style="font-size:15px;"> She couldn’t take it if he once more failed to live up to them.
TIME TICKED ON. Grace met with Liam daily to check on him, changed his exercise regimen and measured his progress every other day. The days that she didn’t see him he still came in to use the pool. Exercise in only his hotel’s pool limited his ability to exercise several times a day so lately he’d spent more time there than the twenty minutes she prescribed three times a day.
And not once in all that time had Liam’s poker face slipped an inch. She had no idea whether or not her words to him had made a difference, all she knew was that she was out of gumption to chase things.
Three days ago she’d added dry-ground exercises to his program, in addition to the pool strengthening techniques. They’d see him through to the start of his first project, and he’d reached the point that he didn’t need monitoring. That meant today he was being discharged from supervised rehabilitation.
Grace stepped out of her office, clipboard in hand with the discharge paperwork snapped in, and headed to the pool therapy room, hoping to catch him before he got into the water.
“Liam?” She called him out of the locker room.
Hearing a splash, she turned back to the pool in time to see him rising above the closest edge, every muscle in the man’s arms and chest flexed, the tattoos he bore on his shoulder rippling in some breath-catching combination of strength and water running off tanned skin.
The clipboard in her hand felt as heavy as her tongue.
This was it. This moment was the end of whatever insanity they’d been cycling through for the past three weeks. She’d talked to him before about the papers, now she just had to find some way to remind him. Some words to say.
She had nothing.
He was going to let it go without a backward glance. She was probably already in his rearview mirror.
Spinning the clipboard paper side out, she gave it a little shake and then laid it on a nearby bench with the pen.
There. Message delivered.
She showed him her keys too as farewell, then turned and hurried out.
Someone else would lock up. They stayed late. She needed to go.
At least this time it wasn’t humiliation eating a hole in her, even if he clearly didn’t want her as badly as she wanted him.
Whatever it was could just remain undefined. She didn’t have any energy left to roll it around in her mind. Not when there was wine chilling in her fridge and yoga pants waiting for her.
* * *
A knock on the door interrupted Grace’s night of sulking and drinking.
She flopped back against the plush pillows on her couch and stared at the ceiling.
It was probably Nick. Yesterday, when she’d called him to catch up, she’d refused to talk about Liam and had hoped that would be the end of it, but that’s never how things went with her protective older brother.
At least since her accident. Before that mess he’d pretty much left her to her own devices when it came to the guys she dated. Which probably informed his protectiveness now because no matter if she chose hot bad boys to date, they were never good for her. And they were never a good enough stand-in for Liam for her to keep playing that game when it became clear to her how fragile her hold on this life could be.
Another knock came, but no yelling. Not Nick.
She took another drink of her wine to fortify herself, and to empty her third glass, set it down and peel herself up off the couch.
Emboldened by booze, she flipped off one security device after another, locks and stoppers designed to allow her to peek without subjecting herself to the danger of a full door opening.
But the security in her building was too good for that to be a real issue.
She flung the door open and there Liam stood.
Or leaned, one shoulder resting against her doorjamb, hair wet and disheveled, his black T-shirt clinging to him like he’d not taken the time to even dry himself properly before throwing his clothes on and coming to find her.
The heat and hunger in his eyes sent sparks licking all over her body and burned away any doubts she’d been nursing through her second glass of wine.
Once again she was struck by her inability to predict this man.
“I don’t have a trench coat,” he said finally when she’d failed to come up with even a single word of greeting. “Can I come in anyway?”
Instead of answering, Grace reached directly for his belt and dipped her fingers into the front of his jeans. Soft hair brushed the backs of her fingers and she closed her hand around the buckle to tug him insistently through her apartment door.
One step inside and she launched herself against him, arms flying around his shoulders as she pressed as close as she could get, hungry mouth glued to his.
He managed to close the door and flip some locks, then she was against the wall, the tank top she’d donned to laze around the house inched up. Soon her belly burned with the heat of his firm, muscled torso against her.
More. She wanted more skin, the only thought strong enough to barrel through years of need coiling in her belly.
When her shirt reached her arms she let go of Liam long enough for him to whisk the material over her head.
He tossed the flimsy tank top and then stepped away from her, his eyes rolling down her body, which heated her skin too, just not as well as his skin against hers.
She once more closed the distance between them, needing his flesh against her. Before she could slide her arms around his shoulders once more, his hands landed on her hips and he pressed her back against the wall, falling to one knee as he did so.
He was going to hurt himself. A trickle of rationality made it through her fuzzy brain. “Your ankle.” The get-up he had on might be meant to tantalize, but he’d still known better than to take off the boot cast he’d been in since they’d returned from New York.
“It’s fine,” he said, pressing his face against the flat plane of her belly, then trailing wet kisses from one hip to the other, the stubble he wore so well rasping along her skin.
When he dug his fingers into the waist of the pants and dragged them down, along with the flimsy panties, she realized his intention.
No sooner had they wrestled her legs from the cotton tangle than he had one of her legs over his shoulder and his hot mouth pressed into her.
His tongue stroked and his lips plucked as if he were starved for her, as if he’d spent every night for the past six years dreaming of exactly this. She couldn’t tell whose moans were louder.
All she could do was grab the frame
