Callum (Blue Halo Book 7)

What the heck had she been thinking? Following some random woman outside and getting herself locked out in the cold.

Stupid.

An hour had passed since Callum had found her, and Fiona was only just starting to feel her fingers again. Of course, his arm around her shoulders wasn’t terrible. And the way he intermittently rubbed her bare arm almost made the little ordeal worth it. She should probably tell him she was okay, maybe inch away, but who the hell ever did what they were supposed to do?

She sipped on another glass of juice. She’d been tempted to switch to wine to warm her insides but had decided not to. She did not need a repeat of the embarrassing bathroom incident from last night.

Stacey and a couple other cousins sat at the table with them, and Callum fit in like he’d known these people for years. He joked. Smiled. Told stories that had the entire group throwing their heads back and belly laughing. But was she surprised? Nope. She’d already surmised he was the ideal guy, so of course he had to fit in with people he’d only just met.

Her phone vibrated from the table.

Jenny: How’s the wedding?

Grinning, Fiona lifted her phone and responded quickly.

Fiona: So much better than I thought it would be. I’d even say I’m almost having fun.

Ha. There was no almost about it. She’d laughed more at this table than she had in the last year.

Jenny: With your hottie date, I would expect nothing less. Make some memories and report back on Tuesday.

Oh, she’d be reporting back, all right. She was just putting her phone down when Amanda took a seat across the table. “What are we laughing at?”

The smiles slipped on everyone’s faces. Every. Single. Person. They’d all been subjected to Amanda’s cranking bitch too many times. No one as much as Fiona, of course, but still, one time was too many for most. She was less awful to the others and more a naturally self-centered person.

Stacey cleared her throat. “Callum was just telling us a story about his time as a Marine.”

Amanda raised a perfectly manicured brow. “What type of Marine were you?”

“Special operations.”

“Ooh, dangerous.” She cocked her head. “Yet, Project Arma was still able to kidnap and detain you.”

Fiona’s muscles tensed. Not just because the topic of Project Arma wasn’t appropriate to bring up at a wedding, but also because of the way her sister said it. Like she was insinuating he couldn’t be that badass.

Fiona gave her sister a pointed look. “Amanda—”

“I mean, you were trained to be the best. Wouldn’t the best be able to protect themselves?”

What the hell? She cast her gaze to Callum, sure she’d find him annoyed or frustrated. He didn’t look either of those things. In fact, he didn’t seem affected by her words at all. She was about to tell her sister where she could go when Callum got in first.

“I’d just gotten off a fourteen-hour flight after a mission. The men who took me were waiting inside my apartment. There were six of them and one of me. I wasn’t armed or expecting an attack. No normal man would be able to withstand that kind of ambush.”

Fiona’s breath stalled in her chest at the scene he described. At the way his life must have changed after that. One moment, and everything was different. He was held for two years. Drugged. Trained. Altered.

He drew a small circle on her shoulder. “They wouldn’t take me so easily today. If at all.”

Her sister raised a brow. “Well, you think they wouldn’t.”

“I know.”

Fiona cleared her throat. “Your wedding is beautiful, Amanda. Maybe you should do the rounds.”

In other words—go.

Slowly, Amanda drew her focus to Fiona. “I should probably be thanking you for all of this, shouldn’t I?”

Her muscles tensed, and Callum’s hand tightened on her shoulder.

This time, it was Stacey who tried to intervene. “Amanda—”

“I am sorry about how you found out about us,” Amanda cut in, like everyone wasn’t staring at her open-mouthed.

Fiona’s blood ran cold. Only Callum and Stacey knew the truth about how she’d found out. “Don’t—”

“We didn’t want you to find us in your bed like that.”

There was a collective gasp from her cousins. Fiona’s fingers curled into fists, and words tumbled from her lips before she could stop them. “You’re not sorry, Amanda. Just like how I’m not sorry about you now being married to a cheating asshole.” Fiona’s eyes never left her sister’s narrowed ones as she pushed to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I could use a drink.”

She moved through the crowd, blinking back tears. The tears were more frustration than anything else. She certainly was not embarrassed. She’d done nothing wrong. But Amanda’s words brought it all back. Every emotion she’d experienced that day. The rejection. The hurt. The loss of the future she’d planned in her head.

And the fact her cousins now knew…that burned. Would they tell others? Would the news get back to her parents?

Oh God, please say no.

She stopped at the bar, curling her fingers around the wooden edge. Her chest heaved even as she felt she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Then heat covered her back, and a large hand touched her shoulder.

“Dance with me.” Callum’s deep, raspy voice whispered over her cheek.

“I don’t know if I’m in the mood to dance.” Understatement of the century.

“Please.”

That one whispered word…it slid over her skin, making every inch of flesh pebble with awareness.

She swallowed. She wanted to say yes. Heck, she wanted this man to take her away from all of this.

It was only when his thumb grazed her skin that she got the words out. “Okay. One dance.” Because she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out how to say no.

The hand moved down her arm, and his fingers slid into hers. Then he was pulling her to the dance floor. As she followed, she searched out her parents. They were laughing with her uncles and aunties. Clearly, news hadn’t traveled to them…yet. Hopefully Stacey would convince everyone to keep quiet about it, at least for tonight.

Callum stopped in the middle of the dance floor. She expected him to put one hand on her waist, keeping a thread of distance between them. When he curved both arms around her and pulled her entire body flush with his, the air left her lungs.

His mouth neared her ear. “Relax.”

“I can’t when it comes to her. I don’t know why she’s like that.” She blew out a long breath. “I didn’t want people to know.”

“Shut them out and don’t think about them.”

“What should I think about instead?”

His face brushed her hair, and a shudder raced down her spine. “How good I smell.”

She laughed. “You do smell nice.”

A crisp, fresh, outdoorsy smell. And all masculine.

“How right my arms feel around you,” he added.

The smile slipped. His arms did feel right around her.

“What we’re going to do when we get back to Cradle Mountain.”

Her heart thumped, her gaze shooting up. “What we’re going to do?”

“Yeah. Where I should take you for our first official date. How I should greet you when I go to the library.”

She laughed again. “You say hi.”

“With a kiss?”

Her breath caught. “We…we haven’t kissed yet.”

“That’s something we should remedy, isn’t it?”

Her lips parted. “You want to kiss me?”

One side of his mouth pulled up. “That’s like asking a starving man if he wants food.”

She shook her head. “You can’t kiss me here.”

“Why not?”

She wet her lips, and his gaze flicked down. “Because if we have a first kiss—”

“When.”

“Okay. When we have a first kiss, I want it to be just you and me. I don’t want the eyes of my family on us. I don’t want to wonder if my sister’s throwing death stares our way or aiming imaginary daggers toward my back. I want intimacy. And privacy. I want…just us.”

His eyes darkened, and something hot and unfamiliar flickered through them. Then he tugged her body even tighter against his. “I want those things too, honey.”

The pause that followed felt so deep and intense that she looked away. But she didn’t separate from him. Instead, she lay her head on his chest like she’d done it a million times before, and just rocked, allowing herself to be swept up in all that was Callum.