“Brad.”
“Brad,” she repeated. “And then we broke up, and I met Austin. And then—”
“Stop. Please. I don’t need your dating CV.”
“Because this is not a date?” she prompted, grinning at him finally. “I feel better. I do. You shouldn’t feel badly about events you had nothing to do with.”
He felt badly about the event he had had something to do with. “If I had taken you aside and said I want you but we can’t do this, it would have been better. Because then I could’ve been there to make sure Brad knew what I’d do to him if he hurt you.”
“You assume that one change would have changed everything. Maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe it would’ve made everything worse. I know for sure what you telling me that would’ve done. It would have led to me upping my game.”
“Grace, your game started with you at my front door in your underwear.”
“No. My game started long before that, but then you went away and I got desperate. That was my big plan when you came back to visit. It was my grand gesture.” She pushed the plate away and then flattened her hands against the tabletop. “I thought if I stopped beating around the bush, once you knew I wanted you, you’d be all for it. Everyone says teenage boys will have sex with any girl they find remotely attractive if offered the chance. I thought once the chance was offered, that the underwear would make you want me, and then everything would fall into place and they all lived happily ever after...”
“No reflection on your attractiveness, but that’s not how it works. At least not for me.”
“I figured that out later. But my point is that if then you had already wanted me and were just being rational? What eighteen-year-old girl do you know who cares about being rational when feelings are in the way? Heck, I barely care about rational now and I’ve supposedly had six years to grow up since then.”
The waiter came, the dessert between them was only half-eaten, and he’d lost his appetite for the chocolate-strawberry confection. “Check, please.” He nodded toward the jacket and said, “My wallet is in the pocket with the phone.”
“No,” Grace interjected before the waiter could get away. “Two checks.”
Because this wasn’t a date.
There had been moments when it had felt date-like, and then everything had gone pear-shaped.
The waiter looked at Liam for confirmation before he went to split the order.
She frowned, but didn’t keep on with the subject. Instead, she slid the jacket off and handed it to him. “Thank you for the loan of the jacket. Mind if I visit the ladies while he sorts the checks out?”
“It’s that way.” He gestured and scooted back around to his side of the booth as she departed the table.
Before he moved to LA proper to start chasing the dream, he’d known about the boys who’d called Grace, and the few that she had tried—and quietly succeeded—in making him jealous of. He probably owed her for teaching him to hide that emotion, even though the ability had abandoned him tonight.
He called his driver and had him ready the car and pull around to get them. The waiter brought the checks before Grace returned, and Liam paid both of them.
When Grace came back he stood with his cane and offered her his elbow again. “Checks?”
“Paid,” he muttered, and added, “I don’t want to fight about the check. The restaurant was my decision, and you’re here as my employee, right? It’s not a date. It’s not two friends having dinner together. It was my responsibility. And I tipped him well for his trouble. Clear?”
She didn’t take his elbow, but walked ahead of him through the restaurant for the door.
He’d known she’d had a crush on him when they’d still been in high school. Idiot though he may have been, he had been love-deprived enough that he’d developed a keen way of detecting it in every incarnation. And if he was honest with himself, that was probably a big part of the draw of his occupation. He’d gone from having very few he could claim who loved him to having thousands, to having millions. He’d gone from the unwanted son of dead junkies to the man on top of every producer’s wish list.
He could identify a lot of emotions on sight—studying body language to improve his acting had come with other benefits. He could tell the difference between fondness of friends, adoration of fans, and when past girlfriends were getting Too Close to Love—aka Time to Break Up. He knew the difference between the way his parents had looked at him the times they hadn’t been looking through him, and the way the Watsons had always looked at him—loving and always a little worried about him.
He could identify love in its many flavors.
But apparently he sucked at spotting a virgin.
* * *
Liam had claimed he’d wanted honesty and to clear the air. Obviously he hadn’t thought that through.
Grace was just trying to be completely honest, because all her instincts said to lie about the whole ordeal. Protect herself. But when her instincts were the most selfish, that’s when she did her best to ignore them. Do the opposite. Do the hard thing if it could help someone else.
Protect Liam. Absolve him of his guilt. Don’t leave him wondering why she’d been the one to hold on to it for so long, make sure he knew this had never been his fault.
But this was apparently also wrong. Now that she’d told him, they sat in the back of the limo in silence and tension even worse than when she’d been wondering when he was going to bring up how much he hadn’t wanted her.
“You’re gritting your teeth,” she said softly, trying to fix this before it got worse. “I’m fine, Liam. You should be fine too. You were right.”
“I don’t want to hear again that it was the only course of action. I know that. I still know that, but that doesn’t make this better.”
“Why? Are you such a caveman that you’re angry that I’ve had boyfriends?”
“No. God, no. I’m not angry.”
“Have you told your face that? I don’t think your eyebrows got the memo. Did you ever notice that the angry characters in children’s shows either have a unibrow or they have just really heavy, straight brows that come together in an angry way?”
“I never played a Muppet,” he joked, if that tone could be called a joke.
She scooted up against him, mirroring the way he’d dragged her to him earlier, and lifted his arm so she could get under it. “See? I’m completely at ease with you now. I understand limits. I understand why you felt that way. I really do. At least now. You felt like you should be more like a brother to me, only I didn’t feel that way. You—”
“Couldn’t have won. Let’s stop talking about it.”
“You were the one who wanted to talk.”
“And now I want to stop talking,” he said, sharply enough that she leaned forward, out from beneath the arm she’d just wrapped around herself, and slid away from him on the seat again.
He was going to be the end of her sanity. Should she have trusted that instinct to keep hiding things? She’d not trusted them because when she had, all those years she’d been wrong.
Mr. I-Know-What-You’re-Thinking-Because-of-Your-Feet would never have that problem. He studied body language, she studied bodily injuries. Not the kind of emotional injuries that might help her understand him.
And maybe that was why he was good at reading people. Maybe it wasn’t just study but something he’d developed during a rough childhood.
She sank back into her spot on the seat and looked toward her window as he uttered an expletive and dragged her back to him.
This time, rather than wrap an arm around her, he twisted and grabbed her by the hips. One second she was on the seat, the next she was in his lap. “You’re going to hurt your ankle!”
“Shut up, Grace.” He caught her by the back of the neck and pulled her against him
, his mouth immediately on hers.
His lips, soft and sweetened with the lingering taste of berries, stroked and nibbled, coaxing her mouth open within seconds.
Her arms rested against his chest, but as his tongue sought hers and the kiss deepened, the fighting from the past long minutes fled her mind. Instinctively, her arms slid around his shoulders as his went around her. Wide, hot hands pressed against the cool skin of her bare back and on down to her hip to keep her close to him.
She’d seen him kiss countless women, and had always wondered what it was like even while envying them. Even when her coping mechanism was to pretend that she didn’t think anything about him at all.
It felt like a drug. Like it heightened her senses and tuned her into him so acutely that her heart changed rhythm to match his beat. She breathed his air and plowed her fingers into his hair to kiss him better, get him closer. Every kiss dragged her deeper into him.
A kiss like no other. If it was because of all his practice, she didn’t care.
If it was because she’d been starved for it for so long, had imagined it so many times, she didn’t care what that said about her either.
Their time together was almost at an end. Soon they’d be back at the clinic, and frequent visits would dwindle to only a few and then back to none. None, because that was normal for them. They’d done all they could to unweave all their ties six years ago, and she had no illusions that he’d start unweaving them again once he no longer had to have her with him. He might still want her, but there were so many women who could be whatever he wanted. A girlfriend without their baggage, without their obstacles, without jeopardizing the friendship he held dear.
This bubble that New York cast around them, it felt like a different planet. A place where they could talk about that stupid trench coat, and a place where inexplicable anger and hungry kisses could confirm that old desire still clung to them both. The only place it could exist.
The door they sat beside opened, a blast of humid air hitting them both. Liam jerked his head back, eyes glazed and panting.
“Sir?” the doorman said. “Want me to close the door back up?”
Tonight they were at the front entrance. She’d forgotten that they weren’t sneaking in and out through the back since he’d deigned to use the cane. A flash went off. Then another. Stupid cameras.
She felt him retreat before he’d moved an inch.
The wall came up, and he put her down gently. The next instant he had his cane and had climbed from the car.
This time he didn’t wait for her to get his elbow but started forward with the cane and a stronger hobble.
She got her bag and accepted a hand out from the doorman, thanking him before she went to catch up with Liam.
Something had just happened, she just wasn’t sure what.
* * *
Two days later, decked out in her classy, cotton, roomy, embroidered polo and slacks, Grace walked beside her morning patient at the clinic, holding on to the small woman’s support belt as she used the double bars to take shaky but supported steps toward the end.
Finally, a patient who didn’t confuse her.
A patient who liked her and listened to her advice.
“You’re doing great. Don’t rush.”
“I want to sit down and the sooner I get to the end, the sooner I get to sit down,” Mrs. Peters said.
“And every step gets you closer to needing to sit less. You’re doing so well. I can honestly say you’re the best patient I have had in days.”
The woman stopped midway and Grace kept holding on to the support belt, as she always did.
“I need just a little breather.”
“Take your time. You standing here without walking is still making you do work.”
“Yes, it is. I don’t know how I got so weak.”
Grace knew. Stroke. It had been caught fairly quickly, but it had still had time to do some damage.
“Muscle weakens really fast. Many of the people who come visit me here don’t actually even have direct accidents or illnesses to blame for the atrophy. It happens if you just spend too much time sitting. My gran needed a bit of rehab after she had particularly nasty flu, just because she wasn’t active in that time. It sneaks up on you.”
Mrs. Peters nodded and inched her hands along the bars, supporting herself that way before they took another step. “A good reason to keep going.”
“You can wait a bit more if you want to. It’s probably only...six more steps to the end. That was one. Five more.”
Other physical therapists on staff came and went with their patients during the day, but the facilities came with the kinds of equipment that made it possible to do this kind of work with only one therapist. She had safety harnesses and leads that hooked to the ceiling if the client was too heavy for the belt, but Grace preferred the belt. She’d liked it best when she’d been rebuilding her own muscle after her accident. It was smoother than the cables. Felt more secure, even if that was the opposite of true. Being connected to a person rather than some apparatus brought trust into the equation, and she’d swear that patients who could use the belt with her help got better faster.
Together they counted the steps, and once Mrs. Peters got to the end, Grace helped her turn and sit in the chair that she’d already placed there. “Let me get you some water. Don’t go walking around while I’m gone, now.”
She stepped into the storage room and snagged a cold bottle of water from the cooler. Her phone rang when she was in there. She glanced at the screen and rolled it to voice mail.
She didn’t want to talk to Nick. She was having a hard enough time finding ways to not think about Liam, without Nick talking about anything. He invariably talked about his best friend.
And she was a terrible liar, and what was she supposed to say if he asked about her weekend? Great. I went to New York and made out with your best friend who I’d currently like to strangle because he’s being a big taciturn jerk?
After the steamy kiss in the back of the limo he’d gone to his room and she to hers, and she hadn’t seen him again until the morning when Miles came to knock and give her the ten-minute warning before they went to the airport and she’d gone to Liam’s suite to wrap his ankle.
Yes, he’d accepted the ice.
He’d been polite but had slept most of the flight.
He’d taken the anti-inflammatories when she’d foisted them on him.
But what he’d refused to do was talk. He didn’t actually say, I don’t want to talk to you. There had been no yelling. He’d just failed to engage about anything.
“I’d like to watch television for a bit, Grace,” Mrs. Peters said. “I didn’t sleep well last night and feel tired today, but my son isn’t coming to pick me up for another half an hour.”
Grace flipped the brakes off on the chair and wheeled the small, frail woman around to a wall-mounted television above where the treadmills faced. She confirmed that Mrs. Peters wanted her to phone her son to come and pick her up.
She didn’t have any other clients this afternoon as her clients had been shifted to other therapists—she’d only had Mrs. Peters because of a scheduling misunderstanding.
What she should do was call Liam and check on him. Even if he didn’t want to talk to her about anything else, he was the one who had dragged her into this patient-therapist relationship, so she’d do the job she was supposed to do.
She dialed.
Liam answered on the second ring. “Afternoon, Grace.”
“Hi. Just checking on the ankle. Doing all right? Keeping it elevated? Heat instead of ice?”
“Doing all prescribed actions.”
She opened her mouth but heard Liam’s name on the television and turned to look at it.
“You’re on TV. Mrs. Peters is watching something.
Interview.”
“I had a couple of interviews this morning.”
“Did you use your cane?”
“I did. And they came to the house so I didn’t have to go to them. Foot elevated and all that. I told you I’d do what you told me as soon as I was able to.”
A picture of Grace flashed up on the television, all decked out in her beautiful deep taupe, sparkly halter gown. “They asked about me?”
Watching the interview and talking to Liam at the same time was...weird.
“Is that you, Grace?” Mrs. Peters asked. “You know that Liam Carter?”
“Yes. And it’s... Yes.” She answered Mrs. Peters first and then added into the phone, “Why were they asking?”
She stopped when Liam’s eighteen-inch head began laughing off the idea of dating her. Just his physical therapist. Just a friend from childhood. Just there to make sure he didn’t do anything silly with his ankle in wraps.
“Wow,” she said into the phone, not even sure what she felt about the denial. The way bighead TV Liam phrased it, the notion was laughable. Like there had been no kissing. No history worth mentioning aside from having been childhood friends. Nothing romantic at all.
“It’s just the way you handle the press, right?” he said, trying to lead her to the same conclusion.
But all she could say was, “Wow.”
Mrs. Peters’s son arrived, having just wandered back inside from the grounds. She needed to go.
“I’ll call you tomorrow to set up your first appointment in two days.” Before he could say anything, she hung up and stashed her phone.
The chair her patient was currently using belonged to the facility, so she needed to transfer her back to her own chair and remove the belt once she was securely seated. She could think about Big Laughing Head Liam later.
Right now she didn’t have room inside her own small head for all...that.
Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy Page 10