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“Youwantto?” I asked her one day.
Mira nodded emphatically. “Bye, Zoe. I go see him.”
And she marched through the connecting gate, juice box in hand, to join him on the back deck, where he was assembling a new grill. While I watched curiously, she clambered up onto a chair, kicking her legs happily as he glanced over his shoulder to verify that I knew she was there.
He arched an eyebrow.
If he were anyone else, someone I was friends with, I might have responded with a confused shrug. But because he was Liam, I arched an eyebrow right back.
Liam set his jaw, then turned back to his assemblage, his mouth moving as he said something to Mira. She giggled.
“Huh,” I said under my breath.
“I’m bringing the girls here for our next book club,” Rosa said. “Martha’s heart may not be able to take it, but it’s worth the risk.”
I refused to ask.
Refused.
But because I wasn’t rude, I made a polite humming sound.
Then I stopped, because damn it, that sounded likehishumming sound, and now I couldn’t help but think about all the times he used it instead of answering.
Was he actually trying to be polite in those moments?
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath.
Rosa ignored me. “You need to join us some night. It’ll do you some good.”
“I know, I know.” I gestured toward the house, the stacks of folders atop my laptop, the toys littering the family room, the dinner mess covering the island. “I’ve been a little busy.”
“Did you read the last one I told you about?” she asked. “The one about the pool boy? Goodness, it was spicy.”
A laugh escaped under my breath. “I didn’t get to it, no. My reading time has been nonexistent. It was hard enough to get through tax season.”
“The curse of people who deal with the numbers,” she said, going up on tiptoe.
Her attention never wavered, and I damn well knew why she wanted her book club friends over here. I gritted my teeth and kept my focus on the pizza dough in front of me, thank you very much.
“Are you sure you don’t want to watch this?”
Her ass was perched in front of the slider overlooking my backyard and, consequently, the pool in Chris and Amie’s backyard.
When Denver had decided to usher in May with a hot spell, Liam took it upon himself to open up Chris and Amie’s pool.
“Positive,” I told her. “I see enough of Liam now to last me the rest ofeternity.” I said the last word with a particularly vicious slap of the pizza dough onto the island. “I don’t need to gawk while he’s doing perfectly normal things.”
Rosa glanced over at the dough, one eyebrow arched. “Easy, dear. The dough hasn’t earned your vitriol.”
With a sigh, I plopped the ball back into its bowl and laid a towel over top so it could rest. “I know.”
“And I don’t care how much you see him. His arms,” she mused. “They should be illegal.”
Theyshould. My face felt suspiciously warm when the agreement registered in my brain, which was why I gave her an annoyed look. She couldn’t even appreciate it because she’d already turned back to the slider, going up on tiptoe to watch whatever his cranky ass was doing.
My vitriol, she’d said.
In the last few days, as one week turned the corner into two, I wasn’t even sure what word I could use to encapsulate what I felt toward Liam.
