Page 51 of Goode Tidings

Don't fall in love with Eden. You don't deserve her. Nobody does.

Justin might be dumber than a box of rocks, but he's right about that.

I grab my cup from the counter, taking a sip of coffee that is now lukewarm as I flop into my desk chair. The screens are dark, but I swipe over the keyboard and wake them. I try not to work on Sundays, but this will give me a distraction from all that lovelorn pining and yearning I was recently accused of doing.

The submissions inbox is up first. The first three are the kind I like to see. Tales of the kindness of strangers, and one firefighter who saved an old woman's cat. These are the stories I want to share. I copy and paste these emails into the productivity app my team uses. There's a timestamp, and I fully expect to be given a hard time for working on a Sunday when they see these submissions tomorrow.

There's a fourth submission with the subject line Repaying my husband's mistress. I blink at the sentence, mentally preparing myself for what this might entail. It's impossible to know without looking. Sometimes the email subject lines are so unbelievably awful, I send the submission straight to the trash. But this one? I'll have to open it.

"Please tell me you gave the mistress a kidney," I mutter as I click the email.

Behind me chimes a voice that is melodic and amused. "That's going in the top five weirdest sentences I've ever heard."

CHAPTER 25

Callum

I jump as if a rocket has gone off underneath my desk. My hand flies out, knocking over my crappy cup of coffee.

"Shit," Eden hisses.

My mouth opens in astonishment as Eden whips her sweatshirt over her head and tosses it on top of the coffee spill. This woman has the power to reduce me to a dopey male.

"Did you just"—my eyes skip between the sweatshirt heaped on my desk and the woman standing beside me in a sports bra—"do that?"

Eden shrugs one-shouldered. "Black coffee, black sweatshirt." Her eyebrows furrow, head tilting as she looks at me.

"What?" I ask, worried there's something on my face. I don't know what because I haven't eaten anything recently, but now I'm positive there's something going on that will make my list of embarrassing things longer. Eden's never been in here, and I don't know why that's throwing me off, but it is. It's just such a small space, and there she is. Right there. So close. Wearing one fewer item of clothing than she walked in here wearing. Is it hot in here? I'm suddenly warm all over. The outside temp might be cool, but in here it may as well be the middle of summer. On the surface of the sun.

We hugged a couple nights ago, and I think that's what is causing all this internal heat. Now I know what it's like to hold her in my arms. To look down at the top of her head while she snuggles against my chest. Do I need ice to calm down? I think I might be dying.

Eden crosses her arms. Pops one hip out. "You swam in the lake for the second time this weekend." She says it so matter-of-factly, it's more like a challenge.

I do like a challenge, so I take the bait. My hands fold across my waist and I shift in my chair so we're facing each other. "Keeping tabs on me?"

She smirks. "It's a part of the Naked Squatter identification program I'm a member of. Once an individual is located, we are bound by a blood oath to keep an eye on them."

"Sounds serious." The heat in my body subsides as we volley, like an opening of the valve on a pressure cooker. "And what exactly are you on the lookout for?"

"As it pertains to you?"

"Obviously."

"Squatting naked." Eden's lips quiver as she suppresses her laughter.

"Well, I don't plan on being a repeat offender. I learned my lesson the hard way when I hiney greeted an officer of the Naked Squatter identification program."

Eden's pinching the skin on the underside of her forearm to keep from laughing. "I heard about that. She said it was a nice hiney."

My eyebrows lift. "Oh really?"

"Yep. She said you must work out."

"I do squats."

Eden loses it. Her head tips back and her rich laughter fills the room. She looks so pretty.

I want to laugh, too. The amusement is there, ballooning out through my chest. But I don't. I study her instead. The points of her smile. Her dark pink lips. The movement of her breasts in that white sports bra and the contraction of her stomach.