So with what amounted to supreme effort, Liam forced himself to back away.
Taking hold of Julia’s shoulders—feeling her shaking beneath his hands—he separated himself from her.
An incredible feeling of desolation and loss swirled through him so quickly, Liam thought he was hallucinating. Self-preservation had him instantly shutting down so that he would stop feeling altogether.
“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I shouldn’t have done that. Won’t happen again,” he added stoically.
Buckling up again, he turned on the ignition. Then, staring straight ahead, he pulled his truck back onto the road and drove toward Horseback Hollow.
“You’re ‘sorry’?” she echoed, then repeated with both bewilderment and anger, demanding, “‘Sorry’?”
“That’s what I said,” he answered in a voice so devoid of any feeling it could have easily belonged to a robot.
Julia sucked in a lungful of air. Liam had all but incinerated her world, stirred up longing and desire to a degree she had never even dreamed existed and he was sorry?
Just what was that supposed to mean?
And what had that just been? An exercise in mind control? In complete and utter disarmament of her body and soul?
She’d been all ready to make love with him and he— He’d been what? Experimenting with her? Trifling with her?
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded just as the town began to come into view.
She realized that Liam had to have been doing ninety to get back as fast as he did. Maybe his goal was to somehow crack the time barrier and get back to Horseback Hollow before they had even left so that what had just happened could be wiped out.
So he didn’t have to bear any responsibility for it.
“Making a big mistake, apparently,” he told her, his voice just as dead and emotionless as before.
The answer couldn’t have hurt any more than if he had stabbed her.
The second they reached the outskirts of town, she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the passenger door and jumped out as she angrily shouted, “I’ll walk!” tossing the words over her shoulder.
Liam slammed on his brakes, afraid she’d really hurt herself. He reached to grab her but it was too late.
She was already out.
Landing on her feet, Julia ran home without looking back.
He watched her go, wishing with all his heart that he had never suggested going to see that damn restaurant in Vicker’s Corners.
Because he had just opened a door to something that wasn’t going to be easily shut again and more than likely, what was contained behind that door was going to lead to his undoing.
Chapter Nine
He’d lost sight of what was important.
He had allowed himself to get sidetracked without realizing it, Liam thought, more than a little annoyed with himself. What was important here was the ultimate fate of the town, not the fact that when he’d pulled off the road that day he and Julia had gone to Vicker’s Corners and kissed her, his insides twisted up so badly a corkscrew would have looked completely straight by comparison.
The first couple of days after that, he had deliberately thrown himself into working on the ranch, going from first light to beyond sundown with hardly a letup. He thought if he worked hard enough and long enough, his mind would become blank, having no room for anything more than putting one foot in front of the other and simple, basic instructions.
He should have known better.
Exhausted, he’d fallen onto the first flat surface he came to within his house and slept—not the sleep of the just or even the sleep of the weary, too tired to even think. Instead he’d slept the sleep of the troubled—and dreamed.
Dreamed of a blue-eyed redhead and a desire that set fire to his very insides. And when he woke up, he wasn’t rested; he was even more tired than when he’d fallen asleep.
At this rate, he’d burn himself out in a week and nothing would be accomplished. Avoiding all contact with Julia wasn’t working. This was obviously not a matter of out of sight, out of mind. The only thing that was going out of his mind was him.
That’s when the idea came to him. Rather than trying to deny what he was feeling—because that certainly wasn’t working out—he made up his mind to use that very same intensity to gain the goal he was shooting for: stopping the restaurant from being built and keeping those Fortunes out of Horseback Hollow before they could get a toehold. And the way he was going to do that was to turn on the charm he’d relegated to the sidelines, pursue the woman who was currently haunting his thoughts and seduce her not just into sharing his bed but his philosophy about Horseback Hollow, as well.
The second he formed his plan, Liam smiled to himself. Smiled for the first time in almost a week.
This was going to work, he promised himself. And maybe, just maybe, after this was over, after he’d bedded her, he’d be over Julia, as well, and could get back to life as he knew it.
It gave him hope.
*
Damn it, Julia upbraided herself. What was wrong with her?
Why did she keep looking at the door, hope springing up within her chest every time she heard that silly little bell go off, alerting her that another customer had walked in?
She knew why, Julia thought sullenly, because even after six days had gone by—six days without so much as a single word—she was still hoping to see that big, dumb lout walking into her store. She’d always known that Liam Jones was as shallow as a puddle, so why was her pulse doing these stupid, erratic things every time she thought he was walking into the Superette?
He probably had enough supplies up at that ranch of his to see him through six months without needing to restock—and when he ran out, most likely he’d send one of his brothers to buy supplies for him.
She was supposed to be smarter than this, Julia silently insisted. She’d always prided herself for having more brains than those worshipful groupies that had always clustered around Liam back when they were in high school. Why in heaven’s name had she suddenly voluntarily joined their club?
“I haven’t,” she declared staunchly.
“You haven’t what, dear?” her mother asked, turning from the magazine display she was rearranging.
“Um, I haven’t a clue what I did with that inventory list from last week,” Julia told her mother, silently congratulating herself on her quick thinking. She’d been so preoccupied thinking about that idiot that she hadn’t even realized she had said anything out loud just then.
She was going to have to exercise a little more control over herself, she thought.
“It’s on your desk in the office. I saw it there earlier.” Her mother looked at her, concerned. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
Julia waved her mother’s concern away, feeling slightly guilty about giving her mother something else to worry about. She’d remained here in Horseback Hollow all these years to help her mother, not give her more to worry about.
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind, Mom, that’s all.”
Annie shook her head. It was obvious that she was in agreement with her daughter.
“You take too much on yourself, Jules. Why don’t we hire more help?” she suggested. They already had five part-time workers here at the store as well as two full-time employees. “We’re doing well enough to afford it, honey,” Annie pointed out.
Now her obsession with that jerk was going to cost them money? Not if she could help it, Julia silently promised.
“We’ll talk about that tonight, Mom. With Dad,” Julia added.
Annie smiled at her only child. “You’re a good girl, Jules, to include your dad like that. After all the work you’ve put into keeping the Superette open and running, anyone else would have just shut him out.”
“Hey, I want him to get well enough to run this place again with you,” Julia told her mother, even though they both knew that was probably never going to happen. But for each other’s sake—as we
ll as for Jack’s—they pretended that it would.
Annie squeezed her daughter’s hand, mutely thanking her. When the bell over the door went off this time, Julia didn’t bother turning around.
Not until she heard his voice.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tierney. Would you mind if I had a word with Julia alone?” Liam asked politely.
“Absolutely not,” Annie told him, letting go of her daughter’s hand and stepping back. She smiled warmly at Jeanne Marie’s son. “She’s all yours, Liam.”
“I’d rather be staked out next to an anthill,” Julia declared, her eyes shooting daggers at the man who had haunted her dreams every single night since she’d gotten back from Vicker’s Corners.
He had his damn nerve, she fumed, first reducing her to a palpitating mass of desires and longings, then completely ignoring her for nearly a week only to waltz in here as if nothing had happened between them—as if the world hadn’t been reduced to a pinprick when he’d kissed her like that.
“Choose it well,” she told him as her mother went to wait on a customer at one of the checkout registers.
“Choose what well?” Liam asked, puzzled.
“The ‘word’ you want to say to me,” Julia said to refresh his memory, “because I’ve got a really good one for you—that can’t be repeated in polite society.”
*
He just bet she did, he thought, tickled despite himself.
The only way to deal with whatever insults and accusations Julia was going to heap on his head, he thought, was to head her off before she ever had a chance to say any of them.
“And it probably isn’t even strong enough,” he told her, doing his best to look contrite and remorseful. “I acted like a horse’s ass,” he readily admitted.
“Not even nearly that good,” she returned. Her eyes narrowed to intense, accusing slits. “What are you doing here?”
He dug deep for his sincerest voice. “I came to apologize for the way I behaved—and to tell you that I’d like to start over.”
Just what was his angle? she wondered. “Start what over?” she asked suspiciously.
“Us. You and me,” he told her simply, his eyes meeting hers. He knew if he so much as looked away for a second, it was all over for any chance he had to get to her.
“There is no ‘us,’” she informed him tersely. “There’s not even a you and me. There’s me and there’s you. Separate,” she pointed out.
“Look, whatever name you want to call me, whatever insult you want to hurl at me, I more than deserve. But I felt something back there that day on the side of the road,” he told her in a low voice, taking care that it didn’t carry to anyone. “I’d like to give it a chance to take root and grow.”
“All the great plagues started that way,” she reminded him contemptuously, “taking root and growing.”
“This isn’t like that,” Liam protested.
Her eyes narrowed accusingly. “It’s exactly like that. I don’t know what your game is, Jones, but I’m not playing, so why don’t you just pick up your marbles and go home?”
“No game,” he told her, holding up his right hand as if he was taking an oath. Glancing to see where her mother was, he saw that Annie was busy. But any second now, the woman would turn around and see them, possibly even decide it was time to join them again. He didn’t want to be interrupted until he was finished.
Taking her arm, he pulled Julia over to an alcove for more privacy. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t feel something back there on the side of the road that day.”
She looked at him defiantly, echoing his words back to him. “I didn’t feel something back there on the side of the road that day.”
His eyes held hers. “I don’t believe you.”
“That is not my problem,” she informed him, “and if you don’t let go of me, you’re going to find out what a problem really feels like.”
Reluctantly, because he didn’t want to attract any attention to what was going on, he released her arm. “I just wanted you to know that I’ve been thinking these past few days—”
“First time for everything,” she quipped dismissively.
He ignored the dig and just forged on. “And I think that you might be right about the restaurant. About it being a good thing for the town.”
Surprised, Julia looked at him incredulously. “Nobody told me that hell was freezing over.”
He smiled at that. He was making headway one small step at a time. “I thought that maybe we could talk about it some more over dinner.”
“At The Grill?” she ventured, thinking that was what he had up his sleeve, to subtly show her how more than adequate that eatery was for the locals.
“No—” Liam started, but he didn’t get a chance to tell her what he had in mind.
“You want to go back to Vicker’s Corners?” she asked him, surprised.
“No,” he said patiently, forging on this time. “I thought that I’d have you up to the ranch— I cook,” he told her.
She didn’t know whether to laugh out loud at the idea of Liam attempting to actually cook something edible, or to be concerned because he had apparently lost his mind. “You cook,” Julia repeated.
“That’s what I said,” he confirmed, his voice unshakably confident about the ability he had just professed to possess.
“And have people eaten what you’ve cooked?” she asked. “Are they still alive so I can question them?”
“Every last one of them,” he assured her. “I can print up a list of names for you if you’d like,” he offered, taking what he assumed was a joke on her part and raising it to the next level.
“I’d like,” she told him without so much as cracking a smile.
Well, that told him one thing, he thought—not that it was anything new on her part. But then, he’d known when he’d decided on this course of action that it wasn’t going to be easy.
Nothing about Julia Tierney had ever been easy.
He supposed that was part of what he’d found so compelling about her—not that any of that mattered right now.
All that mattered was preserving Horseback Hollow the way it was.
“You don’t trust me,” Liam said.
The old, polite Julia would have denied it, or tried to explain why she had reservations. The Julia who hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in a week congratulated him on his insight.
“You’re catching on.”
“You’re going to have to learn to trust me sooner or later,” he predicted.
The hell she did, Julia thought. “Why?” she asked flatly. “Why do I have to learn to trust you sooner or later? Why do I have to trust you at all?”
“Because I can be a help with this restaurant thing. You still face having to get that final vote from the town at the mayor’s next meeting and you still have to convince those friends of yours—the Mendozas, was it?—that Horseback Hollow is the right location for their new business.”
Liam had done a complete about-face in six days. Something didn’t feel right to her. “Why this sudden change of heart?” Wanting to know, she pinned him down with her eyes. Dared him to come up with something believable.
He plumbed the depth of his being for sincerity. “Because I realized that I was guilty of putting my own feelings about the Fortune family ahead of the town’s welfare.”
That sounded a great deal more noble than she thought that Liam could ever be.
“I thought you said you believed that having that sort of high-traffic restaurant here was going to be bad for the town’s ‘welfare,’” she reminded him.
He’d found that it was always best to keep his story and his answers simple. That allowed for fewer mistakes to be made. “I was wrong.”
“Just like that?” she asked him skeptically. He was nothing if not stubborn. This just felt way too easy to Julia.
“Sometimes it happens that way,” he told her innocently, shrugging his shoulders for emphasis and as a testimony to his own mystifica
tion. “Have dinner with me and I’ll tell you about my ideas. You might find them helpful.” He looked at her pointedly, his eyes all but delving into her very soul. “C’mon, say yes,” he coaxed. “What have you got to lose?”
A great deal if I actually bought your story.
She continued to play along, but she was beginning to entertain the idea that whether he was serious about his conversion or not—and she had a hunch it was “not”—she could make him believe she was hanging on his words until she was ready to spring her own trap. A trap that would get him to do what she wanted rather than him having convinced her that his opposition to her plans was justified.
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “But I’m afraid I’m going to find out.”
He couldn’t put his plan into action unless he got her up to his ranch. He decided to take an even bigger risk than he was already undertaking and proposed a compromise.
“If it makes you feel any better, you can bring your mother with you, Julia—or anyone else for that matter. I just want a chance to talk to you away from the store and any distractions.”
If it makes you feel any better.
Julia knew how that sounded. It sounded as if she was afraid of him and she wasn’t. She’d known Liam Jones most of her life and in his own way, he was as honorable as they came. He never took a woman against her will—he just made her very, very willing.
She supposed that she could have dinner with him and hear him out. If he actually was on the level, she really could use him to convince the few diehards on the council who might make pushing this vote through difficult for her.
And if her plan worked, then she would really wind up turning Liam and bringing him into her camp.
She made up her mind.
“I don’t need to bring anyone with me to act as a chaperone,” she informed him.
He pretended to give her every chance to change her mind. “You’re sure?” he pressed.
“I’m sure,” she said firmly and then asked, “What time do you want me to come over?”
He was leaving nothing to chance. She could always change her mind at the last minute and not show up. “I’ll pick you up,” he told her.
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