Bran’s brothers ambled out of the lounge an hour later, but Bran stayed behind. He needed to call Ireland. He’d put it off all day. At first, because he’d had a crisis to deal with. Later, because he’d not wanted to bring up the software issues with her. He’d fucked up last night. And now he had to tell her the program she’d written was a wreck? No sane man wanted to be put in that position, and Bran was nothing if not practical.

“Hey,” he said when she answered.

“Hi.” She sounded down. What he had to say wasn’t going to make her any happier.

“Your day go okay?” he asked.

“It was all right. How about yours?”

Great, their relationship had diminished to small talk in the span of twenty-four hours. “Not the best.”

“Yeah, I was pretty upset after last night.”

Bran cleared his throat. “Me too, but…that’s not the only reason I had a bad day. It turns out the program you wrote malfunctioned this morning. We shut it down, and I called the company. It will take weeks to rebuild.”

“Wait, what?”

“The program misdirected two hundred orders this morning.”

“That’s not possible,” she said.

“I don’t know what to tell you. It happened.”

“I’m coming over.”

Bran sat up in his seat. “You don’t need to do that. I’ve got a programmer from Tech Banquet working on it.”

“You’re firing me?”

“Of course not. But I hired you through Tech Banquet and they sent someone else.”

“Why didn’t you call me first? I wrote the program.”

Because he was a big fat chicken?

“This is bullshit,” she said. “And so was last night. But I can’t worry about that right now.”

Normally, Ireland’s anger was a total turn-on. But right now, his chest tightened. He didn’t like upsetting her.

“Do me a favor,” she said. “Have someone let me in so I can see what’s going on. I’ll be over there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll let you in myself.”

She sighed. “Fine, but this isn’t about us and what happened last night. This is about the program.”

“Agreed,” he said. Though it was about more than the program. It was about everything, but he wasn’t opening up that can of worms.

How dare he not pull her in when things had gone south this morning? And after his shit-poor reaction to their accident last night? Ireland wanted to strangle Bran.

He might as well have blamed her for not reminding him to wear a condom last night. A woman could get caught up in the moment too! It was that damn mouth of his. What he’d done to her with his tongue had given her an orgasmic mind-numbing. How was a woman supposed to function under those conditions?

They’d made a mistake. Shit happened. But they were grown-ass adults. Bran was so focused on his past that he couldn’t see beyond it to support her and not make it all about him. And now, he’d gone around her for a program she’d written.

Her code was flawless. She’d checked and double-checked it before she made the software live. That didn’t mean she couldn’t make mistakes. But to just go over her head like that and call Tech Banquet without even consulting her? Did he have no faith in her at all?

It was late, nearly ten, but Club Tahoe, and all the casinos in South Lake Tahoe, didn’t sleep. People buzzed around the lobby as Ireland made her way to the lakeside end of the resort, where Prime and the now-closed shops resided. She pulled on the door to Prime, but it was locked.

Bran looked up from a table nearby, laptop open. He stood and walked over, opening the door for her. “Thanks for coming.”

Her heart jumped into her throat at seeing him. Part of her wanted to hug him, and the other part wanted to shove him.

She gestured to the computer. “You mind if I use your laptop? I’m assuming it’s connected to the server?”

He took in her face, as though trying to read what was going on inside her head. Good luck, she thought.

“Sure,” he finally said, and stepped aside.

Ireland sat at the table and pulled out her headphones. She needed to focus in order to figure out what the issue was. She couldn’t do that while Bran stood there, staring at her. So she turned on music and attempted to tune out Bran and the riot of emotions he brought out in her.

She sensed when he walked to the back of the restaurant.

Ireland looked up to see him enter his office, and her shoulders drooped, eyes burning. “Dammit.”

She’d told him she didn’t want to talk about last night. That she was only here to work on the software. But deep down, she wanted him to hold her. To tell her everything would be okay. Pretty much exactly what he hadn’t done last night or tonight. Over the phone, he’d seemed more concerned about the software issues than their relationship.

Not again. She was important too, and she wouldn’t take this shit from another guy.

She’d thought Bran was different, but right now, he was like every other man she’d ever dated—self-centered. He’d thought only of himself last night. And today, he’d called to check in, but he was obviously more distracted by the restaurants.

If that was the way he wanted it, fine. She’d fix his damn program and move on. She had to.

Ireland squeezed her eyes shut to push back annoying tears trying to work their way out, and pulled up the code. Right away she noticed lines that looked different than what she’d written. She searched for the backup she’d saved just in case, and couldn’t find it. It wasn’t where she put it, and when she searched the cloud service Club Tahoe used, it wasn’t there either.

Good thing she’d backed it up on an additional cloud service with hard-core security.

Ireland pulled up the alternate backup and compared it with the current program. Sure enough, the two didn’t match. Someone had switched out the program she’d written.

And the reasons why someone would do such a thing were stacking up. None of them good.

Ireland stood and walked to Bran’s office. The door was open and he was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, the strong edges of his jaw drawing her attention to pillowy lips. Her stupid heart fluttered.

Why couldn’t her heart be smart for once?

When something important happened, Bran hadn’t put her first. Twice. As if last night weren’t enough. He was supposed to be her boyfriend. Instead, he’d shut her out. Ireland didn’t want that kind of relationship with anyone, especially not Bran, the man she wanted to share everything with.

He must have sensed her, because he opened his eyes and looked over.

“Has anyone had access to the program?” she asked. “To the actual code?”

He shook his head slowly, as though considering. “No. Just you and the new Tech Banquet employee they sent in.”

Ireland had the evidence she needed that the original had been modified. But now she had to figure out why. She turned and headed back to the computer.

“Wait,” Bran said, and stood. “What’s going on?”

She kept walking. “Someone switched out the program with a different one.”

“Who would do that?”

She stopped and spun around. “You think I had something to do with it?” Okay, that had been a tad touchy. She was tired and sad, and as confused as anyone about what was happening.

His face held genuine shock. “No. Absolutely not.”

Ireland sat and pulled up a screen on the laptop. “Then let me do my job and see if I can find out who did.”

“Ireland.”

Ireland dragged her gaze from the screen to the face she loved even when she didn’t want to. It was too painful to look at a man she believed in who didn’t believe in her. “Yes?”

“Thank you.” He was sincere, but all Ireland could think about was how much she’d lost today.