Page 70 of Power Play

What an idiot I’d been. What an absolute fool to think he’d been teaching me the business, using me for my skill at remembering details. Buying me gorgeous dresses that were also just a little sexy.

Gas station hot dogs were never anyone’s favorite treat.

I should have known how deep the lies went, but I didn’t.

Now, I was here. Stuck in another lie. If I was smart, I’d get the hell out of this beautiful beach house. Away from this charming town and this man who stirred up a hurricane of desire inside my body.

But at this point, I think it was pretty clear - I was not smart.

So instead, I sat down at the big kitchen table and ate delicious falafels. I talked about birds with Tess and laughed at Liam’s bad bird jokes.

It was almost like I wanted to get hurt. I wanted to have this weird hope, only to have it yanked away from me. Like I could see the tornado approaching and all I had to do was walk away, but no. Not me. I was going to dive right inside.

Kit Barrington was nothing if she wasn’t a sucker for punishment.

I needed to get as far away from Liam Locke as I could, and instead I made a grocery list of things we’d need for the week.

“I can Instacart that stuff,” Liam said, coming into my space, looking over my shoulder. His breath was warm against my neck in a way my brain hated but my body loved.

“He Instacarts everything,” Tess said. She sat across from me rolling falafel in hot sauce and eating them in two bites. It was legit. That girl loved hot sauce.

“There’s no Instacart here,” I said. We were in rural Maine. An out of the way beach community. There would be one local grocery store. I’d been in enough places like this around the country on my journey of atonement to know I was right.

“Instacart is everywhere,” Liam said. “I once was able to Instacart myself new underwear at the Espys. Trust me. I got this.”

“Why in the world did you need new underwear at the Epsy’s?” I shook my head. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Fine. Knock yourself out, here is what we need.”

I handed him the list. He winked at me and ruffled Tess’s hair. Then he went out to the truck to bring in all our luggage. While he did that, Tess and I thoroughly explored the beach house. We found cabinets under the stairs (like Harry Potter, only unlike Harry Potter they were only filled with shelves of jars and dusty old wreaths). We found a spacious bathroom with a huge window that opened over a claw foot tub. There was a room full of books and inexplicably two bicycles that Liamimmediately took outside to hose off. There was a terrifying attic that Tess tried to dare me to go into, but I was no fool.

Liam let me have the primary bedroom with the private bathroom. It was right next door to the bunk bed room where Tess would sleep. Liam claimed a guest room with a queen bed tucked under the eaves upstairs.

There was a television. Internet. A washer and dryer.

“Everything we could need,” I said.

Run!My gut said.Get out while you still can. This is going to feel like a home.

Tess ran from her room to the screened in porch with a stack of her books.

Liam was frowning at his phone and I thought about that scene today with that man, Nick. His half-brother.

I knew how to keep myself safe with almost nothing at my disposal. I could cobble together a weapon of self-protection with sarcasm and fear of abandonment. The best way to keep myself safe right now was to not get involved in Liam’s family drama.

But there was something about the way he looked in that moment. The way his brow furrowed like someone had hurt him and he just didn’t understand why.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up and shaking off the pensiveness on his face. “I just…” he let out a long breath. “I need to talk to my brother about what I did today.”

“You mean Nick?”

“No. My other brother. Who is going to be furious with me for coming here.”

“Wyatt.” The brother who just married the pop star in Vegas.

“Yeah. We were going to go easy with Nick. Give him time to get used to the idea of having brothers, and I, of course, did the opposite of that.”

He smiled at me in the way of a guy who is used to doing the wrong thing and getting yelled at by his big brother. It made me, stupidly, want to push the hair off his face and give him a hug.

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