LITMIR.BIZ

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       CHAPTER TWO

      GRACE STEPPED CLOSER to Liam’s chair, her arm outstretched, hand captured.

      How many times had this happened in her youth? How many times had hands clasped to do something mundane and helpful? How many times had her teenage self been sprawled on the grass near where Liam and Nick had hung out—doing whatever it was that teenage boys did—with her beside Liam just so she could beg for a hand up when it was time to go in for dinner? She’d used any excuse to make him hold her hand, even for just a couple seconds.

      But it had always been at her instigation.

      She’d been the one dying to feel her hand in his.

      The only kind of flirting a dumb kid could come up with to try and make Liam see her as something other than Nick’s kid sister.

      And the least ridiculous, as it had turned out. When she’d hit eighteen and the time apart while he’d been at school had turned her desperate, her tactics had become the stuff that couldn’t be lived down.

      “I know you don’t want to come with me,” Liam said, his hand still in hers, even though he’d stopped stroking her skin now. It didn’t really help clear her thinking, though.

      She needed to make him let go. Get some space. Maybe her thinking would unfuzzy.

      She took a slow deep breath and gestured back to the stool as she pulled her hand from his, indicating that she wasn’t fleeing so he’d let go.

      Please, don’t mention it.

      She might be able to force herself through this without having to face the embarrassment head-on, but if he wanted to talk about it...

      He hadn’t so far, but she could see it on his face every time she looked at him. Who could forget something like that?

      “We haven’t seen one another in a long time, I know,” he said, nodding to his ankle. “Could you rewrap it? It feels better when it’s got something around it.”

      “Yes. Of course.” She grabbed the bandage, thankful for something to do, and began rolling it up to make the rewrapping easier. Focusing on a task was better than focusing on emotions that would make everything so much worse. Liam settled back again, his hands in his lap. She could still feel the weight of his eyes on her.

      “I have no one else to turn to, Gracie. It seems that when everyone wants something from you, it gets harder to trust.” The edge she’d heard in his voice drained away and he chuckled, sounding something like the old, charming Liam. The old Liam, the only one she’d ever let call her Gracie. “You probably hear some variation of that from entitled celebrities every day, whining about their success and how much it costs them.”

      He lifted his leg as she began wrapping, allowing her to pass the elastic wrap under and around his leg, snug enough to stop further swelling but not so tight that it would hamper circulation. Something she knew how to do, unlike the rest of this. And as painful as it looked, the physical pain was so much easier to deal with. And he really had hurt himself, but there were things that could be done to speed recovery. Things she could help him do after a few days of healing rest, but this insane plan to keep walking on it...

      “I’m sure I could find someone skilled enough to help me through these next few weeks, but I’d have to keep my guard up, and that’s really hard to do twenty-four hours a day. I know you’re not going to secretly record me or take pictures to sell to the tabloids. I know you’re not going to pay more attention to the limelight than to my recovery. And if I ever had any doubt, after seeing how badly you don’t want to get involved...I’m certain of it now.”

      Her stomach bottomed out, hearing those words, almost as sure a hit as if he had mentioned the other. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you. I can see you need help and I’m sure you hate having to come ask for it.” The words tasted of lies. She didn’t want to help him, but none of that was his fault. It was her fault. He wasn’t holding grudges and she wasn’t either, but... “Maybe I could get you started and then after your premieres you could come back. That way I wouldn’t have to let down my other patients either.”

      “James said you have a light enough schedule that the other therapists can cover it.”

      Of course he had. Because even if he’d known about their past, James would’ve still wanted to do what was best for the clinic, and that meant taking excellent care of the patients, not turning them away for wholly emotional reasons. Way more professional than her reaction had been.

      She should just say yes, let him stop convincing her...

      She opened her mouth to agree, but he was already saying something else.

      “The Watson family has always been my safe place. There’s no one I trust more than Nick and you. Even when the whole world felt barbed-wired and booby-trapped, I always knew I could come to your house and—”

      “Okay, I’ll come.” She blurted the words out before he tried other guilt tactics. Guilt worked every time, especially since all of this awkwardness was her fault. He was the victim here. Heck, if the situation had been reversed and he’d come to her house in a trench coat and scanty underwear, it would’ve probably been considered a sex crime. And it definitely would’ve made all his other relationships with her family tense and awkward, maybe even worse than this.

      It had been all on her and her childish fantasies that Liam Carter could’ve ever thought of her the way she thought of him. No. The way she had thought of him. The only thing she felt now was horrified at her own behavior. And desperate to never have to acknowledge or explain, to never experience that level of vulnerability again.

      Holding the loose end of the bandage with her wrist, she fished fabric tape from her pocket and pulled off a strip to tack the bandage down before taping it more thoroughly.

      “But, for the record, I was going to say yes before you added that little bit about trust and our childhood.”

      There’d been no way for him to win that situation, just like there was no way for her to win this one. No polite, professional, or kind way at least, and he deserved her kindness. She’d spent years trying to figure out what he could have said that would’ve made the rejection better at all.

      Should he have just slept with her so she hadn’t felt stupid about the hours of vigorous waxing and grooming to make herself irresistible? Wasted hours and needlessly tender post-waxing flesh...

      “You mean I’m wasting my best lines?”

      His question jerked her back from pondering the futility of her tender bits after that tragic home wax/shaving experiment. The smile she found when she looked at him softened the memories of bad razor burn and gut-churning humiliation.

      “Was that a line in one of your movies?”

      “Don’t you watch my movies?” The words rang with obviously faked horror and he laid a hand over his heart as if the mere thought would do him in.

      Silly.

      Cute.

      He was trying to make her feel better.

      Before she could stop it, she smiled back. He certainly hadn’t lost that natural charm.

      But that kind of dangerous thinking had to stay as far from her scrambled gray matter as possible. The only way to get through this was to just focus on the injury, not the man. Not the way her insides expanded when he smiled at her, which they shouldn’t even do anyway. Playful banter might as well be a sledgehammer, he could knock all sense out of her with one strategic swing.

      She took a breath and eased the smile off her face.

      Playful banter fit nowhere, it had to go for the next couple weeks.

      Playful banter could make her forget.

      Playful banter could make her stupid.

      No

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