Lingerie Wars (Invertary 1)

“Thanks for the recap, Shona, but I wasn’t dying,” Kirsty said.

Shona leaned over to pat her hand.

“That’s not the point, love. You were seriously injured and he was the man you were going to marry. You don’t run out on the people you love.”

Kirsty swallowed the old feelings that tried to gag her. Her mother flicked a concerned glance in her direction.

“Okay, ladies, we’ve strayed from the point,” her mum said.

“Do we really have to send him packing?” Jean said. “He’s such a nice man. He has a right to try to get his business off the ground too.”

The group turned to her in unison. Jaws opened but no words came out. There was a general consensus that Jean needed to buy herself another couple of IQ points with the money her husband had left her in his will.

“He’s a stranger. Our loyalty lies with family,” they told her.

“We need the business in this town,” Jean continued, unaware that they were ganging up on her. “And that class last night was great. I haven’t had that much fun since Dave died. You were there, Kirsty—I didn’t see you complaining.”

Kirsty kept her mouth shut. The last thing she wanted was to admit that the evening had turned out to be fun. Whether or not she enjoyed herself wasn’t the point. The point was, Lake was getting under her skin and it was time for him to leave Invertary.

“It’s lovely that you had a nice time last night. Both of you,” Shona said pointedly, “but the fact of the matter is that we don’t need another lingerie shop in Invertary. We’re a small town. We barely need one lingerie shop, let alone two.”

“Don’t forget he’s English,” Heather said.

Everyone nodded. English trumped community economics any day of the week. When it came to a choice between a precious daughter of Invertary and an English interloper, everyone knew exactly where their loyalty lay—business or not.

“What do you want us to do?” her mum said.

“I’d like to know if you have anything else planned.” Kirsty pulled her chair in close to the table. “He’s fighting dirty so I want to fight dirty back, but I don’t know how. All I had planned was some advertising and a fashion show. So I’m looking for ideas. What you got?”

Five middle-aged women smiled with scarily cold eyes.

“I had a wee talk with my nephew,” Jean said. “He works with the courier company, and your man’s underw

ear isn’t going to arrive when he expects it.”

“If at all,” Shona said with a mad gleam in her eye.

Kirsty grinned. This was more like it.

“Billy already worked on the pipes,” Shona said, “but his cousin is a decent electrician. We were planning a wee power cut—or two.”

Kirsty started to chuckle.

“I had planned for him to get the wrong paint,” Heather said. “But he went to Fort William and bought it there. Which was a pity. Otherwise his shop would have been vomit green.”

Shona patted her hand to console her over her failed plan.

“I’ll put out the word, make sure that people know where their loyalty lies. It would be scandalous if they bought their knickers from an English impostor instead of our own Kirsty,” her mum said.

Kirsty smiled warmly at the women she had known her whole life. Family. That’s what it was all about. That’s why she’d come home. Plus, there was no doubt in her mind that if Scotland was ever invaded this group could easily sort the enemy out over a cup of tea and a new knitting pattern.

CHAPTER SIX

It became clear to Lake, almost a week after Morag’s protest, that things weren’t going to plan. First, the truck full of shop fittings had taken a detour en route from Glasgow and was days late. The local courier rep didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. It had taken a threat for the truck to suddenly find Invertary. Once that was solved, he got an embarrassed call from his lingerie supplier. His order had been delivered back to the warehouse instead of to Invertary.

Meanwhile, his shop and flat had been the victim of several inconvenient and mysterious power cuts. It’d taken him three days to figure out that the old wiring in his house shared a second fuse box with the house next door. The owners swore that they had no idea how the power cuts happened. Lake had given them a look that told them he knew otherwise, then he’d sealed and padlocked the box. He was kicking himself that it’d taken three days to get to the bottom of the problem; the fact there were two fuse boxes had thrown him.

He had to hand it to Kirsty, this was pretty impressive. She’d effectively shut him down for almost a full week. He smiled in the direction of her shop as he supervised the unloading of his furniture. He was grateful for her actions. They reminded him that he was becoming soft. It was time to change that. He’d lost sight of his goal. If he didn’t make the business work, he wouldn’t be able to sell it and his deadline for a new life would pass him by. Two months and counting. Kirsty’s efforts had been impressive—for an amateur.