Nothing But This (Broken Pieces 2)

His jeans rode low on his narrow hips, exposing his sexy Adonis belt. He looked positively drool worthy, and both Clara and Libby froze when he entered the living room. They stared at him, one with a baby’s avid curiosity and the other with a woman’s sincere appreciation of a fine male form.

Libby blinked self-consciously, willing herself to look away and back to the baby, who was still dangling in front of her. Libby lowered Clara into her lap, turning her to face Greyson, at whom the infant was still staring in wide-eyed fascination.

Greyson’s eyes dropped to the curious baby, and a wide, genuine grin parted his lips for a few seconds. The expression was gone all too soon when he refocused his gaze on Libby.

“Water’s working.”

“Is it?” Libby asked in frank disbelief. She couldn’t help it: she got up, Clara in her arms, and went to the kitchen to check. After a few sputters, the water flowed without any problem at all.

“Wow, Greyson, that’s”—unexpected—“great. Thank you.”

“It’s a temporary fix. I did what I could.”

“It’s more than I was expecting,” she replied honestly, feeling terrible for underestimating him. While also feeling annoyed that this was yet another thing Greyson the Great could do.

He winced, ducking his head and avoiding her eyes while rubbing the back of his neck as if to relieve tension or muscular strain. Libby tilted her head, trying to assess his body language. He lifted his eyes to hers again, and she couldn’t quite read the expression in them.

“I didn’t quite do it alone,” he admitted softly, looking embarrassed. Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything, silently inviting him to say more. “I looked for some solutions on Google.”

Libby huffed a quiet laugh. How like Greyson to consider that a failing.

“Everybody uses the internet to seek answers sometimes, Greyson,” she said, feeling magnanimous now that he had admitted to needing help. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the motion. Momentarily diverted by the movement of his throat, Libby’s gaze snagged on that strong, tanned expanse of flesh, and she was seized by the almost uncontrollable urge to kiss him there, then lick him to taste the salt and musk of his skin.

She was so distracted by that unwelcome compulsion that she missed the first part of his next statement.

“. . . didn’t work.”

“Uh. What? Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” she said self-consciously, and he cleared his throat.

“None of the so-called answers I found worked.”

“But . . . the water’s running.”

“No . . . before this. The original fix I found on the internet was the reason the water stopped working.”

“I see,” she said. When she didn’t see much of anything at all. What was he getting at?

“Nothing I googled could help me fix what I broke . . . so I had to call an expert.”

Oh.

“I see,” she said again. Leaning back against the kitchen sink and absently tugging a strand of her hair out of Clara’s grasp.

“A twenty-four-hour plumber. She talked me through what I needed to do to get the water running again. But like I said, it’s a temporary fix. You’ll need to get someone in to look at the plumbing.”

“A professional, you mean?” she asked pointedly, and he grimaced and nodded in reply.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized quietly. His second I’m sorry in under two hours. That had to be a record for him. “I thought I could fix it.”

“Once again apologizing for the wrong things,” she said beneath her breath, and he looked taken aback by that response. She cleared her throat before asking another question. “Is the problem worse than it was before?”

“No. I just got the water back on. But the underlying problem remains the same. I can’t tell you what that is because . . .” He shrugged. “Well . . . I mean, I’m not a plumber, am I?”

The question was almost defensive, and Libby bit her lip to stop herself from laughing.

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” she reminded him.

“I’m paying for the plumber I called, since it was my mistake that needed resolving.”

“Yes, you are,” she agreed, pushing herself away from the sink and walking back to the sofa. He remained standing in the kitchen but turned to face her.

“No arguments?” he asked, sounding relieved, and she rolled her eyes before sitting down and tickling Clara, who dissolved into chuckles.

“Why would I argue? I’m a firm believer in the whole ‘if you broke it, fix it’ philosophy.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he said, his voice thickening, and she lifted her eyes from the laughing baby to the man still standing in her kitchen. “I’m trying to fix what I broke, Olivia. I’m trying to fix us.”

“Greyson,” she said, her voice laden with regret. “We were broken from the start.”

“I don’t believe that. I refuse to believe that,” he said fiercely.