Off the Hook (29 page)

And she didn’t doubt that for a second. She just wished there’d been a different way to make it happen, one that wouldn’t have left her standing in a fish shack, not knowing where she’d be standing tomorrow. If her leaving had hurt him a fraction of how much it hurt her when he’d left, then there was a good possibility this was going to go all kinds of wrong. And given the fact they’d all lied to him, wrong was exactly how Kate expected this to go.

She wouldn’t blindside him in front of the guests, though, which was why she’d paced about five miles inside that fish shack, waiting to get the all-clear from Jessie.

But God almighty, how many courses was Olivia serving for dinner tonight? It felt like hours since Finn went up to the lodge, and yet…Okay, so it hadn’t been hours, at least not according to the clock above the sink, but it had been close to an hour and a half.

Ninety long, torturous minutes.

“Come on, people,” she muttered. “Chew, swallow, and get the hell out of there.”

Ever since Liam had called to tell Jessie when he’d be home, Kate had forced herself to believe it would all be fine, that somehow he’d understand why she’d not only lied but why she’d done it in such a horrible way. Leaving the jersey and note was what cemented everything, what made it real.

He’d signed with Oakland and he’d pitched beautifully. He didn’t throw a lot of fastballs, but when he did, he was easily hitting ninety, ninety-two, and he never would have done that pitching to her out behind the lodge. It was what he’d wanted, what he’d worked so hard for, and together they’d all helped to give it to him.

And right up until his arm gave out, everything had worked perfectly.

She could still see the agony in his face when he’d stumbled off the mound that last time, could still hear the commentator describe it as a “spectacularly devastating pitch,” could still taste the salt of tears that wouldn’t stop running down her face.

It wasn’t until she blinked the fish shack into focus that she realized the tears were fresh. Again.

Oh God, what if he didn’t understand? What if he took one look at her and lost his mind on all of them? What if he didn’t want anything to do with her and sent her packing? Then what? She had no job, nowhere to live, she’d used all of her savings to pay the taxes at the Buoys, and the stock options and bonuses she’d received from the Foster Group (right on time) had gone into the down payment on a new boat.

She’d given everything she had to the Buoys—financially, physically, emotionally—and all of that could be wiped out in a matter of minutes.

Ro and Finn had insisted on putting some terms down in writing, so somewhere in Jessie’s office was a used window envelope with their repayment agreement scrawled on the back, but Kate couldn’t have cared less about it.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the money, because she did; it was everything she had. But it didn’t matter one tiny bit how much she had sitting in her bank account if she wasn’t happy, and being at the Buoys was what made her happy. Being at the Buoys with Liam was what made her really happy.

If she was forced to pack up and leave…well…
No,
she wouldn’t think of that. Liam would understand. He’d have to understand.

And yet the second she heard his voice carrying out over the night air toward the fish shack, all her hard work and preparation for this moment didn’t mean shit.

“What’s with that?” she heard him ask. “Are we renting dock space now?”

“No.”

Kate closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. They’d hid a lot of things from Liam over the last six or seven weeks, but it was impossible to hide the twenty-eight-foot Boston Whaler.

“Whose boat is it?” Liam asked, his voice so much closer now. “Wasn’t here when I arrived.”

“That’s ’cause the new guy had it out this afternoon.”

“It’s ours? You guys bought a boat and didn’t tell me? What the fuck’s the matter with you? And where the hell’d we get the money for that?”

“Funny story, actually.” Ronan’s voice on the other side of the door almost made Kate’s heart leap straight out of her chest. “Think I’ll let the new guy fill you in.”

“What the—”

The door swung open and there was Liam, his left hand still wrapped around the doorknob, his right arm immobilized, and his oh-so-blue eyes awash with disbelief, confusion, and a whole lot of shock. He stumbled a step and winced as his right shoulder bounced off Ronan’s.

“Remember how we told you we’d hired a friend of Olivia’s?” Ro half-shoved, half-nudged Liam inside, then shot him a warning look as he started to back out. “We didn’t lie about that, so here, meet the new guy. And be nice; turns out she’s a hell of a good guide.”

The door clicked behind Ro, and then there was nothing but silence. Liam never took his eyes off her but, God, how she wished he would, at least long enough to blink the hurt out of them.

“You’re the new guy.”

Kate started to step toward him, reaching for him, then stopped and fisted her hands against her chest.

“I can explain.”

“Are you back?” His voice, so quiet, so small, ripped straight through her.

“Am I—” Kate sucked her lips in behind her teeth for a second before answering. “I never really left.”

His eyes widened a little, but he didn’t move. It didn’t even look as if he was breathing.

“Everything happened so fast,” she said, hurrying to get it all out before he walked away. “Ronan arrived, you got the offer from Oakland, I found out about Paul…and I knew—
I knew
—it was the only way we’d ever get you to go.”

Oh crap
. Even before his shoulders sagged, she knew what she’d done. She shouldn’t have said “we.”

“They didn’t want to do it, I swear, but I didn’t give them a choice. It was my way or no way, but if you’ll hear me out, you’ll see we had no other choice at the time.”

His jaw tightened and his chest heaved as he inhaled a long, slow breath. “What about Paul?”

“Paul? Right, okay.” She took a step back and pointed toward the metal chair in the corner. “Do you want to sit?”

He didn’t even blink.

“Never mind.” Her voice shaking almost as hard as her knees, she hurried to explain about the email Josh had sent by mistake, why Foster had really sent her to the Buoys, and how he had every intention of undercutting the price on his original offer. How he’d screwed them both to try to get his hands on the Buoys.

Liam didn’t utter a single sound; the only thing that changed were his eyes, which were clouded almost black by the time she finished.

“We didn’t have a whole lot of time to think the whole thing through, because we needed to get the taxes paid, but at the same time we couldn’t keep you from doing what you wanted.”

“What I wanted.” His voice was low, flat. “You think you knew what I wanted.”

“Yes! God, you’d been back there almost every night, keeping your arm up and doing everything your trainer’d told you to do, and here was your chance—it was finally going to pay off.”

He took a couple of shuffling steps closer to the metal chair but didn’t sit. Instead, he leaned against the wall and sighed heavily.

“So you lied to me.”

She couldn’t do it; she couldn’t say the word out loud. The best she could do was force a short nod.

“And then you left.”

“Just for a couple days, until we got things sorted out.”

“What things?”

The fish shack wasn’t very big, but there was enough floor space for her to turn and walk a few feet away from him before she said anything else. Not because she was afraid of him but because being close to him was making her brain fuzzy.

“Kate?”

“Okay.” Turning back again, she chewed her bottom lip for a second, then nodded. “But I have to start by saying your brothers are the worst liars I’ve ever met. I mean, God almighty, when we were at breakfast and you said you were going to call Mandy, I thought Ro was going to have a stroke right there in the kitchen.”

“Wha—” Kate could almost see the cogs slipping into place in his brain. “Ro didn’t sell his house.”

“No.”

“Then where…? Oh no.” Shoving off the wall, he started to pace but only had a couple of feet on either side of him. “No no no no no.”

“I had the money, Liam, it was just sitting there.”

“We could’ve figured something else out.”

“What? You said yourself, even if you’d signed the contract that day, there was no guarantee the money would come through in time. I had the money; it was my choice, my idea, not your brothers’ or Jessie’s.”

His face paled as his left hand fisted and flexed.

“It’s done, Liam, and I gotta tell you, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. You should’ve seen the look on Paul’s face.”

“You lost your job, didn’t you?”

“Lost it?” she choked. “I didn’t lose it; I know exactly where it is: stuffed up his ass, right next to his head.”

There. Finally, the first hint of a smile.

“Look,” she said, wishing she could force some strength behind her voice, “you left me once because you were afraid you’d lose focus on your career if you stayed. And suddenly there we were, right back where we started, only this time it was me who was afraid it would happen. We all know what playing means to you, Liam, and, yeah, I know Ronan gave you kind of a hard time about it when your dad died, but you have to know how proud he is of you—we all are—but even so, your confidence level wasn’t where it needed to be. You had to believe again that your career was all you had. That way you could focus on it and nothing else. And you did.”

“Kate.”

“You should’ve seen yourself out there.” The tears started again, and no matter how fast she wiped them away, they just kept coming. “It was amazing.”

Damn it, why couldn’t she be Strong Kate now when she needed it most?

He took a couple of slow steps toward her, then stopped. “Why? Why’d you do it?”

“Because,” she blurted, choking on the word. “Because you deserved a second chance, Liam, and because I couldn’t be that person, the one who distracted you, who made you lose focus. The one…the one you’d end up resenting.”

He took another step, but Kate backed up, knocking into the cutting table as she reached for the nearest clean rag to wipe her runny nose on. Yeah, that must be attractive.

“You never made me lose focus,” he said quietly. “You
gave
me focus.”

“No.” Shaking her head, she tried to move farther away, but there was nowhere for her to go. “Last time you said if you didn’t leave right then, you never would have, and—”

“I was a stupid kid, Kate.”

“Maybe, but if we hadn’t done this, if we hadn’t all but forced you to go to Oakland, would you have gone?”

Liam stared down at his fingers as they ran along the edge of the counter, then shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know.” He glanced up, not at her but all around them. “This place is…”

“Exactly!” Kate didn’t need him to finish, because she knew what he wanted to say. This place got to a person. “We knew you’d be back eventually, but we also knew you probably wouldn’t leave unless you were pushed.”

“So you pushed.”

It took Kate three tries before she finally managed to swallow. “Please don’t be mad at them. I was serious when I said they didn’t want to do it.”

“Then why did they?”

Oh boy.

“Okay…the thing is…I hate to say I coerced them, but…” Kate twisted her mouth to the side for a second. “I had the money for the tax bill, so, really, they would have done pretty much anything I wanted.”

Liam’s forehead pulled down in a deep frown. “What about Africa? I thought you wanted to travel.”

“Oh, I’m not giving up on Africa,” she said with a decisive nod. “But I’m pretty sure it’s not going anywhere, so if it takes me another couple of years to get there, that’s okay.”

He didn’t look angry, but he sure as hell wasn’t smiling, either, which was what made Kate twitchy.

“So the four of you concocted this plan without ever thinking it might have been easier to just tell me what was going on?”

“We did think about it,” she said. “God, it’s all I’ve thought about since the day I left, but we couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because we love you and we knew you’d give up your chance if you—what?” Kate frowned. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

It was the weirdest expression she’d ever seen: a tentative look of disbelief mixed with hope, giving way to an uncertain smile as he took another step closer.

“You said ‘we.’ ”

“I didn’t—”
Oh God
. “I meant…”

She couldn’t finish, because he was so damn close she could hardly breathe.

“I gotta tell you, Kate, it’s been nothing but shit for me since you left.” He leaned his hip against the table and looked straight at her, his blue eyes almost, but not quite, sparkling. “I was pretty pissed off and confused as hell. But then something happened.”

“What?” she croaked, her throat completely parched.

“I pulled my head out of my ass.” That smile of his normally would have made her smile, too, but not this time, because she had no idea what he was going to say. “Yeah, I wanted to play ball, and, yeah, I wanted to keep this place, but neither of those things meant shit to me without you.”

Kate’s mouth opened. The words were there, but nothing came out.

“I love you, Kate. I loved you in Vegas, I loved you when I sent those stupid damn divorce papers, I loved you every day over the last ten years, and, holy shit, I loved the hell out of you when you showed up here in those stupid yellow boots.”

“But—”

“No buts.” His smile warmed every cell of her body as he used his thumb to wipe the tear from her cheek. “I hope you don’t mind, but if I don’t kiss you soon, I’m going to—”

She didn’t wait to hear what he’d do, just threw her arms around him and kissed him. Oh God, she’d missed him, missed this, missed every little thing about him, especially the way his lips moved against hers like that when he smiled through their kiss.

Wait, that wasn’t a smile, it was a…a
grimace
? Oh God—his arm!

“I’m so sorry,” she choked, starting to step back from him. “Are you—”