“It’s okay to ask about her, Liam.”
He glanced down at her sharply.
“I’m curious about you and your father, as well.” She hesitated before she plunged ahead. Glimpsing his uncertainty had given her courage, for some reason. “I would have been curious even if it wasn’t for the crash. I would have been, because of you.”
For a few taut seconds, she couldn’t read his expression. Then he muttered something under his breath she couldn’t quite catch and his arms closed around her. She shivered at the contact of his cool, wet skin against hers. He must have felt it, because he pushed her tighter against him, surrounding her with his body, until his heat penetrated into her. He bent his neck and pressed the side of his head against hers.
Natalie suppressed a whimper of rising emotion as her arms wrapped around his waist. Being so suddenly enfolded in his embrace like that had affected her in a way she hadn’t expected. It was a hug of compassion, an acknowledgment of their shared suffering.
As the seconds passed, however, and she became hyperaware of Liam’s near-naked body pressed intimately against her own, Natalie admitted the embrace meant more than compassion. Much more. Desire twined with all those other emotional threads: brilliant, golden and undeniable. His chin moved. He spoke in a low, gruff voice, his warm breath in her ear causing ripples of pleasure to course down her spine.
“This is a hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” No sound came out of her throat, but the right side of her mouth was pressed against the dense muscles of his chest. She knew he’d sensed her answer, just as she somehow knew he’d been referring to their strange association with one another, their past…the attraction between them that seemed to building to some kind of crescendo.
He trailed his large hand down her spine, and she shivered.
“Are you cold?” he murmured, his palm coming to rest just above her buttocks.
“Not…not really,” she replied with breathless honesty.
He stepped back. The setting sun shone so brightly around his outline it was like he was a haloed hero from a dream in her dazzled eyes. It fit somehow, that description. Distantly, she realized her cheeks were wet with tears, but…she experienced no embarrassment under Liam’s stare.
She felt strangely light-headed at the rea
lization, liberated, her soul seemingly swelling upward, like a weight had just been lifted off her that she’d never known existed until now.
“Are you going to swim?” he asked her soberly.
She shook her head. She’d already plunged way deeper into these emotional waters than she’d ever intended.
“Let’s go inside then,” he said.
He took her hand and led her toward the beach.
He was happy that Natalie joined him on the terrace when he went out to grill their supper. Something had happened out there as they stood in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. Some kind of barrier had melted away. The change in Natalie’s manner toward him was subtle, but at the same time…
Miraculous.
Liam felt as if he had somehow gained the privilege of watching a flower bloom before his very eyes. Slowly, maybe…and tentatively, as if she was testing out the environment. But there could be no doubt of it.
Natalie trusted him enough to open up her inner world.
It humbled him a little, that realization.
He closed the lid of the smoking grill and listened as Natalie described the volunteer work she did for the Family Center—the treatment and family support facility for survivors of substance abuse that Mari Kavanaugh had opened last year. Apparently, Natalie volunteered a good chunk of her time in order to do the Center’s books, plus she took on the responsibility of making sure the Center’s licenses and operating guidelines were up to date and within required code.
“You make me feel like a shirker for just hammering a nail now and then,” Liam said.
“You had that beautiful sign made. Choose hope,” she said softly, repeating the quote Liam had requested for the sign he’d commissioned for the Family Center last year.
He couldn’t have stopped himself for anything. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to her wistful smile. His heart felt like it skipped a beat when he felt her smile widen beneath his lips before she kissed him back; it drummed into double-time when she laced her fingers through his hair.
A sudden blast of smoke in his face was the only thing that stopped him from tossing down the spatula and sacrificing the salmon to the flames.
He’d rather have Natalie for dinner.
“So I guess we’ll both be going to the Labor Day fundraiser Mari and Colleen have been planning this Sunday. Why don’t we go together?” Liam asked after he’d coughed the smoke out of his lungs and hurriedly removed the salmon fillets from the grill before they turned to carbon. He turned off the gas and picked up the plate of steaming fish.