We ate in silence for a little while longer and, soon, my bowl was empty. I was swallowing down the last sip of my tea while Liam picked up my bowl, taking it to the sink with his and dumping them in their rightful place.
“What are you going to do tomorrow?” he asked.
I saw him hunch over the sink, propping his hands up on the edge while he bowed his head.
“Go back to the resort, I guess. Get out of your hair.”
I watched him shake his head.
“Get out of my hair,” he said.
“You don’t want me to leave?” I asked.
But all I got in return was silence.
“Liam?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to come spend a couple of nights with me at the resort?”
I watched him slowly turn around until his eyes connected with mine.
“With you,” he said.
“With me. The cabin’s a studio cabin, sort of like this one. But I stocked it with food before I went on my fun little ankle-breaking adventure. There’s only one bed but I figured, based on last night, that might not be an issue for us.”
I watched a small grin creep across his cheeks as the tension in the room alleviated. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t going to open up to me and it didn’t matter that I had the capability of leaving tomorrow. All I knew was that I felt better telling someone else about what happened to me and I wasn’t ready to let Liam go.
Not if I was still going to be in the area for at least two more weeks.
“I think I’d like that,” he said.
“So, you’ll come back with me?” I asked.
“I’ll even pack clothes so I don’t have to wear yours,” he said, grinning.
“You know you like me in your clothes,” I said.
There was an expression that rolled across his face before he turned back to the sink.
“Thank you for opening up to me,” he said.
“Thank you for listening.”
I felt much better about going back tomorrow now. I’d be able to spend a little more time with him, and maybe I could finally get him to open up to me. It felt good, talking to him about what happened. He didn’t try to offer any advice and he didn’t try to ease my mind about the situation. He merely sat, listened, and took everything in.
It was refreshing and I wanted the ability to give him the same in return.
“When you pack,” I said as I stood from the table. “Pack a bathing suit.”
“A bathing suit?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said. “There’s a clubhouse on the grounds with multiple hot tubs. Figured we could use one of them sometime.”
I smiled at him as he craned his head back to look at me and I could’ve sworn I saw a glint of mischief in his eyes.
“You’re bad, Miss Whitney,” he said.
“Hollis,” I said.
“What?”
“Miss Hollis. My name is Whitney Hollis.”
He turned around fully and raked his eyes down my body before he nodded his head.
“Liam Canter,” he said.
“I think we’re doing this a bit backward but we’re getting there,” I said.
The chuckle that fell from his lips curled my toes as I stood in the kitchen and watched him take care of the dishes. I watched his muscles twitch with movement underneath his clothes as his large hands dried the dishes he’d soaked in soapy water. His skin glistened with the water running up his forearm and I snuck a peek at his pert ass as he stood at the sink and cleaned up.
Oh, yes. I was really going to enjoy tomorrow now.
CHAPTER 21
LIAM
“You know, I’ve never been to a resort before,” I said.
“Really?” Whitney asked.
“Yeah. My family and I couldn’t afford vacations like that. There was one vacation where my father borrowed a tent from a friend of his and we all packed up like we were going camping. Only we walked a mile back into the woods and found a clearing before we set up.”
“That actually doesn’t sound so bad,” she said.
“It was so much fun as a kid. We watched the stars and ran around. There was a creek not too far away that I’d swim in and throw rocks into.”
“Is that where you get your love of the outdoors?” she asked.
“Yep. Because we were so poor, I spent all my time outside. My father was a farmer and my mother raised the animals on our farm, but it wasn’t anything that raked in any good money. We had enough to keep rice and biscuits in the house. Then, we ate the produce we couldn’t sell. Any of the animals we couldn’t unload, my mother butchered for meat and, at any given moment, something was being shut off in our house. We only ever had enough money to keep one thing on at a time.”
I could feel Whitney’s gaze on me while we slowly diverted onto the back road that would drive us right up to the resort.
Right up to the stop sign where I’d first seen her crossing the road.
“It’s odd that I still enjoy the outdoors, honestly,” I said.
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“On one of our vacations, I fell out of a tree and hurt myself pretty bad. Dislocated my shoulder and had one of the limbs of the tree drive right through my side.”
“Oh my gosh, Liam.”
“It would have been a lot worse had it not been for the doctor that was on call that night,” I said. “Our town didn’t even have a hospital but our regular doctor was out of town for some conference and he had a friend of his filling in whose expertise was actually in trauma. He was able to get me stable in the doctor’s office until an ambulance could get to us.”
“I can’t believe you still want to be surrounded by trees,” she said.
“That’s actually the memory that came to my mind when I was enlisting in the Navy. When they first asked me if being a medic was something I was interested in, I laughed at them. Until I remembered that doctor. That man saved my life that night. He helped me in ways I didn’t understand at the time and that’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to help people.”
I drew in a deep breath before I flicked my gaze over to Whitney, who was smiling brightly and studying my face closely.
“What?” I asked.
“I know I haven’t known you for long,” she said. “But I’ve never seen you light up like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“That little moment there when you were talking about becoming a medic and all of that stuff. Your eyes were just sparkling. Were you even aware that you were smiling?”
I furrowed my brow and turned my sights back to the road.
“Have you ever considered getting back into the practice now that you’re no longer in the military?” she asked.
“I won’t,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s obviously something you’re passionate about. Why not continue to help people on the other side?”
The other side. The other side. I felt my hands grip the steering wheel tightly as we slowly approached the stop sign. I rolled to a stop before I got onto the freshly-plowed roads of the resort but I could feel Whitney’s stare, hard on the side of my face.
That was what I’d done in the fucking Navy. Helped the other damn side.
I was a traitor and she had no fucking clue.
“Where should I go from here?” I asked.
I heard her sigh before she turned her gaze out toward the road in front of us.
“Keep going straight,” she said. “We need to get to the main lodge so we can get you a parking pass.”
All I could do was take in the sights around me. This place was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The cabins were luxurious and the main lodge was massive. I studied the chandelier hanging from the ceiling as I walked in with Whitney. Then she took my hand as we walked up to the front desk.
“Miss Hollis, we are so glad you are okay,” the front desk woman said.
“That’s very kind of you to say, thank you,” she said.
“That employee should’ve never let you go out with that impending storm looming over our heads. She should’ve directed you straight back to your cabin.”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t have been able to control what she did,” I said.
Whitney snickered and shook her head while the front desk woman continued to look at us with worried looks.
“Nonetheless, please accept our complimentary upgrade in your stay,” the woman said. “We took the liberty of moving all of your food and your suitcases into your new cabin suite.”