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She felt her stomach lurch. “There’s no need to be a bastard about it.”
“There’s never any need for my being a bastard. It happens naturally.” He leaned forward, into her space. “Now tell me about the body.”
The words hit her hard and her stomach clenched even tighter. There was a body. In her freezer. Suddenly it was hard to breathe.
“Don’t you dare,” Callum snapped. “You freaking out and forgetting how to breathe is how we got into this mess in the first place.” He lifted the warm mug of tea and pressed it into her hands. “Drink. Then talk.”
For once, Isobel did as she was told. The hot tea was soothing. It would have been better if he’d put milk in it, but you couldn’t have everything. As she drank, she studied the man she’d had sex with. He’d been starring in her dreams for months, with his brooding good looks and his dangerous persona. Everything about him simultaneously warned her off and attracted her to him. From his broad shoulders and bulging arms, to the lines around his eyes that spoke of experience. His nose had been broken at some point, and there was a scar on his chin that had whitened with age. Even the planes of his face were sharp and brutal. But it was all softened by the lush fullness of his lips. She blushed just thinking about those lips and the parts of her body that had already experienced the feel of them.
Callum’s eyes darkened as though he could read her mind, and the air between them crackled. He shifted in his seat, drawing her attention to the fact that his jeans had become too tight again. A secret part of her was pleased by the effect she had on him. She shook her head to clear it. What was she thinking? She had enough to deal with without adding the Arness Outlaw to the mix.
She put her mug on the table. Folded her hands in her lap and looked at him. “My sisters and I found a dead man on the beach this morning.”
There was silence for a minute. “And you thought it would be a good idea to freeze him?”
Wouldn’t you know that the first question he asked her would be a sarcastic one?
She scowled at him. “We put him in the freezer because I can’t call the police and I don’t know who he is. We were going to bury him, but the beach is hard and rocky and we were worried we wouldn’t be able to dig a hole deep enough to stop the waves from unearthing him when the tide came in. I came here to see if, maybe, you had some idea what to do with the body.” She remembered their conversation and looked away. “I lied. I’m sorry. I have absolutely no interest in tanks or camouflage. I just didn’t know how to bring up the topic of the dead body. I thought if I got you talking about the army, it would lead to talking about wars and stuff, and then you might mention some dead people you’ve seen and I could casually say, ‘Speaking of dead people, there happens to be one in my freezer.’ It didn’t go as planned.”
He had a look of pure incredulity on his face. “I can see why it didn’t go as planned,” he said dryly. “But let’s back up some. Why can’t you call the cops?”
“Oh.” Isobel blinked several times while she tried to work out whether it was worth trying to lie again. In the end, she figured it wasn’t. “I kind of did something illegal that I really wouldn’t like them to know about.”
Callum stared at her. It was impossible to read his expression. “Was this thing more, or less, illegal than stuffing a body in your freezer?”
“How would I know?”
With a sigh, he got to his feet, towering over her even more. “Show me the body. We’ll talk about this while we’re there.”
“But you won’t call the cops?” She affected the same pleading face her three-year-old used on her that worked without fail. “He came off a boat that sneaks into the cove now and again. I don’t think they’re doing legal stuff, but I don’t want the police around asking questions.”
This story just kept getting better and better.
“We’ll see.” He reached for her hand and tugged her to her feet.
“I don’t like that answer. That’s what I say to the kids when I mean no.” She tried to pull her hand from Callum’s but he wouldn’t let go. “Do you think I’m going to run? You know where I live. I’m easy to find.”
“Who knows what you’re going to do,” he muttered. “And ‘we’ll see’ means we’ll see. Nothing else.”
“This day is not going as planned,” Isobel said as she let him drag her back up the road towards her house.
“No kidding,” Callum muttered.
CHAPTER 7
There was indeed a body in the freezer in Isobel’s garage.
“We think his throat was slit.” Isobel stood behind Callum as he leaned in to get a better look at the man.
“What gave it away?” Callum couldn’t stop the sarcasm. He took out his phone and started snapping pictures.
Isobel muttered something he couldn’t catch, and started pacing. She’d changed out of his shirt, and, for some reason, that irritated Callum. It was as though she wanted to distance herself from him, and what had happened, as fast as she could. He didn’t like that idea at all, and was irritated with himself that it bothered him.
He tuned Isobel out and lifted the dead guy’s left hand. There was a tattoo on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.
“He’s been in prison.”
If he’d been in prison, he’d be in a database somewhere. It would make searching for an identity that much easier. And an identity would help Callum figure out how the guy had ended up in Arness cove with his throat slit.
