Page 79 of Meet Me at the Grand

Letting go of his hand, Dani slid onto one of the stools and studied him. “Liam?”

He set the cider on the counter and began to pace. “Dani, I…I tried. I called my dad and was going to put in my formal request to be put on this project, but he…” Then he stopped, a nearly wild look in his eyes. Panic. That’s what it was. Panic, pure and simple. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of him the last few days, and it’s because he’s been thinking. He went to the doctor on Monday and…”

“Did he get a bad diagnosis?”

“Yes. No.” Liam looked up at the ceiling, then back at Dani. “He didn’t get anewdiagnosis, but he had a follow-up with his endocrinologist, who told him his sugars were off-the-charts bad.”

“Oh, that’s awful. I’m sorry, Liam.” Dani cocked her head. “Isn’t that something he can fix with medicine?”

“Usually, yeah. If he remembers to take it. But also, he has to start exercising. Changing his diet. Lowering his stress. All things I’ve been telling him.”

“But he’s finally hearing it?”

Liam nodded. “I guess it helped that Marianne went with him to the appointment.” Then a glimmer of a smile crested. “He told me they’ve been doing a lot together. I guess our talk last weekend got him thinking about love again. He said he looked up, and there Marianne was. And that he was surprised, because she’d been there all along.”

Dani reached for the saltshaker in front of her, ran her fingers over the ridges of the container. Smiled. “So they didn’t need our intervention after all, hmm?” Then she sobered, put down the salt, and moved to stand in front of Liam again. Reached for his hand. “His resolution sounds like a good thing, but you look like you received bad news. Is it just that his sugars were bad?”

“No, because like you said, that’s fixable.” Liam frowned, looked off somewhere over Dani’s shoulder. “But I guess he’s been processing—with Marianne’s help—exactly what he needs to do to fix the things he needs to fix. And he’s decided that the best course of action is to do the one thing I’ve been trying to get him to do for months.”

Oh. “Retire.”

“Yes. He’s decided to retire.”

“And let me guess.” She couldn’t keep her voice from trembling. “He wants you to take over.”

“Yes. But?—”

“Did you tell him? About us? About wanting to stay here?”

But the pinched look on Liam’s face gave Dani her answer before he confirmed it with words. “I didn’t get a chance before he told me he wanted to retire.”

“Can’t he get someone else? Surely there’s someone at the company who?—”

“He’s family.” Liam ran a hand through his hair, his fingers following the exact path of the grooves already there. “You should have heard him. ‘There’s nobody I would trust with this but you. I’m so proud of you, son.’ It’s up to me, Dani. It always has been, and I was fooling myself to think things could be different.”

His words sliced, but surely he was just talking about taking the job here and not being with her. “That’s pretty hard to say no to.” And Liam was a good son for saying yes. She knew that. This was part of the reason she loved him.

But now that reason was taking him away from her.

Still, this didn’t have to mean the end of them. It just put them right back to where they were before that kiss—except, now he’d admitted how he felt about her. Told her that if given his choice, he’d gladly move here. And yes, long distance would be difficult, but plenty of couples did it all the time.

She wasn’t going to give them up so easily just because things had gotten more complicated. But what about him? What about what she’d overheard him telling Cody about his last relationship?

Okay, then. “I understand.”

“You do?” Liam exhaled slowly. “Thank you, Dani. I promise, I’ll get the best person we have to handle this project.”

“I know.” She traced the back of his hand with her thumb. “But maybe you could spare a few days here and there to come check up on it? And I’ll come to California too. I’ve always wanted to visit the Hollywood sign, the Pacific Ocean, Disneyland?—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I know you’ll be busy, but if we’re going to make this work between us, then we’ve got to both make an effort.”

But the look in his eyes—pained, unwilling to stay focused on her—shut her words off like a faucet.

“Dani…”

“You can’t be serious.” How could he throw everything away just because they’d be in different places? “Nothing’s changed from this morning except where you’ll be living. And I know you hate the idea of long distance because of things not working out with Tiffany?—”

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