They obviously hadn’t expected to see her there. Well, no more surprised than she was to find herself there, Scottie thought. She promised herself that she would have one bottle of beer with Bryce Cavanaugh—probably not the entire contents—and then, her so-called debt repaid, she’d be free to go.
When she felt the hand on her elbow, her first reaction was to pull away. She actually tried, but the hand just took a tighter hold.
“Easy, Scottie, I’m not trying to take your elbow from you, I’m just guiding you over to that table,” Bryce whispered against her ear.
He did so because the noise level inside Malone’s was steadily increasing and he instinctively knew she wouldn’t want attention drawn to her by having him raise his voice so she could hear him. He had no way of knowing that getting so close to her, whispering so that his breath glided along her neck, would cause Scottie to unexpectedly feel something that had her instantly bracing herself.
But, braced or not, it was too late, Scottie realized. She could feel something stirring as if in automatic response.
Not the time, not the time, Scottie harshly told herself, tamping down the feeling that had no place in her life right now.
Her entire focus had to be on Ethan, on finding him and, if it came to it, saving him, although she was still fervently praying there was some acceptable reason why he wasn’t home, why he wasn’t picking up his cell phone.
A reason that had nothing to do with these break-ins.
“This okay?” Bryce was asking her.
It took her a second to focus and realize what Bryce was saying. They were at a small table for two. It looked to be almost intimate if it wasn’t for the fact that there was so much noise surrounding them. She supposed this was as good as anyplace.
“Sure, why not?” she said with a shrug.
“Good answer,” he remarked with a smile. “What’s your poison?”
Scottie never hesitated. “Pushy partners who won’t back off.”
The corners of his mouth curved in amusement. She was feisty, he thought. He was raised with feisty women. Anything less would have been exceedingly dull. “I meant to drink.”
She gave him the name of a currently popular beer.
“That’s a new one on me. Is that any good?” Bryce asked.
“Better than most. I’m not much of a drinker,” she told him.
Even though there was so much noise building around them, his laugh wasn’t lost in the din. Instead it seemed to undulate right through her, like a shiver waiting to happen.
“I already picked up on that,” Bryce told her. His grin intensified. “See, I’m learning things about you already.” The table was several feet away from the bar itself. “Stay right here,” he requested. “I’ll be right back.”
With that, he made his way to the bar to order their drinks.
Scottie glanced over her shoulder at the front door.
This would be a perfect time to make a getaway, Scottie thought. Cavanaugh’s back was to her and he was busy trying to get the bartender’s attention. The latter was taking and filling orders like a house afire, but it still looked as if it might take him at least a few minutes to get to Cavanaugh.
If she slipped away now...
If she slipped away now, Cavanaugh would undoubtedly hunt her down and insist on collecting his “debt” at some other, probably less convenient, time. Scottie sighed. She might as well resign herself to getting this over with and out of the way.
It wasn’t easy, but she stayed where she was.
Cavanaugh came back faster than she thought he would, a mug of beer in each hand.
“You’re still here,” Bryce said. There actually was a note of surprise in his voice.
That made two of them, Scottie thought.
“I said that I would have that drink with you,” she reminded Cavanaugh. “What, did you think I’d make a break for it?”
She found herself, just for a moment and very reluctantly, being drawn in to the man’s genial smile. It was just this side of sexy and difficult to ignore.
“It crossed my mind, yes,” he answered.
Her eyes met his. Maybe ground rules were called for here. “When I say I’ll do something, I do it.”
Bryce placed her mug of beer in front of her and then, straddling his chair, set his mug down where he was sitting.
“Good to know.” He raised his mug, waiting for her to do the same. When she didn’t, he went ahead with his toast. “Well, here’s to a fruitful partnership.”
Scottie knew she couldn’t very well ignore the sentiment behind that, so she nodded, raised her mug and clinked it against his.
Taking a sip, she placed her drink down again. Glancing at her watch, she wondered how long she would have to remain at Malone’s before Cavanaugh would call them square and let her leave.
“So, do you do that often?” Bryce asked out of the blue.
Caught off guard, she stared at him, quickly reviewing their sparse conversation. She came up empty. “Do what?”
“Serve dinner at the homeless shelter. I assume that was what you were doing there.” He hadn’t seen her carry in any bags of clothes to donate, so he had come to the only conclusion he could about her thirty-five-minute visit to the shelter. “Very noble, by the way,” he added.
She frowned. What she’d heard about the Cavanaughs was true. Once they latched on to something, they just wouldn’t let go. She was going to have to answer him.
“Before you start fitting me for a halo,” she told Bryce, “I wasn’t there serving dinner.”
“Oh?” He watched her over the rim of his mug. “Then what were you doing at the homeless shelter?”
The words “none of your business” rose to her lips, but antagonizing Cavanaugh from the get-go would just cause problems and she already had more than enough of those. So, she grudgingly told her partner, “I was looking for someone.”
The look in his eyes told her that his interest had piqued a notch higher. “Who?”
Okay, this had gone as far as she was willing to go with it. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I do off duty is my own business.”
If she’d offended him, she saw no indication. “No, you’ve got that right. I was just going to volunteer to help you find that ‘someone,’ that’s all.”
He couldn’t help her, not without her opening up about Ethan, her brother’s past and her concerns that it had caught up with him again.
“I don’t need help,” she told him.
The last thing she needed was to have Cavanaugh looking for her brother’s whereabouts. It wouldn’t take much for him to unearth a slew of things she didn’t want anyone knowing. Once Cavanaugh started digging, it would be all too easy for him to make the leap from her brother and his particular set of skills to the current break-ins plaguing the city’s residents.
“I don’t know about that,” Bryce countered. She looked up at him sharply and he explained, “Maybe it’s because I was raised with so many relatives, always willing to pitch in, but to my way of thinking, everyone