Chapter Nineteen
Liam’s stomach roiled and for a second he thought he might puke. The anger mixed with fear as he watched Vivien pace. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t told him about the email or the text, but before he’d had time to process that, she went into epic meltdown mode. He might as well be watching a train wreck he was powerless to stop. Intellectually, he’d accepted that she’d likely leave eventually, but he thought he had more time to convince her to stay. She’d taken them to DEFCON One, and the nightmare that had haunted him the last few weeks began to materialize.
“You’re damn right I can’t get past it,” Vivien said. “I lost my mother, Liam. I was nine, and I had to watch my mother waste away from cancer that they would have caught months earlier if she hadn’t had Greer. She thought the lump was a clogged milk duct when she found it right before Greer was born. By the time she got it checked, it was too late.”
Liam sighed, wishing he could make her stop pacing. The frantic movement was making him dizzy, but he let it go. Better she paced than releasing her energy some other way, say by smashing his mother’s flowerpots. All of the restless energy he’d sensed lurking beneath the surface since she’d told him about Christopher festered and boiled over the top in an uncontrollable wave. “That’s no one’s fault, Vivien, and you’re smart enough to know that.”
The mulish silence and the slower pacing told him he’d scored a point. “The illness? No. But how Jed handled it sure as hell was his fault.”
“What happened after your mom died?” It didn’t take rocket science to see that this meltdown wasn’t just about her family life, and some of his anger faded. Years of frustration and hurt drowned out the usual steeliness in her eyes and robbed her of the proud set to her shoulders. He wanted to give her comfort, but that wouldn’t come from cuddling her close as he had not long ago. Walking through the fire was the only way to save her from the pain of the burns and maybe save himself from them in the process.
“Gran moved in to help with Greer soon after Mom’s diagnosis. Greer was barely two months old, so there was no way for Jed to take care of both of us and run MT. That I understood, even when I was that young.” Vivien crossed her arms over her breasts as the garden lights flickered on in the dusk. “What I didn’t understand was why Jed wanted nothing to do with me. I was nine. I’d just lost my mother. And all Jed seemed to care about was Greer.”
Liam frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. After Mom died, the only person outside of work Jed had time for was Greer.” Finally standing still, she sighed. “When I was younger, Jed always played with me or read a book with me or even listened to me tell him about my day. Even after Greer was born and Mom was sick, he made time for me. Then Mom died and it’s like a pod person took over my dad. When he did look up from work, he spent it cuddling Greer. Gran made sure I was taken care of and she was great, but I felt like I lost both my parents. As I got older, I started to pick fights with him in some weird teenage attempt to make him pay attention, but all that did was drive him further away.”
Realization began to set in. No wonder she’d settled for the relationship Christopher offered her. It was the same reason he’d accepted whatever Sophia was willing to give him. All her life, Vivien had felt second best. In her mind, she didn’t matter to Jed, just as he didn’t matter to his dad. She went from being the apple of his eye to the forgotten child. All of that seemed so counter to the man he spent so many years idolizing, because he’d always made Liam feel important.
“But he always talked about you. I’ve never seen a guy so proud of his daughter. Why would you think he didn’t care?”
Vivien stomped her foot so hard he was a little worried she’d break her shoe. “Damn it, Liam. You don’t have a clue what it was like to grow up with that man. To you and Greer, he was this great dad. But to me, he was the jerk who would come home and fight with me—if he talked to me at all. I wasn’t taking the right classes at school. I wasn’t going to the right university. I spent too much time with my friends when I should be studying, never mind that I had a four-point-oh GPA.”
“Every teenager fights with their parents about stuff like that,” Liam protested. “Mama and I butted heads once or twice a week over the same things. That doesn’t explain why you seem to hate him so much.”
“You don’t get it. It’s not that we simply butted heads. That was the full extent of our interactions for nine years. The only time he would even look at me was if I did something to piss him off. It’s a wonder I didn’t go off the rails just to get his attention.”
“That wouldn’t have been calm or reasoned or logical. So instead you did everything you could not to become him.”
He got it. For the first time, he understood Vivien Monroe. Being rejected by anyone you loved sucked, but being rejected by your parent took it to another level. And like him, she’d been hit with a double punch, because the only guy she’d let get close to her lied to, and about, her for their entire relationship. She’d at least been the one to have the guts to leave Christopher; Liam had been blindsided by Sophia leaving him in the dust. Yet here he was, falling in love with Vivien in spite of her keeping things from him while she was two seconds away from running back to New York as fast as she could.
And hell if he was much better. His stomach dropped, thinking about the investigation into Jed’s death. He briefly considered telling her about it, but that might be the straw that broke the Ice Queen’s back.
She leaned against the post of the covered pergola, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Exactly. But look at me now. He won. I’m running his stupid company, and I actually kind of like it. All he could talk about in his emails to me was how great you were and fuck if I don’t agree with him. Then, to top it all off, I’m here, having dinner with your mother, and we’re all happy family, and I’m…”
“You’re freaking out, pretty girl. I think that’s allowed.” Liam started to stand up and go to her, but thought better of it. It might tip both of them over the edge. “Everyone freaks out once in a while.”
“I don’t. All of this is too much.” She pushed her hair behind her ears staring at the ground.
“I want it to be over with so I can go back to New York. Life there makes sense. There aren’t people trying to attack me or sending threatening emails or stealing a company from me. Anyone who wants to start shit with me does it in the open or if they don’t, I can spot it a mile away and stop them. Here, I’m helpless and that pisses me off.”
The temper he’d tamped down on after Greer’s revelation flared. Liam stood, facing off with her, pushing down any residual guilt at his own lie of omission. The ambiguous possibilities of the investigation were minor compared to a direct threat to her safety.
Even pissed off, she was magnificent. A warrior queen from the tips of her shoes to the top of her sexy red hair.
“When are you going to stop lying to yourself, Viv? Your life in New York doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
Vivien flinched as if he’d hit her, but anger and annoyance quickly stepped in. “What is that supposed to mean? And how do you know? I have a job that I enjoy and a life free of disruptions and the never-ending drama that comes from relationships.”
“Again—bullshit. Probably the stupidest bullshit I’ve ever heard you spout.” He shoved his hands through his hair before taking a page from her book and pacing. He wasn’t going to let her push him away for stupid reasons. If she wanted to end this, she was going to at least hear the hard truth because he didn’t plan to make it easy on her.
“You don’t enjoy your job. Sure, you kick ass at it, but you would do that wherever you worked. Your work at MT proves that. You hate your boss, and if your clients are anything like your ex, I can’t imagine you actually liking any of them. And I could be very much mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that you’ve got a whole fuck-ton of drama waiting for you in New York. Drama you chose to get yourself into by getting involved with a bastard who happened to be married.”
…
Drama you chose to get yourself into by getting involved with a bastard who happened to be married.
Well, at least he didn’t come flat out and call her a home-wrecker. Still, the words stung more than any slap in the face could have. They didn’t sting because she took offense; she was used to brushing off slights and barbs. As much as she hated to admit it, they stung because they were true.
No matter how much she wanted to idealize her life in New York, it came with just as many pitfalls as life in Dallas. The only difference was that there she felt like she had a modicum of control. She knew the game; she knew the players and the board and how to calculate the most effective moves. Despite what he might think, her relationship with Christopher wasn’t so complicated that she couldn’t control it. Most days, it was as simple as pretending like he never existed. She could compartmentalize everything in New York. The roots didn’t go as deep there, weren’t as messy and hard to separate into their proper places.
Here, there were too many emotions at play that clouded her judgment. Try as she might, Vivien couldn’t put her little sister into a nice, neat box and forget that she’d lost both of her parents at a far younger age than anyone should. And Liam…she studied him, the glow of temper in his blue eyes as strong as it had been at dinner. With his short, dark curls in disarray around his head and his glasses glinting in the moonlight, he didn’t look anything like a man who could affect her so deeply.
But he did. Somehow, he’d wormed his way in, and she gave a damn about what he thought. He mattered and that scared her more than any of the unknown spooks out there trying to get her family’s company.
“I’m not meant for this kind of life.” The protest sounded weak even to her own ears. For the last few months, all she’d been able to think about was when she’d get back to New York. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how, little by little, New York had lost some of its appeal. Right now, she desperately wanted to just rewind the clock and make it through dinner with the same cool sophistication she exhibited at the dozens of business dinners she’d been to over the years. Letting her emotions get the better of her wouldn’t help her get through this. “I can’t build a life here, Liam. It’s too much.”
He was silent for several long moments. In the pale light coming through the french doors, he looked so…confident. He wore it much more quietly than other men might, but it was still there. He knew what he wanted from life, and he didn’t plan to waver.
She should have been wary of that confidence. Confident men were also decisive men. Something in him shifted the longer he stared at her, the look in his eyes moving from a bit of anger and a lot of annoyance to a deeper, more terrifying emotion. Try as she might, she couldn’t read that look any more than she could read Greek.
“I love you.”
I love you.
The words came out not much louder than a whisper, but they might as well have been a roar to Vivien. What the hell? He loved her? Since when?
“You’re insane. Certifiably insane.”
“I’m insane?” Liam looked unruffled. Why did he always have to be so goddamn calm? “Probably. You’ve done nothing but keep me at arm’s length since we met. Even now, after everything, you keep things from me that I should know about—like those emails. But in spite of all of that, yeah, I love you.”
She sputtered. For the first time in her life, Vivien Monroe could do nothing but sputter, searching for words. This didn’t happen. A guy didn’t just blurt out something like that. It only happened in movies. Yeah, in movies, the really stupid guys blurted out they loved the girl.
Shit like this didn’t happen to women like her. Women like her met nice men who worked for a high-powered law firm or brokerage or maybe even a doctor—provided he was a surgeon who had finished his fellowship.
Women like her didn’t have hot sex on the kitchen table; they had satisfying, but contained, sex in a bed, preferably with either twelve hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sateen sheets or one hundred percent silk sheets. And the guys they dated did not say that they loved them on their mother’s patio while they were freaking out.
“This can’t be happening. It really, really can’t. I’m not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to be saying stuff like that. You’re supposed to be a fling. That’s all this was. I’m going back to New York, and you’re staying here. Falling in—in—”
“Love? You’re allowed to say the word, you know.” The annoyance came back, radiating from every well-muscled inch of him.
“No, damn it. I’m not and you’re not. It’s not in the plans. Nothing about this trip has gone as planned and it’s starting to piss me off. I’m not supposed to be having sisterly feelings or a fling with a computer geek. I should be in New York right now, kicking ass and taking names. I don’t do family dinners and declarations of l-love. I don’t make connections. I can’t.”
“Not everything is about you keeping control, Viv. The world doesn’t follow a plan. You can’t make a list and a timeline and expect things to fall into place. Life doesn’t work like that.”
“Yes, it does. My world worked like that until the stupid lawyer called and screwed everything up. Trust my father to find some way to fuck with me from beyond the grave. I’m sure wherever he is, he’s laughing his ass off seeing the havoc he’s caused.”
Taking a seat on the glider, Liam leaned forward, arms braced on his knees. She saw the control settle over him with a disgusting level of ease. She used to be able to get ahold of herself like that. Why couldn’t she now?
“Is that what bugs you the most about all this? That it’s probably what your dad would have wanted?”
“Yes!” The word came out before she could stop it. “No. I don’t know. I mean, come on. Tell me that Jed wouldn’t be all smug and smirking because I’m running his company and able to converse fairly fluently in geek-speak and sleeping with his protégé.”
Gritting her teeth, Vivien turned away from him. She hated that the words were true. Her own father couldn’t give a damn about her, but he’d become like a father to Liam. Intellectually, she knew she shouldn’t be mad at Liam for that. All he saw was a guy who took him in and showed him how to do a job he loved.
But the hurt little girl inside of her didn’t give a flying fuck that Liam hadn’t had a father. All she cared about was all the things her father missed, all of the fights they had, all of the pain he caused her.
Jed Monroe created worlds, was idolized by fanboys worldwide, could fix any computer problem, but he sucked as a father.
The emotions she’d spent twenty plus years burying under work and denial punched her in the gut with the rapid-fire speed and precision of seasoned boxers. Damn it.
She didn’t want to feel this—any of this.
“Viv, your dad loved you. You have to know that.”
Big hands cupped her shoulders, but she shrugged them away. Any contact at all would send her over the edge. “Jed Monroe didn’t love anything that didn’t have MT stamped on it. And Greer. The best day of his life was probably the day I graduated and moved away.”
Liam whirled her around, and she finally saw genuine anger flare, the blue of his eyes brighter than the heart of a flame. “Enough. I get it—we all get it. You think your father hated you. Poor Vivien. So put-upon with your big house and your fancy education and your high-powered job in Manhattan with your shoes that cost more than my mother made in two months when I was a kid.”
“Hey—”
“No. For once, you listen to someone else.” His grip on her shoulders tightened to an almost painful degree for the briefest of moments before he dropped his hands and took a step back. Around them, night sounds slowly began their soft chorus. Vivien prayed for someone—anyone—to interrupt them. Luck was not on her side.
“My dad was an ass. Hell, he’d probably give your ex a run for his money. Married my mom, knocked her up, then decided he couldn’t hack it. Then he decided five years later that maybe he could. Then he left again. Rinse and repeat every year or so until I turned twelve. Haven’t heard from him since the divorce papers were signed.
“Losing your mom at a young age is a shitty hand to be dealt, no question about it. But at least you knew she didn’t leave you by choice.” He held up a hand before she could speak again. “Don’t. Jed may have been a jerk to you sometimes, but when push came to shove he was there for you. He made sure you went to the school you wanted to, that you had a trust fund to fall back on when you wanted to push against him. More importantly, he honestly regretted how he treated you after your mom died. That’s way more than I can say for my dad.”
Vivien wanted to believe Liam. She did, but none of it added up. “If that’s true, then why didn’t he tell me that himself?”
“Because you both have this infuriatingly bone-deep stubbornness that won’t let you budge an inch.” Liam rubbed his forehead, his shoulder beginning to slump a little. “But you’re not going to accept anything I say as the truth. You’ve spent so long hating your father and being screwed over by Christopher that you can’t trust anyone. You’d rather push everyone away and end up alone, working for people you can’t stand. Then your transformation into the Ice Queen will be complete. And you know what? I’ll still love you even then. But I sure as hell won’t like you.”
She let his words sink in, everything slowly going in and out of focus. He deserved better than her and she wouldn’t survive another broken heart. She should never have started this to begin with, much less let it get this far.
“You can’t love me. We’ll never…we won’t work, Liam. I can’t stay here. You’ll find someone who wants this life, who is programmed to be a wife and a sister and a mother and all of that. I’m not that girl. I have to go.”
Then she ran. She had to get away from all of this. If Liam followed her, she didn’t know if she’d have the strength to keep going. It would be far too easy to sink into his arms and let him convince her he loved her. Vivien ran through Liam’s mother’s house, barely aware of Eli following after her. She stopped at the curb, looking around, realizing she didn’t have any way to escape. The feel of a firm hand on her shoulder was all it took to officially loosen her tenuous hold on the warring emotions inside her. A ragged sob choked her.
“Please. I don’t care what you say or that I’m a bitch or anything. Just get me back to Haven. I can’t…I can’t do this anymore.”
…
Liam stared after Vivien, shocked that she’d actually run. He’d anticipated it since she walked it, but it still felt like she’d kicked him in the balls. He started to go after her, but Greer stopped him in the living room. “Don’t. Just…let her go. She’s never going to give a damn about anybody but herself.”
“Greer Monroe!” His mother’s admonishment made both of them jump a little, but Greer’s face didn’t lose the bitter, angry expression. She must have overheard his conversation with her sister.
“No, Mama. It’s okay.” He wrapped an arm around Greer’s shoulder. “Viv gives a lot of damns, Greer. That’s what’s got her so scared. She’s coming around, even if she doesn’t want to admit it. It’ll all work out.”
The words sounded hollow and false, even to him. Nothing would be okay. The woman he should never have let himself fall in love with stomped all over him with her fancy shoes. And if he didn’t miss his guess, she’d alienated her little sister all over again with what she’d said about their father. Greer’s loyalty to Jed was unfailing and she was still grieving his loss too much to try to understand the complicated relationship her sister had with him.
“What happened?” Diana asked, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “What’s wrong with Vivien? And where did Eli go?”
“He’s with Viv.” Liam said, his voice icy even to his own ears. “It’s his job to stick with her anytime she’s not in a secure location.”
He saw that his mother wanted to press him on that, but he returned his attention to Greer. “You know she doesn’t mean most of what she said right?”
Greer sniffled a little, but he could see the anger burning hot under the grief. “No. She does. I…I remember how much they used to fight. How much she used to want Dad to be there for her stuff—drama club, student council elections—and how he always made excuses. As a kid, all I saw was her getting mad at the best dad ever. But to her, he wasn’t. Maybe that’s what made her the Ice Queen. I don’t know. All I know is neither of us should hold our breaths that she’ll ever change.”
But he had. He’d hoped from the first day he kissed her that she’d change. Now that hope was evaporating. God, he was an idiot. He should have trusted his gut from the start, but instead he let her slip in and grab hold of his heart.
To avoid running into Vivien, they stayed and picked at the cake while his mother tried to pry more information out of them. Greer didn’t say a word, just glared down at her cake, her eyes a little bit red. Liam tried to redirect the conversation, but every word he said came out sounding harsh.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this pissed off. Probably the last time he saw his father. Liam just had his first big hit for MT and some of the bigger tech magazines did features about Jed Monroe’s heir apparent. As vermin tended to do, Matthew Hale crawled out of the woodwork, wanting credit for his son’s success. As soon as his father showed up, Liam had found out with minimal effort that his father had remarried ten years earlier and pulled the same routine on the son he had with his second wife.
When Matthew showed up at Liam’s office to nag him for money, all he got was a punch in the face. Hell, he got four or five; Liam couldn’t remember exactly how many. That was the first and only time he’d ever hit anyone. Matthew walked away with a broken nose, a bruised jaw, and the beginnings of two shiners for his trouble.
Liam had never met his half brother, but he did speak with his stepmother from time to time and he was covering all of Jeremy’s school expenses on the condition that she not let Matthew anywhere near the kid until he was old enough to make his own decisions.
Neither he nor Greer said much on the drive to Haven. When he pulled through the gate, he turned to her. “Are you sure you want to go in there? I’ve got a spare bedroom you’re welcome to.”
“Tempting,” Greer admitted. “But no way in hell am I letting her run me out of the house I’ve spent more time in than she has, especially if she’s getting ready to bolt.”
In that moment, he finally saw a resemblance between Greer and Vivien. Despite the earrings and casual clothes, it was there; in the set of the jaw, in the shape of the eyes, and the sheer stubbornness in every feature. “Call me if you need a knight in shining armor.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.” Greer pushed her hair behind her ear. “I’m more worried about you. You’re in love with my sister.”
“Loving someone is never easy, kiddo. Especially someone like your sister.” He shrugged. “But it’ll either work out or I’ll learn to move on.”
Move on. Right. Who was he kidding? He sat in his car staring at Haven, particularly the window to Vivien’s room. The light was still on, and he could see her silhouetted-figure moving around the room, her curves in stark relief against the white gauze of the curtains. Damn it. Even now, mad as hell, he wanted her.
Liam briefly thought of going in and locking Vivien in her room with him until she saw reason, but something stopped him. If there was one thing he learned from his parents’ relationship, it was that loving someone might never be enough to make them stay.
But pining over them gave them too much power over you—he’d learned that much from his breakup with Sophia. It had to be Vivien’s choice to love him and her choice to forget about ever going back to New York. Until she made that choice, he had to keep moving forward and figure out who was threatening her and her sister and trying to screw over the company he’d put his heart and soul into.