14
14
Juniper
Callum: What did the fast–food worker say to the toilet?
Juniper: Is this a poo joke?
Callum: “Did you order a number two?”
Callum: Get it?
Juniper: A newborn could understand that one, Macabe.
Callum Macabe had kissed me on the forehead and ran away like his shoes were on fire.
He’d stroked my ear.
I don’t know why that was the part my brain kept tripping over.
Far filthier things had been shared between us.
All I knew was the way he’d pinched my earlobe between his thumb and index finger – like he found that tiny scrap of flesh worthy of divine worship – screamed volumes for what he’d do with my clit.
Not my clit.
A clit.
A metaphorical clitoris .
A gaggle of clitorises.
No wonder people liked him.
A forehead kiss and a pinch to the earlobe and Clitoris Ken had left me weak in the knees.
I might even like him.
And because he’d known exactly what he’d done to me, I’d barely spoken to him the following day.
Or the three days after that.
He arrived at Ivy House at seven p.m. every day, like clockwork.
Two steaming mugs of chamomile tea in hand – one for me and one for him – and asked a single question before proceeding up the stairs.
On Tuesday he asked: “What’s your favourite Lord of the Rings film?”
“ Return of the King , obviously.”
He’d nodded as if suitably satisfied with the answer and handed over a chocolate chip cookie wrapped in a Brown’s Café bag.
Wednesday: “How many cats did you foster before Shakespeare?”
“Seven. Some for days at a time. Some for weeks. I looked after a sweet ginger tabby called Oscar for close to a year.” The day he got adopted I’d cried in my shower until the water ran cold.
I didn’t tell Callum that last part.
That earned me a banana muffin Jess served so sparingly, they were akin to gold dust in Kinleith.
On Thursday I’d been giving a sweet couple from Missouri restaurant recommendations and he’d waited until they left to ask: “If you could add one thing to Ivy House what would it be?”
“A wooden gazebo in the wild garden to host summer weddings.”
He’d smiled at that.
And that smile had spread into his cheeks when he’d caught my attention drifting to his bag, already anticipating the sugar rush.
I hadn’t even waited for him to disappear up the stairs before swallowing half of the brownie in a single bite.
What the hell was he getting out of this arrangement?
How had he so accurately anticipated my early evening sweet tooth?
I couldn’t make sense of it.
The anticipation beating like a trapped bird in my chest as I watched the hand of the clock tick past six fifty-nine had started to feel like a foreign body spreading through my bloodstream.
That’s just the extra sugar , I assured myself.
On Friday, when I’d caught myself putting a little extra effort into my appearance under Shakespeare’s contemptuous stare, I’d done what any rational thirty-year-old woman would do when faced with what I feared was a developing crush.
I avoided him.
Later that evening my stolen notebook awaited me at the reception desk.
A blue Post-it stuck to the black velvet cover.
Made some notes. Hope you don’t mind.
And below that.
Shakespeare: try spreading some treats on the floor and lying in the centre with your eyes closed.
It’s a confidence-building technique .
He had indeed made notes.
His messy scrawl scored dozens of brightly coloured Post-its, as though his pen couldn’t keep up with his thoughts.
He offered insight on what worked and what didn’t.
Easy changes I could implement now to make Ivy House more energy efficient.
Either he knew a lot about green living or he’d researched the topic.
That seemed unlikely.
One note, beside my god-awful sketch of a garden compost, had simply said: Brilliant.
With a little smiley face.
I’d pressed the tip of my finger to that smile—
“I’m thinking of dyeing my hair pink.”
“What?” Startled, I almost dropped the bathroom sink I held.
April stood behind me.
Bare faced and effortlessly beautiful.
Her words finally registered, and I set down the sink to clutch her wrist. “What did Mal do? I’ll end him for you.” A dramatic hair change was always the first sign of a romantic crisis.
April laughed. “Want to ease up, killer?”
“Sorry.” I released my grip.
“Why would you dye your hair pink?”
“I just said it to get your attention, I called your name three times. I haven’t heard from you in so long, I was starting to worry you’d killed Murray and gone on the lam.”
“I don’t think people say that anymore,” I pointed out, wiping the sweat from my forehead.
“I’m making a conscious effort to bring it back. It’s so Bonnie and Clyde – hot-sex-in-a-getaway-car-esque.” She touched the short strands of hair slipping from my claw clip.
“And you’d look fantastic in a beret.”
“I do look fantastic in a beret. I have three in my wardrobe.” Under a thick layer of dust. I’d made the mistake of wearing one into the village once, I’d barely made it fifty feet from my car before someone shouted, “Where’s your baguette?”
No one took the piss quite like the Scottish.
“Because you’re wonderfully unique,” she replied cheerfully.
I shifted, searching the storage room as her compliment took shape and festered.
People liked unique …
until they didn’t. There was a reason people languished in the known, a favourite book read over and over; a movie recited line for line; the same oat and raisin cookie every Monday morning.
The familiar held no ugly surprises.
“How’s it all going?” April’s voice pulled me to the present.
“Callum says he’s ready to fit the new suite.”
I nodded, lifting the sink again and she grasped the other end.
“It feels like the drama might finally be over.” The day of the flood felt like months ago, when fewer than two weeks had passed.
Even with Callum only working a few hours a night, we’d made progress quicker than I anticipated.
“He asked Mal to help with some heavy lifting. That’s why we’re here.”
“He didn’t say.” Probably because I’d received a singular text from him that morning.
Macabe: Fitting the bathroom in room five today.
That was it. Seven words.
And what did I respond, you might ask?
A thumbs up.
A. Thumbs.
Up .
I never used emojis.
They were fucking humiliating.
“He also mentioned you planned to paint today, so I wore my best work clothes.” Heart a solid lump in my throat, I looked her over again, finally noting the loose denim overalls that somehow managed to hug her curves.
“Oh, you don’t need to help.” I’d been putting off the job for days now.
My heart doing this uncomfortable galloping beat that left me feeling lightheaded whenever I pictured myself making this very permanent change.
Sure, I could repaint it if Fiona hated it, but it would never be Alexander’s work.
“If I need to bulldoze you, I will, Juniper Ross. I’m here, I’m helping, get used to it.” Her hands settled on her hips.
All right then. “Did you just full name me?”
“You left me no choice. You were about to fob me off with some I can handle it alone bullshit.”
“I can handle it alone,” I pointed out, leading her from the storeroom beside the kitchen.
Hank didn’t even look up from his food prep.
Still ignoring me then .
“Callum told me not to take no for an answer.”
“He said what?” I halted.
She kept walking. The sink wobbled between our dual grip.
“You know what? Never mind – the man meddles more than Jessica Brown.” Desperate to change the subject from anything Callum-related, I asked, “How’s things at the distillery?”
“Busy, but good.” She adjusted the weight as we approached the stairs.
“I think we might need to hire more staff, the orders have more than doubled in the last few months. I found Ewan crying in the dunnage yesterday.”
Ewan was Kinleith distillery’s youngest employee.
A sweet lad if not a little jumpy.
“Actual tears?” She nodded.
“Mal can’t be that grumpy.”
“He’s not these days.” Her smirk was pure female satisfaction.
“Ewan cut his hand and felt too bad to leave in the middle of a work day. Mal drove him to the surgery, obviously. And Jacob can’t keep up with the workload anymore, though he won’t admit it.”
“Sounds shit.”
Her nose screwed.
“There’s still so much to do before the ceilidh next month, we might need to consider hiring someone off-island. You’re coming to the ceilidh, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” The distillery’s seventieth anniversary was approaching and to celebrate they’d invited half the village for an evening of whisky and live music.
April had been organising it for months.
“I bet eighteen-year-old April didn’t see this in her future.” Just a few years ago she’d been walking the red carpet in Cannes, not a denim overall in sight.
Her grin was luminous.
“I actually love it, working with Mal every day, being close to you and Heather. Which makes it even more shit that I’m leaving in a few months.”
Ordinarily, I’d distance myself with a sarcastic comment, how we wouldn’t even notice her absence.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
April’s return had changed things around here.
Made me and Heather a little more whole, lightening the ancient baggage that lay between us.
So instead, I blurted, “Callum stroked my ear.”
She almost tripped up the step.
“What kind of stroke?”
“Is there more than one kind?” Her pitying expression suggested I’d been sleepwalking for half my life.
“ Apparently so ,” I muttered.
Setting down the sink, I brushed my hands on my jeans.
“Let me show you.”
Stepping close enough our thighs brushed, April laughed lightly as I twirled one of her stray curls around my finger, just as Callum had done to me.
I’d replayed that tiny interaction so many times I had the exact pace and pressure perfected.
Her eyes danced but she held still as I tucked the curl behind her ear with tantalising slowness, allowing the tip of my finger to graze the arch of her ear, down the lobe where I pinched once and drew away.
Silence stretched. The smallest flush painted her pale cheeks.
Then— “Oh, Juney, you are so fucked.”
“What are you guys doing?” We were standing so close, our noses brushed as we turned in unison.
Mal waited at the top of the stairs, a wary quirk lifting his brow.
“Telling June how screwed she is,” April said.
Mal glanced between us.
“How’s that?”
“Callum stroked her ear.”
He grimaced, coming down the stairs to pick up the sink.
“Please tell me that’s not a euphemism for something.”
“The less you know the better.” I continued up the stairs, patting his shoulder as I edged past.
“Thank Christ,” I heard him mutter before I turned down the hall.
“ I booked the pitch for five-thirty —” A low voice rumbled from inside room five.
Callum . My pulse thundered, as if attuned to the sound of him.
I told myself the brief pause on the threshold was simply to catch my breath from the climb.
Nothing to do with the man waiting on the other side.
Skin …
Pushing the door wide, my brain short-circuited over that singular thought.
Skin . Bare skin . Callum’s bare skin .
Lots of it. He was shirtless.
Completely and utterly bare from the waist up and …
fucking hell.
He might have glanced up when I entered.
Might have laughed despite the phone pressed to his ear.
I didn’t care, not as my eyes roved over the sheer majesty of Callum Macabe’s chest. I needed an intervention.
Needed someone to dig my eyeballs from my skull because I couldn’t stop staring.
His waist tapered into a magnificent V.
His biceps rounded with relaxed power.
A light trail of hair led to the band of his jeans, a delicious path it suddenly felt vital to follow all the way to the end.
Every inch of him firm and stunning.
Real. Not the mass-produced gym bro I’d always suspected lay beneath his clothes.
He twisted at the waist, and I choked down my groan at the sight of the navy T-shirt tucked into his waistband.
I needed to get a hold of myself before he noticed.
A voice whispered it might already be too late.
Still on the phone, he tipped the receiver away from his mouth long enough to whisper, “I feel like I need a cigarette after that, harpy.”
Shit.
Cheeks burning like never before, I forced my legs to move, somehow managing to shoulder past him without actually making contact with his skin.
At the small workstation I’d set up last night, I stepped into the paint-splashed coveralls that had once belonged to Alexander.
Ada was covering the reception desk, so I had the entire afternoon to repaint the freshly sanded wood panelling.
Forgoing the dark wood stain Fiona picked in the nineties, I opened the can of earthy sage green.
My fingers shook as I poured it into the tray.
I was fully following my gut on this one, hoping the change would make the room feel bigger.
That it would complement the ever-changing skies the large bay window framed like a dramatic oil painting, while also retaining the homey quality guests expected.
The hot prickle spreading throughout my cheeks spoke of Callum’s attention on me as I stirred a thick brush into the paint.
He was still chatting on his phone and I pretended not to notice, pushing to my feet only to hesitate moments later, the dripping brush mere inches from the wall, as if held back by invisible hands.
April and Mal entered, their amiable voices nothing but static in my ears as they dropped off the sink and left again.
“You’re staring at that wall like you’re holding a grudge, sweetheart.” Callum spoke from over my shoulder.
I hadn’t even heard him hang up the call.
“What did it do to piss you off?”
“Nothing.” My throat felt like I’d swallowed sand as I forced out a sarcastic comment.
“I love my grudges. I tend them like a rose garden.”
He said nothing, the silence broken only by the rhythmic drip, drip of paint on the plastic sheet.
But I felt his stare like the drag of a finger down my spine.
The temperature in the room ticking up and up.
This is too fucking much .
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to dispel the image of Fiona’s disappointed face.
She was going to hate it and then she would hate me—
The brush wrenched from my grip and my eyes flew open, flicking between my empty, paint-soaked fingers and the man now holding it.
Callum’s shoulder skimmed mine and, without even glancing my way, he set the brush against the wall.
“No wait—”
“Too late,” he said.
My heart jolted as he worked, wrist flicking in such a way I knew he was writing something.
A beat later, he drew back, dipping the brush back into the tray to punctuate the single word with an underline.
No, not an underline, an arrow.
Beautiful .
The word was scribbled in block capitals.
The arrow beneath pointing straight at me.
“There.” He extended the brush.
“No going back now.”
I took it, words failing me.
“You’re staring again.” His voice was lower than I’d ever heard it.
“I’ll stop staring when you do.” Because he was staring.
The look on his face so intense, I had to fight not to press my thighs together.
His smile turned from playful to wicked.
“So never ?”
I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around what he was implying.
It was so wrong. The taunting and harmless flirting was one thing, but we were nearing a clifftop.
The same one we’d teetered over years ago and managed to scramble back from the edge.
He’s Callum. Your ex’s brother .
I couldn’t afford to forget it.
“Shirts are mandatory around here, Macabe.” I slid a mocking look to that perfect chest. “I can’t have you scaring my guests.”
“You sure make a lot of rules for someone getting a pretty sweet deal. I’m here, working on a Saturday after all.”
“I’ll pay anytime you want, just say the word.” Drawing the distinction between a service and a favour would make things a hell of a lot easier.
“Oh, you will pay me.” He let the taunt hang.
“At the shinty game tonight.”
Watching him run around a field all muscular and sweaty and Ken-like?
He probably clapped the opposing team when they scored.
Who knew good sportsmanship was a kink of mine?
No, I needed to spend less time with him, not more.
“I have plans.”
“Cancel them.”
“And if it’s a date?” The words shot out before I could stop them.
Seconds ticked by, measured by the pulse in his jaw.
“If I believed you, you would of course be welcome to bring this … hypothetical date along.”
“You’re coming to the game tonight?” April breezed into the room, Malcolm, Heather and the twins right on her heels.
I turned, swiping the paintbrush across the wall before any of them could read it.
“Oh, I’m not—”
“You have to go,” Heather cut in as the girls dashed across the room, long braids trailing as they threw themselves at their uncle.
Callum scooped one up in each arm, mimicking a vampire snapping his jaw.
They both giggled and squealed.
“Again, again,” Ava shouted and he spun on the spot.
Something in my gut whooshed and I forced my attention back to Heather.
She gave me a bright smile that made my heart swell and said, “I’m dropping the girls off at a sleepover and promised I’d hang around for a while. This way April won’t have to stand alone.”
“As if. People are tripping over themselves to chat with Miss Skye 2008 ,” Callum chipped in, slightly sweaty but smiling as he referenced the out-of-date pageant still held at the summer fete every year.
April practically preened at the compliment.
Picking up a spare paintbrush, she drew a big heart on the wall, adding a stylised M in the centre.
“Y’know, out of all the awards I’ve won, that might be my greatest accomplishment yet.”
“How did I not know about this?” Mal asked.
It was Heather who answered.
“It happened during your comic book phase, you were probably sketching in your bedroom.”
True to form, April’s features melted, as though it were the most adorable thing she’d ever heard, and she threw her boyfriend a flirtatious wink.
“I still have the tiara and sash, I’ll dig them out later.”
He came up behind her, stealing the paintbrush and adding an A right beside the M, so close the edges touched.
“A princess in truth, you kept that one quiet.”
April’s answering giggle and the loaded look that passed between them hiked the temperature in the room another degree.
The twins let out a joint chorus of “Eww.”
Heather coughed, “Children present.”
And Mal startled, red-cheeked and grinning.
“How about we actually get some work done?” Callum suggested.
“Before Mal pulls a bloody tiara from his pocket and crowns the lass on the spot?”
That earned another round of laughs and a middle finger from Mal.
The lightness even getting to me as my friends grouped around, bickering over brush sizes and paint rollers while the brothers withdrew to the bathroom.
Amused grunts crept around the door when Mal fitted the sink taps the wrong way around, affixing them so tightly, it took them twenty minutes to correct the mistake.
We drank copious cups of sugary tea and belted out old pop songs that even the twins knew the lyrics to.
And much later in the afternoon, when the sun had begun to dip, we stepped back, tired and paint-splattered, to admire our handiwork.
“Don’t you like it?” Heather asked after my long silence.
Throat narrow and eyes burning, I could only nod.
“It’s perfect,” I finally managed.
Heather’s arm swept around my shoulders, squeezing me like she used to.
And it was perfect. Not because the green perfectly matched the dark herringbone floor, or because it opened the room up just right , but because we’d done it together.
Without a word from me, my friends had been here, no questions asked.
And just like that, I understood why my mum had been so hesitant to change a thing.