CHAPTER 9
BROOKE
Later that day, I was curled up with a good book on investing when somebody knocked on my door. I tossed the paperback aside. It wasn’t like I had any money to invest, but I liked to keep up on the latest information in the world of finance.
I stood, wondering who was knocking at my door at eight o’clock in the evening.
I opened the door and froze when I saw Liam on my doorstep.
I hadn’t heard a word from him all day, and my insecurities had taken over.
Was he done with me after we’d had sex?
If he thought I was a cheater, maybe I was just another one-night stand for him, a way to alleviate the sexual tension that was always there between us.
“I thought you were working,” I said, trying not to notice that he looked totally edible in a pair of dark-blue jeans and a black sweater.
I hadn’t known that Liam was the sweater type, but it suited him. He was the kind of guy who could make a sweater look sexy. Really, I didn’t know a whole lot about him outside of the restaurant. The only things I’d ever seen him wear were jeans and T-shirts.
He strode through the door and into the living room, which wasn’t more than a few steps. It was a small apartment.
“You need to dump your rich boyfriend,” he stated abruptly. “It’s a red line for me that I won’t cross.”
I swallowed hard as I closed the door and faced him. His expression was so intense that I couldn’t answer.
He moved on. “For the rest of your time here in Amesport, we date. We see each other someplace other than Sullivan’s. The normal stuff. We’ve never had normal, Brooke.”
I raised a brow, wondering what he was up to, but my heart was hammering as I gaped at him.
“I can take you anywhere you want to go. Hell, we can fly anywhere in the world. You know I’m not exactly hard up for funds. I might only be a millionaire, but I have a lot of millions. That might not look all that good compared to the overabundance of billionaires in this town, but I could never work another day in my life, spend extravagantly, and still have money to burn.”
He was right. Liam had reached nine figures in his money markets, investments, and bank accounts. I’d done his taxes. I knew he was loaded. But what did that have to do with us?
“I don’t want money,” I said in a shaky voice.
He stepped up until he was directly in front of me. “Then what do you want, Brooke? Name it, and I’ll make sure you get it. The only requirement is for you to get rid of the other guy. You don’t love him. I know you well enough to see that you never would have slept with me if you were in love with somebody else. God knows I wanted to write you off as unfaithful, but there’s more to the story. I know there is. I can’t care about a woman who cheats.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, my lungs starving for oxygen. “Do you care?” I asked cautiously.
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Yeah, I do. I’m done with the bullshit.”
At that moment, Liam looked so damn vulnerable that I wanted to throw myself into his arms and do something to make everything okay. But I was the subject of his torment, so I didn’t move.
He hadn’t just blown me off after having sex with me. I knew Liam, and he’d obviously been stewing all day about what happened . . . just like me.
“You’re not at the restaurant,” I said, not thinking about the fact that my comment wasn’t exactly brilliant. He obviously wasn’t at Sullivan’s. He was standing right in front of me.
“Tessa is there,” he grumbled. “If you agree to my terms, she’ll be covering a lot more for me, and I’ll pull somebody in to cover for you so we can spend some time together.”
I knew I needed to close my mouth and stop gawking at him, but I wasn’t sure how to accomplish it.
He wanted to . . . date me? We’d already had sex. “We slept together,” I said, still feeling like everything happening was surreal.
I’d never seen Liam act this way, and I was more than a little baffled.
Bottom line . . . he cared about me, and that was hard to comprehend. Even though I’d supposedly cheated with him, he still wanted to go out with me, have some kind of normal relationship.
Damn! I owed him the truth.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I blurted out, unable to stop myself. He’d put himself on the line to come here. I needed to come clean, too.
His eyes jerked to my face. “What do you mean?”
I walked past him and sat down on the couch so I could have something solid underneath me. “The guy you saw me with was my oldest brother, Noah. He came to see how I was doing. The jet belonged to Evan Sinclair.”
It was a relief to force the words from my mouth, but it left me feeling nervous.
“Why did you tell me he was your rich boyfriend?” he asked, sounding confused.
I clenched my fingers together on my lap. “First of all, my family isn’t rich. We lived incredibly poor our entire lives. We’re still putting funds together to help my youngest brother, Owen, get through his residency. Second, I never told you that Noah was my rich boyfriend. You assumed. I just didn’t really contradict your story. I couldn’t. If I did, I think there would have been more questions I couldn’t answer. I was hiding, Liam. And I was scared. Plus, I’d promised Evan and Noah I wouldn’t reveal anything. I couldn’t break that promise. They both went out of their way to help me, and they were trying to protect me.”
Liam’s face was stony and hard to read as he finally said, “So there was never anybody else?”
I shook my head. “No. You’re right about me. I could never have sex with somebody when I was committed to another guy. I’d have to break off the other relationship first.”
I was both elated and terrified that Liam had been able to see so much about me without really knowing who I was.
“I can’t say that I’m not relieved, but I wish you would have told me the truth,” he rumbled.
“I wanted to. I wanted to tell you so many times. I trusted you, Liam. But I made a promise I couldn’t break.” I kept our gazes locked, willing him to see the truth in my eyes.
He held up a hand. “Don’t, Brooke. Don’t be sorry. I get that you did what you thought you had to do.”
“But I don’t have to like it,” I said solemnly. “It’s been a tough year for me.”
“But it’s over,” he commented. “Now all I have to do is get you to go out with me. Spend some time with me, Brooke. No pressure. We both know that what happened last night doesn’t happen every day. Hell, I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve never felt like that.”
“It’s never happened to me, either,” I shared.
“Do we really want to walk away from it?” he asked huskily.
His green-eyed gaze was tumultuous, and I couldn’t resist stepping into the fire to tell him everything. “No. I never wanted to ignore it, and I knew the chemistry was there from the moment I met you. I just . . . couldn’t be me.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I saw you.”
My heart tripped. “I know.” I paused before I asked, “Where do we go from here, Liam? I have no idea.”
“We have some fun together. Pour our guts out about anything and everything. Isn’t that what people do on dates? I’m hoping to convince you to stay,” he warned. “I want you to know that up front.”
My heart was lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t speak. No guy had ever really cared whether I stayed with him or not. I’d had flings in college. But none of them had ever become real relationships. “I’ve never been in a serious relationship,” I admitted.
He shot me a grin. “I can’t say as I have, either. But we can make shit up as we go along.”
I smiled at him, blinking back the tears that wanted to fall just because he cared. “It’s a deal.”
He scooped me up and twirled me around the living-room floor. “You just made me a happy man, Brooke. And that’s not easy to do.”
I laughed as he put my feet back on the ground. There was so much underneath Liam’s crusty exterior. Maybe it was a little bit intimidating, but just like he’d seen me, I’d seen him, too. I’d been drawn to him from the very first day I’d reported to work at the restaurant.
“I think I like making you happy,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck.
His eyes went a deeper green. “Jesus! I love the way you smell. Like sweet vanilla.”
“It’s just my body lotion. I took a bath earlier.” I’d used the same lotion for years, and nobody had ever commented on the scent. Honestly, it was subtle, so I was pretty sure that Liam was the only person who noticed it.
“It’s almost like sugar cookies,” he mused.
“Vanilla and sugar,” I confirmed.
“Good enough to eat. Did I ever tell you that those are my favorite?”
I tried to clear my X-rated brain from conjuring up images of Liam devouring me.
I shook my head slowly. “I didn’t know.”
He leaned down and gave me a very thorough kiss.
I was breathless when he finally lifted his head.
He let go of me and moved across the living room. “Fuck! Brooke, I promised myself I wouldn’t fuck you again until we started really seeing each other. We jumped the gun last night. I jumped the gun last night. Not that I regret it. But right now, I just want to be with you. I want to learn everything about you. It’s not all that easy when my dick is hard, which is just about every time I fucking see you.”
I smiled at him. “I want that, too.”
Not that I didn’t want to have sex with him. The urge was always going to be there. But I knew there was so much more to him than a spectacular body and a handsome face.
“Then let’s do it,” he said gruffly.
“Have sex?” I teased.
He shot me a censuring look. “You’re going to have to help me.”
“I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” I joked. “I pretty much want you to nail me all the time.”
His mouth formed into a happy grin. “Luckily, I have to get back to the restaurant. I promised Tessa I’d close up. But she is going to cover some time for me, and you’re going to have some unscheduled nights off.”
“Am I still working tomorrow?”
He moved back to me and lifted my chin. “Yes, smartass. You are. But no promises after that. I’m redoing the schedule.”
Meeting his eyes directly when we were so close together was intense. My body craved him now, but I tried to shake it off. I did want to get to know him. And if my body had its way, I’d never get out of the bedroom.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, my heart clenching in my chest for lying to him.
He put his fingers over my lips. “Don’t. It wasn’t all your fault. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’ll wait until you want to talk about it. In the meantime, I’m good with you just being uninvolved with another man.”
I let go of a sigh as he moved his fingers and kissed me. It was short, but so damn sweet.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said roughly as he let me go.
I let him out, knowing I was probably going to get very little sleep for another night.