“Bloody hell,” Callum mutters behind me.

We were supposed to go to England to see his family—the first time I would have met his parents—and instead, he decided to accompany me here for a day to help me settle. He’ll have to catch a flight tomorrow morning to England, and I’m already dreading his departure.

“I could get us a room at an inn on the main street,” he suggests, his nice way of saying this place is unlivable for anyone who isn’t a ghostbuster.

“Ryner said I needed to stay here,” I say soothingly, walking up the cobbled path to the chipped, wooden door.

My heart is beating so fast I want to throw up. I’m going to come face to face with Malachy and Kathleen as a couple. They’re going to be all loved-up in my face, and I will be working under their roof.

I knock on the door.

“Do they know we’re coming?” Callum asks behind me.

“Yeah. Whitney said she sent Mal an email with our flight schedule.”

Not that Mal cares, I assume. A knot is forming in my stomach. Is he going to make my life hell here?

“You should text your mum,” Callum points out.

I don’t turn around to face him. “Uh-huh.”

“She’s heartbroken over the fact you didn’t stop to say goodbye.”

“We celebrated Christmas with her,” I grumble.

I wasn’t in the mood to listen to more of her begging me to cover my birthmark with more makeup, pleading with me not to go to Ireland—her most loathed country in the universe—and generally making me listen to her gossip about people I don’t know.

There’s no answer, so I knock again, this time harder. It’s freezing outside. Callum is shifting from foot to foot next to me. He’s wearing a pea coat and a powder blue dress shirt.

He snakes his arm around me, rubbing my shoulder. “Relax, love. It’s going to be fine. It’s been eight years, he’s married, and then there’s the matter of you being madly in love.”

He says that as a joke, but I can hear the question in his voice. Before I officially signed the contract for this project, I told Callum about what happened with Mal eight years ago, hoping to hell he’d make the decision easy for me and express how uncomfortable he felt about it. I’m not much of a Mary Sue who likes to be told what to do, but it would’ve been a much-needed nudge in the right direction if Callum wasn’t so smugly confident he’s the shit.

Okay, so also, maybe I wasn’t one-hundred-percent honest.