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.”
