“You did not just say that, Liam Beckett.” My face heats, but not with embarrassment, oh no, he’s got me about as angry as I’ve ever been.
“It’s the truth,” he says raising one dark brow in a manner that makes me think he’s just daring me to give him a fight.
“My daughter is here, Liam.”
“You don’t call me Lee like everyone else, why?” He questions, while ignoring me.
“You can’t be here,” I say again, my voice wavering with panic. Molly has never seen me with a man. Well, she has, but never one on one like this. Alone in her home. Mainly because I’ve never been on a date much less slept with someone since Jack died. She isn’t ready for this.
“I told you last night no more games. Knew you wouldn’t make it easy for me, baby, but this right here,” he stopped to point between him and me, “this is me not letting go. I’ll give you last night, even though I don’t like it, I was on shift and you needed some time, space. You didn’t need me breathing down your neck making sure you were okay. Nate did the calling, kept me in the loop. Cost me, staying away from you when every inch of my body was screaming to come and make sure you were okay. Gave you the day and now I’m here. With pizza,” he adds as almost an afterthought.
“With pizza,” I parrot.
He nods his head and my anger grows.
“With pizza!” I shriek.
“Pizza!” I hear screamed from the other side of my small ranch house and close my eyes in prayer.
Please, please.
Maybe she’ll forget she heard that and not come in here.
Maybe . . .
Not.
“Pizza! Yay!” Molly comes bounding in the room and skids to a halt when she sees Liam standing with one hip against the island. “Hi,” she says with a huge smile.
Liam smiles his knee-melting smile and pushes off the counter. I hold my breath when he walks the few steps over to Molly and drops to her level and holds out his hand. “Hi,” he says softly, his smile getting even bigger and even more knee-melting when Molly places her small hand in his.
“You came Lee,” she sighs. Even my daughter is easily charmed by that smile.
Wait. What? He came?
“Yeah, little lady, I did. Told you I would,” he strangely responds.
She giggles, much to my shock, and pumps her small arm up and down to shake his hand.
“Yup! I’m five. See,” she yells in her youthful glee and pulls her hand from his and holds it inches from his face to show him all of her pink tipped fingers. “Want me to give you a make-up-ver?” She asks with a big smile.
Liam looks up at me with a smile and a question in his eyes.
“Baby, Liam doesn’t want you to give him a make-over. He’s got to go.” I give him a hard glare and hope he gets a hint.
“Go where?” Molly asks.
“Yeah, babe, where?” Liam adds with a smile. That damn knee-melting smile.
“Home.”
“Nope. I don’t have to go home.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“See! He said he doesn’t got to go, Mommy! Wanna do a tea party now?” Molly jumps and spins around the room.
“A word, Liam?” I say through a clenched jaw as I watch Molly turn and grab the doll she dropped when she saw Liam. Making sure she isn’t paying attention to us before I return my focus to the man standing in front of me.
“No.”
“No?” I gasp.
“Megs, let me be clear here. The only word you want to have is the one that has me leaving and we both know that isn’t what you really want. Listen to me and hear it this time. I’m not leaving. I’m not letting you have weeks and weeks of avoiding me. I’m not giving up. And I’m not stopping until you admit to yourself that you see what we could have between us.”
“What . . . what we could have?” I whisper and shake my head.
“You need some time to come to terms with it, that’s okay, I’ll give you that, but you’re going to have it with me doing everything I can to remind you what this is.”
“What this is? We had one night.”
He looks at me. His eyes burn brighter and his smirk turning devilish. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one too. But we’ve also been doing the foreplay dance long before that one night that solidified everything I needed to know, baby. What did that one night show you?”
I open my mouth and snap it shut. What am I supposed to say to that? Logically I can argue that we don’t know each other, well past the biblical sense, but I know him. Just because I’ve done everything I can to avoid him because of what he made me feel during the night I lost myself in his bed.
Over and over.
“You have to go,” I breathe, my words coming out a hushed whisper that if it wasn’t for his eyes going soft, I would have sworn he couldn’t hear me.
“Yeah, that’s the last thing I need to do. Come on, Megs, come pick out some pizza and let’s eat.”
With that, he turns, smiles down at Molly and proceeds to charm my daughter with pizza and that damn knee-melting smile.
“WILL LEE BE HERE WHEN I wake up, Mommy?” Her lyrical voice is tired with sleep but I can’t miss the hopefulness in her eyes.