“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.”