I am convinced that God wanted me to be a baseball player.
—Roberto Clemente
As he walked past Kate’s still-dark cabin on his way to the sweatbox early the next morning, Liam couldn’t help but shake his head. From his bedroom window last night, he’d watched her slip and slide from her cabin to the lodge, darting looks over her shoulder every couple of steps, which meant it was a safe bet Jessie hadn’t given her the bear-aware talk yet. While the two of them had settled in to watch what he assumed was going to be a chick flick, he’d pulled a couple of flashlights out of the storeroom, dropped one inside Kate’s yellow boot, and left the other one at the front door of her cabin.
He’d have to remind Jessie to educate the city girl on the do’s and don’ts of living at the Buoys. Actually, he could remind Jessie right now, because the lights were on in the sweatbox, which meant she’d beat him to the treadmill again.
Pulling the door open, Liam stepped inside and stopped dead in his tracks.
Not Jessie. Kate.
Kate in black spandex thigh-length shorts and a bright-pink T-shirt.
Shit.
She had her earbuds in and her eyes closed as her feet pounded the treadmill, so it took a second for the cold gust to hit her and then another second or two to regain her balance once she opened her eyes. How the hell did she run with her eyes closed anyway? He’d tried it once and almost broke his frickin’ neck. Hell, even a prolonged blink would send him ass over end off that treadmill.
“Hey.” Balance regained, she pulled out one of her earbuds and gestured toward the treadmill’s display. “I still have another five K to go.”
“It’s fine,” he lied. “Take your time.”
He didn’t even like doing his workout with Jessie there, but Kate? Great. He could have turned around and left, and maybe he should have, but he didn’t want her to think she’d scared him off, so after a bit of warm-up, he went into the same arm stretches he did every morning and night. They were never fun, but he’d thrown hard last night, which meant he was paying for it a little this morning.
It was a price he’d pay, though, because the last time he clocked himself, his fastball was still coming in at only a dismal eighty-eight miles per hour, which was a damn sight worse than what he used to throw before injuries and arthritis slowed him down. Sure, there were plenty of active pitchers who threw under ninety, but they had the ability to throw that consistently. In Liam’s case, all the therapy and practice he’d put in since he’d torn his rotator cuff still didn’t get him over eighty-eight more than a couple of times in a row.
If he had any hope of making it back, he was going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that, and without access to his trainer now, he had to make damn good and sure he was pushing himself hard enough.
One more reason not to leave the sweatbox, even if Kate was in there.
Besides, Jessie was right: With only six weeks to opening, they needed Kate’s help, so it wasn’t as if he could ignore her forever; he was going to have to make the situation work somehow, but how? He had no idea what to say to her, and as the minutes ticked by in silence, it got harder and harder to figure out.
It was Kate who finally broke the silence.
“So,” she said, glancing down at her watch. “You and Jessie. Is that a thing?”
“What?” he choked. “No!”
“Okay,” she scoffed. “Relax; just making conversation.”
Right. Conversation. And since the only thing he and Kate had in common that he knew of was their past relationship, it made sense that relationships would be her go-to conversation.
Lying flat on the weight bench, he bent his knees, adjusted his grip on the barbell above him, and brought it down toward his chest. If he rolled his head back, he’d have been able to watch her run, which was why he stayed perfectly flat, staring up at the ceiling. The last thing he needed was to be distracted by her in that damn spandex.
“The old man hired her right out of high school. She started out helping with the kitchen and the housekeeping and ended up basically running the joint, until the old man sent everyone packing.”
“So she’s not with Finn or Ronan, either?”
“Uh, no. My brothers and I might not be the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to women, but we’re not crazy. It’ll take someone a hell of a lot tougher than any of us to take her on.” Lift, hold, down. “What about you? Are you and that Josh guy…?”
“No. The whole hooking up with co-workers isn’t really my thing.” She sounded a little winded as she laughed lightly. “Besides which, Josh is getting married in a couple months to a great guy named Kyle, so even if I was interested in him it probably wouldn’t work out very well for us.”
Liam didn’t know why that made him smile. Must have been hearing her laugh. Whatever it was, he needed to concentrate, before the barbell ended up on his head. Normally he liked it quiet when he worked out, but there was something oddly relaxing in the steady thump of Kate’s running. In fact, he found himself setting his own rhythm to every fifth step she took.
Up for five, down for five.
“Did you, uh, ever remarry?”
When she didn’t answer right away, he twisted just enough so he could see her, but all she was doing was sipping water out of her water bottle, so he straightened out and gave up on her answering.
“Nope,” she finally said. “You?”
Liam’s grin faded. It wasn’t as if he’d ever held celebrity status like some ball players did, but a quick Google search would have given her all sorts of information. When he hesitated, she chuckled perceptively.
“If you’re thinking I’ve wasted the last ten years googling you, then you need to get over yourself, Sporto. You might have turned out to be some hotshot pitcher in the major leagues, but after you bolted, I had no choice but to pick my sorry ass up and leave you in Vegas where you belonged. So that’s where you stayed.”
Ouch. He’d googled her lots of times—hell, the last time he’d done it was about three weeks ago, on the day he flew home when Da died. As he sat at O’Hare, waiting for his connecting flight, the lineup at the next gate was heading to Vegas, and before he knew it, he’d typed her name into his phone’s browser again.
No surprise: Just like every other time he’d done it, the only things he found were links to her neglected social-media sites and a couple of pictures of her at a friend’s wedding. He couldn’t be sure, but the bride could have been one of the other girls she’d been with in Vegas.
“I did watch a few of your games,” she admitted, never slowing down as she talked. “But I usually had the sound down, because who can stand listening to all those stats and completely useless pieces of information? I mean, honest to God, yeah, I get why they’d want to keep track of something like how many errors Derek Jeter made in his rookie season—”
“Two, but he only played fifteen games that season.” Liam grunted when he heard her snort. “What? It’s Jeter; the whole world knows his stats.”
“Okay, fine, bad example. But there’s no reason to know things like…like…I don’t know…the name of the guy who caught Roger Maris’s home-run ball when he broke Babe—”
“Sal Durante.”
“Oh my God, forget it.” Her breathing increased, became loud as her pace increased. “Back to the original question. D’you ever get married again?”
The barbell slipped in his suddenly sweaty grip, forcing him to grunt under the adjustment. “No. I never should have done it the first time.”
The steady thumping of her feet stopped as abruptly as he realized he’d said that out loud. Cursing quietly, he set the barbell back in the yolk, stood up, and swiped his sleeve across his cheek, but by that time she’d already given her machine a quick wipe down and was reaching for her thick gray sweatshirt and the silver flashlight he’d left at her front door last night.
“Kate, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all yours, Sporto.” With a quick smile, she lifted the flashlight and waved it back and forth as she headed to the door. “Thanks for this.”
“Kate.”
She didn’t even slow down.
“Jessie’s waiting for me,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he being such a dick to her? As soon as the door closed behind her, he fell back against the wall, pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets, and groaned.
She’d only been there…what? Twelve, fourteen hours? And so far he’d done nothing but make himself look exactly like the asshole she already thought he was. Already knew he was. How was he ever going to survive having her around for a couple of months?
Shoving off the wall, he hopped on the treadmill and pounded out ten clicks faster than he’d ever done, then headed straight to the lodge for a shower. By the time he was done, the darkness had almost lifted outside, which meant anytime now—yup, there it was, the welcome whirring of the approaching Helijet outside. Thank God.
Grabbing his coat, he hustled out to the dock just as it landed on the far end. The pilot pulled two duffel bags and a rod tube out of the cargo hold, slapped Finn on the shoulder, and climbed back behind the controls.
“Is this it?” Liam asked, lifting the closest bag.
“Yeah.” Finn nodded, then waved off the Helijet, and they started toward the lodge. They were about halfway there when he asked, “Did that Josh guy show up?”
“Well,” Liam drawled, “funny story about that.”
Finn didn’t stop walking, but it only took a couple of more words from Liam before his pace slowed to a crawl.
“You what?” He croaked. “Married?”
“Divorced, actually.”
“And she’s here?” There was no judgment in his voice, just disbelief. He set his foot on the bottom step leading up to the front door and stopped long enough to scratch his three-day-old beard. “Holy shit, man.”
“Yeah.”
“Did she bitch out or were you just a dick?”
Liam didn’t even hesitate. “I was a dick.”
“Great,” Finn muttered over a heavy sigh. He started up the stairs, then stopped and turned back to Liam, who was still at the bottom step. “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Good.” Unlike Ronan, who would no doubt push for details on the whys and the what-the-hell-were-you-thinkings, Finn simply whistled quietly and lifted his brow in a “what can you do” kind of gesture. “This is gonna be…interesting.”
They set the bags outside the kitchen, then Liam left Finn searching through the biggest bag and headed straight inside the room, where the coffee was percolating on the stove. No regular old drip coffee today.
“How come you only make perked coffee when Finn comes back?” he asked, pulling the cream out of the fridge and setting it on the table in front of Jessie. “I like it, too, you know.”
“I know.” She wagged her brow at him as Finn walked in and handed her a couple of paperbacks. “But he always brings me books. What have you ever brought me?”
“The pleasure of my company.” Liam snorted over a chuckle, then turned to his little brother, who’d already poured himself a big mug of the fresh brew. “And, you! I wouldn’t mind a good book once in a while, either, you know.”
“I know.” Finn tried to hide his grin behind his mug as he shot Jessie a quick wink. “But she always perks the coffee for me. What do you ever do?”
Laughing, Liam filled his own mug and leaned back against the counter to enjoy every last sip before he tackled the day’s list. Finn took a slow step away, then another, grinning the whole time.
“So where’s the little missus?”
“Son of a—” Liam set his mug down hard and whirled to swing a punch at Finn, but Finn ducked just in time, dodging the fist but sloshing some of his coffee before he got the mug safely to the table.
“Sorry!” Laughing, he yanked one of the chairs out to block Liam, then darted around the table behind Jessie. “I meant the ex–little missus.”
Liam lunged across the table for him, but, damn, Finn was fast; always had been. And before Liam could lunge again, Jessie was between them, pressing a hand against each chest.
“Stop! I don’t have time to clean up blood today.” Her stern expression held almost as long as it took her to say that, then broke into one of her indulgent smiles. “Unlike you two lazy slobs, Kate started work half an hour ago; she’s up in the guest rooms.”
Liam was the first to back up and reach for his coffee again, but it took a second for Finn to do the same, because if he stepped too close too soon, Liam would take another run at him, which was why they both stood there grinning at each other now.
“I’m going to start mucking out the office,” Jessie said, thumbing over her shoulder toward the tiny room where she used to spend so much time. “I don’t know what the hell Jimmy did in there after I left, but holy crap.” She started toward the office, then turned back. “Oh, and I got us spots on a few tourism sites, but tops on the priority list should be a proper website of our own. I know Jimmy thought it was a waste of money, but it’s about time this place took a flying leap into the twenty-first century.”
“Okay.” Liam shrugged. “So make us a website.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” she said, rolling her eyes dramatically. “Me and all my computer-programming experience.”
“What about Kate?” Finn asked. Both he and Jessie turned their questioning looks on Liam, who couldn’t do anything but shrug again.
“How would I know? I haven’t seen her in ten years.” Back in Vegas, she’d told him that she was a high school dropout, but who knew what had happened since then? Hell, for all he knew, she might have a degree in nuclear biology.
“Well, let’s go find out.” Finn was out of the room and headed for the stairs before Liam realized what he’d said.
They followed the sound of an Elvis song, playing from what turned out to be Kate’s phone, and found her up on a chair in the far guest room, taking down curtains. For about half a second, Liam was almost thankful she’d changed out of her spandex, until he realized she looked even better in those jeans. They weren’t tight like the ones he remembered from Vegas. No, sir. These were…better.
Much better.
And going by the way Finn’s eyes widened, he noticed how good she looked, too. Fighting back a growl, Liam cuffed his brother across the back of his head, then cleared his throat from where they stood in the doorway.
“Uh, Kate?”
She turned on the chair, and her gaze flicked straight past Liam to Finn. While he knew it shouldn’t bother him, Liam would be lying if he said it didn’t.
“This is Finn. Finn, Kate.”
Finn shoved past Liam, knocking him almost into the doorframe, and headed straight at Kate, hand extended as she climbed off the chair.
“Kate. Good to meet you.” He tipped his head a little closer to her, then cast a quick glance back at Liam, who hadn’t budged from the doorway. “I’d like to say I’ve heard a lot about you, but I’d be lying.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” Kate’s initial look of surprise smoothed into a halting smile as she shook his hand. “I guess I have a bit of an advantage, because at least I knew he had brothers.”
“Nice. Well, trust me on this, you were smart to get out of that marriage as quick as you did, because you can do a hell of a lot better than him.”
Joke or not, normally Liam would have taken Finn down for saying something like that—put him in a headlock and wrestled an “uncle” out of him—but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do anything. Hell, he could barely manage to blink.
“Uh, thank you, I think,” Kate said, sounding a little uncertain. “And while I’d be happy to take credit for it, I should probably confess that the divorce wasn’t exactly my idea.”
“Yeah, I know, he told me he was a dick.”
“Did he, now?” Still grinning, she tipped her face toward Liam, causing every signal in his brain to misfire.
“Yeah,” Finn started. “But—”
“Shut up, Finn.” Clearing his throat again—what was up with that anyway?—Liam finally managed to move into the room. “We were wondering if, uh, if you know anything about building websites. We need to put one together for the lodge, and none of us have a clue.”
“Sorry.” She looked down at Finn’s hand, still wrapped around hers until Liam reached over and slapped his brother’s away. “Can’t help you there, but I know someone who does it as a side job; I could get some information from her.”
“That’d be great.”
Without looking at Liam, Finn elbowed him sharply, tipped his chin toward Kate, and said, “Thank you.”
“Right. Thank you.” Liam grabbed the back of Finn’s jacket and jerked. “Come on, we’ve got roofing to do.”
He shouldn’t care that Finn kept smiling at Kate, and he shouldn’t care that she kept smiling back, but he did, so the sooner they got out of there, the better.
Stumbling backward, Finn tripped after Liam, chuckling the whole way. “We’ll talk later, Kate. Maybe compare notes on what a dickwad this guy is.”
“Looking forward to it.”
The last thing Liam heard as he dragged his stupid brother out of the room was the sound of Kate laughing. Now that Finn had seen and talked to her, albeit briefly, he’d no doubt have something to say, but he held his tongue until they were both up on the roof of the Orange cabin.
“She’s way too good looking for someone like you.”
“Shut up.”
“Well, come on,” Finn laughed. “You might’ve wanted to think twice before bailing so fast on someone who looked like that. I mean, hell, bro, it’s not like that ugly mug of yours has been bringing them in hard and fast lately.”
“Screw off.”
“Am I wrong?” Still chuckling, Finn slid his pitchfork under the first strip of shingles. “I mean, yeah, obviously marriage is a bad idea at the best of times, and it sounds like yours was flat-out batshit crazy, but still.”
“You don’t know anything about it.” Liam had yet to do anything other than lean on his pitchfork and stare down at his boot.
“Did she look like that when you married her?”
“Pretty much.” Truth was, Kate had been a pretty girl, but now…well, shit…now she was all woman, and “pretty” didn’t even come close to describing her. Her milk-chocolate-colored hair hung over her shoulders, a little longer than it had back then, her hazel eyes were a little more golden, and her shape…
It was all Liam could do not to groan. He remembered her curves well enough, but he didn’t remember her seeming as comfortable in them as she did now. It was almost as if she hadn’t quite fit them ten years ago, but she sure as hell did now.
And even after all this time, she smelled like sunshine. He’d noticed it yesterday when she walked by him on the path and slapped him on the shoulder, and then again, up in that guest room, her scent lingered.
“Hey!” Finn’s bark jerked him back, blowing away the remaining images of Kate as Finn waved his pitchfork in front of Liam’s face. “You gonna stand there holding down the shingles all day or are you gonna help?”
Liam didn’t move for another couple of seconds, just continued staring at the back of Finn’s head before huffing out a sigh and getting down to work. For a long time, the surrounding silence was disrupted only by the scraping of the shingles and the ocean lapping the edge of the cove, which gave Liam plenty of time and room to think.
But why did he have to use up all that good thinking time on Kate? There were other things he should be thinking about, like his career, like how much work they had to do if they had any hope of opening for the first of June, and then there was the constant nagging worry that, even if they did manage to get open, they didn’t have a single reservation yet.
And still, thoughts of Kate pushed everything else into the back corner of his brain, until he finally gave up and let her take over completely. The second he did, it was as if a dam broke in his head, and for some stupid reason, the relief of that pressure made him chuckle quietly.
“She is pretty good lookin’, isn’t she?”
“Cha,” Finn sputtered, almost as if he’d been thinking the same thing and had been waiting for Liam to say it. “But you know I’m screwing with you, right? Good looking or not, marriage to anyone back then would’ve messed you up.”
Liam nodded absently as Finn straightened and leaned against his fork.
“So the divorce was your idea? I bet that was an interesting conversation.”
“Yeah, well, there wasn’t much to say,” Liam mumbled. “I just sort of sent her the paperwork.”
“Seriously?” Finn winced. “Wow—that was pretty dickish.”
“It gets worse.” He lifted another fork of shingles as he filled Finn in on the basic facts, then cleared his throat. “So I wasn’t lying when I said I was a dick to her. Never even spoke to her again until she showed up here yesterday.”
“Holy shiiiit. That’s—”
“I know.” Liam shook his head. “Jessie told me I need to grow a pair and apologize, but I haven’t quite gotten there yet.”
“You haven’t—” Finn was no angel, so for him to be that gobsmacked, it had to be bad. “You’ve had ten years, dude, what are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know.” He could have easily said something like he was waiting for the right moment, but there’d been plenty of right moments, especially in the last day. No, the truth was, he’d been waiting for a little courage to come find him, but as much as he hated to admit it, Jessie was right: It was past time he grew a pair and got on with it.
He and Finn didn’t talk much about anything after that, but when they did, it was all about the roof they were working on, the ones they still had to do, and how many trips it would take in the boat to get all the recyclable stuff over to Port Hardy—guy stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with right, wrong, or, God forbid, feelings.
It was probably just as well, because ever since that damn Cessna dumped Kate in their laps yesterday, Liam had been hit with a whole mash-up of feelings, most of which he hadn’t felt since the first time he’d seen her standing in that damn casino. Lust, fascination, curiosity, and something else he’d never been able to define. It was as if being with her had made him feel…alive…and along with “smitten,” that was something else he’d never say out loud, especially standing there with Finn, who’d no doubt fall off the roof laughing if Liam gave voice to either word.
With the entire roof stripped and prepped, they were securing the last of the felt underlay when Jessie’s voice came over the radio dangling from Finn’s belt.
“It’s a little late, but I’m heating up leftovers if you want some lunch.”
“Thank God,” Finn muttered. “Let’s go.”
Liam wasn’t in quite the same hurry as Finn. Sure, his stomach had matched Finn’s growl for growl, but it meant facing Kate again so soon after realizing what he had to do. It’d taken him ten years to get that far, so he was going to need a little more time to figure anything else out.
Maybe he’d just grab some food and eat outside.
It was only a couple of hundred meters from the Orange cabin to the lodge, so that didn’t give him much time to get his shit together, and what little he did manage to get was shot all to hell when he walked into the pub and saw Kate sitting there smiling at something Jessie said.
Finn jumped right into their conversation, but Liam kept his mouth shut until he could fill it with a forkful of leftover stew. Jessie didn’t even let them swallow before she started.
“The good news,” she said, “is that Kate’s friend is going to design the website for us. She’s done a couple other sites that needed reservations systems, so she’ll be good to go with this.”
“And the bad news?” Finn asked.
“Looks like we’ve got a weather system coming in the day after tomorrow. Probably just rain, but they’re not ruling out more snow, either, so we need those cabin roofs finished in case it does turn out to be snow and then we’re stuck.”
Finn and Liam blinked first at each other, then at Jessie.
“I know those roofs aren’t huge,” Liam said. “But this isn’t something we do every day. We’ll be lucky to get this one finished before dark; there’s no way we’re going to get all three done by tomorrow night.”
“I know. That’s why Kate and I are going to help, right, Kate?”
Kate nodded over a swallow. “Mm-hmm.”
“No.” It was out of Liam’s mouth before he could stop it, leaving everyone else at the table staring at him. “Finn and I’ll work on different cabins, split the job up and get it done faster.”
“Not gonna happen,” Jessie said. “The last time I let one of you O’Donnells do a roofing project alone, we had to call in the medevac.”
“What?” Kate choked, her eyes wide.
“Jimmy.” Jessie made the sign of the cross as she said his name, which was great, until she added an eye roll and shook her head. “Refused to let anyone up there with him, tripped over his own big Irish feet, and fell off; landed on a stack of shingles and ended up with a concussion, two broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder. He laid there over half an hour before I found him.”
As their first-aid attendant, Jessie had sounded calm, cool, and completely under control when she’d called Liam to tell him what happened. The next day, when he talked to Finn, who’d taken some personal time to fly down, Liam got a slightly different version of how Jessie was doing.
As soon as the old man had been released from the hospital, Da and Finn had flown back to the Buoys, where Jessie was in no mood for any more of Da’s shit. She’d made sure he was good and comfortable in his bed, then headed straight into the bar, sat down, and sobbed until Finn threatened to call the medevac back for her, too.
“We’re not ever doing that again,” Jessie said, which was why, half an hour later, the four of them were all heading back toward the cabins.
“Jess and I’ll go start on Green,” Finn said, already heading for the far cabin. “When you and Kate finish getting Orange shingled, you can start ripping up White.”
Jessie hustled after Finn, but not before Liam caught a glimpse of the grin on her face. Yeah, this was real funny.
With the White cabin separating them, it was impossible for Liam to hear what his stupid brother was saying, but it made Jessie laugh hard, so it was obviously something at Liam’s expense.
After holding the ladder for Kate, he climbed up behind her, hauling a stack of shingles with him. They spent a few awkward minutes going over what needed to be done and how they were going to work together on it, but once that was settled, Liam couldn’t seem to force anything else from his tongue. Kate, on the other hand…
“You never told me you and your family were fishermen.” She waited until Liam had laid down a pyramid of shingles, starting at the center edge, then began laying the next ones flush against his, using her own nail gun to secure each shingle like he showed her. “I know we didn’t talk much about our families, but owning a fishing lodge is kind of cool; you’d think something interesting like that would have come up in conversation at some point.”
“Most people think fishing’s about as exciting as watching paint dry.”
“I’ve never been,” she said. “So I couldn’t agree or disagree on that.”
Liam stood straight up and stared at her. Surely to God she was kidding. “You’ve never been fishing?”
Her gaze flicked up at him briefly before she shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
“How do you live your whole life on the West Coast and never go fishing?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “One or two of Mom’s boyfriends used to fish, but they certainly never offered to take us with them. And as I grew up, I had other stuff to do, I guess. What’s so great about it?”
“What’s so—” Liam stopped, not entirely sure how to answer that. Truth was, even if he hadn’t turned into an inarticulate moron since she’d arrived, it was next to impossible to accurately describe the fishing experience to someone who’d never wrapped her hands around a rod. “I’d have to take you out on the water to show you.”
Great—that hardly made things more awkward at all. The last thing either of them wanted was to be trapped on a boat together ten miles offshore. Giving himself a hard mental kick, Liam focused on the next line of shingles, staggering his pieces over the ones she’d just laid. Piece after piece, row after row they went, neither one saying much, but both listening to Finn and Jessie laughing and having a great old time over on their roof.
“What was it like growing up here? I assume you were homeschooled.”
“Nope. The old man took us by boat to Port Hardy every morning and picked us up every afternoon, until Ro could do it.”
“Every day? That must’ve made long days for all of you.”
“I guess, but he couldn’t school us himself, so…”
She didn’t need to know about the times Da had been too drunk to come back for them, leaving them to fend for themselves. More often than not, they’d found a boat at the dock that was unlocked, so at least they had shelter, and after the first time he’d left them there, hungry and scared, they were always sure to pack an extra-big lunch in case they needed to feed themselves dinner, too.
“How did it work when you wanted to play ball? It’s not like you could’ve ridden your bike to practice if your dad was busy.”
“When I was little, I stayed over at a friend’s place whenever we had practice or a game.” Liam shrugged. “Once I turned sixteen I could boat over myself, so that made everything easier.”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “Nothing about that sounds easy to me, but I guess when you want something badly enough, you do what you have to do, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
There it was, the perfect moment to tell her why he’d left her in Vegas, but he didn’t. Instead, he just kept his head down and tried to keep his shingles in a straight line. It was tedious work, yet Kate never once complained.
He hauled another couple of stacks of shingles up the ladder and dropped them near the point. Without any hesitation, Kate pulled the utility knife out of her tool belt, opened both stacks, and went straight back to work while he set to cutting down the ones they needed.
“What do you do with the old ones?” she asked.
“There’s a place over in Hardy that recycles them into asphalt.” By the way she was nodding, he knew he had at least some of her attention, even if she didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Two words had never terrified him so much, and why? He’d apologized for plenty of things in his life, and yet this was the first time he remembered being scared.
“What for?” She didn’t glance up, but there was something in her voice that made him think she already knew the answer to that.
“Kate.”
He waited a second or two for her to stop and look at him, but when she did, he instantly wished she’d look away. Tiny bursts of amber lit up her hazel eyes, exposing the same raw trust that drew him to her that night at the roulette table. Only this time she blinked and the amber light dimmed.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. It wasn’t as loud as the first time, but it felt stronger, and she seemed to almost believe it the second time around. “I, uh…Shit.”
He took a couple of steps toward her, then stopped when her eyes widened.
“I’ve had ten years to figure out how to say this and I’m still going to screw it up.”
When she didn’t respond, he scrubbed his sleeve across his cheek, careful not to shoot himself with his nail gun, and sighed.
“What we did—getting married like that—was stupid, right?”
It took a second, but Kate finally lifted her right shoulder in a slow shrug. “Wasn’t one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, no.”
Relief began to seep through him; at least they agreed on that.
“Still,” he went on, “what I did, the way I treated you, leaving like that, was…well, it was—”
“Dickwad-ish?” she offered, reaching for another shingle. “Yup, it was.”
Heat burned up his neck and across his cheeks, but he forced the words out one more time. “I’m sorry.”
It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that they stayed like that before Finn’s voice split the air, making them both jump.
“I hope the slowdown means the dickwad’s finally apologizing.”
Eyes closed, Liam dropped his head forward, wishing the nail gun could fire far enough to reach the little shit. He was almost ready to shoot it over there anyway, but the sound of Kate’s soft laugh stopped him.
“He’s workin’ on it,” she called back. “Give him a minute.”
The chuckle escaped Liam’s throat before he even looked at her. Head tipped a little to the side, her mouth curled slightly, and those eyes, blinking at him expectantly, made him laugh again, this time with a curse thrown Finn’s way.
“I really am sorry,” he said, letting the laugh die on his tongue. “Playing ball is who I am, it’s what I do, and I needed to give everything I had to that. Hell, I still do. So it didn’t matter what you or anyone else wanted; I couldn’t change who I was, no matter what. I still think I did the right thing focusing on my career, but I should’ve had the balls to talk to you before taking off. You deserved at least that.”
“At least.” She snorted, but instead of it being filled with animosity, as he expected, there was a quiet softness to it. “Thank you. I’ve waited a long time for you to say that, but I guess if we’re going to be honest with each other, then the truth is, you probably did me a favor.”
Liam’s ears perked up. “How’s that?”
“I didn’t actually realize it until last night when I was lying in bed.” She fired the nail gun into the next shingle, then straightened. “You, my friend, were my last big mistake. Before you, I’d been living my whole life jumping from one bad decision to another, and when I woke up that morning and realized you’d gone, I had no idea what I was going to do. I mean, I’d done some stupid things before that, and I’ve done a few since, but that—that was something else.”
“Wasn’t all your fault,” he said, offering her a small, wry grin. “I might have had something to do with the stupidity that time.”
“Yeah, but you had something to go back to after you left Vegas. I didn’t even have a job, remember?”
Yeah, he remembered. “What did you do?”
“I did what I had to.” She said it so matter-of-factly, but watching her blink fast like that, Liam knew it couldn’t have been easy. “Found a couple jobs, got my GED, then begged and pleaded my way into an entry-level position with the Foster Group. Worked during the day and took classes at night until I earned an arts degree in hotel management, which might just come in handy here.”
“You’ve been busy,” he said, knowing he sounded stupid. “That’s great, Kate. Really.”
“Thanks. And if you hadn’t gutted me the way you did, none of that would have happened.”
“Uh…” Liam laughed hesitantly. “You’re welcome?”
Something in Liam’s gut warmed. He might not have known everything about her back in Vegas, but he’d figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t a lack of smarts that made her quit school; it was a lack of confidence. She seemed to have found some now, which she proved when she shot him a playful wink.
“And one day soon,” she said, “that degree you helped me get is going to be hanging on the wall in the Buoys office, and the only way you’re going to get out on one of my boats is if you pay me for it. And you, my dear ex-husband, are going to pay dearly.”
“Oh, really?” he choked. “That’s how it’s going to be?”
“Yup, that’s how it’s going to be.” She was still smiling, but there was a whole lot of her newfound confidence behind it. “So put your back into it, Sporto, because I want this place in tip-top shape when I take over.”
For a few seconds, Liam stood there grinning at her, enjoying the way her cheeks pinked up like that when she smiled at him. That was exactly how she’d smiled at him in Vegas—a little teasing, a little shy, and a whole lot sexy.
It was impossible for him to look at anything else when she smiled like that. It was—
“Hey!” Finn bellowed. “We’re burning daylight here, so would you just kiss and make up already so you can get back to work?”
Fighting a laugh, Liam didn’t even turn to look at Finn; he kept his gaze fixed on Kate as he shook his head slowly and lifted his middle finger high in the air for both Finn and Jessie to see.