One Little Dare Read online

  “Oh.” I had pulled my phone out to show her the photo Katy had posted—the one I’d surreptitiously saved before removing the tag. But the idea of it living on the wall, among all these other photos, didn’t feel right. This wall was a place of honor. And I didn’t think evidence of my little dare deserved any real estate on it. “Well, it was just a joke. We don’t really know each other.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “You never really know someone until you do, that’s what I always say.” Deb stared at a photo of Will wearing sunglasses atop a mountain. He was handsome—they all were. But he embodied living if these photos were any sign. “You remind me of him. Always doing dares. That was Will. He had to climb the highest, run the furthest, be the fastest. And those boys, they all egged each other one—but none of them more than Will.” Her smile turned soft, crinkling the skin at the corners of her eyes. “He’d be thrilled that Liam married a stranger. I’m honestly surprised Will didn’t do it himself while he was still here.” I heard her intake of breath and put my hand on her arm, offering support I didn’t know if I could provide.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “Sometimes it runs over me. He was my boy. My son. And he loved big and he lived loud and it doesn’t seem fair that the world keeps spinning after losing someone with that kind of presence. And Liam—” she swallowed audibly “—he loved Will so much. I worry about him a lot. After his mom died…” she paused. “Sorry, I shouldn’t tell you things you don’t already know.”

  “Oh, he told me about his mom. And Will.”

  Deb looked me over, seemingly surprised by this information. “Did he? He’s usually such a quiet soul. Bob calls him a hard nut to crack. But I guess that says a lot about you, if he’s told you these things.” She nodded a moment. “Well, like I said. I worry about Liam. He and Will were two peas in a pod. Liam spent every weekday here during the summers while his mom worked. I went through a lot of snacks and a lot of glassware. A few windows too. For as much time as they played baseball, you’d think they’d have figured out to not face windows when they were up to bat.” Chuckling, she wrapped her arms around her middle. “Even if you two hardly know each other, like you claim, I’m glad he brought you. I think, when he’s alone, he has a hard time processing his emotions.” Suddenly, Deb stopped and vigorously shook her head. “Gosh, look at me just spilling my guts. I’m sorry.” She grasped my hands. “I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for coming.”

  “There you are,” Liam said, stepping into the hallway. “We thought you’d gotten lost.”

  Deb let go of my hands and turned to Liam. “Lost down memory lane, perhaps.”

  “Nice skivvies,” I said, nodding at the photo of the boys in their underwear.

  “You like that?” Liam grinned. “Someone really wanted a bunch of eighteen-year-old boys’ pants.”

  “That’s what Deb was saying,” I said to her retreating back. She hollered out to Bob for something and Liam stepped beside me, in the spot she’d vacated. “Looks like you all had quite the adventures growing up.”

  “We did.” His arm came around my shoulders, pulling me to him. I lifted my chin to look up at him, but his mouth was on mine before I could.

  My hands slid up his chest, entangling around his neck as I went up on my tiptoes to kiss him more firmly. I wasn’t sure where the kiss came from, but I wouldn’t complain. Kissing Liam was one of the most delicious pleasures I’d had, and I decided right then, in a hallway of memories, that I wouldn’t question anything else about us. I’d just go with the flow—see where this led us. If it led to more kisses just like this one, well, all the better.

  When he pulled away, he drew a ragged breath deep into his chest. “Thank you.”

  “I thought I told you, you don’t have to thank me for kisses,” I whispered, my mouth a hair from his.

  “I’m not thanking you for the kiss, though I should.” He brushed my hair behind my ear and slid his fingers along my jaw. “I’m thanking you for coming out here. I was nervous about it, and you settled my mind. You made this easier for me and I appreciate that. More than you probably could understand.” A wave of tenderness passed through me. If I wasn’t careful, I could be emotionally seduced by feelings like that.

  My fingers played with his hair. “I’m enjoying myself. I guess I expected this to have a more funeral type feel. But it doesn’t.”

  “I’m sure the actual funeral will be hell on all of us. But I think we mostly just wanted to get together, the way we used to.” Liam kissed my forehead. “I feel his absence, of course, but the ache isn’t so intense when I’m with you.”

  Alarm bells went off in my head. It was one thing to enjoy each other’s company. But it was another to confuse whatever we were as something serious. I didn’t think Liam was a clingy kind of guy, but I also didn’t want him to get the wrong idea about us. At some point, I’d head home. Alone. And I didn’t want to be his flotation device when he was swimming in grief. I’d only end up being an anchor.

  “I’m happy to be your grief buddy.” I winced. “Not happy of course. But you know what I mean.”

  Liam pulled back to look at me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I felt bad for downplaying his feelings so quickly. “I just don’t want to rush this—whatever this is. I mean, we haven’t even known each other twenty-four hours.” But I’d be a big fat fucking liar if I pretended it didn’t feel like much longer.

  16

  Tori was quiet after we returned to the hotel. She made noises about getting her own hotel room for the night, but I told her that she could have the free bed in my room if she wanted—again. I sensed that she needed some distance from me, so I’d make sure to actually sleep in the other queen bed that night. We hadn’t made concrete plans for the following day, but when Nicole and Naomi had hugged her goodbye, they’d discussed meeting us for dinner at a restaurant on the strip the next day. Tori had seemed eager then, but her quiet now unsettled me.

  Had I said something that bothered her in some way? I walked back the conversation we’d had in the hallway, when the switch from warm Tori had turned off—but I couldn’t think of any one thing I’d said that had triggered her to be quiet and contemplative.

  We slept in separate beds and when I awoke the following morning, the sight of an empty bed and a note on the nightstand made me feel like I’d lost her—just like I had the first night.

  I dropped my head back onto the pillow before reading the note, bracing myself for the worst. I hadn’t even gotten her phone number. Again. I knew her name, so I could find her that way. But should I search for someone who didn’t seem to want to be found?

  After a solid five minutes mentally berating myself, I finally worked up the courage to slide the note close enough to read.

  Liam—

  I’ve got some work to get done, and I need a really quiet place to do it. The hotel has a business area so I can work in silence. I’ll be back before dinner.

  -Tori

  I should have been relieved by her message. I mean, I was. She promised to be back, so she wasn’t lost for good. But her message relayed none of the warmth I’d come to expect from her. It felt like a message one might leave for a coworker, or some other impersonal connection.

  Since I’d be spending the morning alone, I decided to pick up my suits for the funeral and the celebration of life.

  After that, I walked down the strip for a bit. I never did that—preferring my tiny town south of here to the hustle and bustle and noise of the city. For having grown up in such a big city, I had very few poignant memories of the places that made this city iconic. No, Will and the rest of the guys—we’d spent our weekends and vacations out in the desert, or over in California. The bright lights didn’t have anything on the miles of empty desert.

  I stopped for lunch at a restaurant and checked my work email from my phone. Nothing too exciting. But as I scrolled through the messages, one sent early this morning caught my eye.

  The
subject line said: Your wedding photos are ready for download.

  It was hard to believe that it’d been two days since Tori and I had gotten married. Apart from the rings, there were no physical reminders of that night. But as I clicked on the download link in the email, my phone screen filled with photos of Tori and me, out in the grove and inside the chapel during the ceremony. I hadn’t realized they’d captured photos during the ceremony—that showed how much I’d paid attention to my surroundings. Once Tori came into view, everything else fell off my radar.

  The photographer had captured her walk down the aisle and my face as I’d looked at her. I decided it was a very intimate and vulnerable thing, to witness your own expression in moments like this one: when I’d seen my bride approaching me.

  My face was too transparent, like I was drunk on something other than alcohol. I looked at her like a groom should look at his bride. I tried not to analyze that too much and clicked through to the next photo.

  It was Tori and I at the altar, facing one another as we grinned. Damn, we looked happy. For hardly knowing one another, we looked like we’d spent years smiling at each other just like that.

  The next photo was our kiss after being pronounced husband and wife.

  Yeah, these photos were definitely far too intrusive right now. I clicked through until I’d arrived at the more formal photos of us in the grove. There were at least a dozen photos with various poses, but I closed the link and chose not to continue to look at them anymore.

  Tori’s absence today felt like more than just work. She had told me the night before that I was a romantic. Perhaps I was. Was that such a bad thing? Didn’t most women love a romantic man? Not that I wanted Tori to love me.

  Shit, I couldn’t go down this thought path. I finished my lunch in a hurry and headed back to the hotel.

  The room was still empty, so I pulled out my laptop and got some work done, filling out reports and checking in with my accountant. I had just closed my laptop when the door opened and Tori walked in.

  “Hey!” she said brightly, setting a backpack down on the desk. She looked clear-headed, a sharp contrast to how she’d looked the night before. “How was your day?” She pulled the baseball hat she’d been wearing off her head and came around the bed, collapsing onto it like she was spent. She wore shorts that showed off quite a bit of leg and a tank top with some kind of lacy girl thing peeking underneath.

  “Uh…” I peeled my eyes away from her long, tanned legs and looked back at my laptop. “I just checked in with my accountant about my quarterly taxes.” I tucked the laptop into its case and zipped it up.

  “Sounds riveting,” she said with a laugh. Rolling over onto her side to face me, she said, “Sorry for ducking out this morning. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, not at all. When did you leave?”

  “Three. That’s when my classes for the day started. The business center here is pretty good.”

  “That’s good.” I was thrown off by her happy, chatty demeanor. “Are you okay?” I asked when she smoothed her hand over the covers.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m great.”

  “You were quiet last night.” Did I have any right to bring this up? Would it be worth poking at?

  Maybe I expected her to seem confused by that statement, so she could acknowledge the blip and excuse it away by claiming to be fatigued. But she closed her eyes and sighed so deeply that her entire body sank several inches into the plush comforter.

  “I know. Sorry.” She opened her eyes, looking at me. “I think I got a little freaked out, to be honest. I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

  “What’s stupid?”

  “Look—I know we had a wedding and everything and it was great. I’m just worried about where this is going.” She waved her hand between us and gave me a pained smile. She really didn’t like talking about this. “I guess I thought we were just hanging out. Not anything serious.”

  I let this sink in. She was right; there had been no conversations to discuss our intentions. It made absolute sense that she’d feel uneasy by the lack of communication. And I’d thrust her into this really weird, sad thing. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to spend time with me, out of pity or whatever else. “Okay,” I began, looking down at the pattern in the carpet. “I guess I didn’t have a plan, or any expectations one way or another. I appreciated you joining me at Will’s parents’ yesterday, but don’t feel obligated to join us. It’s a weird situation, isn’t it?”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. See, I’m not good at this.”

  “What’s ‘this’?”

  “Explaining. I liked Will’s parents. They’re wonderful people. I can see why they mean so much to you.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t feel obligated. Really.” She scooted across the bed, sitting up to face me so our knees touched. “I like you, Liam. And yeah, this situation is weird, but so is marrying a stranger.” She took my hands in hers. “I’m trying to say that I want to hang out with you still, but…” she licked her lips. “We don’t live in the same state. Eventually, I’ll go back home and you’ll stay here.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And I’m not ready to go home yet. I like you. I know, I said that already. But I want to join you for these things, because I like your friends too. And I want to support you with all that’s going on. I’m in no rush to leave Vegas, so if you’ll have me, I’d like to stick around you for a few more days, at least. With the understanding that when I leave…”

  “To not expect anything romantic to continue,” I finished when her voice trailed off.

  “Yeah.” She blew out a breath. “It’s just… I don’t do committed relationships. They sound like prison to me. And considering that I’ve been a part of one so-called committed relationship failing, and then been in the middle of another, it’s just not my thing. I feel like it’s more or less a fling between us. Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” I said, squeezing her hands. But a small part of me was conflicted. She was the most enigmatic woman I’d ever met. I wasn’t looking forward to saying goodbye to her when she decided to leave, but I respected her decision. It meant several more days with her, which was more than I deserved anyway.

  “Good.” She leaned forward and pressed her mouth against mine. I don’t know what it was about her, but when her lips found mine like that it was if she brushed dust from places that lived dormant far too long.

  I cradled her face, holding her steady in my hands as I kissed her back like a man who wanted to give her what she gave me. The rhythm of our kiss changed, deepened, as she crawled off the bed and onto my lap, pressing her fully against me—chest to chest—heartbeat to heartbeat. Mine pounded so forcefully, as if it ached to jump from my body to hers.

  My hands slid to the nape of her neck, tipping her head back to give me access to her throat, which I kissed thoroughly. I nibbled along her jawline, hungry for more and latched onto her earlobe momentarily before kissing the soft, fragrant skin behind it.

  “Liam,” she said in a throaty whisper. “If we don’t stop now, we’ll never make it to dinner.”

  “Good,” I murmured against her skin, nuzzling my way back to her mouth.

  She laughed, kissing me full on the mouth and squeezing me tightly to her. She let a little moan escape her mouth and float into mine and grinded against my painfully hard erection that had the nerve to create distance between us.

  She bit my lower lip, then caressed it softly with her tongue. “I’m serious,” she said into my mouth, but made no move to climb off my lap.

  “So am I.” I slid my hands down the sides of her body, thinking of a million things I wanted to do with her and not one of them involved eating dinner with my friends and their significant others.

  “We need to eat,” she said, her voice hushed as she grinded against me again.

  “I’d planned on eating,” I said, and gently bit the soft skin along the side of her neck.

  Laughter erupted fr
om her, vibrating up that long column of skin as I nibbled it. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “I told you I believed in being forthright.”

  “Thank God for that.” With a noise of regret, she climbed off me and fell backward onto the bed. “Holy shit. How are we going to make it through this dinner?”

  I adjusted my lap. “Good fucking question.”

  * * *

  When Tori and I joined the group for dinner, we were the last to arrive. Tori had noticed red marks along her neck right before we walked out the door and spent the next few minutes attempting to cover them with foundation before she gave up. “It’ll be dark in there anyway,” she said with a wink. “Right?”

  “Sure,” I told her, but I wasn’t sure. I liked seeing evidence of our making out on her skin. I could still taste her, could still smell her. I was wholly wrapped up in her. The next several days would need to pass slowly, so I could savor her longer.

  Nicole and Naomi stood to give Tori hugs and Seth clapped me on the back and told me he’d ordered a round of drinks already.

  “I didn’t know what you drank, Tori, so I got you a water,” he said as she took the seat next to his fiancée.

  Tori gave him a smile as she unfolded her napkin onto her lap. “Normally, I drink the tears of bitter Nerts losers, but tonight I’ll settle for a Long Island.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t bitter,” Seth said, playing along. “Besides, it was just your lucky night.”

  “Oh, was it?” Nicole elbowed him. “I’m sure, given the opportunity, she’ll kick your ass all the way under the table again.”

  “You’re supposed to be on my side,” Seth said, flipping through the menu.

  “We’re not married yet,” she replied with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yeah, man, I gotta tell you,” Chad said, leaning over the table. “Marriage doesn’t guarantee she’ll be on your side either. Hate to break it to you.”