Callie stared at me, cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t Eilidh’s fault.”
Her tone suggested she thought it was mine. I sighed. Heavily.
“You’re like a different person,” she whispered sadly.
That made me frown because I didn’t think I’d changed that much.
“Not a different person.” She waved off that thought. “Just older and a little changed for being older. I didn’t see you become who you are now and … it’s weird.”
“How so?”
“The tattoos.” She gestured to my arm. “The bike. The beard. The man bun.”
My lips twitched at how angry she sounded on the wordsman bun. “You don’t like it?”
She rolled her eyes on a huff. “You know you look good, Adair. Don’t fish for compliments.”
I grinned. “You look good too. Better than good. You look sexy as fuck.”
Her eyes flared. “Don’t flirt with me.”
“I’m not. I’m merely observing and speaking a truth. You grew up sexy, Callie Ironside.”
Callie’s cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red at the hoarseness in my voice. “That’s something else that’s different about you. You never used to be so flirtatious.”
“I used to compliment you allthe time.”
“That was different. You’d call me beautiful. But the Lewis I knew was reserved with that stuff.”
“I’m not now,” I promised.
She shook her head, sitting up. “No doubt you’ve had plenty of practice flirting with a smorgasbord of women over the last seven years.”
If only she knew. “As opposed to all the practice you had with Remy and Gabriel and whatever other French bastard you let taste you.”
Her eyes flashed. “Taste me? Really? And how do you know their names?”
“Eilidh,” I lied. “She’s a wealth of information about how easily you got over me, sweetheart. How many guys have there been?”
“None of your business. Just like it’s none of my business how many women you’ve slept with.”
Jealousy was a tight ball of heat in my chest. Possessiveness made my brain foggy. Or maybe it was the whisky. Or both. But right then, all I wanted to do was throw this woman—mywoman—over my shoulder and then on my bed so I could erase every single man she’d ever been with. “Funny how it still feels like my business.”
Ten
CALLIE
Igaped at Lewis in disbelief. Who was this guy? Anticipation and indignation coursed through me, and I found I couldn’t stay sitting. Slowly, I got to my feet and then shook my head. “You did not just say that.”
Lewis stood too. “We both know it’s true.” He took a step toward me, and my skin, already warm from the whisky, suddenly caught fire at the heat in his eyes. It was predatory and sexual and thrilling, and a look he’d never bestowed on me before. “Sex with other people will never be what it was between us.”
This was no longer theboywho’d left me behind.
And I would be lying if there wasn’t a traitorous part of me that wondered what it would be like to have sex with this version of him.
Fear of the repercussions of that triggered me, and I was speaking before I could stop myself, my words an effort to put him off. “Neither of us knew what we were doing. We were kids. And frankly, I’ve had better sex since then.”
I regretted the words. Mostly because of the hurt thatflashed across Lewis’s face before he could hide it. Determination (and anger) masked the emotion.
