“Am hot, intelligent, talented, caring and all those things that actually mean more than a large bank balance?”
“You think I’m hot?”
Her colour returned with her smile. “And that’s what you fix on?”
“If you’d said ‘you have a magic penis’, I’d probably have fixed on that instead.” I looked at her phone. “I want to know what made you worried.”
“I’ve been getting texts from a number I don’t know.”
“What sort of texts?”
She looked at her phone. “Threatening ones. Ones that call me a whore.”
“You need to report them to the police.” And I potentially needed to speak to someone about a hitman.
“I know. I’ll go to the station tomorrow. I doubt they’ll be able to do much.”
“You need to give the details to Killian too.”
She nodded. “I will. Let’s not keep thinking about it. Has your brother come in today?”
I opened the door and looked into the hall. The table where he’d normally be, even just for a few minutes, was void of him. The group he’d speak to when he was here had gathered round, a couple of them looking healthier that they’d done for a few weeks.
“No sign of him.” I saw Casey, doing her usual tour of the place, checking in on people. She saw me looking and shook her head. “He must be still up north.”
“Does he usually go AWOL for this amount of time?”
He didn’t. Robert for all of his trauma and stress was a creature of habit. “No. Or if he was staying somewhere, he’d let me know.”
“Do you need time off to look for him?”
“No. I don’t know where to start. He has contacts in Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Newcastle and probably other places. It’s like what I told Lauren when she was little: if she got lost somewhere, wait in one place and I’d find her. It feels like that with Robert. He knows where to find me.”
Her phone was placed back in her bag and she made her way to me, wrapping arms around my neck and pulling herself up so her lips were inches away from mine.
“I think you’re a damn good man.”
“Even though I was a dick?” My hands cupped her ass, pulling her closer towards me.
“Even though you were a dick. Do it again and you’ll find yourself dickless.”
I laughed quietly. “I can’t promise I won’t make mistakes.”
“How about you tell me about your thought process rather than going mute?”
“How about you do the same?”
“Touché. Shall we discuss this further back at yours?”
“I have a teenager-free house…”
“Sounds appealing.”
* * *
I didn’t apologisefor the trail of destruction that Lauren had left on her way out of the door earlier, mainly because my hands and mouth were occupied with the slight doe-eyed woman who was more of an addiction than any Class A drug.
We’d hidden in the small car park at the centre, stealing kisses in the shadows, hands wandering. She’d discovered that I was powerless if she rubbed her fingers on the back of my neck in a certain spot and that her tits were pretty much my kryptonite.
