Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
I didn’t see enough of him. Lachlan, or Lockie as we called him, would be a man before I knew it.
I was thirty years old and having to start my romantic life all over again. There was no way I could face my career being wiped out too.
My misty eyes moved over the wall as I stretched my sore feet into the hardwood floors. There was a photo of my extended family, all the amazing, kind people who’d welcomed Dad, Grace, and my dad’s sister Shannon into their lives. It was from my sixteenth birthday party at the Italian restaurant D’Alessandro’s. The restaurant was owned by my uncle Marco’s family.
Marco wasn’t really my uncle, but he was close friends with Dad and Aunt Shannon through his wife Hannah, a member of the Carmichael clan. Her best friend was Cole, and Cole was married to Aunt Shannon. Cole’s sister, Aunt Jo, was best friends with Joss Carmichael, my pseudo-cousin Beth’s mum. And there were a lot more of us than that.
We were a large, complicated, tangled bunch who loved one another so much.
I’d gone from being alone to having a huge family within the space of a few months. It had been overwhelming in the best way.
Now there were photos of them all over my wall.
Pics of my best friend from high school, Leigh, hung there too. From fifteen years old to now. She lived and worked in Glasgow, but we tried to see each other as often as we could. Other than Beth and my cousins, my social group was scattered all over the world. I’d met most of my current friends when I went to uni in London. My closest friends were my two roommates, Penny and Davina. Penny now lived in Texas and Davina was in Dubai.
The truth was … since I’d met Will, my social world had become his. When we were together, we hung out with his friends. Hence why none of my cousins or Leigh had met Will—in the three years we’d been together.
That said everything. Why hadn’t I realized that wasn’t normal?
Hurt flared across my chest.
My gaze landed on a photo of Will and me. Grace had taken it. He was kissing my cheek, and my face was scrunched up in laughter. We looked happy.
Tears dripped down my cheeks and I wiped them away wondering how I could have been so wrong about that. It was a shock to realize I no longer trusted myself—no longer trusted my feelings. I took the picture off the wall and then reached for the other three photos of us together. With a sick, churning stomach, I shoved them into my side table drawer to deal with later. Then I kissed my fingertips and pressed them to a photo of Dad, Grace, and Lockie as I passed it to venture into the kitchen.
It was moments like these I wished I was a daily wine drinker. Like Will, I wasn’t big on alcohol. If I was out with the girls, I’d have a few cocktails, but that was it.
Stopping in the kitchen, I realized I’d intended to make a snack, yet I wasn’t hungry. Turning around, I wandered out of the kitchen, through the sitting room, and back out into the hall. My bedroom was on the same side as the living room and had a lovely, leafy view. The second bedroom was so small I’d turned it into a wardrobe. It was fair to say I loved clothes. I loved how they transformed a person. So, I had rails of clothes, far more than one person needed, and boxes and boxes upon shoes. Thankfully, this extra space allowed my bedroom to remain mostly clutter-free. Shutting the blinds, I changed out of my tight-fitted pencil dress into joggers and a cropped tee.
I’d barely pulled the tee on when my doorbell rang, setting off the app on my phone. I hurried into the hall to pull my phone out of my purse. Ignoring the notifications that I had missed calls and a bunch of unanswered texts from Will that had piled up over the past month, I tapped on the doorbell app.
There wasn’t a security door into the building, so I’d installed the camera doorbell. The camera app flared to life and my heart skipped a beat at the sight of Baird.
If Will really wanted to talk to me, he could come to my flat. Like Baird. Who didn’t like how we’d left things and had shown up mere hours later.
A pleasant ache scored across my chest as I opened the door to him.
His gorgeous, dark eyes held mine for a second, and I felt more than a sizzle of the physical attraction I’d gotten very good at ignoring. Baird McMillan was probably the most beautiful man I’d ever met.
However, lots of women thought so, and he was the biggest flirt on the planet.