Page 154 of Rough Around the Hedges

“Limpet here was with her last I saw.”

Isa elbowed him. “She’s… um, well, she’s in my car.”

“Oh,” Shaun said, understanding washing over his face. “Yeah, you’re never gonna find her.”

I sagged back onto one of the few chairs still out and buried my head in my hands. “Fuck. What am I supposed to do now?”

“What’s wrong with him?” he said to Isadora.

“Ah, well, it’s like this,” she replied before launching into the whole story.

Shaun looked at me with eyes full of pity. “She’s in one of two places, but short of waiting outside the hotels all night…” He shrugged. “She’ll already have turned her phone off. When Rose wants to be alone, she means it.”

“What hotels?”

“No,” Luke said, shaking his head. “We are not waiting outside hotels all night in the off chance we’ll see her leave in the morning.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that either,” Isadora said. “She’ll be fine. She just needs to cool off and get her thoughts in order. Youwon’t be able to hold a conversation with her right now. She’ll text me when she gets wherever she’s going to let me know she’s safe, so don’t worry.”

Luke rubbed his hand down his face. “And this is the woman you want to marry? One who runs away when she’s upset? Great. Real mature of her.”

“Hey,” Isa said, stepping towards him before I could say a thing. “You, watch your bloody mouth. She’s given everything to this place and pushed herself to exhaustion over the past several weeks trying to stop what this moron started.” She cocked a thumb in my direction. “So what if she’s upset? Is she not allowed to be? She might be stubborn and hard-headed, but she’s only human. Everyone needs time to themselves, and if that’s what she needs right now to work through her emotions, who are you to say anything about that? Have you ever needed to be alone, or are you just a heartless prick?”

Shaun wrapped his arm around her shoulders, clamping his hand over her mouth. “What she’s trying to say is that this is how Rose deals with a broken heart.”

Broken heart.

Ha.

One I’d caused.

All because I’d wanted to surprise her.

She peeled his hand off her mouth, elbowing him again, and turned to me. “And you! Wanting to marry her? Ha. I refuse.”

I stared at her.

I’d already worked out that much.

“You can’t refuse for her, dear,” Susan said, tugging on her arm.

“I can and I will,” Isadora declared. “He’s not coming anywhere near my sweet Rose anymore.”

“Sweet Rose.” Luke snorted.

“I swear I’ll—”

This time, Shaun restrained her properly, making it so she couldn’t escape his hold. “Are you trying to spend the night in her cell?” he asked flatly. “If her phone is off, she won’t bail you out, you know.”

Isa mumbled something under her breath.

I turned to Luke. “Go wait in the car, all right? You aren’t helping.”

He waited for a moment, then shoved the envelope at me and left the hall. Only when he was gone did Shaun let Isadora go, and she made a show of shaking her arms out.

“If he says one more word about my Rose, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born,” she warned me with an icy gaze.

“I think he already feels that way,” I replied. “So, Rose? She needs to know the truth. How do I find her?”

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