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“I just mean,” he continued, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “that you both seem to get along very well.” There was a tightness around his mouth and a stubborn set to his jaw.
Cora narrowed her eyes. “We do.”
“That’s great. I’m glad.” He nodded a little too quickly, as if he were trying to convince himself of something. “He’s a good man. Don’t you think?”
Oh, no.Was Liam trying to foist her off on Finn?Please, no.Anything but this. Her cheeks burned with mortification. It was bad enough suffering through his rejection, but it was downright insulting to realize he was trying to steer her affections toward someone else. Did he think she was some pathetic loser? That her emotions were such fickle things she could so easily be pushed into the arms of another man?
“And he knows how to throw a punch,” Liam added thoughtfully. “It’s not a skill you’d want to claim in polite company, granted, but any man worth his salt should know how to—”
“Stop.” If she had to live through one more second of Liam’s poorly concealed matchmaking, she was going to throw herself from the car. “I don’t feel well. Can you just...not talk, please?”
Liam studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment in which she prayed he couldn’t see the humiliation burning just under her skin. Finally he said, “Aye, I can do that.”
Cora sank lower into the seat with a sigh. A few minutes later, they arrived home without another word spoken between them, a small mercy for which she was eternally grateful.
By the time the weekend ended, Cora vowed she would stop trying so hard to make the thing between her and Liam into something more. It was too painful to put herself out there when he clearly didn’t want to be in a relationship. He’d even told her as much the first time she’d brought it up. So what if Suzette swore up and down that he was into her? Suzette had been wrong about guys before, and she had a trail of exes to prove it. Besides, Cora knew Liam was attracted to her on a physical level, but that wasn’t enough to build a future on. Every jilted lover throughout history knew that. She couldn’t keep going down this road if he wasn’t even willing to meet her halfway. Heck, he was speeding down a different track altogether if he was trying to throw her at Finn.
The embarrassment of that whole elevator incident still rankled whenever she thought about it. One minute she was locked in Liam’s embrace while he said the sweetest things, every whispered word stealing away pieces of her heart like a thief in the night, and the next... They were having a stilted conversation in the car about how great Finn was. What hurt the most was how Liam seemed to believe she was so easily malleable, as if the feelings she had toward him could be diverted with just a few casual suggestions. If he believed that, then he had no idea how she truly felt. And maybe he didn’t deserve to know.
From now on, she had to focus her energy on dreams within reach. The cottage at the edge of town, for example. She’d been wanting to buy it for years. It was going up for sale at the end of the summer, and she was finally in a financial position to make a competitive offer on it. The thought of living in her beautiful dream home with the picket fence and babbling brook should’ve been enough to lift her spirits. It always had in the past, but now there was a dull ache in the pit of her stomach she refused to identify.
Focus on what you can control, she reminded herself for the zillionth time as she headed into work Monday morning. Logically, it was good, sound advice. Now all she had to do was get her emotions to fall in line.
7
“HAPPY MONDAY MORNING, Officer O’Connor,” Mavis sang out from the reception desk. Today the station receptionist was wearing a canary yellow sweater with matching dangly earrings, and her hair was puffed up extra high with some sort of invisible pomade.
Liam grinned and stepped into the sweet, citrusy cloud of perfume hovering around her desk. “Mavis, you’re like a bright ray of sunshine this fine morning.”
She gave a trademark giggle-snort and pointed to a box of doughnuts. “Bear claw? Better take one while you can. Otto just brought them in and they never last longer than thirty minutes.”
Liam reached into the box and pulled out a flaky pastry, remembering a time when the closest he ever got to food like this was in his dreams. “Thank you, Mavis. This is just what I needed.” Cora had left early that morning, making some excuse about meeting a friend for coffee, so he’d slept in by accident and didn’t take the time for breakfast. He didn’t often oversleep, but the tension between him and Cora was taking its toll, and he’d tossed and turned all night.
Before he could sink his teeth into the delicious pastry, Boyd called down the hall, “O’Connor, my office.”
Liam let out a long-suffering groan under his breath, much to Mavis’s amusement. Then he gave her a conspiratorial wink and turned to follow Boyd down the hall.
Cora was already seated in Boyd’s office when Liam entered. She glanced up and gave him a perfunctory nod. This song and dance they’d been doing all weekend rankled on his last nerve. Ever since his slipup in the elevator, she’d been polite but distant. He hated that she felt the need to guard herself from him, but could he blame her? If he had that moment in the elevator to do over again, he’d never have allowed himself to embrace her and say the things he said. But she’d been so soft and sweet, and he’d lost his mind to the moment.
All weekend afterward, he’d mentally kicked himself for acting on impulse and being so reckless. It would’ve been so easy for him to just stay on the patio and let the scene inside Finn’s living room play out as it should. Liam had gone out to watch the stars with the pretense of getting fresh air, but really it was to give them some time alone. He’d dozed off for a bit, and when next he woke, it was to the sight of Finn displaying his naked back to Cora. She was leaning over him, peering at the tattoo across Finn’s shoulders.
Filled with jealousy, Liam had jackknifed off the lounge chair, then reminded himself this was exactly what he’d wanted. They were supposed to get close. They were supposed tofall in love. That was the whole reason he’d been tossed back to earth. Still, when Finn took his shirt off and Cora leaned in closer, Liam found himself yanking open the patio door without thinking. If he’d just stayed outside for a while longer, maybe things would’ve gone differently. But instead, he’d let his jealousy get the best of him. He’d been too pigheaded and stubborn to rein it in, and now here they were. That was always his problem when it came to her. Even with his soul on the line, he still couldn’t get past his own selfish emotions. When was he ever going to learn?
Liam half hoped the angels would’ve paid him a visit on Finn’s patio that night, but they were being evasive as usual. He doubted they’d do much more than chastise him for his actions, anyway, but even that had a certain comfort to it. Their presence reminded him that he wasn’t alone.
“Do you understand?” Boyd asked, piercing Liam with his bloodshot, narrowed gaze.
Liam sat up straighter, trying to hide the fact that he hadn’t been listening. For the first time that day, he took a moment to really study Boyd, and shock rippled through him at the man’s appearance. Growing up together, Liam had witnessed his old friend hungry, angry, desperate, and beaten down. He’d seen Boyd harassed by landlords, townspeople, and even his unhappy wife. But Liam had never seen him like this.
Bloated from years of too much food and not enough exercise, he looked unhealthy. His skin was pasty from lack of sun, and his florid face reflected a clear lack of sleep and an overabundance of alcohol. There were deep, shadowed grooves beneath his red-rimmed eyes causing an almost ghoulish cast to his appearance. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Boyd looked worse than the time he’d hidden in the woods for three weeks avoiding a debt collector.
When Liam didn’t answer fast enough, Boyd’s neck began to grow red around his collar. Cora came to his rescue. “We understand, Captain Thompson. In fact, we’re planning to interview Slice again today.”
“The kid?” Boyd sat back in his chair, rubbing his chin as he considered it. “Yes. See if you can’t scare any more information out of him. Arresting Wally Jensen from that dive motel was an exercise in futility. The man was useless. By the time he sobered up, all he could do was wail about his ex-girlfriend.”
“He said someone contacted him anonymously, paying him to spray-paint over those cameras outside the Booze Dogs’ compound the night the money was stolen,” Cora said. “I was hoping there’d be more to the story.”
Boyd shook his head. “We interviewed his ex, and she only repeated what we already knew. Someone in that motorcycle club is lying.”
