Lake’s mouth snapped shut halfway through my answer and pursed tight. Now it curled just the slightest at me. She swallowed what looked like a bit of pride. It got me strangely hard. “Fine.”
I crinkled my brow. “Is it fine?”
“Yes, Callum, it’s fine,” Lake enunciated. She finally took her spoon and started at her breakfast. It was silent for a good minute as she avoided my stare. “Stop looking at me,” she finally said.
“I’m making up for lost time.”
“Okay, you can’t do that every day,” she pointed her spoon at me and the corners of her lips quivered as we straddled the line of a light or tense moment. I cracked a smile and she let out a laugh filled with relief. “Callum! You cannot guilt me every day. Please. That’s not fair.”
“It actually seems pretty fair to me.”
“No. Stop it.” She stared decidedly back into her yogurt. “Stop looking at me.”
“Fine. But I think it’s time for me to remind you that you once bet I’d never buy my own penthouse.” I grinned as Lake lifted her head slowly. Something about the doe-eyed look she gave me revived my morning wood from zero to sixty. Or rather, forty to sixty. “If I’m not allowed to guilt you, maybe I’ll take you up on those infinite dares. You know. Just to get out my aggression.”
“That would be dangerous, Callum.”
“We’ve always been into that.” She bit back her dirty smile and suddenly that need to suck her lip was painfully strong. “Like you said, Lake. Let’s play the game.”
“Well, it’s my turn.”
“I don’t think you get one anymore.”
“Oh God.” She groaned up at the ceiling but I could see her sexy mouth curving up with amusement. “Fine. Dare.”
“I haven’t thought of a good one yet,” I smirked as my phone rang. “What’s up, Oz.”
“How’s the hand!” The volume of his voice assaulted my eardrums. I looked down at my hand.
“Forgot about it till now.” I’d been happy to bruise my knuckles on Nick’s jaw all night till he called Lake a whore, at which point I stupidly went for a mouth shot. He stayed on the floor after that one, which was probably better if he was interested in looking for his teeth, but it wasn’t the greatest move on my part in terms of keeping my skin in tact. “It’s fine,” I said, assessing the damage. Not my worst.
“Good. We need your handsome whisky grip camera-ready tonight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just got a call from the Times. They’re sending a photographer to The Pike tonight. They want some pictures of us for the article. Dressed nice with friends, they said. Laughing, drinking, having a grand old time. I’m sure we can give them at least an hour of sober smiles.”
“I can swing that. I have my doubts about you.”
“Eh, if I’m going to put on a suit and act sober for anyone I figure it’ll be for them.”
“Good to hear.” It was a big opportunity for us. The Times’ magazine was set to run an article on Oz, myself and Pike Scotch. One of their writers had reached out after attending a tasting. They wanted a story behind the company and the two hundred-year-old distillery I’d renovated with Oz. It was the type of mainstream exposure that could turn a brand into a staple and I was hell-bent on making sure it went perfectly.
“What’s up?” Lake asked when I hung up the phone.
“There’s a thing tonight.”
“Vague.”
“At The Pike. You don’t know what that is because you’ve been gone for six years.”
“Again with the guilting.”
I smirked. “I’m going to need you to wear a nice dress.”
“I don’t have one that isn’t covered in tequila and Nick Spencer drool.”
I winced as I finished my coffee. “There are solutions to that. Once you’re done with breakfast, I’ll be taking you shopping.”
She lifted her eyebrows with surprise. “You always hated shopping.”
“I always hated finding what I needed and then waiting four hours for you and my mother to. That’s not the kind of shopping we’re going to be doing today.”
“No?”
“No.” My eyes slid up her body as she leaned forward on the counter. Whatever look I had on my face made her grin. “I have a feeling today’s going to be a lot more fun for me.”
Chapter Eight
Lake
I was a ball of tension by the time we arrived at his lounge in the evening. I wasn’t sure if Callum had picked out an exceptionally tight dress or if I couldn’t breathe because I was still wound up from our afternoon together. Somehow, shopping with him had turned into six years’ worth of foreplay without the sex and I was in such need by the time I walked into The Pike that the blast of air conditioning felt erotic against my skin.
No one was there yet except Oz, whose eyebrows ascended halfway to his hairline when he saw me. “Callum dressed you,” he declared.
I laughed as Callum grinned and said, “He knows me well.”
Judging from the décor of the lounge and the dress he’d picked for my body, Callum had developed a distinct aesthetic. Bronze and hazel tones glowing throughout a room of dark brown leather and redwood. I matched, carrying a suede clutch and wearing a golden-bronze mini dress with long sleeves and a short skirt. It was one of many pieces I’d picked at the store on Madison that required an appointment to enter. They were booked but all Callum needed was to pass by the window before the doors were thrown wide open by a living Ken doll named Tucker.
“Bless you, Callum, you finally brought me a girl to dress,” he gasped. And it was over from there. I had a flute of champagne thrust in my hand before Tucker waltzed me around the showroom, plucking hangers off the wall and bemoaning the fact that Callum spent so long being so annoyingly single because he had so many great dresses to match all his beautiful ties.
“Now, that – that would look unbelievable on your skin tone,” Tucker said, stopping us mid-skip when he spotted Callum holding a dress across the room. It was the golden-bronze one, the same color of my deepest tan. I used to get to that shade back when we spent whole summers in the Hamptons. Maybe Callum remembered. “You have to try that on immediately,” Tucker decided, dropping his armful of dresses onto a chaise.
“It looks a little… small?”
“I will shove every gorgeous curve of yours into that thing. They don’t call me Tucker for nothing.”
I laughed like it was a joke but he totally did. At the same time, Callum tried on shirts in the fitting room across from mine. But he ripped his curtain aside the second he heard mine open. I stopped breathing. He looked like a prince in his crisp, white shirt and he looked at me in a way that snatched the air out of my throat.