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Calla’s mouth tightened. She looked like she wanted to slug him. “You think the only reason Baird had any interest in me was because he wanted to keep me away from Cearnach?”
“Other than that you have an income, your family has money, and you are a single she-wolf…”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
Retreating a wee bit, Guthrie cleared his throat. “I’m just trying to consider all possibilities as to why he is so interested in you. What if it went deeper than just a chance meeting? Like he’d learned you were the same lass who had saved Cearnach in the river so many years ago and that you were friends.”
“He was infatuated with me, and it had nothing to do with my friendship with Cearnach,” she said so vehemently that Guthrie wondered if she thought otherwise but didn’t want to admit it.
“But he knew you were friends with my brother when you met Baird, aye?”
“I might have mentioned I knew him and your family.”
“In casual conversation, or had he come out and asked you?”
She glowered at Guthrie. “He said he remembered me. All right?”
“From when you had lived in the area before, when you were a child?”
“Aye, aye.”
“But you had never met him and didn’t remember him.”
“Nay. I was young back then. He was probably into doing guy things and really hadn’t noticed me all that much. I hadn’t noticed him.”
“Except that he had seen you and knew you were friends with Cearnach.”
“I didn’t know he and Cearnach hated each other. Baird acted like he knew him only because he was a wolf with a wolf pack living in the same area. We notice things like that, you know. Cearnach met me trying to fish at the river and then proceeded to teach me how to do it right. Then later, I met you and your brothers. I remember all of you smiling at us, but it was more of a case of the three of you being amused at Cearnach for visiting with a girl.”
“Cearnach always liked the girls,” Guthrie said.
“You didn’t?”
He let out his breath. “We thought he was interested in you as more than just a friend,” he said, avoiding her question.
“Seriously?”
“Aye.”
“Here I thought you were interested in me.”
Guthrie felt his face heat a bit. When she smiled, he didn’t know what to say. Oh, aye, he’d been interested in the lassie. All his brothers had. She was a bonny lass even back then. But neither he nor his brothers would have interfered when they thought Cearnach was hung up on her. Their cousin, Flynn, long since deceased, was another story. He didn’t care about such matters. So even though Guthrie and his brothers teased Cearnach about catching the lass’s eye, Guthrie had wished he had seen her first, talked to her first, shown her how to fish first. He was never the glib-tongued romantic that Cearnach was with the lassies. Guthrie still didn’t believe he would have captured her attention even back then.
When he didn’t comment, Calla sighed. “When I saw Cearnach again, I mentioned to him that I was dating Baird, and that’s when your brother went all Highland warrior on me and tried to convince me Baird was a bad person. But Baird had been sweet—”
Guthrie snorted.
She scowled at him. “He’d been great to me. We hiked, boated, ran as wolves, and swam—it didn’t matter what I wanted to do, he always took me.”
“He didn’t let you go with anyone else, did he? He tried to stop you from seeing Cearnach.”
“He thought Cearnach was an old boyfriend. Baird said he wasn’t comfortable with me seeing him. I told him we were just friends. Baird said others in his pack didn’t see it that way. He was having a hard time believing it too.”
Guthrie snorted again.
Looking crossly at Guthrie—which he thought made her appear wolfishly cute, though he was sure she wasn’t going for that look—she folded her arms.
Guthrie rose to his full height. “So when Cearnach learned of it, he tried to change your mind because he didn’t think Baird was a good match or the person you thought he was.”
Calla looked out at the dark gardens. “Aye. Oh, I knew Baird could be controlling, and not just about me not seeing Cearnach. He didn’t like it when I had work to do and he felt that I should be with him instead. But I thought if he cared enough about me, he’d change.”
“Even at your wedding, he proved otherwise when he had his brothers force Cearnach to leave. It didn’t matter that you wanted Cearnach there because he was your friend. Baird had to prove he was in charge and you had no say in the matter.”
Calla didn’t say anything. Guthrie was afraid he’d upset her too much, and she wouldn’t say anything more about the matter. They had to know—had Baird only targeted her because she was friends with Cearnach? Had he met up with her on purpose because of a darker intent, or was it just a coincidence? Guthrie didn’t believe it was.
“So, you had the whirlwind courtship with him and then…?”
“You’ve got to realize I’d been living among humans for years. It was refreshing to see members of a wolf pack working together and know that the leader, Baird, was fascinated with me. Cearnach remained a good friend, but we weren’t interested in each other in that way. Oh, sure, Baird has his faults, but who doesn’t? None of us are perfect. I just assumed that as much as he cared for me, I could live with it.”
Guthrie let out his breath. “You don’t need to put up with the kind of faults Baird has. The control issues. His constant badgering. His being so manipulative.”
Her eyes flickered a bit. “All right, aye. He tended not to care if others got hurt if he got what he wanted. But I didn’t see this until the wedding.”
“What about your business? Would he have left well enough alone?” Guthrie couldn’t see that he would. He suspected Baird would have controlled her business, determining who she saw while she was setting up her engagements, micromanaging her during the activities, and maybe even taking it over so she was working for him. Or maybe even making her quit.
“I told him I wasn’t about to give up my business or the way I handled things.”
“And?”
She let out her breath in a huff. “He knew where I stood on it. I wouldn’t have consented to marrying him otherwise.”
