Chapter 22
Lovelyn
At nine in the evening, Kane pulled up in my street. After he’d dropped me off in the morning, I’d worked all day, taken a short nap in the afternoon, and made plans with the skeleton girls. We had a lot to discuss.
That wasn’t the main reason why joy shook me.
I hadn’t enjoyed being home alone. It had never bothered me in the past, but today had been different.
At his knock, I answered the door, butterflies in my belly. Earlier, I’d taken a shower and discovered a bruise on my hip and faint red marks on my neck. It had driven me a little crazy.
Dressed all in black, Kane had one hand behind his back.
I’d joked about him bringing flowers. Surely not.
I rested a hip on the doorframe. “What have you got there?”
He brought his hand around, revealing a paper-wrapped bouquet in his grip.
I stared at the pretty flowers. Roses, orchids, carnations. Every single one a shade of purple. Pain struck my heart. “Oh God.”
Kane’s smug expression dropped. “Ye don’t like them.”
“No. I love them. I’ll put them in water.” Snatching them from him, I closed the door in his face and fled to the kitchen. There, I took a shuddering breath and stared at the flowers.
Purple wasn’t only my favourite colour, but my mother’s, too.
I’d been mostly joking with my boyfriend training request, but he’d not only listened, he’d seen me.
He’d taken note of something personal, the flowers I embroidered, painted, or sewed everywhere.
Through fierce emotion, I ran water into a vase and arranged the stems inside, cutting a single rose to add to my lapel.
When I’d regained my composure, I returned to the door, picking up the overtones of conversation from outside.
Kane had crossed to the fence between my place and Mrs Hampton’s, and my elderly neighbour was in her window, poking out her walking stick to point at the guttering that ran around her bay window.
It had been broken for months, creating a waterfall in the garden when it rained.
Kane considered it then reached up and clicked the misaligned part back into place, his huge height making it an easy reach.
Mrs Hampton beamed and waved her stick at me. “Good boy. I like him better than the last one.”
I did, too, but I was also wary of her sharing more with Kane than I was ready to reveal. “He’s still on trial. Have a good night, Mrs Hampton.”
She closed the window, and Kane joined me on the path.
“The flowers didn’t mean anything,” he grouched.
They meant more than he knew. “As wild declarations of love go, that was pretty good. I accept your proposal.”
He shot me a startled look.
I bumped his arm with my shoulder. “Joking. It just took me by surprise. Ten out of ten for effort. It’s been a while since anyone bought me flowers.”
At the car, he held my door open. “Who else has done it?”
I climbed in and waited for him to get behind the wheel. “Every guy I’ve dated has at some point. That’s why I put it on your boyfriend training plan.”
He pulled out onto the road with a scowl back at the house. “That fucktard Lyle?”
“He did.” Though I didn’t remember anything about them, just his fingers dragging over mine when I accepted the bouquet.
“We should talk about the threats against ye. I need to know exactly what happened and then work through all the men who you’ve interacted with. Currently, my money is on Lyle.”
“The mild-mannered cop? Doubtful. He obeys the speed limit and plays golf on the weekends. Hardly burglar vibes, and anyway, he’d lose his job if discovered doing something like that.”
Briefly, I outlined the two phone calls my father’s office had received, the attempted break-in, which he already knew about, and my scare seeing the two men in my street.
Kane scowled at the phone calls then tapped the steering wheel. “On the men in the street, I have something to tell ye. Before I picked ye up, I went to the house we saw one of the men enter. He lives there. Works nights with his buddy who has a flat nearby.”
I stared at the dark streets outside the car. “Then it was just me being jumpy. That paints a whole new picture.”
“The threats are real. Just because they weren’t part of it doesn’t mean ye should ignore any warning signs. The right thing was to get away.”
I managed a laugh. “If I was focused on red flags, there’s no way I’d be with you right now.”
“I don’t need to stalk ye, flower girl. I take what I want in broad daylight.”
Didn’t I just know it.
Kane questioned me about the predator hotline I ran, something that had always been anonymous and shared by word of mouth only, the number redirected to my phone and not registered to me, then moved on to Lyle.
I described how he hadn’t been persistent or overly dramatic about us breaking up. “A week after I ended things, he called to ask me to reconsider, but other than inviting me for dinner a few nights ago, he hasn’t bothered me.”
“What about anyone else you’ve hooked up with?”
My cheeks warmed. “You want a list of everyone I’ve dated?”
A muscle in Kane’s jaw ticked. “Not for a fucking second. But aye, tell me.”
While we entered the busy edge of Deadwater’s city centre, I started with the online flirtations I’d had with men in the year before Lyle, then a boyfriend of six months who I’d broken up with instead of going long distance when he’d relocated for work.
But that had been three years ago, and he was now engaged, a socials highlight had informed me.
I was happy for him. His fiancée looked lovely.
My list wasn’t long, but the more I spoke, the tighter Kane gripped the steering wheel.
“More likely it’s someone recent who’s got too interested in ye,” he finally concluded.
“You don’t want to hear about me losing my virginity?” I tilted my head at him.
“Fuck, no.”
I tucked my hands under my legs. “Jealousy looks good on you.”
“I’m not jealous.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Then I should tell you how Lyle seemed particularly interested in my breasts. We didn’t get to the stage where he could touch them, but one time—”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Kane bit out.
I couldn’t help my laugh. This was cheering me up no end.
He shook his head like he needed to clear it. “New plan. In the same way that woman got the message last night, we’ll show Lyle that ye aren’t available. Nothing deters a man more than a bigger rival who could break his face. I’ll show him what he can’t have.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a great idea or just a territorial one, but I liked it all the same. But still… “If you do that, and he knows you’re skeleton crew, he might get too interested in you.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “He’s already seen me with ye, baby. That ship sailed.”
His ‘baby’ was to remind me of the meeting in the street outside the police HQ, but it thrilled me all the same.
We passed through the centre of town, bars open and people out in the streets, then Kane took the harbour road down to the skeleton crew’s warehouse. Pink neon lit the night from the signs high on the towering red-brick building, and a line formed outside of Divide.
We left the car and entered through the front, passing the queue with the thump of bass mixing with excited chatter from the crowd.
Kane had his bandanna around his throat, and I noted the appreciative stares of women as we went by.
I understood. I shared their sentiment. He was a huge and grouchy skeleton crew gangster who looked like he knew how to rock a woman’s world.
No lies detected.
If he were mine, I’d curl a hand around his arm and show my ownership. But he wasn’t, and here in a place we both worked, that kind of thinking needed a reality check.
Inside the building, we made our way to the main corridor where dancers in skimpy outfits mixed with skeleton masked men and other staff, everyone busy with a purpose.
At the management office, Convict entered the room, hugging Arran while Tyler, Arran’s intercept guy, exited with two other men, crew members I didn’t know. Perhaps new recruits, and from a quick glance, maybe brothers.
Both had dark hair and dark eyes and were similarly built, as big as Tyler who was a beast of a man, and muscular.
One had brown hair tied back in a leather strip, a couple of strands escaping to hang down just past his square jaw to collar length.
At his neck, the hint of a tattoo peeked out.
The second appeared slightly older and had black hair that fell in his eyes over two slashes of eyebrows.
His arm, when he raised it, had deep scars cut into his skin.
The three of them came our way.
Kane set one big, warm hand on the back of my neck. I stifled a jump.
Tyler said, “Perfect timing. Kane, Lovelyn, meet Ash and Heretic Atheron.” He gestured between us. “Kane’s part of the team. Lovelyn is our resident unofficial intelligence analyst.”
Kane rumbled a greeting. His hand didn’t budge.
“Nice to meet you.” I formed a smile, a little surprised at the introduction. I’d never done work for anyone in the crew other than Arran and Shade, and the title felt like overkill. But perhaps Tyler had been thinking about me for other reasons.
A short while ago, he’d asked whether I knew anything about Dixie. I’d suggested he come with me to visit her place, but it hadn’t happened. I expected him now to ask for an update, assuming the top tier of skeleton crew management all knew what we’d been doing.
Except Tyler’s focus was on the huge man at my side. “Good to talk?”
At the same moment, Convict hollered, “Lovelyn. Got a minute?”
I slipped out of Kane’s hold and entered the office, Convict closing the door behind me. Behind the black desk, Arran waited, but it was Convict who spoke.
He parked himself against the wall, the bruise my father gave him next to the scar on his hairline lighter, apparently healing. “Why are there no headlines about the bodies found on the Marchant ship?”