by Linda Seed
He just had to figure out what that one way or another might be.
Liam didn’t consider himself to be a scheming kind of guy—he was more the no-bullshit, straightforward type. But if straightforward wasn’t going to get it done, well, he could scheme.
It was one such scheme that brought him to Gen’s gallery on a weekday afternoon while he just happened to be in town picking up a gallon of milk for his mom.
The day was gray and cool, and foot traffic on Main Street was sparse—not like it would be in summer, when tourists would be three deep on the sidewalks and on the boardwalk at Moonstone Beach.
There was one person in the gallery with Gen, browsing a selection of small watercolors on a display near the door. Gen, all done up in her professional art dealer persona, looked pleased and surprised to see him. The surprise made sense, because he rarely came into the gallery. Art wasn’t much his thing.
“Liam.” She got up from her desk and waddled over to him as the customer—a tourist, judging from the Cambria sweatshirt she was wearing—wandered out the door.
“Hey, Gen. You going to be taking off work soon?” Her belly was so big that he wondered how she managed to haul it around day after day.
“I figure I’ll work right up until the big day,” she said. “This job isn’t exactly coal mining.”
“Well.”
“Is there something wrong?” The little space between her eyes furrowed in concern. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? I can see it in your face.”
“No. Not wrong, exactly. Just … I wanted to talk to you about something.” He felt awkward as hell.
He told her what he wanted, and when he was done, he looked at Gen expectantly.
“You want me to invite Aria to your house for dinner? That’s it?”
He squirmed a little, shifting from one foot to the other. “Uh … yeah. That’s it. And you and Ryan have to come, too. But, yeah. That’s the plan.”
“Well … if you want her to come over for dinner, why don’t you ask her yourself? Why do you want me to do it?”
He opted for the truth. “If I ask her, she’ll say no.”
“I see. So, you want me to get her to do something that she wouldn’t want to do if she knew the truth about why she was doing it.” She looked amused, and also a little bit judgy.
“Pretty much,” Liam admitted. “Look. I just want to get to know her better, that’s all. In neutral territory.”
She raised one eyebrow. “How is your house, with your parents and brother and sister and the whole deal, neutral territory?”
She had a point there.
“Well, okay. Not neutral, exactly, but …” He struggled with his explanation, and she let him off the hook.
“You want to get to know her in a context where you both have your clothes on.”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin and gave her a half grin. “That’s more or less the idea. But if I ask her out on a date, she won’t go.”
“You could at least try …”
“She won’t go. You know her as well as anybody does. You know she won’t.”
Gen sighed. “You’re not wrong.”
“I know I’m not. So, will you do it?”
“Liam …”
“I don’t ask you for favors very often,” he pointed out.
“That’s true, you don’t.”
“And you want me to spoil that kid of yours when he gets here …”
Her eyes widened. “You’d try to hold your nephew’s happiness over me to get what you want?”
“Whatever works.”
“All right. I’ll ask her. Now, get out of here so I can work.”
“Thanks, Gen. I mean it.”
“You’re welcome.”
When he was halfway out the door, she stopped him. “Liam?”
He paused in the doorway and looked back at her.
“Just … be careful, that’s all. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”
The way she said it—the genuine love in her voice—made him feel a swell of emotion in his throat. He stuffed it back down in an effort to maintain his manly veneer.
“Hell. However it works out, I can take it.”
As he walked out to his truck, he had to admit to himself that he might be lying. He might not be able to take it at all. But he was sure as hell going to find out.
Aria still hadn’t met the rest of the Delaneys, so the dinner invitation was intriguing. She was living on the property of one of the wealthiest and most influential families on the West Coast. Why shouldn’t she indulge her curiosity and see what they were like?
The question of whether Liam had put Gen up to making the invitation occurred to her, but then she dismissed it. After the way Aria had treated him, it seemed unlikely that he’d be up for having her over to his house for dinner. And if he was behind it, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. It would give her the opportunity to show him she could be friendly while still setting appropriate boundaries.
And there would be boundaries. There had to be.
She made the walk to the main house late in the afternoon the following Saturday. The sun was already sinking in the sky, the colors of dusk painting the landscape. The air was chilly, so she had a warm sweater wrapped around her.
The house was a few hundred yards up a dirt road from the guesthouse, and she enjoyed the crunch of the road under her boots as she walked, the sound of birds in the Monterey pines, the rustle of small animals in the grass at the road’s edge.
The Delaney place was a big white farmhouse with a wrap-around porch that suggested summer evenings spent outside enjoying the cool ocean breeze. The house looked old but well-loved. Warm, golden light spilled out through the windows, and the multicolored Christmas lights hanging from the eaves made Aria realize with a start that it was already December.
For a moment, she just stood there looking at the house. She could imagine the Christmas mornings, the raucous family get-togethers, the chaos of kids getting ready for school.
Standing there on the path leading to the house, she felt a longing so deep it was like a fever that wouldn’t break.
The normal things were what usually did it; those were the things that nearly brought her to her knees.
It wasn’t hard to see where Liam got his demeanor.
Sandra Delaney greeted Aria with the same scowl that was frequently on the face of the woman’s son. Sandra was brusque, ill-tempered, and crabby.
Aria loved her immediately.
“Well, you must be that artist that’s been out there in our barn,” Sandra said when she opened the front door for Aria. “I guess you’d better come in.” She said it as though there had been some doubt whether Aria would be admitted, and she was letting her in with some reluctance.
Inside, the house was buzzing with happy disorder. Sandra, a small woman with graying hair pulled back into a ponytail, was bustling around with an apron around her middle and bunny slippers on her feet; an older man, probably in his sixties, had his feet propped up on a coffee table and was watching football on TV; two boys, either in their preteen or early teen years, were arguing over whose turn it was to use the Xbox; a woman in her thirties with thick, dark hair was setting a big wooden farm table with plates and silverware; and Ryan and Gen were messing around with the big Christmas tree in the corner, adjusting a string of lights.
“Aria. I’m so glad you could make it.” Gen looked up from the tree and greeted her warmly. The smell of the tree combined with the aroma of roast chicken—the smells of a loving home—made Aria’s eyes feel hot, and she blinked several times to steady herself.
Aria had brought a bottle of wine, and Gen took it from her and led the introductions. The older man in front of the TV was Orin, Gen’s father-in-law. The woman setting the table was Breanna, one of the Delaney siblings. And the two boys were Breanna’s sons, Michael and Lucas.
Only one person was notably absent: Liam.
Aria wanted to ask about Liam with
out seeming like she was asking about him, so she said, “Are we expecting anyone else?”
Gen looked at her innocently. “Anyone else? Like who?”
Flustered, Aria found herself babbling. “I didn’t mean … I’m not …”
“Liam’s on his way,” Gen said, amused. “I’m not sure what’s keeping him.”
Liam was already late for a dinner he himself had arranged, and he knew he had to hurry up and get there. But he had one quick thing to take care of first.
That one quick thing involved him getting up on the roof of the old barn at near dark, and he sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t fall twenty feet and mess up an arm to go with his poorly functioning leg.
Even worse, he might fall on his head—though some people claimed he must have done that already, long ago.
He knew what he was doing was silly and immature. And yet, here he was.
The thing was, rain was in the forecast over the next few days, and with the skylight over Aria’s studio space fixed, there’d be little or no reason for him to come out here and see her.
But if the skylight were a little less fixed … well, then a man would have to do his part to help out a woman who was just trying to create her art without a steady flow of rainwater dripping onto it.
He went up onto the roof with a flashlight and a few tools. All he had to do was displace a few roof tiles and scrape away some of the sealant, and bingo.
If his brothers knew he was doing this, he’d never hear the end of it. But if Aria could use the skylight as a ruse, so could he.
Sometimes a guy had to be creative when it came to women.
Chapter Fifteen
Dinner consisted of roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, freshly baked rolls, green salad, and apple pie for dessert. Ryan, a vegetarian, had skipped the chicken and had taken a double helping of everything else.
Sandra, at the head of the table, peppered everyone with her good-natured nagging.
“Now, Genevieve, I expect you to eat more than that, girl. How do you expect to grow a new person if you’re not taking in enough calories to keep a damned flea alive?” She grunted at Gen and spooned more mashed potatoes onto her daughter-in-law’s plate.
Instead of arguing, Gen simply thanked Sandra for the potatoes. Gradually, Aria realized that people didn’t argue with Sandra much because there was no point in it. Any argument with Sandra Delaney was lost before it started.
“Orin, pass Aria some more of that chicken,” Sandra ordered her husband.
“Oh, I shouldn’t,” Aria protested.
“Well, why the hell not?” Sandra wanted to know.
A little flummoxed, Aria hesitated. “I … really need to watch my weight.”
“Pfft. You’re fine,” Sandra insisted.
“By God, that’s the truth,” said Liam, who’d finally arrived and was now sitting across the table from Aria. He grinned at her and winked, and she knew she’d been right when she’d told Daniel she might not be able to resist Liam. There was just something about the man.
Damn him. Why did he have to be so ridiculously appealing? Life went so much more smoothly when the man in her life—when there was one—was pleasant but unremarkable, someone she could spend time with or not, depending on her whims.
Liam Delaney was another kind of man entirely, with his cocky grin, the fine lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes when he smiled, his lean, strong body, the way every molecule of him radiated easy masculinity. Every moment she spent with him, she could feel her own control of the situation slowly leaking away.
Why couldn’t he take it easy on her and be a little less compelling, for God’s sake?
Part of his magnetism was the fact that she could sense something beneath the surface, some deep well of feelings and meaning waiting to be discovered. Her instinct told her he was more richly layered than most people realized.
It was so tempting to just dive in and start excavating, peeling back the layers to see what lay at the deep heart of him.
But if she indulged that urge to really get to know him, it might mean that he, in turn, would really get to know her.
And that wasn’t an option.
Aria tried to focus less on Liam and more on her meal.
She launched into a little small talk, asking the Delaneys about their family history (on the land since 1865, dedicated to cattle ranching for most of that time); life on the ranch (busy, messy, and sometimes dangerous); and Breanna’s plans to buy the house on Moonstone Beach.
Then, the talk turned to her and her art.
“Mom says you’re making a tent. That’s really cool. Are you going to camp in it?” Michael, Breanna’s oldest son, asked her. The boy, who looked to be about twelve or thirteen, had his mother’s dark hair and deep brown eyes that reminded her of the deer she spotted from time to time outside the guesthouse.
“It’s a yurt, which is kind of like a tent,” she told him. “And I am going to camp in it, in a way.” She explained her plan to install the yurt inside a gallery space and then live in it for a period of time yet to be determined.
“You’re going to camp indoors?” Lucas, Michael’s younger brother, asked in wonder. “What for? When people camp, it’s usually so they can be around lakes and trees and stuff. And go fishing. Uncle Liam takes me fishing sometimes. And sometimes I go with Uncle Ryan.”
Gen had explained to Aria that the boys’ father, a Marine, had died in combat in the Middle East. The idea of their uncles stepping in to take them fishing—and to help fill the hole their dad’s death had made in their lives—made Aria feel a sudden, unexpected love for the family.
Breanna ruffled Lucas’s hair affectionately. “Maybe you and I can go fishing sometime soon,” she told him.
Aria had just begun to think that the talk of fishing would save her from having to explain the concept behind her yurt, when Orin, the Delaney patriarch, picked up the thread of the conversation.
“I’d kind of like to know why someone would go camping indoors, too,” he said. “Makes no sense to me, when a person’s already got a perfectly good roof over their head.”
“Well …” Aria tried to think of how to explain without lapsing into the incomprehensible art-speak that people in her circles so frequently used. “The yurt is made of garbage. Things people have discarded on the beach, mostly. By building something out of it, and then living inside of it, I’m trying to show how the things we use every day—the things we choose to throw away—affect our world. Many times, people become so involved with the things they buy—most of which they’re eventually going to throw out—that they shut out nature. The things become their entire world.”
She considered the explanation she’d just given. It was incomplete, but it more or less touched on the major points she wanted to make.
“Hmph.” Orin looked down at his potatoes. “The last guy out there in the guesthouse was a painter. “You paint something, you hang it on the wall. It makes sense.”
“If you think that last guy’s paintings made sense …” Ryan began.
“Orin, your opinion of art and two dollars is worth just about enough to buy you a cup of coffee,” Sandra grumbled, a forkful of chicken paused halfway to her mouth. “Why, I think the yurt is a fine idea.”
“You do?” Gen asked.
Sandra let out a grunt. “Most people are all about things. You buy this, you buy that. You feel unhappy about something, you buy something else. Then later on you realize you’re not any happier than you were before you bought the damned thing. People act like if they’ve got enough damned stuff, they can block out everything they don’t like about their jobs, or their families, or whatever’s going on in the news. But it’s all still out there, by God, no matter how many big-screen TVs you have.”
“Yes.” Aria looked across the table at Sandra. “That’s exactly it.” Sandra wasn’t one of those people who tried to fill their world with things. She was immensely wealthy, but her home was simple and comfortab
le, the kind of home that someone making fifty thousand dollars a year would find familiar and accessible. The Delaneys were about the land. Of course they could understand a statement about the dangers of fouling it.
After a little more talk about art, Sandra asked the question Aria had been dreading.
“So, where’re your people from?” Sandra threw the question out there casually, as though it didn’t mean anything. Which, for most people, it probably didn’t.
“I grew up in the Bay Area,” Aria said. It wasn’t an answer; she hoped no one would notice that.
But of course, someone did.
“What’s your family like?” Ryan asked. “Are your parents artists, too? I figure that kind of thing’s genetic, at least some of the time.”
Aria looked at her plate to avoid making eye contact with anyone. “No. They aren’t artists,” she said.
She hoped to God the conversation would end there, but Orin kept it going. “What do they do? And what do they think of the whole yurt thing?”
It wasn’t as though Aria had never had to deal with this kind of questioning before. She knew she should just come up with a lie, something benign and ordinary, something about her father being a pharmacist and her mother an elementary school teacher, something so bland that it would immediately prompt a change in topic. But she could never bring herself to lie, so instead, she inevitably floundered around offering evasive answers, feeling an oppressive pressure building in her chest.
“The dinner is delicious,” she told Sandra. “If I could just use your restroom?”
As she was walking out of the room, she heard the Delaneys talking about her.
“What did I say?” Orin asked plaintively.
“Nothing. It’s not you,” Gen reassured him.
“Well, what is it, then?” Ryan asked. “She looked upset.”
“Just … everybody drop it, okay?” Liam said.
“Drop what? What did I say?” Orin asked again.
“The woman doesn’t want to talk about her damned family,” Sandra said, in a tone of voice that said the matter was closed. “Why, there are times I don’t know why I’d want to claim any of you people. Lucas, stop playing with your napkin and eat your dinner.”
