Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy (7 page)

“Still playful, that's good. I guess your ankle isn't hurting as much as last night?”

“You did not answer the question but you're correct, it's not hurting as badly as last night.”

She crossed her arms and lifted her brows, giving him her best told-you-so expression.

Liam crossed his arms in response. “You want me to say it?”

“I do. It's a personal failing, I know, but yes. Yes, I want you to say it.” She knew she looked smug, that was the whole point of the told-you-so
 
expression.

“You were right. I should have listened to you all along, but then I would never have gotten to have the prettiest date tonight.”

She snorted. The first couple of times he'd said it she'd been too dazed to really process the words.

“You know, the more you say it, the less I believe it.” They passed a building she hadn't seen on the way to the theater and she stopped to get a good look at the direction in which they were traveling. “This isn't the way to the hotel. Are we going to the airport or something?”

“No, we're going to dinner.”

“You want me to be right some more? You need that thing up and iced—it's been hours.”

“I need to eat too if I'm going to take one of those blessed pain-reducers, don't I?”

“Yes, and it's called room service.”

“I don't want room service. I want to eat at my favorite restaurant in New York, with my date.”

She didn't say anything. Arguing with the man had done no good in anything they'd butted heads over so far. He'd only agreed to the cane after he'd proved her case for her. “How about we get it to go?”

“No. We're going to go in, sit at the quiet booth I've reserved, and if you want me to I will sling my leg up in the bench beside me to have it elevated. We can eat good food and relax with no responsibilities hanging over our heads. No one asking for interviews, or pictures. Have a little wine. Can I have wine with those pills?”

“No. I know I say that a lot, but you always want a little bit more, don't you? I want to go to dinner. I want to eat where I want to eat. I want to have pain pills and wine.” She shook her head, but the tension she'd been feeling had already started to drain away. Probably had started the moment that he'd agreed to use the cane. It made it easier to tease him back. “How did you stay alive this long? Luck? Your looks?”

“Yep.” He reached over, wiggled an arm behind her around her waist, and slid her over to him. “Fate lets me get by with stuff because I'm too pretty to smite.”

She laughed even though she knew it just egged the fool on. “So that's why Fate sent me. I'm immune to your prettiness.”

The car rolled to a stop and the doorman came to open their door. “You just adore me for my winning personality? Or is it my body? I feel so cheap.”

And yet he grabbed his cane and got out of the car, stepped to the side and offered her a hand.

“This is not a date,” she said, taking the offered hand if for no other reason than civility—even if she was currently ignoring the fact that navigating car doors in this dress wasn't really in her usual skill set. “And no wine. Or I'm going to whine.”

“Fine, fine. No wine. But I'm eating red meat and you can't stop me.” He passed her hand through the crook of his elbow and led the way inside. “I come here whenever I'm in New York, they have a couple of great private booths. And if you want, I'm sure they'll even bring out a bag of crushed ice. Which I will use, in the interests of making my date happy.”

“This is not a date.” Grace repeated herself, this time more quietly as they wandered through the restaurant to the promised private back corner booth.

“Okay,” he whispered back. “In the interests of making happy the lovely creature who went to the movies with me, and who is now going to eat with me, I will ask for ice.”

They stopped at the booth and Liam sat on the side that would allow him to kick his leg up on the seat like the heathen he'd better well be if he wanted her to eat dinner with him.

Grace took the other side, and resisted the urge to ask for the ice. He'd said he would do it.

Knowing better than to test her on this—or at least she liked to think that was the reason—he dragged his foot up onto the seat and winked at her.

Menus were place before them and a bottle of the vintage Liam preferred presented to him. “No wine tonight. Water. Iced tea maybe?” He looked at Grace.

“Just water for me.” She looked at the menu, but the prospect of reading words seemed too much for her. “My feminist core is shrieking, but I don't want to order. Can I just have whatever you're having? I don't think I have any room in my head to make any decisions right now.”

“It's harder than it seems, eh?” he asked.

“The stop and pose, stop and smile, stop and shake hands, stop and sign things, stop and chitchat route to the movie?”

“It was better tonight. It's always better with someone there but, you know, as much as we've avoided one another for the past several years, it's been really great to have you here, Grace. I hope that's all right for me to say.”

She smiled, looking down as she did so, and nodded. “You too. When you're not being infuriating. I forgot how much of a playful charmer you can be. All I've really seen is Actor Man, he of the thousand faces, since... You know.”

She cut that thought off sharply, and scrambled for something else to say. She wouldn't bring that subject up now. Their forty-eight hours together were almost done. From tomorrow on they could see one another once a day, she'd go back to her less glittery existence, and he'd stay out in the limelight, adored by millions.

“The little boy...”

“Brody.” He said the name she'd missed.

“You asked his name?”

“He offered it. Brody, the budding physical therapist.” He lifted his pants leg and showed off the colorful bandage still plastered to his taped ankle.

“You were really great with him. As much as you say that this stuff drains you, it doesn't show. It didn't show. It only showed last night because of the limping, I think, otherwise no one would've known.”

“I like kids. I don't really remember ever being that age. I mean, I remember being in kindergarten and, you know, young grades, but my life was...”

Bad. She knew his childhood had been really hard. She had always known that his mother had died from an overdose, but she just didn't know any real details. Before he'd told her about the book. That had cleared up all her confusion in a way that gave absolutely no other details. It had hurt him to even tell her that much, and it had hurt to hear it. She didn't want him to have to go through anything else like that tonight.

“Complicated,” she offered quickly, giving him an out in case he, too, wanted to avoid dissecting painful memories.

If she had her way, she'd know every single part of him, from his past, to the way he thought, to all his future plans... But it really wasn't her right to ask any probing personal questions. No matter how nice they both agreed it had been to be around each other again, he wasn't going to be around that long. Once he was back on his feet, her usefulness would be at an end.

* * *

“Complicated.” Liam echoed the word. His childhood wasn't high on his list of things to talk about tonight. The waiter arrived and he tried to think of the least drippy foods to order, and shifted conversation on.

His list of things to talk about really only had two items: that night and that trench coat.

But that felt like an after-dinner conversation. So he steered them back toward small talk, safe and focused on subjects that would make her feel comfortable.

Memories they'd shared after Liam had been placed in foster care near the Watsons' home, and how he'd befriended Nick.

How she'd ended up at The Hollywood Hills Clinic.

Why she'd left professional sports.

Things he'd never let himself know about her, even when he'd wanted to know.

“I saw you once at a game,” he said, as their dinner plates were taken away. “You were working on one of the players' knees. You want dessert? I want dessert.”

The dessert he wanted definitely wasn't on the menu, but in the interest of sublimating his carnal desires...

“I don't think I need one.”

“Split one. They have this chocolate cake thing with fruit that's really good.” He ordered one and then took the ice off his ankle, sat up straighter, and slid toward her in the booth.

“If you don't want to eat it, just take one bite and I'll pretend we split it equally.”

“I could move over there to you so you could keep your foot elevated.”

“It's okay. We're not going to be here much longer anyway. And I think that those pain tablets are kicking in.”

With a nod, Grace went about clearing a spot between them, shifting water bottles and cutlery as needed. Keeping busy.

“Grace, I need to talk about—”

Before he even got the words out her perennially straight posture went rigid, and beneath that California glow he could see her cheeks pinking up.

She still didn't want to talk about it.

“It's not what you think.” He caught her hand before she could tidy any more and dragged it to his lap in the hopes that her attention followed.

“Oh, I'm sure it is.”

“The thing is—and this is pretty selfish of me—I need things to be good between us. And be honest. You don't really owe it to me to listen to my explanations...”

“You really have nothing to explain.” This time, catching her hand didn't settle her down and her voice rose a little as she looked everywhere but at him. “I don't blame you. I'm not mad. It was all my fault. You didn't do anything wrong. I put you into an unwinnable situation because I was young and stupid. Inexperienced in reading people's intentions...”

“Grace?”

“You've become really good at it, not that I blame you. How else are you going to keep out of those kinds of situations, especially now that you're on the Freebie List of at least seventy percent of the married women in North America, and probably a significant number of women abroad?”

“Stop.”

“Barring sexual preferences, of course. Oh, then probably men too. I just couldn't even ballpark a figure on that one.”

“Grace, I wanted you,” he blurted out, his heart suddenly thundering in his ears, and his confession probably carried halfway across the restaurant. The waiter arrived right then and wordlessly placed the plate between them, then placed the silverware and left.

Grace rolled the hand that he held, not pulling away but as if she couldn't dispel the tension in her body unless she moved something.

“Take a bite of this thing. Strawberry. Chocolate brownie thing. Cream. Get all of it. One big bite.” He kept her hand, and she still didn't pull away, but she also didn't look at him, focusing heavily on the dessert instead.

“I'm eating more than one bite of that,” she finally said, and when he let go of her hand, she reached for her spoon.

“You don't have anything to say about my declaration?”

She glanced up, an uneasy smile on her face now. One of her hands slipped up to cover her collarbone protectively, then gave it a little rub. “You mean besides
I don't believe you
?”

“You think I'd yell that in a crowded restaurant if it was a lie?”

“I think...you're trying to make things right.” She chose her words slowly and carefully, he could see, but the self-comforting actions had already started. “And I appreciate that, but you don't have to.”

He reached over and pulled her hand from her chest, once more holding it in his own as the other fiddled listlessly with her spoon.

“What are you doing?”

“Comforting you,” he murmured. “You covered your jugular notch, it's a self-comforting technique. Women often do that when they're feeling unsettled or emotionally unsafe, while men usually rub the back of the neck... There are other things that could be called tells. Like when you got out of the pool and you saw me there, your feet were pointed toward the closest door, and I knew you wanted to run.”

“I wanted to go to the locker room and get dressed. And please don't do that,” she muttered, bouncing the spoon in her fingers, having yet to use it for anything useful.

“Don't hold your hand?”

“Don't tell me what I'm feeling based on what my extremities are doing!”

“Fine. How about I tell you this instead: I wanted to drag you into that apartment, tear off every scrap of black lace, and make sure that you could
never
forget me. That's the truth.” It was still the truth, but not one he was going to admit. He still wanted her in a way that defied logic, in a way he still had to fight his way through even when she was quarreling with him. “But because I couldn't have what I wanted—which was you, in case you're not paying good enough attention—I tried to forget it. To forget you. But I never didn't want you, Grace. You didn't read me wrong.”

The spoon she bounced on her finger slipped and clattered off the table and onto the floor. She didn't reach for it; instead, she finally looked him in the eyes again, the kind of measuring look that at least said he had her complete attention. She was trying to decide what she thought.

“You were off-limits. I wasn't kidding when I said that your home and family were my safe place.” She
had
to believe him. These confessions weren't easy, and if they were for nothing? “Or how much you all meant to me. Nick is my best friend, I love your family like my own. More than my own. They never measured up when they were around. It wasn't a rejection, I just didn't know how to do it right. You weren't the only one who was young and stupid. I may be older, but I'm definitely not the smarter of the two of us.”