When I looked at him, I felt nothing but impatience.
It turned out all Samuel needed from me for the rest of the meal was to smile and nod. In fact, that interested gleam in his eyes only seemed to grow the less I talked.
Charming.
At the end of the meal, I tried to leave on an ambiguous note. I didn’t want to jeopardize my position with Sheera, so I thought if I didn’t encourage but didn’t discourage, I could keep Samuel at bay until Sheera had made her decision.
However, Samuel insisted on walking me the fifteen minutes back to my place.
I attempted to dissuade him since his apartment was in the opposite direction. That did not work. As we walked, he kept strolling into my side and I kept having to subtly move away. The back of his hand brushed mine. He rested a hand on my lower back when we crossed the street. Sweat gathered in my palms as I considered a way to put him off without losing Aura Beauty.
“… I mean, Edinburgh is beautiful, but I do miss the melting pot that is London. There’s so much to do there. The bars and restaurants are better. The theater is better. The music scene is much, much more impressive. Shopping, sightseeing. Pretty much everything is better there. I do miss it. I’m sure you understand.”
Samuel had been talking nonstop, and I was beginning to think he merely liked the sound of his own voice. And frankly, Ididn’tunderstand. I was born and raised in Edinburgh. I loved my city or I wouldn’t still be living there. “The air is better here.”
He smirked. “Okay, I’ll give you that. We do have a bit of a smog problem back in London. But that’s about it, really. London is far superior to Edinburgh. This city is rather provincial, in a way.”
Attempting to hide my irritation at his disparaging my hometown, I grimaced as we reached my building.
“This is me.” I slowed to a stop.
“Oh, I’ll walk you to your door. You can never be too careful these days.”
Fecking feck feck.
Smiling tightly, I strolled through the car park gates, searching my brain for a brilliant reason to put him off. We reached the front entrance. “Well, thanks again.”
Samuel stepped into my personal space. “I’ve been wanting to tell you all night—in fact, from the moment I saw you—that I find you very, very beautiful.”
Ah, hell. “Oh, well?—”
His mouth covered mine, cutting me off.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CALLAN
There were pros and cons to anything in life. Including life as a professional football player. The biggest pro was the euphoria after a win. The sound of the crowd singing the team’s song, “Caledonia” by Dougie Maclean, as we celebrated our victory. And on the opposite side of that coin was the biggest con.
Losing felt fucking horrendous.
Because we didn’t only carry our own disappointment as a team, we carried the disappointment of thousands of people. Listening to thousands of Dalmarnock fans chant “You’re not singing anymore” to our fans was the worst sound in the world as we’d walked off the pitch yesterday afternoon.
Dalmarnock had annihilated us. On our own pitch, 4–1. Then after we’d showered and changed, the locker room subdued despite the gaffer’s attempt to fire us up for next week’s game against Perth United, word had reached us there had been an altercation between Dalmarnock and Caley fans not far from the grounds. Two people had ended up in hospital and three others had been arrested.
I knew from the look on Baird’s and the other lads’ faces that they felt the weight of that on their shoulders too.
Shoulders heavy and a black cloud hanging over me, I’d driven home wanting to do nothing but slump in front of the TV and watch something mindless to distract me from the game and all the things me and my teammates had done wrong during it. Beth had let me into the apartment building, and I couldn’t even bring myself to speak, let alone swap insults.
We had a day off training the next day, but Baird, John, and I decided to do some of our own training, including a thorough workout at the gym. Our moods hadn’t improved since the loss, and I was still feeling the burn of it as I returned to my flat.
The sight of Beth walking across the car park of our building with some bloke made me inwardly groan. When they stopped at our building entrance, the bloke bent his head to hers for a kiss, and my stomach twisted.
Until Beth jerked back from his kiss with a nervous laugh. As she glanced away from him, she caught sight of me.
A different kind of tension joined the tension already riding me when her eyes widened and she turned back to the guy. “I’m so sorry, Samuel, I have a boyfriend.”
I didn’t hear what the bloke said.
