“We need to talk,” she said.
ONE HAND ON THE ROOF of Hannah’s little red Toyota, Liam leaned into the car. Her yellow shorts and sleeveless white shirt were all summery sunshine, but her face was tense; her fingers were locked in a death grip around the steering wheel. He met her eyes for a moment and then, on an impulse, climbed in and slammed the door.
“Drive somewhere,” he said.
She didn’t move. “You have a black eye.”
“I hadn’t noticed, but thanks for pointing it out. How’s Faith?”
Her jaw tightened. “Faith’s fine.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it over to see her last night.”
“Really.” She flashed a tight smile. “Well, that was easy, huh? You’re sorry and now everything’s fine.”
“Hannah, look…I couldn’t help—”
“Of course you could. You had a choice. You could spend the night hanging around bars tracking down your singer, or you could be with Faith. Faith lost out.”
He looked at her. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I mean that. I’m sorry if my apology isn’t enough. I’m sorry that I disappointed Faith. I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
“What do I want you to do?” She stared at him. “What do I want you to do? Well, let’s see. For starters I want you to think about what you really mean when you say you want to be part of your daughter’s life.”
“Hannah, look—”
“No, you look. Being a father isn’t something you just do when it suits you, Liam. It’s a full-time commitment, one you’re obviously not ready to make. You might be her biological father, but you know nothing about what it really means to be a father. So, to answer your questions, what I want you to do is stay the hell out of Faith’s life.”
Liam felt her anger like a blow to the chest. Her eyes blazing, body tensed, clearly ready to pounce on the next word from his mouth. It struck him that he’d never actually been the recipient of Hannah’s anger. She’d been upset with him before, but she’d tended to withdraw rather than fight back. In the past, he’d never been quite sure where he stood with her. This time he had no doubt.
“Can we continue this somewhere else?” he asked.
“I have nothing else to say.”
“Well, I do and I’d like a chance to say it. But not here.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.” He saw the massive oak front door to Miranda’s house swing open. Miranda’s blond head emerged briefly, then disappeared. “Anywhere. Someplace where there aren’t multimillion-dollar houses and other testimonials to conspicuous consumption.”
She put the car in drive and pulled slowly away from the curb.
“I’m a hypocrite,” he said. “If it weren’t for Miranda’s multimillion-dollar place, we’d all be kipping in some fleabag.”
“One of your many character flaws,” she said, but there was less heat in her voice.
“A veritable walking flaw,” he said. “That’s me.”
“Does your eye hurt?”
“The pain is excruciating.” He buckled the seat belt. “What about the beach?”
Without a word, she drove out of the complex and north onto Pacific Coast Highway. He watched the jumble of signs and billboards, Hannah’s anger beating a steady tattoo in his brain. A medical office advertised flu shots, the tanning parlor next door had an introductory offer. Doughnut shops and taco stands, yacht brokers and surfing shacks. The breeze through the rolled-down windows tossed Hannah’s hair around, filled the car with the flowery scent he used to dream about. Her thighs and knees beneath her yellow shorts were completely smooth and lightly tanned. You know nothing about what it means to be a father.
“Seal Beach is the closest,” she said.
“Fine.” They drove down a street lined with small shops. Main Street the sign read. There had been a Main Street in one of the towns he’d lived in as a kid. Some place in Armagh, the sort of abandoned-looking crossroads with its strip of narrow, paint-peeled houses that only looked picturesque if you didn’t wake up every morning in one of them. Two bars where his stepdad had spent most of his waking hours, a church in which no one he knew had ever set foot and a newsagent’s where his ma bought packs of Players before she took a notion that she wanted to start her life over in Liverpool free of small boys and other encumbrances.
“Now for the difficult part,” Hannah said as she pulled onto the ocean front. “Finding somewhere to park.”
“Over there.” He pointed to a white van that was pulling out and watched Hannah’s arms as she maneuvered the car into the empty space. Tanned like her legs.
“There,” she said after she’d got the car squeezed in between a dune buggy and a Mercedes convertible. “Pretty good parallel-parking job if I do say so myself.” She turned off the ignition, removed the keys and moved around to face him. “So?”
“Let’s go for a walk.” He got out of the car, came around to her side and pulled open the door. Hannah swung her legs around and sat there for a moment, looking up at him. He could hear gulls screeching behind him, the loud roar of the waves. Wind blew his hair, billowed the back of his shirt. A car passed and he instinctively stepped closer to Hannah. He’d worn an old pair of tan shorts that belonged to Pearse and he felt the warm air on his legs and then the brush of Hannah’s skin against his own. He saw the contact register in her eyes and everything seemed to stop for a moment. And then he leaned into the car and kissed her. When she didn’t immediately pull away, he kissed her again and his brain all but ceased to function.
“Damn you,” she said a moment later. “I’m still furious at you.”
“Go ahead with it then.” She looked as dazed as he felt. “Hit me if it makes you feel any better.”
She caught his face in her hands. “Shut up.”
They kissed again, so hard that he felt her teeth against his lips. Another car zoomed past, inches from where he stood halfway into the car, Hannah almost reclining across the seats. He drew back to look at her.
“I changed my mind about the walk,” he said. “I have a better idea.”
HANNAH SAT UP, ran her fingers through her hair. Liam walked back around the car, opened the passenger door and got in. Dazed, she turned in the seat to look at him. No point now in telling herself this was all about Faith. It wasn’t. She knew it and he knew it. Everything had suddenly changed. Later, her mind would kick in—the analysis, the second-guessing, the regrets. Right now, bodies ruled.
“I’ve got a guitar I want you to give Faith.” He touched her knee, cut his eyes up to her face. “I left it in the tour bus. If I remember rightly, it’s only a minute or so from here, on a lot behind Fiddler’s Green. We can talk there.”
She started the car. As good an excuse as any to find a place where they could rip off each other’s clothes in private. With Liam giving directions, she drove. Her brain was a haze of jumbled thoughts and flashing warnings; her body felt liquid, every nerve loudly proclaiming that without immediate satisfaction, they would all gang up on her and drive her insane with lust.
Five minutes later, she stood behind Liam on the steps of the tour bus, waiting while he unlocked the door. Inside, it was dark and cool and smelled faintly of stale beer and cigarette smoke. A strip of sunlight glimmered from beneath the dark fabric covering the windows, faintly illuminated a small living area furnished with a couple of couches. The green digital numerals of a microwave glowed 4:13 p.m.
She heard the muffled roar of traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, the sound of her own breathing. Liam put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her again, and it was like drowning. No one had ever kissed her like Liam. No mouth had ever felt like Liam’s. Everything about him seemed familiar—the wiry frame of his body, now hard against her own, the shape of his shoulders under her hands. Familiar and yet so dreamlike and insubstantial she wanted to preserve it somehow before it slipped away.
He took her hand, and led her to the couch, where they sat down and kissed again. She
wanted him to keep on kissing her—if he kissed her until tomorrow, it wouldn’t be enough. When they eventually parted, he reached past her to switch on a light and took a small guitar from a box beside the couch.
“This is for Faith,” he said. “There’s a note on the back to her.”
Hannah took the guitar, and tried to emerge from the sexual fog. He’d printed Faith’s name in big block letters, each letter outlined and shaded in a different color. With her finger, Hannah traced the F. Imagined him carefully lettering his daughter’s name.
“Pearse walked in on me as I was doing that,” Liam said. “Gave me a hard time about it, called me Daddy Liam. I threatened to knock his teeth out.”
She set the guitar down. Why would that bother him? It wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on right now.
“Brid got herself in a bit of trouble last night,” Liam said after a moment. “That’s what the scuffle was all about. I’d gone to find her and the idiot she was with didn’t appreciate my showing up. She’s finally admitted she needs help. We’ve got her back at Casa Pacifica until she’s well enough to go on the road again.”
Hannah said nothing. From the couch where she sat, she could see the pictures pinned to a bulletin board on the wall opposite. Brid in black lace, holding a guitar. One of Liam, onstage. Newspaper clippings, a schedule of performances. She folded her hands in her lap. Liam sat close enough that she could feel the heat of his body. The strip of light from beneath the curtains fell in a bar across her thighs, disappeared, then reappeared just below the frayed edge of Liam’s shorts.
Without a word, he drew her onto his lap, and they kissed until she was almost lying across him; her brain gone to mush, her body moving in rhythm to the thrust of his tongue in her mouth. They kept kissing. He pressed the flat of his palm against her crotch, held it there. She groaned and moved against it.
“What’s this all about then, Hannah?”
She caught his hand, held it still. “Well, I’ve got you figured out, Tully. The guitar was just a transparent attempt to get me into this den of iniquity.”
He nuzzled his face in her neck. “You saw right through me.”
“Of course.” Even stilled, the pressure of his palm was driving her crazy. She squeezed it between her thighs. “You think I’m some little bimbo groupie?”
“Aren’t you?” He freed his hand, and made to push her off his lap. “Off with you then. I’m only interested in ladies of easy virtue.”
“There’s something contradictory about ladies and easy virtue,” she said, “but at the moment I’m not thinking too clearly.”
“Well, I can straighten one thing out.” He grinned, his teeth white in the murky light. “This should clear up any thoughts you might have that this is just about Faith.” He kissed her neck, her throat. Stopped to look at her again. “Despite your little lecture, I do want to be part of her life. I’ve never been as serious about anything before. But Faith isn’t the whole picture. I can’t think of her without you.”
Hannah’s arm was still around his neck, her legs across his lap. She thought about what he’d said. Weighed whether to say what was really on her mind, then decided that, if nothing else, they should be honest with each other.
“If we take Faith out of the picture, Liam, I think what we have together pretty much boils down to sex.”
His grin broadened. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“It depends. If it’s the foundation of a relationship, we’re off to a shaky start. We’ve been there. What did we know about each other when we got married? Nothing. And we had nothing in common…except sex.”
“I bet if we’d taken up stamp collecting, we’d still be married today.”
She punched his shoulder.
“Or lawn bowling. Except we’d have probably caused a scandal each time I threw you down on the green and had my way with you.”
“Seriously though. We created Faith, and now here we are again…”
“And it’s still all about sex?”
She squirmed around to look at him. “Tell me how it’s anything else.”
He undid the top button of her blouse, and watched her face as he undid the rest of the buttons. Kept watching as he pulled off her shirt and tossed it on the floor. Didn’t take his eyes away as he snapped open the clasp of her bra.
“If you’re trying to convince me otherwise,” she said as he lowered his mouth to her breasts, “you’re not doing a very good job.”
He said nothing, just circled his tongue around her nipples until she lost herself again in the feel of his hands, his mouth, his tongue. She didn’t need his confirmation. It was all about sex. Always had been, always would be. Which was fine. Maybe every woman needed a guy like Liam. Purely for sex, because you couldn’t count on him for much else. And then, he slid out from under her and stripped off her shorts and panties.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SHORTS CAUGHT around her foot. He unsnagged them, lifted her legs and swept all her clothes to the floor. The couch was some sort of fake leather and it felt cool and a little damp under her bare skin. Liam stood above her for a moment, watching her. A little self-conscious and grateful for the dim light, she shifted slightly and clasped her hands behind her head. Still in his khaki shorts and T-shirt, Liam trailed his fingers down over her stomach, then kneeled between her legs.
“The last time I saw you naked, we had a fight.” He kissed the inside of her thighs, and parted them with his hands. “Do you remember? We were living in that place in San José?”
“The place with the fire escape outside. There was a woman downstairs who…” She stopped, her breath uneven as she felt his tongue move inside her. A sound escaped from her throat, loud and surprised to her ears. Liam glanced up at her, caught her ankles and draped her legs around his shoulders. For an instant, she saw it all through the eyes of a detached observer. A couch in a dimly lit tour bus. Liam’s dark head between her thighs. Her own pale body: breasts, stomach, bare feet on either side of his neck. An afternoon tryst. A little tawdry maybe, an experience she’d be unlikely to reveal to anyone, but more exciting somehow because of that. Briefly she wondered about other women who may have lain on this couch with Liam.
And then she stopped thinking altogether. With his tongue inside her, she lost herself in heat and sensation. Her unchecked cries filled the air; her hips rose higher and higher. Building, building, her body arching spasmodically. A vibration had started somewhere inside her, a done of bees growing louder and louder. “Oh yes, yes…” Every nerve in her body was screaming now, the hum filling her brain.
“Liam, I’m…I think I’m going to… Oh yes, yes…” She collapsed against the couch. In an instant, Liam was out of his clothes and driving into her, his breathing harsh, his mouth against her neck.
When he came, moments later, he toppled off her, pulling her with him from the narrow couch to the floor. They both started laughing. Bodies, slick with sweat, legs still entwined, wedged between the couch and a low coffee table, they laughed and laughed and kissed some more.
“God, Hannah, I love you,” he said. “I’ve never stopped loving you.”
BUT EXACTLY WHAT they were going to do about it was another matter, Liam reflected as Hannah drove him back to Miranda’s. Hannah had chosen to ignore his declaration. Had probably put it down to the sort of postcoital ardor that would cool almost as soon as the clothes went back on. She hadn’t expressed similar feelings for him, and he hadn’t asked. Now he felt let down and morose.
They’d had their fling—he could almost hear Hannah thinking—now he could make her life a whole lot simpler by getting back on the bus and riding off. Which was probably the best thing he could do for everyone in the long run, himself included.
But he wanted his daughter and he wanted his ex-wife. A few days ago, Brid had asked him whether he missed being close to someone. He’d responded with a joke. Either he hadn’t really known the answer, or he hadn’t recognized his own needs. Now he did.
Except that his daughter didn’t know him, and her mother didn’t love him.
“Beverly, that was the name of the woman downstairs,” Hannah said suddenly. She turned to look at him. “That place in San José with the fire escape. Beverly lived in the apartment below ours. Beverly Mc-something or other.”
Liam roused himself from his gloomy musings. “I don’t remember a woman downstairs,” he said.
“Really?” Hannah gave him a skeptical look. “You don’t remember how we used to sleep outside on the fire escape because it was so hot in the apartment? One night, you had no clothes on and you said it didn’t matter because no one could see you and then the next day Beverly said you had a cute butt. You don’t remember that?”
He shook his head. Not only did he not remember, he didn’t care. What the hell did any of that matter?
“That’s what the fight was about.” Hannah stopped for a light, turned again to look at him. “Beverly was always coming on to you. You have to remember her. Long blond hair, big boobs?”
Liam shook his head. “As I recall, we fought because I wanted you to sleep naked and you insisted on covering yourself up with this frilly little cotton nightie you had. Rosebuds around the neck.”
“You remember that nightgown?”
“It’s what you always wore.”
“Oh God.” She shook her head. “I guess I was kind of on the modest side. Prudish. Self-conscious. I don’t know.”
“I could never understand why.”
She smiled.
“I’m serious.”
“Oh come on, Liam. How could I not be? There were always women fawning all over you. Fantastic-looking women. They’d stare at me, and I knew they were thinking, ‘God, what’s he doing with her?’ And then all the nights you didn’t come home till three and I could smell cigarettes and perfume…”
Keeping Faith Page 15