Off the Hook

by Laura Drewry

  Kate, on the other hand, was an outsider who felt a little like a vulture, hovering around its prey until it could swoop in and claim the corpse.

  Unfortunately for all of them, she’d told Jessie the truth about her cooking skills, so dinner wasn’t going to be anything spectacular, but even Kate couldn’t screw up pasta. With the beef browning for the sauce and the big pot of water on to boil, she puttered around the kitchen, chopping up veggies and cutting up the last half of a loaf of French bread. Every meal was better with garlic bread, right?

  And the whole time she worked, one part of Liam’s apology played over and over in her head, so she was thankful he was the first one into the kitchen, because that gave her a chance to ask him about it in relative privacy.

  “What did you mean earlier when you said, no matter what I wanted, you couldn’t change who you were?”

  “Well, I couldn’t,” he said, as if that cleared it all up.

  It took Kate a second to say anything else, because she was stupidly distracted by the way his T-shirt stretched over the expanse of his back when he reached into the fridge for some beers. If only she didn’t know what it felt like to slide her hands up that back and—

  Stop it!

  Over a long blink, she turned back toward the stove to stir the sauce, which was already bubbling over a little.

  “But what does that mean? What did you think I wanted?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, she glanced over her shoulder to see him frowning as he popped the tops off the bottles and set them down.

  “Well, looking back, I don’t think I honestly knew what you wanted; I only knew what I wanted.”

  And that obviously wasn’t her.

  “I wanted to play ball, Kate, I had to play ball, and I couldn’t risk getting off track by what anyone else wanted. And I sure as hell couldn’t do something like set up house with you in Vancouver when my home was in Detroit.”

  “What are you talking about, setting up house?” And why were her hands trembling like that? It wasn’t as if it was news to her that he hadn’t wanted her back then, so why did it still hurt? “I never said anything about you giving up Detroit, did I?”

  “Maybe not directly, but…”

  “But what?” Spinning, Kate accidentally knocked the wooden spoon out of the pot and sent it flying to the floor. “I must have said or done something to make you leave like that.”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” he said, his frown deepening. “Just that you started talking about finding us an apartment in Vancouver and…I don’t know. Stuff.”

  “Well, yeah,” she scoffed as she wiped up the sauce and tossed the spoon into the sink. “I don’t remember you inviting me to go to Detroit with you, not even after I stupidly quit my job. The room I was renting from my disgusting pig of a landlord was going to be way too small for the two of us, and I assumed, in my ignorance, that you’d at least come to see me once in a while. I didn’t expect—”

  Before she could finish, Jessie and Finn walked in and stopped short, both of them shifting their gazes between Kate and Liam.

  “Oh God,” Jessie muttered. “What did he do now?”

  “What?” Liam cried, palms out. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Dismissing his brother completely, Finn turned to Kate. “What did he do?”

  “Actually,” she said over a soft snort, “this one’s probably on both of us. It would appear that during our long and fruitful marriage, Liam and I might have had a wee bit of a communication problem.”

  “Shocking.” This time it was Jessie who snorted, but neither Liam nor Finn looked amused.

  “From the sounds of it, I guess I said some things that made Sporto here think I wanted things he didn’t.” She turned to Liam. “Or did you think I wanted you to give up ball?”

  Liam’s hesitation was as good as an answer to not only Kate but Finn, too, who sank onto the nearest chair and cocked his brow at Kate.

  “Did you?” he asked.

  “Did I what—say something? It was ten years ago; I don’t honestly remember. But I do know we never had a conversation about what either one of us wanted, so that was obviously a problem.”

  “And what was it that you wanted?”

  Kate frowned as she set the sauce on the table. Was this really any of Finn’s business? Did any of it matter now?

  “I guess I wanted my husband to want to be with me, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to give up baseball for me, for crying out loud. We might not have known each other very well, and clearly we didn’t put much thought into anything before we marched into that chapel, but what I did know I liked well enough, so why would I suddenly want to change the thing that meant the most to him?”

  Going by the looks on Liam’s and Finn’s faces, neither one of them was sure if that was a rhetorical question or not.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Jessie said. “Save your breath, because no matter what you say, you won’t change their minds about the evil that is woman. The O’Donnell men believe that women live for the sole purpose of screwing them over, of trying to change them and make them give up everything they want for her.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Kate said, heading back to the sink, where the pasta was draining. “There were a few things I would have changed right out of the gate.”

  From the corner of her eye, she caught the knowing look that Finn shot Liam, but before either of them could say anything, she continued.

  “Like his leaving the lid off the toothpaste, for one—that got old real fast—and peeing with the bathroom door open. I mean, come on.”

  “That’s just gross,” Jessie said, her voice thick with disgust. “Nobody wants to listen to that.”

  “Right?”

  “What—you two don’t pee?” Liam asked, the scorn dripping from each word.

  “Not with the door open,” Kate shot back. “We’re not barnyard animals.”

  The look that passed between Liam and Finn this time wasn’t quite so cocky or knowing.

  “So you’re saying you wouldn’t have wanted him to quit playing ball?” Finn asked, his blue-green eyes narrowing. “That everything would have just gone along the way it had been?”

  “Well, no, I’m sure some things would have had to change, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Finn nodded. “Some things. That’s how it always starts, and then one day he would’ve woken up to find himself sitting behind a desk, working a nine-to-five job he hates, but he has to do it because it pays for the pink stucco house you wanted. You’ll have him giving up red meat for kale, drinking wheatgrass every morning, and before he knows it, he’ll be asking permission to go out for a beer with his buddies.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on a second. Before you accuse me of anything I’ve never even had the chance to do, let’s get one thing straight right now.” Kate set the pasta out as the rest of them sat down. “Kale is the work of the devil, and while a glass of wheatgrass every once in a while isn’t going to kill anyone, I wouldn’t trade a good hamburger for anything in the world.”

  Neither Finn nor Liam so much as cracked a smile. Okay. Tough crowd.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “We might have been young and stupid, Finn, but neither one of us was a child, so I don’t understand why, when you don’t know anything about me, you think it’s okay to sit there and accuse me of these ridiculous things.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything,” Finn said with a shrug. “I’m only suggesting that you’d want to change things about him, make him do things he normally wouldn’t, stop him from doing other things he normally would.”

  “Like what?” she scoffed. “Eat kale? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t force that crap down his throat, because in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s significantly bigger and stronger than I am.”

  Liam leaned forward, reaching for the bread. “Can we just eat?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Please.”

  “Hang on.” Finn shook his head slowly. “You’re tell
ing me that no matter what you want or what you like, you’d let him keep doing whatever he wants—even if it’s…I don’t know…going to a strip club with his buddies?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean by ‘let him.’ I mean, what am I in this scenario, his warden?”

  “Well, yeah.” The look on Finn’s face was priceless: certainty giving way to a healthy dose of confusion.

  “Told ya,” Jessie muttered. “Crazy runs deep in this crew.”

  “Give it up, Finn,” Liam muttered. “Let’s just eat.”

  “Uh, no,” Kate said, chuckling over the absurdity that was this conversation. “Obviously your brother and I weren’t together long enough to figure things out, but hypothetically speaking, if we’d stayed together, there absolutely would have been things that pissed us off about each other. Last I checked, though, this was still a free country, and one of the joys of being an adult—which, believe it or not, is what you O’Donnells are—is that you don’t need anyone’s permission to do anything.”

  “Uh-huh,” Finn grunted, adding an eye roll for effect. “Sure.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I mean, frankly, I don’t want to be with any guy who feels the need to go to strip clubs on a regular basis, but in this hypothetical world, if he and I were together and he wanted to go to one with his buddies, that’s his business and God bless him, so long as he doesn’t get all pissy when I want to do it with my girls.”

  With a mouthful of bread, her eyes wide, Jessie leaned closer and mumbled from behind her hand, “You’ve been to strip clubs? What’s that like?”

  “Ugh,” Kate answered over a short gag and a shudder. “I went once with some friends and it was awful. I mean, really? Some random dude shaking his junk all up in your face? No thank you.”

  As Kate finished, Liam leaned over his plate and started twirling spaghetti around his fork, and even though she couldn’t see his whole face, Kate would have sworn he was smiling.

  She’d obviously hit a nerve with Finn, though, because he wasn’t even smirking.

  “So you’re saying you wouldn’t get all mad and cry and carry on to make him stay home,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “You’d just let him go.”

  “Again with the ‘let’ him. What is that?” Jessie was obviously right; these guys had some issues. “I don’t understand why he’d want to be with me if he felt he had to ask permission for everything, and guilting a person into doing something or trying to make him stay with me when he doesn’t want to, well, that’s stupid.”

  Finn raised his left brow and tipped his head to the side. He didn’t believe her, and while she knew it shouldn’t matter one iota what Finn O’Donnell thought of her, it did. And that’s what ticked her off the most.

  Whatever problem these O’Donnells had with women had nothing to do with her, and yet Finn had gone and lumped her into their pile of rubbish without even giving her a chance to show them who she really was.

  “Look, Finn, I learned a long time ago that I can’t force someone to want to be with me, and it’s a huge waste of energy even trying.”

  “So when you and a dude are together, you let him do whatever he wants? Go where he wants, see who he wants, without giving him grief about it…” He trailed off for a second, shaking his head. “Yeah, right.”

  “Is he going to ‘let’ me do whatever I want? Go where I want, see who I want, without giving me grief?”

  “Guys don’t do that.”

  “Oh, really?” she scoffed. “I don’t know what kind of dreamworld you’re living in, but here’s a news flash for you: Guys can be just as bitchy as women when they want to be.”

  “Can we please just eat?” Jessie muttered, but the only one with food on his fork was Liam. Kate was waiting for Finn to admit he was wrong—at least about her—and that didn’t look as if it was about to happen soon. Instead, he kept on pushing.

  “Is that right?” he said. “Well, I’m sorry, Kate, but every single woman out there wants to change the guy she’s with. You all push and push and push until we snap and then you blame us for it.”

  “Every single woman?” Kate repeated. “And you’ve done the research on that, have you?”

  “I’ve had some experience with it, yeah, and while you seem like a nice woman, Kate, I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t have done the same thing to Liam.”

  This conversation had gone from weird to annoying to downright offensive, until the inside of Kate’s stomach burned.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, using the last of her self-control to stay calm. “But whatever experiences you’ve had, none of them were with me. I never did anything to change who Liam was or what he wanted. I mean, for the love of God, did I even have time? The only thing I ever did was apparently say something that was misinterpreted, but he left without waiting to find out what I meant, which clearly suggests he wasn’t all that interested in finding out. He wanted to leave and it didn’t matter what I wanted, so there wasn’t a single tearful phone call, email, or text message from me begging him to change his mind, to come back, or at the very least to float me a loan so I had something other than stale Doritos to eat all day.”

  She heard Jessie click her tongue, but Kate didn’t know if it was directed at her or at Liam. Either way, she kept on talking.

  “The two of you can blame womankind for everything until the cows come home, I don’t really care, but bottom line, your brother left me in that hotel room because he didn’t want to be with me. Plain and simple. Did I want to call him after he left? You have no idea how much, but what good would that have done? Would hearing me cry make him want to come back and give us a chance? No, all that would’ve done was make me feel even more pathetic than I already did.”

  How could admitting that Liam didn’t want her, something she’d come to accept a long time ago, still make her eyes prickle and her throat thicken? And why the hell was she letting herself get so worked up?

  “Kate—” Finn started, easing his accusing tone back a notch.

  Oh no, Kate thought. You wanted to go there, Finn; we’re there.

  “I don’t know what kind of bullshit you guys have been through,” she said, shaking her head. “But you obviously believe that every woman out there is some kind of raving bitch.”

  She didn’t even slow down when Finn’s eyes rolled again; oh hell no.

  “And while Liam and I might have been stupid, I never did anything to him that would warrant me being heaped into that bitch pile with everyone else. So you want to roll your eyes at me, Finn, you go right ahead, but Liam knows I’m right.”

  She’d never been one of those dramatic girls, never liked to cause a scene, but she just couldn’t keep sitting there. Who the hell did Finn think he was anyway?

  “Excuse me,” she said, lifting her plate. “But I think it’s probably better if I take this to my cabin so we can all eat in peace.”

  Plate in one hand, beer in the other, she headed straight out the back door and toward her cabin. Dark or not, she didn’t care. If a bear wanted to tangle with her tonight, he was going to be sorry.

  She only made it about halfway when she heard the lodge door behind her swing open and shut again.

  Damn it.

  “Kate, wait up.” Liam’s long strides covered the distance in a few short seconds.

  “Go eat your supper,” she said, picking up her pace. “I left to get away from you idiots, not to have you follow me out here and piss me off more.”

  Instead of turning around, he fell into step beside her. “I’m sorry about Finn.”

  Balancing her plate on the mouth of her bottle, Kate had her hand on the door latch before she turned to face him, and that was a mistake. Why did he have to be so damn cute? To make it worse, he was even cuter when he looked at her like that, trouble brewing in his blue eyes. His hands were unable to keep still for more than a few seconds at a time, so he alternated between running them over his head and messing up his hair to stuffing them i
n his pockets.

  “And I’m sorry I walked out like that,” Kate finally managed. “I know he’s your family, so you need to have each other’s backs, but he doesn’t even know me.”

  “I know.” He nodded slowly, then sighed. “And I’m sorry, I should have shut him up, because you were right what you said in there, it’s just…”

  “It’s just what?” she prodded, wishing he’d hurry up and say whatever he wanted to say so she could go inside and eat. She might be cranky, but she was also hungry, and when he didn’t make any move to leave, she shuffled her plate back to her left hand so she could take a long swig from her bottle.

  Liam’s mouth twisted a little before he looked down at his boot and scuffed it across the snow. “I always thought the reason you didn’t call me after Vegas was because you were happy we split up.”

  Were all men this stupid?

  “Split up?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it at all. “You make it sound like it was a mutual decision. I didn’t contact you because I’m not the bitch you and your stupid-ass brother assume I am. I might have been dumb and naïve back then, but you made it pretty clear you didn’t want to be with me, and as much as that hurt, I was smart enough to know that chasing you and begging you to come back was the worst thing I could have done.”

  “Come on, Kate.”

  “No.” Bottle in hand, she pressed the back of her wrist against her forehead and closed her eyes for a second. “I don’t mean for you to feel guilty when I say that, it’s just the way it was. Those are the facts. Believe it or not, I’d never hooked up with a guy the way I did with you, and I know we weren’t even together a week, so it sounds completely ridiculous to say, but I liked you a lot and I honestly thought we had something. I thought you were special. Clearly you didn’t think the same way, and that’s…that’s…fine.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, really?” She snorted. “Well, call me crazy, but if it meant anything to you, why did you leave? And even after, if you changed your mind, why didn’t you do anything about it? It doesn’t take a genius to track someone down these days, but if I hadn’t shown up here, we never would have spoken to each other again.”