Page 61 of Sunkissed Colorado

“Ian.”

“He been calling a lot?”

“Unfortunately. But I’m not going to answer.”

Since that call a few days ago, he’d been lighting up my phone way too often. Sending me texts begging,Zandra please. Like it was my responsibility to solve his problems whenhisactions had left me bankrupt. The nerve to demand I ask my parents for a loan…

I went to put my phone away. But before I could, Callum grabbed it from my hand.

“What—”

Callum already had the phone up to his ear. “Z’s phone,” he said calmly. “Callum speaking.”

Ugh. Great. I palmed my forehead.

I could hear Ian’s confused voice through the speaker. “Who? I’m trying to reach Zandra.”

“But you got me instead.”

“And who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the guy who’s with her now.Youare rudely disrupting our date.”

What?I perched my hand on my hip, frowning at him.

Callum shrugged at me.

“Date?” Ian’s voice shot up an octave. “Put Zandra on the phone. Now.”

“Nah.” Callum’s tone remained perfectly pleasant. “Here’s how it’s going to go, Ian. I’m gonna get off the phone so I can focus on Zandra. You interrupted us at a key moment, if ya know what I mean.”

Ian sputtered incoherently, while I gaped.A key moment?I mouthed. Callum grinned, clearly very proud of himself.

“And you are going to stop calling her. Or we’ll have a problem.”

“A problem?”

“Is this hard for you to understand? I thought you big-city business types were smart. Zandra’s done with you. If you keep bugging her, I’ll stop being polite. I’ll have to make this awkward. You’ll probably cry. In short, a headache for all of us.”

“You can’t just?—”

“Bye, Ian. Have a nice life.”

Callum ended the call and held my phone out to me. I snatched it from his hand, torn between wanting to be angry at what he’d just done and wanting to laugh, so I settled on shaking my head. Because he was just too much.

And I kind of adored him for it.

“We’re not on a date,” I said.

“Obviously we’re not. But making dinner together would be a very good date. It feels alittlelike a date.”

“We work together. I just got out of a relationship, and you have no interest in being in one. You’ve never even had a girlfriend, or so you claim.”

“It’s true. I’m a girlfriend virgin. Just saying itcouldbe a date. If it were, it would be going well. I mean…” He gestured around us, like his amazing dating skills couldn’t be denied.

My skin was heating up. I didn’t even know why I was arguing about this. “But it’s not.”

His eyes turned devious. “Z, you’re protesting an awful lot.”