“Then I won’t. I’ll feed that dog plump and well.”

“You’re so stubborn, I pity the girls who fall even half in love with you.”

“Yourself included?”

I roll my eyes. “Oh definitely. I’m just pitying myself so hard right now because I will for sure die alone. Nobody’s wife and mother.”

“But very well made love to every night.”

I feel this awful blush run all over me.

What do you want from me?

“My friend Lisa,” I tell him. “She’s a girl I knew . . . well, she was like a sister for the brief time I knew her. She was Tahoe’s first girlfriend.” I feel pain when I remember the hurt my brother went through. “She died before she could even legally drink. It caused such an impact. I remember how pale she was in the end, and how weak, and how sad I was to imagine her not being able to live her life longer and experience more things. No matter how much her loved ones tried to bring happiness into those bleak white hospital walls, it was just . . . not meant to be. You can’t say that was her choice.”

“I’m not going to.” His expression softens. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” I watch our feet and then stop walking and turn to face him. “Tell me one fear of yours. One, Callan. Or I’ll never, ever talk to you again. You’re freaking inhuman.”

He laughs. “I’m so human. You have no idea.”

“Prove it.”

He scowls, but then we start walking again, and he says, “Being trapped.”

“You mean physically?”

“In any way, shape, or form. By the very things I want to have.”

“Hmm,” I say thoughtfully, the wheels spinning in my mind. “So is that why you can’t commit to one company? You just take what you want and drop it so you’re free to move on with no commitment or emotional investment in making it work. Takeovers.”

“Miss Roth,” he scoffs, tugging my ponytail, “I do nothing out of fear. I do it because I’m good at it. Because I can. Let’s not forget I’m the best at it.”

“Any person in the world can give a life or take it; it doesn’t mean you should.”

“All right then. Because it’s all I know. I don’t know how to do it differently.” His lips curl as he raises one inquiring eyebrow. “My brother and his roughhousing, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, five years older is a lot when you’re five. I had to devise plans to get what he had and win the game without physically wrestling it from him.”

“It was your mode of survival. I’d like to meet this evil brother.”

“He’s not evil, he’s just a sibling; we were both fighting to be the alpha of the house.”

“Well, who won?”

“We’re still fighting it out.”

“Ha ha. I want to meet him, then.”

“I don’t want him to meet you.”

I flush at the possessiveness in his eyes. God. The way he pays attention makes me so self-conscious and aware of him.

“So he’s a bad boy, huh?”

“More like you could fire up holy water.”

We sit on a bench and sip on cold drinks. His words, though they make me giggle, tug at all of my heartstrings, and every inch of my sexy parts too.

“You have a way of opening me up,” I accuse.

He shifts forward on his elbows, glancing at me past his shoulder. “You have a way with me, period.”

“I’m not sure we should flirt; it’s not professional.”

“I agree, it’s not.” He nods somberly, his hazel eyes watching me.

“Well then, no flirting.”

“Miss that pink on your cheeks? I don’t think so. I’ll have some of that pink with an extra spoonful on the side, Miss Roth.”

“You’re a cad.”

“You like me best when I’m a cad.”

“I do not.”

“I can say anything right now, bring on the pink, and you will have a very hard time proving me wrong.”

“I pity the girls who fall for that. Losers, all of them. I’m not falling for that or you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“What are you asking for?”

“Just time with you.” He gazes deeply into my eyes, and slowly, Callan lifts his brows at me.

I stare at the laces of my sneakers. I’m not sure he’s making a pass at me. I’m not sure of my own name.

He gets a phone call.

“Carmichael,” he answers. He motions with his head for us to leave, and I toss my empty water bottle into a nearby trash can and follow him to the Range Rover.

Several hours after Callan drops me off, he texts me at 9 p.m., making me cancel an evening plan with Wynn. He wants me at his home office. Lincoln is also there with a thousand printed pages of Callan’s new obsession. I’m kind of relieved Alcore is off the hook, and in a way, so am I, for having proposed it as ripe for takeover—for now.

At 11 p.m. Lincoln excuses himself to go home and recharge, leaving Callan and me poring over company documents.

By 1 a.m., I’m ready to bail.

“Come on, stay,” he says. He sounds almost disappointed that I’m giving up already.

“So I get a peek at a strumpet in the morning? No thanks.”

“No strumpets,” he says.

I shoot him an I-don’t-believe-that look but I stay and even make some coffee for us.

At 3 a.m., I set down the papers and doze off to him speaking on the phone with someone overseas.

I feel a delicious warmth spread over me and hands shift me on the couch—then I sense something hard beneath my cheek and a hand stroking the back of my head. I turn a bit and realize my head is on his lap, his hand running down my hair, stroking me.

Sunday morning I wake up to the sound of male voices. I’m disoriented, glancing around and trying to adjust my eyes to the blazing sunlight pouring through the massive arched windows before me.

Someone covered me with a blanket and plumped a pillow under my head.

It takes me a second to realize where I am and another to realize I must look a sight. Attempting to reach the stairs that lead to the second landing, where I assume both the master and guest bedrooms are located, I pass the conference room downstairs and hear a group of men talking animatedly. They’re talking in legal terms and I realize they’re Carma’s law team.

Seven men sit at the conference table, while Callan is the only one standing, wearing the same shirt he wore last night, his jaw shadowed from a day’s growth of beard, his chin resting on two fingers as he looks down at the team with a stance that says “NO BULLSHIT.”

I would have never, ever in my life expected my mailman to live in a place like this. To be like this. I can’t believe that once, ages ago, I imagined he had a one-bedroom apartment, very cluttered—not a Gold Coast home, with a gated entrance, so clean that the floor could be a long, endless marble mirror beneath me.

His energy fills the room. I can see the men scramble to please him and answer his questions. Tall and dark and solemn, he looks about as brooding and bloodthirsty as a vampire acquiring his next ounce of blood. In this case, a struggling business.

Rolling his shirtsleeves to his elbows while he speaks on the phone, he seems oblivious to the men in the room, even to my presence at the door as I wonder if I should say hello or simply go freshen up and leave.

I see the way he frustratedly tugs the top button of his shirt and I wonder if I hallucinated the way he ran his fingers through my hair last night. His hands are tanned, and although big, they are sleek, his fingers long and elegant. His hair is close-cropped, ending just where his collar begins.

I wonder who the guy on the other end of the line is, probably some other investment-savvy genius like him, and for a moment I’d do anything to listen in on their conversation.

Ending the call with a brusque click, Callan finally turns, assesses his employees in one sweeping motion and, to my mortification, suddenly spots me by the door with my hair probably a mess and in the same clothes as yesterday. He lifts a brow and drinks me in.

And I quickly turn away and hurry upstairs, my cheeks red. I head into a guest bathroom and wash my face and find some toothpaste and mouthwash, then I fix my hair and clothes, call a cab for myself, and tiptoe inconspicuously out of the house.