Page 45 of He Loves Me Knot

Callum ran his hands over the smooth steering wheel, his chest tightening. “You’re right, it’s none of your business,” he said in a low voice.

Liddy’s mouth parted with a quick retort, but she closed it again, clearly thinking better of it. With a nod, she shifted her body away from him to look out the window.

He regretted his words almost immediately, but any apology he thought of stung the back of his throat.

What does she know about my life, anyway?

Yet she wasn’t entirely wrong.

He’d purposely set up boundaries between his work and personal life. And in his efforts to achieve career success, most of his personal life had gone out the window.

Not that he cared. He wasn’t looking for the same things that many people seemed to want. Domesticity. A long-term, committed relationship. Neither had any appeal. And the hours he kept at the office made it so that he was rarely home—even the fiddle leaf fig that Isla had given him to bring “cheer” to his flat had died. He couldn’t keep a damn houseplant alive, which was an indictment for his ability to keep any other living creature satisfied for long.

He liked it that way, though. It was simple. Easier.

He enjoyed being the best at what he did. Enjoyed watching his bank balance increase as a result, too. Not that he had anything he wanted to spend that money on. But it was still satisfying.

Finding women to warm his bed had never been a problem, either. He was always clear that he offered nothing more. And when, inevitably, a woman started behaving as though she was special, an exception to that arrangement, he cut things off for good and moved on.

Even that was little more than an annoyance.

Somewhere, over the last few years, he’d startedfeelingless.

But when was the last time I did anything fun?

Surfing this morning had been fun.

Maybe because it was the only thing he’d done in a while that hadn’t been a part of his schedule.

Liddy didn’t deserve his defensive reaction.Why am I allowing her to get under my skin?She had said nothing he didn’t already know.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said at last.

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Look, Liddy, I’m not . . . particularly good at this. Talking about myself makes me uncomfortable. And you’re right, I’ve been cold to you over the years. I regret that. I think we’ve made a good team despite that.”

“Maybe. But what if you knew I tried to get you fired one time? Because I may as well tell you about that since we’re sharing.”

Fired?He raised his brows. “Over the comments you overheard me make when we first met?”

She shook her head. “No,that would have involved humiliating myself. I looked into you after I was hired. And I found out you have a criminal record. I don’t know how you even got past the background check, but I went to Aiden, and he ordered me not to say anything to anyone else.”

“I didn’t—” He couldn’t argue with the facts. No one had blinked twice at his background at Camden Enterprises because, well, they knew him. But to someone like Liddy, the red flags had been incontrovertible evidence of his ineligibility for his position.

Because it was all bullshit.

And it shouldn’t bother him what Liddy thought of him.

Yet it does.

But maybe he could help her understand.

Callum cleared his throat. “When I was eighteen, I moved to England to go to Oxford because my father went there. But what I really wanted to be was a footballer.” He tried to block the images out of his head. “After university, I was invited to join a football club, and my chances looked good—until a game when I shattered my leg in two places. It ended any hope I had, put me in the hospital for a while, and meant I went to physiotherapy for years.”

Liddy’s eyebrows drew together in confusion as though she wasn’t sure why he was telling her this.

“Sophia came to stay with me while I was going through this, to help me get on my feet again. My father and his wife lived in the States, my grandparents had all passed away, my sister was in university, and my mum was already runningLa Hacienda.In the middle of all that, I proposed to her.” Callum’s fingers tightened around the wheel. “She kept me going through that hell. In some ways, she was the only thing I had left in my life. I started working for the Camdens, and it finally appeared that my life might get back on track.”