Liv had a sudden urge to crawl inside the bathroom vanity and hide from the world. How had she messed up so badly? She hadn’t had any idea Caleb was that into Joslyn. Back at Rafe and Jen’s house, he certainly hadn’t looked at the woman like he was counting the hours until he could propose.
Maybe you just didn’t want to see it.
“What the hell would Caleb want to get engaged for?” Matt sounded appalled. “He barely knows the woman.”
“Because he’s the kind of guy who decides what he wants and then does something about it.”
“Unlike me, huh?” Matt’s voice took on a familiar, belligerent tone. “If that’s what you’re trying to say, come out and say it.”
Alex sighed. “Will you please, for once in your life, do the right thing? Talk to her.”
Matt muttered a curse, but a second later the door slid all the way open.
Showtime. Crap. Liv started around the corner, trying to make it look like she was coming out of the bathroom.
“Oh. Hey, Livvy.” Matt tried for a smile, but since he looked like he was about to hurl, it wasn’t very convincing. “Do you, uh, want to…you know.”
“Have a beer? Go streaking? TP the neighbor’s house?”
“I thought, maybe, we could…” He swallowed several times in quick succession. “Do you want to sit down and…talk?” By the time he pushed the final word out of his mouth, it was barely recognizable.
Part of her wanted to call his bluff, but she couldn’t torture the one Voretti who might be on her side. “I’m not plotting to ruin Caleb’s engagement,” she said. “I was sick of sitting in front of a sewing machine, so I stopped by. That’s it.”
Matt let out a visible sigh of relief. “Thanks, Livvy.” He threw an arm around her shoulder. “We’d better get back to work before Alex comes after us.”
With Matt tugging her along, she had no choice but to return to the yard and pick up the nail gun. She might have allayed Matt’s suspicions, but he was the only one. Rafe and Alex still had her under surveillance, finding an excuse to intercept her every time she sidled in Caleb’s direction.
By the time they finished work and Caleb fired up the barbecue, she’d had enough. Her dress was coated with dirt, her muscles were screaming, and she still hadn’t done what she’d come to do.
With Rafe, Alex, and Matt finally distracted by the beer cooler, she made a break for Caleb. “We need to talk.”
He bent low, adjusting the burners. “This isn’t a good time.”
The last of her patience evaporated. If he wanted to live happily ever after with the woman of his dreams, he could at least have the courtesy to give Liv a heads up. “When would be a good time? After you pop the question to Joslyn?”
“Keep it down.”
“We had an agreement! If you’re not going to hold up your end of the bargain, I need to know.”
He finally faced her, eyes blazing hotter than the flames on the grill. “When have I ever gone back on my word?”
“My entire family is talking about you and Joslyn. How are they ever going to believe that we’re—”
“Shut it, Livvy.” His voice was rough with warning.
“No! We’re the ones who are supposed to be in a relationship, but you’re too busy with Ms. Perfect Preschool Teacher!”
Every single one of Caleb’s muscles locked down, like he was bracing for an explosion. That’s when she became aware of Matt, ten feet away, and bearing down on them fast.
He slammed into Caleb, taking him down to the concrete. “You shitbag.”
“Stop it!” Liv shouted.
Matt’s fist met Caleb’s flesh with a hollow thud.
“I’m serious!” She tried to find an opening between the two men, but she couldn’t tell which body parts belonged to whom.
Matt shoved Caleb’s face into the pavement. “You think you can fuck my sister on the side, like she’s your dirty little secret?”
She swallowed the sickness rising up her throat. She couldn’t look anymore. Couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and hurled herself into the middle of the fray.
Two strong arms yanked her back. “What are you doing?” Rafe demanded.
“I’m trying to stop the fight!” She threw an elbow behind her.
Rafe grunted, but he didn’t let go.
“Do something!” Desperation scraped her voice raw. “He’s hurting Caleb!”
“Caleb can take care of himself.”
One second, Caleb was on the ground. The next, he was on top of Matt. And still in one piece. Thank goodness.
Caleb wrenched one hand behind Matt’s back. “Two choices, Voretti. Listen to me, or get your ass kicked.”
Matt took a deep breath. He relaxed under Caleb’s grip.
Moving in slow, cautious degrees, Caleb stood. He offered a hand to Matt.
Matt ignored it, pushing to his feet with a curse. He folded his arms across his chest and glowered at Caleb. Alex and Rafe flanked Matt, wearing identical glares, and her heart flew back up to her throat. Caleb might be able to take Matt, but no way could he handle all three of her brothers at once.
“Well?” Matt prompted.
“It was my fault,” Liv blurted out. “Caleb wanted to tell you, but I wouldn’t let him.” The words ran together—she had to get them out before Caleb said something stupid and was forced to face the wrath of her entire family. “I was going to tell you guys. Eventually. I wanted to see where things went without all of you turning into armed psychopaths. It’s kind of hard to have a relationship when every other man in your life keeps threatening to come after your boyfriend with a shotgun.”
“So Caleb’s your boyfriend now?” Rafe sounded…skeptical.
“Of course he’s my boyfriend.” She kept her gaze fixed on her brother, hoping it would look like she was doing the I’m-telling-the-truth eye-contact thing rather than the I’m-afraid-to-look-at-my-pretend-boyfriend thing. “What did you think this was?”
All three of her brothers started to talk at once.
“—never had a healthy relationship in your life—”
“What about Joslyn?”
“—kick his ass—”
“Hey.” Caleb didn’t raise his voice, but it carried over her brothers, throwing them into silence. “I’m only going to say this once, so listen up. Liv and I have been in each other’s lives for so long that I never thought of her romantically. She was almost like a sister. So, yes, I asked Joslyn out. I thought she was everything I was looking for. But she didn’t have that life—that spark—that Liv does. That date made me realize that the woman I really wanted had been right in front of me for years.” He turned to Liv, and even thought she knew he was only acting a part for her brothers, her skin pricked to awareness.
“But—” Rafe started to object.
“I explained the situation to Joslyn. We’re no longer seeing each other. Now…” Caleb’s dark, savage gaze swept over each of her brothers, but she was the one who felt it—a hot shiver that woke her body up and reminded it how long it had been since it had been truly satisfied. “I love Olivia. I would never disrespect her in any way, and the next person who implies I’m using her for sex is going to get my foot up his ass. Any takers?”
Silence.
Rafe was the first to find his voice. “Well. Congratulations, you two.”
Her brothers shook Caleb’s hand and hugged her, full of apologies for the misunderstanding. She tried to respond appropriately, but she wasn’t sure if her mouth was forming actual words. Every time she tried to focus on what her brothers were saying, she heard Caleb’s voice, low and forceful, like he was braced above her, about to bury himself deep. I love Olivia.
The muscles low in her belly clenched, her whole body beyond ready for him even though he hadn’t even touched her.
What was wrong with her?
But she already knew. That old crush? The one she’d kicked in tenth grade?
It was back.
CHAPTER 12
/> APPARENTLY THE L word changed everything, because rather than trying to keep a safe zone between Liv and Caleb, her brothers were now actively trying to get them alone together. All three of them suddenly remembered urgent plans that prevented them from eating the steaks cooking on the grill. In a matter of seconds, they’d fled the premises.
Leaving Liv and Caleb alone.
Caleb turned his back to her, scrutinizing the steaks like he was trying to use his x-ray vision to tell if they were medium rare. He’d put on his shirt, but the thin cotton couldn’t disguise the tension vibrating in his shoulders. He was pissed.
Of course he was. Her stupid plan had gotten him into a fight, not to mention massively delaying his ten-year plan to marry Joslyn, have two point five children, and live happily ever after. And here she was, having immature high-school-girl fantasies about him throwing down those tongs, picking her up, and taking her against the rough stucco wall.
She swallowed. “Caleb?”
He did something to the steaks that made them sizzle. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here tonight.”
She needed to let him off the hook. Yes, he’d promised to be her fake boyfriend, but that had been before he’d realized Joslyn was The One. “I…”
He turned to face her, and she forgot the rest of her sentence.
“You don’t get it.” He ran one hand over his jaw, where a bruise was forming. “You know why your family is always on your case?”
She so did not want to get into this right now. But after the fiasco with her brothers, she owed him answers to whatever questions he wanted to ask.
“Because I’m different.” She tried to let the words flow out of her mouth without really hearing them herself. “I wear black instead of peach. I date guys in bands instead of stockbrokers. They think I’m a crazy rebel because I don’t always make the same choices they would.”
“No. Well, yeah, they don’t like some of the things you do. But it’s not because they think you’re a delinquent. It’s because you’re so impulsive. You do these things—get a tattoo, bail on a job interview, come over here today—and you don’t spend a second thinking about how it’s going to affect anyone. Not even yourself. You see a cliff and you take a running jump off the edge, and that scares the shit out of them. Because one day there’s not gonna be a net to break your fall.”
The words hit her hard, weighed down by the truth. She felt small—a silly little girl who had been dancing at the edge of the world, oblivious to the fact that everyone around her had formed a human barrier to keep her from tumbling into the abyss.
The words wouldn’t stop echoing through her head. That scares the shit out of them.
But when she risked a glance at Caleb, she heard them slightly differently. That scares the shit out of me.
She swallowed, but her heart was still there, beating hard at the base of her throat. “You’re right.”
“Don’t think those words have ever come out of your mouth before.”
“Yeah, well…” She couldn’t look at Caleb anymore. It was too confusing.
She turned away. Caleb’s dog Max had wandered onto the patio, and she bent to pet him.
His fur was soft and he licked her face. He didn’t think she was a screw-up. “Maybe there’s some hope for me after all.”
“We’re all works in progress.”
“Only, some of us have made more progress than others.”
“I think you’re amazing. You have this energy that lights up a room—hell, an entire planet. But you scare me. I don’t want all that energy to burn out.”
She’d never heard his voice like this—gruff but gentle, like silk over steel. It did funny things to her, burrowing under her skin, heating her up and making her edgy. Restless. Like she was right back at the edge of that cliff, but this time, she was totally conscious of the hundred-foot drop down to a raging river lined with jagged boulders. And she was going to jump anyway.
“Thank you.” Her voice sounded strange. She gave herself permission to glance up at Caleb because if she waited another second, her muscles were going to stage a mutiny and do it anyway.
His eyes were hot. His lips parted.
“Liv.” It was only one word. But the sound of his voice—the knowledge that his mouth, lips, and tongue had shaped two consonants and a vowel into something for her alone—set her on fire.
“Caleb.” Words flew through her head so fast she couldn’t sort them into coherent sentences. Words like want and you and now.
Max barked. The sudden burst of sound pulled her out of her fantasy world, and she realized she’d stopped petting him.
“Sorry, boy.” She scratched the fur behind his ears, where he liked it best, and he settled down, resting his head against her knee.
Caleb stared at the place where her dress had ridden up, like he wanted to shove Max out of the way so he could get a better view.
Do you look at Joslyn like this? The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them. That’s what the old Liv would have said.
“Your dog is huge. What have you been feeding him?” It was a stupid question, but it did the trick; Caleb stopped checking out her legs.
“He’s not my dog. And the vet says he’s right in the middle of his ideal weight range.”
“What do you mean he’s not your dog?”
“He’s my friend’s. Remember John? He was deployed right after he found Max at the shelter.”
“So you’ve been dog sitting?”
“Exactly.”
“For three years?”
He shrugged, like he hadn’t been keeping track of the time. “It’s no big deal. I have the space.”
“That you do.” She looked around the yard, from the pomegranate trees, with their perfect red fruit hanging down like ornaments, to the wide lawn where she could picture Caleb throwing a baseball to some miniature version of himself.
Her brain zoomed in on Mini-Caleb. He had dark hair, but his eyes were blue, like hers.
She forced the errant fantasy out of her head. Back in tenth grade it had been okay to write Olivia Ward on her notebook and imagine the dark-haired, blue-eyed babies she and Caleb would make, but now she was an adult. And she was going to act like one.
“Your place is really coming along,” she said, which would have been okay if she hadn’t ruined it by following up with, “It’s going to be great for kids.”
“Who said anything about kids?” His voice was a little too loud—the kind of thing she wouldn’t have noticed, except that Caleb was always so controlled.
Hmm. Maybe he wasn’t quite as ready to settle down with Joslyn and have those two point five children as her brothers seemed to think.
“Relax. That wasn’t my way of telling you your sperm are about to expire. It was only an observation.”
“Anyway, it won’t be my place for much longer.” He turned his back on the house. “I’m only fixing it up so I can sell it for a decent price.”
She looked from the tiled border he’d set into the patio to the craftsman-style gate that was so intricate it had to be custom made. “But you love this place.”
“It’s a piece of real estate, not a person. I don’t need a house this big.”
“Not now. But you will someday.”
“That’s someday. Right now, if I was living in one of those condos downtown, I’d have a two-minute commute to work.”
The reasonable, Annabelle-like voice inside Liv’s head told her to mind her own business, but some much more fundamental part of her insisted that she open Caleb’s eyes. Only someone with a serious connection to this place would have put in the amount of work he had. This was the house he was meant to live in. To raise a family in. “What about Joslyn? Do you think she wants to live in one of those tiny condos?”
He gave her a look he must’ve learned from her brothers. The one that said he was so much older and wiser, he couldn’t believe she was even daring to speak to him. “We’
ve only been on one date and you’re trying to move us in together?”
“Well, you are getting older. You’ll be settling down soon.” She sounded exactly like her mother, but it was too late to cut herself off. “Wouldn’t you rather raise your children here instead of some cookie-cutter tract home?”
“You want to know what I’d rather do?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “I mean, no. I mean—”
“I’d rather you mind your own business.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “My mouth sometimes gets away from me.”
“I like Joslyn. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to run off to Vegas, get married, and start popping out kids.”
“I know.”
“I’d like to have a family someday, but only when it’s right. When I find the right woman and we decide it’s the right time to settle down. That’s the way normal people do things.” He leaned in hard on the word normal, giving her a pointed stare.
All the heat in her body concentrated in her face, where she felt his gaze. She wished she were standing so he wouldn’t tower over her. “So I’m abnormal?”
“Not everything is about you, Liv.”
“This is.” She pushed to her feet. “Maybe I’m more impulsive than I should be, but you’re not impulsive enough. Seriously, Caleb. You need to live a little. Eat a hot dog from one of those street vendors without a permit. Go out without an umbrella even though it might rain. Kiss a pretty girl just because you want to.”
In the ensuing silence, her words echoed through her head like a song stuck on repeat. Caleb was staring at her like he heard them too.
He took a single step toward her.
Her heart hammered in her chest, powered by equal measures terror and excitement. He looked ferocious. Pushed to his limits. Like he might to anything at all.
Her heart pounded faster. Do it. All of it.
One of his big hands caught her hair. He pulled it into a fist at the nape of her neck, his grip firm but gentle as he positioned her where he wanted her.
He kissed her like she was wearing his ring on her finger—like there was no question that she was his—and in that moment, she was. She sank into him, pulled by a force stronger than gravity.
Pretty in Ink (Voretti Family Book 3) Page 10
