Thrown completely off balance, Thorne could only stare at her former fiancé. She was unable to process the fact that he was really here.
There had been times, over the years, when she’d been ready to believe that Liam Gallagher had never existed. After all, he’d come from nowhere and then disappeared without a trace, leaving her with a broken heart and a heap of problems. Of course she had tried to find him, but that had been easier said than done. It really had seemed as if he was a phantom as the little she had thought she knew about him was revealed to be a bunch of red herrings. Thorne had even flown to Philadelphia to search for him, because he’d told her that was where his uncle lived. She had spent the rest of her savings in vain, for there was no such uncle, nor did she find any trace of Liam there.
The mere thought of the time that had followed his disappearance still made Thorne sick to her stomach. The twenty-two-year-old he had left behind had been hopelessly naïve and devastated. But the twenty-nine-year-old woman of today, however thrown off balance she might’ve been by his sudden appearance at her door, was far too sober and detached to fall into his arms with joy.
Instead, she was angry underneath her confusion.
Her day at work had been horrible, the repairs on her car had cost her almost two hundred dollars, and a policeman was sitting on her couch. And now, of all times, Liam showed up as if it were no big deal at all! She finally had her life together; she did not need him anymore.
There had been lots of times in the past seven years when she had needed him! Often enough, she had been ready to chuck everything, lie down in her bed, and never get up again. But each and every time, she’d had no choice but to give herself a push and go on. It had been hard to manage on her own, to avoid thinking that she could’ve used a little support, but a year after Liam had disappeared, Thorne had forbidden herself from pondering what life could have been like if she wasn’t on her own. In the beginning, she had wallowed in self-pity, missed him like crazy, and worried about his fate. But when she finally realized he’d simply split, leaving her to fend for herself, she had become angry. Very angry. This anger had been her constant companion, increasing and hovering, as it did now.
“Thorne, what are you doing here?”
For a moment, her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth. But only a second later, she bit back, “I live here.”
He sounded confused. “But you lived in Quincy … Since when …?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to sound calm. But she failed miserably, and her reply came out bitchy and wounded. “Since my brother was arrested, my fiancé vanished into thin air, and my apartment was raided by a police task force!”
His expression changed, but she couldn’t interpret what was going through his head.
Striving for composure, she demanded, “And what are you doing here?”
“We should talk …”
She uttered a disbelieving snort. “You ran away seven years ago, and now you want to talk?”
“Thorne, this is not what you think it is.”
“What do I think, Liam? Please tell me how you know what I think. Am I supposed to think that you did not split when my brother was arrested? Am I supposed to forget that you didn’t even have the decency to let me know you were alright?” She shook herself out of her rant, refocusing on the matter at hand. “What do you want? How did you find me?”
“Would you please calm down?”
“Calm down?” She stared at him in utter bewilderment.
With a sigh, he cocked his head to the side. “It’s complicated.”
“There is nothing complicated about this,” she hissed at him, straining to keep her voice down for the neighbors’ sakes. “You asked me to marry you, Liam! A fiancé does not simply vanish overnight without a trace!”
He didn’t reply for a long moment, but then his shoulders sagged. “We really need to talk, Thorne, but this is not the right moment.”
Rendered speechless by his nerve, she glared at him for a quiet moment. “If you haven’t come here to explain your disappearance seven years ago, I’d like to know what you want!”
He raised his chin. “I was called here,” he said simply.
Her confusion increased, and she hugged herself. “Who called you here? It sure as hell wasn’t me.”
“My captain told me a colleague was waiting here for me.”
Then it dawned on her. Her eyes darted to his open palm and the police badge there.
Her eyes went wide with shock. She felt as if someone had hit her hard in the stomach and reeled a step backward. “You are the policeman Detective Spencer is waiting for?”
Unlike her, he seemed completely unperturbed. “Let’s go inside, and then we’ll—”
“What?” she gasped. “You want what? I’m not letting you into my apartment!”
He stepped closer. “Detective Spencer and I need to speak with you. Alone.”
“Liam,” she croaked, “you’re a policeman? But … I don’t understand …”
He shook his head with a frown and uttered a sigh that sounded irritated, as if she were slow, or maybe dense. “My name is not Liam Gallagher, and I can explain it all.”
For a long moment, she was afraid she would vomit on the clean hardwood floor. Instead, she stared into his eyes and struggled to stop the rollercoaster her head was on. Countless things flitted through her brain, unconnected, and yet … Memories of her time with him, her visits to Aidan in jail, the foreclosure sale of her parents’ house, and finally, the thought of Brady. She saw red.
Everything suddenly made sense.
“YOU DESPICABLE JERK!” With all her might, she slapped the man who had deceived and lied to her seven years before. Hit him right in the face.
“Goddammit, Thorne!” he snapped. “I almost lost a molar there!”
“Almost? That’s really a shame!”
“That isn’t funny,” he said accusingly, rubbing his cheek, which had turned bright red. That should have given her at least some satisfaction, but instead she’d rarely felt this frustrated in her entire life.
Had Thorne been alone, she would have thrown something against the wall right now. But there was a policeman with a beer belly sitting on her couch, sipping on the iced tea she had offered him back when she still thought the worst that would happen tonight was wasting her only evening off. At least he was too far away, down the hall in her living room, to hear what was going on in the entryway. All she could do now was ball her hands into fists and glare at the dark-haired policeman who, five minutes ago, had merely been her unfaithful ex-fiancé.
“What is your name?” she demanded angrily.
“Could we maybe do this inside and—”
“I WANT TO KNOW YOUR NAME!”
“Shane Fitzpatrick,” he grumbled unwillingly.
“Shane.” The name sounded unwieldy on her tongue. She felt alternately hot and cold as she contemplated the fact that she’d been in love with a man who never existed. She had lived and slept with someone whose real name she hadn’t even known. She’d shared her most intimate secrets with a stranger.
“Are you even really from Ireland?”
“No.” He put his badge back into his pocket. “I’m from Boston. But I have a great Irish accent.”
Thorne didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Seven years ago, she had moved from Quincy to Boston after losing her childhood home to the bank and becoming unable to stand the way neighbors and friends looked at her, making her life miserable. It hadn’t been easy, trying to live a normal life as the only sister of a convicted criminal. There weren’t a lot of options for a young woman who’d lost her job and, thus, her way of pursuing her dream of going to college. The anonymity of a large city like Boston had made it easier to start over.
And now it seemed like an irony of cosmic proportions that the man she’d looked for for months was living right here in the same city.
“Let me get this straight,” she ground out. “Your
name isn’t Liam, you’re not from Ireland, and you’re not a dockworker. I bet you’re not an orphan, either, and you certainly don’t have an uncle in Philadelphia. Correct?”
He nodded curtly. “Correct.”
“Your name is Shane, you’re a Bostonian, a policeman, and … What other truths are behind all those lies?”
She could see his indecision in the way he ran a hand through his hair. but he finally said, “If you must know, I’m now a detective with the homicide squad. I have four siblings. There’s no uncle in Philadelphia, but there is at least a second cousin there.”
She was still too stunned to react with her usual quick wit but attempted to read his face. “So you made it all up in order to … what? Shadow me?”
He shook his head. “Not you.”
Thorne licked her dry lips. “You wanted to shadow Aidan,” she croaked. “What are you? Some sort of undercover cop, like on TV?”
He didn’t show the slightest emotion but instead nodded at the door. “Let’s discuss this inside.”
Her stomach did another flip. “You lied to me.”
He made an apologetic face. “It was not about you or anything personal against you. It was just a job.”
“Just a job?” Her eyes widened again. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “We had to investigate—”
“Maybe it was ‘just a job’ to you, but guess what, I had no idea that the man who moved into my house, who slept with me and told me he wanted to marry me, was just a cop who thought this was a fun little game of pretend!”
“Dammit,” he muttered, looking defensive. “I didn’t like the fact that I had to do it, either!”
She lifted an eyebrow and heaved a great breath. “Oh, that was not the impression I was under, considering how often you slept with me!”
“Thorne.” He raised both hands in apology. “You can’t take this personally.”
The full extent of his confession finally hit her, and she felt herself blanch before an irrational anger took possession of her and flushed her cheeks again. She was taken by surprise at its sheer force. “I can’t take it personally? Do you even think before you open your mouth? You pursued me, you made eyes at me! You slept with me and pretended you were in love with me! Then you asked for my hand in marriage, only to disappear as soon as my brother was arrested—because of you, I presume! HOW ON EARTH AM I SUPPOSED TO NOT TAKE THAT PERSONALLY?”
It seemed that Liam—or Shane—was either slow on the uptake or so jaded from his job that he couldn’t understand how Thorne was feeling. Which was as though she was standing underneath a house of cards sliding down all around her.
He wrinkled his nose and sighed again. “I’m sorry, Thorne. Honestly.”
“Excuse me?”
“That was seven years ago,” he added, almost flippantly. “Can’t we just move past that old story?”
That was such a ridiculous and unbelievable question that she couldn’t suppress a cynical laugh. Liam Gallagher, alias Shane Fitzpatrick, was not merely a liar and a fraud, he was also the biggest idiot to ever walk the earth. Maybe she could’ve forgotten “that old story” and gotten over the fact that she had fallen head over heels for him, that she had been devastated when he’d left her, and that his investigation had sent her brother to prison while she was left with a mountain of debt, but how could she ever forget Brady?
She wanted to hit the man standing before her once again, wanted to yell at him for being such a damn fool and a self-centered asshole, but she swallowed both her angry words and her disbelieving laughter.
“Thorne, I know this isn’t a very comfortable topic, but could we move past it for now and go inside?”
He was the last person she wanted to see in her apartment, so she shook her head. “Certainly not.”
She remembered his stubborn look of determination all too well. He’d worn the same expression when he was losing at poker yet wouldn’t be deterred from raising the stakes. She was no longer impressed with his single-mindedness, nor did she adore him for it. She lifted her chin defiantly.
“Come on, Thorne, let me in.”
“No way in hell.” She stood in the doorway and shook her head.
“I don’t have the slightest idea why I was called here,” he admitted with a sigh. “Let me talk to Detective Spencer, and we’ll—”
“I’m sure you have his number, so call him,” she said icily. “You’re not setting foot in my apartment.”
“Dammit, Thorne!”
She narrowed her eyes just as he did the same. “The detective can presumably tell me whatever it is he wants to tell me without you holding his hand. Right?”
“Don’t be this unreasonable, please!”
Before she slammed the door right in his face, she barked, “A search warrant is the only way you’ll get into my apartment, Detective Fitzpatrick. Have a nice evening!”
***
Her heart was still beating in her throat more than half an hour after Detective Spencer left. She was unable to calm down, or keep her hands from shaking uncontrollably.
Thorne did not know which bit of tonight’s news was more enervating.
On the one hand, she had just been informed that her brother would be released early for good conduct and the cops wanted her help in seeking his cooperation for things she didn’t understand.
On the other hand, she had also fielded the news that, technically, she had never been engaged, and that she’d been in love with a person that did not exist. She felt like the victim of some horrific intrigue who had just been exposed before the world. Worse, she was utterly ashamed of the fact that she’d been stupid enough to fall for Liam Gallagher and believe her relationship with him was genuine. He had pretended he loved her, and she had been too naïve to see it was all a scam, a front for spying on her brother. The entire department had probably gotten a few laughs at her expense, watching the train wreck unfold with beer and popcorn.
However, because she was not the type to be cast as a damsel in distress, her embarrassment quickly changed to a fiery wrath.
She should file an official complaint about his conduct. No, she should file charges! It was unacceptable that policemen could simply pretend to be someone else and sleep with women under false pretenses—that they could even get engaged. That had to be illegal! Or, at the very least, it had to be a violation of some moral code!
Thorne closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
She’d gotten over the entire ordeal a long time ago, glad to no longer think about being ditched without explanation. Why couldn’t it have stayed that way?
In the eyes of her former neighbors, she’d been the poor thing with a criminal brother and a faithless fiancé who’d split the second problems appeared. Now, however, she was the naïve thing who still had a criminal brother and had also fallen for the mind games of an immoral cop, a man who had managed to make her fall in love with him, a man who had lied to her whenever he opened his mouth.
She did not want to think about Liam—Shane—the treacherous, ruthless officer who had trampled all over her heart, so she grabbed a rag and started to scour the dirty sink in her kitchen.
Initially her evening plans had consisted of watching the newest episode of Shameless, her favorite TV show while she had a glass of wine and some nachos. But that plan, which had been thwarted by the two cops who had appeared to make her life miserable, no longer appealed to her. She was far too upset to just sit back and relax. Detective Spencer was an overbearing idiot, who had sat on her sofa like he was her boss and spoke to her as if he were giving orders, but the encounter with Shane Fitzpatrick was the part that had been exhausting. Because of him and his callousness, her hands were still sweaty, and her heart was beating nervously and erratically in her chest.
Her feelings were so tangled that she didn’t even know whether to be happy that Aidan would soon be a free man again. He was her brother, and she loved him, there was no doubt about that. She had been devastated when he was arre
sted and tried. Of course she also knew he was guilty and that his sentence was justified. She worked for a lawyer, after all, so she knew the difference between right and wrong only too well. Still, Aidan was her brother, and she didn’t want him to suffer.
Even so, she couldn’t deny that there had been a time in her life when she wished he would just go to hell. His shady business and subsequent trial had caused her a lot of suffering, too. But, at some point, she’d recognized the fact that he had only gone along with the criminal schemes of his buddies so he could take care of her. Their father had died only months before, leaving them nothing but a dilapidated house with a mortgage and a bunch of other debts. Aidan probably would have sold the house and started over, but for her. He kept it for her sake. Back then, Thorne couldn’t bear the thought of parting with their parents’ house and moving to a different city. She was two years Aidan’s junior, having been only fourteen when they lost their mother. When their dad died, Thorne was just about to apply for college. Aidan felt he had to forget whatever his plans were and take care of his little sister.
Thorne didn’t want to justify or excuse his criminal career, but she knew why it had happened. Her brother was a good man, and fortunately, he didn’t want to rejoin his former “friends,” who’d been responsible for introducing him to a life of crime in the first place. Once he was out, he could find a decent, normal job and build a new life for himself. She was sure of that.
But she disliked the fact that a policeman had come knocking at her door and asked her, of all people, to help get her brother to cooperate with them. She would never trust a man with a police badge again! Tonight had opened her eyes as to what a bunch of devious bastards they really were!
Filled with fresh anger, she threw the rag in the sink and went into the living room, plopping down on the couch and tucking her legs under her. She rubbed her face, feeling utterly confused and restless. The news of Aidan’s imminent release made her uncomfortable because she didn’t know what to expect. He’d been living in prison for the past seven years! Of course she would invite him to live with her until he found his own place, but she had no idea how to interact with him now. The prison was some hours away, so she hadn’t visited that often. They had always been close before, but how was she supposed to know whether that would still be the case after seven years and everything that had gone down?
Blast From The Past (The Boston Five Series #2) Page 2
