Can't Buy Me Love: Romantic Comedy (Sinclair Sisters Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  “Okaaay,” Logan said. “Then can you do me a favor and keep an eye on Agnes? If she does anything out of the ordinary, send me a text.”

  “You want me to spy on my boss?”

  “Well, aye.”

  “Yes!” She punched the air. “This day is looking up. I can totally do that for you. Do you need photos? I’m awesome at taking photos.”

  “No,” Logan said, deflating her bubble a little. “Just updates.” She looked so crestfallen that he added, “But if something merits a photo, I wouldn’t say no.”

  And just like that, Bernadette was back to perky. “I’m on it. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my eyes glued to her.” She handed him her phone. It was pink.

  “Great.” He keyed in his number before returning it. “Thanks for your help.” He strode toward the door.

  “Wait,” Bernadette called. “Does this mean I’m officially part of Benson Security?”

  “In an unofficial capacity,” he said with a straight face.

  “Awesome.” Bernadette looked starry-eyed.

  With a shake of his head, Logan headed into the pub, where he was meeting Lake. Maybe his boss could shed some light on how Agnes’ mind worked, because he was coming up blank.

  Agnes pressed her hand to the closed door after Logan had gone. Surely, he’d gotten the message that she didn’t want to start anything romantic. She’d been clear, right? And it was definitely what she wanted…mostly…

  She’d spent the night thinking about it and had come to the conclusion that this was the only way forward. There was no future in starting something with Logan, so why put them both through an inevitable breakup? Why put his kids through it? Yes, it was definitely the right decision. So why did she have a pain in her chest from sending him away?

  Her phone rang, and she glanced at the screen to see it was housekeeping. “The delivery’s here,” the housekeeper said. “They’ve parked out front like you asked them to. Although why you didn’t get them to park at the back door as usual, I don’t know. Are you just trying to make more work for us?”

  Agnes smiled, and she knew if anyone could see it, they’d run screaming. “It’s just for today. You can carry on with preparing the rooms, and I’ll deal with it personally.” She hung up before Eileen could complain that the housekeeping deliveries were her job.

  “I’m dealing with a delivery,” she told Bernadette as she passed. “If you need me, call me on my mobile.”

  Bernadette nodded and then, for some inexplicable reason, took her photo. Agnes didn’t even bother to ask. Some conversations seriously weren’t worth starting.

  She pushed through the heavy wooden doors and stepped out into the icy December air, instantly wishing she’d thought to grab her coat. The driver climbed down to meet her. A big man with wild hair, he reminded her of Boris Johnson.

  “You must be the new manager. Dougal doesn’t like us parking out front. And he’s very specific about not using the main door for deliveries.”

  “I know,” she said sweetly and held out her hand for the paperwork. “Unfortunately, we’re having some work done and it isn’t possible to use the back door at the moment. I’m afraid you’ll have to take the boxes through the pub and up the stairs to the hotel.”

  “Why can’t we use that door?” He pointed at the hotel doors she’d just come through.

  “Blocked.”

  It was clear he didn’t believe her, as he was staring at her as though trying to figure out what the punchline was. “Fine, we do it your way,” he said at last. Then he pointed at the guy in the passenger’s seat and signaled for him to get out.

  Meanwhile, Agnes reached for her phone. She already had Mrs. Edwards primed to do her part, now she just needed to get Dougal out of the pub, so he wouldn’t start shouting when the deliverymen traipsed through.

  “Dougal,” she said once he’d answered, “Mrs. Edwards has a problem, and she refuses to speak to anyone but you.”

  “I’m happy to talk to her.” He hesitated. “But you’d better come with me, seeing as you’re the…ah…manager.”

  Yep, she bet that stuck in his throat. “I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “The customer comes first,” Dougal barked.

  “I understand, but I’m really tied up.”

  There was silence for a second before his voice lowered. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be alone with her.”

  Agnes fought a grin. “Don’t worry about that. She’s got a room full of teenagers helping stuff goody bags.”

  He cleared his throat. “Okay. Well, in that case, carry on.”

  “Thanks, Dougal.” She hung up.

  When she turned to the deliverymen, they were waiting with a trolley loaded with boxes.

  “If Dougal shouts at us,” the driver said, “we’re pointing at you.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead.” She walked down the street to the pub doors. They were on the corner of the high street and in full view of everyone out shopping. Once there, she propped the doors open for the men to go through. “Be careful with those boxes,” she called after them, far louder than necessary. “That’s our new toiletry range for the hotel. It’s top of the line—people pay a fortune for this stuff. We’re lucky to have gotten it.”

  “If you’re changing out the toiletries to something better,” Breanna asked, as soon as Agnes stepped into the dining area of the pub, “is that only for new guests, or will we get it too? I wouldn’t mind trying that range.”

  Agnes beamed at her. “I’ll make sure they stock your room.”

  As she watched the deliverymen make their way through the bar, she was pleased to see heads turning to follow their progress and people reading the brand name on the boxes. She could tick part one of her plan off her list. She was grinning when her eyes caught on the last person she wanted to see there—Logan. Just her luck.

  “She’s up to something,” Logan told Lake, who sat opposite him in a booth at the side of the pub, not far from where Agnes was grinning a little maniacally after the deliverymen.

  Lake glanced over at Agnes and nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Just take all the new toiletries up to the store cupboard,” Agnes called, loud enough for the whole room to hear. “We won’t start putting them out until tomorrow.”

  The deliverymen grumbled something but headed for the stairs up into the hotel.

  “Why is she making them go through the pub?” Logan said, more to himself than anyone else. “Deliveries would usually go through the back door.”

  Louise, who worked in the town’s tiny supermarket, stopped beside Agnes. “I can’t believe you have the Orion range of toiletries,” she squealed. “That stuff is so hard to come by. I couldn’t even order the shampoo off their site the other day because it was out of stock.” She stared wistfully after the deliverymen. “I don’t suppose you’d sell me a couple of bottles?”

  “Sorry.” Agnes shook her head. “But if you book a room after tomorrow, you’ll be able to use the range as part of your guest experience.”

  “I wish,” Louise said with a laugh. “I’d love a night away from the kids. If you change your mind about selling them, let me know.”

  “Absolutely.” Agnes beamed. It was over the top.

  “She’s still talking too loud,” Logan said. “And why is she making such a big deal out of shampoo?” He groaned as it hit him. “I’m an idiot.” His brain had been so occupied with wondering about what’d happened between them in the office and why things had suddenly turned cold that he’d missed the obvious. “She’s baiting a trap, and she’s not being subtle about it.”

  “Nope,” Lake said. “That’ll be why she had the lorry park in the street.” He cocked a thumb to the window, where the rear of a huge truck blocked their view.

  He’d been so focused on Agnes that he’d missed the truck. If Dougal saw that there, he’d have a conniption. Logan glanced around, realizing Agnes had managed to get rid of the hotel owne
r. She’d staged the whole thing, and he’d missed most of it because he’d been too busy worrying about their weird conversation. Some detective he was turning into.

  “She’s driving me crazy,” Logan confessed. “I’m so busy wondering what’s going on in her head that I’m missing stuff.” It wasn’t an apology, but his boss should definitely know he was falling down on the job.

  “Happens to the best of us.” Lake reached for his coffee, his too-observant eyes missing nothing. “You know, Agnes has a habit of taking care of her own problems, even when it can get her in trouble. She isn’t used to relying on anyone else.”

  Logan focused in on the man. “What does that mean?”

  “Did you read the background report I did on her?” Lake lazed back in the booth, his leather pilot’s jacket at his side, and the sleeves of his blue Henley pushed up past his elbows. He sipped his coffee, looking every inch a man relaxed, but his gaze continually scanned the room on the lookout for trouble.

  “It seemed pretty standard,” Logan said. “Except for the part about why she’s been blacklisted in the hotel community.”

  Lake’s eyes turned to steel. “That’s being dealt with. Callum wasn’t too pleased about his sister-in-law being blackmailed for sex either.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask to be included in whatever Callum had planned for the sleazy hotel owner, but he didn’t have the right. Agnes had made it clear they were nothing but work colleagues. And that knowledge sat in his gut like cement.

  “What wasn’t in the report?” Logan asked his boss. “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “More than you’re capable of processing.”

  “About Agnes, dickhead.”

  Lake did that smile-twitch thing he did, rather than just smiling like the rest of them, before leaning in to rest his forearms on the table. “When Agnes’ sister Isobel first walked into Callum’s life, I did a deep dig into all four sisters. I didn’t want my business partner taking on something he wasn’t ready for.”

  This wasn’t news—Lake looked out for his own. “But you must have been happy with what you found. Callum and Isobel are married.”

  “Isobel’s a sweetheart who attracts trouble. Callum can handle that. Mairi, the youngest Sinclair, is a bit of a wild child, but now that she has her business and a man to occupy her, she’s calmed down some. And Donna’s the sensitive one. She needed someone to protect her, which her husband, Duncan, is doing just fine.”

  Logan was used to Lake knowing everything about everyone, so he wasn’t surprised by his assessment of the Sinclair family. “And Agnes?”

  Lake’s ice blue eyes met his. “She’s the protector.”

  Something in the way Lake said it made Logan sit up straighter. “What exactly did she do to protect them?”

  “See.” Lake pointed a finger at him. “That kind of question is why I hired you and why I put up with you calling me dickhead on occasion. Agnes has a sealed juvenile record a mile long.”

  Logan didn’t bother asking how Lake managed to get access to sealed records. His boss had connections that even government intelligence agencies would envy. He would have found court documents child’s play to attain.

  “Most of her arrests ended without a conviction,” Lake said. “But she did community service for one offense.”

  Community service wasn’t uncommon as a punishment for wayward teens. Logan thought back to the way Agnes had denied she’d stolen from the hotel. Just that one word: No.

  “What did she steal?”

  Lake’s eyes flashed approval. “Just about everything that wasn’t pinned down. She was the main breadwinner for Isobel and her baby, and then their two younger sisters. She was fourteen when she moved out with her pregnant sister. Seventeen when the other two sisters joined them. Donna and Mairi were still in school.”

  Logan’s mind was going a mile a minute. “Food, clothes, nappies—am I right?”

  Lake nodded. “Everything her family needed that she couldn’t afford to buy on the money she made from her cleaning jobs.”

  “A judge would have understood that. I don’t see her getting community service for it. Counseling, aye, but a sentence?” He shook his head. “What else is there?”

  “Her father was, is, an alcoholic. The bastard kind. Beats their mother, who’s so out of it on pills I doubt she even notices anymore.”

  Logan let out a low curse, his mind instantly going to his own kids. “Did he hit the girls too?”

  “Only the once. He turned up at their flat in Campbeltown. Agnes was a few days shy of her eighteenth birthday. He wanted money. Social Services had cottoned on to the fact the girls weren’t living with him and had stopped him claiming money to support them. Furious, he figured they owed him for the loss of income, and he threatened to have the two youngest girls sent back to him or put in care. Agnes told him to go to hell and that he wasn’t getting any money from them—not that they had any to give. He didn’t like being told no. And being drunk, he struck out, hitting Donna.”

  “The weakest link. The bastard.”

  “Yeah.” Lake took a sip of his coffee, his eyes on Logan. “He hit her hard enough to give her concussion. She doesn’t remember any of it, but there are hospital records.”

  From what little he knew of Agnes and her sisters, he guessed she’d gone ballistic when Donna had been hurt. “What did she do to their father to get her arrested?”

  “Hit him with a wooden chair. When it broke, she used the leg to beat him senseless. Broke his nose, took out three teeth, damaged the sight in one eye, and pulverized the fingers in his left hand by jumping on it. It took two cops to get her off him.”

  Logan nodded. “I would have done worse.”

  Lake inclined his head in agreement while Logan reached for his own coffee, wishing it was something stronger.

  “That doesn’t explain the community service though. Grievous bodily harm is a serious assault, so she should have been tried as an adult.”

  “There were witnesses, apart from her sisters, which helped her case. But the flat they rented was owned by a local businesswoman who had a lot of property in the area, meaning she had power and connections. Far as I can gather, their landlady was seriously pissed that the girls had been hurt. She had a word with the local judge on Agnes’ behalf, and her word held sway.”

  “Was the community service connected to a hotel by any chance?”

  Lake flashed a rare smile. “Just so happened that their landlady owned a small hotel. Agnes worked out her time there, then went on to paid employment with time off to study. The owner organized other work placements for Agnes too, helping her get all the experience she could, not to mention the money she needed. If it wasn’t for deferring her study to help support her sisters, she’d have had her management degree years earlier. I think she planned to work in the woman’s hotel when she qualified, but the owner died years ago, and her properties were sold.”

  It seemed Agnes Sinclair just couldn’t catch a break. “What happened to the father?”

  “Well, he can’t play the piano anymore,” Lake said drolly.

  In spite of everything, Logan laughed.

  “He’s been in and out of prison. Agnes and her sisters have nothing to do with either of their parents.”

  “I wouldn’t mind paying that man a visit.”

  “You’d need to get in line. Donna’s husband, Duncan, asked first, and Callum’s itching to talk to him too.”

  “So,” Logan said, his eyes straying to the door where Agnes had disappeared, “she’s used to dealing with her own problems any way she deems fit, and she’s desperate to hold on to this job because it’s her only chance to shake off being blacklisted.” Logan thought about it for a minute and then sighed. “I’d better call my mum and get her to watch the kids tonight. I’m going to be busy stopping Agnes from getting herself into trouble.”

  “And that right there is why you get paid the big bucks.” Lake relaxed back in his seat, taking
his coffee with him.

  And Logan flipped off his smug English boss.

  Chapter 7

  Logan spent the rest of his day running routine background checks for Benson Security clients. As the information guy in the operation, his job was to dig through databases, investigate trails online, and call leads for preliminary chats before presenting his work to the field agents in a report. To others, it might have sounded like dull work, but it took skill, creative thinking and some serious finesse.

  Really, it wasn’t unlike the work he’d done as a detective in Glasgow. And, as well as giving him the same training as the rest of the Benson Security staff, Lake gave him jobs out in the field to keep his skills sharp. But, generally, he was home in time for dinner. As was the case that night.

  When he’d first moved back to Invertary, a year or so after his wife left him, he’d stayed with his parents while he looked for a house. Only, while he’d been looking, the house that made up the other half of his parents’ building went on sale, and he’d jumped at it. Now he lived next door to his parents and had built-in babysitters for his kids. His mum loved it. He wasn’t sure what his dad thought, as he spent most of his time in the shed at the bottom of the garden.

  “Hello,” he called out as he let himself into his parents’ house.

  He followed the smell of beef stew to the back of the house and the kitchen.

  “Dad!” His daughter, Darcy, roller-skated over and wrapped her arms around him. “I got a certificate in school today. For maths. I’m a genius!”

  “Well done, you.” He squeezed her in a bear hug and kissed the top of her head. She had the same rich brown hair her mother had sported before she’d gone blonde, but she had his hazel eyes. In other words, she was perfect. “Should you be wearing roller skates in the house?”