Page 2 of Callum
Fiona grabbed her apple and was about to sit down when her phone rang. She almost expected it to be Amanda, wanting to ride her ass about this date stuff. Nope. Her cousin’s name popped up on the screen. Thank God.
Fiona moved back into the library, then out the front door, where she sat on the bench beneath a pine tree.
“She called you, didn’t she?” Fiona said before Stacey could get a word in.
There was a beat of silence, and Fiona could just imagine her cousin cringing. “Yeah, text then call.”
Of course. Because it wasn’t harassment with just one mode of contact. “Did she also tell you she thinks I’m lying about the whole having-a-boyfriend thing?”
“Kind of. But it’s not lying, remember? It’s fudging the truth.”
“Stace, it’d only become fudging the truth if I’d miraculously found a boyfriend between then and now…which I haven’t.” Hence, straight-up lie.
“Amanda was pretty firm that she needed a response within the week.”
Oh, man.
“I know,” Stacey said, as though she could hear Fiona’s thoughts. “It’s soon. But don’t you have a guy friend who could just, you know, come over to Twin Falls and pretend?”
Fiona laughed out loud, a big, yeah-the-hell-right kind of laugh. “Even if I’d made a male friend in this town in the last eight months—which I haven’t—our friendship would not be at the let’s-play-house stage.”
That was like a good ten-year friendship thing, right?
“Let’s just call it what it is,” Fiona continued before Stacey offered any other ideas. “I’m screwed and all out of options. I’m going to have to admit to my god-awful sister that I’m dateless and will be watching alone as she marries the man who broke my heart.”
The words had barely left her lips when she turned her head and spotted Callum stepping up to the door of the library. A deep breath filled her lungs, and her heart beat to a new, faster rhythm in her chest. Not because he was a million feet tall with biceps so thick they looked like tree trunks. But because his beautiful light brown eyes were looking directly at her.
Stacey’s voice turned to a buzz of background noise. The brush of wind on her face lost its coolness, and the world faded away to just her and him. Then he winked, one side of his mouth lifting, before he disappeared inside the brick walls of the library.
Her chest deflated and she exhaled so long and so loudly, it was a wonder she had a speck of oxygen left in her.
Christ, why did he have to be so pretty?
Callum was one of eight men who ran Blue Halo Security here in Cradle Mountain. They were all former military. All huge, and beautiful, and dangerous—in more ways than one.
How much of her conversation had he heard? The man had good hearing…reallygood. He and his team had been part of a non-government-sanctioned project that involved experimental drugs. Those drugs had made the men faster and stronger than they should be, and able to hear things they shouldn’t. Had he heard her pathetic admission about needing a boyfriend? Oh God, where was that hole in the sand for her to bury her head?
“Earth to Fiona! Are you still there?”
Crap. She forced her attention back to the call. “I’m sorry, I…”Saw a man I absolutely do not like and got distracted while I was simultaneously thinking about how pretty and off-limits he is?“Nothing. I’m going to text Amanda that I’m coming alone.”
Yep, the words sounded as painful out loud as they did in her head. What would typing and sending them in a text feel like? Razor blades to her fingertips? Electrical bursts up her arms?
It sounded like she was being dramatic. She was not. Amanda and her fiancé were the worst humans on the planet. Okay, maybe not the planet, but the worst in her world after what she’d found them doing while Fiona was still with him…
“Don’t you dare!” Stacey basically shouted. “You have the week, just give it until then. I’m going to spend my evening researching real-life wedding dates for hire.”
The corners of Fiona’s mouth twitched. How many times had she and Stacey watchedThe Wedding Dategrowing up? So many she’d lost count. She’d never thought she might actually need a date for hire. “Okay. You do that. But I’m only hiring him if he looks like Dermot Mulroney.”
One-sided smiles and dark eyes…yes, please.
When thoughts of the actor spidered through her mind, another set of eyes bombarded her. Light brown eyes.
Dammit, Fiona. Get it together! You are not at a point in your life where you can afford to date another attractive, sexy-as-sin man.
“Deal,” Stacey said easily, like there was a good chance she might actually find this made-up man, when really there was none. Zilch.
“All right, I have to go before Rick comes out here.”
