Forever Scarred (24 page)

“Now then
Stewart, would you like to tell me just what you are going to do about your gambling debts that you left Miss Collins to pay off or am I going to have to remind you what I feed to deserters of women?” She looked down significantly at the flies of his trousers.

Stewart
turned grey and tried to cross his legs. He pressed back as far as he could into Patrick’s arms as he shouted.

“I’ll pay her back!
Every penny. I’ve had some luck recently. Give me that tablet, I’ll do it right now. I’ll even pay the interest.”

Joe passed him the tablet.
Stewart spent the next few minutes typing furiously. He gave the tablet back to Joe and pointed a trembling finger at the figures on the screen.

Joe nodded in satisfaction
as he checked the accounts.

“Right, well I think we’ve done all that we can here. Just pop that note into Mr. Freeman’s pocket and we’ll be off.” He looked down at the eyeless man lying prone across the table. He considered him for a moment and then added. “We’d better get this man to the hospital. Won’t be able to
give him his eye back as we need that as a souvenir for Mr. Freeman here, but we should get him tidied up a bit. Wouldn’t want to get into trouble for leaving a man to suffer unnecessarily. We can drop him at A & E as we go.”

Gemma nodded as Patrick hauled the injured man from the table. She placed the eyeball right in the middle of the table and turned it so that it would be the first thing Freeman would see when he eventually came round from his faint.

She turned towards Stewart.

“I suggest that you leave right now
Stewart. And I suggest that you forget everything that you have seen. We know where to find you, and don’t think you can run and hide because we will always be able to find you, so take this opportunity to turn over a new leaf. If you don’t you could just find yourself with an interesting new selection on your breakfast menu.”

And with that final remark
Joe scooped up the tablet and Gemma and the men filed out of the house with the injured man being dragged between them.

Chapter Sixteen

Lucy was beginning to become worried. She had given up sitting with the men as she had told them everything that she knew about Freeman and his business. She chatted to Donna for a while and then made more coffee for the men. She wandered through to the back room and looked quizzically at the Adam and Alex, who both appeared to have been crying. Adam wiped his eyes with the back of his hand while Alex blew his nose hard.

There was a sudden howl of laughter from back in the pub.

“I can’t believe how terrifying you looked Gemma
. Even I was scared of you!” David’s voice could be heard in the bar and Lucy looked up expectantly.

The whole gang came barreling through the door the next second and squeezed in around the table.

Joe walked straight up to Lucy he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up into his arms. He didn’t even hesitate as he leaned down and kissed her thoroughly. Lucy couldn’t resist him. If this was her last chance to kiss him then she was going to take as much as she could get.

They only came up for air when the groans and sounds of pretend vomiting became too loud to ignore. Joe spoke to Lucy quickly.

“It’s done. It’s over Lucy. You’re free. Freeman won’t ever bother you again. Now tell me that you want to be with me as much as I want to be with you.”

Lucy’s eye’s shone up at him, but then her smile dropped and she pushed herself out of his arms and backed away from him.

“It won’t be over Joe. Whatever you have done won’t be enough. It wasn’t just about him blackmailing me. I owe so much money. I’ll never be able to repay it and I can’t come to you with that kind of debt hanging over my head. You have to forget about this, about us. We had one fabulous night, we just have to accept that is all we will ever have.” She turned to leave the room.

Patrick coughed and held his arm across the door, barring her way.

“Actually Lucy, you will find that your debt has been paid. A lovely chap called Stewart, a Stewart MacDonald to be precise, has decided to own up to the fact that the debts were actually all his. He’s paid you back everything you have already paid out and he is arranging to take over all the payments on the loan as we speak. You won’t have any problems on that score from now on.”

Lucy stopped dead.

“Stewart? My Stewart? How the hell did you get in touch with him? He disappeared into the ether as soon as I discovered what he’d been up to.” She looked around at the now grinning group.

David tapped Alex and Adam’s shoulders.

“People aren’t that hard to find if you know how to look for them. He was only living ten miles away. I picked him up this morning after I dropped you here and we all had a little chat.”

James began to laugh.

“You should have seen his and Freeman’s faces when Gemma pulled out Paul’s robotic eye. It was priceless. Needed some sleight of hand with the lychee marble ensemble but the effect was wicked. It’s a pity we didn’t have a hidden camera.”

Adam gave a satisfied grunt.

“Actually we did. The tablet Joe was using has an inbuilt web cam. Joe had it angled perfectly. We caught the whole thing and saved it. Nearly killed ourselves laughing while you were filming it. Alex here was actually crying with laughter. Thought we might put it on YouTube if we have any further problems. I particularly liked the bit about feeding his balls to him for breakfast off a blunt spoon. Poor bastard almost wet his pants!”

Lucy looked from one of them to the other.

“I obviously missed something while I was talking to Donna. I think someone had best show me what’s been going on.”

Alex turned and touched the computer screen and a crystal clear picture came into view. Lucy’s mouth fell open as she saw someone who couldn’t possibly be the doe eyed woman beside her,
snarling ferociously as she reached forwards and plucked the left eyeball from the man who was now howling with laughter right behind her.

“Oh my God!
That looks so real!”

Paul leaned forwards
and tapped his eyeball gently. Lucy jumped as she heard a very solid tapping sound. Paul explained.

“The pulling it out
bit was real. It’s just my eyes that aren’t. But it’s the next bit that’s really clever.”

Lucy gulped and turned back to the screen just in time to see Gemma slide something down her sleeve into the palm of her hand.

Lucy leaned forwards and stared as a bright blue eye, surrounded by glutinous white jelly stared right back at her from the palm of Gemma’s hand.

“What is that? Clearly not your eye, it’s too bright
and it’s all dripping and oozing.”

Patrick leaned forwards too.

“Yes, we were a bit worried that they would notice the colour, but fortunately they were too busy praying that we weren’t going to do it to them too that they didn’t notice. After Gemma disconnected James’s eyeball she had to be quick to swap the things over.” He rummaged around in his bag and brought out a jar of pitted lychees and a bag of children’s marbles. “The lychee was perfect, just the right rubbery jelly consistency but we had to make do with the only blue marble in the bag to pop in the hole made by the stone. I forgot to specify colours when I asked Donna to go shopping for me. The pupil was just a stuck on bit of black paper that I tore off a headline in the newspaper.”

Lucy opened her eyes wide and then she began to laugh. She laughed until she cried as the others joined in with her.

“I can’t believe you actually got away with that. Surely Freeman will notice that it’s not real when he wakes up.” She held her aching sides as she spoke.

Joe pursed his lips and rolled his eyes at her.

“Would you hang around if you had witnessed that happen when we had just proved that we even know where he buys his underpants from? He’ll be out of there and long gone by now.”

Lucy shook her head
and looked miserable again.

“I don’t think so. I sold my house and
apparently he’s the buyer. There’s nothing that I can do about that now. Maybe we should go back and clear up the evidence.”

Patrick shook his head.

“We sorted that too Lucy. We’ve left him a lovely letter thanking him for his generous offer to back out of the deal and return your mortgage to the previous company. We’ve also thanked him for his turn around with his business practices and that we are pleased to hear that he has changed his contracts for all of his clients so that the debts will all be paid in three years and at a reasonable amount of interest. His company has put an announcement in all of today’s national newspapers.”

Joe smiled at Lucy and walked up to her again.

“There’s only one downside really. Because his company will now be offering some of the cheapest rates and best deals over the three years, he will probably pick up even more clients. I bet he ends up making more money this way then he ever did before.”

Lucy looked up at Joe.

“But now I’m stuck with a house I don’t want. I’d said goodbye to it and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with going back. I want to make a fresh start.”

Joe took hold of her hand
s and gazed down at her.

“Either sell it to someone else or rent it out. You won’t need it anymore if you come and live with me
in France. The house by the river is nearly finished. Please say that you will come back with me.” He suddenly slid down onto one knee. “Lucy Collins, I can’t live through another day without you by my side. Please come back to France and marry me.”

Lucy pulled in a shocked breath. T
here was a stunned silence in the room. No one moved for what felt like an age and then suddenly Lucy smiled and breathed out.

“Yes Joe, I would love to
go to France and marry you.”

The room erupted into shouts of congratulations as Joe swept her up into his arms and kissed her deeply again. There were more loud groans and sounds of fake vomiting
but Joe waved them down as he continued kissing the woman he loved.

Eventually th
ey had to come up for air, much to the relief of their friends and a few moments later Gemma spoke up.

“Well that’s me done for today. I have to get back on post. I wouldn’t want to be late for my own leaving party.” She
walked up to Lucy and gave her a quick squeeze before slapping all the men on the back. “Don’t forget to invite me to the wedding. I rather like that chateau of yours Dave and could do with a bit of a break in the lap of luxury.” She waved as she walked out of the door

Adam, Paul and James agreed
as Alex started clearing away his gear.

“Yes, I
should come over more often too. I haven’t been since Patrick’s wedding.”

Joe smiled down at Lucy.

“Maybe we should book the chateau for a week when we are married. We could have all this lot over and show them what they are missing.”

Alex grunted.

“I know exactly what I’m missing. I hear about it all the time from all the lads who have been over. And what you lot do on the corporate weekends sounds more like fun than work. Or far more exciting than the job I have at the moment at the very least. Going to be even worse going back to it after this little bit of excitement.”

David grunted and slapped his friend on the back.

“Huh! Those corporate things are no fun at all they’re blooming hard work and anyway I thought you were being poached by the Yanks.”

Alex shuddered.

“Not bloody likely. Wouldn’t be able to get away with stuff like this out there. They have hackers hacking their own hackers. If anything does come of this little stunt I’m going to blame Adam. They’re not so likely to go after him.”

Adam shook his head.

“Thanks a bunch. I can’t wait to hear what my wife says about it when I’m hauled off in front of the judge just before her holiday. And the girls won’t be pleased either. I promised them that we would be coming out to the chateau for Halloween. They loved it there when we were over for your wedding Dave. We’ve been looking forward to coming back.”

David frowned slightly.

“Ellen didn’t say that you had booked. I wonder why that was?”

Patrick breathed in deeply.