Because of His Past (11 page)

Liam suddenly slid out from beneath her
and rolled across the bed, grabbing his cell phone from the nearby
nightstand.
 
He got up and began
dialing.
 
“I’m taking care of this
thing once and for all.”

“Liam, no!”

He turned to her.
 
“Don’t try and stop me, Grace.
 
I’m tired of talking about it with
you—now it’s time to actually do something.”

“Please, don’t,” she whispered, fearing
the worst.
 
A dreadful sensation had
welled up in her stomach—something so awful that it was
indescribable.
 
“Don’t do this,” she
begged, crying now, but it was obvious that Liam had made up his mind.

His face was stern, and his expression
determined, as he paced the floor of the bedroom with the phone to his ear.
 
“Mother,” he announced, sounding formal,
even though, ridiculously, he was still completely nude.

If
only Anne Houston could see him right now
, Grace thought, and almost laughed like a hyena, but
managed to stifle it just in time.
 
This was no laughing matter.

There was a long pause and he seemed to
listen for a moment before continuing.
 
“Actually, I decided not to stay at the castle tonight.
 
You’ll be interested to know that I’m
with Grace Knowles, in a hotel room right this very moment,” he said.

Grace put her head in her hands and
moaned.
 
“Oh God, Liam.
 
Why are you doing this now?
 
Why?”

Liam turned his back to her and continued
speaking.
 
“And I want you to know
something very important, Anne, so listen up closely.
 
I care very much about Grace, and if I
hear any reports of you trying to disparage her or her brother, or anyone in
her family—I will never speak to you again.”
 
He paused and listened.
 
“I’m not joking, Mother.
 
I’m deadly serious.”
 
His voice grew louder.
 
“You think this is funny?
 
You really think this is a joke?
 
I’m in love with her,” he said, his
voice harsh and also vulnerable at once.

Grace sat back in bed like she’d been
shot—and in a way, she had.

She put a hand to her chest.
 

What
did he just say?
 
To
his mother, of all people?

He
hasn’t even said he loves me, to me yet!

Grace stared at him, not knowing what to
think.
 
He was still standing with
his back to her, listening as his mother apparently spoke for a time.
 
And then his shoulders hunched.
 
“Do what you want with my inheritance,”
Liam nearly shouted.
 
“I should’ve
known you’d stoop this low.
 
You really are a bitter old crone
,
do you
realize that
?
 
Do you realize
that you’ve actually become what Father always accused you of being?
 
I don’t care if you threaten me, and I
don’t care if you hurt me.
 
But do
anything to Grace or hurt her in any way, and you’ll find out what I’m truly
capable of.”
 
He hung up the cell
phone and then tossed it on the bed.

Grace stared at the phone as if it was
radioactive.
 
“Oh, no,” she
whispered sadly.

“It’s done,” he declared.

***

Later that night, she was lying in Liam’s
arms once more, the two of them dozing.
 
She could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady in his chest and it made
her smile, as his fingers gently stroked her hair.

“This is nice,” she murmured.

“The best,” he replied.

She sighed, and then cleared her
throat.
 
“I think you should call
your mom back tomorrow and try and patch things up.”

Liam stiffened and his hand stopped
stroking her hair.
 
“She doesn’t
deserve that.”

“You’re not going to feel right if you
stop talking to her,” Grace told him.
 

“How would you know how
I’ll
feel?”

“Because, I saw this happen with my
brother and my mother, and both of them were completely miserable.”

“My mother’s always miserable anyway,”
Liam joked.

“I’m serious,” Grace said, craning her
neck so she could look at him.
 

“I don’t want to talk about Mother,” Liam
said.
 
“Right now it’s just you and
I.
 
That’s the way I like it.”

“It’s the way I like it, too,” she said.

“Then why ruin it?” Liam asked.
 
“Let’s enjoy it.”

“I’m enjoying it plenty,” Grace replied,
sliding her hand down his bare chest, to his stomach, and then sliding onto his
now hard cock.
 
“And it looks like
you are too.”
 
And then she was
stroking him slowly, making him moan, and then she stroked faster and faster,
and she leaned down until he could fuck her mouth, and before long, she was
stroking him into her mouth and sucking him deeper, until he came, explosively.

“Fuck,” he said, gripping the pillow with
one hand and her hair with his other hand.
 
“Oh, man,” he shuddered, as she continued to suck the last of his
released fluid from his dick.

Grace loved that she could turn him on as
much as he turned her on.
 
She loved
his cock, his body,
his
mind.

When she was resting her head on his
stomach for a moment, she even said the words aloud.
 
“I think I love you, Liam.”

“I love you too,” he told her.

And then they were back, wrapped in each
other’s arms and falling, drifting to sleep together.

A few hours later, her alarm on her phone
was already going off, and Grace had the brief thought flash through her
head—
why am I going to this
horrible job right now when I could stay here with the man that I love?
 
A man who declared his love for me?

“Don’t go,” Liam grumbled at her as she
sat up, slid her legs over the edge, and forced herself to stand in the
comfortable, warm darkness of the room.

“I have to,” she said, even though her
eyes burned and there was nothing more she wanted than to stay there with
him.
 
“I can’t call in my second day
on the job.
 
As it is, I already
nearly got fired yesterday thanks to you.”

“I wish you did get fired,” Liam said,
his voice gravelly with sleep.
 
“Come back to bed.”
 
He
reached one muscular arm out to her.

“Come on,” she said, groaning.
 
“Don’t torture me, Liam.”

But she let him grab her hand
anyway.
 
And then she let him pull
her back into bed, as his body was calling her, and she couldn’t
resist—just like always.

She fell on top of him, and his hands ran
up and down her body, and his lips kissed her.
 
“Stay with me,” he said.

“I’m only lying in bed for like three
more minutes and then I have to get up.”

“Fine,” he sighed.
 
“I give up.
 
But I’m going to swing by later today
and pick you up from work.”

“No,” she cried.
 
“You can’t.”

“Why not?” he asked.
 
“Easton’s a good friend and you’re my
girl.
 
I’m coming by later on, like
it or not.
 
And you better like it.”

“Whatever,” she sighed, kissing him
again.
 
His lips were irresistible,
and truth be told, she was happy that Liam wanted to be public with her.

She was happy period.

***

The happiness lasted for about all of two
minutes after she arrived at the office for her second day of gainful
employment.

She’d just sat down with a cup of coffee,
started her computer, and sighing with a smile on her face as she once again
thought about how Liam had kissed her before she’d left for the day.

And then Easton Rather opened his office
door and came out to the suite, and as she turned to greet him, he dropped an
enormous folder filled with papers onto her desk.

“All of these are old client records that
have to be entered into our FileMaker Pro database,” he said, pointing at the
enormous folder.
 
“You have to key
them in manually, they can’t be scanned.”

“I don’t—I’ve never done that
before,” she said, her anxiety instantly rising so that she was already getting
heart palpitations.

Easton was standing there, towering over
her, and his face was a mask of unfriendliness.
 
He pointed to the computer.
 
“Log in, please.”

She logged in, having to retype her
password twice due to nerves.
 
When
she finally got in, she smiled at him.
 
“Sorry, I’m kind of nervous.”

“You better enter data faster than you
type your password,” he said, not smiling.

“Sorry,” she said again, under her
breath.

“Click on the FileMaker Pro icon in the
top corner of your desktop there,” he said, and she followed his instructions
to get into the database.

Easton flipped
open
the binder and pushed his finger against the first record on the top of the
pile.
 
“All of these fields match up
with the fields in the database.
 
If
the database doesn’t have a field for
it, that
means
it doesn’t need to be entered.
 
Just
essential information, that’s all we need.”

“Oh.
 
Okay,” she said, smiling.
 
“Seems simple enough.”

Easton nodded.
 
“It better be.
 
Because if you don’t get through these
files by the end of the day, I’m going to have to let you go.”

She swallowed.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
Are you—are you joking?”

“No,” he said, turning around and walking
back to his office.
 
“Any executive
assistant worth his or her salt would be able to do this task blindfolded.”

“I’m on it,” she told him.

“And don’t make errors,” he called back
from his doorway.
 
“I’m going to
spot check your work to make sure everything’s entered correctly.”

She grit her teeth and tried not to
cry.
 
Fuck you, Easton Rather, you dick.
 
I wish your father punched you out at your wedding like he tried to.

She considered just standing up and
walking off the job right then and there.
 
After all, who could blame her?
 
Easton hadn’t even given her a
chance,
he’d
hated her instantly and for no good reason.

But then Grace decided she’d prove Easton
wrong.
 
For some reason, he was
trying to make her quit, and she wasn’t going to do that.
 
She was going to pass his dumb test with
flying colors.

So, she took a breath, composed herself,
and then picked up the first record, and began typing the information into the
corresponding fields in the database.

It took her about five minutes to do the
first record, and about three to do the next.
 
After that, she started to get the hang
of it and find a little rhythm.
 
She
was focused, determined, and knew that she would do this.

It took her almost an hour to do the
first twenty records.
 
Now she had a
tiny pile stacked on the other side of the computer—the done pile.
 
It was dwarfed by the “to be done”
pile.
 
Eyeballing it, she figured
there were nearly five hundred records still to be entered, which, at her current
pace, would take her much longer than the seven remaining hours she had left to
accomplish.

I
have to go faster.

Double
my work rate.

She began entering the records even
faster, her fingers flying over the keys.
 
She knew that this pace was significantly inflating the chance of making
multiple errors, but Easton had made it clear that she would be fired if she
didn’t finish.

Therefore, it was a higher priority to
finish the pile of records than it was to make sure her work was error free.

After about another hour, she’d been able
to speed up to a point where she was averaging about one or two records entered
every minute.