I heard a sound somewhere between a cat purring and growling. It was only a mortified second later that I realized it came from my own throat. I pressed my hand to my chest and cleared my throat. I locked my eyes on him like my life depended on it. "Indigestion," I said quickly. "I ate like three burritos for dinner."
He nodded like I’d just told him something vaguely impressive.
“So… Guess you forgot to bring clean clothes in there with you?” I said through a dry throat, desperate to fill the silence.
“Sure. We can go with that. Or maybe I was just hoping I could figure out if you were a human or a robot.”
“I’m definitely a robot. You can look inside if you don’t believe me. Just cords, batteries, and plugs. Because I could care less about any of that,” I gestured to his torso, trying to wear an expression that said it was just so-so while simultaneously diverting all the power in my brain to record a perfect memory of the moment, even if it meant purging non-essential data to make room, like algebra or US history.
“I won’t lie,” he said. “The thought of getting inside you had crossed my mind.”
I felt my eyebrows climbing my forehead. I normally had pretty good control over my face, but right now was too much. All my focus was going into keeping my eyes on his, which wasn’t that much help. They were like simmering gray magnets that threatened to pull me in and never let me go.
“Can you put some clothes on before we continue this conversation?” I couldn’t take it anymore. I put my hand over my eyes and lowered my head. Let him see my weakness. I didn’t care. He was going to see a lot more if I had to keep looking at that, anyway.
“Sure.” I heard the towel drop to the ground, and the sound might as well have been a thunderclap.
My brain was on high alert. Naked man. Naked man. Penis flopping in the wind. Buns of steel in plain view. The whole deal. There was a naked man directly in front of me, and all I had to do was peek through my fingers.
I summoned up the willpower to keep my hand right where it was until I heard the door to his bedroom close.
I breathed out a sigh of relief and sank into the couch. Jesus. Dying from a sexy-induced heart-attack probably would’ve been one of the more embarrassing ways for me to go, especially given the reputation I tried to maintain.
“Hey,” I said, hoping I was speaking loud enough for him to hear me through the door. “Can I use your phone to call for a locksmith? Mine is still in my apartment.”
“What?” he said. The door swung open and he stuck his naked torso out.
“Jesus,” I hissed, covering my eyes again. “Stop waving that around, asshole.”
He closed the door. “Sorry, thought you said you were choking.”
No, you didn't, dickbag. “I said can I use your phone?”
"It's on the coffee table. The password is BOB."
I looked toward the door as if I could read his face through the wood. He was going to just let me open up his phone without supervising me?
I picked it up and tried the password, which, for the record, was probably the dumbest, most insecure password I’d ever heard of. It worked, and I saw the default home screen with what looked like no apps downloaded. He didn’t even have any notifications.
I battled my index finger for a few seconds until I managed to overcome the urge to snoop in his photos. I’d always wondered if it was true that men’s phone galleries were entirely full of dick pictures, after all.
I pulled up Google and started to search “locksmith” but the browser auto-filled as soon as I typed the “L” with a single suggestion based on his recent searches: “Liam Hightower.”
I frowned at the screen for a moment but heard him opening the door from the bedroom and quickly finished typing my search. I punched in my zip code, found a local locksmith, and dialed the number.
“Find one?” he asked.
“Mhm,” I said. I hoped I sounded casual, or better—annoyed.
He was wearing a plain white t-shirt now and a pair of sweatpants. It should’ve looked sloppy or lazy, but of course, it just looked good on him. His hair was still wet and messy, too, which only added to the instinctual desire to throw him down on a bed somewhere and demand at knifepoint that he cuddle the crap out of me. Thankfully, I didn’t have a knife.
A few minutes later I found him in the kitchen dumping powder into a shaker cup and then mixing it all up. I handed him his phone. “All yours. The guy will be here in three hours. Said it was the fastest he could do.”
“Thanks.” He took a long sip of the shake and winced a little.
“Is that a protein shake? Don’t those give you really bad gas?” I asked.
He grinned. “I have a strong stomach.”
“I saw.”
“So you were peeking through your fingers?”
I sighed. “No. You practically went Full Monty on me, like six times. I didn’t have to peek to see that you are some sort of health freak. Probably wouldn’t even eat a jelly bean at gunpoint, would you?”
He pulled open a drawer in the kitchen that was stuffed with what had to be at least six two-pound bags of chocolate covered raisins.
"Seriously?" I asked. "All the sweets in the world and you go for desiccated, chocolate covered grapes?"
“So,” he said, ignoring my question. “You can catch some sleep in my bed if you’re tired. I can use the couch.”
“You think I’m going to go walking into whatever sex dungeon you have set up in your bedroom? No, thanks. I’ll sit on the floor, right by the door. That way if you try anything creepy, I can escape faster.”
He chuckled. “What qualifies as creepy, exactly? Just trying to make sure I don’t scare you off.”
“If you have to ask, it’s a bad sign.”
“Here, I’ll make you a deal. You can sit on the floor as long as you let me put a pillow on the ground and give you a blanket.”
“Whatever,” I said with a shrug.
He grabbed one of the couch cushions and lobbed it to the ground by the door. He came out of his bedroom with what looked like the comforter off his bed.
“Thanks,” I said as I sat down on the cushion and pulled the blanket up over my legs. “I guess.” The comforter had his smell on it, and I barely resisted the urge to pull it up to my nose and take a huge, embarrassing whiff.
He sat on the floor a few feet away from me and held up his palms at the look I gave him. “Easy there. I’m not trying anything weird. I just thought I’d keep you company. Three hours is a long time to sit and brood.”
“Maybe I like brooding.”
I expected him to sigh or laugh, but he just looked thoughtful as he let the back of his head rest against the wall. “Me too, sometimes.”
“Can’t say you struck me as a brooder.”
“And I can’t say you really know me at all.” His tone caught me off guard, but the trace of a smirk in his expression softened the effect.
“Is that an invitation to ask? Not that I care, by the way.”
“How about this, you tell me something about you, I tell you something about me. Sound fair?”
“What’s your real name?”
“Liam,” he said simply. There was no hesitation, but his eyes shifted over to watch me for a reaction.
I only felt vaguely surprised. Liam Hightower, I assumed. So he’d been Googling himself, which shouldn’t have surprised me, either. The fact that his name was fake almost seemed like a given. The part I didn’t know was why he would be pretending to be someone else. Running from debt? The police? “That makes more sense than Bob. So why are you pretending to be someone else?”
“Nope. It’s your turn now. Why are you trying so hard to convince me you’re not interested?”
“Maybe because I’m not actually interested?”
“No. You are.”
I made an indignant noise, but couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Tell me I’m wrong, then.”
“Even if I was interested, that
’s a pretty vague thing to say. I mean, I’m interested in what happens to our bodies after we die. I’m interested in why clouds are called fog when they’re on the ground but not when they’re up high. I’m interested in learning to eat a meal without spilling a little bit on my clothes every single time. Or why—”
“Why are you trying to convince me you don’t want to sleep with me?”
“Because you think you deserve it?”
He chuckled. “What makes you think that?”
“Look at you.” I made a floppy hand gesture toward him. “How many times have you ever had to do more than wink at a girl to get her to strip naked and beg to have sex with you? I feel like I owe it to the world to make it hard for you.”
“Well, you’ve accomplished that. A few times, actually.”
Oh, my...
I wasn't a blusher, but my face felt a little hot. I must've been getting a fever. Either way, I wanted to change the subject. "My turn. Why the secrecy? Why are you pretending to be somebody named Bob Smith? And what made you think ‘Bob Smith' was a halfway decent alias in the first place?"
"That's two questions, so I'll answer the first. It's my step-sister. She and I had a… disagreement. She thought the best way to get revenge was to plant rumors about me in as many magazines and tabloids as she could. Within a few weeks, I'd come out as gay, declared my intent to get a sex change, described how doctors had printed a list of my STDs, and it was longer than a CVS receipt… I could go on, but you get the idea. She wanted to make sure no woman in the city would come within five feet of me, and it was only a matter of time before the ugly rumors started hurting business."
I raised an eyebrow. “Are these the kind of rumors that have a kernel of truth, or the totally made up kind?”
“Take a wild guess.”
“Kernel of truth?”
He glared. “Total fabrications. But it didn’t matter. If I publicly denied them, it made them seem more legitimate and brought attention to them. If I ignored them, it looked like I was hiding from the truth. I decided my best option was to hide in plain sight and hope she’d get bored of making my life hell if she couldn’t find me.”
“Sounds like a really dumb plan.”
“What would you suggest?”
“I don’t know, give her what she wanted? How bad could it have been?”
“She wanted me to have an affair with her.”
“Oh. Oh.” I paused while I digested that, then burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s just, well, it’s kind of awesome, in a screwed up, deep south kind of way.”
He was watching me with a crooked grin. “I’m glad I could get a smile out of you somehow, at least. All it takes is my life to be in shambles.”
“I smile sometimes. But I usually only do it around people I like.”
“So you’re saying you like me? Good. We’re making progress.”
I gave him a little shrug. “Still deciding. But that was your question. It’s my turn again.”
He put his thumb to his lip while he locked his eyes on me, and the gesture made my skin feel like it was heating up from the inside-out. His lips were nice. Not quite pouty, but also not stiff and boring. There was such a confidence to his gestures, even the small ones, like the way he would let his head tilt to the side a little as he smiled. I wondered if it was just me, or if anyone with a pulse would find it impossible to tear their eyes away from him.
“Ask away,” he said.
“Why are you so interested in me?”
“Initially? I thought you were spying on me for my step-sister. But I also thought you had a kind of wounded animal thing going on, too. I’ve always had a soft spot for broken things.”
“Who says I’m broken? You don’t have to have a traumatic past to be an asshole.”
He laughed. “Then what’s your excuse?”
“It wasn’t like my parents abused me or anything. They did what most parents do, I guess. They had an idea for what they wanted me to be, and they made it their obsession to see me reach their goal." The words practically tumbled out of me. It was a strange sensation, like an overflowing bag suddenly ripping at the seams. Before now, I'd only told my best friend, Emily, about my past, and that had come after years of building trust. Talking to Liam felt natural, though.
He watched me with an intent, focused expression.
“Both my parents were from old money families. My dad’s great-grandfather made millions in textiles, and my mom’s great-grandfather was a real-estate tycoon in his day. Their grandparents didn’t have to work, and they pretty much lived the high life off their inheritances. Houses across the country, exclusive clubs, yachts, all that kind of stuff. By the time the money made it to my mom and dad, they had all the expectations of spoiled rich kids but without the inheritance to match their lifestyle. Their parents had squandered almost everything. The real estate had all been sold in the final years by my grandparents because the money was drying up. They didn’t know how to slow down their spending, so they just kept on doing it until they ran dry.
“My parents wanted to have a son so they could groom him to become some kind of business guru. My dad admitted as much a few years ago when he was drunk. When my mom got pregnant with me, they decided to keep trying until they had a son. But a few months after my birth, my mom had to get a hysterectomy. They were devastated, and because they were pessimistic, sexist assholes, they decided they couldn’t groom their daughter to be a business mastermind. They wanted to turn me into a turnkey bride—the perfect little easy-open package to be pawned off on the first financially eligible bachelor they could find.”
“Damn. He admitted all that to you?”
“Yeah, by the time that conversation happened, you could say I’d already burned a few bridges with them, so our relationship was already rocky anyway. The alcohol helped, too. They thought if I married rich, I’d be their ticket back to the high-money lifestyle.”
“So should I be worried that you’ve shown up in my life? Are you still the turnkey bride just waiting to siphon off my money to your parents?”
I wiggled eyebrows. “Absolutely. You’re just a big, fat, sexy piggy bank to me. I’m actually going to text my parents in a few minutes and let them know it’s going great so far.”
Liam grinned. “You’re still a terrible liar.”
“Lying wasn’t part of my turnkey bride training. But if you need me to balance books on my head while I walk, eat with perfect manners, or do your laundry, I’m very capable. I also know all the English ranks of social status, because that will absolutely be relevant to my daily life. Everyone knows a Duke or a Duchess, right?”
Liam said nothing, but he was watching me with intense interest. It might have been the most intently anyone had ever listened to me talk before, and I felt myself getting that same hot-faced fever feeling again that absolutely wasn’t a blush.
“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “I did what most kids would do. Once their leash was off, I set out to be exactly what they didn’t want me to be. Offensive. Sarcastic. Mean. You name it. I’m basically a walking cliche. I thought I was rebelling and I thought I was refusing to be defined by my parents, and in the end I basically let them define me anyway.” I laughed a little sadly at that.
"For the record, if you ever feel like not being sarcastic and mean, I won't complain. Then again, you haven't come off as mean to me. Just honest, which I guess is a little ironic since you're saying it's all an act."
I played with my fingers in my lap while my brain churned. “Who knows which one is the real me anymore. Maybe if you play a part long enough, it starts to become real. Or maybe not.”
He looked thoughtful. “Well, what makes you happy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. When stupid people stub their toes or trip and fall? When people are dickholes and karma bites them in the ass?”
He smirked. “I like it. What else makes you happy?”
“When guys I think are jerks turn out to b
e not so bad.”
Liam’s eyebrows twitched up. “Who says I’m not so bad? You hardly know anything about me. You didn’t even know my real name until a few minutes ago. I could be an absolute prick who’s just on his best behavior.”
“Well, are you?”
“I like to keep some kind of mystique about me. If you want to find out, I guess you’ll have to stick around.”
“Hmm.” I looked at his sharp features and tried to imagine what kind of man he really was. I’d always believed the average person couldn’t hide who they truly were. I’d read once that our resting expressions were gradually shaped by the way we lived our lives. If we spent most of our days scowling, the muscles used to scowl would get stronger and pull our neutral expression toward menacing. Someone who smiled all day would look happier, and so on.
With Liam, I thought I only saw a kind of intense focus in his expression. I could imagine a lifetime of single-minded pursuit of some goal. I could picture him shutting out the world as he tirelessly worked and worked, beyond the capability of a normal person. He was the kind of person the world couldn’t touch, I thought—the kind of man you didn’t pick because he picked you.
The more I looked at him, the surer I felt that he had picked me, and he was choosing to bring me into his life.
“When I look at you,” I said. “I just see a guy I would have never imagined taking an interest in a girl like me.”
“I don’t get distracted easily, and ever since you got your hands on my package, I haven’t been able to think about anything else.”
“Well,” I said, and it felt like I couldn’t raise my voice above a husky whisper, as if he’d put some kind of spell over the air itself. I wanted to sound unbothered—even casual—but it felt like a hand softly gripped my throat until I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears. “That’s a manipulative choice of words.”
“Which part? When I said I can’t stop thinking about you, or when I mentioned the way you had your hands all over my package, and I liked it?”
I wasn’t sure if the room was shrinking around me, or if he’d scooted closer, but he looked dangerously close to kissing distance.
His Package Page 5
