Chapter Five
Without a word, Liam picked Cora up in his arms and carried her towards the stairs. He knew she kept a first aid kit in her bathroom. As soon as he picked her up, Cora started fighting him.
"Liam put me down. I can walk."
"So, you can bleed all over your floor? It's fine. You need to keep pressure off your foot right now."
Doc, another of Liam’s teammates, was more equipped for field dressing, but he was here, and there wasn't a force on earth that could keep him from her anymore. Cora needed him. Liam tried to ignore how perfect Cora felt in his arms or how great she smelled, but it was impossible. She called to him like she always had. He wanted to claim her, though he no longer had a right to. Thoughts of asking her about Alejandro would have to wait. He had no doubt Alejandro’s men broke her window. Why, he didn’t know yet but he would soon enough.
Cora stayed quiet as Liam carried her into her bathroom. He sat her down on the counter between her double vanity and smiled when he saw only her things on the sink. It meant she didn’t have another man. This boded well for him. What was he thinking? He couldn't get back together with Cora no matter how badly he wanted to. She would insist on knowing where he was going when he had to sneak out. He hated lying to her in the past, and she wouldn't contemplate getting back together with him unless he told her. They were at an impasse.
Liam shook off his thoughts and focused on the task at hand. He dug around under her sink and pulled out her first aid kit.
"How did you know that was there?" Cora asked confused.
"I had to patch myself up once or twice when we...were together. I just assumed it was in the same place."
Cora seemed to accept his answer and remained silent as he pulled out gauze, bandages, and tweezers.
"This is going to hurt. I'm sorry." Liam blocked her out and the rest of the world as he placed a hand on her foot and set to work.
~
Cora watched Liam silently as he gently cleaned the excess blood away and gently probed her foot trying to pull the piece of plate out. It hurt like the devil, but she remained silent. She didn't want Liam to know how much it hurt and not just the shard in her foot. Seeing him again reopened old wounds she had hoped healed. This was the man she had once loved and thought one day might marry. She knew military marriages weren’t always successful, but she already knew the lifestyle and what to expect after being raised by two Marines. She had been blindsided when Liam told her he was a Delta Force operative. To be an Army wife was one thing. To be the wife of one of the most secretive groups was another. She knew what he did was dangerous, and he already explained he couldn't tell her much about what he did. It didn't, however, explain his other secrets. They were personal secrets. She didn't think he was cheating. It was something else. Something apparently, he didn’t think she could handle or was embarrassed by.
Either way, she was done with the secrets and left him. She made it a point to avoid him. She knew if he ever turned those baby blue eyes on her and gave her one of those panty melting smiles she would be a goner and run right back to him. Cora thought she had finally moved on and was over him until she saw him again when his commander attacked her. It was like a dam broke and all her old feelings came rushing back. Cora couldn't get away from him fast enough. Then he had to show up and ask her out as if the past few months’ separation had never happened.
While Liam was busy working on her foot, Cora took the distraction to study him. His hair had grown out. He normally kept it short and close to his scalp. Now it was several inches long, and curls had begun to form. Her fingers itched to touch them and see if they were as soft as they looked. His face looked harder like he hadn’t smiled in a long time. Or was that just wishful thinking on her part? She hadn’t had much to smile about since they broke up. She just buried herself in her work and let life go by around her. Maybe she needed to go out on a date. Cora cringed at the thought of going out with a stranger. She had no intention of starting over. She was thirty-three. Just a year older than Liam. They used to joke that she was a cougar for dating someone younger than her.
"What is going on in that beautiful mind of yours?" Liam asked her without looking up. Cora had been so caught up in her thoughts his voice startled her, and she jerked in surprise which caused the tweezer to scrape her wound. Cora hissed in pain and tried to pull her foot back.
"Easy," Liam said keeping a gentle but firm grip on her foot.
"Sorry," Cora relaxed her foot and let him continue.
"So, are you going to tell me?" Liam prompted.
"Tell you what?"
"What you were thinking about?" Liam asked while still working on her foot.
"What makes you think I was thinking anything?" Cora asked instead.
"Because your face went from happy to sad, then a grimace."
He had been working on her foot. How had he seen all that? "You saw all that while working on my foot?"
Liam stopped what he was doing and looked pointedly at her. "I notice everything about you, Cora. I always have. Always will. When you’re happy or sad. Frustrated. Or when you just need a shoulder to lean on."
Cora could only stare at him with her mouth hanging open. She didn't know what to say. When they had been together, he had always seemed to read her moods.
~
Liam shook his head and went back to digging in her foot when Cora stayed silent. He cursed himself for opening his mouth and revealing too much. Cora had made it painfully clear she wanted nothing to do with him. So why reveal so much to her? She already hated him. Telling her how much he cared and noticed about her wasn’t going to suddenly change her opinion about him.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” He asked fishing for information from her.
“I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.”
“What? Ask you a question?”
“You’re playing interrogator. You asked an assumptive question, and I’m supposed to confirm or deny it.”
Damn, he forgot how intuitive she was. “Maybe. So, are you going to tell me if you have one or not?”
“Why should I? We broke up.”
Yeah, why should she? It’s not like he gave her any reason to remain faithful to him like he had for her in hopes they could put aside their differences and get back together. “Because I want to make sure you're happy.”
“You didn’t have to break into my house to find out. A phone call works just as well.”
“Would you have answered my call?” Cora clamped her lips shut. “That’s what I thought. I was respecting your wishes and giving you space like you asked for but you're upset with me when I do that.”
“Yeah well, I’m a girl, were complicated.”
“You don’t suppose.”
“Are you done yet? I still have things I need to do,” Cora snapped at him.
Liam stayed quiet, and after a minute he grabbed hold of the corner piece of the shard. "Here we go. Take a deep breath." As Cora inhaled Liam tugged on the piece and it pulled clean out of her foot. Cora cried out but quickly silenced herself. Liam dumped the shard in the sink and cleaned out her foot with alcohol and put gauze and bandages over it and wrapped it tightly. "All done. Try to stay off it for a while."
When Cora remained silent, Liam stole a glance at her and felt his heart break. Cora was hunched over with her bottom lip between her teeth and a tear rolling down her cheek.
"Oh, Cora. I'm so sorry." He tilted her head back and swiped the tear away.
"It's not so bad," she grumbled with her eyes closed tightly.
"There's my brave Amazon." It had been a long time since he had called her that. But it felt right. She was an Amazon warrior. Fierce and protective. It was also a nickname that she hated and always seemed to rile her up.
Just like Liam predicted, Cora's eyes popped open, and she glared at him. "I am not your anything. Thank you, Liam, for your help. I can take it from here."
"Kicking me out already?" He smirked. He knew it had been coming. She had made her feelings plain and clear.
"I think it’s for the best," Cora said looking away from him.
"Best for whom?" Liam asked losing his playfulness.
"Look, Liam. I appreciate what you did, but I think you should go. I'll be careful on my foot, but I have to get the downstairs cleaned up." As far as excuses went, it was lame, but she needed him gone. She should never have answered the door, to begin with. Now that he knew she was injured it would give him another excuse for him to want to visit her and she didn't want that.
Liam looked away clenching his jaw. "I’ll take care of downstairs and get the window boarded up. You just rest." Liam started to walk away but pivoted on his heel to face her again. “And don’t think our earlier conversation is over. I still need to talk to you about your client.” He fled the room before Cora could protest.
She didn't want his help, and she sure didn’t want to discuss her clients with Liam. He had never seemed interested in them before. Why now? And how did he even know she had a new client for that matter?
Cora slid off the counter carefully and went into her room to change so she could ask him. She could hear Liam downstairs sweeping up the glass. It should be her down there doing that. It was her house after all, but she knew she was hardly in any condition to be cleaning up the glass or boarding up a window. Cora slipped on her pajamas and hobbled downstairs. She finally reached the bottom step just as Liam was finishing up putting a board on the window. It wasn’t a piece of wood she recognized but with Ben only next door she was sure Liam had found something there. Had she been gone that long for him to already be done, or did he just work that quickly?
He turned and looked at her and quickly looked away. "That should hold until you can call someone to replace it."
"Thank you, Liam, for helping me. I know I seem ungrateful, but I’m not."
Liam nodded absently.
“And before you start, I don’t discuss my clients, so you can just forget it.”
Liam shook his head at her. “This isn’t a game, Cora.”
“No, this is my life. My job. You don’t discuss your assignments, and I don’t push.” Liam looked away but not before flinching.
“That’s different. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself involved in."
“You don’t have a say in what I do and don’t do, Liam. You’ve kept secrets from me before, and you’re doing it all over again. I won’t have you disrupting my business. Who I work with is none of your business. Now get out.”
A tick worked in Liam’s jaw, and she could see that he was debating if he should keep pushing her. He must have realized it was futile because he nodded his head at her and closed the door.
Cora flinched at the slamming of her door. It was for the best though. Liam Macintosh broke her heart once. She wouldn't give him the opportunity to do so again. And he had no right barging back into her life after all these months.
Cora did a quick sweep of her house and made sure all the doors and windows were locked. A small voice nagged her in the back of her mind warning her that the broken window wasn't an accident. Alejandro had warned her not long before the window had been broken and there had been a car parked in front of Ben’s house, but she shook it off. She was just being paranoid. Who would break her window on purpose? She didn't have enemies. Her parents were long retired, and if someone were after Ben, they would go to his house, not hers. Alejandro was a client, and he didn’t know where she lived. Since she worked from home, she never met her clients there. She either met them online or at a public place, if they were close. And what she did wasn’t worth harming her over. No, she was just being paranoid. It was a random accident where a teenager got bored, nothing more. Cora shook her head at herself and went to bed.