Derrick cleared his throat. “Vice President of Skulduggery and Snoopery.”
“It’s the other way around,” Oliver said crisply.
“As if you know anything about either,” Ewan said with a snort.
Oliver reminded himself that he needed Ewan alive for at least another twenty-four hours, but that didn’t preclude delivering an elbow to the lad’s gut.
“Why don’t I get a title?” Ewan wheezed.
“You wouldn’t like my choice,” Derrick said shortly.
Ewan slung his arm around Oliver’s shoulders. “When you kill him and take over the company, will you give me a fancy title?”
Oliver shot his colleague a cool look. “What leaves you thinking you’ll outlive him?”
“You need my vast stores of knowledge about the fairer sex and how not to make an arse of yourself when you’re around them, which, considering your hopeless state, means that I should get a lofty titleanda very generous raise.”
Oliver had to concede that Ewan definitely excelled where the rest of them floundered when it came to women. The lad was perfectly willing to fling the Cameron name and his ownunfortunately abundant amounts of charm around like rose petals, then scoop up all the willing—if not a bit bamboozled—maidens fair who found that sort of thing mesmerizing. Oliver wasn’t entirely sure that Ewan could talk about anything besides the hoity-toity rubbish he himself loathed, but there were obviously girls who enjoyed that.
“Kill him first,” Derrick advised, “and save yourself the aggravation. Let’s go talk in Cameron’s office. Your girlfriend can join us any time she likes.”
“Girlfriend,” Ewan said thoughtfully. “That means there’s still hope—”
Oliver wondered if Ewan had permanent bruises from the elbows to the gut he seemed to take regularly, then decided it wasn’t worth investigating. He did make his way with his collection of mates to the laird’s downstairs office where he found that a detailed outline of Moraig’s forest and the surrounding environs had been marked out on a large white board. There were magnets waiting in a patient line down one side, proper black ones only polluted with one pink kitty face.
“For your lady,” Ewan said, rubbing his hands together. “She’ll appreciate the utter cuteness of the kitten, which will lead her naturally to associate charm and adorableness with your sorry self.”
Oliver looked at Derrick, had a shrug in response, then decided that perhaps he wouldn’t kill Ewan right off. The man might prove to be useful. He held back and watched as Derrick, Ewan, and Peter arranged things to their liking for a proper strategy session, ignored the fact that they seemed perfectly happy and attached to their devices, and further ignored the truly unnerving thought that he didn’t entirely loathe the idea of occasionally being unplugged.
He looked to his left to find the laird of the current clan Cameron standing there, watching him with thoughtfully.
“My laird,” he said, making Cameron a small bow.
Cameron only smiled. “How are you, Oliver?”
“Wishing I’d been less impulsive,” Oliver admitted.
“If there’s anything I would never call you, lad, it would be impulsive, but love makes fools of us all sometimes. We’ll help you sort this.”
Oliver let out his breath slowly. “Thank you, Cameron.” He looked at him seriously. “For more than this.”
“Don’t get all maudlin on me,” Cameron said with another smile. “We’ll either drink or weep later, whichever you like. I might also send you and your lady on a proper holiday somewhere sunny after you’ve rescued her. There’s a useful thought for you.”
“I won’t argue,” Oliver said. “And if you’ll excuse me, my lord, I’m being summoned to go and play with magnets.”
Cameron waved him on to the white board and he went, feeling a bit more himself with each step. He set aside the recrimination that he should have done this the first time around because there was nothing useful to be gained from flogging himself over things that were dead and gone, so to speak. Perhaps there was also something to the old saying that the third time was the charm.
He sincerely hoped so.
“How many lads?” Derrick asked. “And where were they?”
He shook aside his useless thoughts and focused on the discussion at hand. “Which time?”
Peter held out a bag of blue magnets. “Another color for a different time. Want green as well?”
“We’ll need both, plus the black,” Oliver said grimly. “We’ll need to account for the first time and my subsequent two tries.”
“Give me details about each,” Peter said, setting out magnets, then reaching for a legal pad. “Call them black, blue, then green so I can keep it straight.”
