“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.

Eredine stared impassively at him for a second before she looked past me and out the window to the firth. “Sometimes I forget how beautiful it is here. I could stare at that view all day.”

“So could I,” Arran murmured, seeming to memorize her profile.

I scoffed, and he raised his hands defensively. “It slipped out. Just an honest response to a spectacular view.”

“Oh my God, do they serve Macallan here? I think I’m going to need it.”

They didn’t serve whisky, and I didn’t need it because Arran mostly behaved himself. He slipped flirtations into his interactions with Eredine, but we actually enjoyed a pleasant breakfast together. My brother was cagey about his time in Thailand, where he was supposed to have been bartending for the past two years, but I hoped he’d open up a little when it was just the two of us.

Arran insisted on paying for breakfast, and Ery and I waited by the door. She was fixing her hair, the heavy mass of it slipping from its tie, when Arran sauntered over. His gaze fixed on her hair as she pulled it with effort into a high ponytail. “Christ, you’ve got gorgeous hair,” he said, his voice a little hoarse for my liking.

Eredine raised an eyebrow and asked as I pushed open the door, “When are you leaving again?”

My smirk dropped as soon as I spotted my Defender where I’d parked it in the distance. I could see the spray paint from here.

Hurrying into a run, I heard my brother utter a muffled curse, and his footsteps and Ery’s picked up pace.

I skidded to a halt by my car. Fear thrummed through me.

Spray-painted across its side:

* * *

You aren’t you without me

* * *

They were the same words Fergus spray-painted across a Range Rover on Lachlan’s estate last year at Lucy’s bidding.

“When am I leaving?” Arran growled. “Not anytime soon, by the looks of this.”

The police checked the security cameras at An Sealladh, but my Defender was parked too far from the building. They checked with people who’d come into the café after us, but no one saw anything or had dash cams that might have caught the culprit. The car park was at the windowless front of the building, with all other windows facing the view across the loch and either side of the café.

We had nothing.

And the bastard was now doing an excellent job of frightening me.

I’d gotten lulled into a false sense of security since nothing had come of the first note. The constables who’d arrived to check the car had called it in and had been advised to confiscate the vehicle. They said there wasn’t much else they could do but turn it over to the detective inspectors from the original case. I felt helpless. Powerless.

Gravel kicked up behind me, and I spun from watching the police confiscate my Defender for prints to find two SUVs pulling into the car park.

Tags: Samantha Young Adair Family Romance
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