He shook his head, the motion disturbing that perfectly tousled hair. I wanted to run my fingers through it like I had that night, feel the softness of it, use it to pull him harder against me.
Pathetic, I thought again.
“You aren’t pathetic. Don’t say that about yourself.”
“But...” I started.
Then his baby blues hardened into two chips of ice and froze me mid-rebuttal. “No. Pathetic people don’t have the courage to go half way around the world for a year, away from everything and everyone they know. They stay at home and wallow in their self-pity. So, you’re not pathetic. If anything, you’re brave. And too self-deprecating. You wouldn’t let anyone else call you that, so why beat yourself up?”
I don’t think I blinked through his little speech. The hairs on the back of my neck had stood up, though. In a good way.
Not pathetic. Brave, I thought, followed quickly by, he thinks I’m brave!
I realized then that I’d just gotten a glimpse of the hard, business-minded core hidden by the handsome exterior. He’d spoken with such confidence, too. I bet he got his way at all the board meetings.
I kind of wanted him to get his way with me, right then and there. “What are you? Some kind of self-help guru?” I nudged his foot beneath the table.
“I’m good at reading people. Don’t you believe me yet?” he said, the ice over his eyes cracking at the same time he smiled. It was a one-two punch, first the lecture delivered so clearly, then the smile to smooth everything over.
He definitely got his way in the boardroom. And everywhere else, I bet. I hoped his boss knew what they had in Liam. Whatever meeting he was in Rome for was in the bag, as far as I was concerned.
“I believe that you have a really high opinion of yourself,” I said, unable to keep my own lips from curving up into a matching smile. I could lose myself in those eyes of his. Escape my sliding grades, escape the memories from St. Louis. All of it.
“A well-justified opinion of myself.”
I slipped my shoe off and then ran my toes up his calf, loving the warmth coming off him, the smoothness of his khakis against me. Liam’s smile twitched. Reaching down, he ran his fingers up my calf, stopping right behind the knee.
He squeezed that spot. It was like he’d lit a pilot light inside of me. A furnace roared to life low in my stomach. It wouldn’t have surprised me if my panties burnt to ash with the heat of it.
“A very well deserved opinion,” I said while teasing electric fingers ran up and down my back. If only we hadn’t been in such a public place.
I wondered if I could be brave enough to ask him to take me back to that lovely hotel room with its equally lovely, large bed.
His hand slipped away, leaving the back of my knee cool and aching for his touch again. Liam crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, regarding me with that philosopher’s gaze again.
“Tell me something about you I don’t know. Something good.”
“Like what?” I said. I’d be his open book if only to feel his eyes discover me.
“Anything. Ten seconds. Something I don’t know.” He then jerked his watch out from beneath his cuff, actually counting off the seconds.
I opened my mouth, smiling hard enough that my cheeks hurt. But nothing came out. It was crazy. We hardly knew anything about each other. There was an entire ocean of life behind me I could tap, but I didn’t know when or where.
“Five...”
“Liam!” I said, laughing around his name. It was a nice name. Lyrical.
“Four...”
“I don’t know!”
“Three...” He couldn’t keep his own smile off his face, amused at the way he’d put me on the spot.
Desperate, I picked something. “Before I came to Rome I’d never been on a plane before.”
He frowned. “Something interesting.”
“Once, in third grade, I made a boy I had a crush on eat a worm.”
The frown disappeared, replaced by that winning smile. “Remind me never to play in the dirt with you.”
“So you think I have a crush on you?” I said, leaning across the table.
He smiled again, but didn’t answer. Probably because the answer was obvious. I definitely had a crush on him. Third-grade me would have tried to force-feed him a whole handfuls of wriggly worms.
Of course, now that that memory had surfaced, I recalled that the boy in question ran away from me every time I approached him on the playground after that.
“Your turn,” I said.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he replied.
He started saying something else, but his cell began beeping furiously in his pocket. He pulled it out, frowning at the screen. He sighed, and I knew instantly that he had to go.
I wanted to beg him to stay, to hang out with me some more, to tell me about himself. But instead I let him go.
“I have to attend to some matters,” he said, his voice and eyes switching back to that confident businessman mode I’d gotten a glimpse of earlier. “But first you’re going to tell me where you’re staying.”
I scribbled the address of my little flat onto a napkin and pushed it across the table to him. He picked it up, folded it neatly, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. He also took out a few bills and tucked them under the antipasto plate.
When he stood, I did, too.
“I want to see you again,” he said.
“I want that, too.”
Then he pulled me close, his hands clasped at the small of my back. His lips found mine. He tasted of olive oil and desire. It was the sweetest kiss I’d ever had, and I didn’t want it to end.
The way his hands squeezed against me, I didn’t think he wanted it to end, either. But it had to.
“Until next time,” he said, his cheeks flushed and his dark pupils dilated. He was breathless.
I hated to see him go, but I loved to watch him leave.
Chapter 5
I missed Liam. I missed the feel of his skin against my fingertips. I missed the way my heart fluttered in my chest when he smiled.
I missed him so badly that I'd started writing a sentence about the Renaissance painted Giulio Romano about fifteen minutes earlier and gotten no farther than typing his name out. It was supposed to be a paper exploring Romano's tutelage under Raphael. Similarities and differences between the styles of student and teacher.
Yet, I couldn't bring myself to type another word. I'd rather write something about the perfect symmetry of Liam's face. I'd focus on his eyes first, I thought. That light, baby blue shade that deepened the more you looked into them. As though you could fall into their fathomless depths.
It was kind of funny, actually. I'd been putting this paper off again and again, giving myself a new excuse every time I looked at the assignment sheet and the ever-approaching due date.
I'll get to it tomorrow. There's still a month left. There's still two weeks left. There's still a whole business week left. You know that sort of thing.
And the closer that deadline crept, the heavier the rock in the pit of my stomach became. And since the only way to relieve the pressure of that weight was to give into temptation to put writing the paper off again, I did it more and more easily each time.