“Oh-kayyyy?”
“See, if there’s no place in town for you two to stay, you’ll have to stay with me, right?”
“Or sleep in the car. Or head back to Syracuse,” Liam said slowly. “Or a thousand other things.”
“Stop talking sense, Liam. This is O’Leary. Around here, logic is always the last resort.”
He chuckled reluctantly. “Okay, fine. So I stay with you. Because there’sliterallyno other option. And?”
“And…boom. Movaries.”
Liam blinked. “What?”
I shifted on the seat and waved a hand in the air. “Clearly the intense attraction between us will be too much to resist and we’ll be fu”—I glanced at Hazel, wondering if maybe Parker was right about my foul language, and swallowed—“fa la la-ingbefore the night is out.”
I rolled my eyes like the notion was outrageous, but… every fucking time the guy moved, all I could smell was his cologne—something orangey and spicy—and something vanilla too, like residual frosting. And it was a measure of how far I’d sunk over the past few hours that despite our whole shitty history and the kid sneaking glances at us from across the table, I was sorely tempted to lick him just to see if he tasted as good as he smelled.
“Wow,” Liam said. His nose wrinkled and his eyes danced. “Fa la la-ing? You have a gift for euphemisms.”
I shrugged. “I swear like a trucker. I’m trying to control myself.”
“Right, so.” He ran a hand over his forehead tiredly. “The people of your town are trying to find you someone tofa la lawith? That’s… odd, no? Have you alreadyfa la la-edthe entire local populace, and they need to import new people?”
I dug my fingers into my knee under the tabletop. The note of jealousy in his voice was probably my own wishful thinking, but the way the idea made my cock twitch was very, very real.
“I’m not a guy who talks about how many people he’sfa la la-ed, Liam.” Especially when the number was mortifyingly low over the past five years. “Besides, it’s much more insidious than that. See, once we’ve…fa la la-ed, it’s just a hop skip and a jump to us forgetting our history, losing our minds, and falling for each other again. Then someone will be repainting the Welcome to O’Leary sign to say Population 1076.”
“That’s…” He paused and blinked. “Okay, I don’t even know what that is. Besides ridiculous. Obviously.”
“Absurd,” I agreed.
Liam cleared his throat and didn’t look at me. “Hazel, two more bites of ice cream and we’ve gotta go. It’s already dark outside, and we’ve got a long drive to find a hotel.”
Hazel paused, spoon halfway to her mouth, and stared at him in horror. “What? But no! Daddy, we said we’d stay! I’m going to eat a cinnamon roll with amountain of frostingfor breakfast.”
“You heard the part where no one has a place for us to stay, right?” He huffed out a breath. “If we leave right now, you can still have your cinnamon roll in the morning. We have to come back here tomorrow anyway to finish up our business.” Liam pushed to his feet and grabbed his wallet out of his pocket.
“But, Daddy!” she whined.
“Hazel,” he said, clearly at the end of his patience. “Enough.We’re leaving. Now.”
It hit me again, just like it had hit me back at the bakery when he was talking about croup and hospitals, that it must be a fucking hard thing to parent a kid. Just the stamina required to resist those eyes was a lot.
“But…” Hazel turned those giant, weaponized brown eyes on me. “Gideon, can’t we stay with you? In one of your spare bedrooms? In your big old house?”
She batted her eyelashes, stuck out her lower lip, and clasped her hands—one of which was still wrapped around her drippy spoon—beneath her chin. It was hilarious, aggravating, and charming all at once.Irresistible, I would have said, but in truth I could resist it.
“No, we cannot. And since when do you invite yourself places?” Liam left some cash on the table. “There’ll still be plenty of sugar left in this towntomorrowwhen we come back. Get moving.”
Liam looked… truly drained. Worn thin. Still gorgeous, because life would be too easy if I could find a way to turn off this unwelcome attraction. But those pretty green eyes used to be carefree, bubbling over with enthusiasm, and now they looked defeated, which was unacceptable.
Yeah, Liam wasnotmy responsibility, and yeah, I was royallypissedat the whole situation—at him for leavingandat him for coming back, at myself for still giving a shit, at the town for their conniving—but it didn’t seem to matter. I couldn’t see him truly distressed and just… ignore it.
Unlike Hazel’s pout, sad Liamwasirresistible.
“Youshouldstay at my house,” I announced.
Liam looked at me, a tiny line between his eyes. “But youjusttold me—”
