Always You (Adair Family 3)

My breathing hitched at the idea of a Mac who fought for us rather than ran. “You spoke with Lachlan?”

He nodded. “He won’t stand in our way.”

“He approved?”

“He wants us to be happy.”

“Uh …” I let out a grunt of disbelief. “I’m not sure what is happening.”

“I’m fighting for you.”

“O-o-okay.”

“Yeah?” He smiled slightly, a sexy, lopsided expression that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made my fingers itch for a different reason. “Okay?”

“I can’t promise you anything,” I felt the need to say.

Mac grinned now, wolfish and wicked and very dangerous to my heart. “That’s all right. This is good enough for me.”

Feeling that familiar flutter of butterflies in my belly, I wrenched my gaze away and took a bite of my forgotten sandwich, even though I was no longer hungry.

“Is that it?” I asked a little belligerently. “All you wanted to discuss?”

Mac’s expression sobered in such a way my spine straightened with tension. “There’s something else. Craig, the boy who my friends killed?”

“Yes?”

“Billy, the friend who was with me when we tried to stop them, he contacted me a few months back and told me that the others involved in Craig’s murder had died under unusual circumstances. He was concerned someone close to Craig was coming for their revenge.”

Fear shot through my heart at the thought of anyone hurting Mac. “But you tried to stop them from hurting Craig.”

“And I hoped that was the reason they’d left Billy and me unscathed. He moved to Australia with his wife and has had no troubles. But there’s a possibility I have had troubles.” Mac stared pointedly at me. “We can’t rule out that the notes are about me. I thought there was no connection, which is why I never mentioned it, but yesterday I got a call from a contact high up in the Glasgow police, and she told me Craig’s brother, Lee, has been brought in for questioning regarding the death of one of my old friends. Bryan McNab was run over outside his house, but the person reversed back over him, suggesting it was deliberate. The police didn’t have a lead because the car used in the crime had been reported stolen a few days before, but Lee’s been under investigation for running a chop shop. And they found that car in the garage he’s running it out of.”

“Jesus … but w-what does that have to do with me and the notes?”

Mac took a shuddering breath. “They found information on us all on a computer they confiscated from Lee’s office in the garage. There was stuff about me, where I work, links to articles he’d saved about Lucy’s murder trial, and there were photographs of you and me, Arro. He had someone follow us months back.”

“But why not target Robyn, then? She’s your daughter.”

“Perhaps because Robyn seemed like too strong a target, just as we discussed before.”

I considered this and let out a string of curse words. “Did you tell Lachlan?”

“I told him and Robyn last night before I spoke with him about …” He gestured between us.

“So what now?”

“We wait and see if the police can provide us with any more information, but until Lee is in prison, I can’t suspend your security detail. And you have to stop finding reasons not to come to jujitsu. I want you there tomorrow.”

Processing it all, I nodded slowly. “Okay, agreed.”

“This could all be a good thing, Arro.” He pressed a reassuring hand to my shoulder and for the first time in weeks, I let him touch me. “If this is Lee, once he’s behind bars, everything can go back to normal.”

Well, not really, I wanted to say. Normal was when Mac brushed off our feelings and my advances.

The normal Mac now spoke of involved a possible future of waking up to him in my bed every morning.

A dream I’d once longed for.