Page 76 of Fated Love with You

I glance at her left hand. Ring. Of course.

And suddenly, I’m not in a hurry to go anywhere.

I just watch...

Several Weeks Later

For weeks,I watch her. Follow her from a distance.

It starts as surveillance — vetting. I need to be sure she’s not involved in Nate’s theft. But it morphs. Fast.

I start timing my drives to the end of her shift atCrafts & Notes. I linger across the street to watch her unlock the store or press a tuning fork against her ear while she checks a violin’s bridge.

She repairs my daughter’s instruments — that’s our first thread. Our “connection.”

I find myself chasing that thread constantly.

Waiting to see her. Waiting to be seen.

Hating myself for it.

But she never looks up. Never notices.

And I have to remind myself:

She doesn’t belong to me.

She’s married.

She wouldn’t want someone like me anyway.

“She’smarried,” Chester cuts into my thoughts one day, watching a courier deliver her latest batch of repairs. “Stop stalking this woman and focus on something productive. Something like ending Rush Banks once and for all.”

That’s all it took to walk away.

Or, so I thought…

Several Weeks After Visiting Nate

The BMWbehind me has been riding my ass for twenty minutes.

Annoyed, I speed up. Switch lanes. The BMW does the same.

It matches me, mile for mile. I can’t see through the tinted windshield, and it’s making itself impossible to ignore.

When I flash my signal to exit off 180A, the car doesn’t. Good.

But when I pull off anyway — it follows.

Now I’m pissed.

I send an alert to my team, a code to prepare them in case this person is stupid enough to follow me down my private road.

They are.

Still bumper to bumper, all the way to my gate.

I grip my sidearm and grab an umbrella, stepping out into the rain with every intention of ending this idiocy myself.