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Liam seemed distracted, and without knowing how his brother was, she couldn’t blame him. “Wanna get a cup of warm milk or green tea from the courtesy kitchen?”
“That sounds good.”
Sleep could wait. Her client needed company right now.
And she didn’t mind his company either.
****
“I’m your first client?”
Callie stirred her drink. “Technically, Mr. Quinlan is our first client.”
“I’ll be paying the bill myself. Trent only facilitated a referral. Plus, I don’t want to be indebted to him.” Liam’s voice trailed off before taking a long drink of his horchata. “Trent said you’re old friends?”
Callie stirred her cup of horchata the receptionist had created for them. “Something like that.”
A crash sounded against the portico on the west side of the building, and Callie jumped.
Liam reached over and pressed his hand on hers. “We’re safe in here. Meg and Paul chose a place that has one of the highest safety ratings for hurricanes. I asked them to.”
Better safe than sorry.
Liam’s concern and his strength settled into her like a warm blanket on a cold, rainy day. She stared at the skin-to-skin connection. The touch wasn’t just friendly. It was intimate. Silky sensations overwhelmed her with possibilities and instigated errant thoughts of making this tropical stay one she would always remember. But what would Liam think if he knew about her and Trent? She pushed the thought from her head. Right now, he was sweet and caring, and a part of her needed the connection, if only for a few hours. Then they could go back to business and formalities in the morning.
Liam’s dimples hollowed adorable divots as he smiled. “We’re in a tropical paradise and there’s no need to think of what lies beyond the front door because obviously, we’re not going anywhere for a while.” He gave a squeeze and let go.
She missed the connection instantly. Shaking off the craving for more, she sipped from her mug and let the warm liquid fill the space that caverned with yearning. The smooth and sweet drink reminded Callie of the man across from her.
She sipped more. “This is my kind of paradise. No worries, lots of delicious horchata with enough sugar for a cavity and a little warmth of cinnamon to make me feel all relaxed. Perfect.”
Liam tried to crack his neck. “I’m afraid relaxing isn’t in the cards for me tonight. Don’t know what I did, but my neck is killing me. I’m hoping the spa opens tomorrow.” He sipped his drink.
Callie remembered her little impromptu lap dance. “I think some of that might be my fault.”
His eyes narrowed in on her. “How’s that?”
“Um, my little tumble in the plane? I think I probably twisted your head.” She mumbled, “With my boobs.”
He burst out laughing and almost spilled his drink. “Ms. Laurel, I don’t think that’s the problem. If anything, I really enjoyed…” He stopped and shook his head. “I won’t finish that, but that definitely wasn’t the worst part of my day.”
Their gazes held, and she could feel him remembering the incident as vividly as she did.
She crossed her legs, and Liam glanced to her thighs. Her stomach did the same dip as earlier in the day when they’d touched down in Monterrey. A little anticipation and a little fear mixed perfectly in her body to cause a ripple of exhilaration. The short shorts showed off exactly what she attempted to conceal daily, but by his lingering glance he didn’t seem to mind. Callie set her drink down and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.
“Where did you learn the fancy shadow puppets?” she asked, trying to get his attention to move topics and his gaze to move locations.
Liam’s eyes twinkled in the candlelight. “Self-taught as a child. I loved reading at night under covers with a flashlight. My father would ignore it when he came to check on me. But my mother would burrow under the blankets and help me make shapes. We created quite the menagerie together.”
Callie wished she had memories like that of her mother, but the last memory she had was of her parents fighting about something so inconsequential that she couldn’t remember now and was positive her father had forgotten immediately. Her mother had rushed from the house crying. In seconds, screaming tires sounded from the end of the block, metal crunching, then a blaring horn that didn’t stop. Her father had run to the scene but insisted on Callie waiting back on the front porch.
She hadn’t.
Seeing her mother frozen in time would never leave her memory. Fate had been cruel to take her mother, but to steal her father before he could enjoy grandkids and before he’d found love again … to her, that was brutal. A part of Callie wondered if he’d stayed single as punishment. After watching him languish in grief, Callie told herself that if she found love she wouldn’t be afraid to let herself feel without fear, but she’d tried that with Trent and that method had backfired. But maybe she’d just had the wrong man, not the wrong mindset. Sitting across from Liam made her shiver with both hope and fear.
“You were quite creative with your dorky stork.”
Liam laughed. “You should see my cocky peacock.”
