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I opened my mouth to argue with her some more, but Leith’s hands were firmly steering me away from the conversation.
“Have a lovely day,” Leith called over his shoulder and I heard Ciara respond in kind, her voice softer when she was talking to the freckled beast currently manhandling me.
Once the apartment door was shut behind us I whirled on him. “Have a lovely day? What the fuck, Leith?”
Leith glanced over at Artie who’d crossed the room to throw himself on the only piece of furniture in the living room—a velvet settee that he’d refused to part with when we were downsizing for our move. “Don’t look at me. You explain it to him yourself.”
I looked between the two of them with confusion. I hated when I was left out of something, especially when I was left out of something that they both knew. “Am I crazy? Did you two have a conversation about that woman out there without me?”
Leith sighed, his broad shoulders sinking. “I’m not angry with her anymore, Enz, and I don’t think I ever was. When I realized we were coming here and would probably run into her, Artie and I talked everything out.”
“And what conclusion did you come to?” I asked, already dreading his answer.
“I like her still and I’d like to see if something is still there—Artie’s okay with it and if you don’t like it then we can discuss—but I want to fix whatever happened and figure it out this time.” Leith’s jaw clenched with a surprising stubbornness which was uncharacteristic for the Scot.
He was the quintessential go-with-the-flow man and had been ever since we’d met three years ago.
“You’re okay with it? You?” I wheeled around to look at Artie. Where Leith was calm, Artie was the opposite. I’d seen him crawl all over the both of us when another omega slanted even the slightest of flirty looks in our direction.
Artie shrugged one shoulder. “Why wouldn’t I be? She’s properly gorgeous and she smells absolutely divine.”
“I’d say you need to get your eyes checked—but we already know how that ended last time,” I told him with a shake of my head.
“Ouch, love, a blind joke, that really hurts,” Artie said, clearly unfazed by my jab.
With a heaving sigh, I rolled my eyes and threw my hands up. “I’m saying no. To all of it. She’s our neighbor and nothing more. We have no more room left in our lives for her bullshit, we barely have enough space for our own.”
With that I turned and headed for the back hall where my bedroom would be, my insides churning with frustration.
“He’ll come around, Lei, he always does,” I heard Artie say before I shut the door.
That was where he was wrong. If there was one thing I could be stubborn about it was Ciara Callaghan. They may have forgotten how shredded Leith was after she’d blown through his life, but I hadn’t.
If I couldn’t get her to move back to wherever the hell she came from, then I’d protect my packmates from her blast radius.
Even if they hated me for it.
“And this is the studio where you will work after the games with a panel of other sports commentators,” Hideo Nomura explained as he led me through the massive studio space.
I was a bit surprised that the vice president of the whole place was showing me around, but I was quickly learning that things ran a little differently here than at a typical broadcast company.
“We have a deal with ESPN,” Hideo continued as he walked me around the curved desk. “We film from here and take on overhead costs and the percentage of ad revenue and viewership is kicked back to us.”
“Why not just have commentators from ESPN?” I asked, more curious than anything.
Hideo shot me a wry smile. “Colt is obsessed with all parts of winter sports and wants to do as much in-house as he can. Wait until you see his plans for an adjacent medical clinic outside of our PT department.”
I never understood how someone whose career trajectory was through the atmosphere could sell off his successful security business and throw all of their ducks behind a Sports Complex like this.
There had been no guarantee of success and yet Colt had done it anyway.
It was insane, and perhaps a little bit impressive.
I was still irritated with the elusive billionaire for moving Ciara Callaghan right across the hall, though.
In the three days since our hallway discussion I’d run into her almost every morning because she went on a pre-dawn run at the same time as me.
She didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t to her, but I could feel the tension as we set off on our opposite paths.
