burst into a flood of tears and threw her arms around my waist.
Fear receded, and I stared at the piece of paper, crumpled in my hand. L. MacNeill, it read. I flipped it open, and inside was a red heart, drawn in crayon.
I love you, daddy. From Isla, was scrawled underneath.
Oh fuck. Oh fucking God.
I’d officially aged a year in sixty seconds.
“Sorry,” Isla blubbed.
I crouched and wrapped her in a hug. It took a long minute before I could speak. “Christ, sweetheart. Naw, it’s me who’s sorry. I jumped to a conclusion.”
“I wrote it when we were driving, using the new pens Auntie Blair gave me. I thought you’d like it. My letters are so neat.”
“They are. Perfectly so.” I hushed her, stroking over her yellow hair, so different to my dark-as-night own.
I needed to calm the hell down.
No one knew where we were. Even my sister didn’t have our new address. Isla was still safe. We could continue.
With another hug, I strapped my lass back into her car seat and kissed her forehead, then drove us on.
The last forty minutes took us deep into the Highlands of Scotland, to a remote estate where I had a new job and we’d settle in a new home. For a while, we could hide and be happy.
Yet the echo of my alarm still infected me.
I drove, edging over the speed limit, needing to escape the sense of danger.
Finally there, I pulled up outside our cottage—one of two that backed onto a thick pine forest and a good distance from any other property. Isla sat forward, peering out.
“What’s that woman doing to her door? Is she painting words on it? That’s naughty. I can see a ‘B’, then an ‘I’ and a ‘T’. Oh, but the paint is running.”
I stared, too. Our neighbour, a woman I’d yet to speak to but who my boss had assured me would help with childcare if my job called me out late, was gazing at her front door, not noticing us.
Then I saw the painted slur.
There was no chance she’d done this herself.
My anger spiked again because I’d had it with threats, worry, and stress. With driving four hundred miles and thinking I’d have to drive us back.
Whatever the fuck was going on here had one pissed-off Scotsman to contend with.
2
Cait
The red paint dripped like blood, and I gazed at my cottage door, my gut tight.
Of all the emotions I could stir in another person, obsession scared me the most. This had all the hallmarks of a spurned lover. Except that was hardly the case.
As a pre-teen, I’d been followed by boys who asked me out, caught on my apparently perfect face. Likewise, teenaged me gained admirers in droves.
Until they got to know me better. Then, they gave up.
No amount of good looks could replace the fact that I had nothing to offer them. Or them to me. Zero, zip, nada sexy feelings. It hadn’t happened for me once, not for any boy, man, or woman. It had become common knowledge that Cait McRae just wasn’t interested.
I still feared the attention. The infatuation my birth mother had had for my father that led to the disastrous first few months of my life.
At twenty-three, I’d hoped the days of random crushes were past me.
The events of the recent few months and now the word splattered on the entrance to my home told another story.
Bitch, it read.
Well, thanks very much, weirdo.
Gravel crunched behind me, and I twisted around. Two people exited a car. A man and a little girl.
My new neighbours, I assumed, and my heart sank. Why the ever-loving heck did they need to arrive right at this moment?
“Back in the car,” the man barked at his daughter.
She did as ordered, and he stalked over to me.
“What the hell is this?” He glared at the door as if the slur was aimed at him, not me.
Lochinvar. That was his name. My uncle had recruited him as the new head of the mountain rescue. He looked the part, too. Dark hair, a close-cut beard, and dangerously intelligent almost-black eyes.
He was huge, too. A mountain of a man. Wide shoulders stretched his t-shirt, sizable muscles plain.
Instinctively, I took a step back. “This is my place. I’m Cait. I just arrived home and found it.”
His gaze swept over me. “Ye havenae been inside?”
“Not yet.”
“Unlock the door.”
I bristled at the order but still obeyed. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that the woman should never enter the creepy house alone.