Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy (13 page)

James and Mila had once been married, or something...and now they were stuck working together? Maybe not smoothly working together but they were trying. She knew she'd heard the word “truce” in there. Because that was the adult way to handle these kinds of relationship issues.

Which made her hiding in the trees until it was time to leave clearly not the adult way to handle this mess with Liam.

Freya wouldn't notice if she slipped out before face-to-face congratulations, she had so much else going on this evening.

Grace peeked around her hiding tree again, but no longer saw James or Mila so she darted through the trees and back to the reception.

Get Liam.

Get out of there.

And just get it over with.

She should've stuck with just the one night.

* * *

Liam hadn't expected her to want to leave before the first dance but, then, she probably wouldn't have let him dance on his ankle. And she'd spent so much time away after dinner it seemed like his plan to make her dump him was working.

His stomach soured at the thought.

But if she did the leaving this time, she wouldn't feel rejected. It would be her turn. And he could take it.

With her silent and tense at his side, Liam opened the door to their hotel room and held it for her.

Grace stepped past him and went straight to the minibar. Ten seconds later she'd poured herself a straight vodka and in less time than it took for her to lift the glass to her mouth the clear liquid was gone.

The drink must've burned as she breathed hard, coughed a little, and put the glass down. Pulling her shoulders back first, she turned around to face him.

“I don't know how to do this. Never thought it would come to this, but it's just one more way I'm delusional when it comes to you.” She stopped, rubbed her head and paced away from him, then back.

Self-comforting. Dispelling tension.

It was happening. He could smell it in the air like salt by the ocean. His stomach rolled and he stuffed his hands into his pockets, lest she see him shaking.

Unlike the dinner where he'd brought up the trench coat, she wasn't hiding her gaze from him tonight. It was all right there, spelled out for him.

“Whatever stupid idea made me invite you tonight, consider me over it. I thought that things changed between us that night. I thought that you had finally stopped running from this. I thought you felt...” The words dried in her throat, and she looked back at the empty glass. “Something.”

“It was supposed to be one night,” he said, avoiding all that talk of feelings, because even now, even though this was what had to happen, he wanted to comfort her.

“I know!” Grace blurted out. “I know that's what we'd said. But that was before we were together, and one time became one night, became one whole night, became yes to whatever I wanted. That was the perfect example of a situation changing, right? It seemed that way. It seemed like...”

She stopped facing him and went to the balcony doors and opened them, pulling the drapes back so that the cool night air could blow in, and breathed deeply.

He didn't know what to say, aside from the apology clawing at the back of his throat. He shut his mouth so she'd keep going, make it go just as he'd rehearsed in his mind all day.

“I didn't ask you to come with me because I was trying to collar you. I haven't been writing ‘Mrs. Grace Carter' on my notebooks. I just wanted to be with you and see how things went. I didn't invite you here as some grand gesture to hint for you to start making commitments. I know that there are extenuating circumstances to be careful of with my family. And I know you're just out of a relationship.”

“That relationship has nothing to do with this one.”

“No? Because you don't care what people say about you and Simone?”

“No. I care about what your family could say about us. That would be true. Unless this leads to marriage, then it's a betrayal of the trust that David and Lucy put in me when they welcomed me into your home.”

“Why?”

Damn. She was going off script. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to yell and leave. Demanding explanations meant she saw through his tactics, and there was a danger of this turning into him rejecting her again.

“Because you're built for marriage, Grace. You are a cry-through-the-ceremony woman. But I don't want to be married. Not ever. I don't want kids. Any of it. I am not your white-picket-fence future. But that's what you want, or what you'd come to want, because that's who you are. And you would get hurt.”

“I'm hurt now! Because you're lying to yourself and to me. I love you, and I know you love me.”

Rolling stomach turned to nausea at her words. Ignore it. Ignore them. He drew a deep breath, looked her in the eye, and said, “I don't love you. Not like that.”

The words felt like mud in his mouth. Mud and blood. Acidic and wrong.

She shook her head, tears in her eyes. “Yes, you do. You might not want marriage and children, but you feel more for me than lust. I'm not nothing to you.”

“I never said you were nothing to me. But even if I did love you, love doesn't make things magically work out. My parents loved one another. They did. They probably loved me too in some twisted way—why else would my father refuse to grant permission for me to be adopted for so long but to keep from losing me? They were full of love, for each other, for me, and for their heroin. They still spiraled into death and destruction together.”

How had this gone so far off course? There was no easy way out of it. No one else had forced him to say words he'd never wanted to give voice to, there was no one else he felt compelled to bare his soul to. Another reason to get out now.

She poured herself another drink.

“I loved my father, Grace. I loved him and I still couldn't save him. When Nick went to school and I moved into my own place in LA? Before my acting took off, I sought him out, moved him in with me. I thought maybe if he was there and we had a relationship, if he had someone to count on, someone to talk with about Mom, I thought he could heal. But he didn't. He died, Grace. He died alone on the living room floor of my run-down little hovel. Love didn't help him. Not once. Not ever. Love doesn't fix things, it just makes losing harder.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over her cheeks and she stepped toward him, her instinct to comfort him. Always to comfort. Even when they were fighting.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, stopping before she got to him, lowering the hands that had half reached for his face. “Your love couldn't fix him. Are you telling me this now because you want me to come around to the notion that my love can't fix you?”

“Yes.” He felt his heart hammering against his chest. “I'd ruin you. That's what I'm built for. That's the example I have to draw from.”

“You're wrong.”

“I'm not.”

“Yes, you are, because you don't need fixing. You didn't kill your father or your mother. Fate handed you a terrible situation, and you survived it. And you learned to thrive. You didn't ruin Simone. You didn't use me and throw me away, even when we were stupid kids and I offered you everything. You tried to do what was honorable at that time, you tried it later. I know you're trying now, but it just so happens that you're wrong.” Her voice stayed confident and certain until she got to the end, and then it broke. One aborted sob followed by a short, bitter laugh—a sound nothing like the full-throated laughter he loved to hear from her. “Don't feel bad about it. I keep screwing up with you too.”

“You give me too much credit. I agreed to one night with you because I crave you like an addict craves heroin. And you have the same addiction. I didn't care. Even now, I don't care. I want to stay because I want to be with you, but for the need to do better by you than what I learned from them. And if we keep on the way we want to there would eventually be a child. Or you'd want one. And people learn from their parents' example. My parents were abusive, neglectful junkies. Is that what you want for your children?”

“That's not what would happen. I saw you with Brody. But if you want to blame someone for this situation, then blame me. I'm the one who couldn't let go. And if you're guilty of anything, it's being too afraid to take a risk on me. I'm not afraid to take a risk on you. I know a sure thing when I see it. You might not see it, and I don't think you even want to see it, but you're an honorable man, Liam. Or else you'd still be with Simone.”

Grace swiped her cheeks, picked up her handbag and then went to grab the handle of her suitcase.

“Where are you going?” His palms started to sweat and the air felt thick, soupy, hard to breathe.

“We're broken up, right? I can't stay here with you in this hotel room.” She unlocked and opened the door. “Take care of yourself, Liam. You couldn't save your father, what happened to him was due to his own decisions. And I can't save you from this, because it's your decision. Only you can save yourself. Don't just do it in your rewind fantasies of this evening, and don't take too long... I'm not going to wait for you forever, even though I know that's how long I'll love you.”

She pulled the door open, her head up and her shoulders back. And she was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
WIMMING
 
IN
 
THE
 
pool at work had rules, and one of those rules was the hours of operation. But at two thirty in the morning, after tossing and turning her sheets into a sweaty tangle, those rules meant very little even to the perennially law-abiding.

The last place Grace wanted to be was somewhere she'd spent so much time with Liam, but work was the only place she could find a pool where she knew it would be safe to swim alone at that hour.

It took a little explaining to get her past the guard, but as she flipped on the lights to the pool room she could already feel the stress starting to abate.

A swim was what she needed. Exercise to burn off excess energy. The comfort of the familiar. Maybe the water could give her even the metaphorical weightlessness she wanted, some way to return to her usual mental and emotional buoyancy.

She dove in and prayed the water would work its usual magic on her.

How long had it taken her to get over Liam the first time? Really get over him, not just take out her frustrations by kissing every cute boy who hadn't immediately bored her?

Well, that was a depressing thought.

Because she'd never got over Liam. Not really.

She had eventually got to a place where it had hurt less and she hadn't cringed when she'd heard his name. By the time his face had been plastered everywhere, it hadn't even really hurt anymore. She'd built up a callus, which she'd vigorously exfoliated when she'd gotten tangled up with him again.

Kicking harder, she turned under the water, completing her first lap.

Three days and she hadn't heard anything from Liam. Tonight she'd come to the conclusion that she wouldn't. The paparazzi who'd found out where she worked had mostly given up following her—all except for a couple intermittent stragglers. Why bother watching her when Liam was clearly nowhere around? She went to work. She went home. She swam. It wasn't terribly interesting.

Even if they saw what she did when she was home, it would probably only inspire pity in them.

She was considering getting some cats.

And learning a craft of some kind.

And moving in with people who shunned cell phones. Anything to keep herself from asking Nick about Liam. He'd stopped talking about his friend anymore when they spoke, and she didn't know if Nick and Liam were even speaking to each other.

If they weren't on speaking terms any longer, that would mean that her desires had interfered with her brother's relationships. And if they were, it would be just as awkward between her and Nick, even if it was a different kind of awkward.

Cats, crafts, and shunning technology seemed like the safest outlets to turn her attention to.

Or maybe it was time for a change of scenery. Take another job with a sports team, somewhere other than California, New York, or Virginia. Maybe if she went far enough away, she could figure out how to put it all behind her.

* * *

Liam sat sideways on the sofa in his hotel suite, trying to wrap his ankle before his guest arrived. It had probably gotten to the point that he could stop wearing all the wraps and splints if he was careful, but he'd be cautious a little longer. He just couldn't call Grace up and ask her.

He couldn't call Grace up for any reason.

But Nick he had called, and Liam was now waiting for his oldest friend to arrive. With all that had gone on with Grace, and then with Nick's reaction, he needed to figure out where they stood.

By the time he worked the little metal thing into the bandage to keep it in place, the door opened and Nick strolled in. “Hey, Miles let me in. He said you were working on your ankle.”

Nick stopped by the sofa and looked down at the bandaged limb. “That looks like the same technique you use to wrap gifts.”

“I don't wrap gifts anymore. Hailey does it now,” Liam said, dragging a smile on his face even if it was just for show right now. He used to also have someone who would wrap his ankle for him, but that was over. And the reason why seeing Nick for the first time in more than a month felt like walking to an execution he'd volunteered for. “Thanks for coming. Want a drink? Bar's stocked, as always.”

Liam got his sword cane and used it to meander over to the bar. Talking at the bar felt better than talking on the sofa. Less intimate, and Nick wasn't the Watson who Liam had a history of getting intimate with.

Nick followed and reached for the Scotch and two short tumblers. A minute later they had ice and whiskey in them. Liam had given up the pain relievers last week, just in time for this conversation that required alcohol.

“So, do you want to talk about my sister?” Nick slid a glass to him.

Right to the point.

Liam nodded, took a drink of the Scotch and looked for the words. Unlike with the Trench Coat talk, he hadn't planned any of this beforehand. He was by turns apologetic with Nick and angry with him, but before he got to his apologies, there were things he needed to know.

“Yes. And I asked you here because you're my best friend so if there isn't honesty with us, then this friendship isn't worth saving.”

“Is there some reason it's going to be in jeopardy?”

“You might think so after I tell you what happened with your sister.” Liam downed the Scotch and slid the glass back to Nick with a nod to refill it. “But first I need to know something.”

Nick didn't sit. He stayed standing on the other side of the bar where the booze could be easily reached. “I think I know what happened with my sister. You dated her. You kissed her. You said you weren't going to do anything else, and then you ended up at a wedding with her. So I'm guessing that something else happened in there somewhere.”

“Something else happened.”

Another two fingers of booze slid back to him and Liam took another good pull at it—they always stocked the good stuff at this hotel, but this bottle could be smashed over his head just as successfully as rotgut.

“More happened. A lot happened. But, speaking of things that happened... You've known about her feelings for me for a long time. So I have to ask—when she had her accident and was in the hospital, why did you never tell me? She's got scars, she said that a motorcycle wreck derailed her from her career goals, and I would swear on a stack of bibles that you never said one word to me about her getting hurt.”

“That's because I didn't.” Nick rubbed the back of his neck and then leaned on the bar. “Your dad died that day, Liam.”

* * *

It was a week and two days since the wedding, Grace spent most of her evenings alone with wine and movies. Tonight she'd added her cell phone, and now sat replaying a voice mail over and over, with her thumb hovering over the delete button, unable to bring it down.

Liam's bosses—the producers and whoever she'd spoken to on the phone about him—had called to offer her a job on their set.

High action, medieval, dragon-chasing fantasies could injure the actors and stunt crew just as effectively as thrillers and movies where the good guys fought the bad guys with high-speed chases and pyrotechnics.

Even though the phone call had felt like a job interview at the time, she really hadn't expected anything to come from it. And she still didn't know how to respond.

She wanted to say yes, and she wanted to scream at them to lose her number.

It was just a reminder of that door she'd left open for him. A door that any sane person would've closed by now.

She took another drink of her favorite sweet red wine and set the glass down, then pressed the button.

Delete.

The doorbell rang, and she continued to sit. Dealing with people didn't sound like something she could do right now.

She got up and turned to her bedroom to get as far as she could from the door. After she got another glass of wine.

“Grace?” Her name shouted through the door reached her just as she was about to shut herself in her bedroom.

Her hand started to shake.

That was Liam's voice. Liam was at her door.

The bottle felt heavy and awkward as she headed for the door, gripping the bottle with both hands lest she drop it.

Opening locks and latches with her hands full of wine bottle didn't work. She bent and set the bottle on the floor. When she finally got the door open, the first thing she saw was his eyes.

Still dark blue. But hopeful. He'd shaved and the man's trademark stubble was gone, leaving that broad, manly jaw completely bare.

She looked down at his feet next. Wrapped, but not in the splint.

And wearing nice dark gray slacks and a button-down shirt. No tie, and also no sexy lean or smoldering looks. This wasn't Hollywood's Beautiful Bad Boy. This was...not a booty call.

This was him trying to make a good impression.

Without saying a word, she focused on the various things in his hands.

A bouquet of daisies and roses in the crook of one arm.

A heart-shaped box of candy in the crook of the other.

And in each hand a ceramic figurine. A kitten in one hand and a puppy in the other.

Her words came back to her.

Her old rewind fantasies.

Quintessential boyfriend gifts because...he had relationship feelings.

One hand flew to cover the base of her throat and she held back a cry that wanted to collapse her chest.

Worry in his eyes, Liam stayed standing there in front of her, waiting in silence.

It took her a minute, but when she managed a full breath without whimpering Grace lowered her hand again and folded her arms across her ribs. She wouldn't touch him. She wouldn't throw herself at him. He'd shown up, and that was a lot, but he had to say some stuff too.

Her stomach had just tied itself in a knot, and she probably couldn't even have moved from in front of the door if the apartment had been on fire.

Don't say the wrong thing.

She nodded to his hands. “What's all this?”

“It's candy, flowers, a kitten and a puppy,” Liam said, not a hint of their usual flirtation in his tone. He looked nervous. And he sounded insane.

“The kitten and puppy were supposed to be real. And alive. Not ceramic.”

“I'm new to commitment, Gracie. I didn't think I could handle taking on two animals if you told me to get lost so I went with figurines.” He nodded to the apartment, and then to his arms. “Can I come in? Or can you take the breakables?”

“Are you here to ask me to go steady?” Even as she said the joking words, her heart leaped at the idea. It was a beginning. And they'd come this far. If he took this first step, he wouldn't turn back. Liam didn't know how to quit.

“Yes. And anything else you're willing to risk on me.”

She unfolded her arms and opened the door wide enough to reach for the flowers and candy, relieving him of the items perched most precariously on his arms.

“Did I have four arms in your rewind fantasies? Or a pet carrier with the animals in it?”

“It's a lot to carry. I did say those fantasies were insane at the time.” She stepped back from the door and nodded to him and the floor. “Don't kick the wine.”

Turning to the hall table, she set down what she'd taken from him and then looked back, waiting. Afraid to let her hopes get too high. Terrified because they were already soaring.

“I had a long talk with your brother,” Liam started. He stepped in and set the knickknacks down then closed the door.

“About me?”

Vulnerability, she saw it in his eyes. It was there in hers if he was looking closely enough, and he always looked closely. “And me.”

His hands rubbed together roughly. He seemed to realize what he was doing and stuffed them into his pockets instead. “And also why he didn't tell me about your accident.”

It was something she'd wondered too, but hadn't been able to bring herself to ask Nick yet. And right now it seemed very important for her to hear anything Liam wanted to bring up. Let him talk. At least as long as he had something to say he wouldn't go. She could hear his voice. Watch his mouth forming words—any words. She could see that he'd nicked himself shaving before coming over.

“Why didn't he tell you? Was it because he knew about...my trench-coat antics?”

He shook his head.

“He didn't tell me when I called him, because it was the day my dad died.” The words came softly, but he made no move to hide the rawness in his voice. “And he knew I'd still drop everything and run to your family at Cedars. He said it was the last thing I needed to deal with.”

Grace nodded as she absorbed this. Nick had done what he'd thought was the kindest thing to do for Liam, and she might've made that same decision. He'd had no way of knowing what had been going on with them—she'd certainly never told anyone about the night she'd gone to his apartment. He'd probably only known they'd stopped talking about one another, if he was even perceptive enough to pick up on that at twenty. “That was probably the right thing to do.”

“No, it wasn't,” Liam said, taking a step closer to her, close enough to touch her if he wanted to. Or for her to touch him if she was brave enough. “It was an attempt at kindness, he did it because he cared. But the truth is... Cedars would've been the best place for me. I tried to make a family with my father when I got old enough, but we were both too damaged to know how. And when that ended, the best thing I could've done would've been to go to my real family. The best thing for me, I mean. You all had a lot to deal with at the time. So I could've understood if he'd not told me because you all couldn't deal with one more broken thing that day.”

She still didn't know if she should touch him, but she needed to, and he needed it too. He'd come as close as he could and had left that final step to her, so close her head craned back and she could feel his breath fanning her skin. Accelerated, scared. She lifted a hand and rested her palm against the solid heat of his chest, and then used the other to brush away a trace of blood beside that razor nick. “That would never have happened.”