I’m met with quite the welcoming committee when I step through the front doors of Clancy’s. Erin’s there to greet me with squeals and a hug.

“Oh, thank God you’re back!” she says, embracing me.

I laugh. “Did you miss me that much, or do you just hate being acting manager?”

“Both!” she says, pulling back with a smile.

Mack is here too. “Glad you’re back,” he says, giving me a friendly nod. “Erin was getting a little antsy here without you.”

Erin swats Mack on the arm. “I was not!”

I laugh. “I wasn’t gone that long.”

Erin grabs my hand and pulls me toward the stairs. “Let’s go upstairs to your office, so you can tell me everything.”

I head upstairs with Erin, Sam close on our heels. I want to talk to him about Cooper, but I can’t do that in front of Erin. I don’t think he wants his relationship with Cooper to become public knowledge.

“I’m sorry I abandoned you yesterday,” I tell Erin, as she closes my office door behind us.

She waves it off. “Oh, no problem. I was just worried about you all day yesterday. Is everything okay?”

“It will be,” I say. I hope.

“What happened?”

I realize then that Erin hasn’t seen the images Luciana sent to my phone yesterday when we were at the restaurant. While I’m not thrilled with the idea of showing them to anyone, I can’t keep her in the dark. Not about this. I pull out my phone and scroll to the images, then hand her my phone.

“Oh, my God,” she breathes, staring at the small screen. Her gaze lifts to mine. “Oh, my God.”

I nod. “Yeah. It looks bad. But Shane says it’s not him in those last four images.”

Erin looks the images over carefully. “That’s clearly him in the first two.” She eyes me cautiously.

I nod. “It is. And he doesn’t deny it. He says she walked up to him on the sidewalk and kissed him without warning. He said he pushed her away and walked on. Alone.”

Erin looks skeptical. “But then how – ”

“I don’t know how. But Shane’s going to figure it out.”

“Well, he’d never do this to you, that’s obvious,” Erin says. “I mean, he’s not that kind of guy. No way. And besides, look at you! Any man would be insane to cheat on you, and Shane does not strike me as being crazy.”

I laugh at that. “He says he didn’t do it, and I believe him. Now he’s trying to prove it.”

My phone chimes twice with incoming messages. The first one is from Lia, just checking in with me. I send her a quick text back, telling her I’m back at work and doing all right.

The second one is from Shane.

I’m on my way.

My heart starts racing. He must have found what he’s looking for. “Shane’s coming.”

I boot up my PC to check e-mails and kill time while we wait for his arrival. I’m a nervous wreck, my stomach turning cartwheels.

Twenty minutes later, there’s a knock at my door.

“Come in,” I say, my heart in my throat.

The door opens, and Shane fills the doorway, looking both pleased and determined.

* * *

I can tell immediately by the look on Shane’s face that he found what he was looking for. He looks weary, which isn’t surprising as I suspect he stayed up all night working on this. His suit and shirt are rumpled, his tie is missing, and his hair’s tousled. The sight of him makes my heart ache, and honestly, I just want to go home with him and fall into bed. I need him so badly right now I can hardly see straight.

Being apart last night was hard on both of us, and I want to be with him. I need to touch him and hold him and feel his hands and mouth on me. I miss his heat and his strength and his hunger. His gaze meets mine, intense and heated, and I swear he knows what I’m thinking.

Shane stands aside and another man enters the room – someone I’ve never met before. He’s young, about my age, with blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a pair of gold, wire-framed glasses, jeans and a light blue buttoned-down shirt. He must work for Shane.

Shane heads straight for me, and I jump up from my chair and meet him halfway. I could cry when he wraps his strong arms around me, holding me against his firm torso and kissing me like we’ve been apart for months and not just twenty-four hours.

“Come with me,” he says, taking my hand and leading me out of the room. We head down the hall to the security control room, which doubles as a panic room.

Erin, Sam, and the blond guy with the glasses follow us.

“This is Scott Anderson,” Shane says, introducing the young man. “He’s a digital forensics specialist, and he’s been heading up the team working on these images. Scott, this is my fiancée, Beth Jamison. And you already know Sam. And that’s Erin O’Connor.”

Scott reaches into his front pocket and withdraws a flash drive, which he holds up. He inserts the drive into the nearest PC, then launches a sophisticated image editing software program. He opens the first of the six images.

“This first one is Shane,” he says, addressing his comments directly to me. “No one disputes that.” Then he moves to the second image. “This one is Shane as well. You can see his face clearly.”

Then Scott moves to the third image, which shows a man practically devouring Luciana. This shot is taken from behind the man, so his face isn’t visible, but his hair and clothing are identical to Shane’s in the first two images. “On the surface, the last four images appear to have been taken at the same time as the first two, which would indicate that Shane is the man in all of these images. However, that’s not the case. The last four images were taken much later than the first two. And in that time gap, a body double must have been brought in.”

Scott flips back to the first image and points to the parking meter in front of the car parked along the street where Shane and Luciana are standing. “We can’t see the timestamp on the parking meter because of its orientation, however...” Scott points at a spot on the windshield of the sedan. “There’s a faint reflection of the timestamp on the parking meter here on the windshield. If I zoom in like this...” He adjusts the image editing software to blow up the area he’s pointing at. “You can actually make out the timestamp. In the first image, the timestamp is 11:02 am. In the second image, the timestamp is 11:03 am.”

Scott grins as he jumps ahead to the third image. “In the third image, however, the timestamp reflected in the windshield is 11:47 am – that’s a jump of forty-four minutes. If you look at the rest of the images, their timestamps coincide with that of the third image: 11:47. Forty-four minutes elapsed between the time the first two images were taken and the remaining four. Time enough for Luciana to have brought in a hired body double and restaged the encounter on the sidewalk.”

I shake my head, dumbfounded. “She must have planned this ahead of time.”

Shane nods.

I’m shocked that she would go so far to try to break us up. “She wanted me to doubt you, to think you were still involved with her. And I almost let her succeed.”

Shane pulls me into his arms. “Sweetheart, no one blames you for reacting to those images. Admittedly, they do look bad.”

I slip my arms around Shane’s waist, beneath his jacket, and hold him tightly. I’m swamped with guilt for ever having doubted him.

“Shh,” he says, rubbing my back. “It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”

I look up at him, oblivious to our audience. “Take me home. Please.”

His arms tighten around me, and I know we’re okay. I didn’t ruin anything.