Page 16 of So Bad It Must Be Good

But she didn’t want to think about gratefulness or Gallagher’s or being cut off. She wanted to think about how Liam’s lips looked when they weren’t pressed together in a firm, disapproving line.

He had a nice mouth. It very nearly looked soft. As though she could press her lips to his and not be met by smooth, immovable rock.

What would it be like to kiss Liam Patrick? A few hours ago she might have laughed hysterically at the question, but in the warm glow of his workshop, his mouth up close and surprisingly tempting, she found herself wondering.

* * *

Kayla Gallagher was staring at his mouth, an almost considering expression on her face.

A very drunk Kayla Gallagher, he reminded himself quickly. Sober Kayla wouldn’t consider a thing on his face if he asked her to, and it was important to not let his idiot brain think otherwise.

Clearly the woman was having a little quarter-life crisis of sorts. She’d been cut off by her grandmother, had been stood up by her date, and had wanted nothing more than to get drunk in a bar and see his workshop.

Kayla Gallagher was a mess.

And not yours to fix.

He’d do well to remember that. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, let her look around, and then take her home. She was not his responsibility or his problem.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Because, really, when had he ever let ownership keep him from trying to fix a problem?

Her blue eyes stared up at his as if he were some mythical creature. Well, she was drunk enough she was probably seeing two of him. That was the reasonable explanation.

“I just had to get out, you know?” she said, her voice something like a hushed whisper.

“Well, no.” Out was not a word in his vocabulary. Especially when it came to his family or the family business.

“I was suffocating. Which sounds dramatic, but I felt it. Like I couldn’t breathe. Like someone was pressing me down into this lifeless, colorless, pointless decoration.” She pressed her hand to his chest, her arm shifting in the circle of his fingers, her warm palm pushing lightly against him. As if she could demonstrate.

“You could never be pointless, Kayla.” Which was also something he shouldn’t have said, but Kayla had been something like fresh air in all those years of answering to Gallaghers. She was quiet, yes, definitely a little skittish, but she was kind. Always kind in the midst of orders expected to be followed to the letter.

Yes, she’d seemed fragile compared to her iron maiden of a grandmother and her slick, formidable businessman of an uncle who’d run Gallagher’s for so long. Her father, who ran the place now, reminded Liam of ice—cold, sharp, brutal if you let it be. Then there’d been Dinah, Kayla’s cousin—a pretty package, but with the grandmother’s steel underneath it all.

Kayla was none of those things. Soft and warm, scared and timid. So maybe it made sense she felt like she’d been suffocating in that family. Pressed down into the background.

“Why do you keep touching me?” he asked, when she said nothing else. When she simply stood there with her hand on him. He couldn’t seem to escape it. Her body pressed to his, leaning against his, brushing against his, and now her hand over his heart.

She’s drunk, you idiot, all the reason there is.

“I don’t know,” she said, as if arguing with the harsh words his mind was trying to tell him. “It’s kind of fascinating to think of you as something real and breathing instead of a vaguely disapproving statue.” She looked at her hand on his chest, and no matter how he tried to breathe like a normal person and not someone who’d just run a marathon, he could see her hand move with the rise and fall of his chest.

He still had his fingers curled around her arm, in an effort to keep her from crashing into things in his workshop. In an effort to keep her upright and unharmed.

Why did that have to feel like his responsibility?

Maybe because he was so focused on not being focused on her hand on him, he missed that she’d moved her other arm until she traced her fingers across the whiskers on his jaw.

He nearly jerked away, holding himself still only because if he jerked, he’d jerk her with him.

“I remember when you didn’t have a beard,” she said, staring at his chin.

“I remember when you had braces,” he replied, and though he wasn’t drunk, he felt a little off. All this close quarters and her and . . .

Her dark blue eyes rose to his. “Did you pay that close of attention?”

Always. “No. I just figure if we’re pointing out how people have changed . . .”

“I’m trying to change,” she said, her eyebrows drawing together.

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