Chapter 13
ARRO
I’d woken early to a text from Eredine asking me to breakfast the Sunday after our talk.
I’d gotten calls and texts from Ery all week, and it was lovely.
She was acting very protective of me, but the truth was, I felt a million times better after confiding in her.
It was a massive weight off my shoulders.
Ery didn’t judge me for my wrongdoing in the whole situation, and she didn’t judge Mac either.
She just let me feel what I wanted to feel about it and made it clear she was there for me.
It was a special friend who kept her opinions and bias out of an emotional situation. I was grateful to her.
For the first time since that night, I was looking forward to a social situation—breakfast at An Sealladh, a roadside café fifteen minutes outside the village with a view across Ardnoch Firth.
It was called the View in Gaelic, and they cooked the best Scottish breakfasts.
Hoping it wouldn’t be too busy that morning, I hurried to dress to pick up Ery on my way. There was no point in taking two cars.
I’d just stepped out of the house when a Range Rover pulled into the driveway with Arran at the wheel. He must’ve borrowed one from Lachlan’s new fleet. What was he doing here?
My brother got out of the SUV and bleeped it shut behind him with a point of the fob. “Where are you off to?” he asked before I could question him.
“Breakfast with Ery. What brings you to my door, especially at this hour?”
His face brightened suspiciously at the mention of Eredine. “I was coming to take you for breakfast myself. How fortuitous. Shall I drive or …?”
Rolling my eyes at his boyish smile, I answered by walking to my Defender. He followed like a happy puppy, and while it thrilled me to have him home, I felt the need to repeat myself. “Ery’s off-limits.”
“You can’t make people off-limits, Arro,” Arran replied humorlessly as he pulled on his seat belt.
I did the same thing but glowered at him. “I can make her off-limits. She’s my friend. And she doesn’t need you blowing into town, devastating her, and then blowing back out.”
He shot me a dark look. “Not everything has to be taken so seriously, wee sister. Frankly, Eredine needs to indulge in a wee bit o’ lighthearted flirting.”
“What do you know about it?” I huffed, pulling away from the house.
“I know Lachlan and Mac won’t tell anyone a damn thing about where they found her, and that in itself means something potentially bad happened.” He shrugged. “I’m not looking to uncover her secrets. I just want to make her smile.”
“Well, that’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” I teased.
“Fuck off.”
I laughed, but as my amusement died, I warned, “Don’t lead her on. Brodan flirts with her any chance he gets, but he always buggers off and leaves her behind without a thought. I don’t know if Ery takes him seriously, but she doesn’t need another Adair man messing with her emotions.”
Arran didn’t respond, and we didn’t mention her again until we pulled up to her house in the woods.
“This is where she lives?” Arran scowled, his head dipping to look out the windshield. “Alone?”
“Yup.”
“And Lachlan allows this?”
At his belligerent tone, I sighed heavily. “It’s not really up to Lachlan. Believe it or not, Arran, as a thirty-one-year-old woman living in the twenty-first century, it’s entirely up to Eredine where she lives.”
“Funny.”
“I was being perfectly serious.” I hit my horn gently to let Ery know we were there, but she’d already know because of the cameras. “And Lachlan has cameras everywhere in the woods around her house.”
Arran relaxed at that.
“Caveman,” I murmured under my breath.
“What was that?”
“Caveman,” I said louder.
Arran grunted and I smirked because, well, point made.
The front door opened, and Ery appeared. My attention flicked to Arran, who watched her with a troubling fascination. It troubled me because Brodan looked at her the same way.
My bloody brothers and their similar taste in women. I’ll kill them if Ery ever ends up in the middle of their shenanigans.
Her beautiful smile froze with surprise when she saw Arran beside me. He unclipped his belt and got out, holding the door open for her.
“I can sit in the back,” Ery said.
But Arran, ever the gentleman, insisted she take the front passenger seat.
“Just do it, Ery,” I said, “or we’ll be here all day.”
“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Arran whispered loudly in Ery’s ear.
She seemed to flush at his proximity, a tinge of red beneath her smooth, golden-brown skin, before she gracefully slid onto the front seat. Every move Ery made was graceful. She reminded me of a ballerina.
Catching the smug expression on Arran’s face, I shot him a warning look, and he laughed before he got into the back.
“Sorry, I didn’t know he was coming,” I said to Ery as I did a three-point turn in her gravel driveway.
“It’s fine. The more, the merrier.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Arran slid forward to rest his chin on my shoulder. “I thought my wee sister was happy to have me home?”
Though he was teasing, I heard something, a note of disquiet, that disturbed me. I glanced in the rearview mirror, meeting his gaze. “I am happy. I just wish you’d stay.”
Something sad, troubled, entered his eyes, and I wanted to ask him what the hell was going on. Why had he stayed away so long?
Just like that, the look was gone, and he sat back in his seat. “So, where are we off to for breakfast?”
“An Sealladh,” Ery answered.
“Excellent choice, ladies. Glad to hear the old place is still going strong. I wouldn’t have thought you were a fry-up kind of woman, Eredine.” He leaned against her seat now.
I flicked a look at her and saw she was ignoring his face propped on the edge of her headrest.
“Why would you think anything about me? You don’t know me.” Her sassy assertion was surprising.
I snorted, glancing at Arran only to find him grinning.
“It’s a good thing we’re about to have breakfast together, then.” He leaned in close to her ear again and said in a deep, throaty voice I’d seen melt many a girl, “A man can tell a lot of things about a woman from the way she eats.”
I made a gagging noise.
“Oh?” Ery asked with quiet primness. “Can he tell when a woman would like him to stop purring in her ear like a tomcat?”
It took everything I had not to burst into laughter.
“Fair enough.” Arran chuckled and sat back again.
“How was work yesterday?” I tried to commandeer the conversation.
Ery shrugged. “It was fine. It’ll be good when Lachlan’s back. The place just isn’t the same without him.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her how Mac was, but I stopped.
Sometimes I had to remind myself that I hated him and didn’t care how he fared.
I’d even caught myself being mad at him for not phoning me in days, until I remembered I’d blocked his bloody number, because every time his name came up on my screen, I wanted to curl up in a dark room and cry.
Ery spoke a little more about the estate and asked about my work.
I told Arran and her about Duncan, and Arran, serious for once, said we should tell my brothers and Mac about it.
We already told Robyn and Lachlan about the ominous note for their own safety, and I had to convince them to finish out their honeymoon.
I had a feeling it had ruined it, anyway, and that they’d be glad to get home to us.
“I suppose we should,” I murmured, uneasy about adding Duncan to my nonexistent list of suspects. It didn’t seem right to accuse him of this when it was more than likely his behavior at work was unconnected. Still, Lucy had taught me caution, and admittedly, paranoia.
An Sealladh wasn’t busy at this time of the morning.
They’d just opened, so we had our pick of tables.
Arran took the seat opposite Eredine, studying her in a way that made her squirm.
I wanted to tell him to stop making her uncomfortable, but I knew that wasn’t his intention.
I didn’t think he realized he was staring so much, and I didn’t want to embarrass him by pointing it out.
“You have the most astonishing eyes,” Arran said as we waited for our server.
Or maybe he did know he was staring.
For fuck’s sake, was I to endure his flirting with Ery all morning?
Rather than looking embarrassed, Ery stared at him with surprising forthrightness. “So I’ve been told.”
Arran’s blue eyes twinkled at her unimpressed response.
Me? I was impressed. I’d only ever seen this assertive side to Eredine among her friends.
When Brodan paid attention to her, she clammed up, impossibly shy around him. Around most men, in fact.
“Aren’t you going to compliment me in return?” my brother teased.
“Why? Do you have self-esteem issues that require women to stroke your ego?”
“Ha!” I couldn’t help myself. Who was this woman with the tart responses, and where had she come from?
Unfortunately, Ery’s dry wit only seemed to spur Arran on.
Thankfully, the waitress interrupted him mid flirt, and we ordered a full Scottish breakfast.
“See, I definitely would have taken you for an omelet kind of woman, or maybe eggs Benedict,” Arran mused, studying Ery’s face in a manner that was making me uncomfortable.
I was a bloody third wheel.
“Proof that you don’t know me.”
Arran leaned over the table toward her. “But I’d like to.”
“I’m going to shoot you if you don’t stop flirting right this second.” I sighed. “Please, I just want to eat my breakfast without feeling the need to run to a bathroom and vomit.”
“My flirting isn’t that bad.” Arran settled back in his seat. “Is it, Eredine?”
“Oh, was that flirting? I thought you just had a staring problem.”
I snorted and she looked at me, her mouth twitching against a grin.
“I do have a staring problem, but only around you. It’s impossible not to look at you.” Arran smoldered, and I shuddered at witnessing him in seduction mode.