Chapter 29 #2
The couple shared a knowing look, so I quickly changed the subject. “How has Callie been with you guys?”
They were quick to assure me they’d noticed an improvement in Callie’s mood. I asked after Lewis, too, because Regan had told me the poor kid felt guilty for not noticing his best friend had left school that afternoon.
“He’s doing much better. Watches Callie like a hawk,” Thane replied.
“Yeah. Typical Adair male, overprotective of their females,” Regan teased.
I raised an eyebrow. “They’re a little young for it to be …”
“Oh, I just meant in friendship with those two. But who knows?” She shimmied excitedly, her dimples flashing. “Maybe as they get older, it’ll turn into more.”
“Christ, she’s planning their wedding already, I can tell,” Thane muttered, but he was looking at her with such tenderness, I felt a pang of undiluted envy.
Joy for them that they had so much love between them because they deserved it, but also envy.
Longing. Loneliness, if I was honest with myself.
“I don’t know about that.” I smiled, shaking off my melancholy. “If Callie beats Lewis at tae kwon do one more time …”
“Lewis is getting better at losing to Callie,” Thane observed. “We had a wee talk after the last time about being a good sportsman.”
“He wants to be the capable one for Callie, the protector, so losing to her is pretty hard.”
I frowned at Regan. “He’s surely not thinking like that at his age?”
“I’m telling you. The protective gene runs deep in this crowd.” She gently shook Thane, who took her teasing with good humor.
“Well, as cute as that is, Callie will not lose to soothe Lewis’s feelings, no matter what’s behind them,” I warned gently.
“Then she’ll be no different from any of the women an Adair man cares for,” Thane cracked.
Regan nudged her husband. “That’s what happens when you surround yourself with strong women.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Adair.”
We turned at the voice to see Mrs. Hunter standing in the classroom doorway.
“That’s us,” Thane murmured.
“Good luck,” I murmured back and watched them disappear into the room.
Glancing around, I saw an empty seat next to a guy who looked vaguely familiar.
I took it, my gaze drifting over to Walker before I could stop it.
He stared stonily ahead, arms behind his back, shoulders straight, legs braced like a soldier.
The man did not blend, and he had no intention of trying to.
Hauling my eyes off him, I stared at my lap and let myself worry about what Mrs. Hunter might have to say regarding Callie. I hoped she’d noticed an improvement in her mood too.
“You’re fairly new around here, right?”
I startled at the question and looked to my left at the parent.
This close to him, I realized why he was familiar.
Dr. Haydyn Barr, a parent who’d asked Monroe out last year.
She’d told me all about him, how he was a professor of engineering at the University of Highlands and Islands, but dressed well and had an expensive car, which suggested he had some other income or inheritance.
Monroe had thought him charming, but she wouldn’t date a child’s parent, even if she hadn’t been hopelessly in love with Brodan for two decades.
“Yeah.” I smiled at him and held out my hand. “Sloane Harrow. Callie’s mom. You’re Michael’s dad, right?”
Haydyn gave me a handsome grin as he shook my hand. “I am. Nice to meet you, Sloane. I’ve only ever heard Sloane as a surname, never as a given name. Is it a family name?”
“Really? It’s not unpopular in the US as a girl’s given name. It’s an Irish clan name that means warrior and it was my mom’s surname. She always liked the sound of it as a girl’s first name.” Funny, no one had ever asked about my name. Not even when I first moved here.
“I like it.” His grin was flirtatious as he searched my face, as if he liked it too. I wondered if Haydyn Barr was a player. Honestly, I didn’t care if he was. It was just nice to feel attractive. “It suits you.”
I smiled back. “Oh, you have no idea.”
He laughed loud enough for me to see in my peripheral that Walker turned to look at us. I refused to give him the satisfaction of noticing and continued to chat with Haydyn.
“So, you work at the estate as a full-time housekeeper, you have a bakery business on the side, and you’re a single mum?” Haydyn said five minutes later. “Are you Superwoman, Sloane Harrow?”
I chuckled at his admiring tone. “Maybe a little.”
“Maybe a lot. You put me to shame.”
“You’re a single dad and have a full-time job too.”
He gave me a sheepish look. “With a nanny who helps out.”
“I have help,” I admitted. “Friends who take care of Callie when I’m at work. They’re amazing. I don’t know how I survived before them, actually.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Being a single parent isn’t easy. And I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you must have been awfully young when you had Callie.”
“Seventeen.”
He shook his head in wonder. “At seventeen I was an immature moron. I can’t imagine being a father at that age.”
“You’d surprise yourself. Makes you grow up fast.”
“I’ll bet.” His gaze wandered over my face again, and I flushed a little at his appraisal. There had been no judgment like I got from some people who realized I’d been a teen mom. No snobbery regarding my job as a housekeeper. Haydyn seemed genuinely interested in me. “Do you—”
“Mr. Barr.”
We glanced over at the door to see Regan and Thane standing next to Mrs. Hunter.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” Haydyn said, like we would actually see each other after.
As he disappeared inside the classroom, Regan and Thane came over to say goodbye.
The whole time, I was hyperaware of Walker standing guard, wondering if he’d been watching the interaction between me and Haydyn.
Regan hugged me and whispered in my ear, “Barr is a catch.”
I rolled my eyes but laughed at her matchmaking attempts.
When my friends left, stopping to talk with Walker for a few minutes before they did, Walker finally looked at me. My breath caught, and I wanted to go to him. Wanted him to touch me so badly. The muscle in his jaw flexed before he whipped his head around, breaking our stare.
Why did he have to be the one who made me feel like this?
Time crawled as the parents who were left either talked to one another in low tones or glanced around awkwardly, trying not to meet anyone’s gaze. I noted a few of them staring at Walker in curiosity.
Michelle Kingsley, a woman Monroe had known in childhood and still disliked (but whom Regan liked because she’d once helped fend off a man who attacked Regan at the school gates a few years back) gazed at Walker like he was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen.
I decided at that moment to side with Roe on this one, even if Michelle had helped Regan.
Petty, but true.
Finally, Haydyn came out of the classroom, and Mrs. Hunter called Michelle in. Instead of leaving, Haydyn walked over to me.
“All good?” I asked.
He nodded. “Michael makes parenting easy.” Haydyn reached into his coat and pulled out his phone. “If it’s not too presumptuous, I would really love to grab a coffee or dinner with you sometime.”
My lips parted in surprise. While, yes, we’d definitely been flirting, I hadn’t expected him to ask me out. And in front of people.
In front of Walker.
I couldn’t look in Walker’s direction as I nodded. “Sure.”
Haydyn’s smile was slow and sexy as he held out his phone. “Can I have your number, then?”
I typed my number into his phone and he took it back, pleased. “I’ll call you soon.”
“Great.”
He nodded in agreement. “It is.”
As he strode past Walker with a spring in his step, he missed my bodyguard/ex-lover watching him walk away with a coldly murderous look in his eyes.
My heart raced at the rare show of emotion on Walker’s face, and I instantly regretted giving Haydyn my number. It didn’t matter if things were confused and weird between us right now. If Walker did that to me, it would hurt.
After a month of nothing, I thought he wouldn’t really care.
But I caught his eye as Mrs. Hunter called me into her classroom … and he was pissed.
Through the guilt, I felt a mingle of indignation and thrill shoot through me.