Next morning, Jack was up early again. Belle heard him talking on the phone for a long time. Then they ate breakfast. With no horses to muck out and no hens to collect eggs from, Belle occupied herself by cleaning up the inside of the house while Jack prepared that night’s dinner.
At just after one, a battered old Jeep rolled up at the front of the house and six men emerged from it. Through the kitchen window Belle saw them coming. There was something in the way they moved, the tense and watchful way they held themselves, that reminded her of Jack. He’d heard the Jeep pull up, and let them in to the house.
‘Christ, here you are, Jackie boy. Talk about the arse end of nowhere,’ one of them said.
Belle went to the door and looked out as the men greeted each other with hugs, back-slapping and a lot of swearing. The one who’d been driving flicked a look at her.
‘See you’ve been busy,’ he said to Jack with a grin.
He didn’t seem to notice her scars. In fact, as they turned toward her, all six of them, none of them seemed fazed by the state of her.
Jack took her hand in his. ‘This is Belle,’ he told the men.
They nodded. Belle looked them over, staggered by a wall of solid testosterone. One – the driver – was ginger-haired, one was portly and clean-shaven, one had big black muttonchop whiskers, another had heartbreaking dark eyes, one was built like a bear and the last was slight, blond and twitchy, very fast-moving. Six men, and they all looked like trouble; like they could handle themselves. They all had that same cool assessing stare; just like Jack’s.
‘Belle?’ Jack pulled her against him. ‘Meet the boys.’
‘Hi,’ she said. These were the people he must have been on the phone to this morning.
‘You said you needed an army,’ said Jack, giving her a squeeze. ‘You’ve got one. So what do you want to happen now?’
Belle looked at him. ‘First I’ve got to find someone.’
‘OK. We can do that.’
‘I’ll take first watch tonight, shall I?’ asked the big one Jack had called Tank.
‘Yeah. Good,’ said Jack.