Lingerie Wars (Invertary 1)

“I’m not having my way with her, she’s having her way with me,” he said loudly.

The crowd whooped and whistled. Kirsty had disappeared back inside the room, but not before smacking him first.

“I don’t care who’s having who,” Betty shouted. “My shop is a mess! Get your backside down here and sort this. I’m calling the police.”

“No! Don’t!” Kirsty was back beside him.

“Give me a minute,” he told Betty. “And for the record, it isn’t your shop. Put the bat down, you’re scaring people. What are you doing with a cricket bat anyway? You’re Scottish.”

“You want me to brain the thieves with a rugby ball?” Betty demanded. “Numpty,” she called him before stomping back into the shop.

“What’s ‘numpty’?” he asked Kirsty once he’d shut the window.

“A numpty. An idiot.”

She was pacing on the rug in front of the sofa. Lake retrieved his clothes.

“You want to call your mum and tell her to bring back my gear?” he said as he pulled on his jeans.

> It almost made him laugh when she looked surprised that he knew who had done this.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Kirsty,” he said as he shrugged into his shirt, “I know who was there. I need my computer. Call your mum.”

Her green eyes were wide and pleading.

“How about we return it in the morning?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But we need time to...” She bit her bottom lip.

“Spit it out.”

He stood with his hands on his hips, regretting that he hadn’t pulled the plug on her activities earlier in the evening. It was his fault. He was having too much fun. Now he had damage control to do.

“We need to hack your computer,” she mumbled.

Lake sighed.

“You do know that you don’t actually have to have someone’s computer to hack it, right?”

“That’s not what my hacker led me to believe,” she said miserably.

“By the look of it, your hacker is ten years old.”

“Thirteen.”

Lake ran a hand over his face as he tried to remember what his life had been like back when it was normal.

“Why, exactly, did you want to hack my computer?”

She glared at him.

“To put a stop to your stupid competition. You can’t sell yourself off to some woman. It’s indecent to spend the weekend with someone you don’t even know. All to sell underwear. It’s bad for the town.”

She folded her arms in a huff. Mad at him. Unbelievable.