ll try to make sure I don’t fall when you do. Not sure the ribs will take it.”

  “I can do that.” She put her thumb on the release button. “Ready?”

  “Aye.”

  “Okay, releasing, now.” She pushed. The seatbelt sprang free and Alastair toppled against his door with a thud and a grunt.

  Rainne waited, itching to do something, anything to help him while he lay there breathing heavily.

  “Alastair? What can I do?”

  “I’m going to push myself up and out of here. You climb out to give me some space.”

  “I can pull you, help you.”

  He froze her in place with his stare. “Out, Rainne. I don’t need help. I’ve got this.”

  “I can—”

  “Rainne.” His tone was icy cold. “I need space to move.”

  Rainne crumpled under his steely gaze. “Okay, but tell me if you need me.”

  She scrambled back out of the passenger door.

  “I won’t,” she heard Alastair say behind her.

  Of course he wouldn’t. He’d made that clear earlier. He wanted nothing to do with her. Things between them really were unfixable. She should never have come back to Invertary. She should never have tried to come back to Alastair.

  Rainne wrapped her arms around herself as she waited for him to climb out into the darkness. The snowflakes fell silently around her. Huge thumb-sized flakes. A thick sheet of them, reducing visibility to a couple of feet in all directions. Soft, fluffy snow built up fast around her feet. Making her think that if she stood still long enough it would cover her completely, wiping out all traces of Rainne Benson from the earth.

  There was a time she would have thought that was a good thing.

  Now she knew it wasn’t.

  “Okay,” Alastair said tightly as he stood in front
of her. “I have a plan.”

  Rainne lifted her chin as she looked him in the eye. “So do I.”

  “Aye, but I’m pretty sure I have a plan that will work. Just follow me and everything will be fine.”

  Three years ago she would have done as she was told. That was before she’d learned that her thoughts and opinions had value too. Guess Alastair really hadn’t listened when she’d told him she’d changed. He was about to get a reminder.

  Rainne stuck her hands in her pockets. “Let’s hear it, then.”

  “We don’t have time for that. Best if you just follow me. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Tell me your plan.” She ground her teeth as she waited.

  He heaved a sigh, which obviously hurt his ribs, as his lips tightened and went white.

  “We’ll walk into town and get help. The men are meeting at the pub for Lake’s stag night.” He looked around him and swayed on his feet. “It will take a wee while to get there in this weather, but it’s the most sensible option.”

  Rainne stood up straight and pulled her limited courage around her once again. It was tattered and bruised, but it was still functioning.

  “No,” she said. “That isn’t the best plan.”

  Alastair gaped at her. “What the hell, Rainne?”

  “I have a better plan.” She was grateful she sounded more confident than she felt.

  “I seriously doubt it. We’re walking to town.”

  “You haven’t even heard my plan.”

  He actually rolled his eyes at her. Yeah, that wasn’t offensive, at all. “I don’t need to hear it to know I have the better plan. Knowing you, you’ll want to march up to the castle and have a chat with the guy about how violence is a bad thing and we should sit down in a talking circle and communicate our feelings, peacefully and inoffensively. And while we’re at it, we can all eat some tofu and braid each other’s hair with ribbons.”

  Without thought, Rainne reacted. Her hand shot out and she slapped Alastair’s cheek. Never in her life had she struck another person. But instead of feeling bad about it, she felt enraged. She glared up at the man she loved. The man who clearly had an extremely low opinion of her and asked the only question raging through her brain.