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Touched, I opened my mouth to say as much when she continued, “You, Quinn, and Taran. And Greg, of course.”

Of course.

I couldn’t remember the last time my mum and I shared a meal just the two of us. “Great. When?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

The thought of tomorrow made my stomach roll. “I’m going to be off island tomorrow. There’s a potential client up north and it’s too big a job to ignore,” I lied.

“You can’t switch the day?”

“No, sorry. What about the day after next?”

“No, Greg likes his Friday nights to himself. I’ll talk to him and phone you back. Nice to have you home.”

“Thanks, Mum.” I hung up.

Any warm tingly feelings I had toward Torin died at the reminder of my plans tomorrow. The last time I let a bloke charm me like that, I’d ended up in his flat, finding a hunting knife and a branding iron in his wardrobe.

Tomorrow might reveal that when it came to men, my intuition was broken.

Dangerously, dangerously broken.

8. Forde

Aberdeen, Scotland

The flatbed recovery vehicle Mr. McEwan paid for me to rent to pick up the Ferrari was almost as old as the fucking Ferrari, and I didn’t exactly enjoy the drive up to Aberdeen. It was four hours of thinking time, and all I could think about lately was Cameron. Yesterday at lunch … she was giving off a weird energy toward me. Different from before. Less antagonistic but somehow worse. More distant than ever. While I’d vowed not to be a jealous prick about the fact she was sitting next to Torin Montrose, I might have kept him engaged in conversation for the entire lunch so he and Cameron didn’t have time to flirt.

I had to come up with a plan to get Cameron to spend some quality time with me. To trust me again.

For years, I’d convinced myself that we were okay after we slept together. Even though I was the first man she’d ever had sex with. Quinn never found out, and even though things had been a bit strained between me and Cameron for a few months after it, we’d finally found our rhythm together again. Problem was, I never forgot that night, and that connection between us never dissipated.

We’d gone our separate ways in that sense, even though deep down, I’d dreaded the day Cameron finally fell for one of the pricks she’d dated over the years. To my selfish relief, not one of them had lasted more than a year. And she never acted like she was in love with any of them. In fact, most of the time she seemed uninterested in them. I’d even felt a wee bit sorry for a few of her boyfriends because they were clearly in love with Cameron, and she was oblivious. I hadn’t let myself think about why that was. Not until Greig.

Around four years ago, this young lad, a painter and decorator who traveled around freelance, worked on Tierney’s guest house. He’d made it clear he was interested in Cameron, and I couldn’t believe it when I heard she was going out with him. Even though I knew it was casual, one, it always made me sick to my stomach thinking of Cameron having sex with other men; and two, Greig was only twenty-four. He was only a few years older than I was when I slept with Cameron.

I didn’t know at the time, but I knew now after my sessions with Dr. Gardener that the reason I got so fucking jealous and resentful of Greig was because of his age. Because he had all the years ahead of him that deep down, I felt I’d wasted not being with Cameron.

And I’d acted like a pure and utter shit to her because of it.

It was the downward spiral of our relationship.

As I drew up to a cross section behind a long queue caused by temporary traffic lights not far from where I was to collect the Ferrari, my mind wandered to a night two years ago when Eoghan McCall had returned to the island.

I probably should have left the pub too, but Cameron refused to leave without me. Only hours earlier, I’d been pissed off and agitated because she was annoyed with me. I’d been in a good mood because I’d played a gig with the lads, but Cameron took a swipe at me because I’d been flirting with a tourist at the bar. I’d swiped back. I’d thought she was over the whole Greig thing, but she’d brought it up again, telling me how shitty it felt that I’d mocked her for dating a younger man. That’s the word she used. Mocked. I didn’t know how to handle everything I felt toward Cameron, so I’d retreated to flirting with the pretty brunette at the bar.

That is until Liam’s dad, Eoghan, came into the pub.

His was an unwelcome return to the island. He’d just admitted to being behind trying to run Taran down and spray-painting Cameron’s old Defender in retaliation for what he wrongly believed we did to his son. Seeing him again brought up crap I didn’t want to think about. The police were called and afterward, all our friends left the pub.

Except me.

I’d wanted to get wasted.

The brunette left because of my bad mood, but Cameron didn’t.

She sat next to me at the bar. “The Lantern is closing. Time to go.”