Full Circle (5 page)

Liam was quiet for a moment. “I’m sure it’s got a few advantages, though, right?”

“I guess, but my family is so overprotective. I feel like I’m three inches tall and they’re hovering over me. My parents retired and moved out of state last year, and my mom still manages to watch my every move. Sometimes I wish she’d just get off my back.”

Elisa led him into a room and flipped on a light. “This is my study. If I’m not at the clinic, I’m in here.”

When he didn’t answer, she turned around and found him looking right past her, his eyes full of pain.

“Are you all right?”

He blinked and met her gaze, but this time, he looked away first. “I can’t argue against having a mother who’s concerned with the well-being of her child. My mom passed away last fall.”

Oh hell. Elisa put her hand on the back of her desk chair to steady herself. Guilt rushed through her, both for complaining about her mother and for not knowing he’d been through such a terrible loss.

She’d met his mother once. It was Parents’ Day on campus. Naturally, she had paid more attention to Brett’s family, trying to decide if she wanted to be a part of it—oh, if only her younger self had a lick of sense—but she remembered Liam’s mother being young and beautiful, and both of his parents had seemed very proud of him.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. It didn’t seem like enough, but what could she possibly say that would make him feel better?

She didn’t ask what happened, but the question must have been in her eyes, because he answered, “Brain aneurysm. In the middle of the night. She didn’t suffer.”

Judging from the way he turned away and looked out the window, he had—and still did. Elisa’s chest ached.

She watched the back of his head for a moment. He was very still, as though he’d fall apart if he moved.

She wanted to hold him.

Her steps were light, somewhat fearful, but she made it across the room and stood at his side. He blinked now and then, but other than that, he remained motionless. It took her a few seconds and several nervous twitches of her fingers, but finally, she took his hand.

His fingers closed around hers. She could barely breathe. She hadn’t touched him since that night so long ago, but seeing him in so much pain was more than she could bear.

“I’m here for you,” she said softly. “I’ve lost…family.”

“I know.”

She squeezed his hand, a tiny bit. Then her arms were around him, and his around her, a long, tight embrace that melted away the years. His chest moved with each breath and his hands pressed against her back. She laid her head on his shoulder, let her cheek brush his shirt and inhaled the scent of him—she didn’t know if it was cologne, aftershave, detergent or something else, but it was
him
and she had missed it more than she’d ever allowed herself to believe.

She yearned to tell him everything, but she would have to honor the memory of their daughter alone. He had lost his
mom
. There was nothing to be gained by dumping the news on him that he’d also lost a child.

When they separated, Liam gave her a sheepish half-smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload my baggage like that.”

Elisa couldn’t begin to speak about her own baggage. She squeezed his hand one more time and then reluctantly let go.

He surveyed her office, which had a little more personality than the first level of the house since she spent so much time there. A bookshelf near the window stored a collection of porcelain cats, the animals she hoped she’d continue to love since she was destined to become an old lady with eighteen of them.

Then she spotted the small photo on top of the shelf, and her heart almost stopped beating.

She snatched up the picture before Liam could get a look at it, but not before he saw what she’d done.

He looked amused. “What’s that?”

She hid it behind her back. Very slick.

“It’s just a…really bad picture of me from a while back.”

What was it doing on the bookshelf, anyway? She kept those photos in a box at the back of her closet, where no one else would see them. But she had wanted to look at this one a few days ago, and in the chaos of Liam’s arrival and her resulting emotional haze, she’d neglected to pack it away.

“Let me see it. I bet you’re beautiful.”

Elisa forced a half-hearted laugh. “No way. Let’s go back downstairs.”

She stuck the picture into a row of books and pushed Liam toward the staircase before he could argue. She had an idea, a plan that would keep them too busy to talk about the past as well as find Liam a woman—so he could get on with the life he’d obviously moved here to find after losing his mother. She owed him that much before she moved away and left him behind—again. It wasn’t a very appealing thought.

“If you want to get your name around town, there’s an annual Fourth of July celebration coming up next month,” she told Liam when they returned to the kitchen. “It’s a huge deal and everybody in Windy Flats will be there. You should check it out. You’ll jumpstart your client list, maybe even find yourself a Mrs. Barton.”

She’d have sworn he blushed at that.

“I didn’t say I was looking for one of those. Having some fun with a nice lady would do just fine.”

He looked at her, right through her eyes and into her soul, and she heard what he wasn’t saying.

A nice lady like you.

She definitely had to get him a girlfriend. Because he wanted her and she wanted him, and that would never do.

“Great. I was thinking I could show you around and introduce you to some of the locals. There are plenty of nice ladies, just make sure you check out their left hands before you put the moves on them. Don’t want to get yourself caught up with one of those housewives who can’t say no to a sexy vet.”

“How about tonight?” he suggested, and though the idea made Elisa nervous, she was happy he’d steered their conversation away from the somber turn it had taken earlier. “It’ll still be light for a couple of hours and I wouldn’t mind looking around downtown. You do have a downtown, right?”

“Yeah, complete with a gas station and a thirty-year-old ice cream shop.”

They both laughed. Liam gathered up his toolbox and tossed it in the back of Elisa’s car since he’d left his at home. She didn’t mind driving—it would feel way too much like a date to be riding in the passenger seat of a hot guy’s car.

She didn’t date, didn’t even like spending time with men who weren’t part of her family, but she needed Liam’s friendship. She needed him to support her decision to leave, and to stay at the clinic so her brother wouldn’t be overwhelmed with work when the new baby arrived.

Since she could no longer avoid him, she would do everything in her power to keep her affection-starved body and emotions under control. The way she’d done since the day she moved back to this town.

Elisa had definitely changed.

On one hand, Liam was glad to see it. She was no longer a doormat who got herself attached to the wrong people and into trouble. On the other, she had turned into the most restless, unsettled person he’d ever met. How could she have not hung so much as a single photo during the five years she’d been in that house?

The sun had begun to set on downtown Windy Flats, which consisted of a couple of blocks’ worth of small businesses housed in old historic buildings, and true to Elisa’s word, a gas station and an ice cream shop. The tour hadn’t taken long, and now they sat at a picnic table on the restaurant’s patio, eating small cups of rocky road ice cream and enjoying the orange-streaked sky.

“So, what do you think?” Her lips slid a bite of ice cream off her spoon and sent Liam’s imagination into overdrive. “Is it quiet enough for you?”

“The town? It’s perfect.”

It
was
perfect—for him, anyway. With its locally-owned businesses, sprawling baseball fields, and organized youth activities, Windy Flats was a place made for families. He had every intention of having a family, the sooner, the better. He ached to recreate the happiness of the home where he’d been raised and pass on the closeness his own family shared before his mother unexpectedly left them.

She had talked about grandchildren so often. He would give her some, even if she wouldn’t have a chance to read to them at night, or bake cookies with them, or watch their eyes light up when they opened her carefully chosen Christmas gifts.

His fingers clenched, and he tried hard to relax. He couldn’t bring her back—he could only do his best to bring her dreams to life. He needed to focus on that.

He had ditched the career-minded, opportunistic women of the big city to search for something simpler. Someone less risky.

Instead, he’d found Elisa.

Elisa was beyond risky. She’d made a grand effort to show him the highlights of the small town and look happy about it, but he could see it was the last place on earth she wanted to be. She had city lights and dollar bills shining in her eyes. Her intense desire to leave raised enough red flags to doom any possibility of a future with her. Marriage and children, the most important things he hoped to have in his life, made her cringe.

She used to want those things—with Brett, unfortunately—and Liam wasn’t sure why she’d changed her mind. Was she afraid she would lose another baby?

Feminine giggles erupted behind him. A glance over his shoulder revealed a pack of five women huddled together in the parking lot. When they saw him watching, they stopped laughing in favor of whispering and shot disapproving looks in his direction.

So he hadn’t been seeing things. Those women had been gawking since he and Elisa had arrived, and this new development made him sure that he wasn’t just feeling the self-consciousness of a new guy in town.

“Do I smell or something?” he asked, leaning over so only Elisa could hear him.

Laughing, she finished her last bite and tossed her spoon into her cup. “What?”

“Shh. Seriously. Is there ice cream hanging from my nose? Is there anything about me that would make you want to stare?”

“That’s probably not something you should ask me in public.”

Her suggestive response surprised him—pleasantly—but he squelched the impulse to finish what they’d started a decade ago. First, he needed to find out what the women were chattering about, and he prayed it wasn’t the same scandal that had followed him out of college and into Dallas. There, although it had ruined his chances with the last woman he’d dated, he had managed to keep it contained to a small number of people. But small towns could weave wicked grapevines, and negative rumors would kill the admirable reputation he was trying to establish at the clinic.

He gave her his best chiding look. “You’re very cute, but can you help me out here?”

For a second, she looked like she’d smack him for using the word
cute
to describe her, but she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Yes, Doctor. What’s the problem?”

“You see those women over there?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Do you know who they are?”

She tossed a covert glance across the parking lot to inspect the group. “The blonde is Mrs. Dale, who I’m sure you’ve had the pleasure of meeting at the clinic. The dark-haired one works at the real estate office down the street, and the other three I recognize but can’t remember much about them.”

She paused. “Why do you want to know who they are?”

“They’ve had their necks craned in our direction all night long. Hence the question of ice cream hanging from my nose.”

Her face paled. “Are you sure they’ve been watching us?”

“Pretty sure.” He paused, watching her expression flicker between fear and anger. “It’s no big deal. I’m probably imagining things.”

She hopped off the picnic table. “No, you’re right. They’re the gossip center of this town. If you did have ice cream on your nose, they would notice and then they’d tell everyone else about it.”

“Let’s get out of here, then. I could do without the meddling.”

“Here, here.” Elisa lifted her empty cup in a toast before throwing it in the waste can.

Liam followed suit, and a horn beeped as they headed back to Elisa’s car. He looked up to see Justin and Laura waving from their massive SUV and supposed they would need a vehicle that size to tow three kids around. A pang of envy tore through his chest.

Justin stopped the truck, and Elisa approached his open window to tell him about the busybodies inhabiting the restaurant.

“We’re getting out of here,” she said. “You guys want to hang out?”

“We definitely don’t need to stay here,” Justin answered, putting his arm around Laura’s shoulders. “We hit the drive-thru. The
baby
wanted some ice cream.”

They all shared a knowing laugh, and Laura grinned at Elisa. “I was going to stop by the baby store around the corner while Justin picks up the boys from soccer practice. You want to look around with me? I could use some female time.”

Liam thought Elisa would rather do just about anything else, but to his surprise, she conceded. “Sure. Wait a minute—I can’t. I’m Liam’s ride.”

Justin and Laura exchanged a look of surprise and immediately tried to conceal it.

“It’s cool,” Justin said. “He can come with me to pick up the boys or I’ll drop him at his place. You ladies can take Elisa’s car.”

Liam looked at Elisa, silently questioning her, and she smiled in agreement. It dawned on him that this arrangement would keep them from the awkward goodbye moment that would certainly come if she took him home.

“Sounds good to me,” he answered, thankful for an exit that wouldn’t force him to decide whether to try to kiss her and embarrass both of them. “Thanks for the tour, Elisa. I had a good time.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks for the faucet.”

If he didn’t want her so badly, the comment would have amused him. His friends in Dallas would heckle him for weeks if they knew a woman’s response to an evening with him had been “thanks for the faucet”.

Laura got out of the truck, and the two women walked away. When Elisa looked back and gave him a little smile, he couldn’t help staring after her.

“I’m surprised she was out with you tonight,” Justin said while he started the engine and drove away from the restaurant.