“I know she’ll behave.” She gave him a furtive glance. “But…if you two have a falling out, it’ll have been my fault, for asking you to take on this investigation. I knew that in the beginning, but now…things are different…”
He turned onto his side, facing her. Despite her rising anxiety, she couldn’t stop herself from admiring him wearing nothing but some low-riding, black swim trunks.
“Things are different.” A small smile flickered across his mouth. “What’s different, Natalie?”
She bit at her bottom lip.
“I care. That’s what’s different.”
For a few seconds, he didn’t speak. Then he reached for her.
“Come here,” he said.
She couldn’t resist his beckoning. She laughed after he’d pulled her on top of him and she landed on him in a graceless heap.
“Ouch…hey, watch the elbows,” he mumbled as Natalie squirmed, trying to find a comfortable position.
“I’m trying not to crush you.”
“You’re too small to crush me.”
“I’m not too small to break this deck chair,” Natalie said, eyes going wide when she heard the springs creak.
Liam’s low laugh struck her as delicious. She stopped squirming and rested her head on his warm, hard chest, absorbing the vibrations of his mirth. He smoothed her hair back from her face.
“There. That’s better,” he said.
Natalie sighed in contentment, sandwiched as she was between Liam’s heat and the sun’s.
“Listen to me,” he said, his deep voice rumbling directly into the ear pressed to his chest. “I can handle my mother, just like you can handle your brother. You weren’t wrong to ask me to look into the crash. It’s like you told me in the beginning—the truth is what’s important.”
“Family is important, too.”
For a few seconds, she’d wondered if he’d heard her, because he didn’t move or respond. She couldn’t see him in their present position, but she imagined his expression at that moment—the careworn, sober one he rarely showed the world, the face of a much older man.
Natalie suspected he’d acquired that expression when he was a fifteen-year-old boy.
“You’re right. But if family ties are strong enough, they shouldn’t be damaged by the truth,” he said before he resumed stroking her hair.
She lifted her head slowly. An ache started up in her throat when she saw he wore the precise expression she’d imagined. A strange sense of foreboding came over her. She’d been the one to suggest this venture because her lack of understanding nettled her so greatly, made it difficult for her to heal.
But what if in finding the answers to the questions that burned inside her, she tore open old wounds for Liam?
What if her questions inflicted new, fresh wounds?
The possibility horrified her.
She opened her mouth to suggest they cease the investigation, but at the same moment he slid her body up farther against his. He lifted his head and took her mouth in a hot, possessive kiss. Her worries fizzled into mist.
He must have known it from years of experience, Natalie thought dazedly.
He must have known it was impossible for a woman to worry and kiss him at the same time.
By the time he sealed the kiss, her flesh had softened to the consistency of warm butter.
“Why don’t I take you out to dinner?” he asked gruffly.
“Oh,” she mumbled, surprised by his suggestion. “If that’s what you’d like to do.”