“Should we go talk with them?” Olive stood, like she was a bit concerned, and her husband stood with her.
“No. Because you know as well as I do that it’s not going to end well.”
She threw her napkin down. “Fine. Leave it to us women then.” She glanced at Pink. “You’re coming too.”
“Should I—”
“You stay here,” Callahan cut me off. “Enjoy yourself. You deserve it working for him lately. He’s … unsettled right now.”
I watched my friends hurry after Jameson, but I didn’t follow. Callahan was the brother of the enigma of a man I was falling for, and that meant I was going to pry as much information from him as I could now. I was past professional niceties. “How so?”
“He’s got you on that Ducati, right?” I nodded at his question. “And he only brings that out when he’s feeling reckless.”
“Not what I need to hear when I’m riding on the back of it.” I glared at him.
He chuckled. “You can hitch a ride back in the SUV tonight if you want.”
I hummed, knowing that Jameson would want me with him instead. “He feeling reckless because of what happened at the club and with Franny at the academy?”
Cal shrugged. “Maybe.” He thought about it as we watched people mill about. “But also he likes you. A lot more than he normally likes people.”
“Okay,” I responded slowly, not sure where he was going with this.
“I think you’re different from all this, Mia. And he always wanted something a little different. If not for himself, for Franny. His wife … fuck, she was diabolical, strategic. I think he thought that even though their marriage was arranged, he could make her see that too. But she definitely didn’t give him different. She belonged among us.”
Hearing his marriage was arranged had my heart twisting for him, for the love he didn’t get, for the way his life must have been planned out. I sat there wondering for the first time if fitting in amongst the people in Paradise Grove mattered. I’d found I didn’t fit in once or twice before and knew it was for the better. “And he didn’t want that?”
“No. Because sometimes belonging and fitting right in doesn’t balance out the damn group, right? Sometimes you need the opposite. Someone sweet. But also someone who’s real and who’s truthful. Someone who sees past the Diamond name, if you know what I mean … but now I think Jameson is probably considering whether or not he deserves that.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
He smiled sadly. “He doesn’t believe his hands are clean whenit comes to his wife, Lex’s disappearance, or my father’s. Makes him just as bad as any Diamond in his eyes.”
“Why?” I was taking the opportunity to pry. How could I not when I was thinking of the man all day at this point?
“You’ll have to ask him, Mia.” He shrugged. “Now, come on, let’s dance before my brother comes back to act like your shadow again.”
Callahan stood and offered his hand. Chewing my cheek, I hesitated. “He won’t like it. Gave Archer a black eye for it already.”
“Ms. Darling, I can handle my brother.” He leaned closer. “Plus, if you stay here much longer, Valerie is bound to come bother you.”
And that had me up and out of my seat, grabbing his hand. We moved between the tables and onto an empty dance floor, where the band continued the classical music. And then he spun me way faster than I anticipated, and I gasped before a burst of laughter flew from my lips as he dipped me low. “Callahan, what the hell?”
“What? I’m here to dance, not sway.”
And we did dance for two or three more minutes, all around the floor, because Cal was so smooth with his lines I could barely keep up.
“You can waltz, teach, and survive a professional hit,” he whispered in my ear. “Should I steal you from him?”
I couldn’t help but smirk, but the joke between us died as I heard his voice behind me, cold, measured, and full of an edge. “You could try to steal her, brother, but I’d kill you for that.”
Callahan didn’t flinch or even look over my shoulder at his brother. He winked at me, his light-blue eyes dancing with mischief as he replied, “A death I might take chances on if she’d have me.”
“She won’t.” Jameson stepped between us as Callahan let my hand fall. “Go dance with someone else. I’m cutting in.”
“Jameson,” I chastised.
Callahan conceded to his brother easily as he backed away and said, “Come find me if he pisses you off too much.”
