Page 10 of Love Bomb

Darach cocked an eyebrow at the drive. “You gonna look at it?”

“What’s the point? It’s probably full of photos of me as a teen. Rona loved to lurk and spy on me.”

“And cock block you at every opportunity,” Darach said with a grin.

“Oh yeah, it was hilarious when it wasn’t happening to you,” Bain said.

Kade came into the room and plopped into one of the other sofas. They had three, all old and lumpy.

“She was creative in how she stopped you dating,” he said. “Remember the itching powder in your sports gear?”

“Aye.” Bain frowned. “I also remember her telling Agnes Muir that the reason I was itchy was because I had the clap.”

His brothers thought that was hilarious.

Conall arrived with a bowl of chips and four more beers. He handed them out with a grin. “Rona had every guy in school terrified,” he said as he settled into the other sofa.

“She did run wild,” Darach said, “but you only have yourself to blame. If you hadn’t beaten up everybody who looked at her sideways she might have reined it in a bit.”

“I beat up the bullies,” Bain said. “You wanted bullies reining her in?”

“No, of course not. But nobody was going to challenge her, or set any boundaries for her, with you ready to crack heads. Everybody in Invertary knew that if they dealt with Rona, they were dealing with you.” Darach held up his hands. “Face it, when it came to Rona, you were a softie.”

“Not soft, just concerned. She had a habit of getting into trouble. And her parents had a habit of forgetting she existed. When you think about it, the problem isn’t that I was too soft, it’s that I was too compassionate.” He considered the drive. “A curse on my compassionate nature,” he muttered. “I have to look at this, don’t I?”

His brothers nodded.

“I’ll get a laptop,” Conall said heading out of the room. “You can cast the contents to the TV. We all want to see what’s on there.”

Of course they did.

Bloody Rona Dalgliesh. Age hadn’t made her any less of a pain in his backside.

It took a couple of minutes to set up the laptop, mirroring the screen on the TV so everyone could see. Then all he had to do was click the file on the thumb drive helpfully named: For When Bain Is Stubborn.

Suddenly, a younger version of himself appeared on the screen. He was dressed in a black sweater and navy-blue jeans to make it easier to blend with the night, and there was an old black backpack on his back. As they watched, he crept along the edge of a well-maintained path, and through the gate into a carefully tended garden.

“Oh crap,” Darach muttered. “This isn’t the time you blew up Kitty Baxter’s rose garden, is it?”

“Allegedly blew up the rose garden,” Bain corrected. “And aye, it is.”

He’d had no idea Rona had followed him that night. Sneaky little demon. How he’d missed her bright pink bike on the way to Kitty’s farm, he’d never know. Between the bike, the orange hair, and the luminous white skin, Rona should never have been able to sneak up on him.

“Wait a minute,” Conall said, holding up a hand. “That was you? They said it was a sinkhole. How did I not know it was you?”

“Because you were twelve,” Kade said. “And you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”

On screen, Bain—who’d been a month shy of his eighteenth birthday—headed straight for the center of Kitty’s prize rose garden. It sat in an area all of its own, a distance away from the grand house.

After her farm, which was one of the biggest in the highlands, Kitty loved nothing more than her garden. Every year, she won prizes for her roses and looked down her nose at anyone else who entered the local competitions. It had been a no brainer to take them out. Although, he had been tempted to put a nice big hole in her hedge maze too.

“I know what’s coming,” Darach said. “And I feel sorry for the flowers.”

His brothers looked at him like he was deranged.

Darach shrugged. “I can’t help it. The roses never did anything to us.”

“No, that was all Kitty,” Bain said.