Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 109783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
“Then why?” She nibbled on her lower lip, the action betraying her.
I took a step closer. “I didn’t want Lewis to get the wrong idea. He and Callie had so much going on.” It turned out that the break-in at the cottage hadn’t been random. After Lewis’s house had gotten broken into, we thought Callie’s criminal father might be behind what was clearly a threat to Callie.
But a few months later, Callie was attacked in her bakery, and it turned out the whole thing had to do with her French ex-boyfriend. She’d just gotten caught up in his tragic story. Thankfully, she made it out fairly unscathed, and she and Lewis welcomed Harley into the world, and they were getting married in October. At the time, however, it was stressful not knowing what was going on or who was behind the break-ins. “I didn’t want to give Lewis something else to worry about.”
“Why would he worry about us being friends? Haven’t we always been?”
“Talking every day kind of friends, though? He might think it was something it wasn’t. You didn’t tell him either,” I pointed out.
We both took a long swallow of beer as Eilidh processed this. Then she said, “I wasn’t telling him anything about my life. It wasn’t a deliberate secret I was keeping.”
“I didn’t mean for it to seem like I was keeping you a secret.”
She considered me and nodded with a heavy sigh. “Okay.”
Relief started to slide through me. “So … are we good? Like, actually good this time?”
Eilidh wiped her forehead and I became fully aware of the heat again, sweat trickling down my back beneath my T-shirt. “If we’re friends again, then I don’t want to hide that from people. Hiding it makes it seem like there’s something to hide. Right?”
I nodded, willing to agree to anything to have her back in my life. “I will tell Lewis I came here and that you and I are good friends. I promise.”
A sexy wee smirk curled the corner of her mouth, and she bridged the distance between us to clink her bottle against mine. “It’s nice to have you back.”
My gaze devoured her gorgeous face, her big, expressive blue eyes. “You too, sweetheart.”
Seven
FYFE
“You’re on holiday?” I repeated, because I wasn’t quite sure I believed her. Eilidh had been working nonstop since she was a teenager.
She was sitting on the cool hardwood floor of her flat, her back to an armchair and her knees drawn toward her torso. Sweat glistened on her chest as she drank from her fourth beer. I was on my fifth. The alcohol was making our hot bodies already hotter and had loosened us both up. As I sprawled on her couch, beer bottle dangling from my fingers, it pleased me that it hadn’t taken too much for those nine months of distance to melt away.
“My agent wasn’t very happy about it. Says I could lose momentum since the show isn’t as talked about anymore. But I’m exhausted. When a fellow actor offers you a pill to give you energy and you seriously consider taking it, that’s when you know you’ve got a problem.”
Anxiety flickered hotly through me at the thought of Eilidh going down that path. “Fuck, Eils, please tell me you’re exaggerating?”
She shook her head grimly. “I didn’t take it, of course. But the fact that I considered it scared the shit out of me. That was around the time Harley was born. I was about to sign on to a movie shooting this summer, but I know I’m burned out, so I said no. That went down like a lead balloon with my agent.”
“Fuck your agent.” I’d like to mash the bastard for overworking her. “You’re really taking a break all summer until the next season of Young Adult starts filming?”
“I am.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Were you planning on coming home?”
She gave me an exasperated look. “Of course. But Mor is coming to stay with me for a few weeks as soon as school’s out. She wants to spend some time in London, and I want to get to know my wee sister again. I didn’t see any point coming to Ardnoch now. I’ll visit when I bring Mor back.”
Looking around her flat, I hated that she was here alone in this place. It was more art gallery than home. Not that I could talk. My house had very few knickknacks in it or personal touches.
“What is it?”
“Merely wondering if it’s a break you need or a change of career,” I told her bluntly. Eilidh hadn’t been happy for at least a few years now. She was only twenty-four and she couldn’t go on like this.
“Well … I have been writing.” She didn’t meet my eyes, and I couldn’t tell if the flush on her cheeks was the heat, the beer, or her insecurity. Most likely all three.