“Probably on chowder or something stupid like that,” I jest with a straight face.
“Well, I’m glad to hear you weren’t thinking about any backdoors while we were eating, at least.”
His quick rebuttal makes me laugh a little. “Touché.”
“Guppy, I like you. I do, but what I should have said the other night was that Liam deserves a win. He’s had a tough road, and he’s a cold jackass for a reason, but he’s a good-hearted jackass.”
I inhale sharply through my nose, letting it out slowly through my mouth, trying to unwind the knot of tension in my chest. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I offer.
“I forgive you, but just promise me this . . . if you end up working things out with him, don’t be like, sucking face in front of me or anything. I might not be able to stop myself from joining in. Liam’s hot shit.” My head falls to the side, waiting for his laughter, but he holds in his composure for a long second. “I’m almost not kidding.” Now, thankfully, there’s a laugh because I’m not sure I’m up for any type of threesome talk at the moment.
“Liam’s at the beach, probably on his knees and taking—”
“A railbang?” I add in.
“Wow, I am impressed by your surfing lingo. Now, we just need to get you on a board.”
“I still can’t swim, remember?”
“Liam will teach you, then you gotta get on a board and surf with us in the mornings. Okay, girlchacho?”
His term of endearment makes me feel a little better, or at least a little less bad. Not sure which yet. “So does this mean we’re friends, eh?” I mock his accent.
“Definitely,” he says with a smirk. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and places a kiss on the top of my head. “Now get out of here.”
Whether Liam wants to forgive me or not, I’ll at least feel better after apologizing for outing him publicly with private information. It’s so unlike me to do something low like that, and it’s been eating away at me and continues to do so the entire twenty-minute ride back to Kennebunkport.
I pull into Sam and Daniel’s driveway, knowing I owe them an explanation as well. But first, I need to talk to Liam. Heading down the path and over the small footbridge, I see a few guys surfing, and I plop down on a rock to wait for him.
The sun feels nice this morning after my hideout in Jade’s apartment, but at least I had some real time to think.
Dad was supposed to arrive the morning after that traumatic party, but as his poor luck goes, the radiator blew before he even crossed the state line. He had to get towed back home and wait out the weekend for the shop to open. Then they told him it would take a few days to get the part in. Last I talked to him, he was planning to try again this weekend, but if Sam and Daniel don’t want me back after my unnecessary time off, that’s going to kill Dad’s plan. I’m just grateful the bank let him stay in our house for an extra week.
Liam and everyone else he’s with are all coming in with their boards, and I wait until he’s had a moment to shake the water from his hair and stop smiling at the brunette he’s laughing with.
Something in my chest tightens and hurts. Why would Sterling have said all of that if Liam hadn’t truly seemed upset? He seems to be doing fine now. I hate the thought of Sterling forcing me to witness this scene so I’d come running back to him, but he didn’t look like he had been plotting. Every word he said sounded sincere, but who knows. And who is the brunette?
Liam leans into the girl and gives her a hug, running his hand up and down her back. I can’t see his expression, but her eyes are closed, and she’s sort of beaming.
I stand up, knowing now isn’t a good time, and maybe it’s just a bad idea altogether. However, after having time to think over the past few days, I’ve decided to stay and keep at it with Dylan. Sam told me I was the first nanny he’s warmed up to in longer than she can remember. Hearing that meant a lot to me, especially since it didn’t seem like he was warming up to me at all.
Heading back to the path, I hear quiet thuds in the sand coming up behind me, but I don’t turn around, knowing it could be any one of the people surfing. Plus, I don’t want to see him with her. I know I had no claim on him, and we were playing “games” for a week, but I let my guard down, and I left my heart exposed.
“Well, if it isn’t the bitchiest ray of sunshine in the world,” I hear.
Ouch. That’s what he’s saying in front of this girl? I know I deserve some wrath, but not that.
I continue walking as if I didn’t hear him, but he grabs my arm, forcing me to stop. He spins me around to look at him, and now I have to sit here and stare into his sunlit, sea-green eyes and the new freckles that have appeared all over his nose. Always the hot guys . . .
There are no words coming to me, and I just stare at him like a weirdo. “Did you talk to Sterling?” he asks.
“Yes.” I keep my answer short, still unsure of what else to say. Sorry might be a good place to start.
“I’m glad he cleared things up then.”
“Look, I’m so sorry for reading your mail and then announcing it. I was so wrong and should never have done that. I don’t want to blame it on the wine, but I was upset and just lost control of my mouth, I guess.”
He crosses his arms over his bare chest, which melts into his partially unzipped wetsuit. “I was pretty pissed at you for doing that, but after I had calmed down, I realized it felt good to hear it out loud after all these years.”
“How did it all happen? I felt so shocked when I read the letter, but to me, it kind of all made sense afterward.” I’m not sure if he wants to talk about it, but I’m obviously more than a little curious to know the whole story.
“There’s not much to it, really. My dad left when I was ten—never called, wrote, sent money, nothing. He was just gone. It destroyed my life and my mom’s. We were poor, she didn’t have a job, and we barely had enough money for food. Every night of hunger, every day we had to figure out how to fix a leak or a clogged toilet in our crap apartment, I blamed him. I’ll never forgive him. My mother was forced to work early mornings, all day, and late nights just to keep us going.”
“I wouldn’t either.” While mom didn’t leave us high and dry, the feelings can’t be much different. Dad has been paying the consequence for years, and watching him unhappy has hurt me more than anything.
“Anyway, he got in touch with me a few years ago and confessed a bunch of shit, but he was drunk. He said he had a new family, but I shouldn’t feel bad because he left them too. At the time, Sam still had his last name, so I did a lot of searching and found a record with my dad’s name on Sam’s address.” I can’t help looking at him the way I feel—broken. A parent leaving causes more damage to an innocent child’s soul than anyone could ever imagine. “I lived just a few towns over so I came here to introduce myself to her. I just needed to know who she was and if she was okay, but before I could get a word out to her, I saw Dylan running around behind her. I was speechless.”
Everything is piecing together, sadly, heartbreakingly. “So how come you didn’t know until just now that he was truly your half-brother?”
“The next thing out of Sam’s mouth was asking if I was there to apply for their housekeeping position. Having a mother who runs a popular cleaning company seemed like fate at the time. I told her about my experience, even though it was a little fluffed, and Dylan ran over to me, asking if I’d play with him, which he never did with other people, as I found out later. It was all history after that, but I couldn’t get myself to admit to the truth of who I was and why I was really there.”
He presses his lips together, closes his eyes and sighs. “I still can’t tell Sam . . . not yet. I think it would hurt her, and I’m scared she’d make me leave. Plus, I sort of did the test without her consent, and I’m worried she’d never let me see Dylan again. All that matters to me is that I make sure he has a male figure in his life who loves him, who wants to be there for him. It’s just something I need to do for me—and him.
”
“So, were you yelling at your dad on the phone after you found out?”
“To his voicemail, yeah. It’s been years since we’ve spoken.”
Trying to ignore the gumminess in my throat, I look up at him through my lashes, wishing I could take some of his pain away, while at the same time, knowing what it’s like to feel like someone doesn’t love you enough to make the right decision. “I guess we have something in common, huh?” I told him about my mom taking off on us, and that was the day he admitted to liking me a little more than he already had. I didn’t understand then what that had to do with anything, but now it makes sense.
Liam places his hand on my shoulder, and with more sincerity than I’ve seen from him, he says, “Yup. It sucks. No one deserves to go through that, and I know all about your mom now. Your dad likes to talk and—” I laugh because I can hear in my head how the conversation went between them.
“Thank you for inviting him out here.”
“Did he get his car fixed?”
“Yeah, he should be heading out here in the next couple of days, hopefully.”
“Good, I’m looking forward to meeting him.” I’m questioning my feelings, his feelings, and everything in between now, wondering how this will work. Are things just going to be amicable in the house, and we’ll live our lives knowing there are no hurt feelings, or what? “You are coming back to work after your week long vacation . . . you know, after working almost a full week, right?” His brow quirks to the right and the corner of his lip follows suit, which is adorable. No. Not adorable. Stop.
“Yes, if Sam and Daniel will have me back.”
Liam laughs and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s not Sam and Daniel you need to worry about. Dylan’s grudge is what should be concerning you.”
“I can only imagine.” I glance down between us, feeling a bit awkward now. I wrap the loose strands of my hair behind my ear and try to take a deep breath.
Liam’s finger slips under my chin, and he lifts my face up to look at his, which appears to be glowing as it covers my exact view of the sun. “You’re a spitfire, and I think it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I like you, Julia, and I don’t like a lot of people.”
“I guess I messed up then,” I tell him, looking over at the pretty woman trying not to look at us as she appears to be glancing out at the beach behind us. She’s with Cale, and Cleary, but not interacting with them. I didn’t realize they were friends—all surfers, but I suppose it makes sense. “I don’t want to get in the middle of whatever you have going on—you know with—” I nod my head toward the woman.
“So, you’re not into threesomes?” My heart pretty much drops so heavily into the sand, it may have hit China. What’s with the threesomes today?
“You’re kidding me, right?” I clear my throat, sounding like a sick frog asking him. Clearly, he’s not kidding though, because he waves this super model-looking surfer chick over to us. “That was a no, like a definitive no. Like a not swaying from my answer in a million years kind of no.”
Liam just laughs at me as the girl steps into the shade we’ve created with our closeness. I take a step back, feeling like I might be stepping on this girl’s toes if she’s seeing Liam, or whatever the case is. It has only been a week since I last saw him, and I wonder what may have happened between the two of them in that period of time. I remember what happened between Liam and me in that amount of time, and it was also long enough to develop ridiculous feelings for him that I shouldn’t have. “Would you be up for a threesome, Mandy?” he asks her.
“Liam!” I snap, grunt, whatever it sounded like. “I said no.”
The woman reaches over and runs her fingers through the ends of my hair. “You sure are pretty,” she says, smiling oddly before she sighs. “I don’t know, Liam, baby, she’s not really my type.”
Liam places his arm around her shoulders, and I’m positive I’ve never been this uncomfortable in my entire life. “Well, um, it’s been super nice meeting you and chatting,” I trail off as I head up the path.
The entire way back to the house, I hear giggling and snickering, which pisses me off. She must not have known what Liam was doing to me just a week ago if she’s already calling him baby. What a pig. He’s telling me all about how Sterling is a player, and I find this. Unbelievable. No, it’s not unbelievable—he’s just too into himself. There, my book is officially plotted.
I speed up so I can get to the house first, ringing the doorbell and hoping Sam answers the door quickly. It’s Sunday, so she should be home since it’s the only day she doesn’t teach. Come on, come on. Open the door.
I hear her talking on the other side, and I start dancing around like I have to go to the bathroom, quickly adding my hand waving as I hear their voices trailing up the path. Come on, Sam.
She opens the door, her head tilted to the side with her phone pinched between her ear and shoulder. She holds up a finger and opens the screen door before I close us inside. Obviously, I turn the deadbolt to lock Liam out.
“Okay, sure thing,” she says with a smile you can hear. “I’ll talk to you later. Good luck. Bye now.” She pulls the phone away from her face and presses a button. “Jules!” She makes her way over to me and locks her arms around my neck. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“So,” I huff, looking over my shoulder through the bay window, wondering if Liam has reached the door yet. He’s probably making out with that chick outside. “I don’t know if Liam wants me here, and I don’t want to make things awkward, you know?”
“Awkward, as in, locking me out of the house I live in?” Liam walks in through the kitchen. Come on. Give me a freaking break. I swear, I can’t win.
“The door is unlocked,” Sam says, walking over to the door and checking it out. “Oh weird, the deadbolt isn’t turned. It wasn’t a second ago.” She looks at me questioningly.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to talk to you in private.”
“You didn’t have to lock Liam out,” she laughs.
“It’s not just Liam,” I explain.
Sam turns around, finding Mandy in the opening between the kitchen and the living room. “Oh, Mandy, come here, I want you to meet someone.”
Mandy, with a devilish grin on her perfect lips, prances over to Sam. “We’ve already met,” Mandy says, looking me up and down as if she were some kind of sexual deviant
“Do we look alike or what?” Sam asks, elbowing Mandy in the arm.
They both have different hair colors, different facial features, and Mandy is at least three inches taller, so, I kind of don’t think so. “Uh—”
“We’re sisters. Would you believe that?”
I can’t help closing my eyes, slowly realizing how much messier this situation is becoming. “You two don’t look that much alike, so I am pretty shocked.” I sound confused, slow, weird, and annoyed, and she’s just trying to introduce me to her sister who wants to have sex with me
“Where’s Jared?” Sam asks her.
Jared. Jared, Jared? “He still hasn’t come downstairs yet? He never came to the beach.”
What? “Not that I’ve seen,” Sam says.
Liam is in his own world right now, looking through his phone for something, and it’s pissing me off even more, seeing as I’m sitting here dumbfounded and more bewildered than I think I’ve ever been. “Jared, get your ass downstairs!” Mandy yells.
I hear something drop upstairs, followed by footsteps. Jared descends the staircase, and it’s Jared, Jared. “Hey stranger,” he says to me. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” I say with just my breath. I’m not sure where my voice is right now, but it’s probably somewhere with my pulse, which can’t be found either.
“Is Jared your brother?” I ask Sam, looking back and forth between everyone in this room.
Sam laughs. “In-law, yeah . . . lucky me, right?” She rolls her eyes.
“Whoa, easy, I made the bed this morning. You can’t be mad at
me for that. Plus, that’s Liam’s job anyway,” Jared says.
“I’m confused . . .” Someone, please explain to me what the hell everyone is talking about. My focus is directed at Liam, who’s grinning while still looking at his stupid phone.
“Well,” Sam says, looking at me strangely like I shouldn’t be so confused, “Mandy is my sister and Jared is her husband.” Oh my God, Mandy and Liam are having an affair?
Mandy places her head down on Liam’s shoulder. “Hey babe?” she asks. What the hell? I honestly can’t imagine what my face looks like right now because I can’t believe what I’m watching. This is more than I can comprehend and handle for the moment.
“Yeah, babe?” Liam responds.
Sam’s looking at Liam and Mandy, rolling her eyes.
“Can I stop calling you ‘babe’ now? Because it’s gross,” Mandy says. She shivers like she just touched a spider.
“I guess,” Liam says, avoiding my glare.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Jared asks Liam and Mandy.
“Pissing Julia off,” Liam says, casually.
Sam groans and grabs Jared and Mandy by the hands and drags them into the kitchen and out the back slider, leaving Liam and me alone in the house. “You’re an asshole,” I tell him.
“At your service,” he says, waving a hand down from his forehead as he bows.
“And a manservant,” I add in, just to piss him off.
“Coming from Mary Poppins, who falls in love with a chimney sweeper, I’ll take that as a step up.”
“No one is falling in love here,” I tell him, probably lying to myself, but I’m going to try very hard not to.
Liam walks across the room, dropping his phone down onto the coffee table, and loops his arms around my back, pressing his forehead down into mine. “Don’t be so sure about that. I can make you fall in love with me if I want to.” His words should not make me quiver, but I have definitely found my pulse . . . it’s everywhere now, and my heart is hammering.
“That’s kind of arrogant, don’t you think?”
“First comes sex, then comes love, then the boyfriend/girlfriend shit, and who knows what else?”
The Man Cave Collection: Manservant, Man Flu, Man Handler, and Man Buns Page 26
