“Liam...”
“Oh, my god, Declan, you look...” Liam blurted out in answer to his brother’s greeting when he walked into the room at the rehab hospital and set eyes on his twin being helped from a bed into a wheelchair.
Looking at Declan had always been like looking in a mirror—not only were their features that similar, but they’d always been the same height and build. As teenagers they’d competed when it came to working out, measuring biceps, pecs, waists, thighs and calves to compare who was gaining more muscle mass. Even striving to win that contest, they’d always been within a fraction of an inch of the other.
But now Liam was faced with the signs of his brother’s injuries. Declan had lost weight and muscle. He was pale; his cheeks were sunken. His eyes were dull and lifeless. He looked weak and vulnerable—something Liam had never seen in him—and it shocked him.
“He looks great now. You should have seen him before,” Conor interjected, sounding like a cheerleader. “Plus you have to remember he was traveling yesterday. That wore him out. That’s why today is a rest day and he won’t start therapy until tomorrow.”
“That’s what we were just talking about,” said the man who had helped Declan into the wheelchair. He introduced himself as Declan’s physical therapist.
The physical therapist left them and Conor motioned to one of the visitor’s chairs for Liam while he did his own examination of Declan.
He checked the jagged scar on the back of Declan’s left hand, testing the movement of his fingers and the strength of his grip. He studied a nearly healed wound on Declan’s left temple, by his hairline. Then he moved on to what was clearly Declan’s worst injury—his left leg and knee.
A massive brace kept the knee stationary and his leg extended. Conor unfastened the brace to expose evidence of multiple wounds that—like his head wound—were almost healed, along with the scar of an incision that ran from mid-thigh to mid-shin.
Conor had Declan show him how far he was capable of bending the knee and asked him to move his toes. Then Conor tested the feeling in his toes and foot before replacing the brace, all while Liam watched his twin comply and show pain only in the flinch of his eyebrows.
The exam gave Liam a few minutes to come out of the shock of seeing Declan like that. But as he adjusted, he also began to think that Conor had understated the problem when he’d mentioned Declan’s mental state. Declan’s spirits seemed alarmingly low.
Of the two of them, Liam had always been more by-the-book, serious natured. Declan was the smart-ass jokester with boundless energy constantly looking for action, fun and excitement.
Now, not only did he merely comply with Conor’s requests without any effort to speak to Liam along the way, he also made no jokes, no puns, no comments at all. He was more poker-faced than Liam had ever seen him, completely expressionless and detached, as if he was there physically but totally removed otherwise.
Conor finished his exam and Declan watched the brace being replaced as if it were being done to someone else. Then Conor said he wanted to talk to the physical therapist and left the room.
When they were alone, Declan looked Liam squarely in the eye and said in a gravelly, barely audible voice, “We lost Topher.”
“Conor told me,” Liam answered the same way.
They’d both been almost as close to Topher Samms as to each other. In many ways—since Conor was four years older—they’d been closer to Topher than to Conor.
The Samms farm was next to theirs, so the three of them had been together from the cradle up. They’d gone to Annapolis together. They’d gone into the marines together. Had Liam not become Special Forces, he would have joined Declan and Topher in requesting to be assigned to the same unit. For Liam, losing Topher was very nearly as bad as it would have been to lose Declan. And Liam knew that for Declan, too, losing him wouldn’t have been much worse than losing Topher.
“I tried but I couldn’t save him...” Declan confessed, the crack in his voice the only sign of emotion that Liam had seen since entering the room.
“Course you did,” Liam said without a doubt.
“The front wheel on his side of the Humvee must have hit the IED. Topher took most of the blast. It blew the Humvee onto its side...my side... I was driving...”
Liam could see that his brother was looking for absolution. But he also knew that there was nothing to absolve him of and even though Declan had to have heard that any number of times, he still couldn’t forgive himself.
Still, Liam had to add his own. “Wasn’t you who planted the IED, Dec. Couldn’t see it to avoid it. Not your fault.”
His brother’s eyes filled and damned if Liam’s didn’t, too. So a moment passed in silence as they both dealt with that before Declan said in barely more than a whisper, “Feels like my fault. Should have been me.”
“Hey! Don’t give me that bull—”
“A pregnant wife...a little girl...that’s what I took him away from. Why the frick am I the one left when he needed to come back to them?”
“Geezez, Declan, there’s no answer to that! Because it was his time and not yours? I’m just glad I didn’t lose you both, for god’s sake! But it sure as hell wasn’t your fault and it sure as hell shouldn’t have been either one of you!”
“Uh, this is a hospital,” Conor said as he came back into the room.
It was Liam’s voice that had been raised and, like with Evie and Grady, he was afraid he was desperately mishandling this.
He took a breath and recalled advice Dani had given him for the twins, trying to put himself in his brother’s shoes.
Forcing moderation into his tone, he said, “Okay, it’s bad enough that we lost Topher. I’m seeing you in this shape for the first time. You can’t make me think about losing you, too...”
Liam needed another moment to regain his control.
When he had it, in his most authoritative tone he said, “You are not to blame and if I have to have that tattooed on your arm or tell you that a million times, I will. And you and I both know that Topher would be saying the same thing to you. We talked about this—the three of us—we knew what we were taking on, not one of us was doing it because of the other two. We agreed that it was to serve a cause greater than ourselves, no matter what the risk. I meant that. Didn’t you?”
Declan shrugged and inclined his head slightly, arching an eyebrow that confirmed it without enthusiasm.
Still, Liam was going to take what he could get. “I know Topher meant it, too. He was willing to do it for that pregnant wife, that little girl of his. It sucks that they’re all making the worst sacrifice they could have, but he went in with his eyes open—the same way we did—and now we have to go on. We have to deal with what’s left, Declan. We move forward from here—you and I—exactly the way Topher and I would have if it had been you, exactly the way you and Topher would have if it had been me. It’s what we promised each other and it’s damn sure what we’re going to do. Because it was Topher, that means we’ll do whatever we can, whatever needs to be done for the family he left behind.”
It didn’t seem as if that had any impact on Declan. He only acknowledged it with a single raise of his chin.
“Liam is right,” Conor contributed in support. “You honor Topher’s memory and do what you can to help his family, to make sure they never want for anything.”
Still Declan just sat there. He didn’t say anything. He again showed no emotion.
“Letting yourself be another casualty won’t help them,” Liam felt the need to point out. “Work on getting back on both feet, getting yourself in shape again, getting the hell out of here. Then we’ll tackle what Topher left behind. We’ll make sure we do everything for them that Topher would have done for us if the tables were turned.”
Another slight raise of Declan’s chin was his only response and that seemed to have nothing behind it but a feeble attempt to humor both Liam and Conor.
But their conversation was cut short just then when a nurse came into the room.
“I asked your doctor to take some more X-rays,” Conor explained, nodding in the direction of the nurse. “I want to make sure everything is healing the way it should be before we get started with this rehab. It’ll be intense and I want to know the leg can take it.”
Yet another scant raise of Declan’s chin and nothing more.
“I’d say you could wait for him,” the nurse said as she unlocked the wheels on his chair and maneuvered it in the direction of the door, “but after X-rays he has his entrance interview with Dr. Noone and that takes quite a while. But it’s up to you. The cafeteria is one floor down.”
“No, he needs to rest, too,” Conor said.
“We’ll be back another day,” Liam told Declan.
Declan merely nodded but didn’t say goodbye as the nurse wheeled him out of the room.
Liam took a steeling breath and stood. Only when he and Conor were out in the hall and headed in the opposite direction to leave did he say, “He’s not good.”
“Physically—after what he’s been through—he’s doing great.”
“It’s not that I’m worried about. When have you ever known Declan to be like that? Flat—it’s like he’s not there.”
“I know,” Conor said. “No wisecracks, no jokes—”
“Hell, he barely talks! He’s like an empty shell—except for the stuff over Topher. It’s like there’s nothing there except guilt. And that crap about how it should have been him? Geezez, is he gonna hurt himself?”
Conor breathed a sigh that made Liam think his older brother was finally letting his own concerns for Declan show.
“He hasn’t made any threats of that,” Conor said. “But I wanted him in this rehab for their psych department—it’s one of the best and I’ve got him on their radar. I’ve been told that there are a couple of other guys rehabbing here who are carrying some similar baggage so there’s a plan to start a group, get them together with Declan, see if maybe he’ll open up with them better than he does with a shrink. Or with me. Or even with you, apparently—I was hoping it might be different with you—you know, the twin thing—but I guess not.”
“I don’t know... I just... I didn’t know whether to kick his ass or hug him and try to make him cry it out.”
“Yeah. Neither one would have worked any better than what you did—I’ve tried both. He’s buried under his own demons right now. Since I’m in Denver to stay I’ve also set it up with the shrink to counsel me—he can’t legally tell me anything specific to Declan because of privacy laws, but I’m just trying to figure out the best way to approach him, to deal with it, because I don’t know what to do either. My area is the body, not the mind. The shrink says it’ll be a process, the same as his leg—one step at a time.”
“With a guarantee that he’ll be himself again when it’s done?”
They’d left the hospital and were at Conor’s car, facing each other over the top, so Liam saw his older brother’s weak shrug. “There weren’t any guarantees on his leg. There aren’t any guarantees on this. We just do what we can and hope for the best.”
* * *
Was she gawking?
Well, she was, but was it obvious? Dani glanced around to see if anyone had noticed.
She was sitting on the bottom bleacher beside the swimming pool where Evie and Grady were just finishing their swimming lessons.
Dani didn’t always agree to the extension in the pool the twins regularly begged for. Swimming was not high on her list of likes. But today when their pleading had begun, Liam had offered to do it.
And he’d just come out of the men’s locker room.
While he’d worn clothes that gave hints about the body being covered, nothing had prepared her for seeing him in only a pair of swim trunks.
And what those swim trunks didn’t cover was most definitely something to gawk at.
Not only was his face movie-star handsome, he had the body to go with it. There was a full six-pack of abdominals below pecs that could have been sculpted from granite. Expansive shoulders and biceps were pumped up into boulders under his taut, smooth skin. His legs were long and also well honed, with thighs that looked thick enough to power lift a house. And viewing it all together, Dani had to force her jaw not to drop.
This is a public place, not a bedroom! she silently reminded herself.
Bedroom? Had she actually just put Liam Madison and bedroom together in one thought?
That was bad.
She couldn’t do things like that, she told herself firmly. Not even in her mind. She couldn’t do things like think of Liam in conjunction with anything to do with the bedroom and she also couldn’t do whatever that had been when they’d almost kissed last night.
But now that thoughts of the bedroom and kissing were creeping in, it told her that she really needed to work on putting it all to a halt.
The twins were and had to be the center of the universe for them both, with nothing else added to the mix. She was Evie and Grady’s guardian; he was potentially their father. There was no way she should ever, in a million years, let herself feel the attraction she was feeling for the father of kids she was in charge of. It was one great big no-no and she was going to stop it. Now!
She unscrewed the top to her water bottle and took a big gulp to cool down the sudden flush she was feeling, wishing she’d worn clothes that were lighter weight than the jeans and double layer of T-shirts she had on. At least she’d put her hair up today—that helped.
But even over the bottle she couldn’t take her eyes off Liam as he got into the water, where the swimming teacher was just saying goodbye to Evie and Grady.
And the camouflage of the pool water didn’t help much because he was in the shallow end, so his incredible upper half was still there for her to see in all its glory. And Dani thought that if she really wanted to cool down she might have to pour her bottled water over her head rather than drink it.
But then she took a look at Liam’s face alone, his expression, and that actually helped more than the water or the stern talking-to.
He was gorgeous. And yes, there was something about that time after the kids went to bed at night when he wasn’t trying so hard, when he seemed to drop his guard, something about talking to him and having quiet time alone with him, that felt like there might be a little connection happening.
But she’d been looking for signs of Liam’s military service taking any toll on him mentally or emotionally. And today she worried that one might have appeared.
This morning, when he’d come home from seeing his family, he hadn’t come searching for her and the kids. He hadn’t jumped right into their day.
Instead he’d immediately gone upstairs to the guest room without so much as a hello or an announcement that he was back. He’d just come in the front door, climbed the stairs and stayed secluded for well over an hour.
And as that time had grown, Dani had had sort of a flashback to when her father had vanished into the bedroom or bathroom in dark funks, lost in himself and his memories and whatever else his PTSD had caused him to suffer through, putting and keeping distance between himself and everyone else.
She’d worried that was what Liam had been doing up there.
Yes, seeing his injured brother for the first time had likely not been easy. And had he merely come back from that more quiet than usual that wouldn’t have alarmed her. It was that full-on withdrawal that pushed a button in her.
Dani had told herself that was only her own baggage coming to the surface and she’d tried to stay positive. She’d also considered that maybe Liam hadn’t felt well and had needed a short nap or something with no deep-seated meaning behind it.
She’d told herself that maybe he’d brought something in with him and he was going to come down with a surprise for the kids—a toy he’d needed to assemble or a project he’d needed to prep.
She’d told herself that there was probably a simple explanation and everything was fine.
But then he’d finally come downstairs. And when he had, it wasn’t with an assembled toy or a project for the kids. And he wasn’t the Liam who had been trying so hard to make friends with the twins. He wasn’t the Liam she’d spent the last few nights talking to, getting to know and even thinking about kissing.
He’d been—and remained all day long—the Liam she’d first met. Stiff, solemn and nearly silent. A sentry standing in the wings just observing, barely giving an indication that he was even there. Seeming more than down-in-the-dumps over his brother but impossible to engage, to draw out of himself and his withdrawal. Like her dad.
She’d tried including Liam as she’d played with the kids, teasing him, joking with him, but nothing had worked.
Just the way nothing but time on the boat had worked on her father’s funks.
She’d ultimately decided her focus needed to be on Grady and Evie, and she’d left Liam to whatever it was that had caused this switch, hoping that it might just right itself.
Soon! she silently commanded, watching him now. After all, he was in the pool with the kids—wasn’t that a time and place to lighten up?
But no, there he was, still stiff and solemn, his handsome face stony, just going through the motions.
And even worse, he was insisting that the twins do only what they’d just learned, refusing to let them vary from the drill. Exactly the way Garrett would have and that set off another alarm in her.
Liam was being completely inflexible. He was trying to maintain strict control over the kids, the situation.
But if you don’t bend, you break... Dani had said that to Garrett so many times.
Garrett was a police officer. A tightly wound police officer who had not unwound when he was off duty.
But trying to convince him to try, to try for her sake and for the sake of her young charges when he was around them, had been to no avail.
That constant drive for control had ultimately destroyed her relationship with him. Thinking about their relationship now, Dani knew two things: she never wanted to be involved with another man like that, and if Liam didn’t bend a little now, after an entire day of the detached wooden-soldier act, he was going to lose the headway he was only beginning to make with those kids.
“It’s okay if they just play,” she called to him, hearing an undertone of anxiety in her own voice, both because he was reminding her of her former fiancé and because similarities to her father’s sudden lapses into withdrawal stressed her out. Plus there was so much riding on Liam for the twins’ sake.
“I thought this was to practice what they learned,” he called back, frowning at her, again reminding her of both her father’s intensity and Garrett’s.
“That’s the reason they give to stay in the pool. It isn’t what they really want to do. But it’s okay,” she repeated. “They had their lesson. You can just have fun now.”
For a moment his expression showed complete disapproval of that notion, and yet again she thought of the strict adherence to things that her former fiancé had demanded.
She held her breath. Fearing the worst. Hoping for better.
Come on, Marine, these are little kids... Pull it out of the fire...
Their eyes were deadlocked, and Dani really did feel as if she were facing men of her past as she willed Liam to come out from under whatever it was that had a hold of him today. But still, she feared that he would stand his ground, get angry and insist on dominating the situation.
Garrett would have.
But then Liam nodded. His expression remained somber and he still didn’t relax, but he did seem to accept her encouragement to move on because he broke off eye contact with her, returned his attention to Evie and Grady and said, “So, what do you guys like to do in the pool?”
It was a question asked without any real invitation to change course, but Dani told herself it still opened the door for the twins to let him know what they wanted.
She went on watching, unsure if Liam had already put them off to the extent that they didn’t want to swim anymore.
But apparently staying in the pool was important enough to them to give Liam a second chance because they told him what they liked to do.
And to his credit, he complied and took turns bracing them with his big hands under their backs to keep them afloat so they could pretend they were boats sailing in circles.
Dani breathed a sigh of relief.
He could give a little. He had put what the twins wanted before whatever was going on with him. So he wasn’t as bad as her dad had been. Whatever demons he was fighting today weren’t debilitating and he was still able to deal with the kids patiently.
And he had let go of that inclination to keep a tight rein on things in the pool, too. Even if it had taken some intervention, he’d still allowed Evie and Grady the freedom to play and just be kids—another thing that would hopefully make him okay as a father.
As much as she wished for it, she couldn’t expect perfection. With Evie and Grady’s future at stake, Dani had to hope not only that Liam would prove to be their father, but that he could at least be an okay father to them. And while seeing what she’d seen today wasn’t heartening, it hadn’t robbed her of all hope for that.
But it did temper the impact of his gorgeousness.
Because while there was no arguing that the man was hotter than lava, Liam reminding her of her father and Garrett was an eye-opener.
Liam was a marine, in the line of work that had caused her father’s problems. There were no assurances that Liam wasn’t on the same path.
And when it came to the reminder of Garrett? The similarities she’d seen between the two today?
She couldn’t ignore that either. She’d already come up against enough of the issues that Garrett’s high-pressure job had caused to know she wasn’t the person to be with someone whose occupation caused rifts in their personal life.
The reminders of her dad’s and Garrett’s issues added even more reasons to resist Liam’s almost overwhelming appeal.
But watching him sail Grady in a circle gave her a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of that torso, those muscular arms and that full expanse of back, and she decided his appeal wasn’t almost overwhelming.
It was completely overwhelming.
So it was a good thing that she had a whole list of reasons to resist.
* * *
“What was the name of what I ate tonight?”
“Evie and Grady’s favorite pasta—cavatelli. But for some reason we’ve always shortened that to cavatils so that’s how they say it and it sounds different than it looks on the menu,” Dani answered Liam’s question later that night when the kids were in bed.
He’d followed her to the laundry room, where she was taking the swim things out of the washing machine to hang the suits and toss the towels into the dryer.
He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Ah, that makes sense—I did see that cavatelli thing on the menu. They were really good,” he praised. “And you make those?”
“Not me in particular. It is Gramma’s recipe but not one of the secret ones, so it isn’t something I have to do myself. Ours are a little different than what they usually are because we put ricotta in the dough.”
“They look like tiny hot dog buns.”
Dani laughed. “That is what they look like.”
“And the kids, you might have to put them on the payroll. They handed out menus to customers, brought out the silverware wrapped in napkins. All very seriously.”
Dani laughed again. “I know. They call it ‘playing restaurant’ but they really get into their roles.”
“And you just let them have run of the place even with the customers?”
Was that more of a need for control coming through? Because Garrett had also disapproved of the kids being allowed to do even those small things.
“I told you it’s always been a family restaurant. They aren’t doing anything I wasn’t doing at their age. Most customers get a kick out of it but when we have the occasional one who doesn’t, Carmella intervenes and keeps the kids away from them.”
“Carmella...” he said, putting some lilt into the name. “She’s, what? About a hundred?”
Dani laughed. “She’s eighty-six.”
“She told me working keeps her alive.”
“I know, she tells everyone that. She’s a fixture there. She and my grandmother were close. I wasn’t sure Carmella would stay after Gramma died, but she told me she didn’t know what she’d do with herself without that place to go to every day. And everybody loves her, so as long as she wants to work, she works.” Unless Dani closed or sold the restaurant.
But she didn’t add that.
Instead she was just glad to see that Liam’s mood had improved.
That improvement had first started at the pool. Grady refused to play it, but Evie’s favorite game was to get out of the water, go to the pool’s edge and jump into waiting arms.
Dani’s safety stipulation was that the little girl not get the running start she really wanted. But even doing it right from the edge, Evie still loved the challenge of trying to increase her distance each time. Her gusto for the leap, her cries to warn that she was coming and her glee when she was caught—and maybe that it had helped break the ice between Liam and Evie—had caused the first slight lift in Liam’s curtain of gloom today.
Then, at the restaurant, the curtain had risen a little higher when Carmella had been undaunted by that still-stoic manner of his. The warm, elderly woman had treated him the way she treated everyone—as if he were her cherished grandchild who’d come for a visit. She’d doted on him, teased him, flattered him and eventually succeeded at improving his mood even more.
When Dani had finished in the kitchen she’d called the twins to the table where Liam was stationed and the four of them had eaten dinner. The kids had chattered freely and Carmella had joined them at the table whenever there was a lull, so the meal ended up with a lot of happy talk and laughing. Liam didn’t join in, but it did seem to take his disposition up another notch.
By the time they’d left Marconi’s, he was still quiet, but his low-spiritedness seemed to have gone away. And now here he was, seeking out her company rather than retreating to the guest room’s isolation again the way Dani had thought he might.
“I’ve been in homes that aren’t as homey as your restaurant—my own, for one,” he said.
“Your home wasn’t homey?”
“Not like that, no. At my house growing up it was strictly kids should be seen and not heard. Coupled with Hugh’s military attitudes, we were taught to stand straight, only speak when spoken to, follow orders without question—”
“In other words, do what you were told,” Dani translated with another laugh. “That’s what all parents want.”
“Sure, but...there was just a different atmosphere. Watching you with Grady and Evie, watching things tonight at the restaurant, it’s all... I don’t know, open and warm and inviting and indulgent in ways that my upbringing didn’t have. You all act like kids are special.”
“Kids are special,” Dani said as she finished with the swimming gear and they went into the kitchen, where she opened the dishwasher to empty it.
“Like I said, that isn’t how I was raised. Everything was more reserved. More conservative. We knew my mom loved us but there were no spontaneous hugs like Carmella dishes out at the drop of a hat, like you do with the kids all the time—”
“Italian families can be very affectionate,” she conceded.
“And your whole restaurant has that feel to it—like one big Italian family. With the kids being little shining stars right in the middle of it instead of being...well, seen and not heard,” he went on. “In my family kids treated anything like Evie and Grady were, are, considered spoiled.”
“I was spoiled rotten by my grandparents, and I grew up in the ‘atmosphere’ you saw tonight, but there was still discipline and rules. I had to behave, but I knew I was the apple of everybody’s eye and it was great. I feel bad for kids who don’t have that. It’s actually one of the reasons I like being a nanny. I like the idea of bringing that into the lives of kids who maybe are expected to be seen and not heard, or kids whose parents don’t have the time or inclination to make them feel the way I did growing up. I like to be able to give them the kind of attention I had.”
“Yeah, I suppose now that I think about it, Hugh training us for the military got Conor, Declan and me a lot more attention than most of our friends got from their parents, so that’s probably part of why we liked it. But it just wasn’t all so...touchy-feely.”
“Sooo...if you end up being the twins’ dad, which way will you go as a parent?” She felt the need to ask.
“Huh...” he mused. “I haven’t thought about that. You mean, like a parenting style, right? It never occurred to me to choose what kind of parent I’d be. I just thought...you know...you just do it...”
Dani handed him glasses to be put in the cupboard. “You aren’t just doing what you’re doing now without putting any thought into it,” she said. “You’ve been working on the relationship you want to have with the kids. The kind of parent you are will determine that, too. My friend Bryan was raised with the sort of attitude you’re talking about—not military but definitely not ‘touchy-feely.’ He’s gay and it made it kind of hard to come out to his family. In fact, he came out to mine before he came out to his. I always thought that was sad. And he and his father don’t even speak now.”
“Yeah, that’s not good,” Liam agreed.
Talking about Bryan reminded Dani about the call she’d had from him today. Since she wanted to let seeds she planted about choosing the kind of parent to be take root, she changed the subject.
“Bryan called me this morning to tell me there’s been an offer on the restaurant.”
Liam’s brows pulsed together. “I didn’t think it was up for sale. I thought you were on the fence about that.”
“I am and, no, I haven’t put it up for sale. But an offer came in anyway. Bryan is an attorney and he represents us. He also represents another small chain of Italian restaurants around here. That’s where the offer came from.”
“A chain? So they’d change things to fit in with that? They wouldn’t leave it the way it is?”
She shook her head. “But it’s a good offer because they want the secret recipes, too, to add to their own menu.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“I haven’t had time to think about that. I’m just kind of in shock at the amount right now. And it seems so soon...”
“After being at that place I can imagine how tough a decision it is to part with it. It’s more than just a business—”
“It’s family in itself.”
“But stick with it and you have to stop working with kids,” he repeated what she’d told him before.
“Or sell and feel like I’m really losing what’s left of my grandparents.”
He nodded, giving credence to her dilemma. “But it seems to me that since your grandmother steered you into doing your own thing, she’d understand if you sold out so you could go on doing your own thing.”
“True,” Dani conceded.
It didn’t make the decision for her but talking to him did help ease a little of the pressure she was feeling. She appreciated that. As much as she appreciated talking about this with someone as coolheaded as he was.
But she didn’t want to deal with it right then so she made a joke to get them out of the conversation. “And if I sell, that leaky pipe in the basement could be someone else’s problem.”
“That leak is nothing. You just need a section of pipe replaced and I can do that.”
“You can?”
“I’m no master plumber but I can shut off your water and do that. I’ll fix it tomorrow while we’re there making that weird bomb soup you and the kids kept talking about.”
“Billi bomb soup—it’s a family recipe but I promise there are no real bombs in it,” she joked again, realizing that she was suddenly feeling better on two counts: Liam was back to himself and it was good to have another perspective on the restaurant, especially now that there was an offer on the table. It was also good to have someone who could lend a hand with a problem there.
But a temporary reprieve from thinking about the offer put her mind back on Liam and his mood today as they finished with the dishwasher and moved on to the dance studio.
The twins had taken a box there that contained the pieces to ten puzzles. They’d wanted to put them together on the flat, open floor. But that had turned into throwing the pieces at each other to see how many they could land—like a snowball fight—and now the pieces needed to be organized.
As she and Liam sat cross-legged on the dance studio floor with the mess between them, she ventured into new territory that she realized was prying but couldn’t resist now that his sullenness seemed to have passed.
“So...what was going on with you today? You were kind of...off...” she said cautiously, wondering if mentioning it would reproduce his bad humor the way it would have with her father. Or if it might set off the kind of temper and defensiveness it would have roused in Garrett.
But in Liam it didn’t do either of those things. He didn’t deny it and said with some regret in his tone, “Yeah... I’m sorry about that.”
An apology. Dani thought that was encouraging.
“Seeing Declan this morning hit me kind of hard,” he admitted then.
“You said he was doing okay.” When Liam had finally come down from the guest room she’d asked him if everything was all right with his brother. But he’d assured her his twin was all right.
“Physically he is on the mend,” Liam went on, explaining what he’d found on that initial visit. Then he said, “He’s in a bad way mentally, though.”
Liam told her in detail what his brother had said about their friend, filling her in on who that friend was and their history with him. As he did, the glumness reappeared full force to deepen his voice before he finished and fell silent as they exchanged puzzle pieces.
“I’m sorry,” Dani said in condolence for his friend.
“You hope there won’t be casualties. But you know there always could be,” he said solemnly, his tone telling her that his brother wasn’t the only one to have feelings over this loss.
But he didn’t talk about his own feelings. He went on talking about his brother. “I’ve just never known Declan to be as low as he is. He’s not himself and that got to me more than even the physical stuff. I’m worried about him, and I don’t know what to do to help him.”
“From what went on with my dad I know that can be really tough,” she commiserated when she heard the frustration and concern in Liam’s voice. “I think you just hang on tight. Hear him out when you can get him to talk. Listen for clues to what he needs from you. My mom used to say we needed to do that with my dad, that sometimes we could figure out what to do from listening.”
Liam laughed humorlessly. “Something else for me to figure out?” he moaned. “Something else that isn’t simple?”
Dani laughed the same way he had. “Life and people get complicated.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
For another moment he didn’t say more as they finished putting the puzzle pieces back into their boxes. Dani wondered if his melancholy had so much of a hold on him again that he would retreat to the guest room now.
It shouldn’t have mattered to her. But it did. She didn’t want him to go yet. And she needed to steel herself a little for the possibility that he would.
Then, rather than getting to his feet and leaving her behind, he shifted positions, bending one knee and hugging it with both long arms.
He was wearing jeans and a yellow sport shirt. His sleeves were rolled to just below his elbows, exposing thick wrists and powerful forearms that his big hands wrapped around. And for some reason, something tingly rushed through Dani that brought with it madly inappropriate thoughts of those arms around her. Of those hands on her skin.
She mentally fled from the images and tried to quash the tingling, forcing her eyes upward to his face.
Which wasn’t the best of solutions because that gave her the view of his smoldering good looks as he smiled a bit sheepishly and obviously came out of the gloom again.
“You’re pretty good medicine for what ails me, though,” he said. “You and being around the kids and the restaurant and Carmella.” He paused again and looked into her eyes with those stunning blue ones of his. “But mainly you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she claimed because she didn’t feel as if she had.
“You picked up the slack I left all day long. You kept things cheery enough that I don’t think the kids even realized I was moping.” His smile stretched into a grin. “You also helped by giving me that nudge at the pool so I didn’t blow it with the kids again by being a taskmaster. In fact you let me treat Little Miss Daredevil Evie to that jumping-into-the-pool-thing and I think I made a little progress with her because of it—today of all days. Without you I probably would have just made them like me even less. I kind of felt like we were partnered up and you had my back.” He shrugged. “Just being around you is... I don’t know...good,” he added as if he needed her to know that.
“Well, sure, because there is my magical superpower force field,” she joked in response.
He laughed a genuine laugh of his own—which was the only thing she did think of as an accomplishment with him today.
“So that’s what it is about you—a superpower force field,” he responded, playing along.
“You forgot magical,” she corrected matter-of-factly. “It’s an upgrade.”
“Magical superpower force field,” he amended, still amused. Then those blue eyes of his took on even more of a sparkle of delight and, as she watched, his smile somehow turned very sexy. “I saw you in here that first night, you know?”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. “You saw me?”
“Sure. With the lights on in here, from outside in the dark you can see everything. You were in here with the kids, your hair was all whacky from Evie doing it and you were going as wild as they were.”
Dani suddenly remembered that she and the twins were in here that night when he’d arrived.
“Oh, dance party! We were getting the wiggles out,” she recalled.
“Yeah,” he said with an even bigger grin. “That’s also not something that would have ever gone on at my house growing up. But I enjoyed watching it...”
There was heavy insinuation in his voice, which had gone deeper when he’d said it, infused with more intimacy.
“You were spying,” she accused.
“It wasn’t like I could have missed it,” he defended. “Go out and see.”
“If I do, will you dance?” she goaded.
He laughed again. “Not a chance.”
“Then we won’t be even.”
“It was quite a sight,” he teased. “I wouldn’t say you have a lot of rhythm...”
“We were just playing.”
He shook his head, denying that, clearly giving her a hard time. “You were totally into it.”
“For the kids!”
“Nah...your eyes were closed and you were cutting loose.”
“I know my eyes weren’t closed.”
“They were,” he insisted with another laugh. Then, in a voice that changed to match that intimate look in his own eyes, he said, “You were a sight to see...”
He was looking at her so intently there seemed to be something to see now, too. And out of nowhere a memory of her own bout with voyeurism flooded her with the vivid image of him walking out of the locker room at the pool today.
Oh, that body.
Those cobalt blue eyes that were holding hers...
He unclasped one hand from the opposite forearm and reached slowly across to slide it behind her neck—so slowly she thought he was giving her ample time to slap it away if she wanted to.
But she didn’t want to. Not when everything she’d been fighting the last two nights, at the pool today, just now at the simple sight of those hands and arms, all came out from hiding again.
He leaned forward. Pressure from that big hand on the back of her neck urged her forward slightly, too. And there was nothing Dani could summon to make herself not go there, not accept it when his lips met hers, not kiss him back the same way he was kissing her.
And she was kissing him back—eyes closed, lips parted just a little, with only enough sway to answer his—as everything instantly became about that kiss. That kiss was good enough to wow her into oblivion.
Before it ended a moment later, for no reason, even though she knew it should never have happened at all.
“I know,” he said quietly. “You’re gonna tell me I shouldn’t have done that. That there’s no place for it in the situation we’re in. And you’re right.” He shrugged one of those broad shoulders. “But I couldn’t help myself.” Then he smiled with only one corner of that supple mouth she just wanted back on hers. “Must be your force field pulling me in.”
“I’ll see what I can do to turn it down,” she said, deciding to go along with the gag so she didn’t tell him that, regardless of whether he should have kissed her, regardless of the situation they were in, she just wanted him to kiss her again.
“Thanks, that would be helpful,” he joked.
He got to his feet and held out a hand to help her to hers.
And it didn’t make any difference that she knew without a doubt that she shouldn’t take it. She took it anyway, unable to deny herself slipping her hand into his, feeling the strength in the arm that pulled her up.
Once he had she wished mightily that he would pull her all the way to him and kiss her again while she melted against that big masculine body.
But he didn’t. Instead he was a perfect gentleman and as soon as she was on her own two feet he let go of her hand.
Sending a ripple of disappointment through her.
But that really was the way it needed to be, Dani told herself, bending over to pick up a wooden puzzle box and holding it in front of her like schoolbooks to keep her own hands from reaching out to him.
She headed for the door, leading the way out of the dance studio.
“I’ll go to the hardware store in the morning and get what I need to replace your pipe,” Liam informed her as he followed. “And then it’s a day at the restaurant?”
“It is,” she confirmed, heading for the entryway and the staircase that would take him up to the guest room.
Up to the guest room alone, she reminded herself when her mind wandered up there with him.
“And Evie and Grady are going to teach me how to make the bomb things,” he was saying over those wandering thoughts.
Dani smiled. “They do think they’re experts. We made a small batch just for us a while ago when we got snowed in and they learned how.”
“They don’t seem confident in my abilities,” Liam said as he stopped at the foot of the steps.
“But I have faith in you.”
“Thanks,” he said with another laugh.
She didn’t pause for more than that, though, afraid of what she might do if she put herself in kissing position again.
Instead she left him there with a “See you tomorrow,” and kept on going as if nothing had happened between them.
But even after his answering “See you tomorrow,” she didn’t hear him climb the stairs.
She thought she could feel his gaze staying with her down the passageway to the kitchen and until she turned into the stairwell to get downstairs.
She didn’t glance back to see if she was right, though, because it was bad enough that she was thinking of that kiss and how good it had been.
And worse than that, she was fighting the inclination to instigate more of them, and it was all she could do to keep herself on track.