His expression lightened with relief as he strode in, giving me a flash of that cocky grin. Baird didn’t talk much about his dad because he’d taken off when he was a baby, hence why he’d taken his mother’s surname instead. But he did tell me his dad was Scottish Italian, and I gathered that’s where he’d inherited the olive skin that made his teeth gleam white.
The smell of bergamot and lemons accompanied him, and I felt another flush of inappropriate attraction. Especially when my gaze devoured his broad back and tapered waist as he strolled down my hallway.
He was like a Marvel superhero brought to life.
“Tea? Coffee? Water?” I asked, trailing him, pulling awee bit self-consciously at my crumpled cropped pajama tee.
“Chamomile.” Baird followed me into the compact kitchen. He seemed to fill the entire space as I made us both tea.
“What brings you here?” I asked, even though I suspected I knew. He made it difficult to stay annoyed with him.
“To apologize.”
I glanced over my shoulder, and his gaze jerked up from my lower back to my face. It was not unusual to catch Baird staring at my arse or legs or chest. We were friends, but he was a man who loved women, and I did have all the female bits he adored, so I didn’t take it personally. “You don’t need to.”
“I do.” He took the mug I offered. “Maia, you’re my friend, and I don’t want to lose your friendship.”
I gently tapped my mug against his. “Well, cheers to that. Come sit.”
Once we’d settled in my living room, him making my sofa look tiny and me in my armchair facing him, I asked, “What’s going on with you?”
Baird pushed his hair off his face before taking a sip of the tea. I waited. He gave me a small, sexy grin at my serious, determined expression. “I’m fine, babe.”
Babe.
The one and only time he’d met Will, he called mebabeso many times I thought Will’s head would explode. When Will went to the loo, I’d had to ask Baird not to do it in front of my partner. He’d grinned like an idiot who’d won a pissing contest. I’d playfully tried to shove him into the bar counter.Triedbeing the operative word. It was like trying to shove a hundred-year-old oak tree. That only made Bairdlaugh harder. But he’d stopped calling me babe in front of Will.
“I don’t believe you. If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. But just be honest.”
“I am fine.” He leaned forward. “I’ve got a lot on my plate. The season, the castle reno … and I just need to decompress a bit. I might have gone about it the wrong way.”
“Are you talking about the partying or the dangerous hobbies?” I referred to the past few months of extracurricular activities that included him snowboarding on one of the most difficult trails in Switzerland, tandem skydiving in Fife, and motor racing against his friend, Daire Montrose, a ScottishFormula 1driver. I repeat: He thought it was a good idea to race against a Formula 1 driver!
Baird grinned unrepentantly. “You say dangerous, I say fun. And I’m going to take you skydiving one of these days. I see the way your face lights up whenever I mention it.”
I wrinkled my nose because he wasn’t wrong. There was a part of me that longed to shrug off this safe little cocoon I’d built for myself. When I mentioned to Will it might be fun to skydive, he’d scoffed and told me I’d hate it. I thought he was simply protecting me from myself.
Yet, if I thought about it, I used to take calculated risks before I met Will. Going off to London for university was the biggest one. Had I stopped living a bit after I met Will? Had I allowed him to stifle me?
Hmm.
“Hey. You okay?” Baird leaned forward, brow furrowed with concern.
“Don’t change the subject,” I evaded. “You know you’ve gone off the rails since …”
“‘Going off the rails’ is a bit dramatic. I’m enjoying life.But the partying stuff … It won’t happen again. It can’t. The new club owner has me by the balls.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not only can I not put another foot wrong but he wants me out in public doing positive PR. Volunteer work, that kind of thing.”
I tried not to chuckle. “Well, that sounds awful. What an evil thing to make you do. Helping people.”
Baird made a face at my sarcasm. “Ha, funny. C’mon. It’s not about the helping part. It’s the PR part. I mean, I hate that fake bullshit. I know it’s a reflex for people to film absolutely everything, but filming your ‘good deed’ to post on social media gives me the fucking boak.”
“Right?” I agreed. “Every time someone shares one of those reels where they film themselves doing something nice for a stranger or a friend, and people are all like ‘You’re the loveliest, you’re the kindest,’ I’m like, really? You’re buying into this? It’s self-aggrandizing, narcissistic BS. You do a good deed because it’s the right thing to do. It’s not something that’s premeditated. You don’t film yourself doing it to post on socials to have a million strangers pat you on the back.”
Baird chuckled. “Tell me how you really feel, babe.”
