by Linda Seed
But for some reason, he wasn’t so much thinking about those other things.
Right now, he was just thinking about her.
He told himself to get his head back in the game at work. They were in the middle of calving season, so he had to check all of the pregnant animals to see if any were ready to deliver and to make sure none of them was in distress. Since Liam’s ex had been their veterinarian, they were currently without one—or at least a steady one they knew they could trust. A vet they’d never worked with before was coming out today to check on a bull that had been showing signs of a respiratory illness, and Liam wanted to be there to evaluate the guy, see if he knew his ass from a hole in the ground.
On top of that, two of the ranch hands had quit unexpectedly—one to be near his elderly parents who were in failing health, and the other to go to law school—and Liam had to pick up the slack for them until they could find some new guys to take their places.
The bottom line was, he was busy, and he didn’t need any distractions.
Be that as it may, he was distracted as hell thinking about Aria—so much so that Ryan had to repeat himself when they were in the barn looking at the bull.
Ryan had been saying something about discharge and Liam hadn’t heard him.
“I wasn’t … What did you say?” It was like coming up from underwater.
“I said, the bull doesn’t have any nasal discharge that I can see. Where the hell’s your head?” Ryan looked at him appraisingly.
Liam scrubbed his face with his hands. “Aw … hell, I don’t know. I’m just not on my game today, I guess.”
“You think?”
Liam expected to see amusement on Ryan’s face—expected for his brother to rib him about who was the superior cattleman. But instead, he saw concern, and that was somehow worse.
“You okay?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah. Of course.”
“You know, I can handle things here if you want to …”
Liam scowled. “I didn’t hear some damn thing you said, and now you think I can’t do my job? I could work you into the ground any day of the goddamned week.” It wasn’t true—Ryan was every bit as formidable on the ranch as Liam was—but it sounded good.
Ryan didn’t seem convinced. “Well … all right,” he said. “I just thought—”
“That’s your problem, right there. You need to stop thinking,” Liam snapped at him.
That ended it for the moment; they both went back to doing what they’d been doing, and the subject of Liam’s lack of focus wasn’t brought up again. But privately, Liam told himself he needed to get his shit together.
It wasn’t that his heart was broken because Aria hadn’t pledged her eternal love for him after two sexual encounters. It wasn’t that he thought she should be slavishly devoted to him because of his prowess in bed. And it wasn’t that he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her, pinning onto her all of his hopes for emotional fulfillment and the healing of his romantic scars.
Liam might, occasionally, act like an idiot. But he wasn’t a big enough idiot to believe any of that.
His unsettled feeling had more to do with instinct. Something was telling him that there was more to Aria’s hot and cold routine than she was letting on. Of course she had depths he didn’t understand; they barely knew each other, and he’d had no real opportunity to get beneath the surface. But some vague itch in the back of his brain told him that whatever was going on, it was more than the usual things that made a woman change her mind about a man. Something told him that if he knew Aria’s secrets—really knew—he’d be both fascinated and rocked by them.
That left the question of whether he was willing to do what it might take to find out.
Part of him wondered why he cared. They were her secrets, not his, and she didn’t owe him any kind of explanation. They’d screwed twice. So what? He’d had fun, and so had she, and neither one of them had any obligation to the other.
But, for whatever reason, he couldn’t get her out of his head.
Being preoccupied by a woman wasn’t the safest state of affairs when you were dealing with large animals on a daily basis. The last time he’d let a woman really get into his head, he’d ended up with a crushed leg, a trip to the emergency room, and a surgery that hadn’t fully restored him.
On the other hand, if he was thinking about Aria, it meant he wasn’t thinking about his ex.
There was a lot to be said for that.
Aria didn’t open up to people. She didn’t mind sharing a little bit about her sexual escapades with Gen, but when it came to what was going on in her heart, that was her own business and no one else’s. The habit of keeping her inner thoughts to herself had been formed over many years of hard experience, years in which she’d learned that her feelings didn’t matter to anyone but herself.
If you told people your feelings, they could—and would—use them against you.
Because that attitude had been so firmly in place for so long, she was more than a little surprised when she found herself exploring those feelings with a man—one other than Liam Delaney.
It started with the skylight—the one for the yurt, not the one in the barn.
Aria had the idea of creating a multicolored glass mosaic made from the discarded bottles she’d found on the beach. But she hadn’t worked with glass much, and she needed some instruction to get the effect she was looking for.
Gen knew a local artist who worked with glass, and the guy had agreed to show her some techniques she could use on her piece. He had a studio with a glass furnace, something she might need and had no access to on her own.
That was how she ended up in Daniel Reed’s outbuilding south of Cambria, showing him her sketches for the skylight and talking to him about the yurt, the concept behind it, and the overall feeling she hoped people would experience when they saw it.
Daniel, a tall, dark-haired guy with a two-day growth of beard that gave him a rugged, man-of-the-earth look, squinted at her drawings.
“If you want a stained glass look, then you don’t need to fire it,” he told her. “You can just cut the pieces and fit them together inside a frame.”
She nodded. “Right. And that could work. But what I really wanted was to create the effect that the bottles are melting together. Like they’re each distinct bottles—you have to be able to see the labels—but they’re kind of slowly fusing to become one.”
The idea of the bottles fusing together had to do with her themes of evolution, rebirth, and the unity of humankind, but she didn’t tell him that. The concepts behind works of art were sometimes tiresome even for other artists.
“Huh. Well, you can do that with a torch.” He showed her a hand-held blowtorch he used for smaller pieces. “I can show you, and we can do a few test pieces. Then, when you’re ready for the real deal, you can come out here and get it done.”
She’d offered to pay him for his instruction and for the use of his space, but he’d waved her off. “Gen’s a friend. And my wife is one of her best friends. You get the wife’s-best-friend discount.”
The remark, and the way he’d casually thrown it out there, made her wonder what it would be like to have a best friend.
“That must be nice,” she said, before she realized she was going to say anything.
“What must be nice?”
She felt herself blushing a little. “Oh … you know. Just … the best friend thing.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “What, you don’t have a best friend?”
And then it popped out: the truth. “I’ve actually never had one.”
He looked stunned by the revelation. “Even when you were a kid?”
“Especially when I was a kid.”
Aria immediately felt embarrassed to have blurted out such a thing. “Listen, that’s … Just forget I said that. Okay? Let’s talk about glass.”
They were standing in Daniel’s studio late in the afternoon, with golden light slanting in through the windows. Though the da
y was cold, the room was still hot from when he’d used the furnace earlier that morning. Shelves and tables lining the room were covered in colorful pieces of glass: bowls, vases, and some amorphous sculptures that put her in mind of flowers and insects and running water.
He regarded her for a moment, then nodded. “Sure, we can do that.”
He started to show her a piece of his own that used techniques similar to what he’d been talking about. “See, this one—”
“The thing is … I don’t want to talk about my personal life.”
“Okay.”
“But this … this thing happened … and I’m a little thrown.”
“Yeah? What’s the thing?”
What was she doing? Why was she getting into this with him? She tried backing off. “There’s no thing. Really. There was never a thing.” She waved her hands to clear the specter of the thing from between them.
“Oh, there’s a thing,” he said. “The question is whether you want to talk about it.”
“Well … I don’t.”
He nodded. “Fine.”
“It’s just …”
He leaned his butt against the edge of his worktable and crossed his arms over his chest, looking vaguely amused.
“This wouldn’t be the first time I stood in as somebody’s girlfriend for the purpose of a personal confession,” he told her. “I’m here, I’m done with work for the day, and I’m game. I don’t have a dog in this fight, so whatever it is, I figure I’m perfect if you want to bounce it off someone.”
When he laid it out that way, it was hard to argue with his logic.
“Do you know Liam Delaney?”
“Sure. Everybody knows the Delaneys.”
“Well, I … he …”
He prompted her: “Does this involve one or both of you naked?”
She ran her hands through her hair. “Never mind. This is stupid.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t mean to be offensive. It’s just my way. Seriously, I’m listening.”
“Actually … yes. What you said. Yes, it did.”
Daniel looked at her for a moment, then pushed off from where he’d been leaning against the table. “Let’s get a beer.”
“A beer?”
“If I were talking about this kind of thing with a guy, there would be beer.”
That seemed true enough, so she followed him out of the studio, down a gravel path through an expanse of golden grass, and to his house, which appeared to have been renovated recently. It looked as though the second floor and part of the ground floor were new, though they’d been designed to blend in with what looked like a 1920s cabin.
Daniel led her through the back door and into the kitchen, where a tall, stunning blond woman was standing at the sink, rinsing a plate. Aria recognized the blonde from Jitters, a coffeehouse on Main Street.
“This is Lacy, my wife,” Daniel told Aria.
Lacy greeted her with a smile. “Aria Howard, right?” She dried her hands on a kitchen towel and extended one to Aria to shake.
“Right.”
“Cappuccino, one sugar,” Lacy said, pointing at her.
Aria couldn’t help smiling—something about the woman’s sunny disposition demanded it. “Usually,” she said. “Though sometimes I’m a nonfat latte with a dusting of cinnamon.”
“Right.”
Lacy turned to Daniel. “I’m headed out; Connor’s leaving early to go to his cousin’s thing.”
“Did you eat?” Daniel asked her.
“Not yet, but I’ll grab something at Linn’s on the way.”
They kissed, and Lacy gave Daniel’s shoulder a quick, affectionate rub before she grabbed her purse and left the house.
Watching the two of them made Aria feel a nagging ache in her chest. Something about their easy, casual exchange, the way they seemed at home in the world together, made her long for that kind of comfort with someone. Then she told herself she was being stupid.
Domestic comfort was nothing but an illusion—she knew that.
Aria wondered if Lacy would have a problem with her and Daniel here in the house alone, talking about Aria’s encounters with Liam.
“So … is this okay?” she asked him. “With Lacy, I mean? The two of us, here, talking about my sex life?”
He took two bottles of beer out of the refrigerator, brought one to her, and sat down at the kitchen table. She sat across from him.
“As long as I don’t become a part of your sex life—which I don’t plan to do—we’re good.” He twisted open the bottle and took a drink. “So, shoot. What’s up?”
For just a moment, Aria reflected on the absurdity of her situation. She was in a virtual stranger’s kitchen, about to tell him her man problems as though they were gabbing at a hair salon, their newly set tresses under the big plastic dryers.
Of course, Aria had never gabbed with anyone while sitting under a dryer, so she really was in no place to make the comparison.
“Liam and I … got together … a couple of times. While I was out in the barn at the ranch, working on my piece. The skylight was leaking, and he came out there …”
“And he worked on more than your skylight.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “So, what’s the problem? He being an asshole again? He’s been known to do that.”
“No.” She thought about the question. “I think if there’s an asshole in this scenario, it’s me.”
Daniel leaned back in his chair and threw one arm over the back of it casually, settling in for her story. “Okay. So, what assholish thing did you do?”
“The thing is, we had fun,” she told him. “And that’s all it was supposed to be. Just one time, just … you know. Fun.”
“Two times,” he corrected her.
“Right. Exactly. It was supposed to be one time, but then it was two times, and he seemed … I don’t know … like maybe he had other ideas. Like he maybe wanted more than that. And that’s not okay!”
“Wait. You’re upset because a guy you slept with seems like he’s not just in it for your body?” Daniel raised his eyebrows at her.
“Well … it sounds dumb when you say it that way.”
“And yet …”
“I just … I think we’ve had some mixed signals, that’s all. I want one thing, and he wants something different.” She slumped in her chair and took a long swallow of the beer. It was very good beer; some kind of local brew with a citrusy flavor.
“Okay,” Daniel said. “You’ve had a communication problem about who wants what. Talk to the guy. Straighten it out.”
“I can’t do that,” she said miserably.
“Because?”
“Because if I talk to him, I’m going to want to sleep with him again.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “Help me out here. If you want to, and he wants to …”
“You don’t get it,” she told him. “I need to be able to walk away. And if it’s hard to walk away now, how much harder is it going to be if I sleep with him again? Or again after that?”
Daniel was starting to look like he might be developing a headache.
“But you don’t actually have to walk away,” he said carefully, as though he were trying to explain algebra to a toddler. “You could always, you know, try things out. Date. Like people do.”
“Like people do,” she repeated.
“Well … yeah.”
“Other people might do it, but I don’t.”
“You don’t what? Date?”
“Date. Have relationships. Get to know people.” She put finger quotes around the last phrase.
“But … why not?”
It was one thing to talk about what she had or had not done with Liam Delaney. It was entirely another to start unburdening herself about the chaos of her formative years and the emotional scars that had resulted.
“I just … don’t.”
He let out a short laugh. “That’s it? You just don’t?”
Daniel looked at her appraisingly. “Huh.”
They were getting too close to the heart of things, things she didn’t want to discuss. So she got up and put her purse strap over her shoulder.
“Thank you for the beer. And for the help with my piece. And for the talk.”
“You’re welcome.” He rose from his seat, took both of their bottles, and tossed them into the recycling bin. “Come back when you’re ready to do a test piece for your skylight concept.”
“I will.”
She was headed toward the door when he stopped her.
“Aria?”
“Hmm?” She turned.
“If you like to be able to walk away from people, but you’re having trouble walking away from him, there might be a reason.” He shrugged. “Food for thought.”
Chapter Fourteen
This thing with Aria was like a nagging itch that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much Liam tried to scratch it.
The fact that she was interested in him one minute and pushing him away the next was something he could have brushed off. It could mean anything or nothing. Who knew the mind of a woman?
But combined with what Gen said—the thing about nobody knowing her, and about Gen’s sense that something was going on there—he had the itch. Liam wanted to know what the deal was.
Of course, it wasn’t just curiosity.
He hadn’t been able to make himself feel an interest in any other woman since Megan had left him. Lord knew he’d tried. Then Aria had showed up, and suddenly Liam was feeling desires he’d thought were lost in him.
He appreciated the role she’d played in reawakening something he’d sorely missed. And now that those feelings of wanting someone were back, he sure as hell wanted to indulge them.
So, yeah, it was that.
But it was also intuition. Liam’s gut told him that Gen was right: There was something going on with Aria, something that ran deep. And he wanted to know what it was.
If anyone asked, Liam’s mother would tell them that Liam had been her stubborn child, the one who wouldn’t give up a fight no matter how ill-conceived.
He was going to find out what made Aria Howard tick, one way or another.
