Goody Two Shoes (Invertary 2)

Caroline knelt up on the bed and pointed at him. “I’m being serious. You can’t handcuff me to the bed. What are you? A barbarian? Take these off this minute or I’ll call the police.” She eyed the phone on her bedside table.

“Where do you think I got the handcuffs? I explained to Officer Donaldson that you wouldn’t listen to me and I couldn’t trust you to stay where you were put. I made it clear that this was a safety issue. He was happy to help. He wants you safe too.”

Caroline felt the top blow off her head. “Stay where I’m put? Stay where I’m put?” Her voice rose to that scary high-pitched level that only dogs could hear. “When I get out of here, Josh McInnes, you are going to be so sorry. I’ll give you one last chance to do the right thing, otherwise you are really going to regret this.”

Josh shrugged like her threat meant nothing. “I’m making eggs. I’ll come back when you’re more reasonable.”

With that he thumped back down the stairs. Caroline stared after him mutely. She couldn’t believe he’d left her. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t done what he was told. Furious, she reached for the phone beside her bed. There was no dial tone. She screeched in frustration before slamming the phone back down.

“Now, if you’d kept your cell phone with you like I told you to, you could call someone right now,” Josh called from downstairs.

Caroline wanted to hit him so badly it actually caused her physical pain. He was so dead when she got loose. She’d never been one to hit people, preferring mental torture to physical, but Josh brought out her violent side. She planned his punishment while she fumed.

“And another thing.” Josh’s voice interrupted her planning. “I found your stolen sex books. We’re going to have a nice long chat about that later.”

Caroline screamed in frustration and threw the useless phone through the open door.

“She is going to kill you when she gets free.” Mitch sipped coffee at Caroline’s tiny kitchen table.

Josh shrugged. “I should have done this weeks ago. Her ‘ruler of the world’ mentality is going to get us all in trouble. If she’d been contained we wouldn’t have needed the roadblocks, or the domino boys. We wouldn’t have Danny bouncing back into town to chat with her. There wouldn’t be any crazy gifts being sent to her work—well, not that she knew about, anyway. It would have all gone a lot smoother.”

“You’ve lost your mind, you know that, right?”

“You’re not telling me anything new. You said that to me when I proposed.”

“Yeah, but this is further proof.”

Josh concentrated on the omelette he was making. In a little while he’d go back upstairs for round two with Caroline. Maybe by then she’d be so desperate for the toilet that it’d make her more reasonable.

Josh eyed his best friend. “You didn’t send Lake’s guy away when you came inside, did you?”

Mitch looked at the ceiling for a beat. “Don’t worry, I won’t do that again.”

Josh grunted. Lake had a guy at the front door of Caroline’s house and one at the back. There wasn’t much space between her doors and the public footpaths, but at least the bodyguards were keeping the press back. Josh had also closed all the curtains in the house. It was as private as a tiny terrace house could be. Thankfully, Lake’s men were also dealing with the neighbours, who had come either to find out what was going on or complain about what was going on. That left Josh with one responsibility—Caroline.

“I snuck out of the castle to get away from you,” Caroline shouted. “Can’t you take the hint?”

“So”—Mitch leaned over to grab the coffee pot for a refill—“what exactly is the plan here? I’m assuming you have a plan. Right?”

“Absolutely.” Kind of. Maybe.

“You want to share the plan with your best friend, lawyer and manager?”

Josh plonked two plates full of food on the table. It was man food. Meat. Eggs. None of that vegetable or bran garbage. Nothing you would feed a gerbil. He sat in the chair beside Mitch.

“The plan is to convince Caroline that her life can’t go on as usual. She has to make changes. She has to take her safety seriously. And she has to realise that her choices affect more than her—they affect me and my career as well.”

“That sounds great,” Mitch drawled. “I’m sure she’ll be

eager to change everything about her life.”

“She needs to see reason.”

“And how are you going to get her to do that? Tickle her until she submits?”

Unfortunately, that was the part of the plan he wasn’t so clear on.

“Look”—Josh put his fork down and took a gulp of his coffee—“she could have been hurt yesterday. She can’t go out alone. Even if her crazy voodoo stalker doesn’t go after her, there’s still the press. You know as well as I do that dealing with them can be terrifying. The paparazzi want her to crack under the pressure. It’s exactly the kind of picture they could auction off.”