by Linda Seed
Fortunately, by the time Aria returned to the table, the talk had changed to Breanna and her house. Aria listened gratefully as Breanna talked about how her offer had been accepted, and what she was going to do next.
“The place is barely inhabitable right now, which is why it’s so great that I don’t need to move in right away,” Breanna said, her face alight with excitement. “I’ve got a two-week escrow, and after that, what I really need is a contractor.”
“Two weeks?” Aria said. “Isn’t that fast?”
“Yes, but we can do it because it’s a cash deal,” Breanna told her.
“I don’t know what the big hurry is,” Liam said, sounding a little irked. “The house is about ready to fall down. You ought to take the full thirty days, or even longer, and really check it out. You don’t know what you’re going to find if you really get to looking.”
“I’m going to have it inspected, Liam,” Breanna said. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Yeah, well.” Liam pushed his food around on his plate with his fork.
They talked a little bit more about real estate, and contractors, and Breanna’s plans for remodeling the house. Once the tension of trying to avoid talking about her family blew over, Aria found that she was genuinely enjoying the Delaneys’ easy banter. Aria had never owned a house—she’d always had apartments—but she joined in the conversation about open vs. closed floor plans, the benefits of en suite bathrooms, the importance of having a guest bedroom, and the various ways in which the house would have to be adapted for use by a couple of young and boisterous boys.
When the meal was over, Aria offered to help clean up, and Sandra shooed her away. She chatted with the family for a bit in the living room, then excused herself, saying she wanted to make it an early night.
The guesthouse was only a short walk away, but it was dark, and the rain had started pattering onto the roof. So when Liam offered to drive Aria back to the guesthouse in his truck, she accepted.
“I really like your family.”
The truck was bumping over the dirt road leading to the guesthouse, the rain drumming on the roof and windshield, the wipers making a soothing swoosh-swoosh sound.
“Yeah. I kind of like ‘em, too. Most of the time,” Liam said.
“So, what was going on with you and Breanna?” she asked. “Why don’t you want her to buy a house?”
“Ah … it’s nothing.” He shrugged. “I just think she’s rushing things, that’s all. One minute she’s happy living on the ranch, and the next she’s buying a place that’s so rundown it’s about to fall in on itself. I just don’t get it.”
“Maybe she’s not as happy as you think she is,” Aria suggested.
Liam shot her a look before focusing on the road again. “Well, hell. Why wouldn’t she be happy? What’s she got to be unhappy about?”
She’d hit a nerve, clearly. She could either back off or poke at it and see what happened. She decided to poke.
“Sometimes a woman needs a home of her own, Liam.”
“Is that what you want? A home of your own?”
They’d arrived at the guesthouse, so he parked the truck and turned off the engine. She suddenly felt very aware of the intimacy of being here with him in the dark truck, both of them dry and protected from the storm.
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Breanna.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. The part where we’re not talking about you, I mean.” His voice was a low rumble that made her flash back to the moments she’d spent with him, moments when she’d lost her sense in the feel of his body.
He waited for her to take the bait, and when she didn’t, he sighed and rubbed his face with his hand.
“I just don’t want her to go, I guess.”
“You and she are close?”
He considered that. “You know, I’m not sure I realized we were until she started talking about leaving. Then, once she started making plans …” He left the thought out there, unfinished.
“She’d probably appreciate it if you’d be supportive. Stop giving her such a hard time about it.”
“Maybe. But if I didn’t give her a regular ration of shit, she’d wonder who the hell kidnapped her brother and replaced him with a lookalike.” He gave her that grin, the one that made her all soft and stupid.
After a moment, he tried again: “If you’ve got brothers, you probably get that—”
“Liam. Don’t.” She cut him off before he could go any further.
“Don’t what?”
“Just … don’t.” She gathered up her purse and went for the door handle. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Aria. Wait.” Liam put a hand on her arm, and she paused.
“What?”
Liam didn’t know how to answer her. What was it he wanted to say? How could he get her to stay here with him, or better yet, to invite him in?
“I’m sorry,” he said. That always seemed to work well when women were pissed at him. “I shouldn’t have pushed the thing with your family. You obviously don’t want to talk about it, and—”
“You’re right. I don’t.” It was dark in the cab of the truck, but the full moon was making the cloudy sky all silvery and pale, so he could see her face, see the challenge in her eyes. Still, she wasn’t leaving, so that was something.
“So, we won’t talk about that.”
“Good.”
They were quiet for a moment, watching each other, the tension thick between them.
“Instead, why don’t we talk about why you’re shutting me out?” he said.
She closed her eyes. “Liam …”
“We’ve had a good time together. At least, I know I was having a good time. But you … changed. One minute you were interested, and the next, you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”
“That’s not—”
“Just wait. Let me finish. Now, I’m not some guy who’s going to try to pressure you into something you don’t want. I mean … shit, I’m not that guy. I just want to know what I did.”
“You didn’t do anything.” Her voice was softer now.
“I didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell’s going on?”
She didn’t say anything for a while, and he thought maybe he had a chance. Maybe she would answer him, tell him something real that would explain her sudden change of attitude.
Instead, she opened the truck door. “Goodnight, Liam. Thank you again for the ride.”
Chapter Sixteen
Liam was far from the first man to become puzzled by the mystery of women. He found it comforting to know he was no more or less clueless than the next guy.
Reassuring as that thought was, it didn’t help him with the situation at hand.
What was going on with Aria? What was the big secret about her family? And why did she keep pushing him away when she obviously was attracted to him?
Maybe he was tired of being alone after his breakup with Megan. Maybe his male ego needed answers. Or maybe he just didn’t have enough to keep him busy.
Whatever it was, he was determined to solve the puzzle of Aria Howard.
The more she put him off, the more his substantial stubborn streak kicked in and he decided that he was going to figure her out or die trying.
He hoped it would be the former rather than the latter.
He thought about all of that the next morning while he went about his work at the ranch and waited for Aria to call him.
She was going to call sooner or later—if only because he’d sabotaged her skylight and it was raining like the heavens had unleashed the wrath of God.
He was out in the southeast pasture, riding a big black gelding and checking on the stock while trying not to notice the rain pounding down on him.
The cattle didn’t always care about coming in from the rain, but today it was coming down hard, so Liam and some of the hands were putting dry bedding under a big, open-sided shelter they used when the weather got bad. They
had too many animals to put them in the barn during a downpour, but the shelter, with its high, arching canopy, could hold quite a few of them.
They were just getting everything set up with fresh hay and a full water trough when Liam’s cell phone rang. He’d closed it up in a Ziploc bag to keep it safe from the elements, since he was so wet he looked like he’d fallen into a lake.
He stood under the shelter, took the phone out of the bag, and answered it.
“Yeah?”
“Liam.”
Just the sound of her voice could make parts of him stand at attention.
“Hey there,” he said, a grin tugging at his lips. “You keeping dry?”
“Well … that’s what I called about. The skylight’s leaking again.”
His eyebrows shot up, as though this were actually news to him. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m afraid not. I hate to bother you with this again, but—”
“It’s no bother.” At least that part was true. “I’m just finishing up here. I’ll be out there in a bit to take a look.” He ended the call feeling pleased with himself.
Who said Colin was the smart one?
When Liam got to the old barn, he saw that he’d done a better job of sabotaging the skylight than he’d realized.
Where there had been a slow drip before, now there was a steady stream.
“Oh. Crap.” As he looked up at the place where the water was coming in through the roof, his surprise was genuine. The effect was more dramatic than he’d thought it would be.
“Yeah,” Aria agreed.
Liam, feeling a little bit guilty, asked, “It didn’t get your … your yurt … wet, did it?”
“A little. Luckily, it wasn’t directly in the line of fire.”
“Well, that’s good.” He gazed up, his hands on his hips.
“You’re soaked,” she pointed out, as though he might not have noticed on his own.
“Yeah. That’s a thing about ranching. The work doesn’t stop just because it rains.”
“I guess it doesn’t.” She reached out and wiped a drop of water off of his face with her finger. He felt it all the way down to his feet, and for a second, he didn’t realize that he wasn’t breathing.
“I’ll have to wait until the rain stops to get up there and look at the skylight,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.
“I know. That’s … I know.”
She was standing closer to him than people having a casual conversation about a skylight usually did. Even that distance seemed too far. He took a small step closer to her, until he could almost feel her body heat.
“I guess you need to get back to work,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
“You too.”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t leave, and he didn’t move away.
She swallowed hard, and he saw her throat move with it.
“It’s pretty cold and wet out there,” he observed.
“It is.”
He reached out and touched a lock of her hair that had come loose from the pins that had been holding it.
“It would help warm me up a little if I could maybe kiss you,” he said. “Just once.”
“Liam …” She started to protest.
He wasn’t going to push it. He wanted her to want him; that was the point. And if she didn’t, well, he guessed there was nothing for it.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll be back when it’s dry.”
He’d started to walk toward the door when she caught his arm. He turned to her, and then she was holding his face in her hands and kissing him.
He sank into the kiss, opening his mouth to her, caressing her with his tongue. His whole body seemed warm and liquid.
Then she pulled back and let go of him.
“Just once, you said.”
He grinned at her. “So I did.”
He walked out of the barn feeling happier than before, barely noticing the rain.
The kiss settled Liam down in a way he hadn’t expected. Now that he knew Aria still wanted him, there was no need to hurry. He could take his time to find out what was going on with her, what had her so off balance.
He had no doubt that he would find out eventually, somehow. The fact that she didn’t want him to discover whatever it was she was hiding was barely a factor in his imaginings.
It wasn’t that he wanted to force her into any kind of relationship—it wasn’t that he wanted to push her somewhere she didn’t want to go.
But Liam had suffered a certain amount of damage in his life: over his uncle’s death, his heartbreaks, the physical injuries he was still struggling to overcome. He figured that one damaged person probably had a special knack for spotting another one.
And he’d spotted Aria, all right, as though she were lit up in neon.
If he figured out whatever it was that was troubling her and he still couldn’t help—and if she still didn’t want to be with him—well, that was fine. He could be a man about it and walk away.
But sometimes when you got a little air onto a wound, it started to heal. And if he could make that happen for her, it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do, whether the whole thing ended with the two of them together or not.
The question was, how to get her to open up to him. Or, failing that, how to find out the truth some other way.
Liam pondered all of that as he went back out into the rain to finish his workday.
The question distracted him to the point where Ryan had to call him out on it twice, once when he completely missed something the man was saying to him, and once when he didn’t look where he was going and found himself up to his knees in a mud puddle.
“What’s going on with you?” Ryan asked as they were wrapping things up for the day, grooming their horses in the big stable, the smell of wet animal permeating the air.
“Not a damn thing,” Liam said, with little hope that Ryan would accept the answer.
“Well, that’s bullshit,” Ryan said amiably. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I really am,” Liam said, meaning it.
Ryan considered his brother. “You know, it seems like you are, for a change. But there’s something on your mind.”
Liam glanced Ryan’s way as he combed the gelding’s coat. “Well, I figure it’s my mind, so I don’t owe you an explanation for whatever’s on it.”
“Sure,” Ryan said.
The first thing Liam tried was talking to Gen, but that didn’t go anywhere. Gen told him the same thing she’d already told him—that Aria had been vague about her background when applying for the residency. When he pressed her for more information, like the specifics of what Aria had put in her application, Gen had balked.
Liam had expected as much, so he wasn’t daunted. Next, he did what anyone would do in a situation like this: He consulted Google.
After Liam showered and ate dinner, he went up to his room, closed the door, and, with a beer in his hand, settled down in front of his laptop to search for whatever there was to know about Aria Howard.
He entered what he knew about her: her name, her profession, and her connection with the Bay Area, where she said she’d grown up, and Portland, where she lived now. He began wading through the entries on his screen.
At first, things seemed promising. There were a lot of hits, mostly about her work. He learned that she was well-regarded in the West Coast art scene, and that she’d had her work displayed in various high-end galleries and a few museums.
He read a little bit about the art itself, which was experimental and avant garde, combining visual art with performance. She’d once done an installation in which she had set up a table and chairs in the middle of a contemporary art museum and had sat across from one visitor at a time, silently looking at them. Liam would have thought that was a pretty pointless excuse for art, except for the articles he read about the visitors’ reactions. People had felt emotionally moved by the experience. They’d talked to her about their lives, though Aria herself didn’t speak. Some
had stayed for extended periods of time. Some had cried.
“What the hell?” Liam muttered as he read a review of the installation, which was decidedly positive. He tried to imagine what it was about sitting across a table from a stranger that might make a person cry, and as he thought about it, he decided it wasn’t as odd as it seemed.
Aria had listened to people without talking, had looked at them without breaking that contact until the other person was ready to leave. How often did you really get that in life? So many times when you tried to talk to someone, they were so busy thinking of what they were going to say next that nobody really heard each other. And as for people taking the time to really look at each other? Well, hell, that was even more fraught with awkwardness and self-consciousness.
He wanted to pretend he thought the whole thing was stupid, but he could kind of see what she was getting at. He wondered what it would be like to sit across a table from Aria and really be seen by her, to really be listened to by her.
The interesting thing, though, was that she’d stayed silent even then. It was no coincidence that her performance art had involved her seeing into other people instead of them seeing into her.
He read some more articles on art-related websites, and a few archived newspaper pieces about her and her career. He found a couple of pictures of her, either performing or attending the gallery openings and lectures of others in the field.
Interesting thing, though: the earliest mention of her was from about five years before, when Aria was around twenty-three. That was odd. Just as a test, he Googled himself and found mentions that went back decades, ranging from his appearances at local charity events to articles in various financial magazines to his exploits on his high school football team. He guessed it was possible that a person’s early life might not turn up much on a search engine, but his own name was all over the place—and he’d never made any kind of effort to put himself in the spotlight. Aria, on the other hand, was a performer. She intentionally put herself out there. So why wasn’t there more of her online?
He found a few interviews, and reading them, he found pretty much what he expected. It was all about her art, with nothing about her personal life or family background.
