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Catie started laughing. “How many phones does one man need?”
The tinkling sound caught me by surprise. I think I sort of gaped at her a second, then laughed with her. “Hey now. I’m a big damn deal. I was just thinking the other day that I might need a third device.” I held up three fingers in front of her face.
She wrapped her hand around my extended fingers and gave them a little squeeze. “Don’t you ever want to be unreachable?”
“Not necessarily,” I confessed. “The way the music industry is lately, I need to be available for…whatever, I guess.”
She didn’t let go of my hand, and I wasn’t going to complain, or pull away. The heat of her fingers pulsed through me in a slow, sexy cadence I’d happily set to music.
“Okay, but what about when you were out hiking the other day? The day Sweet Cream mauled you. You were out enjoying yourself in nature. Would you have been happy to have that moment be interrupted by a call? I’ve had that happen and I hate it.” Her brows dipped together.
Some emotion twisted through her eyes, and her sad expression tugged at my heart.
I twined my hand with hers, threading our fingers together, the phone clenched in my other fist, forgotten. “You’re right. I do hate that. But I take steps to try to be sure it doesn’t happen. When I’m hiking or in a recording studio, I set my phones to ‘no notifications’. A couple individuals are programmed in as favored contacts, so if they call or text, I do receive them.” Asher was one, although even he didn’t have my personal number. My dad was another of my favorites, but it had been twelve months since—
“Well, I guess that makes sense. I’d never thought about silencing notifications. My ex always texted or called at inconvenient times. And far too often. I finally decided to get a new number.”
“Ex?” I burned to know all about him, what drew her to him, what forced a wedge between them.
“Yeah. He’s part of the reason I moved to Nashville. Well, really, that was all Naomi’s fault. She’s been my best friend since grade school and when I called her to tell her Steve was a cheating son of a bitch, pardon my language, she took a red-eye to Oklahoma.” She smiled softly at some memory. “It was her idea to light a bonfire of his stuff. When his clothes were ashes, just like my marriage, she helped me pack up and move to Pineridge.”
What kind of asshole would cheat on a woman like Catie? I shook my head in bewilderment. “He sounds like a freakin’ idiot. So, you got a new number because…” I cocked my head to wait for her answer.
She snorted. “He wouldn’t stop calling and texting. Begging me to come home. He could spin a great story when he pleaded for forgiveness. He wasn’t quite so eloquent when he told me he’d knocked up his new girlfriend. I told him to focus on raising his baby to be a better person than he was. Then I got a new number and set a rule on my computer that his emails would be automatically diverted to a folder.” Her grin brightened the dim interior of the bar. “I named the folder Ex-Files.” She whistled the introduction music to the television show by the same name. “He was as unlikely to get a response from me as Agent Mulder was to actually prove the existence of aliens.”
I stared at her, a chuckle bubbling slowly in my gut. The chuckle grew into a belly laugh, which morphed into a wheezing, snorting full body guffaw. Seriously, I couldn’t catch my breath and my sides hurt.
A smile pulled the corners of her lips up, and then she grinned. After a hot minute, she laughed along with me.
I reached out and dragged her into my arms, laying my still-laughing lips on hers.
7
CATIE
Every bit of laughter in me crashed to a stunned halt. Callan Wilder was kissing me. Not just a sweet peck on the cheek, either. His lips were hot, soft, laughing, and demanding, coaxing my response. But to be perfectly honest, he didn’t have to work too hard at it.
I loved the feel and taste of him.
The arm of my chair dug into my ribs but I ignored the discomfort to focus on kissing him back. Opening my mouth to his tongue, relishing the slide of it over mine, dueling with his in a parry-and-thrust motion. His warm fingers cupped my neck, his thumb stroked along my jaw. His neatly trimmed beard was soft on my chin and under my fingers when I lifted my hand to his cheek.
Callan’s lips lingered on mine, tasting, sipping, doing insane things to my insides. My nerve endings tingled as if hundreds of butterflies coasted over my skin.
He changed the angle of his head and threaded his fingers through my hair, cupping the base of my skull. His other hand slid over my shoulder to the middle of my back, tenderly holding me in place to continue the kiss.
From somewhere across the bar came awhoop, whoop, whoopand a coupleBow Chicka Wow Wows.
“You asshats better delete any pictures you just took of that!” Joel hollered from behind the bar.
Callan jerked his head back, making my world spin. “Dammit!”
He scowled at the dudes across the bar from us, before looking back at me, his brows pinched together. The frown eased and he pressed his cheek to mine, his breath tickling my ear when he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
Sorry? He was sorry he kissed me?
I eased backward out of his hold. “Um… I…” I stopped because I didn’t seem capable of forming words.
His face came into focus, his brow furrowed and expression slightly alarmed. “I didn’t mean I’m sorry I kissed you. God no! I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day Sweet Cream jumped into my arms.”
