Chapter 15 Zandra #2
When he stepped back, I had to reach for the counter with my free hand to brace myself. Wow. No wonder he’d always had so many women passing through his bed. How could anyone resist?
I was just annoyed at myself for being that predictable.
My phone rang, and I pulled it from my pocket, eager to get my mind on something else. Not on Callum’s endless charms. But I groaned when I saw the screen.
“Who is it?” Callum asked.
“Ian.”
“He been calling a lot?”
“Unfortunately. But I’m not going to answer.”
Since that call a few days ago, he’d been lighting up my phone way too often. Sending me texts begging, Zandra please. Like it was my responsibility to solve his problems when his actions had left me bankrupt. The nerve to demand I ask my parents for a loan…
I went to put my phone away. But before I could, Callum grabbed it from my hand.
“What—”
Callum already had the phone up to his ear. “Z’s phone,” he said calmly. “Callum speaking.”
Ugh. Great. I palmed my forehead.
I could hear Ian’s confused voice through the speaker. “Who? I’m trying to reach Zandra.”
“But you got me instead.”
“And who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the guy who’s with her now. You are rudely disrupting our date.”
What? I perched my hand on my hip, frowning at him.
Callum shrugged at me.
“Date?” Ian’s voice shot up an octave. “Put Zandra on the phone. Now.”
“Nah.” Callum’s tone remained perfectly pleasant. “Here’s how it’s going to go, Ian. I’m gonna get off the phone so I can focus on Zandra. You interrupted us at a key moment, if ya know what I mean.”
Ian sputtered incoherently, while I gaped. A key moment? I mouthed. Callum grinned, clearly very proud of himself.
“And you are going to stop calling her. Or we’ll have a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Is this hard for you to understand? I thought you big-city business types were smart. Zandra’s done with you. If you keep bugging her, I’ll stop being polite. I’ll have to make this awkward. You’ll probably cry. In short, a headache for all of us.”
“You can’t just—”
“Bye, Ian. Have a nice life.”
Callum ended the call and held my phone out to me. I snatched it from his hand, torn between wanting to be angry at what he’d just done and wanting to laugh, so I settled on shaking my head. Because he was just too much.
And I kind of adored him for it.
“We’re not on a date,” I said.
“Obviously we’re not. But making dinner together would be a very good date. It feels a little like a date.”
“We work together. I just got out of a relationship, and you have no interest in being in one. You’ve never even had a girlfriend, or so you claim.”
“It’s true. I’m a girlfriend virgin. Just saying it could be a date. If it were, it would be going well. I mean…” He gestured around us, like his amazing dating skills couldn’t be denied.
My skin was heating up. I didn’t even know why I was arguing about this. “But it’s not.”
His eyes turned devious. “Z, you’re protesting an awful lot.”
“No I’m not.”
“Do you want this to be a date?”
“What? I—You—” My tongue had twisted itself into a knot.
So I grabbed the spoon from the brownie batter and smeared it down his face. Callum’s jaw dropped open.
“That’s exactly what a girl on a date would do,” he said.
“How would you know?”
He laughed, lunging forward and pinning me against the counter, his body flush with mine.
Shit.
Then he reached behind me, dipped his finger in the brownie bowl, and smeared chocolate across my cheek.
“Oh, you did not just do that.” I grabbed another spoonful.
We were both laughing and dodging, getting brownie batter all over ourselves and probably half the kitchen.
We wound up with my back against the fridge, him pinning my arms in front of me with a firm grip.
His weight pressed into me, and he gazed down at me with a smirk.
So close I could see the golden flecks in his brown irises. The faint stubble on his jaw.
His tongue licked batter from his lower lip, and I wondered what his stubble would feel like against my skin if he kissed me.
All the blood and all the common sense were rushing away from my head.
And that’s when Darius stormed in, just as the oven timer for the pot pie was going off. “What the hell is going on in here?”
Oops.
Callum stepped back. I looked around at the disaster we’d made of the kitchen. There was brownie batter on the counter and splatters on the floor. Both Callum and I were smeared with it. Our hair. Our clothes.
Darius put his hands on his hips. “Is there any of that left to bake?”
“We made extra,” Callum said smoothly, before whipping off his chocolate-stained shirt.
I tried not to stare, but holy hell.
The man was built. Full six pack plus juicy pecs, all golden and smooth.
I’d seen the assortment of tattoos on his right forearm and bicep before, but they stretched all the way up to his shoulder.
His baseball cap had been knocked to the floor during our batter fight, and his dark wavy hair was as wild as his eyes. My mouth went completely dry.
“We both need to shower,” he said. “Z, you can go first if you want. Or if you want to save water—”
I tore my gaze away from Callum’s torso, lifting it to his face. And he was smirking like he’d very much noticed his effect on me.
“Do not suggest it,” I warned him.
“I was just gonna say I could have Dare hose us off in the yard.”
“Keep me out of whatever this is.” Darius swiped a dab of batter with his finger and tasted it. “Just let me know when the brownies are ready.”
Callum rolled his eyes. “Z, you shower. I can clean up the mess. Even though, I’d like the record to show that you started it.”
“But you deserved it.” Turning away from him, I asked, “Where’s the bathroom?”
It was difficult enough to resist Callum when he was fully clothed.
Shirtless? He should have come with a warning label.