“Okay, then I’ll also take the last apple fritter, Jen,” Tristan said, earning a gasp from Marty.

“Don’t. You. Dare,” Marty bit out.

Tristan turned around and crossed his arms over his chest while he leaned back against the counter. “I’m sorry, did you want that?” he asked with mock innocence.

She narrowed her eyes on him. The bastard knew that anything with apples was her weakness.

“Yes,” she practically hissed.

He nodded, looking thoughtful before he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Too. Bad.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek before pulling away, leaving her shocked and ready to kick his ass.

“Thanks, Jen,” Tristan said as he dropped a five dollar bill on the counter. He grabbed the two small bags and large hot chocolate and headed for the door.

She closed her eyes and counted to ten. She would not go after him and kick his ass. She would not go out there and jump on his back and take him down with a chokehold. She would not go out there and kick him in the balls and take his fritter and run off laughing. She would not-

“Can I help you?”

Marty’s eyes flew open in time to catch the nervous expression on the cashier’s face. She took a cleansing breath and then another.

“Yes, can I have a hot chocolate and do you have any fritters left in back?” she asked, sounding pathetically hopeful.

“Sorry, the only thing we have left are bran muffins and I think we just ran out of hot cocoa.”

Marty sighed miserably. “Of course you did.”

*-*-*-*

“Ye really shouldn’t have done that, lad,” Shayne said as Tristan finished off the last bite of that unbelievably delicious apple fritter. Something about Marty wanting it made it ten times more delicious. He took a healthy sip of his cocoa as he looked over the notes he’d made over the weekend.

“She had it coming,” he simply said.

“Tristan, ye need to either stop being an ass and man up and be with the lass or leave her the hell alone. Stop torturing her. It’s not fair.”

His eyes snapped up at that. “It’s not fair, is it?” he bit out coldly. “It’s not fair? What the f**k do you know about fair?” he demanded as he stood up, sending his chair slamming back into the wall. “This isn’t my ideal situation. Do you think this is easy on me? I’m the one that can’t be with her. I’m-“

“No one said that ye couldn’t be with her, lad. Ye made that foolish decision on yer own years ago,” Shayne said softly.

Tristan glared at Shayne as he said, “Foolish?”

“Aye, foolish! Ye love that lass!” Shayne yelled, which was surprising, because Shayne never raised his voice to him. He’d always handled Tristan with a patient smile and a calm tone. “Yer a f**king fool to turn yer back on her! All ye care about is her rejecting yer dumb ass when she discovers what ye are instead of giving her a chance. Why don’t ye think about her for once-“

“She’s all I ever think of!”

“Yer putting her through hell! She loves ye and ye know it! Stop playing these games and grow some balls!”

“Fuck you!” Tristan roared as he kicked the chair across the room, slamming it into the side of a metal filing cabinet and putting a very noticeable dent into it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Tristan’s gaze flew to the door. Marty walked in and dropped her purse on the desk. She gave his hot chocolate a dirty look before sitting down at her desk.

“Tell her!”

He shook his head.

"Fine! Have it yer way then, lad," Shayne said before he disappeared.

“What?” Marty asked.

“Nothing,” he snapped.

She shook her head in disgust as she placed her purse in the bottom desk drawer and placed her jacket on the back of her chair before sitting down. Without another word to him, she logged onto her computer.

With a tired sigh, he pulled his chair back to his desk and sat down. He grabbed the small pile of folders in his inbox that required his attention. These were the arrests made over the weekend. The ones on top were the arrests made the night before and the ones that required his immediate attention.

He grabbed the top one as he took a sip of his hot cocoa.

"You're such a bitch!" a woman's shrill voice suddenly announced, making him jump and spill some of the hot chocolate on his leg.

"Shit," he gasped as the hot liquid seeped through his pants and onto his leg. He quickly placed his drink back on top of his desk. He grabbed a handful of napkins and pressed them against his leg.

Marty muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Serves you right," but otherwise didn't acknowledge him in any way.

"Me? You're the bitch!" another woman screamed.

Tristan was just about to get up and see what the hell was going on out in the pit when two young women literally stumbled into his office through the wall. He barely bit back a groan. He did not need this today, especially with Shayne off somewhere pouting.

He wasn't about to summon Shayne to deal with these two, knowing that it would just invite another lecture about Marty. That subject was closed. Any possibility of him taking a chance with her had been squashed when she’d shoved his na**d ass out of his own house.

"You got us killed, you ho bag!" the peroxide blonde said as she shoved the brunette back. The brunette stumbled back several feet before coming to a stop in the middle of Tristan's desk.

"I'm the ho? You're the one that slept with that creepy security guy!" the brunette announced with her hands firmly planted on her, torn pink leather covered, hips.

"I thought he was part of the band!" the blonde shrieked as she threw herself at the brunette. They both went flying through his computer and onto the ground where they proceeded with the saddest and loudest catfight he'd ever witnessed.

Tristan sat back in his chair, rubbing his hands over his face and sighed. This was going to be a long day.

*-*-*-*

"At least I didn't die ten pounds overweight!"

"I may be ten pounds overweight, but at least it's not all in my ass like in some people that I won't mention!"

A loud outraged gasp was followed by the sounds of another catfight. Tristan didn't bother looking away from his computer screen as he reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a value-sized bottle of fast acting aspirin. He popped three pills into his mouth and chased them down with the now cold hot chocolate.

He returned his attention to the database that he’d made over the weekend for the missing girls from the past twenty-two years. Based on the files he’d been able to dismiss thirty of the missing cases. That left over fifty cases that fell into a pattern that, at first looked like nothing more than coincidences, but after putting them into the database and mapping them they looked anything but coincidental.

All the women on his list were grabbed within two miles of a restaurant or a restaurant supply company. It wasn't until a month ago that these cases had caught his eye. At first he hadn't thought much about them since all the kidnappings occurred in the busy sections of each town or city where most restaurants were located.

The fact that not all of the kidnap victims were associated with any of the restaurants either as employees or customers was another problem for his theory as well as the fact that none of the women fit any type of pattern. They were all different ages, body shapes, ethnic backgrounds and came from different financial backgrounds. Any other investigator would have just looked at the cases and said that they had nothing in common. He almost had, as well, if it hadn't been for one little detail.