Chapter 81

Scarlett’s pit bulls had taken a liking to Liam and gave him too much attention when he was in the mansion, so Scarlett got jealous and banished him to the guesthouse.

“You’d think they’d know which side of their bread has the butter on it, wouldn’t you?” she said with disgust as she watched her dogs taking turns trying to knock Liam over with their enthusiastic greeting. “It’s like you’re a bitch in heat.”

Liam pushed off a particularly fat, silvery-gray dog and shook his head. “Why’d you bring them out here, then?”

“Oh,” said Scarlett, waving them back out the door, “I told them I was going out to retrieve you for dinner, and they all insisted on coming along. Out, out, out now.” She shoved the last one out and shut the door behind them. They all crowded at the door and stared at them mournfully through the glass. “Ignore them. They look tragic but really they just want to hump your leg. Now let’s have a nice little chew and chat before we eat. Get me a vodka and tonic, please.”

When Liam had shown up at Scarlett’s door three days before, she hadn’t seemed surprised at all. “Things not going so well, Maguire?” she asked in a voice several notches kinder than he had ever heard from her before. “Well, I don’t have anything planned for the next few days, so why don’t you just come on in?”

He didn’t know he was heading for Scarlett’s. He had told himself that he was going to the Hamptons because he was sick of the Greenwich Hotel and he had a huge house on the beach just sitting empty. Hana had offered to move out of the loft, but he’d told her to take her time finding something else. He didn’t want Alli to feel displaced.

But once he got to the Hamptons, he drove right by his own driveway and straight on to Scarlett’s.

First, he had convinced himself that he wanted to confront her about making him lose Alexander Redetzke. But she just laughed when he had started to complain about that.

“Oh, bless your heart, of course I was helping out Bridget. At least at first. But really, the way you were treating that boy, you were lucky he just quit and didn’t poison your coffee on the way out. He was ripe for the plucking. So I bought you at auction and kept you around to give Bridget some time—make sure she could close the deal, you know—but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually liked you. Plus—” she gave him a wink “—I was worried that if you went home any sooner, you might walk in front of a bus.”

Since then, he had been spending every day the same way, having coffee by the pool in the morning, then meeting Scarlett and her pack of dogs for a long walk on the beach. His job was to be on the lookout for Bono. Then they would lunch, usually in the garden, then he would get on the phone and check in to work, and pretend he cared, and then he and Scarlett would meet for dinner in the solarium. She said she liked the trees. After dinner they would linger, nursing a nightcap or sometimes sharing a joint.

“Hmm,” said Scarlett as she settled on the couch and looked around. “I never come out here anymore. I rather think it might need a freshening up. I believe the last time I renovated was three or four years ago.”

“It’s perfect, Scarlett,” he said. “Don’t touch a thing.”

He realized that he had yet to walk through and catalog the house. Something he’d never been able to avoid doing after more than twenty-four hours in any one place. He wondered what that meant.

“You know,” said Scarlett, accepting the vodka and tonic, “it’s really too bad that I find men’s bodies about as appealing as fuzzy cheese, and I’m probably twenty years and fifty pounds outside your preferences, because I do believe that you and I just might be soul mates, Liam Maguire.”

He laughed and sat down next to her. “Well, that seems kind of complicated.”

“No, I think it’s rather lovely. If we were to be romantically involved, I’d drop you like a stale cake in a week or two, but this—” she nestled next to him and put her head on his shoulder “—this I can see lasting.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“But you know you can’t stay forever,” she murmured.

“I know.”

“But you can always come back if you want.”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head.