by Joanna Sims
“Hi, Dr. B-Brand. I—I made a gluten-free chocolate cake for you.”
“Thank you, Callie.” Liam gave her a hug and accepted the cake. “This looks so good I may have to have dessert first.”
That made Callie duck her head with pleasure and giggle.
Liam introduced him to his teenagers. Both of his kids strongly favored Liam and the Brand side of the family; both were tall, lanky, with sandy-brown hair and bright, blue eyes. Sarah, in particular, was the spitting image of her father.
“Have you been enjoying your visit with your dad?” Kate tried to make a connection with Liam’s daughter.
Sarah shrugged a little. “I used to live here.”
“I remember,” the horse trainer told her. “I used to see you in town with your mom.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you miss it?”
Sarah shrugged again.
“Do you like horses?”
That got the smallest of smiles out of the teen.
“I used to ride all the time when I lived here,” Sarah told her. “I never get to ride in Seattle.”
“You can come out to see my horses if you want,” Kate offered.
“We have horses here.” The teen pulled a face.
Sarah stood, looked as if she was going to leave without say anything in response, but she stopped and said, “Dad didn’t tell me he was dating anyone.”
* * *
Every second his kids were with Kate and Callie, Liam felt like he was on edge. He didn’t relax from the time Kate had arrived until the time he was walking them out to their truck. They both waited for Callie to get inside the vehicle before they took a moment to talk privately.
“I’m sorry.” Liam apologized right off the bat, even though she didn’t expect it or think it was warranted. “They’re going through a weird phase. God help me if they get stuck in it.”
Kate touched his arm sympathetically. “A week is such a short time. Couldn’t they stay a little while longer?”
“Perish the thought,” Liam blurted out before he added. “No. Their mother and stepfather are taking them to the Bahamas.”
“Well, I’m glad I got to meet them, anyway.” She had seen Liam’s children at school functions in passing, but that had been years ago. They had both grown so much since then.
Liam looked pained; none of this was easy for him. He wanted his kids to love their time with him, and he wanted them to love her too.
“It’s going to be okay, Liam. It always is.”
Chapter Ten
“Lord have mercy, I needed that.” Kate rolled onto her back, naked.
Liam chuckled, his hand on her thigh. “I second that.”
After taking a week off to spend with his kids, Liam had to work late nights without taking a day off to catch up with his caseload. No day off meant no time for afternoon lovemaking.
Kate pulled the covers over her body and curled into Liam’s warm body, loving the scent of the man. She kissed his chest, before resting her head in the crook of his arm.
“I can’t believe how much my body missed you.”
Liam lifted his head a little to look down at her. “Just your body?”
She hugged him. “No.”
“I missed you,” he told her, rubbing her arm lightly. “I miss you all the time.”
“Hmm...that’s nice.”
Liam sat up so he could look down at her; he brushed her hair away from her face.
“Every night that we talk on the phone, I say sweet dreams before we say goodbye and then I wonder why I’m not with you, in person, to kiss you good-night.”
She reached up and put her hand on his face. “We live complicated lives.”
“Not really,” he disagreed gently. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. Why can’t we live together? I love you, I love Callie. As far as I can see, there’s nothing holding us back.”
Kate tried to scoot away from him, but Liam rolled between her thighs and pinned her down.
“Every time I try to talk to you about our future, you find a reason to end the call or change the subject or find something, anything, else to do.”
He kissed her before she could formulate words; she’d rather kiss him than talk about taking the next step in their relationship when she wasn’t all that sure that they needed to take a next step. This was lovely.
Kate let her legs fall open wider, wrapped her arms around Liam’s waist; she felt his body begin to rouse and she welcomed the diversion. Liam reached between their bodies and guided his hardening shaft into her body.
“Ah...” Kate sighed at the wonderful feeling. Slowly, deliberately, Liam pushed into her deep, then stopped moving. They were connected, body to body, chest to chest.
“Look at me, Kate.”
Liam had lifted himself up over her.
She opened her eyes; he had grown so hard so quickly that she wanted to stop talking and start moving. It was so easy to orgasm with Liam.
“This is incredible.” Liam’s voice was gruff with feeling, desire. “But there has to be more.”
Kate nodded and shifted beneath him to get him to move within her. It took only two long, hard strokes to get her to climax. She shuddered in his arms, clinging to him, wrapping her legs so tightly around him as he picked up the rhythm, driving into her until he found his own release.
Instead of lingering in bed with her as was his habit, Liam gave her a quick peck on the lips, got out of bed and hopped into the shower. She wasn’t stupid—her resistance to any type of discussion about their future plans had grated on him. No, she wasn’t sure how to move forward with Liam, but she was very clear on one thing—she didn’t want to lose him.
He emerged from the bedroom, his hair wet and slicked back from his face, still unshaven with a thick layer of stubble on his face. He was barefoot, shirtless, his chest hair still wet. The man was just sexy.
“Coffee?”
“That’s exactly what I need, thank you.” He walked past her—no kiss—and opened one of the kitchen cabinets and rifled through the bottles until he found the one he was looking for.
“Here you go.” She put the coffee cup on the counter next to him.
Liam took out a bottle of ibuprofen, shook a couple of tablets into his palm, then popped them into his mouth.
“Aren’t you supposed to get a headache before sex?”
He took a swig of coffee, wincing as the hot liquid hit the back of his throat. She could read him well enough now to know that he was irritated.
She put her cup on the kitchen butcher block island. “Look... I can tell that you’re annoyed with me.”
He put his cup down as well. “Not annoyed. Frustrated.”
Same difference as far as she was concerned.
“Okay. Frustrated. And now I’m starting to feel frustrated with you and that’s not how I want to feel.”
Liam grabbed a T-shirt off the back of one of the bar stools and slipped it on over his head. Then he crossed his arms protectively in front of him as if he were gearing up for a fight. “What are you feeling frustrated about?”
“This obsession you seem to have about us moving forward.” She used air quotations when she said moving forward. “We haven’t even been together all that long. What’s the matter with how things are now? I like how things are now. What’s the big rush?”
“I already know what I want,” Liam said. “I want you. I want to be with you. I want to wake up with you in the morning, I want to go to bed with you every night. And the fact that you don’t want the same thing makes me question what the hell I’m doing in this relationship.”
“You question why you’re with me?” Kate asked, stung. “Just because I’m not jumping up and down at the thought of getting married?”
“You don’t have to say it like it’s a dirty
word.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes. You did. That’s the problem. You and I don’t have the same vision for the outcome of what we’ve started here. I’ve never made it a secret that I want to be a part of a family. My own family. We could have that, you and me and Callie.”
She gestured around her, to his cabin, to his homestead on Sugar Creek Ranch. “And what? Callie and I move here? You move to the Triple K? Change everything about our lives?”
Kate started to scratch at her neck, feeling hot and itchy all over her body.
“Just because things change doesn’t mean it’s for the worse. And to answer your question—I would leave Sugar Creek. For you.”
Liam stared at her; watched her clawing at her neck. “Jesus,” he said. “Just look at you. One conversation about marriage and you break out in hives.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kate snapped. “I don’t have hives. And just so we’re clear, you don’t understand. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’ve been looking into apartments for Callie in town. She wants to be independent and I want that for her. But Callie thinks that she wants to leave the ranch, but she has a really hard time with change.”
“I do understand that. Either way, we can make things right for Callie.” Liam pinned her with a pointed look. “Let’s be honest. You have just as much difficulty with change as Callie. Maybe even more.”
A tingle of fear raced up her spine—this wasn’t at all how she expected their long-awaited afternoon of lovemaking to go. The silence stretched between them until it felt awkward that neither of them was saying anything.
Finally, she spoke what they both were thinking. “What if I don’t want things to change? What if I like how things are?”
Liam pushed away from the island to put some distance between them, leaned back against the kitchen sink and crossed his arms in front of his body again.
“If we don’t want the same thing, Kate, then we’ve got to end it now. That’s not what I want. But we’re not teenagers. We’re old enough to know what we want.”
Her fingers gripped the edge of the counter as she swallowed hard several times.
“Do you—” she started and then stopped “—want to call it quits right now?”
Liam stared at her hard, his eyes filled with disappointment. “Like I just said, that’s not what I want. I want us to make a plan to be together for the rest of our lives. That’s what I want. But if what you’re saying is that all you want is this—” he gestured between them “—casual arrangement where we get together on my days off to make love and I come over for dinner once or twice a week.”
He paused and she waited.
“If that’s what you’re telling me, then, yes. We need to cut our losses and move on.”
* * *
Two weeks went by without a phone call from Liam. Kate was so busy with the ranch and the horse training and looking at assisted-living apartments for Callie in town that she was able to put Liam out of her mind most of the day. But at night, especially during that block of time when she would crawl under the covers and call his number to talk about their days, that’s when life without Liam really hurt. She missed him like he was a missing limb—he was gone, but she could still feel him.
So many times, she picked up her phone, stared at it, debating whether she should call him and break the silence. Yet she knew in her heart that she wasn’t ready to commit forever to him. Not because he wasn’t wonderful and worthy—he was. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love him, because she did. What it came down to, for her, was that she had built a life for nearly two decades. It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was hers. She wasn’t beholden to anyone, she didn’t have to account for another person other than her daughter, and she was in complete control of her money and her future. Liam wanted a marriage, he wanted a wife. If she gave in to that future, how much of her own autonomy would she lose? How much of her life would remain her own?
For her, it was a big question. It was, in fact, the question.
“Fred.” Kate found her most trusted employee overseeing the installation of new automatic waterers for the stalls.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I need to leave the ranch for a while. Can you stay a little late today so Callie isn’t here alone?”
Fred tipped his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
Kate found Callie and let her know she was leaving before she headed out. She thought she should change her clothes—it’d been raining for days, so her jeans and boots were caked with mud. But it felt as if she didn’t have the moment to spare; she didn’t want to wait to get to Liam. Two weeks without him had been long enough. If he had been trying to show her what life would be like without him, his plan had worked. She discovered that, no matter what change was coming down the pike, she did not like her life without Liam Brand.
At Sugar Creek Ranch, Kate parked her truck next to his truck, rushed up the porch stairs of Liam’s cabin and knocked on the door. This was his usual day off, but it’d been a risk driving all the way to his ranch without calling ahead, as she knew his schedule changed with the wind, it seemed. But she was in luck—Liam was home because all of his vehicles were accounted for.
After several minutes on his doorstep without any answer, Kate knocked again, a little harder this time. When there was still no answer, she tried the front door. Not surprising, it was unlocked.
“Liam?”
Kate left her boots on the front porch, not wanting to drag mud onto his clean floors. Then she stepped inside the quiet cabin and shut the door behind her.
“Liam?”
She didn’t think to check the barn or the pasture to see if one of the horses was missing—he could very well be out riding or fishing. Her plan was to check the master bedroom, because Liam was known to nap during the day, and then investigate the barn, the pasture and the workshop.
“What the hell?” Liam walked out of his bedroom, naked.
Kate jumped, startled, and put her hand on her chest. “God! You scared me!”
“I scared you! I’m supposed to be here.”
The horse trainer couldn’t stop herself from looking at Liam’s naked body, from his muscular arms, to his flat stomach, to his groin. She felt a tingling sensation between her thighs; she couldn’t be around this man without thinking about making love with him. She’d never felt such a strong attraction to a man. Maybe that should’ve been a clue.
Liam stared at her for a moment, silently, before he turned on his heel and went into his bedroom. He emerged a few minutes later dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, but he was still barefoot.
“I knocked,” she explained, feeling out of place in his cabin now.
“I just woke up.” Liam pulled the refrigerator door open and grabbed a beer. “You want something?”
Yes. You.
“No. I’m good. Thank you, though.”
He twisted the top off his beer, tossed it in the sink and then took a long swig from the bottle.
“So—you’re good, then?” he said after he swallowed.
That seemed to be a loaded question. He was asking her about much more beyond her level of thirst.
“Can we sit down?” she asked. Why was she feeling so nervous around him? What was there to be afraid of? This was Liam, after all. He loved her. But the man was such a highly sought after bachelor in their part of the world, it wasn’t inconceivable that he could have moved on to greener, more commitment-friendly pastures.
He joined her on the couch, his expression sullen and guarded. Kate knew this man well enough to know that he had not fared well during their short separation.
“What’s on your mind, Kate?” Liam hadn’t smiled at her once since he discovered her standing in his living room.
“I...” She had to stop to gather her thoughts before she started over. “I’ve missed you.”
&
nbsp; He said nothing in return.
“I’m sorry,” she added.
“No need to be sorry.” There was a coldness, a distance in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before. “You can’t change who you are or what you want.”
“I think I can,” she told him quietly. “I think I have.”
Even those words didn’t soften his expression; his mouth was drawn down, the expression in his eyes wary.
“I find that difficult to believe.” Liam gave one shake of his head. “It occurred to me the other night—maybe I’m no different than one of your horses. You come over, you take me for a ride, and then you put me back in my stall until the next ride. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I like feeling used.”
Kate realized, right then and there, that she had pushed Liam to the limit. If she were going to turn this boat around, she was going to have to take charge and get it done. She stood, moved to the cushion next to Liam, took his beer bottle out of his hand, put it on the table and then took his hands in hers. She took it as a positive sign, a bright spot in an otherwise dark moment, that he hadn’t pulled his hand away.
“I love you, Liam.”
He didn’t return the endearment.
“I know that I haven’t always said it as much as you’ve wanted me to. But I do. Love you. And I’ve missed you more than I can express. If you wanted to show me what life was like without you—” she shrugged a shoulder “—it worked. I don’t like my life without you now. You have become essential to me.”
Liam’s eyes roamed her face, lingering for the briefest of moments on her lips before his gaze returned to her eyes. It seemed like a really long time before he answered, and when he did, he, of course, had to throw her off balance.
“Are you saying this just because you want to get laid?”
Kate was stunned for a split second and then recovered, hit him on the shoulder and frowned at him. “Are you being serious right now? Because I’m being serious. I’m trying to say yes to you.”
“You’re saying yes to me?” Liam sat up straighter, bringing his body closer to her for the first time.
“Yes.”
