NautiCal (Forever Wilde 8)

“Maybe. But I can already tell he’s different from Mason,” she continued.

“How can you say that? You’ve known him less than twenty-four hours.” I didn’t add that I’d known him less than twenty-four hours.

“I can tell. It’s in the way he talks to people. He shows genuine interest in them by asking questions, and then he pays attention to their answers. I remember introducing Mason to Mia the first time at a fundraiser. As soon as he heard her last name and realized her family owned the cafe chain, he went off on a twenty-minute bitch session about the time he went into the cafe and had to deal with the horror of getting someone else’s coffee by mistake. Apparently, he was allergic to dairy which is weird since he ate the hell out of that gourmet ice cream we had at Spike’s.”

I knew the story well. He’d passively implied it had been my fault for making him late that morning. How his being late had resulted in being served the wrong coffee was beyond me. At the time, I’d thought his constant chatter about what had gone wrong during his day was part of his charm. Like a comedic monologue or something. It had taken Lucas’s quiet comment after a night at the theater to wake me up to the reality of it. “It must be difficult making him happy, brother. I’m sorry.”

I’d stood there in the late-night drizzle staring at Lucas while his words tumbled through my brain, landing with heavy thunks over all of the excuses I’d made through the years Mason and I had been together. That night at the theater, Mason had complained about us being stuck with the understudy, he’d bitched about the woman’s jacked-up hair in front of him, and he’d asked me at least three times why I hadn’t sprung for box seats so we didn’t have to sit so close to other people. I’d seen Mason as adorably high-maintenance when everyone else around us saw him as a selfish asshole.

“He’s not allergic to dairy,” I muttered. “He just told people that to explain why he was such a coffee snob. Anyway, can we not talk about Mason, please? I was actually beginning to relax.”

“You need a drink,” she said with a grin. “Let me grab you one. Stay right here.”

When she climbed off the chaise, I tuned back in to the conversation Cal was having with Jin about Jin’s vintage car collection.

“But you don’t drive them?” Cal chuckled. “Why collect them if you never take them out of the garage?”

It was something I’d often wondered too.

Jin swallowed the sip of his punch and laughed. “Everyone asks me that. If you had a collection of something super valuable, would you risk wrecking it? Do you collect anything?”

Cal shot Prescott a look before reaching out and placing his hand around my thigh possessively. “Older men with fancy boats. But I promise you, I ride them as often as possible. I find it’s good for them. Keeps their creaky old parts in working order.”

Prescott sputtered, but the rest of us laughed. “Gee, thanks,” I said drily. “I’ll remember that later. Maybe my old parts need to go in for a tune-up if they’re not passing muster.”

Cal draped himself across me again and brushed his nose along my cheek. “I didn’t mean you. Your parts are top-notch. They’re Daytona 500–level professional. They purr like a kitten.”

My skin broke out in goose bumps, but I ignored it. “Like a ferocious lion, I think you mean.” My voice sounded weird in my ears, rough and low. I rubbed a hand up and down his back, feeling the smooth, warm skin I wanted more of.

Cal pressed a kiss to the edge of my mouth. “Sure, baby. A manly lion. Mmhm.”

I steeled myself against a full-body shudder. I wasn’t about to lose control of myself just because Cal Wilde was a particularly good actor. I turned and met his lips with mine, taking the opportunity to taste him softly. His eyes widened in surprise for a millisecond before he closed them and hummed his approval.

Nat’s voice jerked me back to reality. “You know Jade is filming this for Instagram, right?”

Cal pulled away and tucked his face in my neck. “Sorry,” he whispered. I pulled him tighter against me. I didn’t much care what people on Jade’s social media account thought of me, and I’d been out for over twenty years. But that didn’t mean it would be fair for Cal’s reputation to be seen kissing a random older man on a boat in the Caribbean. I opened my mouth to warn Jade against tagging him but then stopped myself. Cal was a big boy. If he didn’t want to be tagged in a social media post, he could speak for himself.