Can't Take My Eyes Off of You Read online

  Actually, he'd never really cared about the scar, but what was the point in clarifying things twenty years after the accident that had sliced up his face?

  Before he could respond, his father poked his head into the room, obviously looking for his wife. "Liam!" Henry Kane pulled him in for a bear hug. "Welcome home. I'm glad you were able to make it after all."

  His grandmother Jean was there a moment later, giving him a kiss on the cheek, then holding him still so that her wise eyes could take in far more than he'd planned to give away. Just like she always did.

  "I found Liam talking with Christie a few minutes ago," Susan explained.

  "Christie is a lovely girl," his grandmother said with a smile. Something about her expression shook him. The glint in her eyes looked far too much like matchmaking for his peace of mind.

  "You've heard about Wesley and the wedding, I take it?" his father asked.

  Liam nodded. "I was planning to head upstairs right now to start making some calls to see what I can find out."

  "You can't stay at the reception a little longer?" his mother suggested, a hint of desperation pulling at her words. "Sarah and Calvin would love to have you here."

  Knowing she was right, he pulled out his phone to send a quick text to his secretary to see if there was a note from Wesley waiting for him at his house or in his email spam folder, then went to congratulate Calvin on his new marriage.

  Liam hoped his friend and his cousin could pull off the impossible--and actually make love stick.

  *

  "Was it kind of tense down there, or was it just me?" Sarah asked as Christie carefully sewed the hole closed on her wedding dress.

  "It wasn't just you," Christie agreed. "Especially since Liam didn't know that Wesley and I split up. He came here expecting us to get married tomorrow."

  Sarah whistled softly. "And of course Susan had to get right in the middle of it all, didn't she?"

  Christie bit her tongue. She might not be marrying into the Kane family now, but she still didn't feel right saying anything about how uncomfortable Susan made her feel. She had never been particularly warm and embracing. "Susan is just concerned about Wesley."

  "I know she is. We all are. But I still don't get it," Sarah said. "You're every mother's dream daughter-in-law. She should have been thrilled that you and Wesley were engaged, instead of always acting so weird and stilted around you."

  The thing was, Christie had noticed Susan acting strangely around Liam too. Completely different from the way she behaved around Wesley. Susan had always taken care of Wesley, almost to the point of being suffocatingly nurturing. With Liam, on the other hand, she'd seemed tense. Worried.

  Not knowing how to fake either a smile or an easy response, Christie pretended to be busy tying off the thread on Sarah's silk gown.

  "Even though we're related, I haven't seen Liam in years," Sarah mused as Christie finished up. "But Wesley and Liam were always close. I'm really surprised he didn't know about the wedding being off."

  "Me too."

  That was all Christie was going to admit. Definitely not that her reaction to finding Liam standing there staring at her had been more powerful than any reaction she'd had to another man.

  Ever.

  Even realizing he was Wesley's older brother hadn't been enough for her to stop feeling like fireworks were shooting off inside her stomach just from being in the same room with him. One look at him and she'd dropped the entire handful of rose petals she'd been holding. And when he'd put his hands on her...

  Thrill bumps moved across her skin again, just from remembering how electric his touch had been.

  "He sure hasn't gotten any worse looking," Sarah said. "Back in high school, pretty much everyone had a crush on him. All the girls in town wanted to be my friend in the hopes that they'd get invited to a family gathering, even though he rarely came to any of them." Sarah smoothed her hand over the fix-it job Christie had done to her dress. "I swear the scar from the car accident only made the girls want him more. Probably because of all the danger and mystery swirling around him."

  "I didn't notice a scar. Where is it?"

  Sarah shot her a surprised look. "It's on his left cheek. Lower down. It's hard to miss."

  Christie tried to think back to those moments when he'd been holding her close, questioning her about Wesley. But all she could see in her mind were his intense eyes staring into hers. And all she could feel were butterflies. In as light a voice as she could manage, Christie asked, "Was he a total heartbreaker in high school?"

  "Nope. They all wanted him, but he never dated anybody in town." Sarah shrugged. "Honestly, Liam's always been hard to read. Which only ever seemed to make women want to try to uncover his heart. It's the same old story we've all heard a million times--some poor, delusional girl out there thinks she's going to be the one to make him fall. The reformed rake brought to his knees by love."

  "Definitely delusional," Christie agreed. She knew firsthand all about girls like that.

  Because she'd been one of them her entire life.

  Heck, she'd wanted so badly for things to work out with Wesley that she'd actually accepted his proposal of marriage. And before Wesley...well, she'd been even more delusional with her previous boyfriends. She'd seen only what she wanted to see--and ignored all of the warning signs.

  Never again. Especially given that warning signs had started flashing bigger and brighter than ever before when she'd been talking with Liam. He was just Christie's type, in fact.

  The very type that always ripped her heart out of her chest and stomped all over it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Six hours later, Christie had seen the bride and groom off on their way to the airport for their honeymoon and was saying good-bye to the final wedding guests--many of whom couldn't resist addressing the huge white elephant in the room.

  "Such a lovely wedding, Christie. We're just all so sorry you won't be up there tomorrow marrying Wesley."

  Ugh.

  "Oh, honey, it must be so hard at your age to have to start over. We're all trying to think of any single men we can introduce you to."

  Double ugh.

  "You must be so overwhelmed running the inn without Wesley. I heard Liam was back home to help."

  God, no.

  Liam hadn't come home to help her with the inn. Ten minutes in the same room with him was enough to send her head spinning and her heart racing. Working together would surely do her in completely.

  Only William Sullivan had known the right thing to say. "It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. All that matters is that you're happy. Let me know if you need to get away in my rowboat for a little while. Sometimes there's nothing better than sitting in the middle of a quiet lake with the water and the birds and the mountains for company."

  She'd hugged him so hard that he had to have been more than a little surprised by it. But he had no idea how much his words of support helped.

  Finally, she was back in her room, where she was desperate to take a long, hot bath.

  She reached for the zipper of her dress, knee-length green satin that played up the best of her figure and hid the worst. She hadn't told anyone that it was supposed to have been her rehearsal-dinner dress. Figuring it was better to get some use out of it after the amount of money she'd spent on it, she'd decided to wear it today.

  Still, after ten-plus hours running around in it, she couldn't wait to get into a pair of leggings and a T-shirt. But when she tried to pull the zipper down, it wouldn't go. She tugged and pulled at it until her index finger was scraped sore by the small metal tab.

  Was this dress cursed?

  Just as she had the thought, the window in her bedroom that looked out on Main Street began to shake. She hadn't noticed the wind earlier in the afternoon--in fact, it had been unusually still out on the water--but the weather changed so fast in the Adirondacks that the sky could go from bright blue to pelting hail in seconds.

  With some help from the moonlight, she
could see that the treetops weren't blowing. And the flag on the town hall was limp. But, strangely, the window was still shaking.

  Wesley had fixed up this suite of rooms high under the inn's roof especially for the two of them to move into after their wedding. Sixty years ago, this bedroom had been the honeymoon suite. But only a few years later, for some reason that no one seemed to know, it had been converted to storage.

  Wesley had insisted she move in a month ago, and she'd agreed, glad to have the chance to make the rooms feel like home before the wedding, rather than returning from their honeymoon to an impersonal space. But as she stood in the middle of the bedroom, she felt cold, despite having turned on the heat earlier. The small hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and a rush of air moved over her, almost as if someone had walked by.

  Spinning around, she saw that she was still completely alone.

  Or was she?

  She'd always had a vague sense that something wasn't right about the bedroom. She'd even heard rumors during the months she'd worked at the inn that it was haunted. And though she'd laughed it off, over the past few weeks since she and Wesley had called off their wedding, she wasn't sure it was completely ridiculous anymore.

  But when her stomach growled, she decided low blood sugar was the only reason she was thinking about ghosts and spirits. Her bath would have to wait until she went back downstairs and had a snack. There was leftover cake, and considering she hadn't eaten much all day, she figured she deserved a big slice. Maybe two. Plus, even though her employees had all gone home, if she was lucky she might find a guest in the common rooms downstairs who could help her unstick the zipper.

  So the dress was staying on for the time being. Shoes, however, weren't going to happen again tonight. Just the thought of putting her heels back on had her wincing.

  Her feet bare, she left her living room and walked out into the private hallway. Well, not so private anymore, since Wesley insisted on keeping a small suite here for Liam's visits to town--which had never happened until today. Hurrying past his door and down the stairs, she was soon pushing through the inn's kitchen door.

  Where Liam was sitting on one of the stools, tucking into a piece of wedding cake.

  "Hi," Christie said, wishing her voice didn't sound so breathy. "I didn't realize you were still up."

  Liam's eyes quickly took in both her slightly wrinkled dress and her bare feet. For some reason, not wearing her shoes around him made the moment feel almost intimate.

  Far more intimate than she had ever planned to be with Wesley's brother.

  "I got hungry and thought I'd come down to get a snack," she told him when he didn't say anything, "but I didn't think anyone would be here. I don't know where you flew in from today, but since Wesley says you're always traveling overseas, I figured if it was a long-haul flight, you might be really jet-lagged."

  Oh God, she was babbling. Stop talking, Christie. Just stop. She clamped her lips shut and tried to lift her feet to back out of the room, but they were stuck as though she'd stepped into quick-drying cement.

  Liam gestured to the cake. "There's plenty."

  It wasn't exactly an embossed invitation to sit down with him, but it didn't take a social genius--which she was not, by any stretch of the imagination--to see that if she ran now, she'd look guilty of something.

  Like, maybe, breaking his brother's heart.

  And, probably, single-handedly driving Wesley out of town.

  As if she needed any help from her stomach, it growled so loudly that Liam's eyes actually widened. "When was the last time you ate?"

  She looked down at her wrist, but she'd already taken off her watch in preparation for the thwarted bath. "A long time ago."

  She couldn't have been more surprised when he stood up, got a clean plate off the rack, and put a large piece of cake on it. For her. "Sit down and eat. You were on your feet all day."

  He'd noticed? She tried not to flush. It was so embarrassing, but with her light coloring, if she blushed it didn't just cover her cheeks, it also covered her chest. A chest that was on much better display in the green dress than usual.

  Realizing she was still standing there in the most awkward way, she tried to put a smile on her face and move toward the cake. Toward Liam. Thankfully, her limbs obeyed her this time--unlike her heart, which was racing out of control again.

  What was wrong with her? Why did he make her so nervous? Well, not nervous exactly, but like she was buzzing on the inside. And even worse than the fact that she clearly had no control over her stupid feelings, was that she was certain he could see her attraction to him written all over her face.

  Her unfortunate reverse-poker face.

  Taking the stool to the far side of the one that he had been using, she was pleasantly surprised again that he didn't sit down until she was seated. He was obviously a gentleman, like his brother and father. It should have made her more comfortable. Instead, her nerves ratcheted up another notch.

  There was nothing quite like a bad boy who acted the part of a gentleman. It tended to do all sorts of ooey-gooey things to her insides.

  She'd eat as fast as she could, and then she'd flee.

  She was reaching for the fork when a pang landed in the pit of her empty stomach at the thought of running again. Her instinct had always been to run. From bad jobs and bad boyfriends.

  But when she'd gone to break things off with Wesley, she'd vowed that she was going to change her life for the better. She'd started by throwing herself not only into Sarah and Calvin's wedding, but also into focusing on something that was all hers: the Tapping of the Maples Festival. In two weeks, she was going to put on her first big event in the Adirondacks. Even before Wesley left, she'd watched the details line up one after the other and knew in her heart just how great the event was going to be for the entire town.

  Yes, she was uncomfortable sitting in the inn's kitchen with Liam. But that didn't mean she was going to let herself fold under the pressure, darn it. Not only was she going to make herself sit here and enjoy every single bite of what was supposed to have been her wedding cake, but she was also going to force herself to relax. After all, for years she'd listened to Wesley's stories about his beloved older brother and she'd wanted to meet him. At last, she was getting her chance.

  "So," she said to Liam, "you said earlier that you've been on the road for a few weeks?"

  "I was."

  While she waited for him to say more, she finally took a bite of the cake. Mmmmm, it was good--half a dozen layers of chocolate cake surrounded by coconut and chocolate frosting. So delicious that she couldn't hold back a small moan as she closed her eyes to fully appreciate it. When she finally swallowed it down and opened her eyes, she was surprised to find a glass of milk in front of her. Provided by Liam.

  After drinking half the glass in one gulp, she smiled and said, "Thank you. That was the perfect touch."

  "You're welcome."

  She swore one half of his mouth had almost quirked up as he said it, but she couldn't have proved it for a jury. It was just a sense that he might be loosening up the slightest bit.

  "Where were you traveling, if you don't mind me asking?" One of the things she loved most about her job was talking to the inn's guests about their travels. She very much wanted to visit all those wondrous places she'd heard about. It was another vow she'd made to herself--that one day she would see the seven wonders outside of a book or a cable TV program.

  "I've been all over Asia these past weeks."

  She could tell he was a big traveler, simply by the way he said it, like it was no big deal to visit Asia. She would have been gushing like crazy about her trip and pulling out pictures.

  "I've always wanted to see that part of the world," she said after another bite of cake. "Do you have a favorite country in the Far East?"

  "Japan. Especially in the spring."

  She leaned forward, guessing, "Were the cherry blossoms in bloom?"

  "Everywhere."

  She
closed her eyes, trying to imagine what it must be like to stand beneath the pink blooms. "How lovely it must have been," she said, a smile on her lips at the vision in her head.

  "Lovely," he echoed.

  She opened her eyes and found his gaze locked on hers. His eyes were darker than she remembered them being a few minutes earlier. Even more intense. Which was saying something, because he was one of the most intense men she'd ever come across.

  Wanting to go back to that space they'd just been in where things had finally felt somewhat comfortable, she said, "Wesley told me you have your own business."

  His almost-smile disappeared. "I just sold it."

  "Oh." She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say to that. "Is that a good thing?"

  "It was time to move on."

  Yes, she knew all about moving on. "Any thoughts about what you want to do next?" Feeling borderline comfortable again, she picked a chocolate crumb from the stainless-steel countertop with the tip of her left index finger and licked it off.

  Of course, that was right when he said, "Look, Christie, you seem like a nice person, but I don't understand what happened with you and my brother. I need you to explain it to me. Now."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Christie nearly dropped the fork in her right hand at his abrupt conversational switch. But really, how could she blame him for asking when they hadn't had a chance to talk much about it earlier? It was easy to see how much his brother meant to him.

  "I'll do my best." She wanted to be honest with him, despite knowing she had to keep Wesley's secret. It was a heck of a position to be in. She put down her fork and pushed her plate away, not hungry anymore. "You probably know that Wesley and I have been friends since college."

  "He always said you made him laugh."

  She grinned at that. "He made me laugh too. Did he tell you the first time we met was in a nude-drawing class?"

  His lips twitched a little bit again, and she found herself wishing he would let himself actually smile. But, again, his mouth flattened out before that could happen. "No, he didn't mention that."

  "I probably should have known right then and there that I wasn't cut out to be an artist when I couldn't keep a straight face while sketching the nude." When he raised an eyebrow, she realized she was getting off track. "Anyway, fast-forward ten years and I needed a job." And an escape from her mistakes. "Wesley offered me one here at the inn." She looked around the inn's kitchen, at all the upgrades she'd helped make in the past nine months. "I absolutely love working here."