‘Apparently, he’s a nice guy, as long as you’re not looking for anything other than what he’s got in his trousers,’ Kerry says.
‘Well, that’s me out,’ I tell them.
‘Well, if you’re not interested, I am,’ Emma says, readjusting her cleavage in her top.
Internal flames threaten to scald my face. The pounding of my blood resonates around my rapidly tensing body. Jealousy… What is wrong with me? Emma has every right and I shouldn’t blame her in the slightest for feeling that way, when sex personified is standing twenty feet away from us, throwing the wandering eye.
I send up a silent prayer that Callum does not come over here. For some absurd reason, the thought of him and Emma hitting it off makes me feel physically sick. What kind of a friend am I? I don’t want him, but I don’t want anyone else to have him.
Karen leaps out of her chair in excitement.
‘I’ve got it. This is absolutely feckin’ brilliant,’ she practically screams. The elderly couple to the right of us flinch at her colourful language.
‘He could do it. He’d be perfect,’ Karen says.
He is perfect. That’s half the problem. It should be illegal to leave the house looking like that. He’d give a weaker woman a heart attack.
I tear my gaze from where he stands with his back to us and meet her eyes questioningly.
‘For your show,’ she spells it out to me, shaking my arm with excitement.
Realisation dawns on me. If a man like him talking about romance doesn’t interest every straight woman in the country nothing would. Hell, he might even convert the gay ones, too. It would be out of this world. Candice would be so impressed that she might finally drop her incessant suggestions of a new co-host for my show. It would blow Sally’s Soul Show out of the water.
‘Yeah, but good luck with that,’ Emma says crushingly. ‘There’s absolutely no way a man like him will go on national radio to talk about his feelings and all that kind of guff.’
She might have a point.
‘He doesn’t have to talk about his feelings. All he has to do is offer a male perspective,’ Karen says.
‘Well, it’s not like I’ve got any other options right now.’ A newfound sense of confidence returns.
The prospect of having a legitimate excuse to be near Callum Connolly excites me more than I’m comfortable with, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he plays rugby for Ireland. I have zero intention of becoming the next notch on his apparently extensive bedpost, but I can look and not touch. I’ll simply need to keep a tight rein on these ridiculously unruly hormones, which seem to excrete directly to my deprived lady parts, any time his eyes bear heavily into mine.
