by Nicole Helm
“No.”
She blinked over at him. “Well, I’m not telling you my address.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I want to see your workshop,” she replied as if it was the most logical thing in the world.
“Guess what, Kayla? Drunk women aren’t cute,” he returned irritably. Because the last thing he needed was her laughing and joking and talking about him having a dimple. It wasn’t that he couldn’t control himself—he wasn’t a reprehensible ass. It was just . . .
Aiden wanted this woman, and the more Liam wanted her, the more this was going to suck balls. Because of course Kayla would want Aiden over him, and he was never going to put it to her as some kind of choice, so this was all futile torture.
“Guess what, Liam?” she returned, mimicking his voice. “Drunk or not—I don’t care if I’m being cute for the enjoyment of men.”
“Touché,” he muttered, glancing over at her.
Her mouth was firmed into a line, her hands were crossed over her chest, and she looked at him—stubbornness etched into her every feature.
“You’re not going to back down on this, are you?”
She smiled, her whole face softening. “Nope. Kayla Gallagher is done backing down.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh. “To my workshop it is.” Just another circle of hell to survive.
Chapter Four
Kayla sat in the passenger seat of Liam’s truck quite proud of herself. Liam might think drunk Kayla was not cute, but she thought drunk Kayla was something of a genius. Drunk Kayla followed her instincts. Drunk Kayla was spontaneous. Drunk Kayla had figured out the next step in her life.
Do. Make. Create.
She wasn’t going to be taken home and shuffled into her under-decorated apartment to be depressed about the turns her life had taken all over again. She was going to see Liam’s workshop.
She’d never spent any time wondering what Liam did with his free time. Where he might live, what his friends might be like. She’d always considered him something of an imposing, irritable rock.
Only because he thinks you’re fragile.
She scowled at the memory. She supposed it was nicer than him hating her, and there was a little curl of something like sympathy over him thinking he only knew how to fix things, but mostly she hated that he’d seen her as nothing but a breakable thing.
He was wrong. He had to be wrong. She’d stepped away from Gallagher’s, hadn’t she? That was no fragile feat. Not in that family.
“Well, we’re here,” Liam muttered gruffly.
Funny, a little meal with him and suddenly his gruff made her smile. She looked out the window. It was nearly dark, but she could see he’d parked on the street like many in the neighborhood.
Out the window was a little brick house, kind of gingerbread-like with a pointed eave over the door. The porch light was on, and she supposed Liam was the kind of guy who’d always remember to turn on his porch light if he went out at night.
The yard was neatly kept, with a little sidewalk up to the front door and a concrete pathway toward the back, from what she could tell in the dusky dark.
“I like it,” Kayla offered.
“My life is complete,” he said drily.
She smirked at him and pushed open the truck door. “Is your workshop inside?”
“No.” He gave a gusty sigh and got out of the truck.
Kayla didn’t wait around for him to round the truck or lead the way. She walked straight for his door, though the ground seemed strangely uneven and she couldn’t quite seem to walk in a straight line.
Suddenly, his hand was gripping her arm, helping to keep her upright in a sea of swaying grass.
“For fuck’s sake, you’re going to break your neck.”
She opened her mouth to tell him he was wrong and she was fine, but she stumbled a bit—surely over a hole—and had to hold on to Liam to keep herself from taking a header onto the sidewalk.
He was so very tall, and sturdy, like you could lean and lean and lean and he would never bend. The direct opposite of her, who bent and bent and bent until she snapped.
She frowned at the depressing thought, even as she leaned harder against him. He led her around the house to a patchy little backyard and what appeared to be a detached garage that faced an alley or street behind his house.
All the homes around were built in a similar fashion, separated by chain-link fences, but when Liam unlocked and pulled open his garage door, flicking on a light, she doubted any other houses in the neighborhood boasted this.
There was a big table across the far side, various machinery on it as well as hanging from shelves and corkboard across the walls. To the far corner there were stacks of wood and a little table full of paints and paintbrushes.
On the opposite side of that were shelves and boxes of what looked to be finished carvings or child toys or what have you. She started to move toward them, but his grip tightened on her arm.
Warm and strong. She looked curiously down at his fingers around the pretty purple and green pattern of her dress sleeve. Rough and scarred and fascinating, she thought she could look at his hands forever.
“You’re not stumbling around my workshop, breaking my stuff or hurting yourself.”
“I can walk,” she replied, still staring at his long fingers curled around her arm.
“You’ve proven you can’t,” he replied.
She harrumphed, though she had to admit the floor in this room seemed a bit topsy-turvy too. “I want to see . . .” But she trailed off as her gaze landed on one of the tables.
He had rows and lines of tools meticulously organized. But sitting in the middle of one of the tables was a hunk of wood, as though started and left unfinished.
Which didn’t seem like Liam at all.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the . . . It was a bear. Like the one she’d bought the other day. A grinning bear, she was nearly certain.
“I was working before my brother so rudely interrupted me.”
His brother. Aiden. The one she was supposed to have had a drink with. She never would have gotten drunk with Aiden, she didn’t think.
Odd. Why would she behave differently around them? They were from the same family. She’d known them both forever. But she couldn’t imagine letting down her inhibitions with Aiden.
A few hours ago, she would have said the same for Liam, but here she was. Drunk and demanding.
She looked at the half-finished figure, then back at him. “It’s a bear.”
“Yes,” he replied, his grip on her arm loosening, his entire body almost leaning away from her. Interesting reaction, though she couldn’t quite figure out why. It felt almost as though the points in her brain wouldn’t connect. Some thoughts were stuck on one side; some observations were stuck on the other. None could bridge the gap to make sense.
“I want to touch it.”
He made an odd noise, maybe a squeak, if it had come out of a woman, but everything about his voice was so low and gravelly, nothing could quite be considered a squeak from him.
Still, he led her closer, and though his grip had loosened it was still there. Strong and sure, and she had no doubt that if she tripped or fell or, well, passed out—as seemed a little possible with the way her head was spinning—Liam would catch her. Keep her upright and safe.
Yes, she was very, very drunk. Still, she reached out for the half-formed bear and grabbed it. It fit into her palm, and unlike the one she’d bought the other day, this one was rough. It had most of the carving done, but it hadn’t been polished.
“It needs a mouth,” she said, running her finger over its face, surprised at the rough texture compared to the smooth gloss on the mouth of her figurine.
“I hadn’t decided on the expression yet.”
“It matches mine, except it has overalls instead of a dress. So it should be smiling. Grinning. Happy, naturally.”
“Maybe it should be scowling,” he muttered.
“No,” she argued. “They’re a couple. They should be happy. They match.” She glanced up at him, surprised to find him awfully close. His features seemed a little wavy, but his eyes were that unnatural, piercing blue.
And there was something in them, something she should recognize. Not just his usual gruff stiffness, but something . . . else.
She blinked, then squinted, staring hard and trying to put it together.
“Fine. It’ll be smiling. Happy?” He tried to move, maybe away from her, but she only sort of swayed with him. He was holding her arm after all.
“Can I have it?” she asked, curling her fingers around it. She didn’t know how to explain the desire to keep it, but she didn’t want to put it back down.
Something in his jaw tensed, and he gave an oddly stiff nod. “Fine. When it’s done, it’s yours.”
“Do I have to pay for it?”
His eyebrows drew together. “Are you, Kayla Gallagher, trying to stiff me out of more money this evening?”
He drew out her last name like the curse that it was, cutting through some of that dizzying buzz, leaving only a kind of vague nausea. But his blue eyes, so dang blue, were steady on hers, and his stare was just like his hand on her arm, a steadying, solid thing holding her up.
“My grandmother cut me off,” she said, not sure why, and it even sounded a little slurred to her ears.
His usually impassive—or grumpy—face widened then, shock, clear as day. “I’m . . . sorry.”
Her head fell back in an attempt to look him better in the eye, those perfect blue steady points of strength. “Funny, you’re the only one who’s said that to me.”
His eyebrows drew together, his lips softening into something almost like sympathy. Sympathy for her, Kayla Gallagher, who’d had so much handed to her and not been the least bit grateful for it.
But she didn’t want to think about gratefulness or Gallagher’s or being cut off. She wanted to think about how Liam’s lips looked when they weren’t pressed together in a firm, disapproving line.
He had a nice mouth. It very nearly looked soft. As though she could press her lips to his and not be met by smooth, immovable rock.
What would it be like to kiss Liam Patrick? A few hours ago she might have laughed hysterically at the question, but in the warm glow of his workshop, his mouth up close and surprisingly tempting, she found herself wondering.
* * *
Kayla Gallagher was staring at his mouth, an almost considering expression on her face.
A very drunk Kayla Gallagher, he reminded himself quickly. Sober Kayla wouldn’t consider a thing on his face if he asked her to, and it was important to not let his idiot brain think otherwise.
Clearly the woman was having a little quarter-life crisis of sorts. She’d been cut off by her grandmother, had been stood up by her date, and had wanted nothing more than to get drunk in a bar and see his workshop.
Kayla Gallagher was a mess.
And not yours to fix.
He’d do well to remember that. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, let her look around, and then take her home. She was not his responsibility or his problem.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Because, really, when had he ever let ownership keep him from trying to fix a problem?
Her blue eyes stared up at his as if he were some mythical creature. Well, she was drunk enough she was probably seeing two of him. That was the reasonable explanation.
“I just had to get out, you know?” she said, her voice something like a hushed whisper.
“Well, no.” Out was not a word in his vocabulary. Especially when it came to his family or the family business.
“I was suffocating. Which sounds dramatic, but I felt it. Like I couldn’t breathe. Like someone was pressing me down into this lifeless, colorless, pointless decoration.” She pressed her hand to his chest, her arm shifting in the circle of his fingers, her warm palm pushing lightly against him. As if she could demonstrate.
“You could never be pointless, Kayla.” Which was also something he shouldn’t have said, but Kayla had been something like fresh air in all those years of answering to Gallaghers. She was quiet, yes, definitely a little skittish, but she was kind. Always kind in the midst of orders expected to be followed to the letter.
Yes, she’d seemed fragile compared to her iron maiden of a grandmother and her slick, formidable businessman of an uncle who’d run Gallagher’s for so long. Her father, who ran the place now, reminded Liam of ice—cold, sharp, brutal if you let it be. Then there’d been Dinah, Kayla’s cousin—a pretty package, but with the grandmother’s steel underneath it all.
Kayla was none of those things. Soft and warm, scared and timid. So maybe it made sense she felt like she’d been suffocating in that family. Pressed down into the background.
“Why do you keep touching me?” he asked, when she said nothing else. When she simply stood there with her hand on him. He couldn’t seem to escape it. Her body pressed to his, leaning against his, brushing against his, and now her hand over his heart.
She’s drunk, you idiot, all the reason there is.
“I don’t know,” she said, as if arguing with the harsh words his mind was trying to tell him. “It’s kind of fascinating to think of you as something real and breathing instead of a vaguely disapproving statue.” She looked at her hand on his chest, and no matter how he tried to breathe like a normal person and not someone who’d just run a marathon, he could see her hand move with the rise and fall of his chest.
He still had his fingers curled around her arm, in an effort to keep her from crashing into things in his workshop. In an effort to keep her upright and unharmed.
Why did that have to feel like his responsibility?
Maybe because he was so focused on not being focused on her hand on him, he missed that she’d moved her other arm until she traced her fingers across the whiskers on his jaw.
He nearly jerked away, holding himself still only because if he jerked, he’d jerk her with him.
“I remember when you didn’t have a beard,” she said, staring at his chin.
“I remember when you had braces,” he replied, and though he wasn’t drunk, he felt a little off. All this close quarters and her and . . .
Her dark blue eyes rose to his. “Did you pay that close of attention?”
Always. “No. I just figure if we’re pointing out how people have changed . . .”
“I’m trying to change,” she said, her eyebrows drawing together.
“Why would you want to change?”
“Because I don’t like myself very much. I haven’t been happy much, and I kept waiting for something to change—something big to happen that would suddenly reveal itself to me as the thing I needed to do. But . . . it’s not coming. It’s never coming.”
She sounded so bleak, and it wasn’t something Kayla Gallagher should feel. She was beautiful and bright, and though she’d been cut off, she was a part of this privileged world. She could have been anything, done anything.
Before he could offer something comforting or sage in response, she straightened her shoulders, her hands leaving his body, though he was ashamed to realize he’d moved a little toward her as she’d pulled her hand away, as if he could keep that physical connection longer.
Yeah, he really needed to be avoiding physical connection, or connection of any kind.
“So I decided to stop waiting and start doing.” She gave a sharp nod and looked around his workshop. “You do, all the time. You do and you make and I want to do something like that. I can paint—did you know that?”
He shook his head vaguely because she looked so determined and very nearly fierce, this woman he’d always viewed as fragile.
“I always liked to. I even thought about going into art. Graphic design or similar to make it practical, but . . .”
“But what?”
She chewed on her bottom lip, so he forced his gaze to her hairline, where the rich red strands curled
around her face.
“I was afraid. I’ve always been afraid. Of being a failure, or not being good enough. I was always afraid of letting someone down, of letting Gallagher’s down, because Gallagher’s is all that matters really. It’s all that ever mattered.”
She blinked, and he didn’t think she so much looked at him as she did through him while her mind was somewhere else.
“I should get drunk all the time. I’m figuring all sorts of shit out,” she said with a little laugh. “Because that’s it, I’ve been afraid. And I’m not going to be anymore. That’s what I’m going to change.”
“Well, I suppose that’s a, uh, good, um, choice,” Liam offered lamely. She didn’t need him fixing things at all. She had it all figured out. Which was good, really. Great, in fact. Get her home and she’d no longer be his problem.
She pressed her hand to her stomach, the smile on her face dimming to something more like a grimace. “Well, I’m not ready to give up fear quite yet, because right now I’m very afraid I’m going to throw up.”
Well, shit.
Chapter Five
When Kayla opened her eyes the next morning, she immediately closed them again. Everything in her vision had wavered and rolled, so it seemed safer to keep her eyes shut.
Except she still felt like she was rolling or spinning or something. Why had she insisted on getting so drunk? What had she been trying to prove? The morning-after misery was never, ever worth it.
She’d had a few hangovers in her day, but usually from just one extra glass of wine. And she’d always woken up in her own bed. Not someone else’s.
Oh God, she was in someone else’s bed. She thought back to the night before, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead and hoping it might stop the evil pounding.
She’d been going on a date with Aiden, except . . . Liam had shown up, hence the drinking, and she’d . . .
Her memory got a little blurry beyond that, like a dirty lens had been put over everything that happened. There’d been, well, drinking obviously. Something in a truck, a bear.
Puking. There had definitely been throwing up in the grass of Liam’s little backyard. Which was horrifying enough, but remembering the fact she’d thrown up in Liam’s yard meant remembering she’d insisted on him taking her to his workshop, which was at his house.