Page 34 of Callum
Fiona: So much better than I thought it would be. I’d even say I’m almost having fun.
Ha. There was no almost about it. She’d laughed more at this table than she had in the last year.
Jenny: With your hottie date, I would expect nothing less. Make some memories and report back on Tuesday.
Oh, she’d be reporting back, all right. She was just putting her phone down when Amanda took a seat across the table. “What are we laughing at?”
The smiles slipped on everyone’s faces. Every. Single. Person. They’d all been subjected to Amanda’s cranking bitch too many times. No one as much as Fiona, of course, but still, one time was too many for most. She was less awful to the others and more a naturally self-centered person.
Stacey cleared her throat. “Callum was just telling us a story about his time as a Marine.”
Amanda raised a perfectly manicured brow. “What type of Marine were you?”
“Special operations.”
“Ooh, dangerous.” She cocked her head. “Yet, Project Arma was still able to kidnap and detain you.”
Fiona’s muscles tensed. Not just because the topic of Project Arma wasn’t appropriate to bring up at a wedding, but also because of the way her sister said it. Like she was insinuating he couldn’t bethatbadass.
Fiona gave her sister a pointed look. “Amanda—”
“I mean, you were trained to be the best. Wouldn’tthe bestbe able to protect themselves?”
What the hell? She cast her gaze to Callum, sure she’d find him annoyed or frustrated. He didn’t look either of those things. In fact, he didn’t seem affected by her words at all. She was about to tell her sister where she could go when Callum got in first.
“I’d just gotten off a fourteen-hour flight after a mission. The men who took me were waiting inside my apartment. There were six of them and one of me. I wasn’t armed or expecting an attack. No normal man would be able to withstand that kind of ambush.”
Fiona’s breath stalled in her chest at the scene he described. At the way his life must have changed after that. One moment, and everything was different. He was held for two years. Drugged. Trained. Altered.
He drew a small circle on her shoulder. “They wouldn’t take me so easily today. If at all.”
Her sister raised a brow. “Well,you thinkthey wouldn’t.”
“I know.”
Fiona cleared her throat. “Your wedding is beautiful, Amanda. Maybe you should do the rounds.”
In other words—go.
Slowly, Amanda drew her focus to Fiona. “I should probably be thankingyoufor all of this, shouldn’t I?”
Her muscles tensed, and Callum’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
This time, it was Stacey who tried to intervene. “Amanda—”
“Iamsorry about how you found out about us,” Amanda cut in, like everyone wasn’t staring at her open-mouthed.
Fiona’s blood ran cold. Only Callum and Stacey knew the truth about how she’d found out. “Don’t—”
“We didn’t want you to find us in your bed like that.”
There was a collective gasp from her cousins. Fiona’s fingers curled into fists, and words tumbled from her lips before she could stop them. “You’re not sorry, Amanda. Just like how I’m not sorry about you now being married to a cheating asshole.” Fiona’s eyes never left her sister’s narrowed ones as she pushed to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I could use a drink.”
She moved through the crowd, blinking back tears. The tears were more frustration than anything else. She certainly was not embarrassed. She’d done nothing wrong. But Amanda’s words brought it all back. Every emotion she’d experienced that day. The rejection. The hurt. The loss of the future she’d planned in her head.
And the fact her cousins now knew…that burned. Would they tell others? Would the news get back to her parents?
Oh God, please say no.
