The Virgin Next Door (Stud Ranch)

Liam laughed. “There’s no science to it. I’m either attracted to someone or not.”

She tilted her head. “So how long have you been attracted to Mack?”

Liam choked. “I’m not,” he hurried to say as soon as he could speak again. “Not to him.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “But I thought you just said—” She squinted her eyes at him. “And with how the two of you were—”

“I was just going with the situation as it presented itself.” He shook his head so violently Calla had to pull back. “But Jaysus, I’m not attracted to that wanker.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.

Shite. Why? Did she want a repeat of what happened in the hotel room?

Liam had been doing his best to block it from his memory. When he replayed that night, he only focused on the time after he got Calla into the shower.

“I just…” she trailed off again before continuing, her eyebrows scrunched, “I think he’s really lonely. And I know what that’s like. Feeling like you’re all alone in the world.” She shook her head, her eyes going distant again.

Liam didn’t know what to say to that. Whenever he thought about Mack, it was usually just to cuss him out. In his head or out loud if the occasion warranted.

But then he focused on the rest of what she’d said. About feeling lonely. “Yeah,” he swallowed. “I know the feeling too.”

Calla’s eyebrows went up as she looked back at him. “You? But you’re always so,” she waved a hand. “You’re so good with people. Everybody loves you.”

His chest went tight. That was how she saw him? “I don’t know if I want you taking off those rose-colored glasses, beautiful.”

She scoffed at that. “Hardly. I just call it like I see it.” Then she paused, her brows lowering. “Tell me about it. How does a guy like you feel lonely?”

Liam shrugged. He wasn’t going to play the poor little rich boy card. If there was anything he’d learned the last year and a half, it was how fucking entitled he used to be. He wasn’t about to start whining about how hard he’d had it.

Calla lifted her hand to his face. “Tell me. I want to know everything about you.”

“Me da and I weren’t that close. He worked constantly. And Ma was checked out most the time. Drinking and pills. They got divorced when I was nine. The nanny raised me. She’s still the one who calls me on me birthday and Christmas.”

Calla tilted her head, her eyes going soft.

“Don’t do that.” He couldn’t help his voice going stiff. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” Her eyebrows went up again.

“Like you pity me.”

Her eyebrows met her hairline. “I’m not pitying you. Believe me,” she huffed, “I know how shitty that feels. I was just thinking about you when you were a kid. I wish I could have been your friend back then.”

Liam laughed. “You would have hated me. I was a complete shite. I’m shocked Mrs. Owens put up with me as long as she did. None of the nannies before her lasted six months.”

“Oh no, don’t tell me you were the kind of kid who would snap girl’s bra straps?” Calla groaned.

Uh. So now probably wouldn’t be the time to admit that from the ages of fourteen to seventeen his opening line when he met a pretty girl was to tell them to blow him. Or the fact that, more often than not, they’d actually done it.

“What?” she asked, obviously seeing something on his face.

He shook his head, not wanting to meet her eyes but doing it anyway. “I wasn’t a nice person. For most of me life, actually, I was a complete—” bastard. He stopped just short of saying it and instead finished, “—arsehole.”

Her brow scrunched up. “So what changed?”

Liam shifted her in his lap. He’d had a hard on for most of the half hour they’d been snuggled up together, but it was quickly deflating at this conversation. “I don’t know. I guess I grew up.”

That was a copout and he knew it. But he couldn’t tell her the truth. Not if he didn’t want things to change.

Calla was the first woman who wasn’t with him just because of his money or what he could give her. Well, apart from orgasms. He hoped to give her plenty of those in the near future. But if she knew who he was, it would ruin everything before it even had the chance to really start.

Calla’s brow was still narrowed. Like she could sense there was more to the story. She didn’t press it, though. “Well, I guess I’m glad I met you now and not then.”

“Me too, baby,” he whispered, then leaned down and kissed her. “Me too.”

Those were the last words they said for a long while. Jaysus, she tasted sweet. His cock quickly re-inflated but he didn’t push for anything more than kissing. For once in his life, he wanted to do the right thing by a girl.