Page 23 of Hold

“It’s okay, hon,” Zahra said.

“Does he ever see them now?” Dammit. Liam couldn’t keep his mouth shut. As if he didn’t have enough reason to stay away from her, now he had the knowledge that she’d slummed it with another blue-collar worker for years and had no desire to repeat the experience.

“He went back to Ireland. Two years ago.” She looked past Liam, through to the kitchen for some reason. “And it’s a good thing he did, because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here now. I’d be sitting by the phone, waiting for the next time he decided to grace us with his presence.”

She still sounded bitter. Liam fought an insane macho urge to find the guy and punch him in the balls.

Thea shook her head. “All right, your turn,” she told them. “You’ve heard my sob story, now let’s hear yours.”

“You already heard mine,” Zahra said.

Seth and David also shook their heads. Nothing to tell, they said. A few dates, some girls. No great claps of thunder across a crowded room. “Once they see the state of my hands,” Seth said, holding up fingers ingrained with grease, “they’re off like a shot.”

“It’s a sad day when girls turn their noses up at a good man with a steady trade.” Thea sighed.

Amen.

“Areyouinterested?” Seth asked her.

Thea smiled in apology. “Well, no, hon.”

Seth threw up the offending hands. “I rest my case.”

“But I’m not interested in anyone!” Thea tried to clarify.

“Mm-hmm,” Zahra said.

She might have let you kiss her. She didn’t say she didn’t want you to. Just that she was out of trust.Her story backed that up.

Why was he torturing himself like this? She was aFielding. End of story. End of crazy thoughts of trusting another woman. Before Avery had put him through the mill, Liam had been an optimistic person. It was what had gotten him through the apprenticeship. In his world, people did what they said they’d do. Avery’s betrayal had disabused him of that fantasy, and he’d do well to remember it.

Chloe had met her wife, Stephanie, at art school. “I’d only gotten in by the skin of my teeth and a kick-ass interview, and Steph was genuinely talented. I was a goner the minute I saw her photographs.”

“Wait,” David said. “Stephanie Seton? That photographer?”

“Uh-huh. I know, I know, we don’t look like a couple. She comes up to about here on me.” Chloe indicated somewhere just below her chest.

Well, didn’t that just put the cherry on the gold-plated freaking cake. “Wow,” Liam said, sitting back in his chair and stretching out his jean-clad legs. “Seems we’re in the company of greatness.”

“Uh, married to greatness,” Chloe pointed out.

“Or born to it,” he said, nodding at Thea.

Her cheeks flushed as all eyes turned to her, and she glared at him. “But living far outside it, remember?” She waved her hand at the shabby paint and cracked plaster.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Chloe demanded, her wineglass paused on the way to her lips.

“She’s a Fielding of Fielding Paper,” Liam said.

“Oh, I know,” Chloe said, taking her sip of wine, but the others stared at Thea as if they’d never seen her before.

“How did you know?” Thea asked.

“I know Kane. He and Steph are friends. Saw the resemblance as soon as I met you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Yeah, why didn’t you tell us? I could have gotten myself out of this situation before the curl at the end of her hair started driving me crazy at night.

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