Before he moved to LA proper to start chasing the dream, he’d known about the boys who’d called Grace, and the few that she had tried—and quietly succeeded—in making him jealous of. He probably owed her for teaching him to hide that emotion, even though the ability had abandoned him tonight.
He called his driver and had him ready the car and pull around to get them. The waiter brought the checks before Grace returned, and Liam paid both of them.
When Grace came back he stood with his cane and offered her his elbow again. “Checks?”
“Paid,” he muttered, and added, “I don’t want to fight about the check. The restaurant was my decision, and you’re here as my employee, right? It’s not a date. It’s not two friends having dinner together. It was my responsibility. And I tipped him well for his trouble. Clear?”
She didn’t take his elbow, but walked ahead of him through the restaurant for the door.
He’d known she’d had a crush on him when they’d still been in high school. Idiot though he may have been, he had been love-deprived enough that he’d developed a keen way of detecting it in every incarnation. And if he was honest with himself, that was probably a big part of the draw of his occupation. He’d gone from having very few he could claim who loved him to having thousands, to having millions. He’d gone from the unwanted son of dead junkies to the man on top of every producer’s wish list.
He could identify a lot of emotions on sight—studying body language to improve his acting had come with other benefits. He could tell the difference between fondness of friends, adoration of fans, and when past girlfriends were getting Too Close to Love—aka Time to Break Up. He knew the difference between the way his parents had looked at him the times they hadn’t been looking through him, and the way the Watsons had always looked at him—loving and always a little worried about him.
He could identify love in its many flavors.
But apparently he sucked at spotting a virgin.
* * *
Liam had claimed he’d wanted honesty and to clear the air. Obviously he hadn’t thought that through.
Grace was just trying to be completely honest, because all her instincts said to lie about the whole ordeal. Protect herself. But when her instincts were the most selfish, that’s when she did her best to ignore them. Do the opposite. Do the hard thing if it could help someone else.
Protect Liam. Absolve him of his guilt. Don’t leave him wondering why she’d been the one to hold on to it for so long, make sure he knew this had never been his fault.
But this was apparently also wrong. Now that she’d told him, they sat in the back of the limo in silence and tension even worse than when she’d been wondering when he was going to bring up how much he hadn’t wanted her.
“You’re gritting your teeth,” she said softly, trying to fix this before it got worse. “I’m fine, Liam. You should be fine too. You were right.”
“I don’t want to hear again that it was the only course of action. I know that. I still know that, but that doesn’t make this better.”
“Why? Are you such a caveman that you’re angry that I’ve had boyfriends?”
“No. God, no. I’m not angry.”
“Have you told your face that? I don’t think your eyebrows got the memo. Did you ever notice that the angry characters in children’s shows either have a unibrow or they have just really heavy, straight brows that come together in an angry way?”
“I never played a Muppet,” he joked, if that tone could be called a joke.
She scooted up against him, mirroring the way he’d dragged her to him earlier, and lifted his arm so she could get under it. “See? I’m completely at ease with you now. I understand limits. I understand why you felt that way. I really do. At least now. You felt like you should be more like a brother to me, only I didn’t feel that way. You—”
“Couldn’t have won. Let’s stop talking about it.”
“You were the one who wanted to talk.”
“And now I want to stop talking,” he said, sharply enough that she leaned forward, out from beneath the arm she’d just wrapped around herself, and slid away from him on the seat again.
He was going to be the end of her sanity. Should she have trusted that instinct to keep hiding things? She’d not trusted them because when she had, all those years she’d been wrong.
Mr. I-Know-What-You’re-Thinking-Because-of-Your-Feet would never have that problem. He studied body language, she studied bodily injuries. Not the kind of emotional injuries that might help her understand him.
And maybe that was why he was good at reading people. Maybe it wasn’t just study but something he’d developed during a rough childhood.
She sank back into her spot on the seat and looked toward her window as he uttered an expletive and dragged her back to him.
This time, rather than wrap an arm around her, he twisted and grabbed her by the hips. One second she was on the seat, the next she was in his lap. “You’re going to hurt your ankle!”
“Shut up, Grace.” He caught her by the back of the neck and pulled her against him, his mouth immediately on hers.
His lips, soft and sweetened with the lingering taste of berries, stroked and nibbled, coaxing her mouth open within seconds.
Her arms rested against his chest, but as his tongue sought hers and the kiss deepened, the fighting from the past long minutes fled her mind. Instinctively, her arms slid around his shoulders as his went around her. Wide, hot hands pressed against the cool skin of her bare back and on down to her hip to keep her close to him.
She’d seen him kiss countless women, and had always wondered what it was like even while envying them. Even when her coping mechanism was to pretend that she didn’t think anything about him at all.
It felt like a drug. Like it heightened her senses and tuned her into him so acutely that her heart changed rhythm to match his beat. She breathed his air and plowed her fingers into his hair to kiss him better, get him closer. Every kiss dragged her deeper into him.
A kiss like no other. If it was because of all his practice, she didn’t care.
If it was because she’d been starved for it for so long, had imagined it so many times, she didn’t care what that said about her either.
Their time together was almost at an end. Soon they’d be back at the clinic, and frequent visits would dwindle to only a few and then back to none. None, because that was normal for them. They’d done all they could to unweave all their ties six years ago, and she had no illusions that he’d start unweaving them again once he no longer had to have her with him. He might still want her, but there were so many women who could be whatever he wanted. A girlfriend without their baggage, without their obstacles, without jeopardizing the friendship he held dear.
This bubble that New York cast around them, it felt like a different planet. A place where they could talk about that stupid trench coat, and a place where inexplicable anger and hungry kisses could confirm that old desire still clung to them both. The only place it could exist.
The door they sat beside opened, a blast of humid air hitting them both. Liam jerked his head back, eyes glazed and panting.
“Sir?” the doorman said. “Want me to close the door back up?”
Tonight they were at the front entrance. She’d forgotten that they weren’t sneaking in and out through the back since he’d deigned to use the cane. A flash went off. Then another. Stupid cameras.
She felt him retreat before he’d moved an inch.
The wall came up, and he put her