He’d made it perfectly clear. Kate would be deluding herself if she thought she could be the one to change his mind. That was probably what Kimela had thought. That she was different. The exception to the Liam Thayer rule.
A rush of loss and disappointment flooded through her as she realized she could fall for this man. She was already in way too deep—like quicksand. Her gaze fell back to the wedding portrait. Looking at Joy’s radiant face, Kate wondered if it was a sin to have slept with a man who was so obviously still in love with his late wife. Kate had been so blinded by want and need that she hadn’t seen it until now.
Kate heard footsteps above her head. Her heart leaped when she suddenly realized that the water was no longer running. Quickly she turned off the light and left the bedroom. She was still in the hallway, but making her way back to the kitchen—where she should’ve stayed in the first place—when she ran into Amanda. The girl seemed startled to see her.
“What are you doing?” she asked Kate.
“I was just looking for the bathroom. I set out a plate for you in the kitchen. Would you like me to sit with you while you eat?”
Kate fully expected the girl to politely decline, to say that she would just take her plate into the family room and eat while she surfed through the channels. But, much to Kate’s surprise, Amanda said, “Sure, that would be great.”
Oh.
Kate followed the girl into the kitchen, noticing that she was tall and a little bigger than most ballerinas. But, Kate reminded herself, you never knew what hidden talents people possessed. For all Kate knew, the girl could be the reincarnation of Isadora Duncan.
Good for Amanda for following her passion.
“I didn’t pour you a drink,” Kate said. “Would you like something?”
“Yes, please. Water would be fine.”
Nice manners.
Kate got down two glasses, which happened to be in the same cabinet with the picture of Joy and the girls taped to the inside of the door. She couldn’t bring herself to study it as she had before, as if she were... What? Remorseful for snooping? Embarrassed by having realized that the man she’d slept with a couple hours ago was still in love with the image of the smiling woman who lived inside the cupboard with the drinking glasses?
Nope. Joy didn’t live in the cupboard; she lived in Liam’s heart. This was her kitchen, her house, her hairbrush with strands of her hair still visible. That was her daughter sitting at the table.
Kate had no right to any of it.
She said a silent apology—unsure if the contrition was for Joy or herself—for all she wanted and would never know, not with this man. She shut the cabinet door. With that gesture, she tried her best to close off all hope of anything more than friendship with Liam Thayer.
But could she really just be friends with Liam after having made love to him, after she had left a little piece of her heart behind that she would never regain?
Unlikely.
She pushed the thoughts out of her head and filled each glass with ice from the freezer door and then water from the adjacent dispenser.
As she carried them back to the table, she racked her brain for conversation starters appropriate for teenage girls.
But Amanda was one step ahead of her.
“Did you wear that dress horseback riding?”
Oh, that’s right. This must be the daughter who loves horses. Liam had told Kate that one of his daughters was enamored with them.
“No, I was wearing jeans and boots earlier,” Kate said. “I changed for dinner.”
She refused to think about how Liam had picked out the dress, about how they had gotten a couples’ massage and relaxed to the point of losing good sense and ravaging each other’s bodies.
For God’s sake, she was with his daughter! She pushed all those thoughts out of her head.
“Do you like to ride?” Kate asked.
The girl perked up more than she had all evening. “I love to. Although I don’t get to do it very often.”
Before Kate could stop herself, she’d blurted out, “I live on a ranch. You should come by sometime and take out one of the horses.”
“Can I come over tomorrow?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your dad.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the ranch. She was only trying to make conversation. There was probably no way Liam would bring the girl out there. It would have to be Liam’s decision. Beyond that, it wasn’t something for her to choose.
“Did you know you’re missing an earring?” Amanda said.
Kate’s hands flew up to her ears. Sure enough, the right ear was bare. Her heart started pounding. Both earrings had been in place when she’d peeked into the hall powder room. She’d stopped to admire them in the mirror.
That meant that one of her earrings had fallen off somewhere between the kitchen...and Liam’s bedroom.
Kate had no idea how she would retrieve it, much less explain how it got wherever it landed. What in the world had she been thinking when she had so brazenly set off to explore the house that Joy built?
Chapter Thirteen
“Why are you still up?” Liam asked Amanda when he entered the family room and saw her stretched out on the couch in front of the TV.
“I wanted to stay up to make sure Calee is okay,” his daughter said. “Where is she?”
Amanda sat up and pushed her mane of blond curls out of her eyes and looked around as if she expected her sister to hobble into the room. Amanda had her mother’s curly hair, Liam thought. And her eyes. His left thumb searched his ring finger for the wedding band touchstone, but it wasn’t there. It was still in the car’s console. He’d forgotten to bring it in, and would have to go out and get it as soon as Amanda went to bed.
“She hit her head when she fell, and they wanted to keep her overnight for observation. She also sustained a pretty bad fracture. They can keep her comfortable with medication tonight. We’ll go get her tomorrow.”
Amanda hugged a pillow to her chest and looked a little deflated. “I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”
Liam pulled his phone out of his pocket and pressed the button to bring it to life. Sure enough, five missed calls.
“I’m sorry, Amanda. I had to silence the ringer when I was in the emergency room. Is everything all right?”
Amanda shrugged and pouted.
“She is just worried about her sister, Dr. Thayer,” said Rosie. “Please do not be mad. I am the one who told her that she could stay up until you got home.”
Liam gave a curt nod. He wasn’t mad at anyone. It had just been a long day with a lot of things to process. Like Calee’s accident.
And his unexpected intimacy with Kate. He really hadn’t set out to seduce her. They just seemed to have no control when they were around each other. Right now, he was so exhausted and drained he wasn’t sure if their attraction was a good thing or not.... But where was she?
“Is Kate still here?” he asked, fairly certain that she would be sitting here if she were.
“She called someone to pick her up after I got back with Joaquin.”
Oh, yeah. Liam dragged a hand over his eyes, then blinked, trying to right his thoughts. He’d been so scattered since learning that Calee was hurt. It was different being at the hospital as the parent of a patient than being the doctor in charge. But, right, Rosie was supposed to watch her grandson tonight while her daughter worked. Yet she was here.
“Where is Joaquin?”
“He is upstairs in the guest room, asleep in his portable crib. Maria allowed me to bring him here tonight, so that I could watch him and be with Amanda. That way Ms. Macintyre was able to go home.”
He also hadn’t intended for Kate to have to find her own ride home. He’d call her soon and apologize. Again his left thumb explored the bare base of his ring finger. He warred with a sensation that felt a lot like regret. But regret for what? That he’d been human and had spent a lovely evening with a woman he was ex
ceptionally attracted to? He blinked away the question. He’d have to sort that out later.
“I appreciate you being here, Rosie,” Liam said. “Sometimes I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Kate has horses, and she invited me to come over and ride tomorrow,” Amanda said. “Can I go?”
What? Another odd sensation shot through him; this time the feeling was more akin to irritation. Why was Kate inviting his daughter over? Especially when she knew that his other child was hurt. Maybe she wanted to give Amanda something to do while they got Calee settled.
But he couldn’t deny the nagging feeling that reminded him of how Kimela Herring had dangled special ballet workshops that were only available to the most elite and promising dancers in front of his daughters. Soon it had become clear that she was using them to get to him. He gritted his teeth. He’d vowed that would never happen again.
While he couldn’t be sure that’s what Kate was doing when she’d invited Amanda over, he did know it was going to create conflict with his daughter because he was not going to have time to take her over there. But now wasn’t the time to break the news to Amanda. They were both overtired and irritable. The best thing they could do was go to bed.
“Can I go?” Amanda insisted.
“Amanda, you need to go to bed,” he said.
“But, Daad.” She sat up and slammed down the throw pillow onto the couch cushion.
“‘But, Dad’ nothing. Go to bed.”
“You don’t even love me. You don’t even care. Everything is for Calee. You wouldn’t even take my calls tonight.” Amanda got up and stormed out of the room.
“Amanda!” Liam called.
Rosie was already on her feet and headed toward the stairs. “I’ll go see about her and calm her down, Dr. Thayer.” Rosie paused at the threshold and turned back. “I don’t mean to tell you what to do, but I would suggest taking a few minutes for you both to catch your breath, and then coming up and saying good-night. She’s just worried about her sister. Please don’t go to bed mad.”
He nodded. Rosie was right. If he’d learned one thing since losing Joy, it was that life was fleeting and fragile. There were no extra seconds to waste on being mad.
Being irritated with Kate for the presumptuous offer to his daughter was another matter. But there was nothing he could do about it now other than put it out of his mind so that he wasn’t still stewing when he went up to say good-night to Amanda.
He retrieved his ring from the car. As he walked down the hall toward his bedroom, force of habit had him sliding the gold band onto his ring finger where it belonged. Only his finger was so swollen, he couldn’t get it past his knuckle. A raw and primitive grief overwhelmed him. He couldn’t put his wedding ring back on.
Not after tonight.
His body ached, and he needed a shower. He would rinse off quickly, then go up to tuck in his daughter and call it a night. Tomorrow was another day.
He closed his bedroom door, set the ring on the dresser and unbuttoned his shirt before he sat down on the edge of the bed to remove his shoes. When he bent to untie the laces, something shiny lying in the middle of the floor between the bed and the dresser caught his eye. At first glance he thought maybe his ring had rolled off the dresser. He kicked off his shoes and walked over to pick it up.
But it wasn’t his ring.... It was an earring. And it looked just like one of the pair he’d given Kate tonight. Liam stiffened. How had it gotten in here? Had Rosie dropped it when she was cleaning? But how would Rosie get it?
He glanced around the room at the pile of dirty clothes that needed washing and another pile that needed to go to the dry cleaner. Obviously Rosie hadn’t worked her way into the master bedroom. But someone had.
When Liam set the earring on the dresser, he noticed that the pale pink ribbon that usually lay atop Joy’s jewelry box was on the dresser, not where it should be. He reached out and rotated the bottle of Chanel No. 5 a quarter turn so that the writing on the bottle faced forward. The way it should’ve been.
Somebody had definitely been in here, and tomorrow, when he called to politely decline the horseback riding invitation and to ask if someone was missing an earring, he would ask Kate what she’d been doing in his bedroom.
* * *
The following Friday, as Kate stood in front of the drugstore prophylactic display, she had the sudden urge to turn up her collar and don her dark glasses. She’d never purchased condoms before. In her limited sexual experience, the man had always taken care of the task and had come prepared.
As she stood there with so many...choices, suddenly her plan to replace the box that Pepper had sent in the dessert picnic basket with an unopened box and give them back to her tonight didn’t seem like such an airtight plan.
She had a good memory. So she thought she’d remember what kind of box they’d come in, but... She hadn’t realized there would be so many choices and the boxes would all look so similar. Now that she was standing here, nothing looked familiar. Why hadn’t she at least taken a picture of the packaging with the camera on her phone?
Instead, she glanced at the clock on her phone. She was due at Pepper and Rob’s in twenty minutes, and she still had to stop by her house and pick up a bottle of wine. She’d mistakenly thought that this would be a slightly mortifying but quick trip to the drugstore. All she needed to do was smugly present the unopened box to her sister-in-law, proving that no matter what Maya the Matchmaker had said, there had never been anything between Liam and Kate. Never had, and there certainly never would be now.
Kate flinched as a tall guy with close-cropped dark hair passed by the aisle. It would be just her luck that she’d run into Liam here, now.... But that guy wasn’t Liam. And it hadn’t been him the other eight times she’d thought she’d seen him over the past five days.
Come on, Kate, get a grip. This isn’t the ninth grade. Celebration was a small town. The odds favored her running into Liam sometime. Even though she’d popped into a drugstore outside of Dallas on her way home from work to keep from running into anyone she knew.
Still, she hoped the fateful event would happen later...much later...years later. Or at least after Liam had the opportunity to get over himself. She still stung from the embarrassment of his phone call Sunday night.
It had been bad enough that Amanda had obviously misunderstood Kate when she’d said the girl could come out to the ranch and ride sometime. Teenagers. It probably would be a good thing for Liam to wait until his daughters were out of the house before he dated. Obviously he was carrying too much baggage to maintain a healthy relationship with a woman who wasn’t his late wife.
It’s not fair to blame Joy. Kate silently admonished herself. She had been fully cognizant and in charge of herself when she’d gone snooping in his bedroom. She simply hadn’t planned on the earring falling out of her ear while she was there. And she hadn’t planned on Rosalinda showing up so soon after Amanda had pointed out that the earring was missing.
Gaaah! She should’ve known better. She always got caught when she tried to be sneaky. And since she wasn’t able to retrieve the earring, she should’ve been prepared for Liam’s line of questioning.
She shuddered and covered her eyes with her hand as she recalled the awkward silence following his questions, “Are you missing an earring, Kate?” Silence. “How did it get in my bedroom?” Silence. “Were you looking through things on my dresser?”
All she could manage to say was, “I’m sorry, Liam. I was curious.”
Instead, she wished she would’ve said she would mail the other earring back to him. And then she should have asked him what the heck he was doing giving her a sexy black dress and pretty gold jewelry? And making love to her like that?
What was that?
If there were a kingdom called Mixed Signalia, Liam Thayer would be its king.
No! What she should’ve said was, maybe Kimela Herring “didn’t hear you,” but, buddy, I hear you loud and clear. I don’t need your baggag
e. I have enough of my own. And then she should’ve told him if he really wanted to do what was best for his daughters, he’d continue with the grief counseling so that he could get to the root of his issues.
Well, no, she wouldn’t have brought the girls into it.... But couldn’t she have come up with something better than I’m sorry, Liam. I was curious?
Ugggh! She pressed her palms to her eyes as if the gesture might blot out the memory.
“You okay?” asked a husky voice from behind her.
Kate flinched and flushed as she realized a stranger was standing behind her, and she had no clue how long he’d been there. She blinked, trying to rid her vision of the white spots she was seeing after pressing on her eyes.
The guy cleared his throat. “Uhm, my wife likes those,” he said, hooking his thumb toward a black package with yellow writing, and sounding almost as embarrassed as she felt.
“Thanks.” Without looking at him she grabbed the suggested package and beelined for the checkout counter before she humiliated herself any more than she already had.
If she couldn’t remember the specific kind of rubbers, chances were that Pepper wouldn’t, either. Anyway, she did remember that the box had some yellow on it—or was it orange?
Whatever. This was close enough. She just needed to get out of here.
As luck would have it, there was no line at the register. She paid for her purchase and a candy bar for her little nephew, Cody, tucking both into her purse before she left the store. As she started her car, her cell phone rang. The name Darrell Friday—a nice-looking drug rep she’d met on Monday in a meeting in the hospital’s fund-raising department—cropped up. She’d managed to avoid Liam, but she’d run into Darrell twice in the elevator. On their way out to the parking lot, he’d mentioned it might be nice if they met for a glass of wine sometime.
She’d given him her business card because she thought she might want to go—to remind herself that some men were interested in her even if Liam wasn’t. Darrell had been calling every evening, but she hadn’t called him back. Not because she was holding out for Liam, but because she wasn’t interested in Darrell. So what was the point?
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