If I Can't Let Go (If You Come Back To Me #2) (5 page)

Roger had already located a booth, apparently only empty because it was too distant to see or hear the band clearly. She slid into the booth, placing her briefcase between herself and the wall. Her breath caught when Liam slid onto the seat next to her and she felt his hip and thigh press against her own. His clean, spicy scent filtered into her nose. She inched toward the wall, trying not to seem too obvious. Liam gave her a sidelong, too-knowing glance and she froze. Their sides
were no longer pressed together, but his hard, jeans-covered thigh still ghosted against her leg.

A waitress came and Liam and Roger exchanged some pleasantries until she returned with their drink orders. After the waitress walked away, Liam got down to business.

“I understand from Joe that you were on Silver Dunes Beach on the night of the crash and saw my father,” Liam began.

At first, Natalie had been puzzled about Liam’s earlier reference to Joe Brown. Natalie knew the gruff old man—he was a Harbor Town old-timer and handyman. He did everything from yard work to simple house repairs to carpentry and painting. Upon reflection, however, she realized it made good sense to use Joe as a reference. Old Joe, as some of the residents fondly referred to him, was an insider to Harbor Town’s history, people and secrets. Joe saw and heard a lot of things in his daily meanderings.

“That’s right,” Roger agreed. “I wasn’t a full-time resident of Harbor Town at the time. I’d come down with some buddies for some R and R and some fishing in Miller Lake,” he said.

“You were staying in one of those vacation cottages near Silver Dune Beach?” Liam clarified.

Roger nodded his gray head and took a swig of his beer. “There’s a path that leads from the cottages to the beach, but you can take another branch off the path toward Miller Lake. I’d left the cottage around sunset and gone down to the lake…” Roger paused and cast an uncertain glance at Liam from beneath shaggy eyebrows.

“I’m not the police chief yet,” Liam said mildly. Unlike Natalie, Roger seemed to understand Liam perfectly, because he gave a booming bark of laughter and relaxed back in his seat.

“Ernie Prang—he was the chief back then—didn’t take too kindly to trapping in Miller Lake,” Roger said slyly.

“I know,” Liam said. “He always said it was unsportsmanlike.”

“How do you stand on the matter?” Roger asked, his pale eyes sparkling with mischief.

“I stand where the law does,” Liam replied.

“In other words, I better not be caught laying fish traps when you get sworn into office.”

Liam’s shrug and easy smile looked casual enough, but Natalie got the impression Roger Dayson would definitely think twice about putting illegal fish traps into Miller Lake once Liam was the face of the law in Harbor County.

“Like I said, I haven’t been sworn into office yet. But I’d
like
to think I’ll have better things to do with my time once I am chief then to crack down on a sixteen-year-old misdemeanor,” Liam said dryly. “So please…go on with your story.”

“Well it was after sunset by the time I headed back to the cabin. It was a full moon that night, so I took a detour to the beach to get a good look at it. That’s when I saw your father.”

“How long after sunset was it?” Liam asked.

Roger shrugged and his eyebrows pinched together. “Couldn’t have been much more than twenty minutes or so after dark.”

“Was there anyone else on the beach but my father?”

Roger shook his head. “Just me and your dad.”

“And?” Liam prompted when Roger clammed up and took a long drink of his beer. “Did you two speak?”

“No…not really,” said Roger, suddenly seeming uncomfortable.

“What happened?” Liam persisted.

Roger’s glance at Liam was a bit anxious. “Your dad…he was real upset.”

“How do you know?”

The man made a sheepish motion with his head. “He was crying.”

“Crying?” Liam repeated in a deadpan tone. Natalie examined his profile. His facial features remained unreadable, but she sensed he was stunned by Roger’s words.

“Yeah,” Roger admitted. “I’ve never really…heard anything like that before. Your dad…he was a big man. You have the look of him, so you must know what I mean,” he said with a significant nod toward Liam. “It just took me by surprise to come upon a man like that so obviously upset. He didn’t take too well to me seeing him, either. When he noticed I was on the beach with him, he looked like he was going to tear me to pieces for intruding on such a…you know…private moment. I’m not going to lie to you, I got off that beach like a fire had been lit under me.”

Liam just stared.

“Did he seem intoxicated?” Natalie asked, covering for Liam’s apparent shocked state.

Roger shrugged uncertainly. “Maybe. Mostly he seemed like someone had just told him his best friend had been killed. He looked like a mess, you know?”

“And you two never actually spoke?” Natalie prompted Roger.

“Nope. It left an impression on me though. To this day, in my mind’s eye I can just see him standing alone on that beach. He was the picture of misery. I felt terrible for interrupting him,” Roger mumbled glumly before he took another swig of his beer.

Liam straightened slowly, seeming to rise out of his thoughts.

“The crash happened about a half hour after you saw him, I’m guessing, given what you said about sunset. Isn’t that right?” Liam asked, looking to her for confirmation.

Natalie nodded.

A strange expression came over Roger’s face. Natalie saw him studying her glasses and the uncovered scarring on her temple as if he was seeing her for the first time.

“You were actually
in
that crash. You were that little girl,” he said in a hushed tone.

“Yes. I was in the car with my mother.”

“Damn,” Roger muttered under his breath. He threw Liam a wary glance and then looked back at Natalie. “If I’d known Derry Kavanaugh was…you know…in such a bad way drink-wise, I might have done something to stop him from getting into a car, but I
swear,
I didn’t guess he was intoxicated.”

“Of course you would have done something if you’d known,” Natalie reassured quickly.

“Is there anything else you can remember?” Liam asked. She had the feeling he was trying to deflect Roger from staring at her face with so much distress and fascination.

Roger shook his head. “Sorry. Nothing else.”

“Did you see my father leave?” Liam asked.

“No. Like I said, I hightailed it off the beach when your dad turned around and glared at me like he was going to take my head off.”

“And you didn’t know he was Derry Kavanaugh until later?”

“No, not until I saw his photo in the papers after the crash and put two and two together,” Roger replied, giving Natalie another furtive glance. He shifted uneasily in his seat.

“Listen…if that’s all…” Roger faded off and waved vaguely in the direction of the crowd and the band.

“It is. I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to speak with us,” Liam said. He stood along with Roger and shook his hand. Roger nodded at Natalie politely as he took his leave, but she had the impression he was glad to make his escape.

Liam slid back into his seat directly next to her. She tensed. Wouldn’t it have been more natural for him to sit across from
her since Roger had left? And was it her imagination, or had he pressed closer to the side of her body this time?

“Well, that was interesting,” Liam said.

She studied his profile and wondered what he was thinking. Surely it hadn’t been easy for him to hear what Roger had said. Regret trickled into her awareness.

“You seemed surprised,” Natalie murmured, her voice barely audible above the raucous music of the band. “You don’t have any idea why your father was so upset?”

“Not a clue,” Liam said.

“Your…your mother never mentioned any reason why he might have been in such a state on that night?”

He turned. His eyes were a dark, cobalt blue in the dim light as they flicked over her. He shook his head.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” he said.

She leaned toward him.

“I never saw my father cry a tear in his life. Never.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“Something happened to him that night,” Natalie whispered.

“Something,” Liam muttered in agreement. He transferred his gaze to the empty seat across from them as his thigh shifted beneath the table, brushing her skirt against her thigh. “Maybe the video from the bar will tell me something more about what happened to my dad that night.”

“So you haven’t seen it yet?”

“No. I’m scheduled to go to the police headquarters Thursday morning. A friend of mine is going to get the video out of storage.”

Natalie was quiet for a moment. “Has your mother ever spoken to you about the last time she saw your dad?”

Liam shook his head. “The only thing she ever told us is that he came back from Chicago earlier than she’d expected. He usually stayed in the city from Monday to Thursday night
and joined us at the vacation house for a long weekend during the summer months.”

“The crash happened on a Tuesday night,” Natalie recalled. “And your mother never said why she thought he showed up unexpectedly?”

“No. Like I’ve told you before, we don’t make a habit of standing around at family barbecues, reminiscing about the crash.”

She recoiled slightly at the hard edge to his voice. He must have noticed, because he sighed and slumped back in the booth. His thigh pressed tighter against hers, but Natalie doubted he noticed. He seemed so deflated.

“Sorry for snapping at you,” he mumbled. He started to flip a spoon that had been sitting on the table between his long, agile fingers.

“It’s okay,” she said, meaning it. She recalled what Roger Dayson had said about Derry Kavanaugh on the beach.

He seemed like someone had just told him his best friend had been killed.

“I know this can’t be easy for you,” she said quietly as she watched the movement of his fingers.

“I’m sure it’s not a picnic in the park for you, either.”

She glanced up, surprised because his low, gruff voice sounded closer to her ear than she’d expected. His goatee looked so trim and sleek up close. It highlighted his firm mouth to perfection. The thought of what those whiskers would feel like beneath her fingertips rose in her mind to taunt her. She still could hear the rowdy music in the distance, so she couldn’t explain why it suddenly felt as if the two of them were encapsulated in an airtight bubble.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Natalie?”

“Yes. Are you regretting it? Taking the job, I mean?”

His expression remained impassive, but his eyes seemed warm as they flickered across her face.

“I don’t regret it enough to make me stop doing it.”

She just nodded, unable to glance away.

“I wish you’d take off those glasses.”

“What?” she asked, knocked off balance by his abrupt statement.

“I can’t see your eyes. It’s dark back here.” His low, gruff murmur mesmerized her, even though she should have been alarmed by the fact that his firm mouth had just lowered another inch toward her lips. “Go ahead, Natalie. Take them off. I want to look at you.”

W
hen she remained frozen, a small smile tilted his lips. The spoon thumped to the wood table. He reached with both hands and gently drew off her glasses.

“There. That’s better,” he said as he placed her glasses on the table. “You okay?”

She blinked. Thankfully, her eyelid didn’t quiver or droop. Liam had been right. The light back here in the alcove was indeed dim enough for comfort. She nodded, despite the fact that her heart had started to hammer out a warning in her ears. She wasn’t used to having anyone staring at her as frankly—as warmly—as Liam Kavanaugh was at the moment.

“It makes you uncomfortable, when people look at you,” he said, making her wonder if he was a mind reader.

“If you’d had people gaping at you like you were a freak since you were eleven years old, you might not adore the experience, either,” she said stiffly. She turned away, wishing
that her scars faced the wall and not Liam’s sharp eyes. The scoffing noise he made caused her to whip her chin around, though.

“Sorry.” He must have noticed her insulted expression. “But come on…no one is looking at you like you’re a freak. That’s just stupid.”

Anger rose in her, swift and fierce. “What do
you
know about it?” How could he, a man who had probably never known self-consciousness once in his entire life, stand in judgment of her experience? “You saw the way Roger Dayson stared at me once he realized who I was.”

“I’m sure he was curious once he figured out who you were, but that’s not why most people are staring at you.”

She gaped at him, incredulous at his confidence. He noticed and shook his head. Natalie got the impression he really did consider her something of a bizarre novelty.

“They’re looking at you because you’re beautiful,” he said, his brows cocked, his manner saying loud and clear he was telling her the obvious…like,
hello
.

She made a scoffing sound. When his expression remained earnest, if puzzled, she sighed.

“What difference does it make?” she asked irritably.

He leaned closer, so that when he spoke she felt his breath brush against her temple.

“It makes a difference to me,” he said. “It should to you. Natalie?”

“Yes,” she mouthed.

“I wish it made a difference to you.”

She looked up at him slowly. Sure enough, his mouth hovered just inches away from her own. He’d moved closer. Her left arm lay flush against his torso. The tingling tip of her left breast pressed against his ribs.

His mouth lowered, and Natalie realized distantly she’d entered that fog of sensuality that had encapsulated her several
days ago in Liam’s driveway. Despite her heart pumping out a warning, she couldn’t seem to gather sufficient will to do much of anything but anticipate Liam’s mouth closing on her own.

A man spoke and a woman laughed shrilly. Natalie started and saw two men and a blonde woman walking toward the booth in front of them. She recognized Betsy Darnel. Betsy had taken off her jacket. Her top looked more like a draped silk handkerchief tied around her neck than a blouse. It covered her chest, but left her shoulders, back and a strip of belly almost completely bare. The two men who had accompanied her to the table were shamelessly checking out Betsy’s rear-view as she came toward their booth, but Betsy only had eyes for Liam.

“Hi, Liam,” Betsy said.

“Hey, Betsy.”

“Let me out. Please,” Natalie hissed quietly.

“When I saw you at the Shop and Save yesterday you said you were too busy to come to Jake’s tonight,” Betsy reminded Liam, unaware of Natalie’s mutterings. Natalie put her glasses back on and grabbed her bag. Her need to get out of the crowded bar had just grown exponentially. “I guess you changed your mind about coming,” Betsy continued, sounding a little sulky. “How come you’re sitting way back here, where you can’t even hear the music very well?”

“We were talking. We needed some quiet. And some privacy,” Liam replied. Natalie shoved her bag into his ribs, making him grunt.

“Talking, huh?” Betsy mused. Liam gave Natalie a surprised, annoyed glance and scooted out of the seat, probably because he didn’t want to be jabbed again. Once Natalie’s way was clear she shot out of the booth as if she’d been stored under pressure. “I hope I’m not interrupting a per
sonal moment or anything,” Betsy said as she gave Natalie the once-over.

Natalie hitched her bag onto her shoulder, highly aware of Liam’s tall form hovering over her the whole time.

“No, nothing personal,” she told Betsy coolly. “It was just a business meeting. Good night.”

She ignored Betsy’s sarcastic laugh of disbelief.

“Natalie, wait.”

She heard Liam call out, but she ignored him as she rushed away.

Brigit Kavanaugh waved distractedly at Liam from her kneeling position in her garden.

“Something is eating my lettuce and tomatoes, Chief. I demand answers!” she said with mock imperiousness as she stood.

“If you’re implying my soon-to-be job is going to involve hot pursuits of salad-eating rabbits, you’re not doing much to bolster my confidence about taking it.”

Liam felt a little guilty, given his reason for being there, when his mother laughed in a carefree manner. She didn’t laugh enough, nowadays.

“That sun is fierce. Come on, let’s go in the air-conditioning. I want to talk to you about something,” Liam said.

Brigit led him into the cool, shaded front room. The Kavanaughs hardly ever used the living room. They were a kitchen, front porch or beach sort of family. There had been a formal dining room and an elegant parlor in Liam’s childhood home in Chicago; he didn’t miss them a bit. Even before the lawsuits, even before they’d moved to the Harbor Town vacation home permanently, the Kavanaughs hadn’t spent much time in stuffy surroundings. His brother and sisters had always begged to eat in the kitchen or on their large, shaded
terrace; most nights they’d been indulged. Derry Kavanaugh had made the kind of salary that allowed him to support his wife’s tastes in luxury, but Derry himself would rather eat in the cozy, slightly messy kitchen with his children than in the formal dining room.

“So what’s this all about?” Brigit asked briskly as she sat next to him on the tufted couch.

Liam didn’t know how to start. It was more difficult than he’d anticipated, broaching the topic of his father. In the end, he just took the plunge. “Mom, was Dad upset when you saw him? On the night of the accident?”

Brigit’s smile shrunk.

“What?”
she croaked, her expression leading Liam to believe she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him correctly.

“On the night of the accident. Was Dad upset? You saw him before he went out, isn’t that right?”

“Why are you asking about this all of a sudden?”

He grimaced when he heard the offended, stiff quality of her voice. “I’m sorry, Ma, I don’t want to upset you, but it’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

“Why? It happened sixteen years ago. Why should it matter now?”

He considered his mother’s face in the dim light. He couldn’t help but recall that she’d had a heart attack a year ago. It had been a mild one, granted, and Brigit currently was a picture of health. Still…the thought hovered over him like a dark, threatening cloud.

“I’m investigating the events that led up to the crash,” he said quietly.

The silence seemed to swell and billow.

“I don’t understand, Liam.”

Her bewildered expression pained him. He wanted the truth. But at what cost was he willing to get it?

He picked up his mother’s hand, trying to reassure her.

“Someone has hired me to find out any information I can about why Dad behaved so uncharacteristically that night.”

“Someone
hired
you?” Brigit regarded him like a stranger who had suddenly sat beside her speaking a foreign language. “Who on earth would
want
to hire you—”

He saw the moment when she guessed at the truth. Her face settled into a cold, grim mask.

“Of course. The only person who would want to hire you for such a ridiculous task would be someone who was involved. That woman I saw you with the other day at your house…the one wearing the dark glasses. That was the Reyes girl, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Natalie Reyes. Yeah.”

“I see,” Brigit said coldly. She removed her hand from his.

“I don’t think you do at all,” Liam said slowly.

Brigit’s sharp blue eyes flashed to meet his. “Don’t I? She’s a very pretty girl.”

Liam attempted to bury his anger at the insult, knowing his mother had cause to be upset. “I didn’t accept the assignment because she’s
pretty
.”

“She’s paying you a good sum, then?”

“I didn’t accept it for the money, either,” he shot back. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to return the money this evening. I want to do this for me, Mom. For us. For Marc and Deidre and Colleen…for Dad. Doesn’t he deserve to have someone try to understand him? Everyone has painted him as such a selfish bastard over the years. Is it really so strange I would want to get a more realistic picture of the man who caused that crash…a more
human
picture?”

“Selfish bastard?”
Brigit repeated. Liam noticed her lips had gone white at the corners and she moved them as though they were numb. “That’s how you’ve been seeing your father?”

“No! Of course not. I’m just saying, most people would look at the situation from the outside and—”

Brigit stood up abruptly, halting him. “I’m not going to say anything more about this, Liam,” she told him in a low, shaking voice that set off alarms in his head. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you at this moment, that you would consider doing something so disrespectful of your father’s memory. All for a girl.”

Liam sprung up from the couch, his worries about his mother’s well-being evaporating beneath the cold sarcasm of her tone.

“I’m not doing it for a girl. I’m doing it for the truth. I’d think you’d want that as well, Mom, but maybe I’m seeing things a little clearer now. You’re pretty damn happy leaving everything locked up tight, aren’t you? That suits you just fine.”

She walked out of the room. A few seconds later, he heard her rapid footsteps on the stairs.

Guilt ripped through him when he recalled her incredulous, hurt expression.

Natalie had a sneaking suspicion who was visiting when she heard the brisk, authoritative knock the following evening, just before the door opened.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I kissed you first the other day, but you sure as hell kissed me back.”

Natalie sat at her desk, stunned into complete silence not only by the first words that flew out of Liam’s mouth, but the unexpected sight of him standing in her office. He wore a white long-sleeved cotton shirt with the unbuttoned cuffs rolled back once and a scowl on his face. His short, golden-brown hair was mussed, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it in frustration.

What in the world was he talking about? Natalie loosened
fingers that had gone stiff in the last few seconds and set her pen on the blotter.

“Well good evening to you, too,” she murmured calmly.

He gave her an irritated glance and fell into the leather chair in front of her desk like a dead weight.

“That’s just great, that’s priceless,” he muttered. “It’s so…
you,
to say something like that. That response proves my point completely.”

“And what point would that be?” she asked, strangely not at all offended by his behavior. If anything, she was a little concerned by his distracted, agitated manner.

“It means just what I said. That’s just the kind of thing you’d say to something inflammatory.
Well good evening to you, too.
Or what about,
no, nothing personal, it was just a business meeting.
” He shook his head as though he was exhausted by her antics, but his eyes studied her with a sharp gleam. “If that’s the way you kiss all your business associates it’s a wonder you aren’t the most popular accountant on the planet.”

The mention of that kiss finally pricked her anger, which is what he’d intended all along.

“How dare you barge in here and say something like that to me,” she said as she began to straighten the papers on her desk.

“I’d dare a hell of a lot more.”

She paused in her paper shuffling and glanced at him. He looked as lazy and uncaring as a big cat stretching in the hot summer sun. The analogy was completely apt. A big cat could turn dangerous in a heartbeat.

It took her a second to realize she’d stood up in her mounting fury and confusion.

“We
do
have a business arrangement. I was just stating the truth last night,” she said, her voice quavering.

“We kissed, and it was good.
Really
good. Now
I’m
just stating the truth, Natalie.”

She halted the retort on her tongue at the last second. She studied him more closely, noticing the tension in his muscles that belied his lazy pose. “What’s happened? What’s gotten into you? You didn’t come here to talk to me about…
that,
” she said, not wanting to utter the word
kiss
.

At first, he didn’t reply or move, but then his lean body uncoiled from his sitting position. He stuck one hand into a back pocket of his jeans.

Natalie stared at the folded piece of paper he tossed on her desk. She felt sick. She didn’t need to open it to know it was the check she’d written him for a retainer.

“My mother seems to be of the opinion that the reason I took this case is because I find you so attractive,” he said.

“You…you told your mother I hired you?” she asked, her queasiness mounting.

“I went to try and ask her about my dad’s behavior on the night of the crash. She’s not very happy with me at the moment.”

Compassion swelled in her breast. No wonder he seemed so out of sorts.

“I’ve been thinking about this situation all afternoon, and you know what I decided, Natalie?” He pointed at the check on her desk. “
That
was making things more complicated. Not me kissing you.”