“We need to eat. Don’t you cook?”
“Not if I can avoid it.”
He put oil in a hot pan and added the egg mixture. The man looked like he knew what he was doing.
“I don’t mind it. Most days I don’t have time.”
She sat at the kitchen counter and watched him channel his best impression of a short order cook. It was hot, even while he was wearing her bathrobe.
A few minutes later Liam placed a plate full of food in front of her.
“This looks amazing.”
“Taste it and tell me if it needs anything so I get mine right.” He winked.
There were onions, feta, spinach, and a spice she didn’t recognize. “Heaven.”
Before she could butter her toast, he had managed a second omelet for himself and was taking a place beside her.
“This is really good, Liam. Thank you.”
He took a bite, nodded. “A little bacon would round it off perfectly.”
“Love bacon, just hate cooking it.”
“Bake it in the oven. No mess.”
“Really?”
“Yup. The way my mom always did.”
“I’ll have to try that.”
Avery sipped her coffee and watched him finish.
He glanced over. “You’re done?”
She wasn’t about to tell him her normal breakfast was java alone. “I’m stuffed.”
He pulled her plate over and dug into the last few bites. “You drained me.”
She leaned back and placed her foot in his lap. “Worth it?”
“Just need to fuel up so we can do it again.”
“First you won’t, now you don’t want to stop.”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back. “Need to make up for lost time.”
Avery laughed.
“What is on your agenda today?” he asked.
“I was going to stop by the Lankford property for a couple hours.”
“Working on Saturday?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve heard your phone buzzing constantly.”
“True, but most of the time construction stops on the weekends.” He started absentmindedly rubbing her foot that rested in his lap.
“I want this job done. Especially after Sheldon asked me out.”
Liam’s hands stopped. “He what?”
“Don’t stop.” She wiggled her foot before placing the second one in his lap for attention. “Yeah. Out of the blue. I’m thinking no. And hell no. I work for him. Even if I didn’t . . . no.”
“So you don’t want to date the man. Got it.” Liam smiled.
“I told him I was seeing someone.”
Liam pointed a finger to his chest and mouthed the word me.
Avery rolled her eyes. “No, James, the doorman.”
“I knew he had a thing for you.”
“You would think I’m seeing someone would end the discussion. Not with Sheldon, he practically quizzed me. Said if it was new, then he would check back with me later. The whole thing struck me as weird. Uncomfortable.”
“Like wool on bare skin?”
She took a hasty drink of her coffee. “No, like bile coming up your throat. I’m overreacting, but I didn’t like the whole exchange. Especially on the heels of him asking you to take the job.”
Liam rubbed her feet a little harder. “Asking me to what?”
“Okay, so right before the awkward date request, he asked that I inquire with you about taking the remodeling job.”
“He wants to do it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t think it was very ethical of me to suggest someone I’m seeing do the job. Like insider trading.”
Liam’s slow smile went full force.
“What?”
“You just admitted, twice, that we’re a thing.”
She slid her feet off his lap. “I did not.”
Liam reached down and pulled her feet back up. “You did, too. But you’re right. Unless Sheldon knew we were dating and wasn’t going to use our relationship against us, I would have to pass.”
Avery ignored the fact he said dating and relationship in the same sentence. “I’m glad you agree. Do you know anyone else who can do the work?”
“Tell you what, I’ll get ahold of this Sheldon guy and take this off your plate. I have a couple companies that do similar work I can refer.”
She started to relax. “Okay, but you can’t tell him about us.”
There his smile went again.
This time she swung her feet off his lap and stood.
“I’ll tell him I’m unavailable for the job, unless you want to tell him we’re a thing.”
She picked up her dish with his and kissed him briefly. “Thanks, and thanks for breakfast.”
“What are you doing next Sunday?”
“I don’t know, why?” She turned the faucet on to rinse the dishes before placing them in the washer.
“I want you to meet my family.”
The plate slid out of her hands and crashed in the sink. The racket made them both jump.
Liam was at her side and peering down to assess the damage. Nothing broken.
“Too soon?” he asked.
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” And she didn’t.
He took her hands in his and kissed her fingertips. “It’s okay. We have all the time in the world.”
“Normally I would plague Trina with this, but since she’s AWOL—”
“On her honeymoon,” Shannon corrected.
“Honeymoon, AWOL, whatever. He’s calling us a thing, Shannon. Asking me to dinner with his family. He spent the night. The whole night. I don’t do that. I never do that. Even if I accidentally fall asleep, I certainly don’t wake up the next morning, eat the breakfast he cooked—and yes, Liam cooks. I don’t get up and continue to spend almost the whole weekend with him.” It was Monday morning, and Avery hovered over her Starbucks, talking on the phone and sliding into her car. She’d waited until eight o’clock to call, and now she was going to be late to the Lankford estate. But a girl did need to sleep. After Liam left, she was sexually limp and exhausted.
“What has you more upset, the fact he is into you or you’re into him?”
Avery turned over the engine and made sure her Bluetooth was working before tossing her phone in her purse. Careful with her coffee, she pulled out of the parking space to join the droves of cars clogging up the roads.
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“I don’t think it’s more complicated. You don’t do long-term. We all get that. I will let your future therapist discover why. In the meantime, stop and ask yourself this: Does Liam make you happy?”
“Yes.” She turned onto the road. “And frustrated, and anxious . . . nervous. He makes me nervous.”
“Like you’re afraid he is going to hurt you nervous?”
“No, nothing like that. He wouldn’t raise a hand to me.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” Shannon said. “Emotionally. Are you fearing he will damage something inside of you?”
Avery stopped at the light and paused her thoughts. If any of them knew the deep pain of love unrequited, it was Shannon.
“Maybe. Yes . . . I don’t know. This is all new for me, and I don’t know how to walk on this road.”
“One step at a time. That’s how you do this. If there is something in the road that is going to hurt, walk around it, or over it. Or through it. If it stops feeling good, end it. If it only gets better—”
Avery cut her off with a moan.
“There is the crux of this issue. You’re afraid it will get better.”
“I will do something to fuck it up.”
“I’m not sure where that is coming from.”
She crawled onto the freeway. “Why is this so hard?”
“Relationships aren’t always perfect.”
“It’s not a relationship.”
Shannon filled the line with laughter.
Chapter Twenty
Avery was systematically closing up one room at a time in the Lankford estate. The ones that took the most time, and were often the most lucrative in terms of lost treasures, were offices and attics. She had every intention of lowering the ladder to the top floor of the house after one last run through the home office.
She’d boxed the trinkets she’d suggested Sheldon look over after he denied the need. The paperwork that might come into play was in temporary file folders and boxed for storage until everything in the estate was sold and gone. Then it could all be tossed in an incinerator.
Avery started on one end of the room, looking for the unconventional, but almost always there, hidden spaces. The built-in bookcases didn’t look suspect, but she tapped on them anyway. She climbed on a ladder to look above the dust and see if there was something that might be concealed.
When she didn’t see anything, she stepped out of the office and looked at the span of walls between one room and the other.
Nope. No hidden room.
She pulled cushions off the sofa and dragged it away from the wall. Only dust.
The unused chair behind the desk was pushed out of the way, and Avery dropped to her knees.
She chilled.
This she’d done before. For Trina. The idea had come to Avery because she’d found a hidden drawer in her father’s desk as a child. She’d been hiding in his office, a place she wasn’t welcome to play, and stumbled upon it. Her father kept papers in his hidden space, papers that at the time, Avery couldn’t read. By the time she was old enough to see what was so important that they were hidden where no one else could find them, she’d forgotten they were there.
Until the Hamptons.
Until the weekend Trina had gone off to meet her now husband for a weekend trip and Avery was rummaging around Trina’s late husband’s space.
She hadn’t found treasures.
She’d found blood.
And that’s when everything started to fall apart.