Page 12 of More Than A Feeling

I smiled. "Yeah?"

His eyes shuttered then. "We better get cleaned up."

He got out of bed, and just like that, the spell was broken.

But it hadn't been a one-night stand, as I suspected.

We spent every night together after that if we were both in New Orleans and not traveling. Sometimes he wouldn't even talk to me; he'd just fuck me. I preferred to go to his place because mine would only lead to questions about the Fort Knox-like office.

"You don't have to be embarrassed about your place," he once told me.

"I'm not."

"Okay. Just saying. I know you don't have a lot of money."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him he was wrong, but I didn’t. What was the point? He’d believe whatever he wanted, no matter what I said. Our time together was short, and I wasn’t going to waste it arguing. Instead, I’d enjoy what little I had with him. When it was over, I’d nurse my broken heart and move on.

Chapter 6

Callum

"Daddy told me Fleur won't take his calls."

Sabine looked stressed when I took her out to dinner. I tried to do that once a month, but since Fleur and I broke up four weeks and two days ago, it had become more frequent. A part of it was my need to get rid of Fleur; the other was curiosity to see if I was interested in Sabine as more than Seamus's widow and a member of my family.

"Fleur's made her bed," I said more harshly than I intended. She'd blocked me on her phone as well.

My private investigator had found out that she worked for a software company and was a Senior Director there. He did tell me she drew a salary of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. Now, that had been a surprise; that was a hell of a lot of money—granted, it wasn't independently wealthy funds, but it was very, very good. I paid that much to my Vice Presidents. My PI had also discovered that Fleur had a bachelor's incomputer science engineering, which I knew but that she also had completed a master's degree at MIT. What the fuck? The way her family talked about her and the way she carried herself never hinted at how intelligent she was (because she'd have to be to study at MIT) or the impressive income she earned.

When I'd asked the PI about her personal life, he'd said he hadn't been able to get much from after she left Tulane and started working. It was as if she had no identity on the Internet. No social media, no nothing. Not even a personal email from what he could see. "Her company does a lot of work with the government; maybe that's why," the PI had remarked.

My enigmatic ex was getting more so by the day.

"I worry about my parents." Sabine picked up her glass of wine. "And I worry about Fleur and what she's doing to them."

Once again, I wondered if I could have sex with Sabine.

I wasn't sure.

I was attracted to her. Every man sitting at Per Antoine's right now probably was. She wore a cocktail dress that was both elegant and sexy. She was a beautiful woman, and she looked damn good on my arm,just as she had on Seamus's, a voice inside my head reminded me.

"You don't miss her?" Sabine asked, her blue eyes soft.

I didn't know how to answer her question.

Of course, I missed Fleur. We were together for eight months. We fucked almost every night. Woke up together almost every morning. We watched movies. Did stuff all the time—listened to live jazz, went on boat rides in the bayou, went on silly walking tours, tried to do a séance. We talked. Laughed. Fuck, I laughed so much and so hard with Fleur. She had such an awesome sense of humor, and she made my chest feel light.

Yeah, I missed her. The ache for her was like a constant thing. But I didn't understand it. I was convinced that it would pass. It had just been a month since we broke up. In a few weeks Iwouldn't even think about her, though now I didall the fucking time.

"Have you ever known me to miss a woman?" I asked instead of telling the truth because that would hurt Sabine. She was a soft-hearted, emotional woman. It wasn't that she didn't want her sister to be happy in a relationship, but she was afraid of losing me. After all, I was her last link to Seamus, and she was mine to him. Maybe Brian was right. We should date. We could take care of each other.

"Sabine?" I heard a male voice say. I turned to see a man I'd never seen before.

"Malone." Something moved in her eyes, and she stood up abruptly. "What are you doing here?"

"Come to see the family for Thanksgiving." He leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek. She didn't flinch, but it was obvious she didn't like it.

"Callum, this is Malone Collins. We went to Vandy together. He works in Houston now," she introduced us.

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