“I didn’t know I did.”

“It’s what drew me to you from the first time we met,” she told him. “You’d just been kicked in the teeth by your father when Marie and I knocked on your door. And you were all about having us help you make your bed since you’d never done it before. You were excited to sleep in a dumpy room with not a single luxury—unless you counted the running water and flushing toilet in the bathroom—just because you could.”

He was still watching her, not the screen, so she continued to hold on, too.

“What would you have had me do?” She watched his lips move.

“Exactly what you did.” She almost smiled, but couldn’t quite. “It’s just that I was...”

“Horrified?”

“Something like that. I see danger everywhere, pitfalls and risks. Life has always been a minefield to me. Then I spend time with you and I see flower beds.”

“My father raised me to expect the best out of any situation. I think I probably segued a bit from his initial intent, but I learned early, probably from Mom and growing up with her sick, that the best way to get through anything tough was to look for the good. In every moment. It’s not like I stand around looking for it. I think she showed me how to find it naturally. Like she showed me how to brush my teeth and use the right silverware,” he told her slowly, his gaze seeming to devour her face.

“I would have liked to have met her.” She licked her lips gone terribly dry.

“You met me instead.”

Yes. Yes, she had. He moved an inch. She didn’t. That was why his lips touched hers. Because he’d expected her to back up and she hadn’t. It was accidental. And the shock held her still.

Until his lips moved on hers. And she responded.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IT TOOK LIAM less than five seconds to know he’d made the most major error of his life. Jerking back from Gabrielle, he became a six-foot-tall mass of panic.

What had he done? How did he undo it?

For every way in, there had to be a way out.

He came up blank. So he turned to the computer screen.

And saw the picture.

Emotions exploded like a burst dam, coursing through his system with a force that threatened to drown him.

Anger. Excitement. Fear. First and foremost, fear.

There in front of them, staring out at them...was a picture of him and Gabi.

His most private shame that day was right there for the world to see. Him and Gabi as a couple.

Why he’d made such a serious error in judgment, why he’d so inappropriately crossed the line, breaking the trust that he and Gabi and Marie had established in each other so many years before, he had no idea.

But the fates were mocking him, calling him on it, right then and there. For all the world to see.

Obviously taken with a telephoto lens, the photo depicted the two of them sitting together, alone, leaning in toward one another, eyes meeting, at a little café table. The background showed a large window, and outside, darkness.

“That was taken at the coffee shop.” Gabrielle’s voice sounded choked as she spoke beside him. The photo made it look as if they were a couple, intimate. Splashed on the national news.

Liam had no idea what she was thinking. He couldn’t look at her to find out. But he knew her well enough to know that she’d see all of this in the worst light possible.

Knowing too that once there, she’d set to finding a way to protect them from the harm. Because that was what Gabi did. She looked for the dangers and then either prevented them or tended to them...

“He, or she, must have been out front. The background is the side window...” He focused on the picture. Not on the kiss he’d just instigated.

Not on the fact that she’d responded.

Tags: Tara Taylor Quinn Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net