“So these are yours.” He holds the rings out to me. Liam has always been generous when it comes to money. He shares cash easily—it’s himself that he keeps locked up tighter than a bank vault. He also tends to think that everything—and everyone—has a price tag.
I reach out and close Liam’s fingers over the rings. “You keep them.”
“Is that all I did, buy you jewelry? Did I fuck anything up?”
I step into him, looping my arms around his neck. I can’t help but notice that he freezes—and that his arms most definitely do not close around me. “I proposed. You said yes. Then you said now and we may have traded small sexual favors until I agreed. Turns out the ringmaster of the sexual circus you hired is an ordained minister in the state of California.”
Disgust flickers across his face. “I’m an ass. Jesus.”
“Pretty sure he was nondenominational.”
His eyes roam over my face. “We’re really married?”
“One hundred percent.” I wink at him. Play it cool. “However, I’m sure you have about a million security tapes you can pull if you’d like independent verification. Also, you recorded the ceremony itself on your phone. I was unclear at the time if you wanted spank bank material or a souvenir for our future grandkids.”
“I never planned on getting married,” he says. I can’t help but notice he’s not holding me back. “Not because you’re not great but, you know—”
Right. Everyone who lived on our block in Berkeley would have voted his parents most likely to kill each other. The lots were small, the houses close, and his parents were never quiet about their disagreements. Whenever they fought, Liam would climb over our fence and hang out with us.
“I know,” I say.
I step away from him, stupidly hoping he’ll pull me back into his arms. I suppose the ringmaster-slash-minister could have been a lying liar, but whatever team of lawyers Liam has on speed dial will undoubtedly sort it all out. In addition to melting my clothes off my body, alcohol gives me a big-time case of fuzzy logic. Last night, marrying Liam seemed like an excellent idea, the perfect way to transform myself from innocent and off-limits little sister to hot, sexy woman while making my teenage fantasies come true. Today, however, I have doubts.
He reaches out and snags me with his free hand, his warm fingers braceleting my wrist as he tugs me gently to a stop. Liam is always careful with me, even when I wish he wouldn’t be. “I’ll fix this. I swear.”
CHAPTER THREE
PANTS ARE OVERRATED
Hana
WITHOUT WAITING FOR my response, Liam starts towing me back into the bedroom. I feel like a little Hana barge bobbing in the wake of Destroyer Liam. It’s not a good feeling, but apparently I used up my quota of those last night. I let him lead for the moment, though, because he’s great at fixing things and I’m stupidly tempted to let him.
Except that we both still want different things. Why did I think we actually had a shot at us? Too much bourbon? Too many daydreams? I’m not naive, but I’m not exactly jaded, either.
I’m the kind of hopeful where secret heart wishes made at the top of a Ferris wheel seem like an actual plan, something that can come true even when my feet are firmly back on the ground. I grabbed my chance at Liam when he said yes.
Liam stops abruptly, fixing his considerable attention on his massive, mussed-up bed. Just a handful of buttons stand between us and being naked. Heat rushes through my body and my palm hovers over the small of his back and the hard, bare curve of his skin.
That’s the bed where we had sex.
I came about a million times thanks to Liam’s generosity in all matters oral alone. It deserves acknowledgment, a massive statue, maybe even a dildo-shaped one like the Washington Monument.
“I love your big, beautiful bed.” I step up next to Liam and pat the mattress, mostly just to get a rise out of Liam. I hate it when he ignores me.
He lets go of my wrist as if burned, and reverses course to hurtle toward the wall. I fight the urge to make chicken noises and settle for sitting cross-legged on his bed. His shirt rides up my thighs and he swallows audibly. Yes, this was yours last night.
I feel marginally better, enough so that I fish his phone out from underneath the pillow and hold it out to him. The screen is filled with text alerts that I studiously don’t read. “Check it.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he says. “It’s not personal.”
Truth. Liam trusts no one, and I’m no one. He also does best with facts. He likes life to be cut-and-dried, but he’s either too polite or too hungover to tell me to my face that he won’t be convinced we’re married until he’s seen photographic proof. I don’t toss him the phone, though. He’s going to have to come to me.
Eventually, he gives up and strides across the room to take the phone. Even better, he drops down onto the bed beside me, impatiently thumbing the billion text alerts away. The video didn’t turn out half bed. Bad. Oops. That’s a Freudian slip right there. We watch together as the on-screen Hana and Liam promise to have and to hold, for better and for worse, and for richer and poorer.
Since he’s the billionaire and I’m not, he definitely got the worse end of the deal.
“We got married on purpose.” Liam’s got that stoic glare thing going on, the I’m-a-hard-ass stare that’s probably really effective in the boardroom but that has zero effect on the hardware in his hand. It does make me feel hot and dirty, which is likely not what he intends.
“I’m pretty certain marriage isn’t like a pothole or a bumper. It’s not something you hit by accident.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Do you leave a note when you bang some poor guy’s car in the Whole Foods parking lot? Or do you just sneak away?”
“First of all, I do not shop at Whole Foods. They’ve got great stuff, but I’d have to sell a kidney to buy my groceries there, and since I’ve only got two, that’s a two-week death wish and not a viable long-term plan. Second, it sounds like you’re asking me what my plans were for today. I wasn’t planning on leaving you a note with a fake phone number and ghosting.”
He exhales and nods. His gaze flickers over my face but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Typical. He says, “First, you can buy whatever you want. Billionaire.” He points to himself just in case there’s any doubt about who is rich and who is financially challenged in this not-relationship. “Second, yes, I would like to hear how you envisioned today unfolding.”
“I had planned on today being a whole lot more naked.”
Honesty makes everything so much simpler. Liam being the boardroom type, however, he’s more devious and less accustomed to blunt statements of truth.