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“Good!” His face positively lights up. “So, she can come to my birthday party.”
“That’s your first thought? I just told you the Kings know that the one witness to our crime is right here on the island, and you want to bring her to your party?”
“What? She’s lovely. The boys are going to love her!”
There’ll be no boys “loving” her under my watchful eye. “Slow down with that kind of talk.”
“You know they’ll know enough to be respectful.” He eyes me. “Except for old Jonjo. You make sure he’s got other plans that night. I don’t want him anywhere near my party.”
“Will do.” I’ve been breaking up fights between those two boys since they were wee ones. “I can handle Jonjo.”
“But bring Kitt, please. She needs to be introduced to some good Scottish culture and nothing says Scotland like the Hobgoblin. And the Burnes boys are bringing their instruments down from the Highlands to play us a tune.” He gives me a naughty wink. “Maybe she’ll even give you a dance.”
“Enough.”
He keeps going. “Now that our Kitty Cat is out of the bag, can I invite Fiona and Carol Ann? She’d love to see them.”
“Our Kitty Cat?” I cross my arms over my chest. “Didn’t the way I stormed up in here tell you that she’s not to be shared?”
“What do you mean?” Mischief flashes in my brother’s eyes. “Is she your woman now?”
“No.” I shake my head. “You’re talking nonsense. I just don’t want anyone thinking they can have her because of the tender position she’s in.”
“If I am, then I guess you won’t be minding if a Burnes boy were to ask her to dance? Spencer, one of the interns, was smitten with her. Told Cal all about her.” He leans against the frame of the door, his stance casual and fluid in comparison to the stone wall that is my current pose. “Cal said he’d never met an American girl before.”
“Callum, you say?”
“Yeah. Cal.”
Callum Burnes is cocky ‘cause he’s too good-looking for his own good, sporting a long beard, beads woven into the ends of it, bringing it down into a long point like he’s back in the Viking days. My own nemesis from school.
“Sure,” I agree. “He’ll have a dance with her.”
“Alright. I’ll tell Spence?—”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“Aye. Didn’t mean to interrupt you.” Eamon shoves his hands into his jacket pockets.
“Callum Burnes can have his dance with Kitt,” I say. “Dancing right over my dead body. ‘Cause that’s the only way a Burnes boy is going to get his hands on our Kitty Cat, as you call her.”
“What about a Bayne boy? Maybe I’d fancy a dance.” The teasing light sparkles in his gaze. Knowing me better than anyone else on this earth, he can sense my boundaries.
And he would never, ever cross them.
“You’re a funny kid. You know that?” I shove him toward his wee blue Volkswagen Jetta. “Now get out of here before I box your ears.”
When I get back in the house the kitchen’s already filled with the warm scent of good food cooking. How she makes searing a steak look sexy, I’ve no idea.
Focusing on business, I ignore her figure. “I need to talk to you. About Collins and what he was here for.”
“Oh, that?” She waves the tongs she’s cooking with in the air. “Just a little misunderstanding from back home.”
“A little misunderstanding? Last I checked, Detective Investigators don’t just go wandering over to people’s homes to ask about wee misunderstandings that happened on the other side of God’s green earth.” I stare at her. “Someone from California must have contacted him. Someone important.”
“Hmm,” she says, focusing her attention on the steaks in her pan.
I move in closer, determined to get the truth from her. “Tell me exactly why he was here.”
