Page 32 of Flirtatious

Liam rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “It’s not perfect. Trust me.”

I want to hear all about his not perfect clan that sounds perfectly wonderful to me with its extended family and a grandmother who keeps them in line and a Siamese cat his father gave his mother. I imagine the kitten sitting in a box with a pretty pink bow tied around its neck like the perfect present.

“I bet it’s more incredible than you realize,” I say, trying to hide my desire to hear anything he’ll tell me about them.

Unsure he’s in the mood to talk much at all, I wait, hoping to hear even one story. Tilting his head back, he looks up toward the ceiling for a few seconds and then almost as if he knows how much this means to me, Liam begins to tell me about the time he and his cousins were all nearly teenagers and got in trouble at a summertime cookout at his grandmother’s.

As silly as I know it is, I hang on every word and every gesture he makes as he tells the tale, laughing when he chuckles about how his parents were furious, along with his aunts and uncles, because all the boys had stolen beer and hidden it down near the water to sneak drinks from all day. By the time they sat down to eat dinner, every one of them were drunk off their asses, each from less than a full beer.

“Of course, as the oldest boy, my father assumed I should have stopped all of this from happening. I wasn’t the ringleader—that was Cade and Alex, as usual. I was nearly thirteen, which put them at ten, but the two of them were always troublemakers.”

“I hope I get to meet all of these people sometime. They sound like so much fun. I wish my family had stories like that. We don’t have anything but my mother and me together doing the same thing we’ve done for nearly all my life.”

And just like that, all the happiness the two of us had been enjoying evaporates with the truth of my life. I see the change in Liam as his eyes fill with sadness, or worse, pity for me. I’m sure my mother has told him the whole ugly story of how my father couldn’t hack dealing with my work to become a singer and her efforts to do everything she could to make my dream come true. It’s a pathetic story of a man needing to be the center of attention and unwilling to accept he couldn’t be.

Then Liam says the two words that crush me more than anything else he could utter.

“I’m sorry.”

I so desperately wanted to not be pitied tonight, but with just those words, that’s all I am.

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to be. I need to go. Goodnight.”

He doesn’t get a chance to say anything, and by the time I slam his bedroom door behind me, the tears are rolling down my cheeks. The tabloids and those ridiculous social media people should get a look at me now.

No man in my bed. No good times drunk or high.

Just me alone wishing I had a different life sometimes. Is that so much to ask? I don’t want to give up all I have. I just want to smile and laugh for a few minutes without having to deal with the reality of who I am and what my life has been.

I guess it is too much to ask.

CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

Liam

Three times today,I’ve walked into a room in this house and Mia has immediately walked out. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but my gut tells me it has to do with last night. I thought we had reached a new understanding between the two of us after she came to my room clearly to hear stories about my family, but obviously, I was wrong.

Her crew, as she calls them, is more like an angry gang that glares at me whenever we have the misfortune of being in a room at the same time. Probably still upset I told them the truth about their behavior the other day. Too bad. Somebody needed to.

At least one benefit of setting them straight is they appear to have found some manners. Other than the nasty staring at me, of course. Or maybe Andrea finally made it clear that having their craziness around Mia all the time isn’t good for her. I saw how rattled she looked when I said she might not be able to perform.

I haven’t been around here long, but I’ve figured out that fear of her daughter’s career ending is a true motivator for Andrea. At first, I thought she was the only good person here and Mia was the tyrant, but lately, I’ve been rethinking that opinion.

After a long morning meeting with Javier and his people regarding the changes we need to implement here at the estate now that I know there’s a stalker in my client’s life, I head toward the kitchen to grab some lunch. Two days ago, the cook Cecelia made me a hell of a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, so today I’m looking forward to enjoying that again, assuming the hoard of people around here haven’t devoured every last ounce of it already.

Hopefully, I’ll get to eat by myself since I think I saw Mia’s entire crew file across the lawn toward the practice studio on the other side of the estate with the star herself and her backup dancers who’ve begun to come here every day now. Too bad they can’t all stay there permanently.

Cecelia smiles when I walk into the kitchen, waving at me as she walks out of the pantry. “Hungry, Liam?” she asks with more enthusiasm than I expect from anyone around here. It’s almost as if she’s happy to see me.

“I was hoping to have another of your grilled cheese sandwiches and some tomato soup from the other day,” I answer as I stop near the enormous stainless steel refrigerator.

She walks over to me and tilts her head back to smile up at me. Short and very round, she’s the nicest person here by a mile. “You’re in luck! I saw how much you loved my soup and squirreled some of it away for you. Let me heat it up. It won’t take long, and then you can have your grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch.”

“Thank you, Cecelia.”

Waving me away, she turns around to start working on my food. “Now go! Get out of my kitchen and let me do my magic. Go!”

I open the refrigerator to grab a drink, and my gaze lands on that green stuff that smells like feet sitting front and center on the middle shelf. With a grimace, I look past that to the jug of iced tea and reach into grab it. Whatever that stuff Mitchell drinks wafts up to my nostrils, and I swear my eyes begin to water at the stench.

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