Chapter 6
Six
FYFE
Nine months ago
Eils, I’m in London. I’d love to see you.
Amess of emotions churned inside as I stared down at my unanswered text. The London cabbie prattled on about the weather, the traffic, content to hear his own voice and not requiring any response from me.
I’d come to London two days ago for a meeting with a potential client who I’d only gotten word from this morning was now an actual client.
The truth was, I should have returned home yesterday.
But the text I’d sent Eilidh two days ago had gone unanswered, and I knew for a fact from Lewis that she was in the city.
Nine months.
That’s how long it had been since she and I had a real conversation.
Ever since she overheard those stupid words come out of my mouth to Lewis.
She acted coolly toward me. No one else noticed the difference. But the daily text conversations and the weekly video calls abruptly ended. I’d attempted to get us back there, but despite her protestations that “we’re fine,” her short, uninterested responses to my texts proved otherwise.
I’d hurt her.
And Eilidh Adair was adept at throwing up mile-high walls.
But nine months of very little after having months of her—the real Eilidh—I was pissed off. I was hurt.
Truthfully, I felt fucking abandoned all over again.
Now this.
I shoved my phone into my pocket as the cab neared Eilidh’s street.
Not answering me at all. Avoiding me.
I hadn’t realized what a light Eilidh’s presence in my life was until she took that light away.
The whole reason I hadn’t yet left London was because I wanted her friendship back the way I had it last year.
I didn’t want to explode nine months of built-up resentment all over her so I attempted to cool my temper as the cab stopped outside her building.
After paying the cabbie, I jumped out and was hit by the thick London heat. It was early June, but summer had reached London early. Record-breaking temperatures made me long for Ardnoch where, the weather app on my phone informed me, the temperatures were that of chilly spring.
Sweat beaded on my forehead as I pressed Eilidh’s flat number on the buzzer. The last time I’d been here was years ago.
The intercom crackled. “Hello?” I heard her familiar voice for the first time in ages.
We hadn’t seen each other in person in two months.
The last time she’d visited Ardnoch. Callie gave birth to her and Lewis’s baby girl, Harley, in early February.
Eilidh was filming the fourth season of Young Adult and had come home for the weekend to meet her niece.
I could tell it broke her heart to leave again, but she was under contract.
She’d only managed to get home to see Harley again a few months later.
Now that filming had wrapped on her show, I wondered why she hadn’t returned.
I hoped like fuck it wasn’t because she was still avoiding me.
The thought felt a wee bit too self-centered to have merit.
“Eilidh, it’s Fyfe. Can I come up?” I held my breath, hoping like hell I hadn’t underestimated her ability to hold a grudge.
The front entrance door clicked open and relief flooded me as I pushed into it. I made sure it was closed behind me before I took the stairs two at a time until I reached her floor.
Eilidh stood in her doorway, looking adorably young and fresh-faced with no makeup on.
As I approached, drinking her in, a burning sensation flared near my sternum.
Her thick dark hair wasn’t straightened but left in its natural curls and piled on top of her head.
She wore a pair of tiny pink cotton shorts, revealing her long, toned legs.
Her blue tank top clung to her like a second skin and as soon as I realized she wasn’t wearing a bra, I kept my eyes fixed firmly on her face.
Her olive skin was flushed from the heat and aglow with perspiration.
It was a problem.
How beautiful she was.
“Hey.” She stepped back to let me in. “This heat is pretty insane, eh?”
Her loft-like apartment was muggy as fuck.
Even with windows thrown open and three fans blowing, it was stifling.
Considering the UK only had hot weather for a few weeks out of the year, homes were not outfitted with air conditioning.
Those few weeks out of the year were miserable as hell.
And London, being in the south, almost always got hit with higher temps than Scotland.
Even in a T-shirt and cargo shorts, walking into Eilidh’s flat was like walking into a wall of heat. It was worse in here than outside.
“Jesus.” I grabbed the neck of my tee and shook it. “How are you not dying?”
“After a while, you kind of get used to it.” She strode away, not looking at me. Her unbound breasts bounced with the movement, and I swallowed hard. “Want a drink?”
“What you got?” I followed her into the kitchen.
“A cold beer?”
“Sounds heavenly.”
“So …” Eilidh yanked open her fridge. “What brings you here?”
Suddenly remembering I was pissed off, I replied, “Didn’t you get my text?”
“Oh. Aye. Sorry. I thought I’d replied.”
“Liar,” I blurted.
Turning, she held out the bottle of chilled beer with a raised eyebrow. I took it, taking a step into her personal space. For the first time in what felt like forever, she met my gaze directly. Hers searched mine before she slid past me, taking a deep pull from her own bottle.
“Why would I lie?”
Might as well get this shit out in the open and deal with it. “Because I hurt your feelings last year and you’ve never forgiven me.”
Eilidh whipped around, eyes narrowed. “Not true.”
“Bullshit. We went from talking every day to almost nothing.”
She shrugged casually. Her words, however, were not casual. “Well, that’s because your friendship had become the most important friendship in my life, and you acted like you were ashamed of it. Or worse, like it meant nothing to you.”
My lips parted in unpleasant surprise. All this time I thought she was pissed off about what I’d said about her being the last woman on earth I’d ever want.
A comment, I might add, I’d only said to alleviate any concerns Lewis might have about my intentions toward Eilidh.
It didn’t matter if I thought Eilidh Adair was the sexiest woman alive.
She was my best friend’s wee sister, and his friendship meant too much to me to jeopardize it for something that could never be serious.
And not because Eilidh wasn’t worthy of a man giving her that.
But because I was incapable of giving any woman more than a good time in bed.
Nine months and I’d thought the wrong thing had pricked her feelings. Something silly and vain. But it wasn’t that.
It was something important and now I understood the distance.
She was wounded by me hiding what we’d become to each other.
I had made it seem like she meant nothing to me.
Fuck.
“Sweetheart …” The endearment slipped out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t … you know that’s not what I believe, though, right? Your friendship means a helluva lot to me. Or I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Then why?” She nibbled on her lower lip, the action betraying her.
I took a step closer. “I didn’t want Lewis to get the wrong idea.
He and Callie had so much going on.” It turned out that the break-in at the cottage hadn’t been random.
After Lewis’s house had gotten broken into, we thought Callie’s criminal father might be behind what was clearly a threat to Callie.
But a few months later, Callie was attacked in her bakery, and it turned out the whole thing had to do with her French ex-boyfriend.
She’d just gotten caught up in his tragic story.
Thankfully, she made it out fairly unscathed, and she and Lewis welcomed Harley into the world, and they were getting married in October.
At the time, however, it was stressful not knowing what was going on or who was behind the break-ins.
“I didn’t want to give Lewis something else to worry about. ”
“Why would he worry about us being friends? Haven’t we always been?”
“Talking every day kind of friends, though? He might think it was something it wasn’t. You didn’t tell him either,” I pointed out.
We both took a long swallow of beer as Eilidh processed this. Then she said, “I wasn’t telling him anything about my life. It wasn’t a deliberate secret I was keeping.”
“I didn’t mean for it to seem like I was keeping you a secret.”
She considered me and nodded with a heavy sigh. “Okay.”
Relief started to slide through me. “So … are we good? Like, actually good this time?”
Eilidh wiped her forehead and I became fully aware of the heat again, sweat trickling down my back beneath my T-shirt. “If we’re friends again, then I don’t want to hide that from people. Hiding it makes it seem like there’s something to hide. Right?”
I nodded, willing to agree to anything to have her back in my life. “I will tell Lewis I came here and that you and I are good friends. I promise.”
A sexy wee smirk curled the corner of her mouth, and she bridged the distance between us to clink her bottle against mine. “It’s nice to have you back.”
My gaze devoured her gorgeous face, her big, expressive blue eyes. “You too, sweetheart.”