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Her eyes narrowed as she stared into the darkness where he’d vanished. How could he? This was the ultimate betrayal. One for which he would pay. As far as she was concerned, their tenuous deal was off. There was no way she’d stop searching for him now.
Invertary’s Unofficial Council Has a Plan
This story takes place just before Can’t Buy Me Love.
Dougal Jamieson, Invertary’s unofficial mayor (unofficial because nobody had turned up to vote at the last eight elections) banged his gavel on the lectern for silence.
He didn’t get it. Which came as no surprise. Town meetings were raucous at the best of times, but this one had attracted more attention than most—because the one and only point on their agenda had been penciled in as Deal with the Betty situation.
“Settle down,” he boomed through the microphone, making his voice reverberate around the Presbyterian church hall.
Only half the people paid any attention to him. The rest were too busy gossiping about the subject of the meeting, who sat in the front row with a sly grin on her craggy old face. As usual, she’d dressed in a shapeless tartan dress and the smell of hot Scotch pies wafted from her black handbag. It was a relief to see that she’d stopped dyeing her head blue. Her head, not her hair because there wasn’t enough of that left to dye. And, miracle of miracles, she actually had her teeth in for a change.
“I need silence,” he bellowed and, at last, the noise petered out to nothing. “About time,” he snapped at his fellow townsfolk. “Thank you for coming out on this cold night to attend our meeting. We”—he pointed at the council who sat in a row behind him, facing the crowd—“expect you to conduct yourselves in a civilized manner. There will be time for questions and comments later. After we’ve presented the issue to all of you. In the meantime, I’ll introduce the council.”
He turned to the people behind him. “Caroline McInnes, of course, needs no introduction, but I’ll give her one anyway. She’s married to Josh, lives in the castle, and runs everything. And I mean everything! She’s been running this town for years. And recently, she’s gone into business with Mitch Harris and is now managing the careers of some very talented musicians.” He paused for effect. “And Josh.”
As the crowd laughed and Josh complained loudly from the front row, Dougal moved on. “As you may be aware, both the principal of the high school and the minister of this church have retired. So we had two vacancies on the council. Reverend David Carlyle kindly filled one of them.” When the younger man smiled at the crowd and a few cheeky women wolf-whistled, he just shook his head. The poor man had only been in Invertary a few weeks and was already being hounded by every available woman in the Highlands, all of them agreeing he was far too pretty to be living alone in the manse.
Clearing his throat, Dougal moved on to the additional two council members—because they’d had to expand to fill the town’s growing needs. “This is Fiona Hendry, some of you might know her if you have kids in school. She’s the new head teacher at the high school.” And too brand new to dodge taking on the old principal’s place on the council.
“And last but not least, you all know Lachlan McBride. We thought his engineering expertise might come in handy.”
“And Lachlan thought he was only here to offer advice; he didn’t realize he’d been conscripted onto the council,” Lachlan drawled, making his three brothers at the back of the room laugh loudly and point at him.
“Aye, well, thanks for being here.” Dougal moved swiftly on, turning back to the lectern. Placing his hands either side, he leaned into the mic. “As you know, the town is expanding.”
“Mainly with Americans,” Matt Donaldson, the town’s only cop, called out. “It’s an invasion.”
“Hey.” His American wife, Jena, smacked him on the chest. “Any more of that and I’ll go back to the States. Then what would you do? The house still needs work, and you’re garbage at DIY.”
“You know I don’t mean you, Princess,” Matt said. “I was talking about Josh. He can go back any time.” He grinned over at the singer, who flipped him off.
“None of that,” Dougal snapped. “There are children present.
“Some of them yours,” Caroline, Josh’s wife, pointed out from behind Dougal, as their toddler sat at his side.
“Sorry, baby.” Josh batted his eyelashes at her, making everyone laugh.
“Anyway, as I was saying.” Keeping the town meetings on track was a herculean task. “The town is growing. Not a lot, but enough to make us think about the future. If we’re going to keep the young people here and not lose their skills and enthusiasm to the big cities, then we need to generate more employment opportunities for them.”
“Aye, aye,” someone shouted.
“Couldn’t agree more,” someone added.
He held up his hands for silence. “With that in mind, a few of us have come up with some ideas for attracting business and investment to Invertary.” He glanced at Betty, who looked more evil with every word he said. “I want to buy the empty building and carpark next to the Scottie Dog and build a conference center, which should attract people to the area. Someone else wants to set up a summer camp for kids, but the facilities could be used year-round for retreats. Magenta plans to come back at some point and open a caving business to take tourists into the old mine. We need more accommodation for all the looky-loos that turn up hoping to get a glimpse of Josh’s ugly mug. We want to make the fishing competition and the lingerie fashion show regular events. Not to mention, expand our Christmas market. And there are a few other things in the works that we don’t have time to talk about here.”
He took a deep breath and eyed Betty. “I’m sure you’ll all agree that’s a lot of fine plans. Plans that will expand the town without ruining everything good about it. We just have one wee problem.”
The loud cackle from the front row set his teeth on edge.
“It would seem,” he said, “that a good portion of the properties we need to buy to make these business ideas a reality belong to Betty McLeod.”
Betty let out a whoop as a ripple of shock ran around the room. Dougal well understood the reaction. He’d been stunned too when his lawyers had finally managed to dig through all the paperwork hiding the ownership of the mysterious trust that owned half of Invertary.
“Quieten down,” he said into the microphone.
Margaret Campbell, owner of the local craft shop and leader of Knit or Die, shot to her feet. One look at her, and it was clear where her ex-model daughter, Kirsty, got her fine looks from. She was a gorgeous woman, and she was also enraged.
