Pitch Imperfect (6 page)

Who would’ve guessed that what she missed the most from her former life would be walk-in wardrobes and modern en suites? Years of spending money freely and here she was in a musty, empty shell of a house with no hot water, no central heating and no income.

Her most recent bank statements were next to her bed, where she’d dumped them. Crisp pale blue and white reminders that she needed a job, and she needed it fast. Childishly, she crossed her icy fingers. Mac was a school teacher and had arranged an interview at Heaverlock Primary, and a steady, music-teacher salary would help keep her savings for work on the manor.

After liaising with the trust, her lawyer had advised her to ask for a minimum of £80,000 from the bank, more if Brendan didn’t repay her thirty grand. Lacking an architect’s estimates she’d gone for an even £100,000—a hefty sum to lend a jobless applicant with a semi-ruin for collateral. And what if her application was successful, but the money wasn’t enough to cover the restoration and buy everything she’d need to fit and furnish her B&B? And what if Brendan didn’t pay up?

Anjuli settled back and rubbed her temples, remembering her bet with Ash. If she did a good job during the shift she owed her and lucked out at the school position then maybe her little sister would hire her on at the Heaverlock Arms. Full-time shifts should at least cover her living expenses, provided she economised. She could do that, couldn’t she? Swap champagne for cava and buy Home Budget instead of Harrods? She paused, a passion fruit truffle halfway to her mouth. Cadbury’s variety packs?

Oh, God.

Getting angry was no use. She’d done that already and, along with other irate clients, taken legal action. All it’d resulted in was more bills, this time from her lawyers. Her advisor had skipped the U.K., her ex was a deadbeat and her money was gone. She was screwed.

If the restoration cost more money than she could come up with...

“It won’t,” she said to Reiver. He barked as if in agreement and she smiled, feeling more confident. “I’ll convince Rob to work for me and by the time he starts, we’ll have all the money we need. What Rob doesn’t know about my finances won’t hurt him.”

Chapter Six

Ben set his coffee mug on the granite work top with a resounding bang. “You are bare-faced shitting me, aye?”

Rob groaned internally and didn’t look his twin in the eye. “No.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

Ben shot him a frustrated look and strode out of the kitchen. He’d popped in unannounced, asking if Rob had noticed anything amiss that evening. Strange cars, “walkers” who didn’t carry any gear, shots in the night. The discovery of a body in the bracken a few weeks earlier had horrified the villagers and the police station was receiving an increase in what Ben called “hysterical Heaverlock” calls. Still, he seemed to be taking each one seriously, no matter how outlandish the claim.

Rob followed his brother outside. He should have kept to discussing the recent spate of crime and sealed his mouth about Anjuli’s request. When Ben got on his soapbox only being called to duty or Mac’s promises to find him a wife could shut him up.

“Anjuli Carver doesn’t deserve a second of your time and you’re going to restore her house?”

Ben struck a pose Rob recognised as his own: arms crossed and legs set wide apart. They weren’t identical twins, but they had the same swarthy skin, height and build. At a glance they looked like mirror images facing each other across the driveway.

“No, I indicated that I would think about it.”

Ben snorted. “Was that before or after you offered her your gigolo services?”

“Funny.”

“Christ, man! There are plenty of lasses around to heat your sheets at night. Catriona Adams down at the station keeps asking about you. She’s desperate to find out whether the twin brother myth is true.” Ben grinned. “I’ll give her your number if you’re interested. Hers is thirty-six, thirty-two, forty-two.”

It was Rob’s turn to be disgusted. When Ben wanted sex he found a woman, had a fling and that was it. He chose carefully, mainly attractive older women who were after a good time or going through a divorce and didn’t want commitment. Ben didn’t want to fall in love or have a family. He was married to the police service and God help the woman who thought otherwise.

“Anjuli means nothing to me,” Rob said, smiling as he remembered her nervousness around him. “I’m calling the shots so you can relax about me falling for her again. I’m in control.”

Ben didn’t look convinced. His demeanour suddenly changed and a harsh brutality darkened his features. “Anjuli Carver is a promiscuous bitch who’ll fuck anybody who can scratch her itch. Screw her brains out if you must, but make sure you dump her straight after. I’ll go next, keep her hot and wet before I tell the lads at the station to take their turn. Hell, I’ll stop in after my shift tonight and give it to her long and hard before I head home.”

A snarl rose from Rob’s chest. “Stay the fuck away from Anjuli and tell your buddies if they touch her I’ll kill them.”

Ben’s expression shifted to flat and cool. Cop mode. He observed Rob’s aggressive stance with the calm, violence-diffusing posture he assumed when confronting rowdy punters or hardened criminals. Then he smirked, and the rage that had taken possession of Rob trickled away.

“Shit.” Ben had done his bad-cop routine and he’d fallen for it. A few seconds ago he’d been ready to attack his own brother and the fight would’ve been ugly. The testosterone-filled scuffles they’d had as teenagers had always ended in impasse, or worse, with Mac hauling them apart by the ears. Their little sister had a mean streak underneath her tender sweetness and she knew how to twist for maximum pain.

“That was a great demonstration of control,” Ben said. “You’re delusional if you think Anjuli Carver can’t get under your skin. My advice is to walk away. Get as far as you can from Castle Manor and its new owner or she’ll break your heart again, little brother.”

“You’re only eleven minutes older than I am.”

“Wise enough to have kept my dick locked up if I’d seen her in London.” Ben mounted his motorbike. “Dinner here next week?”

Rob nodded. He and his siblings took it in turns to cook a family meal every fortnight. Rather, Mac and Ben did the cooking depending on whose house they were at, and he provided drinks and dessert—straight from the deli shelves in Heaverlock. Ben took over Rob’s kitchen when it was his turn to cook, happy to escape the cramped flat he was currently renting near the police station.

“Craig is staying in Manchester this week and the boys have a sleep over so it’s just us and Mac,” Rob said.

Both men groaned. Craig was a lecturer at Manchester Tech, spending four days a week away from home, but he’d become increasingly busy during the past few months and often wasn’t present for their family meals. Mac was in matchmaker mode, and without her husband to dilute her focus, their fortnightly family dinner would be about “settling down and finding their soulmates.”

Ben’s smile was evil. “I’m going to sit back and enjoy it.”

“Anjuli is off the menu.”

“And I reckon you want to skip starters and have her for main course,” he said, putting on his helmet. “Don’t make the same mistake you did in London. She’s no’ worth it.”

Rob stared after his brother’s retreating motorbike, then into the forest. Ben was right. He should walk away from Anjuli and her restoration. So why didn’t he?

“Fuck if I know.” He shouldn’t have told Anjuli to text him when she needed a man. He’d done it on impulse, but had she believed him? From her expression she seemed to have taken him at his word. And said nothing. Rob frowned and made a disgusted noise. Maybe that sort of thing was common in her world, but he wasn’t in the habit of offering himself to sex-starved women like a stallion at stud. He didn’t have one-night stands and he had no interest in women who did. Relegating her to somebody who meant nothing to him should have been easy, but every time he heard her voice he felt inexorably linked to her.

Her eyes seemed tinted with sadness, as if she were looking through a lens that wasn’t as bright as everybody else’s. He wanted them to shine like they used to, to see the dimple on her left cheek when she laughed. And he wanted to kiss her. The only thing stopping him at Castle Manor had been his pride.

His blood rushed to his cock as he thought of her breasts, full and straining against her cashmere sweater. He’d wanted to rip it off, pull down her jeans and settle into her. Against the sink, on the floor or wherever he could find a strong enough surface against which to brace his thrusts.

“Shit.”

He was swearing too much these days, not at all the right language for a mature, professional man. Maybe he would stop swearing when he stopped thinking with his dick. There was no time like the present. Overextending himself for Anjuli would be madness. Like Ben had said, she cared nothing about him and would obviously sleep with anyone to assuage the craving for her ex.

Except after his rage had cooled he hadn’t been able to shake the sense that Anjuli’s abrupt flip from passionate woman to coldhearted bitch didn’t ring true. She hadn’t seemed able to look him in the eyes, hadn’t seemed...herself. Another frustrated expletive, stifled halfway through. How should he know what Anjuli Carver was like anymore? Eight years had passed but they might as well have been eighty. She wasn’t the woman he had loved and if she wanted to screw the entire village it was nothing to him. Nothing.

The names of single, eligible men in Heaverlock popped into Rob’s head, and he compared himself to each man as if he were indeed a stallion sizing up his competition. Damn it, he didn’t need to examine why his nostrils flared or his vision suffused with red. Residual possessiveness, nothing more. His taciturn, cynical brother was wrong. He was in no danger of falling in love with Anjuli again. So what if she looked sad? What he wanted from her was sex, plain and simple.

Rob let out a string of curses, glad that the forest absorbed his anger. Since when had he been interested in casual sex? That was his brother’s modus operandi. It was time to put Anjuli Carver out of his mind for good. If she phoned to make an appointment he would recommend an architect he knew in Edinburgh, and that would be the end of it.

* * *

The cuts on Anjuli’s hand still hurt like hell. She grimaced as Ash ripped off the old plaster and pulled a new one from the pub’s first-aid kit. The empty platform at the back of the Heaverlock Arms’ great room taunted her. She saw herself back up there with Rob.

“Put one of those over my mouth,” Anjuli said miserably.

“Haven’t got one big enough, Babes.” Ash sprayed the cut with antiseptic. “When I said ‘apology attack plan’ I guess all you heard was the attack part, huh.”

Anjuli groaned.

Ash grinned and handed her a bar cloth. “Don’t feel so bad. The village got a free spectacle and I got a free shift.”

“I aim to please.”

Ash went to serve a punter, then made a face as she watched Anjuli “tidy” the bar. “Next time let’s bet on a girlie weekend in Edinburgh.”

“What’s wrong with rearranging your glassware in an aesthetically pleasing display? And lemon swirls are much prettier than coarsely cut wedges.”

“Yeah, and you waste half the lemon in the process. Remind me never to go into business with you,” Ash said, then pointed at the stack of newspapers on the floor and gestured at the wall rack. “Stop lowering my margins and do something useful before the punters come in. I’ll be in the back office.” She took a few steps, turned abruptly, then rushed back and tried to pull
The Borders Chronicle
from the pile. Anjuli picked it up before she could. “Don’t look.”

Anjuli looked. Jaw dropping, she read the front page headlines, mouthing them in a disbelieving whisper. “Former Fiancés Engage in Battle over Wind Farm by Sarah bloody Brunel.”

The accompanying photo took up most of the front page and showed her, frizzy-haired and red-faced, squaring up to Rob. The article was a word-for-word account of their exchange and—oh God, it painted her character in a palette of rude. Anjuli looked around the pub and stifled a groan. She
had
insulted Rob and therefore she had only herself to blame if some nasty reporter was on hand to write about it. But did she have to do it with such relish?

“What happened to Ethel Portree?” Anjuli asked. “And who the hell is Sarah Brunel?”

“Ethel got the chop, and Sarah was the woman sitting with Rob after your performance.”

Oh. The slender blonde who wouldn’t leave so she could apologise.

“Best thing to do is ignore it,” Ash counselled.

Didn’t she know it, and as the night wore on it became easier. A Scotland-Ireland rugby friendly would be on at seven and already she was sweating, running around from one end of the bar to the other. “I wish people would stop asking me about my past life,” she complained to Ash. “It makes me feel like I died and was reincarnated, and nobody told me about it. If anybody asks me to sing again I’ll tell them to organise a séance so I can channel the diva.”

Ash scanned the bustling pub. “I don’t think they will. Jeffrey Martin thinks you ruined your voice on drugs, Penny Jameson says you’re on voice-deepening hormones for a sex change and Muriel Freeman thinks you’ve developed acute stage fright. They all say you’ve lost that star quality.”

“Oh? What else do ‘they’ say?”

Ash considered her for a moment, then sighed. “You might as well hear it from me. It’s all around the village that Sarah Brunel is hot for Rob. She’s not just content to sleep with anything in a kilt anymore, the slutty lass.”

“Slutty?”

“That’s the word about town.”

Anjuli heaved a sigh. Despite her anger at the reporter, and the tightening in her chest at her familiarity with Rob, she had more than enough experience at being unfairly labelled. “Maybe Sarah Brunel is a confident woman who knows what she wants. Nothing wrong with that.”

“She and Rob went out a few times last year. I heard it from one of Ben’s casuals. She said Sarah was like a bitch in heat, always turning up whenever Rob was around. Then she made a play for Ben, poor, deluded thing. Slept with her boss a few times, too, then it was back to Rob after that, but nobody knows if he took her up on it.” A probing look at Anjuli. “What do
you
think?”

Anjuli crumpled the newspaper and glared at Ash. “None of my business. Tell me what they say about
me
.”

“Easy. Everybody knows you bought that old wreck so you could hire Rob and woo him back to your fickle bosom.”

Some questions should never be asked. “Oh, for God’s sake. Isn’t there anything else to talk about besides Rob, Sarah and me around here?”

“Shit, no. The village hasn’t had this much fun in ages. A fiver of my cash says you’ll have Rob in your clutches by the Common Riding Ball. There’s a wager running down at the bookies and—”

“What?” Heads turned at Anjuli’s squawk.

Viking sidled past, winking. “Christmas he will be yours. Is good time for romance, aye?”

Anjuli listened, aghast, while Viking and Ash discussed the other bets, laughing at some of them. Old Mr. Combe had wagered fifty pounds on the outcome, but he’d got it wrong and had her wooing a Douglas from Halton until his neighbour set him straight.
Ha
,
ha
,
ha and laugh
,
laugh
,
laugh.
How funny.

“There will be no ‘wooing’ of anybody,” she said, as soon as Viking had gone.

Ash grinned. “Skip over that part, then.”

“I’m not in search of a husband.”

“Jesus, lighten up, Babes. Who said anything about marriage? There’s loads of Heaverlock hotties around who can’t restore your house but can sure give you a thorough clean. And your nooks and crannies, sister mine, need a long, deep seeing to.”

Anjuli huffed. “My nooks and crannies—”

“Are like a granny’s. Let’s see, there’s Kenneth Baker, all grown up. Remember him? Quite shy, but such a sweetie. Only twenty-one and just broke up with his girlfriend, ripe for a fling with an older woman.”

She gave Ash a quelling look. “Boy toys are passé.”

“Nick Haddington is a bit older than us but maybe too serious for you. Cups of tea in front of the TV and early nights, but I hear he knows how to keep a woman warm in the winter.”