Liam wracked his brain. He’d taken a few hard falls off horses over the years, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember anything happening after she’d taken him back to her place. The horse had thrown him—that had knocked the wind out of him, cut him up, and torn at his clothes. He couldn’t quite recall how she’d come across him, but Mina had, and when he’d told her what was going on, she had a plan. Liam didn’t question it. He needed someone to bail him out, and she had. He could still feel how it had felt to stand in Mina’s house with her as she worked to mend his clothes, carefully—like he was in the presence of greatness. It had been…calm. Sure, he’d felt…things…for her. But he’d also just been thrown from a horse. A man couldn’t trust his feelings when he was soaked in adrenaline like that. “You’re gonna have to help me out.” He felt stupid saying it, but there it was.
Her lip curled in a smile, and Liam’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest. Mina shook her head, a quick little movement that telegraphed the entire world’s disbelief. “All right. When I was fixing up your clothes, you invited me to a party. Well, I was thrilled. I didn’t think you’d ask me to go anywhere with you. I—” She put a hand to her mouth and cleared her throat. Mina’s cheeks got pinker by the second. “I had a…little bit of a thing for you.”
“A thing for me?”
“A crush on you,” she burst out. It made such perfect sense. He’d trusted her instinctively when they ran into each other after he’d been tossed from the horse, and maybe that was why. No, Liam couldn’t remember much about those few minutes. But he could remember the way it felt to lay eyes on her face. To really look at her. It had felt a bit like flying. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I was so excited to go. I got a new top, which was a big deal, and I did my makeup. I thought something might come of it.”
Liam had never wanted to go back in time so much in his life. “Something like what?”
She waved him off. “Oh, Liam, I don’t know. I thought maybe the party would lead to dating. Something like that. It was a teenage fantasy.” Mina looked at him expectantly.
Liam was caught in a haze of memory. It was right there. The party. She hadn’t shown. “You never came. Are you mad at me for not taking you to the party?” He could feel the final piece of the puzzle hovering above him, waiting to connect with the top of his head. “For god’s sake, Mina, spit it out.”
Her face went scarlet. “Oh, I came, all right. I came just in time to hear you tell everybody how disgusted you were with me.”
“No way. I would never have done that.” A righteous anger flashed across his chest. “I wouldn’t say that about anybody. I know you don’t think highly of me, but I would never have gone and done that.”
Mina’s eyes narrowed. “But I heard you. I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life. I was about to walk into the kitchen and say hi, but one of your friends asked you if you undressed in front of me. And you said, ugh. No. I would never do that.”
Liam could see it now, clear as if it played on a projector in front of him. “You got it all wrong.”
She stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. “How exactly did I get that wrong? You said what you said.”
Liam followed her to her feet and caught up with her by the window. “I said that. But I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about undressing in front of your grandmother. God, Mina, you can hardly blame me for saying that. I didn’t want you to get into any more trouble. I thought you might have been in hot water for fixing my clothes and taking that horse back. So I said Aileen helped me with the clothes.”
It had been years, years, since the horse incident, but Liam could still feel the way his heart had pounded in the kitchen that evening. He’d felt hotly protective of Mina, and some part of him understood that if he gave even an inch, the other boys in his class would spread rumors about the two of them like wildfire. But that wasn’t his style. So he’d gone with the convenient lie. The lie that wouldn’t hurt anybody.
Except…it had still hurt Mina. “Right or not,” he said, the anger fading away into regret, “I shouldn’t have said anything. And I’m sorry for saying that about Aileen. I’d undress in front of her any day.”
A beat passed, and then Mina’s laugh broke free from her throat. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m still sorry,” he insisted. Liam took a half-step toward her. “I’m really sorry, Mina. I never meant for you to hear it that way.” He had a hundred excuses and a million things more to explain. The way it was in high school, when the guys thought that kissing and telling was the ultimate cachet. But he knew it was too late for that. What mattered now was that she understood his regret. “I apologize. With all my heart, I hope you know how sorry I am.”
Mina leaned in and kissed him. Shock reverberated down through each of his nerve endings, making his fingertips and toes tingle. Liam’s body stiffened, but he relaxed almost immediately. She tasted so sweet. Like mint gum and hope. “Well, you’ve done it now,” she whispered, and turned to walk away.
Liam caught her by the elbow and pulled her back. The movement had all the grace of a move on the ballroom floor, and he caught her effortlessly in his arms. Then it was his chance to kiss her. Their lips crashed together with a certain coordination, a certain familiarity that should have been impossible. He swept his tongue over her bottom lip and teased them apart. He wanted to explore every part of her. Every single inch. That desire was tempered with the need to take his time. He could only exist in this one moment, and he wanted it to last as long as possible. Mina’s tongue met his, dueling against it. Liam felt her breath picking up, her chest heaving. The heat between them surpassed an inferno.
An irritated scratch and a whine at the door was a bucket of cold water over the both of them. Lucky whined again, and Liam pulled back with a groan. He brought a hand to his mouth and swept it over his lips. Mina looked up at him, blue eyes blazing. “Lucky sounds like he wants to go out.” Her voice hitched. She took a half-step away and rubbed her hands over her face.
Liam moved woodenly toward the door and opened it without thinking. The blast of cold air from outside woke him up from the fever dream of that kiss. He blinked into the gray winter light. Snow still fell in huge, fluffy flakes. The storm had been a lot bigger than he thought. In fact, Lucky scrambled out over a drift that came almost to Liam’s knees. The dog didn’t go far—only a few paces from the door—and Liam kept an eye on him as he surveyed the front yard. His black truck had snow past the wheels. He’d need his brother’s help to dig it free if he was going to haul Mina’s car out of the ditch.
Lucky frolicked tentatively at Liam’s doorstep, sniffing the snow and stopping often to check that Liam still stood there, waiting. Liam let the cold nip at his skin. He closed his eyes against it and felt the snowflakes falling on his eyelashes. He had not imagined that the kiss they’d shared had been anything short of hot. If Lucky hadn’t scratched at the door, there was no telling how far they would have gone. Especially with the pullout bed still there in the center of the room.