Off the Hook (8 page)

Great—that hardly made things more awkward at all. The last thing either of them wanted was to be trapped on a boat together ten miles offshore. Giving himself a hard mental kick, Liam focused on the next line of shingles, staggering his pieces over the ones she’d just laid. Piece after piece, row after row they went, neither one saying much, but both listening to Finn and Jessie laughing and having a great old time over on their roof.

“What was it like growing up here? I assume you were homeschooled.”

“Nope. The old man took us by boat to Port Hardy every morning and picked us up every afternoon, until Ro could do it.”

“Every day? That must’ve made long days for all of you.”

“I guess, but he couldn’t school us himself, so…”

She didn’t need to know about the times Da had been too drunk to come back for them, leaving them to fend for themselves. More often than not, they’d found a boat at the dock that was unlocked, so at least they had shelter, and after the first time he’d left them there, hungry and scared, they were always sure to pack an extra-big lunch in case they needed to feed themselves dinner, too.

“How did it work when you wanted to play ball? It’s not like you could’ve ridden your bike to practice if your dad was busy.”

“When I was little, I stayed over at a friend’s place whenever we had practice or a game.” Liam shrugged. “Once I turned sixteen I could boat over myself, so that made everything easier.”

“Hmm,” she murmured. “Nothing about that sounds easy to me, but I guess when you want something badly enough, you do what you have to do, right?”

“Mm-hmm.”

There it was, the perfect moment to tell her why he’d left her in Vegas, but he didn’t. Instead, he just kept his head down and tried to keep his shingles in a straight line. It was tedious work, yet Kate never once complained.

He hauled another couple of stacks of shingles up the ladder and dropped them near the point. Without any hesitation, Kate pulled the utility knife out of her tool belt, opened both stacks, and went straight back to work while he set to cutting down the ones they needed.

“What do you do with the old ones?” she asked.

“There’s a place over in Hardy that recycles them into asphalt.” By the way she was nodding, he knew he had at least some of her attention, even if she didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Two words had never terrified him so much, and why? He’d apologized for plenty of things in his life, and yet this was the first time he remembered being scared.

“What for?” She didn’t glance up, but there was something in her voice that made him think she already knew the answer to that.

“Kate.”

He waited a second or two for her to stop and look at him, but when she did, he instantly wished she’d look away. Tiny bursts of amber lit up her hazel eyes, exposing the same raw trust that drew him to her that night at the roulette table. Only this time she blinked and the amber light dimmed.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. It wasn’t as loud as the first time, but it felt stronger, and she seemed to almost believe it the second time around. “I, uh…
Shit
.”

He took a couple of steps toward her, then stopped when her eyes widened.

“I’ve had ten years to figure out how to say this and I’m still going to screw it up.”

When she didn’t respond, he scrubbed his sleeve across his cheek, careful not to shoot himself with his nail gun, and sighed.

“What we did—getting married like that—was stupid, right?”

It took a second, but Kate finally lifted her right shoulder in a slow shrug. “Wasn’t one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, no.”

Relief began to seep through him; at least they agreed on that.

“Still,” he went on, “what I did, the way I treated you, leaving like that, was…well, it was—”

“Dickwad-ish?” she offered, reaching for another shingle. “Yup, it was.”

Heat burned up his neck and across his cheeks, but he forced the words out one more time. “I’m sorry.”

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that they stayed like that before Finn’s voice split the air, making them both jump.

“I hope the slowdown means the dickwad’s finally apologizing.”

Eyes closed, Liam dropped his head forward, wishing the nail gun could fire far enough to reach the little shit. He was almost ready to shoot it over there anyway, but the sound of Kate’s soft laugh stopped him.

“He’s workin’ on it,” she called back. “Give him a minute.”

The chuckle escaped Liam’s throat before he even looked at her. Head tipped a little to the side, her mouth curled slightly, and those eyes, blinking at him expectantly, made him laugh again, this time with a curse thrown Finn’s way.

“I really am sorry,” he said, letting the laugh die on his tongue. “Playing ball is who I am, it’s what I do, and I needed to give everything I had to that. Hell, I still do. So it didn’t matter what you or anyone else wanted; I couldn’t change who I was, no matter what. I still think I did the right thing focusing on my career, but I should’ve had the balls to talk to you before taking off. You deserved at least that.”

“At least.” She snorted, but instead of it being filled with animosity, as he expected, there was a quiet softness to it. “Thank you. I’ve waited a long time for you to say that, but I guess if we’re going to be honest with each other, then the truth is, you probably did me a favor.”

Liam’s ears perked up. “How’s that?”

“I didn’t actually realize it until last night when I was lying in bed.” She fired the nail gun into the next shingle, then straightened. “You, my friend, were my last big mistake. Before you, I’d been living my whole life jumping from one bad decision to another, and when I woke up that morning and realized you’d gone, I had no idea what I was going to do. I mean, I’d done some stupid things before that, and I’ve done a few since, but that—that was something else.”

“Wasn’t all your fault,” he said, offering her a small, wry grin. “I might have had something to do with the stupidity that time.”

“Yeah, but you had something to go back to after you left Vegas. I didn’t even have a job, remember?”

Yeah, he remembered. “What did you do?”

“I did what I had to.” She said it so matter-of-factly, but watching her blink fast like that, Liam knew it couldn’t have been easy. “Found a couple jobs, got my GED, then begged and pleaded my way into an entry-level position with the Foster Group. Worked during the day and took classes at night until I earned an arts degree in hotel management, which might just come in handy here.”

“You’ve been busy,” he said, knowing he sounded stupid. “That’s great, Kate. Really.”

“Thanks. And if you hadn’t gutted me the way you did, none of that would have happened.”

“Uh…” Liam laughed hesitantly. “You’re welcome?”

Something in Liam’s gut warmed. He might not have known everything about her back in Vegas, but he’d figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t a lack of smarts that made her quit school; it was a lack of confidence. She seemed to have found some now, which she proved when she shot him a playful wink.

“And one day soon,” she said, “that degree you helped me get is going to be hanging on the wall in the Buoys office, and the only way you’re going to get out on one of
my
boats is if you pay me for it. And you, my dear ex-husband, are going to pay dearly.”

“Oh, really?” he choked. “That’s how it’s going to be?”

“Yup, that’s how it’s going to be.” She was still smiling, but there was a whole lot of her newfound confidence behind it. “So put your back into it, Sporto, because I want this place in tip-top shape when I take over.”

For a few seconds, Liam stood there grinning at her, enjoying the way her cheeks pinked up like that when she smiled at him. That was exactly how she’d smiled at him in Vegas—a little teasing, a little shy, and a whole lot sexy.

It was impossible for him to look at anything else when she smiled like that. It was—

“Hey!” Finn bellowed. “We’re burning daylight here, so would you just kiss and make up already so you can get back to work?”

Fighting a laugh, Liam didn’t even turn to look at Finn; he kept his gaze fixed on Kate as he shook his head slowly and lifted his middle finger high in the air for both Finn and Jessie to see.

Chapter 4

In baseball, I was always in control of everything until I let the ball go.

—Curt Schilling

Kate had to give Liam credit. As far as apologies went, that one was pretty good, especially considering he was being heckled while he did it. The facts that his cheeks flamed and he managed to look her in the eye the whole time were points in his favor, too.

He really was sorry, anyone could see that, but it was still awkward being up on that roof with him all afternoon. Sure, they threw a little small talk around, but their past hung between them. They’d slept together, got married, and then separated, all within the five days.

Who did stuff like that?

She and Liam managed to finish the roof on Orange before it got too dark, and while he and the others cleaned up and carted wheelbarrow loads of the old shingles down to the boat, Kate took her turn in the kitchen.

Normally she would have happily let someone else do it, but, damn, she was tired. And cold. She guessed that’s what she got for spending so much time working indoors these last eight years; her body wasn’t used to the manual labor anymore.

Besides, coming indoors gave the rest of them a bit of time away from her. They were like a unit, those three, and, sure, they might argue and what all, but Kate had a pretty good sense already that the O’Donnells stuck together, and even though Jessie wasn’t an O’Donnell, you’d never know it by the way they treated her. She was their family.

Kate, on the other hand, was an outsider who felt a little like a vulture, hovering around its prey until it could swoop in and claim the corpse.

Unfortunately for all of them, she’d told Jessie the truth about her cooking skills, so dinner wasn’t going to be anything spectacular, but even Kate couldn’t screw up pasta. With the beef browning for the sauce and the big pot of water on to boil, she puttered around the kitchen, chopping up veggies and cutting up the last half of a loaf of French bread. Every meal was better with garlic bread, right?

And the whole time she worked, one part of Liam’s apology played over and over in her head, so she was thankful he was the first one into the kitchen, because that gave her a chance to ask him about it in relative privacy.

“What did you mean earlier when you said, no matter what I wanted, you couldn’t change who you were?”

“Well, I couldn’t,” he said, as if that cleared it all up.

It took Kate a second to say anything else, because she was stupidly distracted by the way his T-shirt stretched over the expanse of his back when he reached into the fridge for some beers. If only she didn’t know what it felt like to slide her hands up that back and—

Stop it!

Over a long blink, she turned back toward the stove to stir the sauce, which was already bubbling over a little.

“But what does that mean? What did you think I wanted?”

When he didn’t answer right away, she glanced over her shoulder to see him frowning as he popped the tops off the bottles and set them down.

“Well, looking back, I don’t think I honestly knew what you wanted; I only knew what I wanted.”

And that obviously wasn’t her.

“I wanted to play ball, Kate, I
had
to play ball, and I couldn’t risk getting off track by what anyone else wanted. And I sure as hell couldn’t do something like set up house with you in Vancouver when my home was in Detroit.”

“What are you talking about, setting up house?” And why were her hands trembling like that? It wasn’t as if it was news to her that he hadn’t wanted her back then, so why did it still hurt? “I never said anything about you giving up Detroit, did I?”

“Maybe not directly, but…”

“But what?” Spinning, Kate accidentally knocked the wooden spoon out of the pot and sent it flying to the floor. “I must have said or done something to make you leave like that.”

“I don’t remember exactly,” he said, his frown deepening. “Just that you started talking about finding us an apartment in Vancouver and…I don’t know. Stuff.”

“Well, yeah,” she scoffed as she wiped up the sauce and tossed the spoon into the sink. “I don’t remember you inviting me to go to Detroit with you, not even after I stupidly quit my job. The room I was renting from my disgusting pig of a landlord was going to be way too small for the two of us, and I assumed, in my ignorance, that you’d at least come to see me once in a while. I didn’t expect—”

Before she could finish, Jessie and Finn walked in and stopped short, both of them shifting their gazes between Kate and Liam.

“Oh God,” Jessie muttered. “What did he do now?”

“What?” Liam cried, palms out. “I didn’t do anything.”

Dismissing his brother completely, Finn turned to Kate. “What did he do?”

“Actually,” she said over a soft snort, “this one’s probably on both of us. It would appear that during our long and fruitful marriage, Liam and I might have had a wee bit of a communication problem.”

“Shocking.” This time it was Jessie who snorted, but neither Liam nor Finn looked amused.

“From the sounds of it, I guess I said some things that made Sporto here think I wanted things he didn’t.” She turned to Liam. “Or did you think I wanted you to give up ball?”

Liam’s hesitation was as good as an answer to not only Kate but Finn, too, who sank onto the nearest chair and cocked his brow at Kate.

“Did you?” he asked.

“Did I what—say something? It was ten years ago; I don’t honestly remember. But I do know we never had a conversation about what either one of us wanted, so that was obviously a problem.”

“And what was it that you wanted?”

Kate frowned as she set the sauce on the table. Was this really any of Finn’s business? Did any of it matter now?

“I guess I wanted my husband to want to be with me, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to give up baseball for me, for crying out loud. We might not have known each other very well, and clearly we didn’t put much thought into anything before we marched into that chapel, but what I did know I liked well enough, so why would I suddenly want to change the thing that meant the most to him?”