Page 21 of Hold

Not part of the deal, remember? Get your eyes off his biceps and those back muscles you could see working when he was up that ladder.

She congratulated herself on her self-control as she went into the bathroom to find a hairband rather than leaning over the table, giving him a good shot down the front of her shirt, and daring him to do something about it.

Quit it, Thea,she told her reflection in the bathroom mirror.You’re just damn horny. He’s not interested, and neither are you.

Something pulsed deep inside her.Hell yeah, we’re interested.

She pushed at her reflection with a hand as if it were a real person and went back to the kitchen.

Why was the sight of a man taking a good long drink out of a glass of lemonade so hot? This was getting worse. Thea kept her back to him and busied herself around the kitchen preparing food for the rest of the group.

“So I’ve been thinking,” he said behind her. “I want to ask my dad to come and look at your furnace. The banging pipes you mentioned: you’ve got air caught in there, but the system’s so old I’d rather get his opinion before I start bleeding it.”

“Oh.” She turned around from the refrigerator. “I don’t know, Liam.”

His eyebrows went up. “Why not? He knows his stuff. He won’t tell you that you need something you don’t.”

How could she explain it? “Look. Having you do this work here and there—and more importantly, showing me and the boys how to do it—is one thing. I should be paying you anyway—”

“I told you, I have a job. I don’t need your money.”

“I know.” She was the one flushing now. Despite their declaration of indifference, Thea vacillated between relief that they’d spelled out the rules, and hope that the reason Liam kept coming week after week was because he wanted to break them. But involving his father changed the rules. “If your dad comes, I have to pay him. And I can’t afford it. You know the fall semester’s tuition is due next week.”

He looked away for a moment, then fixed her with the piercing stare he was so good at. “My dad won’t charge for a consult. Especially not for a—”

He paused to search for the word. She didn’t want him to find it.

“Thea,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

“Huh?”

“You live in this house. It’s a decent-sized house in an okay neighborhood, but you can’t afford to fix it up. Yet you’re going to school full-time. You don’t seem to have a job, and you also don’t have a husband earning money, but Jacob’s carrying around the latest cell phone and that tablet Benji’s obsessed with is top-of-the-line.”

Thea didn’t speak at first. Liam made a disgusted noise and ran his hand down his beard. “God, forget it. That was totally over the line. Sorry.”

“No, I know…”

“Forget it.” He came off the corner of the table where he’d been leaning.

“Liam,” she said, making up her mind. “Do you remember what my last name is?”

“Donaghy? Isn’t it the same as Jake’s?”

“No. That’s Jake’s father’s name. It’s Fielding.” She waited for him to make the connection.

Liam shrugged, shaking his head in confusion.

There was no reason not to tell him, except her embarrassment at the riches that kept her in school. “Fielding Paper?”

His look pinned her like a wolf with a deer. She rushed on. “When my dad was running the company, he set up trust funds that we came into when we were twenty-five. But by then, the company was in the toilet, and I thought the fund was empty. It wasn’t. When I kicked out Gabriel—my ex—after Benji was born, I used it to buy this house and tried to keep the rest for the boys.

“But I was dying, answering phones for a bunch of scientists who don’t need me, knowing I’d dreamed of better for myself, up until I had Jake. I was a shitty mom, and in the end the only way I could think of to change that was to use some of the rest of the money to go back to school. But”—she felt it was important he understand this—“I only take what I absolutely have to for school. The house is… I want to fix it up when I’m making my own money and not taking it from the boys.”

“Wasn’t the money left toyou?”

“Yes, but they got a shitty deal for a father. Their legacy is in that trust fund. College. Except I’ve been taking the capital, and now there might not be enough for Jake to go without getting a bunch of loans.”

She faced him. He was frowning at her. With her in her flip-flops and him in work boots, he stood two inches taller and so much broader Thea wanted to just sink into his arms and forget about all the decisions she had to make, all the insecurities and questions she had every day.

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