Page 40 of The First Deal

Shane chuckled. “You’re correct, Cariño. But I’ll call Bo now, he can go and pick you up that burger you’re craving.”

“It’s okay,” I said, raising my phone. “I’ve got it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, raising his own phone.

I knew that Bo would be the better option. He’d get me the most delicious burger Lyme-Regis had to offer, and he’d get it to me still hot. But I wanted to do this for myself, and ordering from a cheap, fast-food place was what I was going to do. “I’m sure, want anything?”

Shane shook his head and pocketed his phone.

It took me less than a minute to put my order through the app, a shameful reminder of how often I used it. Then I was rounding the bar and pouring two drinks. “Whiskey?”

“Maybe later. I’ll have a water, please.” Shane placed the bag down on the table that he was standing beside before making his way to the bar.

Handing him an ice-cold pint of water, I sighed. “I suppose we should talk.”

“We should,” Shane said slowly, then held his hand out to me. “But I’d really like to do the bulk of it. Will you listen?”

I didn’t hesitate in taking his hand, and he walked the length of the bar with me, then when we reached the open end, he pulled me close, inhaled heavily, and then sighed loudly. Content. “Will you?”

“I’ll listen,” I said, nuzzling into his chest for a moment, falling into him far too easily.

I pulled back, tugging on some inner strength, forcing myself to not just ignore everything and kiss the life out of him. For all I knew, this was a goodbye, and Violet had been telling the truth.

“Good,” Shane murmured, and then he was taking me towards the table with the little black bag.

Leaning against the table, I stared up at him as he cleared his throat and unbuttoned his jacket, letting it fall open to reveal just how tight that black shirt was.

Then he pulled something out of his pocket. A scrap of fabric. Oh holy fuck, were those my knickers? The ones I had left on the back of the door in the hotel bathroom.

“Yes, they are.” I guessed I had spoken that out loud, as Shane confirmed my suspicion.

He twirled them around his finger, then dropped it onto the table.

“I came to find you, just like you had asked. I saw you leaving though, and something inside me knew what had happened. Violet had left the table with the excuse of speaking to the chef about her main course, but something felt off. Seeing you leaving when I was certain that you were going to be waiting for me with your knickers around your ankles seemed strange. So I went into the ladies’ room and found Violet standing there with your knickers in her hand. She laughed as she pinged them at me, telling me that I had found myself a sensitive little girl.”

He shook his head, his eyes rolling to the ceiling, and I clamped my lips together, ensuring I didn’t burst, saying something rude about his closest friend. Yet.

“I stood up for you,” he said quickly. “Vi ignored me. She told me that you were all wrong for me, that I should be with a strong woman, not…”

He dropped his gaze to the floor, swallowing hard. “She said awful things, and I walked away.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, far more icily than I had intended.

His eyes met mine in a flash, knocking the wind out of me with the intense fire in them. “I realised in that moment that I didn’t need to defend you.”

“What?”

He smiled. “I didn’t need to waste another second on her. I needed to find you and tell you that whatever she said to you wasn’t true.”

“How do you know? Maybe she said something that was.”

“If what she said to you was anything like what she said to me then Iknowthere wasn’t a single breath of truth to any of it.” He looked so sure of himself.

“She said you’d been sleeping together.”

“A lie,” he said with an eye roll.

“That you were working out how to tell Quinn about you two before you went public.”

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