Page 44 of Black Heart

“Er…”

“I just wanted to return these,” Tristan said as he made a show of reaching into his back pocket.

He wouldn’t…

Oh, God, he did! He placed the silver handcuffs in the middle of the table. It seemed like the entire bar went quiet except for the occasional gasp.

“Next time, it’s my turn,” Tristan said with a wink before he stood up and strolled out of the bar, leaving her sitting there as every pair of eyes moved between her and the cuffs. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

Shit!

“You slut!” her three friends said in unison. It would have been funny if she wasn’t sure that was the new consensus in the bar.

* * *

“Oh,lad, ye really shouldn’t have done that to her,” Shayne said from the passenger seat of his truck.

Tristan kept his eyes locked on the front door of the bar as he drove away. If he knew Marty, and he was pretty sure that he knew her better than anyone else, she’d be storming out that door to kick his ass any minute now.

“Ye need to go back in there and apologize, maybe tell the people in there that ye were joking,” Shayne said.

“Not happening,” Tristan said, grinding his teeth together.

“Lad, if ye don’t fix this I…I think whatever chances ye had with the lass will be destroyed. Are ye ready to finally be rid of her forever?”

Tristan gave a casual shrug that he wasn’t feeling and said, “It’s going to happen sooner or later. Might as well get it over with now.” Before the words were out of his mouth, his stomach gave a violent twist at the idea of never seeing Marty again.

She aggravated him, pissed him off, got on his last nerve, but he’d be damned if she didn’t make him smile, laugh, and made him glad to be alive. Without her, his life was going to amount to absolutely nothing.

CHAPTER16

“Tristan, I have to be honest. I’m a little surprised to see you here today,” Dr. Bryne said, picking up a pen and a legal pad. He watched as Tristan added a sugar packet to his coffee and pulled out a large apple fritter from a small, white pastry bag.

“Didn’t we have an appointment?” Tristan asked as he took a bite of his fritter, careful not to spill any of the apple filling on his tie.

“No.”

“Are you sure? I could have sworn that we had a meeting first thing this morning,” Tristan said in a thoughtful tone as he added another packet of sugar to his coffee.

Dr. Bryne narrowed his eyes on Tristan. “You know damn well that we didn’t have an appointment this morning. The fact that you told my eight o’clock appointment to sit down and shut up when he complained about you taking his time slot because you said, and I quote, ‘The voices in my head are taking over and it’s every man for himself’ lets me know that you’re well aware that we didn’t have an appointment.”

Tristan’s lips twitched as Dr. Bryne continued to glare at him. “Oh, come on, Doc! You know that you’re happy to see me.”

“Tristan,” he sighed. “You’ve been skipping our appointments for the last three weeks even though it’s a condition for returning to work. Then, out of the blue, you storm in here and scare the hell out of all of my patients and secretary and you expect me to be happy about this?”

“Yes,” Tristan simply said. “So, what do you want to talk about, Doc?” Tristan asked as he sipped his coffee. He hoped this damn meeting went as planned.

Heneededit to go well.

“Well, since you’re here and all, I guess we could talk about a certain video that made its way onto the internet this weekend,” Dr. Bryne said casually, too casually.

Tristan tried not to wince at the reminder of that video. “That was nothing.”

“Didn’t look like nothing.”

Tristan sighed as he put his coffee down on the coffee table and leaned back against the leather couch. “It was just someone getting back at me for being me.”

“Meaning?”

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