“Nope, you sound like a man in love.”
I jumped, nearly letting out a scream at the voice that suddenly appeared next to me. Mav leaned against my car, picking apart pistachios and tossing the shells on the ground as he watched Ellie through the window.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snapped.
“Watching you watch her. It’s quite entertaining, actually. See, you had this lovestruck look on your face, and even though you didn’t say a word out loud, I could read the thoughts as if a voiceover was playing in the background.”
“Yeah? What was it saying?”
He shrugged, brushing the remaining dust from his hands. “Something like…”
He cleared his throat and got down on one knee right outside my car door. Glancing around, I prayed no one was watching this.
“I’m such a fool to have walked away from you. You’re the most amazing person in the world, and I’d be lucky to have you in my life. Please stay!”
His dramatics had me rolling my eyes and shoving my door open, knocking him over. I wasn’t even the least bit sorry. He deserved it for his terrible performance.
“Don’t quit your day job. Broadway isn’t knocking anytime soon.”
Flicking the brim of his hat up, he got to his feet and stalked toward me. “I resent that. I put on a helluva good performance. Maybe you should think about that the next time you need to work through scenarios in your head.”
How the hell did he know what I was doing?
“Right, I’ll keep you in mind,” I scoffed, pretending that wasn’t at all what I had been doing the whole drive here.
“So, you’re going in, right?” he called out as I approached the door.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Not sure yet. Don’t worry! I’ll get it all on camera so you can watch the replay!” he shouted, pulling out his phone. “Remember to project your voice!”
I flipped him off just as I yanked the door open and stepped inside. Her bright smile turned on me until she realized it was not a customer, but her ex-fling, whom she currently hated.
“What are you doing here?”
I opened my mouth to tell her about the case, about how excited I was, but the words died on my lips.
“Uh…”
She rolled her eyes, walking away from me. “Ryder, some of us have work to do, so if all you came here to do was grunt, then please leave.”
I couldn’t let her go that quickly. It had been days since I last heard her voice, and I was beginning to feel needy.
The realization struck me harder than it should have, and I panicked, shouting out the first thing I could think of.
“Jeff thinks you should put in a section for kilts!”
That got her to stop in her tracks. Very slowly, she turned and eyed me like a strange four-headed dog.
“I’m sorry, did you just come here to tell me that Jeff wants me to put kilts in my store?”
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Kilts.”
I nodded.
“And how exactly would kilts go with anything in this boutique?”
