It was all I lived for, to play baseball.
—Mickey Mantle
Ten years, that’s how long he’d gone without saying a word about Kate or what had happened in Vegas, so Liam didn’t wait around to hear what Jessie had to say about the bombshell he’d dropped. He and Kate had made a huge mistake back then and he’d corrected it.
He’d been right to do what he did—he never doubted that; he’d just done it the wrong way, is all. And then he’d made it worse by never working up the balls to call her after it was all done. Not even once.
The sound of Jessie’s too-big boots made him glance up from the rotting deck he’d been ripping apart on the front of the Orange cabin. This late in the day, the weak spring sun was already behind the mountain; he should have waited until tomorrow to start this job. But the indoor jobs all required more of a gentle hand, and all he wanted to do right then was smash things.
“For the love of God, woman, are you ever going to get boots that fit you?”
“What for?” Jessie frowned as if she didn’t understand why he’d even suggest such a thing. “These are fine.”
They weren’t fine—they were an old pair left behind by either a former guest or an employee—but Jessie had never been one to waste money on anything when she could make do with something else. Standing there in what used to be Da’s old black-and-gray wool sweater and a tight black toque, she looked a damn sight more at home than Kate did in that ridiculously thin raincoat and red dress. He hadn’t even seen the whole dress, just the hem poking out below the jacket, but going by the shoes she had clutched in her hand, he’d given his imagination free rein on what the dress looked like, and, well…whew.
And as for those yellow gum boots…he should have thought they were as ridiculous as the raincoat, because they obviously weren’t built for work, and yet on her, shit, they added a huge layer of cute to a look he already knew was sexy as hell.
Clearing his throat, Liam tossed one of the spindles from the railing into the growing pile to be burned. “Don’t suppose she had a change of heart and called in a Helijet?”
“Nope, but she did opt to stay in one of the A-frames, I’m guessing so she won’t risk running into you every five minutes.” Her response didn’t overly surprise him, but he could have lived without the derisive snort that followed. “So are you going to fill me in here or what? I mean, jeez, Liam. Married? How did I not know this?”
“It was a long time ago,” he said, suddenly tired. “We were young.”
“I’m guessing stupid, too. Do Ro and Finn know?”
“No.”
“God help me.” Lifting her face skyward, Jessie gripped her head between her hands and sighed, long and loud. “Start talking, because I need to know what I’m working with here.”
Liam swiped his sleeve across his cheek, a habit he’d picked up standing out on the mound when he needed a second to catch his breath. From the second he’d realized it was Kate walking toward the lodge, he’d been fighting to breathe normally, and it was getting harder by the minute.
“It was like ten years ago,” he said slowly. “A couple guys on the team and I took a road trip to Vegas at the end of the season, and she was there with some friends.”
He could still see her standing at the far roulette table inside the Bellagio, cheering on her friend, who was being incredibly unimaginative by betting red twenty-one over and over again.
She looked great—Kate, not the friend—in those skintight jeans and black lacy tank top, which he later discovered had two rips in the right seam, both of which were held together by strategically placed safety pins. He’d watched her for a couple of minutes, fascinated by the way she moved and the sound of her laugh, before he finally went over to talk to her. They were both Canadian, both from B.C., and both single. She was gorgeous and funny and he’d been instantly smitten. Wasn’t a word he’d ever use outside his own head, but there really was no other way to accurately describe her effect on him.
Smitten. It had never happened before that night and it had never happened since.
“Okay,” Jessie said, waving her hand in a circular motion as if that would hurry him along. “And?”
“Her friends ditched and went home early, so she and I spent a few days together and ended up married.”
“Ended up married,” Jessie repeated, her voice flat. “You O’Donnells sure are a romantic lot. How long did it last?”
“The marriage?” Liam exhaled slowly. “Most of the night.”
“Most of the—” Jessie gaped. “One night? You were married less than a day? What are you—a Kardashian?”
“I know, all right? But I’d just turned twenty-one and I was still fighting to get my shot in the big leagues.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So I wasn’t moving to Vancouver, Jess. I had a career going in Detroit.”
“Ohhh,” she said, drawing the word out over a slow “you’re such an idiot” nod. “Right.”
Anyone else who talked to him that way probably would’ve wound up on the business end of his boot, but this was Jessie. She’d worked at the Buoys for so long they considered her more of a sister than an employee. Even when Liam, Ro, and Finn left, she’d stayed; she’d put up with the old man’s bullshit and black moods, she was the one who got him into AA, and she was, without question, the only reason the lodge had continued running as long as it had.
They owed her. It was that debt, on top of the debt he owed his brothers, that made him agree to stay at the Buoys. Growing up, Ro and Finn had been forced to pick up the slack every time Liam was off somewhere playing ball. Sure, they’d bitched about it, and you could bet your ass there’d been a few punches thrown, but they’d still done it.
And as much as Liam wanted the Buoys to reopen, he wasn’t ready to give up his career. Sure, he’d been out of a contract for over a year, and, sure, his arm wasn’t what it used to be, but his agent wasn’t trying to sell him as a starter anymore. He was just trying to get Liam a deal as a relief pitcher, but so far every nibble they got turned out to be a dead end. If—no, when—he got another offer, he’d be on the first Helijet out, debt or no debt.
Until that happened, though, he’d do his level best to get this place in running shape again, because at the end of the day, it was home. Always had been.
“Earth to Liam.” Brow raised, Jessie wiggled her fingers in a “come on come on come on” way. “Vancouver? Detroit? Let’s hear it.”
“There’s not much to tell,” he said. “I’d worked too damn hard to get where I was and I wasn’t about to change for her or anyone, especially when it was probably going to end in disaster anyway. I mean, shit, Jess, look what Mandy did to Ro, making him give up everything and trying to turn him into something he didn’t want to be. The guy’s as miserable as a guy can be and it’s all because he bent to whatever Mandy wanted, and if he didn’t, she cried until he finally gave in.”
“Hang on a second.” Jessie lifted her hand and squinted back at him as though trying to work out what he’d said. “You and Kate got married ten years ago, that’s what you said, right? Were Ro and Mandy even married by then?”
“Just.”
“So how in that screwed-up mush of a brain of yours did you think it was reasonable to use her as an example of what your ten-minute marriage might turn out like?”
Liam didn’t have a good answer for that, but if he didn’t say something quick, she’d probably figure him out.
“Finn and I knew Mandy wasn’t right the first time we met her. Shit, Ro’s the biggest carnivore this side of Medicine Hat, and she wouldn’t even allow meat on the table. What the hell? And then he traded in his truck for a MINI? I mean, come on.”
“I don’t see how any of that is Mandy’s fault. Maybe your brother did it of his own accord; maybe he was being considerate, did you ever think of that?” It only took a couple of seconds of Liam blinking back at her before she conceded. “Okay, that would have been completely unlike him, especially since he’d never driven anything smaller than a crew cab before that, but it’s not completely impossible.”
“Impossible or not, no way was I ever going to be that guy, so even though I knew it was stupid, I had to get out of there, away from her. I mean, jeez, Jessie, I was twenty-one, I had no business getting married!”
“God love you, Liam, but for such a nice guy, you can be a complete asshole, you know that?”
“Why? Because I didn’t want to give up what I’d worked for? Or because I didn’t want to leave a wife somewhere while I hit the road for seven or eight months of the year?”
“Don’t give me that crap; plenty of ball players make it work.”
“Mm-hmm. And plenty of them end up divorced, too.”
Jessie didn’t have to look at him like that to make him feel bad; he already knew he’d been a prick, but there was nothing he could do about it now except shrug.
“We hardly knew each other, so we probably would have ended up divorced anyway. I was just smarter about it than Ronan was, because I ended it before I had anything she could take half of.”
“Oh my God,” she cried. “Do you even hear yourself?”
With a sigh, he started to collect his tools, but Jessie stepped closer.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“No.”
“The O’Donnell eye twitch doesn’t lie, buddy. Spill it.”
Shit. He tossed the hammer and pry bar into the crooked wooden toolbox—a beat-up piece of junk Finn had banged together in high school—then turned to face Jessie, but it took a couple of seconds before he could actually look her in the eye.
No point hiding this part anymore; it was bound to come out at some point anyway.
“I just left. Got up in the middle of the night, grabbed my stuff, and took off while she was sleeping.”
He tugged off his cap and scrubbed his hand across the top of his head, as though that would help scrape away the image of Kate lying in that bed wearing nothing but his Justin Verlander jersey, her dark hair splayed out as if a tornado had ripped through it, and her long, bare legs sticking out from under the blanket.
It had almost been enough to make him drop everything and crawl back in with her, and a few times over the years he’d wondered what would have happened if he’d done that. Hell, just thinking about it now made him want to kick himself.
“You left?” Jessie’s shocked croak dragged Liam out of that warm motel room and back to the damp chill of the cove. “Did you at least say goodbye?”
Slowly, painfully, Liam shook his head. “I left a note, told her I was sorry but it was the only way.”
He’d always expected that somehow time would ease how much that ate at him or that he would somehow forgive himself for being such a dick, but it had never happened, and the sound of Jessie clicking her tongue at him didn’t help.
“God almighty, Liam.”
“I know, okay? I know.”
“Did you at least give her anything in the divorce?”
“Like what?” He put his cap back on and laughed, dry and brittle. He’d been so broke back then that he couldn’t even afford a cheap ring for her, so he’d cut up a piece of the lacing from his old glove and tied that around her finger. “Hell, neither one of us could afford a lawyer, so I did the whole thing with one of those do-it-yourself kits.”
“And she didn’t contest it? Have you even talked to her since you left?”
“No.” He sighed again, shrugging. “I texted her once to get her address, and after that, if I needed her to sign anything, I just dropped it in the mail. Everything always came back right away, no problem, but there was never a note or message or anything like that.”
“So that was it? Seriously? Not a phone call or Christmas card? Nothing?”
“Nothing. I went my way and she went hers.”
“Did you ever apologize?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “In the note I left.”
“Uh, yeah, no. That doesn’t count.” Jessie tucked her hands up inside the sleeves of her sweater and crossed her arms. “But, then again—and I’m not saying you’re any less of an asshole—I’m just thinking maybe if she never tried to contact you afterward, either, maybe she was as happy to be rid of you as you were to be rid of her.”
Yup, that’s pretty much what he’d thought, too, the only difference being that in the last ten years, he’d never once been happy about being rid of Kate; he’d simply done what needed to be done and moved on.
“And now here she is.” Jessie looked down at her boots, shaking her head. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns. Did you have any idea she was working for Foster?”
“If I did,” Liam grunted, “we wouldn’t be standing here right now. She was working at a lumberyard when I met her.”
“A lumberyard? Guess that was a step up from the cleaning job she mentioned.”
If Liam remembered right, that cleaning job she’d told him about involved hoard removal, so, yeah, anything had to be better than that.
“There’s not many people—men or women—who’d agree to stick around here after being dumped like that,” Jessie said. “She must be some kind of tough.”
Tough?
No, he mused. That’s not how he remembered Kate at all. The Kate he remembered was soft and smooth and tender, with hands that fit perfectly in his and whose biggest fault was being too sweet and believing he could give her what she wanted.
Jessie started to leave, then turned back. “Okay, obviously this is going to be awkward as hell for all of us, but she’s a warm body who, for some crazy reason, is willing to leave her cushy job on the mainland to work here, where the best thing we have to offer is enough salmon to meet her daily omega-three requirements.”
Liam started to nod, but Jessie wasn’t done.
“We can’t afford for you to piss her off, okay? So if that’s what’s going to happen, then do us all a favor and avoid her altogether.” She paused long enough to sigh and shake her head again. “Or here’s an idea: How about you man up, grow a pair, and go apologize to the girl for being such an asshole and for taking a decade to realize it?”
He started to snap back at her, to tell her the sarcasm wasn’t helping and that it hadn’t taken him ten years to realize it, that he’d known it before he’d even stepped out of the motel room. But Jessie had already rolled her eyes and was walking away, mumbling how it was about damn time they had a little more estrogen around the lodge.
“Jessie, wait!” By the time he caught up to her, she was halfway up the path. “You didn’t call Ro and Finn, did you?”
“Yeah…no,” she replied, her impatience coming through loud and clear. “In case you’ve missed it, I have better things to do than run around telling everyone what an idiot you are. Tell them yourself. And for God’s sake, turn your radio on so I don’t have to come out here and hunt you down all the time.”
No question, Finn would be more understanding about the whole thing; but after the number of times Liam had told his older brother what a huge mistake it had been for him to marry Mandy, he’d no doubt get that back in spades from Ro.
There was no way he could keep any of it from Finn when he got back tomorrow, but telling Ronan…yeah, that could wait. That could wait a long time, actually.
It was a little tight, but Kate managed to fit almost all her clothes into the three drawers under the bed in the narrow A-frame cabin. Her suitcase, now stashed behind the small square table in the living area, held the three things she’d have absolutely no use for here: the dress and shoes she’d arrived in and the old Verlander jersey Liam had left behind in Vegas. He’d loved that stupid thing, had gone on and on about how he’d been at the first game Verlander ever pitched and how he’d used all his beer money to buy it.
The only reason Kate still had it was that she’d been sleeping in it the night Liam took off, and it was amazingly comfortable, especially after ten years of washes. Sure, it was too big for her, but it wasn’t as if she wore it out in public, just around the house and sometimes to bed. If she’d had any idea she was heading into O’Donnell territory, though, she never would have brought it.
With her dress swapped out for a pair of faded jeans and a loose-fitting blue turtleneck, she quickly tugged her hair up into a knot, then stuffed her feet back into her gum boots. It wasn’t until she’d zipped her coat that she peered out the front window into the early-evening darkness and heard Walt’s words play back in her head.
“Hope you brought bear spray.”
Was he serious? It couldn’t be more than a couple of hundred meters between her cabin and the lodge, but the ground was covered in a thin layer of wet slippery snow, and who knew what was lurking out there, waiting to pounce the first time she slipped? Kate liked to consider herself pretty tough, but the first hint of a bear and she’d probably die of fright on the spot.
“Maybe they’re still hibernating,” she muttered, her hand resting on the doorknob. “It was a bumper berry season last year; it’s possible their bellies might still be full.”
In mid-April? Probably not, but it wasn’t as if she could stay in the cabin much longer; Jessie was waiting for her. So, as she stepped outside, she made sure to cough loudly and slam her door, because bears frightened easily, right?
“Sure,” she mumbled. “Bears might, but what about cougars?”
All righty, then.
She bolted for the lodge, slipping and sliding over the snow in her gum boots until she finally made it into the glow of the floodlight at the back door, then slowed almost to a stop until her breathing evened out. Inside the mudroom, she stripped out of her raincoat and boots, then padded through the kitchen to the lobby in her socks.
“Hey.” Jessie smiled from where she stood behind the registration desk, her dark toque-messed hair pulled back in a loose knot. “D’you get settled okay?”
“Yeah, I’m all set.”
“Good. I kind of rushed you through here earlier, so d’you want the grand tour before dinner?”
“Sure, that’d be great, thanks.”
On her first quick pass through the lobby, Kate couldn’t help but notice how cozy it seemed, but now that she had time to actually take it all in, it was more than just cozy. It was like someone’s home.
Unlike other hotels and lodges she’d been in, this one didn’t boast grand floral arrangements or fancy plush furniture. Instead, there were a couple of well-worn brown leather couches positioned around a chunky stump of a table, which sat in the middle of a braided burgundy area rug.
Opposite the table was a huge rock fireplace, which not only divided the lobby from what Jessie called the great room but also opened into that room, so it could be fed from either side.
The great room was filled with more comfortable-looking couches and chairs as well as two leather-padded rocking chairs.
“We never tried to keep anything matching or symmetrical in here,” Jessie said. “Guests seem to like it better if they can move the furniture around to suit their needs.”
She pointed toward the large card table near the window, the one with puzzle pieces scattered across it, where a rocking chair had been set up on one side and an overstuffed armchair on the other. A huge flat-screen hung on the far wall, and yet very few pieces of furniture were turned toward it. Adjacent to that wall stood a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with a chaotic jumble of both fiction and non, movies, board games, even a couple of coloring books.
“Come on,” Jessie said. “I’ll show you the guest rooms.”
As they headed out of the great room, she waved toward the doorframe next to the kitchen, which led down a flight of stairs.
“The family quarters are down there. Nothing fancy, just bedrooms and a couple bathrooms. Once the season starts, we keep that door locked for obvious reasons.” They started up the stairs as Jessie waved her hand toward the huge windows near the front door. “There are three cabins out along the cove.”
“Yeah, I saw them earlier.”
“They each sleep four relatively comfortably, but we’ve had five or six people crammed in there a few times—the guests’ choice, not ours.” At the top of the stairs, she led Kate into the first room on the right. “And these rooms each sleep two, three if we’re desperate. We have a couple cots in the storage room, but, as you can see, there’s not much room in here for one.”
She was right on that. The huge king-sized bed took up most of the space, leaving just enough space to walk around it to the two chairs and bureau under the window. Each room had its own bathroom, but those weren’t overly spacious, either. What the rooms lacked in size, though, they made up for in spades with the view of the cove.
“Every guest room and cabin has a name,” Jessie explained, laughing lightly. “The cabins outside—Green, White, and Orange—are the colors of the Irish flag, and these rooms are counties.”
“Counties?”
“Mm-hmm.” She led Kate back into the hall and pointed at each door. “Clare, Cork, Meath, and Down.”
“Okay,” Kate murmured, repeating the names over and over in her head. “Hope I remember that.”
“Trust me, you will.” Turning, she pointed to the door behind her. “Storage room there, and this last room has the laundry facilities for the guests, and that’s it for up here. I forgot to mention it before, but the middle A-frame outside is the sweatbox. There’s a treadmill, exercise bike, weights…you know, all that, so help yourself if that’s your thing.”
“Thanks,” Kate said, relieved she wouldn’t have to do her running outside with the bears. “That’s great.”
They made their way back down the stairs to the lobby, and Jessie stopped next to the desk.
“Okay, I’m sorry, but I have to ask.” She pressed her hands flat against her face for a second, then thrust them away again. “Liam gave me a quick rundown of what happened between you two, so are you really going to be able to work here with him? I mean, I’m sure we all agree that what happened isn’t exactly the guiding light in either one of your lives and that what Liam did was supremely dickish, but the fact of the matter is it’s still his lodge, and the O’Donnells are like family to me. So…yeah. I just…The thing is, we could really use your help, Kate, but if this is going to turn into some big drama between you two…I don’t know.”
The faster she spoke, the wider Kate’s eyes opened, until Jessie stopped.
“Wow.” Blowing out a low breath, Kate stuffed her hands into her back pockets and licked her lips. “What happened between Liam and me was so epically stupid that I’ve never mentioned it to another living soul before now, so to be honest, if I’d known this was his place, I probably wouldn’t have come.”
Jessie closed her eyes as Kate went on.
“But I’m here now and I have no plan to leave.” She waited until Jessie opened her eyes again. “Can I be perfectly blunt without offending you?”
A half shrug was all she got in response.
“Paul sent me to do a job and I’m going to work my butt off while I’m here, but make no mistake: I work for the Foster Group, not the O’Donnells. If Paul didn’t think he was going to own this place in the next couple of months—or at the very least benefit from it—he never would have sent me.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind me being blunt, too,” Jessie said. “But the only way your boss or anyone else is going to get this place is if they rip it out of our cold dead hands.”
It was exactly what Kate expected her to say. From the second they’d started touring the place, Jessie’s face had been awash with a look of utter happiness, so it was crystal clear her loyalty to the O’Donnells ran deep and she’d do whatever needed to be done to get the place back up and running. And while Kate admired that, she’d also had the chance to go over the entire listing in the red binder while she was down in her cabin. She knew how much work was needed to bring the place up to snuff and had a pretty good idea how much it was going to cost, and if the O’Donnells couldn’t afford to hire staff, there was no way they were going to be able to come up with enough money to pay the taxes by the first of July.
But if Jessie wanted to live in her dream world awhile longer, Kate wouldn’t deny her that. In fact, if things worked out, Jessie might still have a job here when Kate took over, but they had months to go before either one of them needed to start worrying about that. What mattered now was getting the work done and getting it done together, so, to that end, Kate did what she always did.
She smiled and nodded.
“Let’s both hope it doesn’t come to that. And just so you know, I’m not here to sabotage anything or screw things up to make anything worse or harder, because regardless of how this all turns out, that wouldn’t serve either of us very well, would it?”
“No, but it’s sure nice to hear you say it.”
“Besides,” Kate went on, “if you’re right, and the Buoys ends up staying with the O’Donnells, then at least I’ll get to enjoy the next few months away from the office and out of those bloody heels.”
“And what about Liam?”
“Well,” Kate said, laughing, “I’m guessing it’s going to be good and awkward for a little while, but I’m not looking to turn this into any kind of drama. I’ve worked hard to get where I am with the Foster Group, and I’m not about to let some dipshit from my past screw things up now.”
“Dip—” Jessie sputtered, but Kate just grinned.
“Sorry.” She wasn’t, and she was pretty sure Jessie knew it, too. “Are we good?”
It took a second, but finally Jessie’s head bobbed in a slow nod. “Yeah, I think we’re good.”
“Excellent. So what do we do first?”
“We eat.”
“Thank God.” Kate pressed her hands flat against her stomach, thankful it hadn’t starting growling out loud yet. “Whatever you’re making smells amazing.”
“Nothing fancy, just stew.”
For the first time since arriving, Kate winced. “Oh God, is cooking part of the job?”
“Yes and no. Once the season starts and the lodge opens, we’ll have a chef, hopefully, but during the off season, whoever’s here takes a turn in the kitchen.”
“Then I should probably warn you that cooking’s not exactly my forte. I can cook, but it’s pretty standard stuff. I’ve come to believe that if God wanted me to spend any amount of time in the kitchen, there wouldn’t be restaurants on every corner.”
“Restaurants.” Jessie snorted as she handed Kate bowls and a fistful of cutlery to set out. “I didn’t realize how much I missed those until I moved back to the mainland.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Look around; it’s not like there’s a Timmy’s or a Red Lobster close by.” Jessie chuckled softly, but there was a subtle kind of edge to it. “So you learn to get used to what’s on the menu here.”
“Sure, but you must leave once in a while, don’t you?” Kate’s hand froze as she set down the first bowl. “Wait. You do leave here once in a while, don’t you?”
“ ’Course. After Jimmy shut this place down a few years back, I lived in the West End.”
“No, I mean when you worked here before. Didn’t you leave once in a while?”
“Sure.”
That didn’t sound convincing at all. “How often? Like every couple weeks? Every month?”
“I don’t know.” Jessie’s shoulder lifted in a slow shrug. “I guess it must’ve been—”
Footsteps sounded across the lobby floor and in through the door behind Kate, but she refused to let her gaze do anything more than flicker over Liam when he stopped at the end of the bar. He’d ditched the rain gear and was dressed in plain old blue jeans and a long-sleeved gray Henley shirt that fit him…ahem…rather nicely.
Whatever.
“—every year or so.”
That brought Kate’s focus back. “You only left here once a year? Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” Jessie laughed as she set water glasses on the table. “Up until a few years back, Helijets weren’t as readily available as they are now, which meant coming in by boat or seaplane, and water and I don’t really get along, so…Besides, there was nothing on the mainland that I needed, so why leave?”
“I don’t know, maybe—” Before Kate could finish, Liam brushed past her with a nudge and a slight shake of his head.
“I’ll get the pot, Jess,” he said, loud enough to drown out Kate. “You get the hot pads and biscuits.”
Uh…okay. With no idea what she’d done or said, Kate finished setting out the cutlery, then stood behind one of the chairs, twisting her fingers around the spindles. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Nope, we’re good. Have a seat.”
Kate waited for Jessie to sit first, then she took the chair next to her. Seconds ticked in silence as they filled their bowls and dug in. A couple of times Kate smiled at Jessie over a mouthful of stew, but Liam never even looked up.
After what seemed like half an age, Jessie chuckled.
“Thank God,” she said. “I’ve been worried this was going to be awkward.”
Kate snickered quietly, partly because it was funny and partly because, as much as she wished it didn’t, seeing Liam again—and being so close to him—sent her insides into a frenzy.
She didn’t want to feel that way; in fact, she tried like hell to squash it, but it wouldn’t be ignored, and she laid that blame right at Liam’s feet because it was his eyes that had done it to her again. Sure, it had only been maybe a fraction of a second when he’d first seen her earlier, but in that fraction, his eyes had sparkled exactly the same way they had back in Vegas.
And, damn it, that’s all it took.
It wasn’t as if she’d had a man harem since Vegas, but she hadn’t been celibate, either, and even though there was one guy who’d started tossing around ideas of them having a future together, he’d never once looked at Kate the way Liam had. And while it seemed ridiculous, that’s what Kate wanted again—someone who looked at her like she was the most amazing thing in the world. Or at least in his world.
Hadn’t happened in ten years, and going by the way Liam was making a point of not looking at her now, it probably wasn’t going to happen ever again.
Time to do what she was good at: small talk. It had become one of her specialties; she could cover just about any topic, from the weather to sports to the current crisis in the Middle East, but all of that was before she had to do it with her ex-husband.
“Ex-husband”: What a strange word.
It sounded crazy, she knew, because they’d been divorced for so long, but in all that time, whenever she thought about him—and, yeah, okay, she still thought about him once in a while—she never thought of him as her ex-husband. Of course, she’d never really thought of him as her husband, either, because the ink had hardly dried on their marriage certificate before he bolted.
She’d never wondered what it would be like to see him in person again, because it had never occurred to her that it would happen. So the fact that she was sitting across the table from him now, and that she’d basically be living with him for at least the next few months, yeah, that was weird.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to pretend he wasn’t there. That’d work, right? He hadn’t said a word since they’d sat down anyway, so Kate focused on Jessie, pulling all sorts of information from her, most of which had to do with the Buoys, but every now and then a tidbit about Liam and his brothers came out.
“Mr. O’Donnell built this place himself?”
“Jimmy, yeah. He built the main lodge, and then once the boys were big enough, they helped build the cabins and do whatever else needed doing.”
“Wow.” Kate didn’t even try to hide how much that impressed her. “Well, Mr. O’Donnell sure picked a beautiful spot to build on. Are there any other people or businesses here?”
“Nope. The only other living things on or around Welch Island either swim, fly, or walk on all fours. There was talk of a temporary mill going in on the west side five or six years ago, but thankfully that was shot down, because it’s all old-growth forest here.”
“What do the other two do now? Ronan and Finn?”
“Ro’s a laborer for the city of Calgary, and Finn was a heavy-duty mechanic up in Fort Mac until the plummeting oil prices sent a tidal wave of panic over everything.”
“Laid off?” Kate sighed when Jessie nodded. “Been there myself a few times; it’s not a lot of fun. Do he and Ronan get down here very often?”
“Finn’ll be back tomorrow, but Ro…well…it’s not easy for him to get time off.”
The sound of Liam snorting, as quiet as it was, made them both look, and even though he lifted his head only long enough to roll his eyes, neither he nor Jessie said anything else about it and Kate didn’t ask.
“And Mrs. O’Donnell?”
Neither Jessie nor Liam looked at her, but both forks froze in their bowls as the earlier awkwardness immediately shot up another notch. Or six.
“Sorry,” Kate scrambled. “Is that…I—”
Jessie shook her head slightly as she wiped her napkin across her mouth. “Maggie left when the boys were little.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” A normal husband would have shared that with his wife, but clearly there’d been nothing normal about Liam and Kate’s marriage. Best thing she could do was steer the conversation back to the lodge. “So tell me how this works. I’ve seen the list of repairs you all sent Paul, but I assume there are other things that didn’t make the list.”
“Yeah,” Jessie laughed. “There are a few things.”
After a quick sip of water, Jessie explained how the general upkeep and maintenance worked and then started rattling off the bigger jobs that needed tackling: giving the three fishing boats much-needed overhauls, reroofing the three guest cabins out by the cove, painting, plumbing upgrades, landscaping…It got to the point where Kate wondered why they didn’t just torch the place and start from scratch.
“We also need to scrub everything down, top to bottom, and get a complete inventory of what’s here, what we can make do with, and what’s going to need replacing.”
Liam swallowed what was in his mouth and pointed his fork at Jessie. “Fish shack first.”
“Roofs first, then the fish shack.”
It didn’t take long for Liam to concede with a slow nod.
“Well, okay, then.” Kate grinned. “What do you want me to start on?”
“I’m not actually sure yet. We were all together here when Ro set up this arrangement with your boss, but then we all had to go home to sort our lives out before we could start here. I had to give notice at work, we all had to figure out what to do with our living arrangements, blah blah blah. Liam and I just got back yesterday.”
There was nothing in Jessie’s voice to hint either way, but that didn’t stop Kate from wondering again if maybe Jessie and Liam were together. If they were, Jessie had taken the news about Kate and him pretty well.
Pushing another smile, Kate glanced around the bar and out toward the lobby. “I’m guessing you’re still a little overwhelmed, then.”
Jessie snorted softly. “Little bit, yeah. So tonight let’s relax, because once we get going tomorrow, it’s not likely we’ll see a day off until the end of the season.”
“Okay. Sounds…uh…great.”
After a second, they both laughed quietly, then Jessie nodded toward Kate’s bowl.
“What do you say after supper we grab a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie in the great room?”
“Sure!” Unless Kate was off her mark, Jessie was the one who called most of the shots around this place, so it’d probably be best to stick close to her.
“What about you?” Jessie asked, tipping her chin toward Liam.
“No thanks.” Lifting his dishes, he pushed back from the table and headed to the kitchen behind the bar, leaving a bubble of silence behind him.
“It’s not you,” Jessie said. “He needs to do his therapy and throwing after dinner.”
Kate nodded as that settled over her. Well over a year since his last game and he was still throwing? Surely he didn’t expect to pitch again, did he?
Apparently he did, because a little while later, when Kate went to refill her water glass, she saw firsthand how determined he was. The kitchen window looked out on the back corner of the yard behind the lodge, and there, under half a dozen dangling trouble lights, stood Liam. From a mound made of snow, wearing clunky grippers over his boots, he stared down at the ground for a second, then slowly went into his windup and hurled the ball into a huge piece of net strung up around what looked like a crudely cut-out home plate.
He seemed to study the now-empty air space the ball had just hummed through, then reached into the bucket behind him and pulled out another ball.
“Finn’ll catch for him when he gets back,” Jessie said, her quiet voice making Kate jump. “But I won’t. Screwed-up arm or not, that boy throws hard.”
“How long does he stay out there?”
“Depends on his arm and his mood.” Giving Kate’s elbow a nudge, Jessie laughed quietly. “I’m guessing he’ll go awhile tonight.”
Yeah, Kate mused. But it wasn’t only because she was there. She’d seen that look on his face before and knew exactly what it meant: He was going to do whatever it took to get back on a team. It was just a matter of time.