“What I’m saying,” she told him with conviction, “is that Neal deserves to be happy and I hope he is. Someone told me that he’d gotten engaged recently. If it’s true, I just hope the woman realizes that Neal is a very special man and that she’s very lucky. I wish Neal and his future wife nothing but the very best.”
Liam looked somewhat surprised by her good wishes for a man who had once shared her bed. And she meant that, he could tell by the look in her eyes. It was all too calm and genteel for him.
“You do?”
“Yes. Why?” Why did he look so surprised to hear her say that?
Liam shrugged. “Nothing. You just seem very complacent about all this and that wasn’t what I’d heard through the grapevine,” he told her.
The grapevine. Not exactly the most straightforward source of honest news, she thought. She didn’t bother asking him what it was that he had heard. Lies didn’t bear repeating, not even once.
“Well, people like to talk, it helps while away the time, I guess. And if the facts make something dull, well, can’t have that, can we?” she asked sarcastically. She didn’t care for gossip and it was all the worse when it was about her. “But if you want the truth, I really do wish him well.”
“Well, my hat’s off to you,” Liam told her in all honesty. “And him, I guess.”
She’d followed him up to a point, but now he’d veered off again. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I take it that you broke it off with him.”
She did her best to keep a poker face. “Why would you say that?”
She actually had to ask him that? He found it amusing, but he played along, giving her a reason. “You never struck me as someone who just went along with things if she didn’t like the way those things were going.” She was nothing if not a scrapper. Maybe that was one of the things that he found attractive about her.
“Well, if you must know, yes, I broke it off with Neal, which is why I’m glad he found someone else.” She didn’t like having him on her conscience. She could still remember his expression—shock mingled with sorrow—when she’d finally gotten through to him.
“And he went quietly, huh?” Liam mused, seemingly marveled and clearly surprised by the man’s behavior.
“Yes. Why?” It was her turn to push the question.
“Nothing.” He shrugged carelessly again. “But if it was me and my woman had decided that it was over between us and told me she was taking off, well, I wouldn’t just meekly lie there and take it. I’d do something about it. I’d do something about getting her back,” he said with conviction. “And I’d do it fast, before she had time to get used to the situation.”
“Oh, you mean like hog-tie her and leave her in the barn until she was going to come to her senses?” she scoffed, her voice a mixture between being flip and a tad contemptuous.
“Well, maybe not that—” he conceded, then tagged on, “unless it was a last resort.” His reply was followed by a wide, amused grin.
She knew he was kidding, but there was something in his eyes, something about the way he was looking at her, that caused a little thrill to tango up her spine and back down again. For just a fraction of a second, she felt that he was talking about the two of them—even though logically, she silently insisted, he really couldn’t possibly be. After all, there was nothing between them. They hadn’t even gone out.
And yet…
They looked at one another for what seemed like one of the very longest moments on record, interrupted finally by someone clearing his throat. Belatedly, she looked over to see that their waiter had returned with their covered meals on a cart.
“I can come back later if you wish,” he offered, ready to wheel the cart with their meals on it away for a little longer.
“No,” she replied to the young man. “You came just in time.”
She thought she heard Liam murmur, “Amen to that,” but she wasn’t sure it wasn’t just her imagination giving voice to her own thoughts.
Chapter Eight
“So, what do you think?” Julia asked him as they walked out of the restaurant more than an hour later.
She did her best not to sound eager, not to sound as if his answer was as important to her as it was. They’d talked all through the meal, but he hadn’t commented at all about the restaurant, even though she had given him ample opportunity to do so. And, after all, the only reason they were here was to check out the restaurant to see what it had to offer.
Liam was, she thought, a rather difficult nut to crack. During the course of the meal, he had managed to ask her a great many questions about herself while volunteering next to nothing about himself.
Then, again, she probably knew about as much about him as there was to know. He’d been rather transparent in his dealings in high school.
Still, after the lunch they had just had, accompanied by his twenty questions, he owed her, she decided.
Liam was squinting, trying to acclimate himself to what seemed like intense sunlight at this point after having been inside the dim restaurant for so long. It was a little like emerging out of a cave after a very long, dark winter. “What I think is that it’s too damn dark in that place.”
She should have known he’d say something flippant like that. The man had a knack for dodging direct statements whenever it suited him.
“Besides that,” she countered as they circled to the lot behind the restaurant, where he’d parked his truck. “What did you think of the food, the service, the selection on the menu?” she prompted since the man wasn’t volunteering anything on his own. After all, that was supposed to be the reason they had come to Vicker’s Corners in the first place.
Liam shrugged. “They were okay.”
“Try not to burst a blood vessel in your enthusiasm,” she said sarcastically.
He stopped walking, annoyed with her flippant remark and with the fact that she was trying to get him to agree with her. He’d thought that once she saw how the simple life seemed to be dying back in this town, she’d be willing to admit that he was right in voting against the new restaurant coming to Horseback.
The part that bothered him the most was that he could see how a restaurant like the one they’d just left might appeal to some people back home.
Irritated, he demanded testily, “What is it you want me to say?”
If she told him what to say, it wouldn’t count or carry any weight. “I can’t put words in your mouth,” she retorted, frustrated.
“Well, you sure don’t like the ones that are coming out,” he pointed out in frustration. “Look, the place was okay, but so’s The Grill. The Grill doesn’t try to put on airs. You want to know my requirements for a good restaurant?” It was a rhetorical question on his part because he didn’t wait for her reply. He just went on to answer his own question. “Here’re my requirements. I like my food to taste good, to be hot and to arrive in something under half an hour. The rest are just added frills. I don’t need frills,” he said flatly. He saw disappointment flash in her eyes. “Not what you wanted to hear, was it?” He realized that he took no particular pleasure in that.
That should have been his first warning sign.
No matter what, Julia had always tried to find at least one positive thing in any situation. It took some doing this time, but she did find one positive thing.
“I wanted you to be honest and you were honest.” They resumed walking again. “Obviously,” she continued philosophically, “you’re not the target audience the people who own and run that restaurant were trying to reach.” She looked around at both the number of vehicles in the parking lot and the people who were passing them, heading for the restaurant’s front entrance. “Lucky for them, your reaction isn’t typical.”
“Never thought of myself as part of the herd,” Liam told her, reaching his truck.
“That’s good because you’re not,” she assured him with a small laugh. Julia waited for him to unlock his truck, then got in on her side.
“If yo
u wanted a ‘typical’ reaction, as you call it, you should have brought your ex-husband here, not me,” he told her with a trace of annoyance in his voice. From what he knew about the man, Neal Baxter was the poster boy for the word typical.
Glancing to see if she was strapped in, Liam started up the truck.
“Neal moved away, remember?” she said, raising her voice slightly as the engine rumbled to life. “He’s not here and you are. Your opinion was the one I decided counted.”
He laughed shortly as he drove away from the lot. “You mean mine is the opinion you want to change.”
“That, too,” she admitted. She gestured toward the sidewalk as they stopped at a light. “Look at all this foot traffic going on.”
“I’m looking, all right.” And he didn’t like what he saw. There seemed to be too many people, in his opinion. Did they all live around Vicker’s Corners, or were they just passing by, the way he and Julia were?
She could hear the hostility in Liam’s voice and glossed right over it. She knew if she commented on it, she’d be sidetracked into an argument and that wasn’t going to lead anywhere except to have her going around in an endless, frustrating circle.
Been there, done that.
“Having the restaurant here is good for everyone’s business, not just the restaurant’s,” she pointed out adamantly.
He saw it differently. “If the people are here, in town, it means they’re not working their ranches.”
“Not everyone has a ranch,” she reminded him.
Yeah, and there was a reason for that, he thought cryptically. “That’s because they spent all that time, sitting in a dark restaurant,” he told her.
Liam sped up to make the light—the last traffic light before he drove out of town. A minute later Vicker’s Corners was behind him and he could feel a sense of relief washing over him.
Most likely just his imagination, he thought—but it still felt good to leave the place.
Julia bit off an inaudible, frustrated sound. “You are absolutely infuriating, do you know that?” she said, struggling not to shout at him.
“The way I see it…” he told her, speeding up just a touch because they were out on an open road, even though it was only two lanes wide. “I’m absolutely right. But have it your way. Which you are,” he reminded her. “The preliminary vote went your way. There’s no reason to believe that when the final votes are cast, the results will be any different. That means the town’s going to let those people come in and build their damn restaurant anywhere you tell them to. Frankly,” he said, sparing her a look, “what I don’t get is why you’re still trying to convince me that building that restaurant is the right thing to do.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. She’d asked herself the same question. But even though the answer wasn’t logical, it was important to her that he come around about this. “Because I want you to see the merits of having a business like this in town.”
He slanted a quick glance toward her. “And if I don’t, you’ll stop building it?”
That wasn’t the point she was trying to make. “No, of course not—”
He rested his case. “Like I said, there’s no point or need to convince me.”
She tried again. “Maybe I’d just like to have you on board with this.”
She still hadn’t given him an actual logical answer. “Why? You afraid I’m going to do something to sabotage this fancy eatery of yours?”
Was that it? Did she think him capable of doing something drastic?
As the thought sank in, he could feel himself growing insulted.
“No, of course not.”
Although, Julia had to admit, albeit silently, the thought had crossed her mind a couple of times. Not that she believed Liam would actually attempt to destroy anything, but he was very capable of working on changing some of the people’s minds about siding with progress in this case.
“Well, then, why is it so important to you that I see your side of this and agree with you?” he repeated, wanting her to make him understand.
She wasn’t about to admit that she cared what he thought. He’d just take it the wrong way—although she didn’t know what other way he could take it.
Frustrated, Julia threw up her hands. “Never mind. Maybe I just need my head examined.”
“Maybe,” he affirmed matter-of-factly.
She had no idea why he’d said that, but she knew it really annoyed her. Annoyed her even more that they weren’t on the same side of this issue. “You know, I could be gloating that the preliminary vote went my way and I’m not. Maybe you should chew on that for a while,” she told him in mounting frustration.
Liam’s profile was to her as he looked straight ahead, but she could see that the corner of his mouth was curving. He was smiling to himself, she realized angrily. At her expense?
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” he answered in a tone that told her that there indeed was something. And that something was a thought that her words had unearthed. Rather than the food for thought she’d believed she’d just given him, what he would rather “chew on,” he realized, was her—starting from the toes on up.
There was no denying it. The woman definitely aroused him.
She was certainly not the kind of woman he was accustomed to. Julia was not as voluptuous as he liked them and certainly not as accommodating as he’d gotten used to, but there was just something about her. That flash in her eyes, that mouth of hers that never seemed to stop moving… It just all went to stir him, stoke that fire in his belly that created a yearning for her within not just his loins, but more importantly, in his mind, as well.
That was the part that both intrigued him—and scared the hell out of him.
“Doesn’t sound like ‘nothing,’” she retorted. “What is it?” she persisted.
“Nothing,” he repeated. “Just leave it alone.” He issued the warning in a low, terse voice.
“Or what?” she challenged. When he didn’t answer, she repeated, “Or what?” more loudly this time. If she did know what was good for her, she wasn’t focusing on that now.
“You don’t want to know,” Liam told her, his tone almost growling the words out.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know,” she snapped. “I don’t scare off easily, Jones. I’m not like those little harebrained groupies you used to surround yourself with in high school,” she said, referring to the other girls contemptuously. “I don’t hang on your every word but I do give you credit for having a mind and I just wanted to open your eyes and have you see what—”
“Damn it,” Liam swore in utter frustration as he pulled over to the side of the deserted road. “Don’t you ever shut up, woman?” he demanded.
He didn’t leave her any room to answer—not that he actually even wanted an answer from her—because at the same time that he asked the question, he’d simultaneously pulled her to him as he managed to press the release button on her seat belt. And before Julia could even begin to express her surprise at both his question and his actions, his mouth was covering hers.
The second that it did, it seemed to open a floodgate of emotions within him. They were so powerful that he found he had to struggle to get the upper hand and not have them take charge of him or drag him under before he knew what was going on.
The only thing that he did know was that he wanted her.
Wanted her badly.
More than he had ever wanted anyone before— possibly more than he had ever wanted everyone combined. The dalliances, the interludes, the trysts he’d had before belonged to the boy he had been—his actual age didn’t matter. What he was experiencing now belonged to the man he had just become.
He had a man’s appetite and a man’s desires.
And, heaven help him, they were all centered on Julia.
*
Liam had caught her completely and utterly off guard. She knew she should be horrified as well as furious. And scared.
Very
, very scared.
Not of him, of course, but herself. She was scared of the intensity that had been aroused by this sudden contact, this sudden profusion of feelings—his and hers—that had washed over her.
And scared because she wanted to make love with him.
Make love to him here, on the side of the road, out in the open where anyone could unexpectedly drive by and see them.
This wasn’t the kind of reaction she expected of herself and yet, at this isolated moment in time, Julia felt powerless to do anything about it, to cut this intense desire short, to call a halt to what was happening.
Instead she was reveling in what was happening because she wanted it so much, probably had subconsciously wanted it for a very long time.
She could feel her body heating with incredible longing.
Maybe this was why she and Neal had never really had a chance together, because there was something in her soul that had been waiting for this.
For him.
For Liam.
Somehow, though she wouldn’t have been able to say how or why if her life depended on it, she had detected this, been waiting for this to find her. And now that it had, all she wanted to do was to wrap herself up in it and melt into it, become one with it.
And with him.
*
Damn it, what the hell are you thinking? an angry voice in Liam’s head demanded. Where were his morals, his scruples? He was overwhelming Julia, taking advantage of her and this just wasn’t right no matter how much he wanted her. If they were going to make love, the first time couldn’t be out in the open like this, like two reckless teenagers without any restraint, grabbing any opportunity that came their way.
To mean something, the first time had to at least be civilized.
In order to mean something? that same voice in his head echoed, mystified. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Since when had he wanted lovemaking to mean anything but exquisite release? What the hell was going on with him?
Whatever it was, it had to do with her and the sooner he got himself away from her, the better off he’d be—at least until he could untangle all this and think clearly again.
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