“I don’t suppose that you’re going to tell me how you got it?” Ashlyn asked, looking incredibly pissed.
Not that he could blame her.
But with the curse looming over their heads, he didn’t have time to play by the rules.
“Tell her that she dropped it,” Aidan said, shrugging it off as he sat there, taking in the busy coffee shop and looking completely bored.
“You dropped it,” Shayne said, watching as her eyes narrowed on him.
“And how did I do that?” she asked with a look that said it all.
She was definitely thinking about going for his balls.
“Tell her that it fell out of her bag,” Declean said, jumping off the counter so that he could get a better look at the display of baked goods by the register.
“It fell out of yer bag,” Shayne said, watching as she glared at him for another minute before she held up her bag and-
“Face it, lass. Ye need me,” he said when she spotted the small rip on the bottom of her bag.
CHAPTER 9
She had to have missed something, Ashlyn thought as she sat there, rubbing her temples with her fingertips as she watched the video on her phone again and-
She definitely missed something, Ashlyn realized as she swiped back to the start of the video and watched it again. When nothing changed, Ashlyn opened the history on her security app and went through the list of events that happened yesterday, looking for any signs that someone opened a door or a window, something that would explain how the large bastard watching her managed to pull this off.
“Are ye ready ta talk now, lass?” came the curious question as a fresh coffee was placed on the table.
“Are you ready to tell me what you’re up to yet?” Ashlyn countered, pausing mid-rub to reach over and help herself to the coffee that she was going to need to get through this.
“Besides making ye fall in love with me?” Shayne asked as she swiped to the calendar option in the app and started going through the history for the previous week.
“Besides that,” Ashlyn absently murmured, checking everything from the event history for the past week to the video clips and...
Nothing.
There wasn’t any unexpected activity while she’d been away, the alarm had never been turned off or triggered, none of the windows or doors had been opened, and there hadn’t been any movement in or around her house. So, she focused on retracing her steps after she left Detective Black’s house yesterday, other than stopping to grab a sandwich on the way home, she didn’t go anywhere else and as soon as she went inside, she set the alarm.
She didn’t turn it off again until this morning when she was leaving to come here, which meant that he had to have grabbed it while she was at his house. The only problem with that theory was that he was still sitting in his chair, glaring at her when she showed herself out, which meant...
That she’d dropped the damn memory stick.
“I’m helping my brother, lass,” Shayne said, drawing her attention to find him still watching her.
“And you’d be doing that by telling me everything that I need to know,” Ashlyn pointed out, taking a sip of the bitter drink that she hated, but unfortunately, needed just to function at this point.
“Then, I wouldn’t have anything ta do ta pass the time,” Shayne said, shrugging it off.
“So, you’re screwing with my head because you’re bored?” Ashlyn asked, leaning back in her chair as she took in the large man sitting across from her, from his neatly combed black hair to the small scar above his eyebrow, his freshly shaved jaw, to his large muscular build softened by the black dress shirt that he wore before her gaze flickered to the thin scar that cut across his right palm.
“That’s just an added benefit, lass,” Shayne said as she looked up and took in intense green eyes locked on her and found herself wondering what it was exactly about this man that had her losing her damn mind.
There was no doubt that he was incredibly handsome, but she’d met other handsome men only to forget about them as soon as she left the room. She didn’t swoon over men, never felt her heart skip a beat when she saw one, or found herself daydreaming about them. Never had, not even when she was a teenager and the rest of the girls in her class were obsessing about the latest boy band or crying themselves to sleep over some boy that couldn’t be bothered to give them the time of day, or saw some guy and found herself wondering what their children would look like.
So, that begged the question, why she suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about this one?
“I have a theory,” Ashlyn said, deciding that her only option was to bluff at this point.
“And that is?”
