One
LIAM
I drank too much. Of course, I did. It was a wedding. And I was still feeling sheepish about the way I’d treated Scarlett back when I tried to convince my best mate Lachlan, the groom, to evict the woman who became his wife today.
Her sister, Kath, always gave me shit at the many get-togethers where we were both guests. And today was no different. She made no attempt to conceal her scowl as we squeezed closer for wedding party photos and she found something offensive about the words I said, or the way I stood, or whatever.
But something shifted after we skulled the third Nostrovia shot and smashed our glasses on the ancient stone floor of the greenhouse where the wedding reception was being held, the snow swirling outside as if on order from the billionaire couple.
We were meant to throw the glasses. Scarlett and Liam had been drowning in Russian history since their trip to St. Petersburg earlier this year, and they loved the ridiculous extravagance of it. It was fun. But the way Kath took such pleasure in smashing that glass. Wow.
There was something going on there, something passionate I’d not seen before, and couldn’t quite tease out in that deep dimple of her mischievous smile. And I was a sucker for a mystery. Especially when it involved a beautiful woman.
Two
KATH
God, why had I never smashed anything before? It was exhilarating. I never realized how much I needed to smash something until I heard that glass pop and shatter.
Was it difficult to go to your sister’s wedding as a single woman? No. Not when said sister deserved happiness more than anyone. I hadn’t been thinking about myself all day. My mission was to ensure Scarlett felt supported and loved.
But the truth was she’d married a billionaire, so in the support category, she had multiple wedding organizers, and everything right down to when she went to pee had been planned and managed for her.
And in the love category, Scarlett knew how I felt, and her love for me, for her daughter Zooey, and her brand-new husband Lachlan radiated from her skin.
As a result, there wasn’t much to do but enjoy myself. Which I certainly made into a mission. My feet ached from dancing like it was my job. But that hadn’t spiked my cortisol levels the way that hurling that glass at the floor had done. I could do that all night.
Liam startled me from my focus on those sharp, glittering shards at my feet. “Hard to watch your younger sister walk down the aisle to Mr. Perfect?”
I could barely be in the same room with Liam without shooting him daggers. That question wasn’t going to help.
“I was just going to say it was nice having these drinks with you without wanting to punch you in the face,” I said. “But I’m so glad I didn’t.”
“Ouch. Sorry, mate.” He stepped back, palms raised in surrender. I tried not to notice how strong his arms looked in his bespoke charcoal suit.
Had I overreacted?
“I just meant, it hasn’t been so easy for me,” he said in his Australian accent that seemed to shape the words into something shockingly authentic. “I thought perhaps we were in the same boat. I was looking to be honest for a minute. Be a bit vulnerable. Probably didn’t go in with the best opener.”
Liam smiled and I noticed he shone incredibly bright. Suddenly, he mesmerized with that smile, brought me into its light. Like I wanted to throw my arms around him. I forced my gaze to the other guests, but nobody else seemed to notice. Maybe—I didn’t know how I felt about this thought—it was just me he had that effect on. Maybe it was just me on vodka he had that effect on.
“What are you up to, Liam? Those are not your kind of words.”
He gazed at me as if trying to work something out. I didn’t like it. I returned the intense stare so he could see what it felt like, but he didn’t budge.
We’d been thrown together plenty in the last few months—not only leading up to the wedding, but at dinners and parties and holidays, since my sister and Liam’s best friend who had imported him from Australia were a family now. And though I’d worked up to tolerating being in a room with him, I’d certainly never noticed him getting to me this way.
And I’d definitely not noticed how his dark hair was just that bit longer, like there was a party going on under that suit. But just then, when he tipped one side of his smile up, I thought I got a peek of it. Uh-oh.
I shook it off and reminded myself who I was: a serial dater who didn’t do the whole relationship thing. I found it far too complex and compromising.
Before my parents died in a car crash when I was eighteen, they had a stable relationship, so that hadn’t shaped my skewed view. They hadn’t been overly affectionate, but they loved each other in a way that made Scarlett and me feel safe as kids. But Mom never put her feelings on romance or satisfaction on the table. I saw it as private territory and never tread there.
People say you can feel stuff like that, but maybe I didn’t have the right feelers. Because I couldn’t say whether Mom had dreamed of a different life or enjoyed twenty orgasms a week.
Perhaps the truth of my field-playing lifestyle was a result of the practicality I was born with. The day came, and I made my way through it. Some were great, some sucked. The spectrum seemed par for the course.
And after what happened to my trusting, loving sister with her daughter Zooey’s father, Greg, well, I thought I had taken the right path.
I was getting to that age where people asked inappropriately whether I was looking to settle down. Friends were freezing their eggs in case they didn’t meet someone in time. This was not on my radar.
I wasn’t built that way. I’d be fine. I’d wake up, enjoy my coddled egg and toast, read the news, go for a run, drive to work, and eat some more scrummy food for lunch in San Francisco, which I considered the best city on earth, have an incredible bath using oodles of expensive body products that were worth every penny, spend fifty percent of my time with Zooey and Scarlett and then go home to a quiet, ridiculously comfortable bed in one of the best apartments in the Mission. Life was good.
Liam stood to go.
“Wait.” I grabbed his wrist. A shock jolted through me and my knees nearly buckled. What in the world was that?
He turned to look where I’d touched, then back at me. Had he felt it? Because he was doing that glimmering thing again and the two seemed connected. When those eyes were focused on me they had a surprising amount of intensity. I wasn’t going to lie. This proximity to him affected me like I never expected.
And when he smiled, and his face and eyes glowed with that deep power, well, that was something next level. I wrapped the fingers of my other hand around the nearest chair for purchase.
Did I have a thing for Liam? “I’d like to smash one more glass if you’re keen,” I heard myself say.
“I’ll get us another round,” he said and left me in the greenhouse, glass shards twinkling around my feet. Scarlett and Lachlan sat in a corner, looking at the swirls of snowflakes glimmering under the bright stars against the black sky, the moon nearly full.
I could see the profile of my sister’s smile as Lachlan caressed her cheek. They had it. That much was clear. The wedding was nearly over. It had gone so fast. Perfectly. Happiness was everywhere.