I love the way his eyes dance at me, I love the way he smiles, I love when that wee dimple appears in his cheek. And I'm starting to really enjoy the way I feel when I’m with him.
No, it isn’t true.
I crave him. I feel alive when he touches me. I feel safe when he holds me.
I’m falling in love with the man I’m supposed to seduce and I don’t have a bloody clue what to do about it.
I go back out with the girls and resume where we left off. I have lots of ideas about hairstyles, and have loads of fun showing them a variety. We do a wee trial with makeup, and as we get all dolled up, Cairstina talks on and on about these romance books that I need to read, now that the boys aren’t all eavesdropping.
“And you have to understand, they’re not…” her voice trails off, and her cheeks flush with color.
“She means they’re not tame books,” Islan says with a laugh as she loops a bit of Paisley’s hair around a curling wand. “They’re really, really dirty. Like fuckin’ fire.”
“Ohhh,” I say with a sage nod. “Seems I need to get in on this action, eh?”
“Aye, girl, you really do,” Islan says. She lowers her voice. “The girls and I have our suspicions about who the real writer is.”
“Do you?” I ask. It sounds like a great mystery.
“Aye,” Islan whispers.
“Do you really think the writer knows you?”
Islan looks away and bites her lip. “It’s a distinct possibility, aye.”
Cairstina’s eyes go bright, and Paisley bites her lip. I’m intrigued.
“We’ve been doing a little digging around on social media,” Islan whispers.
“Why are we whispering?” I whisper.
She looks over her shoulder. “You have to understand. The men in this house think that someone is spying on them and getting the ideas for these books by watching things here at the house. And you're no stranger to what this life is like, right?” She sobers, the most serious I've seen her look yet. “I don't need to tell you how they treat spies, do I?”
A vivid memory comes back to me. A man, tied up in a dark room, his screams echoing down a long hallway. Me, running to stop them, unable to find the source. Was it a dream or a real memory?
I swallow hard, my voice suddenly hoarse. “No. I know.” My father’s a brutal man, and I’ve seen the way my family deals with spies. I’ve seen it firsthand. My father tends to favor the barbaric “eye for an eye” philosophy, but he always takes things a step further.
If you steal from him, he cuts off your fingers. Do it a second time, and you lose a hand. Snitch on the family, he’ll have your tongue cut out. See something you shouldn't, and you lose an eye. Though I’ve been kept ignorant of the actual workings of the Aitkens Clan, there’s no way to remain completely ignorant of his violent methods.
“I suppose if there were a spy spilling all on the pages of a romance novel, there’d be hell to pay, wouldn’t there?”
“Aye,” Cairstina says quietly. “There would be.”
“But we couldn’t betray someone who wrote such beautiful stories, could we, Bryn?” Islan asks. Does she know the person, then? Or think she does?
“Of course not.” I shake my head. “Never.”
“So we don’t exactly know who it is,” Islan continues. “But we know for certain that she lives in Inverness.”
I blink in surprise. “Honest to God?”
“Aye.”
“Wow. How do you know that?”
“First, the bookstore in Inverness centre is always the first to stock the books. Always. They don’t even arrive online until they’ve come here first. Our search online tells us that while everyone else is looking for the next copy, those that shop in town get the first.”
I nod. “Okay….”
“Second, there are things only a resident of Inverness would even know,” Islan says. “Like the way you get a bottle of Irn Bro on the house to cure a hangover, and how the only place to stay dry when it’s raining and you’re outside is under the trellis of trees by the train station.”
All my mates and I know this, aye.
She continues. “And then… well, there’s some of the lingo. Like instead of calling the little tea shop in town the shop we call it cuppa, but only the locals know that.” She giggles. “And the author knows exactly where by the Castle View you can find a private place to snog.”
I giggle at this particular wee tidbit. “Useful information, that,” I mutter, and they laugh right along with me.
“Okay, so it’s someone who lives nearby. That much we can agree on. But if this person really is spying on you, how would they get close enough to even know anything? How do you know it isn’t just straight fiction?”