Page 38 of The Arrangement
“Yes, Byron was Sebastian’s assistant for three years before Sebastian finally conned Byron into dating. They’ve beentogether for like four or five months; I don’t know,” I said with an absent wave of my hand. With an evil grin, I leaned closer to Liam and dropped my voice. “I do know that Sebastian is a little pissy that Declan got engaged first. He’s fucking chomping at the bit to propose to Byron, but he doesn’t want to do it too close to Declan’s proposal and look like a copycat.”
Liam seemed to hold in a laugh, but it escaped him as a snort, which only made me laugh harder.
“You’re shitting me.”
I bit my lower lip and shook my head. “Nope. Declan and Parker had a sort of friends-with-benefits thing going for more than a year. Just sex. But things got serious when Parker suddenly became a single dad and homeless. Declan took him in and fell hopelessly for Parker and his baby girl. They’ve been dating-dating for a couple of months.”
Liam jerked back, knocking his shoulders on the column. His face shifted into a scowl. “Suddenly became a single dad? How? Was he cheating on his wife with Declan?”
“What?” I squawked. “No! Parker’s gay. Always has been.”
“How does a gay mansuddenlybecome a single dad? It’s a reproduction question. Men don’t.”
My eyes widened as my brain caught up to the critical pieces of the story Liam was missing. “Oh. No, Parker had this good female friend who wanted a kid but didn’t want to do the marriage thing. She asked Parker to donate his sperm because they were besties. Unfortunately, she died last summer, and since Parker is Joy’s biological father, she naturally came to him. And because Parker was going through a streak of shit luck, his apartment burned down two weeks after his best friend died.”
“Fuck. My bad.”
I shrugged. “Not your fault. I didn’t give you all the details. Parker’s a great guy. Very protective of his daughter and Declan. It’s adorable.”
“It’s cool you’ve got this group of close-knit friends you can hang out with,” Liam murmured. “But you were always outgoing. You could talk to anyone. Hell, I think I can remember you talking to the wall when you were bored.”
A groan left me. “Yeah. I think I drive them crazy because I talk so much. But I’m sure you’re going to make a lot of friends once you’ve been here a while. You’re still settling in. Are you in contact with friends you made in college?”
Liam frowned. “I wasn’t close with many people in college. I remained focused on my studies most of the time. It was where I met Fiona.”
My brow furrowed, and I leaned toward him. “The hippo?”
“What? Oh God, no.” His moan turned into a soft snicker. “If that keeps her out of Cincinnati, though, I’ll take it.”
“Huh?” I wasn’t following him at all.
“Fiona is my ex-wife. We met while I was in undergraduate school,” Liam clarified.
“Oh, fuck! My bad! My bad!” I held up my hands in front of me to ward off his vengeance. However, he didn’t seem all that offended by the mistake. “I think it’s a Cincinnati thing. We all watched as that preemie hippo grew up. It was Fiona this and Fiona that. As soon as I hear the name, it’s all I think about.”
“It’s fine. I don’t really care. But I would rather not have you think I was married to an animal in the Cincinnati Zoo.”
A tiny snort might have escaped me. “No. Of course not. But you met in college? That where you started dating?”
Liam nodded. “Yeah. We dated for about five years, all while I was in college. We married after I got my PhD, but we were together for less than four years. I’ve been single for about four years now.”
My lips parted to ask why they separated, but I caught those prying words before they could trip off my tongue. I was a nosy motherfucker, just like my friends, and I was dying for the dirt.However, I knew it was probably a sore subject even now. If Liam wanted to volunteer that information, fine. But he didn’t need me probing sore spots.
“But I’m okay with single,” Liam announced, his voice strengthening. “I completely missed out on single life in my twenties. Going out with you—I-I mean, hanging out with you has forced me to see more of the city. I’m looking forward to exploring more on my own. And doing more things. Stuff I never got to do while married.”
Again, the wrong words were waiting to leap from my tongue. This time, I wanted to offer to hang out with him. Show him all the cool places around the city. But that was stupid. We were only hanging out now because he wanted that donation for the museum. He was going to be so glad when this was over and he never had to see me. I had no doubt that the first thing he would do after this arrangement would be to block my number on his phone.
A fierce wind whipped through the park during the brief lull in our conversation, forcing us to pull our heads down and our shoulders up to shield against the biting cold.
“Maybe we should head to the car,” I suggested.
“Good idea.”
I turned toward the stairs and descended first, with Liam behind me. “So, is your ex also a scientist like you?”
“No.” Liam said that single syllable so firmly that I thought that might be the end of it. “She went to college and got a degree in art. Later, she became an interior designer.”
As I moved off the stairs, I turned to face him because I couldn’t imagine him with an interior designer. The fit wasn’t there in my brain. “How—” But I didn’t get any further. The heel of Liam’s shoe caught on the edge of the stair, and he suddenly tumbled forward.
