Freedom's Price (8 page)

He couldn’t hide his smile. “Yeah, I…um, kind of got that impression.”

“It’s
not
funny! What am I going to do? If I have to sit there,” she fumed, “
wasting
my time—”

“Maybe you should think about changing your major.”

“To what? I’ve already looked through the course catalog, and I didn’t see any listings for classes in strategic warfare. That’s the only thing I’m good at!” Marisala pushed her way past him up the stairs, the puppy on her heels.

Liam followed too. “Maybe you
should
think about joining the army, getting into some kind of officers’ program—”

She laughed, but it sounded brittle as she pushed open the door to her room. “Oh,
that
would be perfect. All those years I spent fighting, living for the day I could
stop
fighting. And now you think maybe I should spend the rest of my life fighting?”

She sat down on the bed, her shoulders slumped in dejection. “What am I doing here? I should have just married Enrique and gotten it over with.”

Liam stopped in the doorway, knowing it would be a mistake to get too close to her. But he wanted to. God, he wanted to put his arms around her. He held his coffee mug more tightly instead.

“How do you stand it?” she asked quietly. “How do you walk around and still manage to smile?”

She looked up at him, and her eyes were fiercely intense. “During the history lecture, I was sitting next to a girl who just broke her fingernail. She acted as if it were the end of the world. She actually left the lecture to find a nail file. And I was sitting there thinking, is this real? Is this what real people worry about? Broken fingernails. And parking spots? On my way to class, I saw two men nearly come to blows because they both wanted the same parking spot.” She shook her head. “I wanted to slap them and make them see how petty their problems are.” Her voice shook. “I wanted to give them a list of all the children I knew who died in that war I was so good at fighting.”

Liam knew she was close to tears. “Please, just go away,” she told him. “Just close the door and leave me alone.”

He knew he should. He knew that was
exactly
what he should do. Close the door and walk away.

Instead, he stepped into her room. Instead, he set his mug of cooling coffee on her bedside table. Instead, he sat down next to her on the bed and took her hand, gently lacing their fingers together.

“We’ll figure this out,” he said, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded. “I know a guy, he’s a career counselor—he’s got this standardized test that you fill out, and it tells you what kind of job you’re most suited for. I’ll help you, Mara, and together we’ll find some classes that’ll interest you.”

She glanced at him and smiled, but turned away before he got a clear look at the tear that had escaped from the corner of her eye. As she furtively wiped it away he pretended not to notice. God, when was the last time he’d seen Marisala cry?

“You’re going to help me, huh?” Marisala took a deep breath and forced another shaky smile. “You, the king of the maladjusted?”

“Ouch—
that
hurt.”

She laughed, and Liam lost himself for a moment in the bottomless depth of her eyes. As he watched, an awareness dawned in those eyes, an awareness and a haunting vulnerability.

She wanted him to kiss her, her body language couldn’t have been more obvious. She wanted him to kiss her, but she didn’t expect him to.

She looked away, but then glanced back. She had something to ask, and in true Marisala style, she took the bull by the horns. “Do you find that my scar makes me terribly ugly?”

Of all the things Liam had expected her to say,
that
wasn’t one of them. For a moment he was speechless.
Ugly?

“I think Santiago wanted me to go to a plastic surgeon because he doesn’t like looking at it,” she continued. “I think he doesn’t like being reminded of the war.”

Liam couldn’t help himself. He touched the side of her face, tracing the crescent shape of her scar with his thumb. “It’s not ugly,” he said. “But when I see it, my knees feel weak, because I can’t help but think how close you came to being killed.”

“So it does bother you.”

He lifted her chin so she was forced to meet his gaze. “Do
my
scars bother you?”

To his surprise, tears once again filled her eyes, and she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “More than you can possibly know.”

She touched him then, turning his shoulder so that she could see his back. He knew it didn’t look pretty. It was covered with a latticework of fading scars, handiwork of many lashings from a lifetime ago.

He pulled away from her. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure I wear a shirt from now on.”

“No,” she said. “That won’t make them go away. It’ll only
hide
them. You don’t really think that just because something is covered up, I’ll forget that it’s there?”

The tears in her eyes overflowed, spilling down onto her cheeks.

When her father and her brother died—that was the last time Liam had seen Marisala cry.

She tried to stop, tried to push her tears away, but she couldn’t.

And in the same way, Liam couldn’t keep himself from reaching for her.

She fell into his arms as if he were her safe harbor. She clung to him, her arms tightly around his neck, her face buried against his throat.

And Liam knew that coming here to Boston was much more difficult for Marisala than she had let on.

He knew that the war had killed the innocent young girl both he and Santiago remembered. Despite Santiago’s wishes, there was nothing any of them could do to get that little girl back.

And Liam knew that whatever he did—whether he rejected Marisala for the sake of their friendship or he gave in to this burning need to make love to her—it didn’t matter.

Whatever he did, it would only make her feel worse.

He could only hope that, in the long run, keeping his distance would hurt her less.

SEVEN

M
ARISALA LOOKED OUT
of the window as Liam slipped the car into a parking spot. As usual, one had magically opened up for him as he pulled onto the busy downtown street. He was inordinately lucky, but only when it came to finding places to park. The rest of his life wasn’t quite as charmed.

She’d woken up in the night again to the sound of him caught in a nightmare. She almost went into his room, but then his light went on. From her doorway, she could see him through the crack in his slightly open door. As she watched he rushed toward her and flung the door open wide.

She swiftly and silently moved back into the shadows of her room as, breathing hard, Liam flung himself at the light switch in the hall. The light came on, glaring and bright, but even that didn’t seem to be enough for him. As she continued to watch he went downstairs, dressed only in his boxer shorts, and turned on every lamp in the house—with the exception of the ones in her room and in Hector and Inez’s.

When she saw Liam this morning, it was obvious that he’d been up for the rest of the night.

He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week—not since that morning she’d first gone to her classes and he’d slept until nearly noon. Maybe it was time to call Ricardo Montoya again. But the last time they’d talked, her old friend had pointed out that he couldn’t
force
Liam to talk to him.

And God only knew
she
couldn’t force Liam to talk to
her
.

He hadn’t even told her where they were going this morning until she was in the car.

Of course, he’d been right about one thing—if he
had
told her where they were going, she probably wouldn’t have gotten into the car. Because they were going shopping. He was taking her shopping for clothes.

Marisala climbed out of the car as Liam put coins in the parking meter. “I don’t need new clothes. I like the clothes I have.”

“Two or three outfits,” Liam said firmly. “That’s all we need to get. Just enough for you to wear when Santiago comes to visit.”

“If he’s not coming until Thanksgiving, why do we need to shop
now
?”

Liam held open the door to one of the fancy stores that lined the street. “Because you have to get used to wearing them.”

Marisala stopped short. “Oh, no. No way—”

“You don’t have to wear them all the time. Just every now and then. As a matter of fact, there’s a charity ball I’ve got to attend next week. It’s a good opportunity for you to—”

“You’re not making me go to a
ball
!”

Liam closed the door, resigned to standing out on the sidewalk and discussing this. “I thought all females liked balls—like you all have some kind of Cinderella gene.”

“I got a Rambo gene instead. I’ll skip the ball, thank you.”

“Mara, you’ve got to practice all this social-etiquette stuff I’ve been telling you about.”

“At a
ball
? I don’t think so.”

“If you can handle that, you can handle Santiago.”

“I can practice keeping my mouth shut anywhere. That’s what it all boils down to, isn’t it?”

“It’s more than that, and you know it. You need to wait and watch and pick up signals from other people. You need to let them take the lead. If you’re at all uncertain as to how formal or casual to be, let them set the pace and the tone. If you wait for them, you can pick up cues. We’ve talked about this—”

“Endlessly,” she said dryly.

“This would be a great opportunity to try it out on strangers—”

“No,” Marisala said. “Read my lips. No. No, I’m not going to a ball.”

“Don’t decide now. Think about it.”

She paused for a half a second. “I’ve thought about it. No.”

“It could be fun.”

She laughed. “Yeah, right.”

Liam gestured toward the door. “Come on. We can do this quickly and get it over with, or we can take forever and really suffer.”

Marisala went inside. “There’s just one problem,” she said as he closed the door behind them. “You didn’t mention we were going shopping until after I was in the car.”

“So?”

She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “So I’m not wearing any underwear.”

The look on his face made her wish she’d brought her camera.

The situation wasn’t quite as awful as she made it sound. It wasn’t as if she simply had neglected to put her underwear on this morning when she got dressed. In fact, the running shorts she wore were the kind that had a panty built right in. As for a bra, she didn’t have the type of body that needed a great deal of restraining, and she only wore one underneath her T-shirt when she ran.

Or when she knew she was going shopping for clothes.

Liam took a deep breath, and Marisala knew that he was determined to pretend he wasn’t fazed by her announcement. “So?” he said. “Big deal.” He pulled a dress from the rack. “What size are you?”

“Not
that
size,” she said, making a face at the big red-and-purple flower print of the dress. “Believe me. They don’t make
that
dress in
my
size.”

Liam pulled another from the rack. “How about this?”

It was better. It still had a floral print—most of the clothes in this store did—but the flowers were tiny and the swirls of blues and greens were actually pleasant to look at. “The skirt’s too long. I’ll trip over it when I run.”

“Ten-to-one odds are you won’t be running while you’re wearing this,” Liam pointed out. “I’m guessing you’re a small.” He took another dress from the rack, and another.

Marisala sighed. “I suppose the next stop is the hairdresser’s.”

“Nope—just the drugstore to buy you a hairbrush. You have beautiful hair. It would be a crime to cut it.” He thrust the load of dresses into her arms. “Try these on.”

She gasped. “Liam! Did you look at these price tags? One of these dresses would feed a family of eight in San Salustiano for an entire week! I couldn’t possibly buy this—it’s insanely expensive.”

“Just try it on.”

“I will
not
!” Marisala flung the dresses onto one of the racks and headed toward the door.

Liam smiled. Perfect. She’d done exactly what he’d expected her to do. He followed her out onto the sidewalk. “You want to come back inside and try that again?”

This was to be another of their lessons in civility. They would go back into the store, and maybe this time she would finally learn how to talk politely, to stay calm, to curb her passionate nature.

There was genuine surprise in her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“Obviously you haven’t listened to a single word I’ve told you about how to deal with people like Santiago. If I were your uncle, I’d be pretty disgusted with you right now.”

“But—”

“If you don’t like that store, if you don’t like those clothes or those prices—that’s fine. But come on, Mara, you’ve got to learn to drop the high drama. Turning your back and walking away…That was rude.”

“Rude?” Two circles of pink appeared on her cheeks. “
Rude?
What’s
rude
is that price tag on that dress! No, it’s not rude, it’s
obscene
! How could you take me to a store like that? How could you think I would wear a dress like that when people are going hungry? Even here in this country, people are hungry! I see them on the streets all the time!”

“So
talk
to me about it. Don’t shout at me. Come on, let’s go back into the store and do this over, without any shouting.”

She laughed in disbelief. “I will
not
. Some things need to be shouted about, and this is one of them!”

“There’s a time and a place for shouting,” he told her, trying to keep his own voice calm.

“Yes, and it’s
all
the time and
every
where,” she countered.

“It can be possible to make a stronger statement with a softer, more rational voice. You need to learn to recognize when shouting will be useless. It’s useless with Santiago—you know damn well he can outshout you any day. And it’s useless with me. All you need to do is talk, even quietly, and I’ll listen to you.”

“But I
like
to shout—and believe me, I’ll shout some more if you make me go back into that store!”

His voice got louder despite his best efforts. “Marisala, you’re being difficult on purpose. You know exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“Yes, I do. You’re trying to show me how to stay silent when my heart wants to cry out. You’re trying to teach me to smile when I want to weep. You’re trying to make me hide all that I feel, to never let it show—to be like
you
.” There was real contempt in her voice. “The only time you shout about anything is in your sleep.”

Liam couldn’t respond. What could he possibly say?

She stalked toward his car. “Take me to a store with lower prices, and I’ll show you all I’ve learned so far about your way of hiding.”

Liam unlocked and opened the car door, knowing better than to hold it open for her. He got in behind the wheel and headed toward a low-priced department store.

Some things need to be shouted about. The only time you shout is in your sleep.

She was right. Dear God, she was absolutely right.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shouted in anger instead of fear.

“Hector did
what
?” Marisala’s new sandals skidded on the kitchen floor, and if it weren’t for Liam’s strong arms, she would have landed directly on Evita. But he quickly released her as if touching her burned him.

“Hector got a job,” Liam answered for Inez. “That Brookline landscaper hired him.”

“Full-time,” Inez added, lowering herself uncomfortably onto one of the kitchen chairs.

Marisala let out a whoop. “That’s fabulous!”

Liam was grinning. “Yeah, isn’t it?”

There were tears in Inez’s eyes. “He wouldn’t have gotten the job if he didn’t have an address and a phone number to give the supervisor. If you hadn’t helped us…” She smiled tremulously. “We were so lucky.”

As Marisala watched, Liam tried to lighten the solemnness caused by Inez’s touching gratitude. “Well, we were lucky too. I mean, think about it. Marisala could very well have brought home someone who would think nothing of murdering us in our sleep.”

“That wouldn’t have been a very big problem for
you
,” Marisala countered, “seeing as how you never sleep.”

Liam crouched down to scratch behind Evita’s floppy ears. “And
you
, of course, have your ferocious watchdog to keep you safe.”

Inez was giggling instead of weeping—exactly what Liam had intended. “You two look so nice all dressed up in your fancy clothes.”

Marisala held out the long skirt of her dress so that Inez could see. “Fourteen ninety-five—can you believe it? Pretty good deal, huh?”

“What do you think, Evita?” Liam asked the puppy. “Do you want to make a bet whether or not Marisala can refrain from telling the waiters and the busboys at the restaurant how much her dress cost? You think she can?
I
think she can’t.
I
think she’s going to stand up on the table and make an announcement about it to everyone in the entire restaurant.”

Marisala squinted at him in her best version of her Great-Aunt Selena’s evil eye. “You don’t believe I can go out to dinner with you and ‘behave,’ as you call it.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it. And of course, it’s not like going to that charity ball. But we’ve already established that you can’t handle
that
.”

“I won’t have to go to a ball with Santiago when he visits. Going to dinner is
much
more similar to—”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he teased. “I don’t think you’d be able to find an evening gown for under twenty bucks.”

“Aren’t you embarrassed by the fact that the tie you’re wearing cost nearly
four times
more than my dress?”

“I think she’s going to make that announcement at the restaurant as well,” Liam told the puppy.

“Four
times
,” Marisala repeated. “Doesn’t that make you feel decadent and evil?”

“Yeah, yeah, right. Decadent and evil. My two middle names.” Liam gave Evita one more scratch behind the ears and straightened up. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

“Give Hector a big kiss for me when he gets out of the shower,” Marisala told Inez.

Inez smiled shyly. “I will.”

“And tell him not to cook tonight,” Liam added. “I’m going to have the restaurant send your dinner over. You and Hector deserve to celebrate too.”

The tears were back. “Thank you so much.”

Even Marisala looked a little misty-eyed. “Oh, Liam, you’re so sweet.”

“I thought I was decadent and evil.”

“Decadent, evil,
and
sweet. What more could I possibly want in a dinner date?”

“This isn’t a date,” he protested. “It’s another of our lessons.”

Marisala smiled angelically as she swept out the door. “Good. Maybe this time you’ll finally learn a thing or two.”

“Are you familiar with the expression
rule of thumb
?” The light from the candle played expressively across Marisala’s face as she gazed across the table at Liam.

“Of course,” Liam said. “It means something that’s standard. Something everybody knows.”

He let himself gaze at her—after all, it would have been rude not to. They were having dinner. They were in the middle of a conversation—a civil one, no less—and it made perfect sense for him to look at her.

Good thing, because he wasn’t convinced he’d be able to keep his eyes off her if it were otherwise.

“Do you know where that expression comes from?” she asked.

It was amazing how incredible she looked dressed in a little cotton nothing of a dress. The miniature flower print and the cornflower-blue color were pleasant enough, but it was the dignity with which she wore it that commanded the attention.

And she
was
getting a boatload of attention. The waiters and the maître d’ of this little Italian restaurant had been hovering ever since they’d arrived.

With her hair down, curling around bare arms and shoulders that were exposed by the sleeveless cut of the dress, and with a touch of the makeup he’d bought for her, she was, hands down, the most beautiful woman in the room—quite possibly in the world.