“Some days. Is it really haunted?”
“Let me take you to dinner there and you can see for yourself.”
Sorcha wasn’t sure what to say to that. It’d been a long while since anyone had asked her out. Too long, in fact.
Her first instinct was to turn him down. After Bert, she didn’t want any part of the dating scene. She no longer trusted herself in that department. Bert had been so good at lying and deceiving that it’d soured her on romantic relationships.
And yet…
It wasn’t like she could ever date the son of the devil. And no one else had knocked on her door in a long, long time.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try again.
Rory turned to look at her while she silently debated. “I know we just met, but I don’t get a lot of free time, and most women have trouble with my job.”
“It’s okay. I get it. I have the same problem myself, and yes, I’d love to go to dinner with you there.”
His mood lifted immediately. “Saturday at six?”
“Sure. I’ll text you my address.”
Why that made her so nervous, she had no idea.
You know why.
It always came back to Bert. He’d all but ruined her on men. I won’t let you take this from me. Bastard had taken everything else. She wasn’t about to let him destroy the rest of her life, too.
She deserved a chance to start over without him ruining it. Especially given the way he’d loved tearing her down and tarnishing any happy moment in her life. It was as if he could only feel pleasure when he caused her pain.
Why did I ever date such a monster?
Because of her sister. Her family had been so broken back then. Not that they weren’t still. Yet in the aftermath of Siobhan’s death, Sorcha had been weak and needy—a shell of who she really was. It’d been hard to make it through a single day.
Bert had come into her life like the mythical knight-in-shining-armor who had pulled her out of her fog. Made her feel something other than grief.
At least in the beginning when she’d thought of him as a gift.
But as she’d gotten back on her feet and returned to her real self, Bert had become resentful. Clingy. Mean and nasty.
An asshole-in-tinfoil who sought to tear her down and make her weak again. Gaslight her until she didn’t know who to trust. It turned out that he didn’t really care about her. It was all about him, all the time. He’d needed her to worship him. And everything he did, he did to feed his ego and self-importance.
“So…um, do you like to read?”
Sorcha laughed as Rory’s question pulled her out of her musings and away from a beast she never wanted to think about again. “You really aren’t good with small talk, are you?”
“Not at all. It’s why I like being a detective. I ask pertinent questions with no side chatter.”
“Then I’ll send you my dossier before Saturday.”
He smiled. “You joke, but I just might ask you for that.”
Laughing, she made a note about it on her tablet. “I’ll forward you a copy as soon as I’m back in my office.”
Rory fell silent for a few minutes as he drove through town.
Sorcha wasn’t sure what had dampened his mood so suddenly. “You okay?”
He let out an elongated breath. “Yeah. I just want you to be careful and I’m not trying to sound like a controling jerk when I say that.”
