His eyes are hot and earnest. Burning. All I want in the whole world is to lean up and find his mouth with mine. And equally I know I can’t. I need to tell him first. The mere thought sends a splash of terror through my bloodstream. I step back and take a slow breath. Fold my arms.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

Liam laughs.

“I’m great with compliments. I know.” I toss my hair again; this time it’s really bugging me. “I’ve got a good idea.” The words roll out before I think about them. “How about I stay for two more nights: this one and tomorrow night. And we hang out—as friends. Purely platonic, friendy friends, like…I don’t know. Platonic people. Middle schoolers.”

Liam snorts, then smiles.

I smile back. “Okay, maybe not like middle schoolers, but we get to know each other. We don’t even know each other really, right?”

He nods slowly. As he does, he folds his arms over his chest: something I’ve realized that he does when he’s feeling reserved.

“So, we get to know each other. All about each other. Except…that. Then the day after tomorrow, if we still…” I arch my eyebrows. “If we still. Then we can. We’ll both be going in with eyes open. It won’t just be a random hookup.”

“No random hookups for Lucille Rhodes, huh?” His lids are low again. I have to force my eyes to stay on his face when they really want to wander down.

I shake my head. “We Southern girls are more discerning.”

He laughs. “Are you?” His mouth twists skeptically.

“Are you saying that you don’t believe me? Are you questioning my virtue, Prince Liam?” I stab a fingertip at his chest.

His eyes shut. I feel his sternum rise and fall below my finger. “No touching,” he finally breathes.

“So…none of this.” I drag my finger down the flat plane in the middle of his sharp-cut abs. He exhales deeply. I can see his face tighten. “Teasing is just mean,” I whisper, stroking just under his pecs.

His eyes open. He takes a slow step back, giving me a confused look as he does. “Yes,” he rasps. “It’s mean.”

I can’t stop the giggle that bursts from my mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

His eyebrows lift as his mouth curves. “You’re finding this harder than I am.”

“Oh, it’s hard.” I snicker.

Liam laughs, his head dropping back, so I can see his yummy throat. I want to bite it like a vampire. When he looks at me again, his eyes are warm.

My cheeks are.

“I’m not usually this way,” I tell him, folding my own arms.

He moves closer to me, stopping with about a foot of distance between us. I can feel him want to touch me—but he doesn’t. He just smiles, the gentle smile, the one I like almost as much as I like his boisterous laugh.

“I know you’re not, Lucille.” The way he sounds—it’s like he really knows. It’s like he knows me.

“You better stop using that dirty word, or I’ll use yours.”

“Willahelm?” And bless my thudding heart, that voice of his makes it sound sexy.

I nod. “Yep.”

“Lucille and Willahelm.” He smiles again. I smile back.

“Maybe we should carve it in a tree.”

“We should. Speaking of trees…” He glances at the castle. “Heath is scheduled to be back tonight—from polo. He’ll be bitchy and hung-over and he might have some lady friends with him. I texted him to tell him not to bring a posse, but he hasn’t texted back. Would you want to…go somewhere? Sleep somewhere not the castle?”

“Somewhere not the castle,” I tease. “This sounds like a riddle. Where would we be going?”

His lips flatten out. He slides his hands into his pockets. “Just an island near here. It’s got cabanas and a few tree houses. Sometimes we use it for entertaining. Hot springs too,” he says. His voice is low and quiet.

Something prickles in the back of my mind, firing for a moment before it triggers my memory.

“I live between the ocean and a…lake. In the lake, there’s an island. My mum used to call it Pirate Island. We would take a canoe there and bring a picnic.”

My chest and throat go hot. “Is that the island that you mentioned on the phone?”

He shrugs. “It’s just the nearest one. In Loch Haar.”

He starts walking toward Don Juan, and I follow. “What does Haar mean? Loch means lake, I think I’m right on that.”

“You are,” he says, collecting my arrows. “Haar means fog, or sea fog. This loch is often foggy, so the name.”

“So the name.” I smile, catching his eye as he puts the arrows back into the leather quiver.

His lips curve up, a little slower than other times. “So the name,” he says again, shrugging.

“You know, your accent isn’t as thick as some of the ones I’ve heard, but sometimes you say little things that sound really Gael-ish.”

“Gaelic?” he smiles.

“Gael-ish. Because I’m not meaning Gaelic like the language. I mean Gael-ish, like your country. Were you guys ever part of Scotland? You weren’t, were you?”

“No. Gael was settled by the—people you might call the Irish,” he corrects, “in the twelfth century. People living in Gaelic Ireland who fled after the Norman invasion and all that trouble. Technically, there were some Scots here at that time as well.”

I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t remember the historical details of the Norman invasion of Ireland, but Liam goes on.

“King Henry II backed the Anglo-Norman invasion and the battling that went on after. Religious and other reasons. Henry and his crew wanted to control the Irish Church. Also, think of it as empire-building. Why wouldn’t Henry want to add Ireland to his empire?”

“I guess he would.”

“He would,” Liam says. “And Henry had the backing of the Pope. It was a rough time to live in Ireland. The people who set off and wound up here were peaceful.”

“Your ancestors were peaceful?” I tease.

“Some of them. Some not.” Liam stops off to store his bow in a nook inside the castle’s base, then leads me to a side entrance. “What do you think?” he asks as he pushes the door open. “Do you want to stay the night on Pirate Island?”

“That’s the name of it?”

He nods, and as we step inside, a delicious smell fills my head. I’m going to ask if there are pirates, but we’re in the kitchen. Not a dining hall, but the kitchen—same as last night. Only today, it’s bustling with people, including a tall, big-boned, gray-haired woman who marches right up to Liam and me with a ladle in her hand, looking at me first, and then Liam.

“So here she is, the reason our vacation was cut short.”

My mouth drops open, and Liam reaches out and slaps the woman in the arm. “Mora.” He laughs. “She’s joking, Lucy. Mora, go back to your stew.”

“Is that an order, little king?”

“It’s an order, big Mora.”

It’s a struggle to keep my mouth from hanging open.

“Big and beautiful,” the woman smiles.

“Of course,” Liam says. He looks to me, as Mora steps back toward the stove, where there are three simmering pots. I watch her give orders to a few other people in the kitchen as Liam turns to me. “Mora is like a mother to me, if you couldn’t tell.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifty last month. My mother hired her when she was much younger. We’ve never let her go. She’s trained all over the world at this point. One of the best chefs anywhere.”

“God, the smell.”

“It’s a twist on Irish Beef stew, but Mora adds cheese.”

“God. I love cheese.”

Liam grins. His arm goes around me, and he leads me past the bar area where we sat last night. Today, two youngish looking guys are chopping veggies there. A blonde girl who looks a little younger than us is telling them an animated story while she works what looks like dough.

“Hello, Liam,” she says as we pass. Her eyes jerk to me. “You’re the girl from telly. Rhodes of Concord,” she says in what I realize is an English accent.

I nod.

“Just Lucy while she’s here, Beth.”

“Right.” The girl nods, then gives me a wink. “Don’t worry. Liam will have my head if I violate the NDA. Says so right there in the contract.”

Liam snorts. “Beth is a bit dramatic, if you couldn’t tell.”

She flings her arms out. “I’m exciting. Unlike Liam.”

He shakes his head, and we walk into the hall. “Beth is Mora’s adopted daughter. Mora found her in an alley in London when she was four. She’s fifteen now. And don’t worry, they really do sign NDAs. No one will know you’re here.”

“It’s okay.”

I’m surprised when Liam’s hand closes around mine. His arm presses against mine as he leads me toward the stairs we took up last night.

“I meant it when I said you’ll have a good time here. No worries, Lucy Su.” His eyes find mine as our fingers twine together, and I give him a funny look.

“How’d you know to call me that?”

“What, Lucy Su?”

I nod.

“Lucille Sutton Rhodes. That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but Lucy Su?”

He smirks. “How do you think?”

“TV?”

“Guilty as charged.” His hand squeezes mine.

“Was that really on the show? I didn’t realize.”

“Sometime in season two, I think.”

“You watched more than one season?”

“Didn’t everyone?”

“But you?”

“What’s so special about me?”

He stops as we reach the landing to the second floor, giving me a cheesy smile that makes my heart pound slightly harder.

“I don’t know.” I smile back. “Just seems like you’re always busy, traveling and stuff.”

“Only this summer. Wanted to get away,” he says as we start down the lavish hallway.

“Bored?” I ask.

“Something like that.”