style="font-size:15px;"> Callie grinned. ‘People frequently say that when they’re around me.’
Finn didn’t find that hard to believe. At all.
Three months later …
CALLIE, ABOUT TO pull the door open to their favourite watering hole, the Laughing Queen, frowned as Rowan held the door closed and stopped her from walking inside.
‘What?’
Rowan narrowed her eyes at her. ‘Can you try and remember that this is a business meeting? That my client and his fiancée have called their wedding off two weeks before they were supposed to say I do. Do not flirt with him!’
Callie, purely to wind Rowan up, flashed her naughtiest smile. ‘Why not? Maybe me flirting with him will cheer him up.’
‘Don’t you dare! I swear, Cal, just behave—okay?’
‘I always behave!’ Callie protested. Okay, that wasn’t true, so she quickly crossed her fingers behind her back. For most of her adult life, whenever she’d found herself back in Cape Town, she had normally ended up in this bar, getting up to some mischief or other. Jim and Ali, the owners, loved her because she always got the party started and they ended up selling much more liquor than normal.
‘Just no dancing on the bar or impromptu line-dancing, okay? Or, if you have to, pretend that you don’t know me.’
‘Hey! I’m not so bad!’
Rowan was thinking of Callie’s early twenties self, or maybe her mid-twenties self … maybe her six-months-ago self. The truth was that it had been a while since she’d caused havoc in a pub. Or anywhere else.
Normally, whenever she was feeling low or lonely, needing to feel outside of herself, she headed for the nearest bar or club. It wasn’t about the alcohol—she’d launched many a party and walked out at dawn stone-cold sober—it was the people and the vibe she fed off … the attention.
So why, after a decade, was she now boycotting that scene? Had she totally lost every connection to the wild child she had been? That funny, crazy, gap-toothed seven-year-old who’d loved everyone and everything. That awesome girl she’d been before everything had changed and her world had fallen apart.
Sadness made her throat constrict. She rather liked the fact that at one point in her life she’d been totally without fear. That was how she usually felt in the middle of a party she’d created: strong, in control, fearless.
Maybe she should just start a party tonight to remind herself that she could still have fun.
When she repeated the thought to Rowan, her mouth pursed in horror.
‘You are hell on wheels,’ Rowan grumbled, letting go of the door handle and gesturing her inside.
‘And you were a lot more fun before you got engaged to my brother,’ Callie complained, stepping into the restaurant. She waved at Jim, who was standing behind the long bar at the back of the large harbour-facing restaurant. ‘What happened to my wild, backpacking, crazy BFF?’
‘I’m working.’ Rowan said through gritted teeth. ‘This is my business.’
Seeing that Rowan looked as if she was about to start foaming at the mouth, Callie slung an arm around her shoulder. ‘Okay … chill. I’ll behave.’ She couldn’t resist another dig. ‘Or at the very least I’ll try.’
‘I was nuts to bring you along tonight,’ Rowan complained, leading them to an empty table in the corner and yanking out a chair.
Callie took the seat opposite her and flipped her hair over her shoulder. Seeing Rowan’s irritated face, she realised that she might have gone a little too far, so she placed her hand on hers and squeezed. When Rowan’s eyes met hers Callie met her dark eyes straight on. ‘Relax—I’ll behave, Ro.’
Rowan scrunched her face up and when she opened her eyes again let out a long sigh. ‘Sorry. It’s just that I feel for this guy. I mean, can you imagine calling it quits so close to the wedding?’ Rowan picked up a silver knife from the table and clutched it in her hand. ‘What could have gone so badly wrong so late in the day?’
Callie heard the unspoken question at the end of Rowan’s sentence. And what if it happens to us?
‘Easy, Ro. Seb adores you and nothing like that is going to happen.’
‘Bet Finn didn’t think that either,’ Rowan muttered.
Finn? Callie stared at her. Finn Banning? The guy on that flight back from JFK? The one she’d never quite managed to forget? The one she’d recommended Rowan to as his wedding planner? Black hair cut short to keep curls under control, utterly mesmerising grape-green eyes and that wide-shouldered, long-legged, slim-hipped body. The man who had starred in quite a few of her night time fantasies lately.
‘Finn? You’ve got to be sh—’ Callie caught her swearword just in time. With Rowan’s help she was trying to clean up her potty mouth. And by ‘Rowan’s help’ she meant that she had to pay Rowan ten bucks every time she swore. It was a very expensive exercise. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Rowan placed their order for a bottle of white wine with a waitress before answering her. ‘Sadly not. Anyway, he’s the strong, stoic, silent type—not the type of guy who you can commiserate with. So don’t let on that you know.’
Of course she wouldn’t. She was loud and frequently obnoxious, but she wasn’t a complete moron.
She had a low-grade buzz in her womb at the thought of meeting Finn again—jilted or not. She still had a very clear picture of his super-fit body dressed in faded jeans, his muscles moving under a long-sleeved black T-shirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows lounging in the seat next to her; his broad hand, veins raised, capable and strong, resting on his thigh. His quick smile, those wary, no-BS-tolerated eyes …
She had amused him, she remembered, and that was okay. He’d looked as if he needed to laugh more. And, more worryingly, those hours she’d spent with him were the last she’d spent in any concentrated, one-on-one time with a man.
Maybe she was losing her mojo.
‘So, how long are you in the country for this time?’
Rowan changed the subject and Callie sighed with disappointment. She wanted to gossip a bit more about the luscious Finn.
As a fashion buyer for an upmarket chain of fashion stores Callie was rarely in the country, constantly ducking in and out of the fashion capitals of Europe and in New York and LA. Trips back home were rarely for more than a week or two—three if she was at the end of a three-month rotation. Wasn’t she due for a three-week break soon? Hmm … she’d have to check.
‘I’m flying out to Paris in a little while and will be away for a week.’
‘Aren’t you sick of it, Cal? The airports, the travelling, the craziness?’ Rowan asked. ‘I could never imagine going back to my old lifestyle,
