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It also feels like something I might never get over, unless I can find some way to make him look at me like that again.
“Well, let’s get it open, then,” says McTavish Senior from somewhere behind me. “No sense wasting the stuff. I’ll go and get some glasses, and we can have a toast to the grandads.”
“Er, maybe we should tell Dylan about this first,” says Jack doubtfully. “And Lexie. Well, her mum, I suppose. This is theirs as much as it’s ours. It doesn’t feel right to open it without them.”
“Aye. I suppose so,” says McTavish reluctantly. “It seems a shame not to even taste it, though. And God knows when Lexie will be back, especially now that—”
He trails off awkwardly, just before the words “now that the wedding’s off” can come out of his mouth.
Isit off, though?
Because I still don’t know that forsure. And I never will, unless I can somehow get my act together and just talk to Jack about this, like two grown adults.
Well, likeonegrown adult and me.
“Jack,” I begin, determined to get him to answer me this time. At almost the same moment, though, his phone starts to ring, and he pulls it out, frowning as he looks at the display.
“Sorry,” he says, looking at McTavish rather than me. “I need to take this.”
He wanders off outside with the phone clamped to his ear, leaving McTavish and I alone in the barn.
“I’ll, er, just go and help your dad find those glasses,” I say, before McTavish can start giving me some of the well-meaning advice I can see is right on the tip of his tongue. “Won’t be a sec.”
I turn and march determinedly out of the barn, with absolutely no intention of going to help McTavish Senior, who I’m pretty sure is capable of rustling up a few glasses in his own kitchen. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m just walking, lost in my thoughts, trying frantically to come up with some kind of grand gesture I could make — right here in the McTavish’s farm-yard, ideally — and to come up with it in however long it takes for Jack to finish his phone-call.
It’s a pretty tall order, really. I have to think pretty hard about it. And that’s probably why I don’t even notice the black SUV that’s just pulled into the yard until I’m somehow being bundled roughly inside it.
Chapter 26
As kidnapping attempts go, it’s not a very good one.
Not that I’m some kind of expert on being kidnapped, mind you: you’d have to speak to Lexie if you want to know more about that kind of thing — and, to be fair, the time Lexie was bundled into the back of a car, she wasn’t actually beingkidnapped, anyway.
But Iambeing kidnapped; or so I assume, anyway. I mean, it’s not every day two men jump out of a car and grab you, is it? And it’s really not that often that you find yourself being pushed through the open door of said car before your brain can even register what’s happening. It’snever, in fact, in my case. So even though I’m not always, as Mum would say, the sharpest knife in the drawer, evenIknow this is pretty serious.
As the car door thuds behind me, there’s just enough time for me to regret every single decision I’ve ever made — with particular emphasis on the one which led me to walk out of that stupid barn and more or less sleepwalk into a kidnapping situation — before we’re reversing out of the driveway at a speed that throws me across the back seat and into the lap of the person who’s sitting there.
The very familiar person who’s sitting there.
“Ben?” I whisper, struggling back into a seated position as the car screeches out of the farmyard and into the single-track road beyond it. “Ben, what are you… oh my God! It’s them, isn’t it? The men who were after you?”
My stomach lurches with horror — or maybe it’s just one of the many potholes on this stretch of road — as I realize what’s happening here. The front seats of the SUV are hidden from view behind a black screen, so I can’t see the men who grabbed me. But the fact that they’ve obviously grabbed Ben too tells me all I need to know.
It’s the people he warned me about. The gang, or whatever you want to call them, who were after him for the money he owes. And now it looks very much like they’ve found him.
Andme.
If I could think clearly right now, I expect my life would probably flash in front of my eyes. As it turns out, though — and I really wish this wasn’t something I could speak on with any level of authority — when you’rereallyscared, that doesn’t happen. (Which is probably a good thing, to be honest, because if my lifewereto flash before me, I suspect it wouldn’t resemble ahighlights reelso much as it would be like a collection of bloopers and out-takes.) No, what happens is that you can’t thinkat all. Which I guess is what I get for always wishing my life could be more like a movie.
If itwasa movie, I’m pretty sure I’d forward-wind this particular bit. As it is, I just sit there, too scared to even cry, as Ben smiles at me in what is probably supposed to be a reassuring way, but which actually just makes him look high.
“It’s okay, Emerald,” he says soothingly, reaching for my hand. “You don’t need to be scared.”
“I don’t need to bescared?” I shriek back hysterically. “When I’m being kidnapped bygangsters? WhendoI need to be scared then, if this isn’t it?”
“Oh, they’re notgangsters,” says Ben, chuckling as if this is somehow amusing to him. “It’s just Colin and Rory. I met them in The Crown the day I arrived here. God, they’ll love being described as ‘gangsters.’”
He laughs again, then presses a button on the door, which makes the barrier between us and the front seat slide smoothly down to reveal two middle-aged men in football tops. Which, okay, isn’texactlyhow I imagined gangsters might dress, but, then again, I’ve never actually seenThe Godfather —much to Ben’s disgust — so maybe I’m wrong about that.
