“No!”
“Don’t lie to me, Deena.”
“I’m not!” I protested, and even to me, it sounded like a lie. But I wasn’t seeing him. We were…I didn’t know what we were.
Then my phone buzzed, but it wasn’t the vibration of a text message. I made the mistake of pulling the device away from my body to stare at the screen, and my pulse took off.
Callum was calling me.
Of course he was. This was what he did. I’d taunted him, and he wasn’t one to back down. But before I could click the phone’s side button to ignore the call, my phone disappeared from my hand and materialized in my mother’s grasp.
“Mom!”
She flicked her finger across the screen and dodged my clawing hands as she put the phone to her ear. “This is Deena’s mother. To whom am I speaking?”
“Mom,” I hissed, sounding very much like that teenager I hadn’t been for over a decade. I reached for the phone, but she dodged around the corner of the island and ducked away from me—but not far enough that I couldn’t hear Callum’s voice coming through the earpiece.
“Callum Frost. Nice to meet you, Ms. Brand. Deena’s told me so much about you.”
I could hear the laughter in the dirty liar’s voice. I was going to murder him. Both of them. Everyone. I’d be in prison for the rest of my life, and it would be worth it.
My mother arched her brows at me. “Has she?”
Callum’s reply was lost in the noise of me trying to scuffle with my fifty-five-year-old mother to get her to stop talking to the guy I had a crushon.
Wait, no. I didn’t have a crush on him. He was just—he was just Cal. He’d put some sort of spell on me. He’d opened the top of my skull with a can opener and scooped out all my brains. Clearly.
Why had I messaged him in the first place?
But my mother chuckled. “All good things, I hope.” She paused, listening, and considered me with glittering eyes. “Oh, good. Mmhmm. Well, we’re talking now, aren’t we? Are you in the travel business as well? Deena’s been chipping away at her little business for so long, you know. We’re terribly proud of her.”
My eyelid twitched as my mother dodged another attempt to grab the phone. Proud of me? Ha!
“Venture capital!” My mother turned, looking at me like she’d never seen me before. Because how could I, of all people, be interesting to a man with venture capital kind of money? “Oh, howfascinating.”
This was my worst nightmare. I’d only wanted to take the edge off by feeling a glimmer of his attention. That was pathetic, I knew. But this—this was an unmitigated disaster.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Cal—can I call you Cal?”—she giggled again—“I’m sorry to tell you, but she hasn’t breathed a word of your existence to us. But Deena’s like that.”
I glared at her, motioning for her to give me the phone.
“And did she tell you about the party this weekend? No?” A pointed look with eyebrows so arched they nearly touched her hairline. “What a shame. I would’ve loved to meet the man who captured her heart. Deena’s been single for so long, you know. I had half a mind to try to set her up with her old sweetheart while she’s here. But now…”
I vaulted halfway over the island, banging my knee on the edge of the marble so hard I saw stars, and finally got a good claw grip over the top of my phone. I wrenched it out of her hands as Icollapsed on top of the island, the dirty roasting pan clattering to the ground when I rolled into it.
“I need to go,” I yelled into the phone, and I mashed at my phone screen until I ended the call. Then I lay on top of the island, my phone gripped in my hand, pain pulsing through my knee, and forced myself to lift my head so I could meet my mother’s gaze.
“He seems nice,” she said. And she smiled.
My phone buzzed.
CALLUM
You didn’t tell me you were out of town.
Somehow, my mother managed to read the message upside down from where she stood above me. “Honey, you’ll never keep a man if you keep acting like this. They need to feel like they’re in charge.”
Ugh. “I’m not trying to keep him,” I grumbled.
