Not even her husband, the first or second.
I suddenly felt woefully inadequate in my handmade leopard-print dress. It was casual enough for a posh lunch with Adam, thanks to the muted colors and the structured corset that gave way to a gauzy, flowy A-line skirt I’d matched with pale designer gold sandals I’d found in my mom’s room, but I felt suddenly as if I was a little girl playing dress-up in Miranda’s hotel closet while she, Savannah, and Bobbi prepared for a televised event.
Adam squeezed my hand, surprising me back to myself to find him smiling ever so slightly my way.
Buck up, his expression seemed to say.
So I steeled myself before tipping my head back to smile up at Savannah.
The woman who had broken the heart of two men I was intrinsically linked to.
My momentary insecurity crumbled to ash in the wake of the anger that built around my heart.
“Savannah,” I greeted, much as Adam had in a pleasant but dull tone.
She did not spare me a glance.
“I telephoned you,” she told Adam, smoothing a perfectly coiffed curl back behind her ear. “You haven’t called me back.”
Adam didn’t look at her, his tiny smile stretching into something more like a grin. He lifted our conjoined hands off the table to showcase them. “I have been rather busy the last few weeks. You’ll have to forgive a man in love.”
I had the deepest pleasure of watching Savannah’s eyes widen to dinner plates, their bold color seeming to dim with displeased surprise.
“I had heard rumours you were dating,” she demurred, looking at our hands before shifting position to look down at me, gaze narrowing as she took me in. After a long pause, she raised both brows and asked, “And who is the lucky lady?”
“I assure you, I am the one who is lucky,” Adam said smoothly, lifting our hands again to bend forward andbiteone of my knuckles.
I had expected a kiss, maybe, but the shock of his teeth against my skin sent a very genuine shiver through my body.
Adam’s smile turned wolfish.
I could feel a blush work its way into my cheeks, but boldly looked back at Savannah with a demure smile.
She was staring at Adam with barely concealed shock.
“I’m surprised you don’t remember me,” I told her sweetly. “Though, I suppose you haven’t been by to visit Miranda in ages, and the one time you came, we didn’t interact.”
Savannah blinked at me before her mouth fell into a little moue.
“Linnea Kai?” she breathed, doing another scan of my person, lingering at my breasts and the ends of my beachy waves. “Miranda’s daughter.”
“And Adam’s girlfriend, if you want to identify me by relationships only,” I agreed.
Adam bit the edge of his smile, trying to hold it at bay, and then, catching my eye, gave up with an exhale of laughter. His eyes sparkled with mirth, a boyish contentment I’d never seen in him before.
It was intoxicating.
“You seem surprised, Savvy,” Adam said, the frost thawed from his tone because he was more amused by me than he wasirritated by her, and that felt like a wonderful gift. “Did you think I would wait around for you to come back to me?”
It was my turn to blink.
What in the world could have possessed Savannah to leave him?
Sure, he was grumpy, a little arrogant, and more than a little stuffy.
But he was also brilliant, charismatic, complicated, and gorgeous with what I more than suspected was a secret streak of tender loving kindness buried beneath it all.
Savannah seemed surprised by his candor, too, more thrown off balance than I had ever witnessed before.
