On the Market (The Ballard Brothers of Darling Bay Book 1)

by Rachael Herron

  Liam swung the camera to the stag-hunting scene on the floor. “It has holes, you know.”

  “I can repair it.” They were doing it. They were repeating what they’d said on the first time through, but letting it sound natural at the same time.

  “You’re a tapestry weaver now?”

  “I’ve never tried.” Felicia held up her fingers and waggled them. His thigh was reassuringly heavy and warm on the tops of her feet. “But I bet Talia-whats-her-name at the antique shop knows someone who can teach me?”

  “Bet she does.”

  Then, in a move she couldn’t have scripted, Liam caught her hand with his free one. “What do you think about the town itself?”

  Felicia swallowed the frog that rose in her throat. She was suddenly nervous again and it had nothing to do with the tiny camera Liam still pointed at her and everything to do with the warmth of his fingers. “I don’t know anything about Darling Bay, not really. I’ve seen the inside of my bed and breakfast, and I can tell you that if you’re looking for stuffed animals that make noise, the Cat’s Meow has all of them. The world’s supply of fake meowing cats is inside those walls.”

  “Want to go on a date with me?” His fingers tangled in hers, warm and dry.

  Her stomach flipped. That was the whole point of this—dating a Ballard brother while the others fixed up the place. And Liam was capturing it—getting her on camera, just as he should. But crap, he wasn’t being filmed. “Hang on. We have to catch you right now, too.”

  “I ask you out and this is what you say?” But he didn’t sound put out. He filmed her as she pulled her feet out from under him. She stood and moved a tall chair to her side of the couch. She propped the second camera on it, made sure it was on and that Liam was in the center of the screen.

  Then she took another chair and set it next to him. “I’ll take that, thank you, sir.” She aimed the camera at where she’d been sitting. “It’ll autofocus.”

  “So we really have to run through this again?”

  She grinned and sat. She tucked her feet under his thigh again. “This still okay?”

  He nodded and reached for her hand. “Is this?”

  Felicia nodded. Something hung in the air between them, a thickness that felt soft on her skin, an electric current that was humming at just the places that touched. Her feet tingled. Her fingers could have shot sparks.

  “So.” She cleared her throat. “Can we try that again?”

  His blue eyes sparkled. “Want to go on a date with me?”

  Felicia nodded. “Yes. Yes, okay. Yeah.” Great, was she going to start sounding dumb again? “Yes. Where should we go?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Darling Bay. Obviously.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Felicia had been sure he’d understood how it worked, but maybe he was having her say it for the sake of the audience? Smart guy. She was impressed all over again. “No, no. We can go anywhere.”

  He just kept those light blue eyes on hers. She wanted to get closer to them, to study them, to see if those gold flecks were she saw in their depths were tricks of the light.

  But he was quiet, so she elaborated more. “Anywhere we want. The only thing we have to do is agree on the location. Have you ever been to Paris?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Was he drawling on purpose? If so, she loved it. She squeezed his fingers. This was going to play so well on screen. “Or Venice. We could take an overnight flight once your brothers start work on the house and cruise the canals in style. You haven’t lived until you’ve danced in St. Mark’s Square to an open-air band.”

  “Guess I haven’t lived, then.”

  “What about Fiji? We could get one of those cabanas that sit right over the water.”

  “But we have the same exact ocean. Right out there. Why take that long a flight, when we’ve got everything we need right here?”

  He really was making her work, wasn’t he? “Okay. Melbourne?”

  “Scary insects that bite.”

  “Thailand?”

  “Tsunamis.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand. Goosebumps rose on her skin, and she wondered if he could feel them.

  “What’s preventing a tsunami from rolling in here?”

  “I know where the high ground is here. I don’t know about Thailand.” He shifted to face her more and drew her hand nearer to him as a result. “I don’t mean to sound like a bumpkin. I have a passport, and I’ll go somewhere someday. But on a date with you? I want to stay in Darling Bay.”

  Felicia decided to not think about the cameras. Whatever she did wrong, they could fix in editing. “No, seriously, Liam. Money isn’t a problem. They’ll literally send us anywhere. We can’t go into space, but that’s just about where the line is.”

  “Are you really serious about buying this house?”

  She nodded.

  “And you said you don’t know anything about Darling Bay.”

  “That’s right, but —”

  “Then I want to show you. I bet you didn’t know that when the sun sets, there’s a little crowd of old people who gather to clap every night.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. I used to think it was kind of dumb, but then I was walking past one evening and I decided to join them. I gotta say, there’s something pretty damn awesome about applauding for the sun putting on a show. And then there’s the folly at Stine’s Cove. And the pier! You haven’t walked on the pier yet. You haven’t met Ethel, Parrot Freddy’s bird, and you haven’t seen what the Rayburn brothers do to new graves at the cemetery.”

  He made it—all of it— sound amazing. But she had to be clear. “Not London? Not Bombay?”

  In answer, he lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed the tip of her index finger. It was the lightest touch, barely a breath, but it seemed to suck the air right out of Felicia’s lungs.

  “I really want to kiss you.” Liam’s voice was hoarse. “But I keep thinking about the cameras.”

  “We’ll both have to work on getting less camera shy.” Felicia felt bold, and then bolder as she saw his eyes go darker as he kissed the tip of her middle finger. Then he kissed his way across her palm, and by the time he reached her wrist, she was liquid inside. He set his camera on the floor.

  She moved fast and dropped her camera to the sofa next to her. She pulled her hand back bringing his with hers. Then somehow, without knowing how she got there, her mouth was a breath away from his. For one long second, they stayed there, separated by only the heat of their gaze.

  Felicia kissed him.

  And lord, if he didn’t kiss her back. His mouth was hot, his lips fierce. Her tongue grazed his. He tasted faintly of mint and strongly of desire. She twisted, and he moved with her. She was in his lap, then, and she could feel how aroused he had become. The kiss lasted forever, and that forever was only a scrap of time. She felt like she could kiss him for the next five years, and she wouldn’t need a break. She wouldn’t need sleep or water or food.

  She would just need him, the way his mouth fit hers, the way his hand slid behind her neck and tangled in her hair, drawing her deeper into the kiss, into him, into exactly where she wanted to be.

  The temperature in the room soared to approximately a thousand degrees, and if they hadn’t been in the middle of trying to film an episode, Felicia would have been tempted to lift her shirt, to take off his, to reach for his belt—right there, where any of her coworkers could stumble upon them.

  Her coworkers. Oh, shit.

  She pulled back. His breathing was ragged, but hers was even more so. She touched her bottom lip, feeling the grazed skin his stubble had left behind. “We have to…”

  “I know.”

  Carefully, she slid sideways and turned her body so that she was sitting next to him, her thigh pressed against his. She breathed through her mouth as slowly as she could, attempting to pretend that he didn’t make her feel as crazy as he did.

  It was almost impossible.

 
Liam moved to touch her hand, and then as if thinking better of it, stopped. “You scare me a little.”

  “Why?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was rough, and low.

  “You make me want to tell the truth.”

  “And you usually lie?”

  He shook his head. “No. You make me want to trust that you are who you seem to be.” He leaned his head back against the sofa and rubbed his eyes. “And that makes me nervous.”

  “Who do I seem to be?”

  “A woman who isn’t afraid of living. Of feeling.”

  Felicia couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You’re the first person who’s ever said that to me, I can promise you.”

  “Sorry?”

  She inched away from him so that they weren’t touching. “Everyone I’ve ever known has told me I need to watch less TV, to get out in the world and live. I fired a therapist over it, actually.” Had she ever sounded more Los Angeles? “Oh, my god, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “You produce shows about love. Or as close to love as television can get. I’d wager your feelings are pretty close to the surface.”

  She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. “We should probably wrap this up and go find the others.”

  “Oh, yeah? That does touch a nerve, huh?”

  “We have a lot to do.” She stood, smoothing non-existing wrinkles in her jeans. “I’m thinking that I want this room to stay very much like it is, I’ve already said that, but I need to meet with Aidan and talk about what we’re going to do with the bathroom, and the upstairs room. I need to schedule that with him. And Jake—I need him, too.” What she didn’t need was Liam’s eyes on her. “This is a whirlwind shoot—are you really sure your brothers can get it done in a few days?”

  He stayed seated, as if he had all the time in the world, which maybe he did. But Felicia didn’t. She now had two full-time jobs, being on the show as well as producing it (somehow, the fake “firing” hadn’t come through, even though she’d signed the cash bonus paperwork). Somewhere in there, she had to go on a filmed date with a man who made her more nervous than anyone possibly ever had.

  “They can do anything if they can afford to hire the right crew.”

  “The money isn’t a problem.” She wanted her purse, wanted to dig out a mint and pop it, to get rid of the taste of him.

  “Felicia. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you.”

  Without stopping to think whether it was the right or wrong thing to say, Felicia spoke. “I don’t actually like feeling my feelings. Feelings are stupid. They hurt, and they’re messy, and I like tidy. I like neat. I like being able to put things in boxes, and I like being able to categorize things. Maybe that’s why I like television. Everything is always wrapped up, if not by the end of the hour, then by the end of the season. That’s important to me. Feelings, whether they’re good or bad, whether they’re upset or excited or in love, don’t fit into boxes. So, no. If you see me as a person who feels her feelings, you’re not seeing me at all.”

  “I see you.” His face was open, his posture relaxed with his arms resting at his sides.

  “I’m just going to check on a couple of things with Anna. I’ll be back in a minute.” She put on a smile she didn’t feel and she walked out of the parlor.

  He didn’t follow her.

  In the kitchen, Anna and Tony were arguing about the best place to set up the diary cams.

  Felicia had no idea why she’d been so honest with Liam.

  She wished to hell she hadn’t been. It was just going to make everything harder.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The diary cam had shaken him up.

  He hadn’t expected it to, though he should have. “Keep a video diary” had been mentioned in the contract, but he kind of assumed it would be Felicia talking to it. She was the buyer, after all.

  So when Anna asked him to sit the kitchen with her, and speak into the camera she’d set up next to the stove, he was tense. “I still don’t know how this is a diary if you’re here, or why you want it from me.”

  Anna, a young woman with bright orange glasses that matched both her orange nose ring and her orange lipstick, smiled at him. She looked tired. “We film a lot. We get as many hours as we can, and then we’ll strip it all back into a forty-eight minute show. The more we have in the can, the more choices we have. And as for the diary part, I’ll feed you a few questions. Just look into the camera and respond in full sentences, as if you’re just thinking about these things.”

  Liam settled himself on the stool. “This seems pretty damn fake.”

  “Welcome to Hollywood.”

  Anna asked him innocuous questions at first, things about what he did at his job, what he liked about Darling Bay. She asked him what his brothers did, and that was easy, of course. Aidan built things. Jake did whatever the hell he wanted, but was good at helping Aidan out. Liam was good with paperwork. He grimaced into the camera. “See? Boring as cement drying.”

  “Which one are you closest to?”

  “I’m closest to whichever one isn’t actively being a pain in my ass.”

  “What was your last relationship like?”

  “Heartbreaking.”

  Anna shook her head. “Remember, phrase it as a full sentence.”

  This was so dumb. “I guess you would say my last relationship was heartbreaking. And it was. My heart broke when she didn’t show up for the wedding rehearsal. But then I got over it.”

  Anna blew out a breath. She looked as frustrated as he felt. “Okay, let’s try another one.”

  Liam didn’t want to do this anymore. He wanted to go home and hang out with Timbo on the couch and eat pizza and yell at the ball game together. But Timbo had a youth group meeting that night—a sleep-over at the school—and pizza wasn’t as fun alone.

  “Liam, I need you to be open. Candid.”

  “Why?”

  “Because authenticity will make you interesting, and if you’re interesting, people tune in. It’s a simple formula.”

  “I thought this whole thing was about being fake.”

  “Common misperception. Okay, what do you fear the most? Answer quickly in a complete sentence, please.” Anna pushed a button on the camera and looked away as if she were disinterested.

  What did he fear the most? Honestly?

  Fine. What the hell did he have to lose? The whole town already knew about Brandy ditching him, and he didn’t care what the rest of the world thought, anyway. “I guess when my ex dumped me, she confirmed the worst. I’d always kind of been convinced I’d never get married. That I’d never find the one.” He paused. The camera lens still made him nervous.

  What if it was Felicia sitting there, looking at him with those big brown eyes? Just imagining her made him feel more comfortable, instantly. “I’ve always thought I was unlovable, since I was a kid, since my parents—anyway. Brandy proved it to me, that if I showed my real self to someone, they’d leave. I guess my biggest fear is that I’ll never figure out how to be lovable.” As soon as the words were out, he felt a little sick.

  It wasn’t Felicia he was talking to. It was the whole world.

  He stood, astonished that someone telling him to be honest and then not looking at him had actually worked. It was a dirty trick. “And that is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever said out loud, and I want to take it back. How do I get you not to put that on the show?”

  “Nah, it’s fine.” Anna scratched notes on a piece of paper. She didn’t look at him.

  “It’s not fine. I don’t agree to that being aired.”

  “Talk to Felicia, then. That’s the producer’s call, not mine.”

  Shit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Liam took his best guess, and ordered the pizza half Hawaiian, half everything. At the store, Martha had let him buy a six-pack of mixed beers, so Felicia would have a choice from light and hoppy to dark and bitter.

  Feelings. She was right, they were stupid. They got in the
way of everything.

  The problem was, you couldn’t get away from them, no matter how you tried. And Liam had tried.

  Felicia had given him her cell phone number earlier, when she’d left the house. “In case you need anything.” Her voice had been all business, her smile bright. And fake.

  Now, parked in front of the bed and breakfast, he texted her. Have you eaten?

  He waited, watching the door at her balcony. The night was shockingly cold, but that was par for Darling Bay’s course. Hot summer days led to thicker than normal fog banks. When they rolled in, they brought the ocean wind. Inland, it stayed warm, but right on the coast it could drop to the low fifties inside an hour. He pulled the zipper of his sweatshirt higher.

  And he waited.

  Five minutes later, he texted again. Because I’m parked in front. I have pizza and beer.

  There was no motion yet.

  I did one of those diary cams. This is a bribe so it doesn’t air.

  The curtain of her room twitched. He waved though he couldn’t see her.

  Then the balcony door opened, and Felicia came out.

  He got out of the car and waved again.

  Felicia’s expression was lighter than it had been when she’d left the treehouse. Her mouth was more relaxed, and her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She leaned on her forearms as he came to stand below, on the edge of the garden which was so thickly planted with flowers it resembled a parade float. “This isn’t necessary.”

  “Did you already eat?”

  She shook her head.

  Though he’d imagined them eating in her strawberry-scented room, he had a better idea. “Let’s have a picnic.”

  “Where?”

  “The house.”

  “The crew…”

  “They’ll be gone by now for the night, won’t they?”

  She blinked down at him. Had she been napping? One side of her face was red, as if she’d been lying on it. “Maybe.”

  “Come on. Eat pizza with me. I’ll drive.”

  Felicia squinted. “I want my car with me.”