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“Okay. You buying all these?” Liam asked, placing them onto the cashier desk.
“Yeah. I don’t have that many dresses, so I figured I’d add to my wardrobe as I’m going home with you.” I handed my charge card over to the sales assistant and turned to Callie. “What happened to the dress you had?”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to leave you two. I have some things to do before I head in to work in a couple of hours.” Callie started to back away from us.
“You sure?”
“Positive. I’d probably puke anyway.” She turned and headed out the store.
Liam took hold of the bags with my dresses and ushered me out of the store to a new café that had opened across the road.
I had slight misgivings about going home with Liam this summer. He…us…confused me. Was I his girlfriend or just a friend? He was gorgeous in so many ways. Tall, slim but still athletic and his blonde hair and blue eyes gave him the appearance of the All American Boy. All the girls on campus wanted his attention, but for some reason he was interested in me.
As I admitted to Callie last night, we hadn’t gotten to the hot and sweaty part of dating yet, and I wasn’t too sure I wanted to. We got along fairly well, but I didn’t get all hot and bothered in his presence. No tingles or wet panties. Even walking beside him, all I felt was the warmth of friendship.
Standing outside the Italian café in the sweltering heat we scanned the menu in the hopes that they had something worth eating. “Aha.” I slid my finger past the list of sandwiches and brought it to rest on the lasagna and garlic bread – just what I wanted.
Liam glanced over my finger and grinned, “You are feeling better if you’re looking at that.”
“I’m hungry now. What about you?” I grinned.
“I think I’ll have the same. Come on, let’s go and order.”
Liam opened the door for me and we stepped into the dim interior. A maître’d cleared his throat before he led us to the terrace out back, sitting us in the shade.
We placed our order with the server and sat back to relax while I let the breeze cool my skin. The café hadn’t been open long, so everything still looked new and fresh. Our table was beside the garden, which had a manmade stream flowing through, with brightly colored flowers along both sides of the embankment. How they’d managed to create a beautiful garden oasis in the middle of the city was beyond me.
I glanced at Liam. “Will you tell me more about your family? What to expect?”
He laughed. “It might scare you off if I do.”
“They can’t be as bad as my parents.”
“Not really. I guess.” Liam knew all about my parents. He took a sip of his water and peered at me, his blue eyes sparkling in mirth. He was obviously enjoying this. “Okay. My father is a lawyer and has his own law practice, which he jointly owns with an old friend of his, Lewis. My older brother, Jack is engaged to marry Lewis’ daughter, Mia.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.” Surprise turned to confusion. Why hadn’t he told me before? We’d had the sibling conversation during one of our earlier dates; if that’s what you’d call them, and he never mentioned a brother.
“Yeah. They’re getting married over the summer, Jack’s twenty-five, and studying to be a lawyer. He’s been groomed since we were kids to take our father’s place at the law firm. Dad wants him to settle into life as a family lawyer, whereas Jack has always held a fascination in criminal law. He’s the golden boy because he’s studying law,” he sneered.
“I take it you don’t get along too well with him?”
“We get along well enough or at least we used to do. He seems angry all the time.”
God, did I want to head to Alabama? Yeah, I did – one word – cowboys. Besides, I liked weddings, I’d had the pleasure of being a bridesmaid at twelve weddings in my twenty-one years, so it would be fun to go to one in Alabama.
“Thalia, let’s eat and talk about something else. My stomach can’t take anymore talk about my family.”
Chapter 3
Thalia
In the process of trying to pull my skinny jeans up my legs, Callie came barging into my room with a brush stuck in her hair. The ‘stuck brush’ happened nearly every time we were getting ready to go out, often because she was trying to multi task. Multi tasking wasn’t exactly something Callie was capable of, probably why she was a bit hit-and-miss with cooking.
With my jeans finally up around my hips, I left them unbuttoned to try and untangle the brush. “How do you always manage to get this thing tangled?”
“Ouch!”
“Sorry,” I said grinning; my fingers working the mess of hair through the brush.
