Page 18 of Hold

“I do!” Chloe shook back her curls. “That’s why I’m now dying to know how old Liam is!”

“You know,” Liam said, gripping the back of his neck, “if I’d asked you this, you’d have socked me halfway across the room by now.”

“Possibly,” Chloe agreed. “So, okay, I’m thirty-one. Seth? David?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Thirty-one.” They said it at exactly the same time, so later, Thea forgot which one was which.

“Zahra?”

“Nuh-uh. I’m a mother. We don’t have to tell.”

What a great excuse.

“Fine.” Chloe pouted. “Thea? That goes for you too?”

Her cheeks were so hot. “Let’s just say I’m… older than all of you.”

“Liam?”

Liam’s jaw looked made of granite, but the blush was still staining his cheeks. “Let’s just say I’m… younger than all of you.”

Dammit.

Chapter 5

“You’ve got to slap it on. Like butter. No, not like—Jesus, woman, how much butter do you put on bread?”

Thea put on a terrible British accent. “I’m sorry, guv’na, we wasn’t allowed no butter in the orphanage.”

Liam rolled his eyes and took some goop off the tile she was holding. “Oh, please, guv’na,” Thea begged, “don’t beat me again! I’ll bring you some lovely gewgaws next time I’m up in Bloomsb’ry!”

Liam pointed at the wall. Thea placed the tile into the space he’d left when he’d chipped out the cracked tiles around her bathroom sink. “Is this how you entertain yourself instead of fixing up your house? And what the hell is a gewgaw?”

Now that she had the accent, Thea couldn’t let it go. “It’s jewel-ery, innit? Lovely sparklers.”

“The British don’t say sparklers for jewelry.”

“They might.” She made a mental note to watchOliver Twistwith her English sister-in-law at the first opportunity, and to ask her which words could still be used in her new and excellent accent.

She picked up another tile and buttered the back of it with a little more precision. “Better,” Liam grunted.

“Better butter,” she said. Then she said it again. And again. And sang it until he had to leave the room.

British accent drives him nuts, check.

Once she’d found out that Liam could be teased, the dynamic of their…let’s call it friendship… had changed. The best part of this afternoon, of Liam coming an hour or two before everyone else, was that Thea could use skills she hadn’t remembered she had to tease Liam, to elicit a reluctant smile from that surly mouth. She’d found that her own sense of humor hadn’t entirely disappeared.

“Get those tiles on,” he said from the kitchen. “I’ll get started on the air conditioner.”

There were only six tiles; she’d been out shopping the weekend before and had bought them on a whim.

“You should have bought porcelain,” he said when she’d proudly shown them and the mortar to him, “and did you buy grout?”

But he’d come two hours early today, replaced the innards of her toilet and shown her how to mix the mortar before chipping off the tired old tile around her sink. The boys, now home for the holidays, had greeted him—Benji joyfully, Jake reservedly—and proceeded to eat their own weight in ice cream while she worked.

“Mom?” Jake said.

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