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My gaze bounced between Brenna and Torin and there was no denying the weird air of animosity between the hotelier and his manager.
“How is Dillon?” I asked Brenna, ignoring another throb of pain.
She shrugged, looking incredibly unhappy. “He’s a teenager.”
“Which you must have been when you had him,” I blurted and then I winced. “Sorry, I have a bad habit of speaking without thinking.”
Brenna chuckled but her gaze darted around uncomfortably. Also that was the fakest laugh I’d ever heard.
“How’s the resort going?”
“Good,” Torin and Brenna answered in unison and then stiffened like mirror images when they realized.
Huh.
Brenna grabbed her backpack and gestured toward the ferry terminal. “Well, if Torin and Forde have got you, I’m going to head out.”
“You just got here,” Torin reminded her.
“No, I, uh, I’ve been here a while.” Wow, she was a terrible liar. “Take care, Cammie.”
“I’ll hopefully see you soon!” I called after her because she was practically running away from us.
Torin, I noted, watched every second of her departure.
Mischief tickled me because I was bored, scared, and in need of distracting entertainment. “Your hotel manager is fit as fuck.”
He cut me a dark, low-lidded look and merely grunted.
“What does that mean? You don’t like the woman you hired?”
“I didn’t hire her.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “So, you can tell Tierney McRae to stop giving me dirty looks when she sees me.”
“If you didn’t hire her, who did?”
Torin scrubbed a hand over his face. “Technically I hired her, I suppose.”
“Well, that’s not confusing.”
He considered me as if deciding whether to elaborate. Then he shook his head. “Never mind.” Torin gestured to my stomach. “You going to stop fucking around with a stab wound and give your bloke a break from worrying about you?”
I flushed guiltily. “Aye, all right. I feel bad enough.”
“Everyone’s concerned.”
“I know.” I took a sip of my cooling coffee. “But I’m good. I just needed to see other humans.” I gestured around us. “To remind myself that we’re all going to be okay. Half-Light Harbor has had enough scary adventures to last us a lifetime.”
“Let’s hope so. You know I thought buying the land on Scaris would mean a quiet life. It’s been anything but so far.”
I snorted. “Torin, you built a fancy resort, a whisky distillery, and an adventure park. What part of that was ever going to be quiet?”
His lips curled in amusement. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s just hope if it’s not going to be quiet, it’s not going to be your island’s idea of a thrill. Two stabbings, a shooting, a crime organization, and serial killers all in the space of … what, four years?”
“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds insane.”
“That’s because it is insane. If I’d known the Hebridean Islands harbored a small-town murder mystery series waiting to happen, I wouldn’t have invested so much of my fucking money here.”
That made me laugh, which caused my stomach to burn. “Ow, don’t be funny.”
