Beautiful Sinner: a standalone forbidden romance (Beautiful Series)

“PLEASE…” I beg, giving him puppy dog eyes and a little pout to my lips. He’s still staring down at his laptop, a pile of papers scattered around his desk. Considering it’s only been twenty-four hours since I was in his office, and we did things we definitely should not have, I’d say we’re acting more normal than I expected.

“Cadence, I have an actual job. I have this budget to approve, homilies to write, proposals to put together. Believe it or not, but this job is more than just showing up on Sunday morning.” When he finally looks up at me, a stern expression that transforms into something mischievous, I know he’s thinking about last night. Fuck, even with the surprise of my mom showing up, I can’t stop thinking about it either. And if it wasn’t for that big ultimatum he served afterwards, I would propose we do it again.

He gave me a choice: stay in Ennis and accept that there will never be anything more than friendship or put some distance between us—like an ocean.

I don’t need to think about it. I couldn’t leave Ennis if I tried, but I’m letting him think there’s some deliberation on my part. I want him to worry that I’ll leave. I want him to be so afraid of it that he’ll do whatever he needs to to keep me.

I want Callum all to myself, and I’m not sorry about it.

“It’s just a few hours, and you know the area better than I do. I thought we could take her rental car and see the cliffs. Plus, you know how I hate to drive here. Everything is backward.”

His shoulders drop and he gives me a terse glare. “You drive just fine. And you have everything you need on that smart phone of yours.”

Finally he stands up and walks closer. It’s a dangerous move, and I stare helplessly into his green eyes. I bite my lip to keep from kissing him. If I kiss him, I’ll want to touch him. If I touch him, it’s all downhill from there. I can’t be the one to initiate. That much is obvious now. If he wants me, then he’ll have to make the move. It has to be his choice.

He stops just a foot away from me, and crosses his arms. “You don’t need me to come.”

My eyes devour him with his golden skin, light hair, and high, sculpted cheekbones. If God wanted him to be chaste, he really shouldn’t have made him so fucking beautiful.

“I know,” I say with a shrug. “I just want you to.”

The room falls silent for a moment while we fight the urge to do anything more than stare at each other, and it’s difficult. I know he feels the struggle too. So, I send him a simple smirk. “As friends, of course.”

He leans forward. “Of course.”

“Are we ready?” my mother’s voice chimes from down the hall. In a rush, Callum leans away and fidgets in his tight black shirt. It’s already warm in this office, and I bet he’s sweating bullets in all that snug-fitting black fabric. I want to peel it off of him.

“I’m ready.” I turn back to her with a smile.

“Our tour guide is coming, right?” She sends Callum a bright expression, and I see him struggle with his response. He can’t deny her when she smiles like that. It’s her superpower, and I know this apple didn’t fall far from that tree, but the thought of her wooing him with her charm makes my insides twist with jealousy.

“He has to work.”

“Give me a few minutes, okay?”

My eyes dart to his face, wide with surprise. He doesn’t say anything, but he turns around to settle some papers on his desk. He didn’t change his mind for her, I tell myself, but when I turn around I find a victorious expression on her face, and the jealousy twists even tighter.

My mother wouldn’t go after a priest, would she?

She wouldn’t come to my new home, my new job, and flirt with my boss.

He wouldn’t even entertain that idea.

Would he?

An hour or so later, we’re standing at the cliffs, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointment in my attitude. I was in such a good mood this morning, knowing that I could show my mother around Ennis, hopefully with Callum too. Being with him off work gave me a spring of pleasure.

But he’s being distant. When I search for his eye contact, he’s too busy being an attentive host to her. He’s playing his priest role today. Loving the attention. Loving that someone is rapt with interest at his every word. I see how she leans in over the center console while he talks. I see how she stands so close to him while he goes on and on about the cliffs.

Is he testing me? Showing me what this will feel like if I stay and we continue being just friends? He will never be mine, not really. I can tell myself that he’s mine all I want, but as long as I’m around and he’s a priest, I will feel like this forever.

The two of them are standing in the grass, looking out over the water, and I’m behind them, feeling as if I’m the one who shouldn’t have come. When I look up again, his eyes are on me. The most subtle flinch in his brow shows a hint of worry. But he can’t talk to me, not privately. Not intimately.

I want to tell him that my mother is flirting with him, but he probably already knows. It’s obvious, but I have no room to talk. I do the same exact thing.

My mother and I have been close my whole life. It was Sunny who she never truly understood. They struggled to maintain a positive relationship her entire life, and there were even violent outbursts that I wish I could erase from my memory. But I love her anyway.

When she turns around and comes over to me, I fake a smile and look out over the water. “Isn’t this amazing?” she says, holding her windblown hair out of her face.

“It never gets old.”

“You really love it out here, don’t you?”

My eyes couldn’t avoid drifting to Callum if I tried. “Yes, I do.”

“It suits you.”

A bursting laugh comes flying out of my laugh. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, okay, it doesn’t. But you made it work for you, Cadence. You took a bad situation, and you made it work. You even look happy.”

“I am happy, maybe happier than I’ve ever been.”

“Good. You needed this, I think. Since Sunny got married, you just needed a break, and I’m glad you got one. A step away from reality.”

My eyes narrow. “This isn’t a step away from reality. This is my home.”

“For now,” she answers with a laugh. “And no, Cadence, this isn’t reality. It’s a fairytale. Look at this place. It’s a long vacation. What are you going to do here? Keep cleaning up horse stables for the rest of your life? Meet a man here? I don’t think so.”

I don’t know why I’m getting so defensive, but my mother’s sudden desire to define my experience has me feeling bitter and ready to fight. “I’m not coming back to Pineridge, Mom. This isn’t a vacation.”

“Cadence, please. What is your plan, then? You can’t marry him!” She gestures to Callum who is currently standing far enough away and engrossed with something on his phone that he can’t hear us. Still, I wish he did hear her. He should hear how unfair that statement is. How unfair all of this is.

“I don’t need to marry anyone, Mom. Callum and Bridget and Daisy are my friends, and I love them. My plan…” For some reason, I stutter because it feels like anything I say at this point is cursed. As if I say my intentions out loud, they’ll be tarnished with false hope and stupid ideas from a naïve girl. “My plan is to take over the Bed and Breakfast.”

Now it’s my mom’s turn to laugh out loud. This time, Callum does look at us.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious.”

Now, she’s angry, and it’s coloring the air between us with bitterness.

“You’re being stubborn, Cadence. You made a mistake when you trusted that boy, but you don’t have anything to prove now. You don’t need to stay.”

Her words are starting to pierce my conscience, and I’m not feeling as confident as I was a moment ago. This isn’t a vacation. I do love it here, but as my mother so subtly reminded me, I fall too easily. I trust too easily. And I make stupid decisions. Is staying a mistake?

Just then, Callum turns toward me and our eyes meet. Quickly, I look away and start to walk back to the car.

I was an idiot to fall for Clint, but until just now I didn’t feel like an idiot for falling for Callum. How can I possibly defend whatever this is between us?

“Ready to head back?” Callum meets me by the car, worry written all over his features.

“Yes,” I snap.

At dinner, I’m not feeling any better. Even after I spent an hour in my room alone, pretending I was napping, I couldn’t shake the feeling my mom’s words gave me.

How can I trust my heart if it’s made nothing but mistakes?

How much am I willing to let love fool me?

It feels like a sign. Callum gave me a choice, and my mother made mine for me. If I stay, just to be near him, knowing he’ll never truly be mine, I’ll be leading with my heart, and it will cost me my life.

If I leave, leading with my head, I’ll lose him forever, and it will break my heart.

But what future do I have here? Even if I learn to run the B&B myself, will I be doing it for myself or for him?

When I come down for dinner, Callum is in the parlor with my mother. They’re sitting at the couch as she leans against him, looking at something on his phone. The jealousy isn’t so much a sting anymore as a dull ache, numbed by my new surrender.

“Have a good nap?” she asks, looking up from his phone.

“Yeah.” I walk over to the small coffee maker in the kitchen and brew myself a cup. My mother’s footsteps close the distance behind me.

“Father Callum was showing me the video from when you two went to Dublin. Looked like fun.” The distant memory makes the dull ache worse. That was only a few weeks ago. It feels like a lifetime. The music, the beer, the dancing. The first time we almost kissed. The first time I wanted to. Who was I then? Not the same girl I am now. I was so sure of what I wanted, so excited and determined for this fantasy future that exists only in dreams. I was an idiot.

“Yeah, it was fun.”

She grows silent, and I feel the awkward tension returning. “Cadence…I’m sorry for upsetting you earlier. I just want you to be sensible about this…”

“What? Sensible like you? Were you sensible at my age?” I snap back at her.

She flinches. My mother never was and still is not sensible. By my age, she was in love with my dad—or at the very least in love with his money. They married quickly and the honeymoon only lasted a year before they hated each other. Neither one of them honored their commitment, and it was never a secret. I never confronted her about it, but I was too busy holding our family together to care that she had male friends over when Dad was away. Or that she started drinking every day until she couldn’t go two hours without a drink. Sunny started retreating into her shell while my mother pulled me out of mine. By the time I was sixteen, I was a fixture at all of her parties. She paraded me around as her best friend. She opened up to me about the men she was seeing, even when she and Dad were still married, and they were my secrets to keep. To her, it was her revenge because he was screwing his secretary anyway.

“I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did, Cadence. Don’t rush into anything because your heart is telling you to.”

When her eyes dart toward the parlor, my heart skips a single beat. Callum is still staring down at his phone, still out of earshot, and I finally understand that my mother knows. Tears fill my eyes. This isn’t about Ireland or the B&B. This is about Callum. About my stupid heart and its recklessness.

Silently, I nod, but it doesn’t stop the tears. Suddenly, her arms are around me, and my face is pressed against her shoulder. I want to sob, but I bite it back. Something about crying for another man feels degrading, so I stop myself.

Bridget shuffles into the kitchen, and I pull away in a rush. Turning toward my coffee, I dress it up with the cream and sugar I like, but I feel both of their eyes on me. When we all gather around the table, I know my eyes are still red because Callum won’t stop looking at me, and there’s an awkwardness in the air.

“Cadence, maybe you’d like to take your mom to Yeager’s after dinner?” Bridget suggests, and my spine stiffens. My mother has been sober for almost a year, or so I assume since I haven’t seen her in two months. If my mother were still drinking, she’d be so drunk by now that she’d have tried to sleep with Callum right in front of everyone. And when he turned her down, she’d make me take her to the pub to find someone else. She’d be violent, abrasive, and mean. I’ve accepted that at least she’s trying now.

“I don’t think that would be such a good idea,” I say.

My mother smiles. “I can handle it, Cadence. I’ll be good. I’d love to hear some live music.”

My skin boils as I think about my mom in a bar. Sure, it may be a pub here, acceptable for kids and food, but to an American, it’s a bar.

“I don’t know…”

“I’d be happy to escort the both of you there,” Callum says, and I hate my heart for picking up speed.

I’m not comfortable with it, not in the slightest, but what choice do I have? She wants to go, and if she wants to get drunk and ruin all of her progress, that’s on her. It won’t change anything for me. So reluctantly, I nod my head and agree to it.

But I make a silent plan that when we get home, I’m going to tell Callum that I’ve made my choice. I’m not staying in Ennis. I’m not willing to stay with him if I can’t have him to myself.