Page 83 of Forbidden Need

“Dad’s finishing a call,” he said, indicating their father pacing the sidewalk a few yards away, his lackeys beyond.

“Okay.”

When her palm landed on the door, Lachlan freed a hand from his pocket to catch her wrist.

“And we were told to wait outside.”

“By whom?”

“I haven’t learned their names. One sycophant looks just like another.” His attention flicked right. “No offense.”

“Might take some if I knew what it meant,” Daly said from the back of her shoulder.

Good delivery, but he wasn’t anywhere close to an idiot. Still, nothing wrong with people underestimating you.

“Why’d you think they asked us to wait out here?” her brother asked. “They covering something up in there?”

“Am I in there to know the answer to that?”

“I like to think you’d be with a guy where we don’t have to make that distinction. There’s something in there they don’t want us to see.”

“They don’t want you to see,” she said, extending her ease. “There is no us here. They asked you to wait. I can see whatever’s going on in any McDade space.”

“Yeah, she gets to see more McDade than the sycophants,” Daly said in jest.

Lachlan didn’t react to the tease. “He’d let you walk in on him doing something illegal?”

“He’s a business owner. I told you that already. Just business.”

Daly backed her up. “Aye. You won’t hear me contradicting her.”

“He could be in there with another woman.”

She faked a horrified gasp. “He could be! Although, except, yeah, he does know how to be in proximity to a woman without his cock leaving his pants.”

“Maybe he’d ask you to join them.”

She leaned in. “Been there, done that. Anything goes in my guy’s world.”

What was it about being near Connel that obliterated her inhibitions? He wasn’t in her eye line, but he’d be in that building and that was enough.

The door opened from the inside. Dingo. Yeah, she knew him.

“Bluebell,” he said, shocked. “Why are you outside? Why are you waiting?”

“Just talking to my brother.”

“The boss doesn’t want you waiting.”

“I wasn’t waiting,” she said, going inside to head down the entry tunnel. “My choice. You won’t get in any trouble.”

“Who won’t get in trouble?”

That stern voice brought them all around to check the ingress they’d just walked by.

Conn appeared from the office stairway with Niall, Doyle, and a couple of others.

“Everyone here?”

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