Chapter Seven
He’d lost his damned mind.
Liam stared at his father, aware that Andi’s hand had slipped from his and her jaw had fallen open in a perfect O of disbelief.
“Just hear me out,” Dad said quickly, holding up both hands. “Hear me out.”
“Dad—” Liam started to stand to end the madness, but Dad stopped him with a furious shake of his head.
“It makes perfect sense, Liam. You and Andi—”
“Are not getting married.” He got to his feet to make his point before Andi started wailing or running off or somehow letting them all know how heinous that idea was to her.
“It would put an end to this Nora Scott’s claims,” Dad continued as if Liam hadn’t spoken. “It would give Christian a legitimate last name.”
“Dad!” Liam’s voice boomed. “He has a legitimate last name—his mother’s.”
Dad gave a half shrug in acknowledgment of his error. “But it might not be enough to keep him safe from this woman,” he insisted. “If Andi’s married, part of a big family, surrounded by support? No one can get near her or Christian. In fact, we could have the three of you live here, like your mother and I did when you were a baby and—”
Liam’s head spun at the idea, and he shut his dad up with a single hand ordering silence. “That is not the answer.”
“Yes, it is.” At the sound of Andi’s voice uttering the three words, every single person in the room turned to her, including Liam.
She had her hands folded in front of her face, the knuckles pressed hard against her chin. She stared straight ahead, as if her gaze was locked on some distant target and nothing could or would stop her from getting to it.
Christian was that target. She’d do anything for him, including marry a man she wouldn’t even consider having anything beyond sex with two months ago.
“You make perfect sense, Dr. Kilcannon.”
“Andi.” Liam sat back down. “Don’t you think it’s…drastic?”
She finally looked at him. “It wouldn’t be forever,” she said softly, the whisper of words like a kick in his gut. “We can get it annulled after I secure Christian, right?”
Annulled?
“Actually,” Garrett said, stepping closer into the fray. “Shane happens to be a bit of an expert on annulment.”
“You are?” Andi looked from Garrett to Shane, an expression of hope in her eyes.
Hope that this solution could be used and then…discarded. Hope that felt like a ten-inch nail shoved through Liam’s chest.
“Yeah, actually, I have some experience in that area of the law.”
“So, we could get married legally and long enough to appear before a judge or whatever, and then not be married?” she asked.
“You may never have to appear before a judge,” Shane said. “Nora Scott might back off.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Dad exclaimed. “The perfect answer.”
Liam shot him a look. Sure, his matchmaking lunatic of a father thought he’d hit pay dirt on this one. But wasn’t he listening to her? She wanted it annulled before…before they even discussed this as a couple.
“What about Christian?” Liam asked as the question popped into his head. She’d said she was terrified of introducing a man into her life because it might hurt her son if it didn’t work out. Didn’t this marry-and-annul plan fly in the face of that?
“What about him?” she asked, as if she’d forgotten the excuse she’d offered for not wanting to date Liam. Because it was exactly that: an excuse.
“What will you tell him?”
She stared at him as if the question didn’t even compute in her head.
“That you got married to someone you barely know because his long-lost aunt wants to take him away from you?” Liam prodded. “Wouldn’t that terrify him?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “So we’ll tell him that…we decided to get married.”
“And when it’s annulled?”
She closed her eyes as if maybe the impact of that hit her. “He’ll survive,” she finally said. “It’s better than living with some stranger.”
So marrying Liam was the lesser of two evils. Great.
“Then it’s settled,” Dad said.
Liam gave him a pleading look, then sent another to his siblings who, except for some mumbling among themselves, hadn’t offered one word of support for him.
Of course not.
Because this wasn’t about Liam’s tender and unrequited love for Andi Rivers. A child’s well-being hung in the balance, and he would no sooner think about his own feelings than one of his dogs would hesitate to attack on command to save a life.
He needed to buck up and play this game, and do it well.
Andi leaned back and sighed as if she’d experienced an adrenaline dump and needed to figure out what had just happened.
“Would you like to take a walk?” Liam asked her.
“Why would you go anywhere?” Dad asked. “We have to make a plan.”
Shane shifted the papers on the table, nodding. “If this is going to work, the entire town has to buy into it being real. One word slips from the wrong mouth that this is a fake marriage and Nora Scott will have way too much ammunition.”
“We have to hold a wedding and fast,” Molly announced, maybe a little too excited to jump into this. “We should have it right here at Waterford.”
“During the engagement party!” Darcy said, clapping her hands with glee.
“But that’s for Jessie and Garrett, and Shane and Chloe,” Andi said. “I don’t want to—”
“It’s perfect,” Chloe interjected. “All the friends and family will be here Saturday for our double engagement party. I’m fine if that turns into a wedding. Aren’t you, Shane?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, us, too,” Jessie said, sliding her arm through Garrett’s. “If it would help you, Andi, we should definitely do this Saturday night.”
“This Saturday?” Liam croaked.
“The sooner the better,” Shane said, tapping the paperwork.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Dad boomed, practically unable to wipe the smile from his face.
What was he happy about? This wasn’t a notch in his matchmaking belt. This “marriage” would be annulled the minute the mysterious Nora Scott backed off. Andi would be happy. Christian would be secure. And Liam would be by himself, licking wounds he didn’t want her to know he even had.
He exhaled, resigned to the idea. “Come on, Andi,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Kennels? See Jag?”
She blinked at him. “That’s what you want to do now? See Jag?”
Garrett snorted softly. “Better get to know your new husband, Andi,” he said. “Dogs over people every time.”
“I don’t want to go see Jag,” he countered.
“Then why do you want to leave?” Molly asked.
“So I can be alone with Andi for five minutes,” he said. “And so I don’t have an audience when I propose.”
“Propose?” At least five of them repeated the word at the same time in a teasing, shocking tone.
But Andi didn’t smile, not one bit. “That’s not necessary, Liam,” she said softly. “We both know this isn’t, you know, real.”
Not to her. And it better not be to him. So they needed to set some damn ground rules before he got so tangled up, he couldn’t breathe. “I know. But I want to talk to you anyway.”
After a second, she nodded and stood. “Thank you,” she said, directing the words to everyone in the room. “I’m blown away by your kindness and strength. I’m honored and grateful that you would all do this for my son and me.”
Dad beamed and put an arm around her. “You don’t worry about a thing, young lady. Your son will be safe. You’re a Kilcannon now.”
Liam could see her nearly sway at the words.
Putting a hand on Andi’s shoulder, Liam led her toward the kitchen, knowing that if they didn’t stop to have a private rules-establishing discussion right this minute, the fake marriage might spin entirely out of control.
As he passed Gramma Finnie’s rocker, she reached up a weathered hand and grabbed his, getting his attention. With her other hand, she crooked a finger so he’d lower to let her whisper in his ear.
“Down on one knee,” she said softly. “That’s how Kilcannon men do this.”
That’s how Kilcannon men proposed to women who actually wanted to get married. When they were doing a favor for a friend? No way.
He merely nodded and headed outside with Andi…his fiancée.
When he thought about how much he’d once wanted that, it was another kick in the ass. He’d gotten what he wanted…but he didn’t have her at all.
* * *
The moment they were alone outside, Andi put her hand on Liam’s arm and squinted up at him, blinded by the sunshine and some unshed tears she’d had no idea were threatening to spill. Maybe it was the crush of that tsunami that had swept her away. Maybe it was the lack of sleep and pressure of worry. Maybe it was Liam’s total disgust at the idea of a sham marriage to fend off lawyers.
Something had her literally trembling with emotion.
“I’m not exactly sure what just happened,” she said. “But you don’t have to do this.”
He didn’t even look at her. Well, he’d barely glanced at her since his dad had the idea. All he did was…fight it. Throw out excuses for why it wasn’t a good idea. Call it “drastic” and look at his father like he’d absolutely lost his mind. And when he said he’d “propose”?
He sounded like the very word strangled him.
“I want to help you, Andi,” he replied. “And this…this idea…is temporary. Extreme, yes, but if it keeps some nutcase away from Christian, you know I’ll do it in a heartbeat.”
Speaking of heartbeats, hers kicked at her chest when he said this idea. He couldn’t even utter the word.
Married.
Yeah, well, it wasn’t a word she uttered too often, either.
She exhaled as they walked around the training pen, keeping her gaze on a few dogs that were running around one of the staff trainers, a young woman who looked like she was having a blast.
“Hey, Liam,” she called. “Can you give me a hand with the therapy dogs in a few minutes?” She put her hand on the head of a dog that looked a lot like a German shepherd, but was so much smaller and thinner than Jag. “Harley is giving me fits in obedience training, and you’re so good with these dogs.”
He nodded, taking a few steps closer to the fencing, as if he wanted to seize on any distraction from the big, fat problem he’d just been handed. And she’d been warned: He loved dogs more than people.
“Maybe later, Allison,” he said. “I’m dealing with a situation.”
A situation.
No, she certainly didn’t expect Liam to jump up and down and be thrilled at his father’s solution, but did he have to act like it pained him?
The dog in question came trotting over to the fence, barking in acknowledgment of Liam, who bent down to get face-to-face with him. “I’ll straighten you out, Harley. And you’ll make someone a happy therapy dog.”
There was something in his voice—a wistful note, maybe frustration. Something that said his emotions and comments were not about the dog.
Puzzled and still coming to terms with what she’d just agreed to do, Andi waited until he chatted for a few seconds with the trainer, then returned to the path to continue into the kennels.
“Why are we going into the kennels?” she asked.
“It’s where I go when I need to escape them.”
“Them? Your family?” She gave a soft laugh. “They are a force to be reckoned with.”
“A good force,” he shot back, his voice defensive.
“Oh, of course, Liam. They’re amazing and supportive and unlike anything I’ve ever known. Remember, it was only me, my quiet opinion-free mother, and my dad, a college professor whose strongest commentary was on the modernist bias against traditional architecture.”
That made him smile. A little.
“We didn’t have family meetings and tackle other people’s problems or build a family ‘hedge of protection’ around someone.”
He shrugged. “That’s what we do. En masse.”
She didn’t say anything, but took a deep breath of cool air when they stepped inside the air-conditioned kennel that could house thirty or forty dogs. Instantly, Liam seemed to somehow relax as soon as they were inside.
It wasn’t the change in temperature or setting, she guessed, but the constant barking that echoed over the white walls and clean tiles, and the faces of different dogs as they looked up from sleep or food, warmth in their gazes.
“You really are at home in here,” she mused.
“I love them all,” he replied. “But sometimes I have to escape the onslaught of the whole bunch of Kilcannons.”
She understood that. “Guess they weren’t kidding when they said your dad is trying to marry you all off,” she joked.
“Real marriages,” he said, no joke in that edgy voice. “Not…this.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t forget that.
They walked down the wide hallway, her sandals tapping against the cream-colored tile, listening to the cacophony of different-pitched barks. They turned a corner, and she glanced at a few of the local four-legged residents, some greeting her with a bark. Most of them slept, with a rumble of snoring, all happy for the air conditioning and quiet in the middle of a blistering North Carolina summer.
Liam was stone silent, naturally. She usually liked how quiet he was; it never bothered her that he wasn’t a big talker. When he said something, it was worth listening to.
He finally cleared his throat. “Andi, you don’t have to worry that I’ll try to make it real.”
When he said something like that.
“I’m not worried about anything except keeping my son,” she said, barely loud enough to be heard over the noisy greeting of a golden retriever in a large kennel.
He nodded. “Yeah, of course. But I want you to know that I’m not going to, you know…”
She didn’t know. And wanted to. She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes, trying to get past his silence to know what he was really thinking. “You’re not going to what? Try to pretend this is something it isn’t? Insist on sleeping in my bed? Create a bond with Christian that will hurt when it breaks? Fall in—”
“None of that,” he said sharply, turning to her. “I won’t do any of those things.”
Shockingly, shamefully, she realized that disappointed her.
“That’s why I brought you out here,” he said. “To set some expectations and guidelines.”
Guidelines? And foolishly, she’d thought it was to at least pretend like he was proposing, maybe to be amused at the whole charade. Make it something bearable, since it seemed they’d be stuck together for a while.
Of course, what man wanted to be roped into a fake, temporary marriage to help out a woman who turned him down cold when he asked for more than a one-night stand?
Sure, she’d been ready to climb into bed with him that night, but that had been a moment of midnight madness.
This was a different kind of madness. Desperation. And deep down, all that mattered was Christian, so she should be grateful for Liam’s help and quit going all mushy about what it meant or didn’t mean.
Because it didn’t mean a thing.
“Yes, I think guidelines are a great idea,” she said. Whatever the hell guidelines there were for a fake marriage.
He rounded the last corner to a separate section of the kennels, and the first thing she noticed was an oversized illustration on the wall of a bulldog with USMC under it and above it the words Teufel Hunden. Devil Dog, like the tattoo on Liam’s shoulder.
“Now we’re in Liam Kilcannon territory,” she said with a laugh, glancing around at the pristine kennels and the tools of his trade. “German commands only.”
He spared her a quick smile. “You’ll be learning them, too.”
Three of the four kennels were empty, but Jag bounded toward the gate of his as they arrived, barking in greeting and, she assumed, hope that he could get out and be with his master.
“Hey, boy,” Liam said softly, unlocking his gate.
Immediately, she noticed a change in his tone, even his posture. The tension of their bizarre situation seemed to dissolve from his squared shoulders, and a slight smile tugged at his lips when he looked at his beloved dog.
He got to his knees, crouching to get eye to eye with Jag, murmuring something, using his large, masculine hands to rub the dog’s head and neck until an animal trained to scare off predators and threats nearly melted into the ground from the love and attention.
Andi stayed outside his kennel, staring at the exchange with a mix of admiration for his genuine connection with the dog and trepidation. Could Christian handle this big, protective, dangerous animal?
“You ready to head to a new home?” he asked Jag. “Big day for you, buddy.”
“You really think we’ll be ready to take him home today?”
He looked up at her. “Would you two like to move into my house? I have a three-bedroom house halfway between here and town, and you’re welcome to live there.”
“Oh.” She considered that and the effect on Christian. “I don’t want to upend his life any more than necessary, and I’m not sure how that would affect him. I’d prefer to stay home with him.”
“And Jag.”
She answered with a sigh as the impact of just how much her life was about to change hit hard.
“Andi, look, I don’t really care about optics, as you might guess, but if you’re worried about your, you know, reputation and don’t want me at your house overnight, I get that. But you are not going to be without this dog for one minute when you’re home. When does Christian get home from school today?”
She blinked at him, the question throwing her when she was still stuck on optics and overnight. “I had originally arranged for him to go to the little after-school-care program that’s adjacent to the elementary school, but this morning I canceled it so I could pick him up at two o’clock.”
He nodded, considering that. “Bring him home at two, and I’ll be there with Jag and everything you need. We’ll spend the afternoon getting both of you up to speed on handling this dog and training Jag to know you’ll be his masters, too. That’s a big part of the handover, and if it’s not done right, we could have problems.”
She studied him for a minute, the whole conversation sinking in. “We do have problems,” she said softly.
“And we’re solving them.” He stood, keeping one hand on Jag, but looking down at her over the five-foot gate door. “It may not be the ideal solution for either one of us, but it makes perfect sense, and you have my whole family on board to assist.”
“What about Christian?” she asked.
“We’re doing this for Christian.”
“But you were right in there.” She gestured in the general direction of the house. “We have to tell him some version of the truth.”
“Yes, we do. And I know that your biggest fear is that he’s going to have the same kind of setback he had when your husband—”
“He wasn’t my husband,” she corrected.
“I know, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. But you know what I mean. His father.”
“He wasn’t my husband for a reason.”
Liam drew back, clearly not expecting the conversation to go in that direction.
“I didn’t love him,” she said simply. “I felt that it would be disingenuous to marry him just because he was Christian’s father. I considered marrying him when I got pregnant, and I did have very strong feelings for him, but when he refused to give up Europe, I knew where his priorities were.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
Because Jeff didn’t want a baby in Europe, she thought, but something made her protect him, even in death.
“The job was hard, full time, and involved a lot of travel, all over the continent. I—we—couldn’t envision doing that with a newborn or leaving my baby for long periods of time. The opportunity to run Bruce Williams’s Bitter Bark operation was the perfect answer for a single mom and young, relatively inexperienced architect. But I also didn’t marry Jeff when he came back to live with us and be in Christian’s life.”
“But you did live with him.”
And she’d chosen that over what Liam surely would have offered her eventually…permanence. “But I didn’t marry him,” she insisted. “Because I don’t take marriage lightly, and I want you to know that.”
He didn’t answer, but held her gaze with a hundred different unreadable emotions in his dark brown eyes.
“So, while this is a great solution for the threat I’m facing now, I want you to know that…” She paused, looking for a way to tell him that even though this technically didn’t matter, it still mattered to her. “The vows mean something.”
“But not like this.”
“Oh, no,” she agreed instantly, getting his drift. “Not like this.”
“Then cross your fingers when you say them.”
She gave a light laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Sure.” He lifted a shoulder. “The people who matter know it’s not a real wedding. You, me, my family, and…” He frowned. “I guess Christian is awfully young to try to understand a temporary marriage of convenience.”
She almost smiled at the archaic phrase. “Yes, he is too young to understand,” she agreed.
“Also, if you tell him the truth, he might mention it to someone.”
“He doesn’t talk to many people, as you may have noticed.”
“Still,” Liam said. “What if he confides in a teacher at school? And he or she walks out of the building right into Nora Scott and whispers the truth? Bam. You’re screwed.”
She cringed at the truth of that. “So I should tell him we’re getting married on Saturday?” She reeled a little, thinking of the impact that would have on Christian. “He might not be able to handle or understand that. He’s seen you one time.”
“You said he’d survive.” There was a little edge in his voice, as if he was tossing back her words to remind her that, really, it might not be so easily survivable. “Just tell him we’re getting married, Andi. He’s too young to understand that people have a relationship long before they’re married. It’s safer. Then I swear I won’t worm my way into his heart if that’s what worries you. When you have him safe and secure, when this thing is over, when we can annul any vows we made with crossed fingers, then he won’t even care that I’m gone.”
Jag barked once, loudly. Maybe because he was bored and wanted to leave, or maybe because he understood and agreed with everything his master had said. Maybe because that was a helluva long speech for Liam Kilcannon.
But she got the most important phrases: When this thing is over. Vows made with crossed fingers. Won’t care that I’m gone.
Words to live by, Andi told herself. He was offering her everything she needed and wanted. A way to protect Christian from an outside threat and an easy way out when it was over.
“That’s what I want,” she said softly.
“Then that’s what you’ll get.”
He bent over to rub Jag’s head again. “I’ll be back in a little bit, big guy. I’ll take you to your new house.”
“Temporary house,” she added. “I don’t know if we can keep him…after.”
Liam straightened slowly, a dry smile on his lips. “You don’t have to keep reminding me of how temporary this is, Andi. I know exactly what we’re doing.”
She swallowed. “It was said in the spirit of, you know, setting guidelines.”
He stepped out of Jag’s kennel, locking it behind him and putting a light hand on her shoulder. “We forgot something,” he said.
“More guidelines?”
“I think I’m supposed to ask you if you’ll marry me.”
She gave a dry laugh, the unexpected punch of emotion making it come out strangely. “Sure,” she said, holding up her crossed fingers. “Till annulment do us part.”