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He didn’t even hesitate. “Taking what’s owed to me, that’s what. I told that bastard you work for I’d get my severance pay, one way or another.”
“Put that back, right now.” Donna’s voice shook and her hand trembled as she pointed at him. “That painting doesn’t belong to Duncan. It belongs to me.”
He shrugged. “Can’t say that I care.”
She stepped towards him, blocking his path out of the room. “Take your hands off it. It doesn’t belong to you.”
“It does now.”
He tried to step around her, but she blocked him, aware that he was a good head taller than her and had a lot more bulk. And from the vicious look in his eyes,
she didn’t think he would have any problem hurting her to get his way. If it had been anything else he was stealing, she would have let him walk out of the building and then have called the cops, but this was her painting. The one thing she owned that was a piece of Duncan. The only piece she would ever have, and she wasn’t going to let anyone steal it from her.
“Get out of my way,” he ordered as he crowded her, pushing at her with the painting.
“No! It’s mine. Put it back.”
“Well, look at that.” He sneered. “The tiny mouse has finally learned to say no. Does it make you cry at night, knowing that the whole of Kintyre sees you as a soft touch? We’d sit in the pub and discuss whose turn it was next to come work at the mansion, just to get the handout when we left. It was my turn this time, and there’s no way in hell I’m leaving without my money.” He glanced at the painting she loved. “This piece of crap should be worth a penny or two.”
“Help!” Donna screamed. “Thief!”
It was no use—the band had started playing again, and the music drowned out her words.
He shoved into her, using the delicate canvas as a battering ram. “The whole of Campbeltown is laughing at you. Donna Sinclair can’t say no, she’ll give money to anybody with a sob story. She’s probably bending over for her boss while she’s at it, giving him a pity fuck because she’s too timid to refuse. Look around you—three old women walked all over you to take over the building. You’re the laughing stock of Kintyre. You always have been.”
“No,” she forced out the word, but his aim had been true with the barbed arrows he’d shot. They ripped through what remained of her pride.
“Aye.” He stepped into her. “Now get out of my way.”
Chapter 28
“Where is she?” Duncan demanded of the three women in front of him. Mairi tried to look innocent while Grace looked resigned and Agnes looked like she wanted to hit him. “I’ll no’ ask again. Where is she?”
“She went to her office to see if she could find a way out of the contract she signed with the Women’s Institute,” Grace said.
Agnes glared at him. “You’d better not lay a finger on her.”
“I would never lift my hand to a woman.” And he was insulted that she thought he might.
“Don’t make her cry either,” Agnes said.
Now that, he couldn’t promise. Although, the thought of Donna crying made him want to take a knife to his own heart.
“She was only trying to please everybody,” Grace said. “The things she did weren’t just about getting you out of the mansion. She wanted you to enjoy yourself and to step back into the art world.”
Aye, he wasn’t buying that. “So this ball was just an unlucky by-product of Donna trying to get me to back into the world?”
“Oh no,” Mairi said. “We planned the whole thing. Donna wanted to ask you for permission, but she was scared you would shoot the messenger, then say no.” She smiled at him as though it was all perfectly logical.
“I would definitely have said no to this.”
“To be fair,” Grace said. “Donna thought she was hosting a gentile charity ball, not a bacchanal for the depraved.”
“The women from the institute conned her,” Agnes said.
“Walked all over her,” Mairi added.
“Took advantage of her kind and loving heart,” Grace said.
