Loving the Storm

by Linda Seed

  Thinking about work was easier than thinking about her feelings for Liam—or facing his family with those feelings surging through her. So she threw herself into constructing the yurt.

  The structure was really taking shape. The exterior was more than halfway covered with the detritus she’d recovered from the area’s shorelines.

  She’d thought she wouldn’t be able to find much trash in Cambria, which looked to her like an unusually clean town, but when she expanded her search from the beaches to the bed of the creek that ran through the area and out to the ocean, she struck gold.

  It turned out that the area’s homeless favored the creek as a kind of home base, and an abandoned encampment had yielded fast food wrappers, Styrofoam cups, plastic shopping bags, syringes (she carefully washed these in bleach and removed the needles for her safety), beer and liquor bottles, stained mattresses (not much use to her for her current purposes), chip bags, and so much else that she likely wouldn’t have to look anywhere else for the remainder of her project.

  Once she was settled in the barn with adequate lighting and a space heater blowing warm air, she sorted through the boxes of crap she’d brought back from the creek and began the painstaking process of arranging it like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the exterior of the yurt.

  Before the baby came, Gen had been talking to galleries about taking the piece—with Aria herself as an integral part of it—and she was beginning to see some interest. There were certain logistics involved in showing a performance piece of this nature and of this size, and that had eliminated a lot of places from the outset. But Gen had a good list of galleries that had the capacity to handle the piece and that also meshed with Aria’s artistic vision. She was focusing mainly on the West Coast because of the difficulty of transporting the piece. It was going to have to travel by truck rather than by air, and while it wasn’t out of the question to have it moved cross-country via roadway, it would be simpler and cheaper to stick to Los Angeles, San Francisco, or possibly Seattle.

  A gallery in Santa Barbara was considering it, Gen had said, and that would certainly be easy enough to manage, given the proximity. But Aria wanted the piece in a gallery that would boost her visibility and reputation, and that meant a major city. The piece would be easier for Gen to pitch when it was finished, though, so Aria threw herself into it, gluing Big Mac containers and empty Cheeto bags, orange juice bottles, and Budweiser cans onto the structure.

  She’d been working for hours—warm now both from exertion and from the space heater, her mind busy with plans for her career and her life—when she realized she wasn’t alone in the barn.

  The realization came so suddenly and took her so much by surprise that she gasped, standing up straight with a piece of trash in one hand and a bottle of glue in the other.

  “Hey, hey. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Liam was standing in the doorway of the barn, looking tall and manly and impossibly appealing. He was just standing there, neither advancing nor retreating.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Aria said.

  She was surprised she hadn’t sensed him—lately, it felt like she was so attuned to him that she might know where he was or what he was doing even if he were in China, maybe, or the wilds of Alaska.

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said. “You looked so busy. And … it was nice just to watch you.”

  The idea that he’d been standing there silently watching her might have been creepy, but instead, it was hot. And she didn’t want him to be hot right now. Not that there was a damned thing either of them could do about it.

  “Ah … I was just …” She gestured toward the yurt, feeling unexplainably flustered.

  “Merry Christmas.” He grinned, and she felt it seep through her like warm honey. “I brought you something,” he said.

  She didn’t see the small, wrapped gift in his hand until he came over to her and held it out. She looked at it but didn’t take it.

  “It’s just something I thought you’d … I was going to give it to you at the house, but …” His face was coloring slightly with embarrassment.

  Of course Aria had known that he might give her a gift, but somehow the gesture was surprising all the same. He was standing there with such hope and nervous anticipation on his face that it nearly broke her heart.

  “It’s not much.” He shrugged. “Just a little something. Here, take it.”

  Her failure to take the gift from him was becoming awkward for both of them, so she accepted the square, wrapped package and held it in both of her hands.

  “Open it,” he prompted her.

  She untied the red ribbon, then carefully removed the paper—red and green with cheerful Santas—to reveal a plain cardboard box. She opened the box, pulled out an object covered in bubble wrap, and then began uncovering the contents.

  When she saw what Liam had given her, Aria simply stared at it. The piece of glass in her hands caught the glow from the skylight over her head, and it shone in fiery, sparkling shades of green and blue.

  “This is one of Daniel’s,” she said, still looking at the piece, at the way the sunlight flashed and played within it as she turned it in her hands.

  “Yeah. Gen said you liked his stuff, so I went over there and asked him if he had anything he thought would be right. I hope it is. Right, I mean.” He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

  He’d gotten it right—so right that it was hard to imagine the reason for his uncertainty. The piece was beautiful, dramatic in its shapes and colors, graceful in its undulating curves, as though it were made especially to fit in the palms of her hands.

  “Liam.” That was all she could seem to say.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  When she’d seen Daniel’s full-sized piece for which this smaller one was a prelude, she’d been awestruck, feeling that squeeze to the heart that only came from art that truly spoke to someone. It had reminded her of so many things: the sky, the ocean, calm summer days with a storm lurking over the horizon. It had reminded her of something she couldn’t name, some feeling of safety and belonging that she’d never quite managed to grasp in her own life.

  And now that feeling was here, in her hands.

  She was starting to get emotional, and that wasn’t okay—not with Liam here, watching intently for her reaction.

  “I … I really need to get back to work.” She put the piece of glass on her worktable, grabbed a bucket full of various pieces of creek trash and a bottle of glue, and climbed into the yurt to work on the interior.

  She knew she was acting like a kid who hid inside a blanket fort to avoid some unpleasantry like cleaning her room or eating peas. But this was an unpleasantry much more daunting than either of those things.

  This was love.

  “Aria?” Liam, standing just outside the entrance to the yurt, sounded confused.

  She poked her head out. “Thank you for the gift, Liam. I … thank you. I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, and she saw a range of emotions cross his face: dismay, irritation, resignation.

  “All right. I’ll come to the guesthouse about five, unless—”

  “That’s all right. I’ll meet you at the house.”

  “But—”

  “I have a lot of work. It’s better if I just go over there on my own.”

  She could see that he was hurt, and she felt a tight squeeze inside her chest. He nodded, turned, and walked out of the barn without another word.

  Aria sat back in the yurt, sighed, and covered her face with her hands. She let out a scream of frustration, muffled so he wouldn’t hear. Then she picked up her materials and got back to work.

  “She hated it.”

  Liam was in the kitchen at Ryan and Gen’s house, where Gen was bouncing James on her shoulder, apparently trying to get him to burp. Ryan was at the sink putting dishes into the dishwasher, a job tha
t apparently hadn’t been done in a while. The kitchen looked like hurricane-force winds had recently passed through.

  Liam leaned back against the counter, his hands in his pockets.

  “What?” Gen said. “That’s crazy. She didn’t hate it.”

  “Well, she acted like she hated it.” He scowled, pulled the hands out of his pockets, and stuffed them into his armpits.

  “Did she say she hated it?”

  “Well … no.” In fact, it had seemed as though she liked the gift—right up until the moment she kicked him out of the barn and refused to let him pick her up for dinner.

  “Then what are you worried about? Daniel said you chose a piece that he thought was perfect for her.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Liam. What?” Gen wiggled the baby around and patted him on the back until he let out a satisfying belch. The table in front of her was littered with a variety of baby-related implements: pacifiers, blankets, clean diapers, boxes of wipes, and other things the uses of which Liam couldn’t name.

  “She kicked me out,” he said, feeling frustrated and maybe a little pathetic. “Said she had to work, basically told me not to let the barn door hit me in the ass.”

  “Well, maybe she did have to work.”

  “On Christmas Day?”

  Gen carefully laid the baby down in a bassinet set up in a corner of the kitchen, watched him to see if he was going to settle, and then, satisfied, turned to Liam. A cloth draped over her shoulder was dotted with something off-white that had probably come out of the baby. She saw where he was looking and plucked the thing off of her shoulder.

  “Artists are different than other people,” Gen said dismissively. “They work when they feel inspired. They keep odd hours. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Huh.” The scowl was still on Liam’s face, and his posture suggested that he was looking for an excuse to punch somebody. Since he couldn’t punch Gen or even Ryan, considering his status as a new father, there was nowhere for his feelings to go.

  He picked up a teething ring, turned it over in his hands, then put it down again.

  “You want me to talk to her?” Gen offered. “See if I can figure out what the problem is? If there even is one?”

  He raised his eyebrows, hopeful. “Would you mind?”

  “I can’t imagine why she would,” Ryan said, looking over his shoulder from where he was working at the sink. “It’s not like she’s got anything else going on right now.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Gen said. “I’ll do it.”

  Liam nodded a few times. “When?”

  Gen made a shooing motion with her hands. “Get out of my kitchen.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Liam tried not to think about it, and got on with the rest of his day. Christmas Day or not, there was work to do on the ranch before he could knock off early to enjoy the holiday.

  He went about doing the chores that couldn’t wait—feeding and watering the horses, checking on a new calf, and working with a filly they’d gotten the week before—and then went home and took a shower so he wouldn’t smell like cow shit.

  Trying not to think about Aria worked about as well as he’d expected: the more he didn’t focus on her, the more she was persistently on his mind.

  He was aware that this Christmas dinner wasn’t just any Christmas dinner. Inviting a woman for a holiday meal was a big step. Of course, she’d had dinner with his family before. But that was a getting-to-know-you thing. This was different. This had symbolism. This was Liam introducing Aria as his significant other. He wasn’t stupid enough to present it to Aria that way, but changing what you called the thing didn’t change the thing itself.

  As he stood in the hot shower, the water soothing his always hard-worked muscles, he thought about women, and relationships, and holidays.

  Exactly two other women in his life had meant enough to him to be presented to the family the way he was presenting Aria. Both of them had eventually cheated on him, resulting in the dissolution of the relationship.

  When women got involved with Liam, they had a tendency to discover they were happier with someone else. Was that due to a problem with him? Was it a character flaw in the women he chose? Or was it just bad luck and poor timing?

  He got out of the shower and wrapped himself in a towel, still thinking about it.

  Would the curse continue? Was Aria going to end up cheating on him? For her to cheat, she’d first have to admit they were in a relationship—something she could actually cheat on—and the chances of that happening seemed slim.

  As he dressed for dinner—his usual jeans and flannel shirt, as the Delaney family didn’t stand on ceremony—he thought about his uncle Redmond.

  Redmond had been alone for as long as Liam could remember. He’d slept on a twin-size bed in a small room in the house where he’d grown up. He’d never dated, never brought a woman home, never had anyone to kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas or even to hold hands with during a walk by the creek.

  What Liam hadn’t known at the time was that Redmond was alone because he hadn’t gone after the love of his life. He’d let her go, let her live her life with someone else. But he’d never gotten over her. He’d never moved on.

  With every passing day, Liam was more certain that Aria was the love of his life, and if he let her go, he would be like Redmond, sleeping alone in the room where he’d grown up, stoically mourning what he’d lost.

  When he was a kid, there was nothing he’d wanted more than to be like his uncle. But now, that possibility—at least where love was concerned—seemed unbearably sad.

  As he sat on the edge of his bed, pulling on his shoes and tying them, he knew he had to go after Aria. She was his turning point. He had two choices: He could let this pass him by and live a life that was structured, predictable, ordinary. Or he could win her over, and his life could be so much more.

  He wanted what Ryan had with Gen, and what Colin had with Julia. Hell, he wanted what Drew had with Megan.

  He didn’t want to screw around. He didn’t want to date.

  He wanted love.

  He wanted Aria and all she represented.

  Aria had been burned so many times that she was terrified of anything that might be real. He understood that. He respected her survival instinct, which was the only thing that had kept her going until now.

  But whether he respected it or not, he had to find a way to get past it.

  He had to find a way to get her out of her protective shell so she could accept everything he had to give.

  He went downstairs with a sense of determination and a sense of hope.

  This thing with Aria was going to happen. He just had to find a way to make it happen.

  Aria showed up at the Delaney house with the gifts she’d bought for Breanna’s boys and Gen’s baby, and a bottle of wine that she’d picked up at De-Vine on Main Street the day before. She felt jittery, and it had nothing to do with the strong coffee she’d been drinking throughout the day.

  Gen had called her earlier at the guesthouse to ask whether she’d liked Liam’s gift. She’d reassured Gen that she’d loved it. But there was a lot she hadn’t said.

  She hadn’t told Gen that when he’d given her the gift, she’d felt her composure blow apart into a million tiny fragments that could never be reassembled.

  It wasn’t the gift itself. It was the way the gift had made her feel.

  She’d opened it and held it in her hands, and one simple sentence had popped into her head and had nearly escaped her mouth before she’d been able to stop it.

  That sentence was, I love you.

  She couldn’t fall in love with Liam. She couldn’t leave herself open that way, couldn’t run the risk that he would take what she had to give and then crush her.

  She’d considered skipping out on the dinner, maybe claiming illness. But she had reassured Gen on the phone that everything was fine. She could hardly now claim to have a raging case of the Ebola virus.
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  So, here she was, bearing a bottle of pinot noir that Rose Bachman—the wine expert at De-Vine—had assured her was a good choice. When Breanna opened the door for her, Aria smiled and made small talk as though her insides weren’t fluttering with dread and nerves.

  Liam wasn’t in the room, thankfully, so Breanna ushered Aria in and introduced her to Colin and Julia, who hadn’t been here the last time Aria had visited.

  Colin was noticeably different than the other Delaney brothers—more polished and sophisticated. Based on the way he carried himself, she wasn’t surprised when she learned he had once been an associate at a large law firm.

  Julia, with her thick, auburn hair and pale, freckled complexion, was pretty but approachable. She was so friendly to Aria—taking her by the hand and leading her to the sofa in front of the fireplace for a getting-to-know-you chat—that Aria wondered why. Then she put two and two together and realized this was the sister of the man who’d stolen Liam’s girlfriend.

  The friendliness was guilt by association, no doubt. If Liam ended up happy with someone else, then Julia would be able to stop feeling bad about what her brother had done.

  Not that your family’s actions were your fault, or had anything to do with you. Aria knew that as well as anyone.

  “Your brother is Liam’s cousin, right?” Aria asked tentatively, throwing the question out there just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken.

  “My half brother. His biological father was Liam’s uncle Redmond.” Julia went through the main points of the story: how Redmond had an affair with Julia and Drew’s mother decades before; how their mother had kept the truth about Drew’s parentage a secret; how Redmond had left Drew a substantial part of his fortune in his will; and how Julia had met Colin when he’d come to Montana looking for Drew.

  “Is Drew coming here for Christmas, then?” Aria wanted to know. If he was—if he was bringing Liam’s ex to the family dinner table for the holidays—that was going to be awkward as hell.