She was going to leave, Jaz realized. Her chest tightened. “Liam is being a jerk. If anyone is going to go without dinner, it will be Commander Broody. Do you drink wine? I’m sure I saw a bottle of something somewhere.”
This time, Pattie’s gentle smile was genuine, though still sad. “I appreciate that, Jaz, I really do. But Liam has every reason in the world to be furious with me.”
Jaz looked back toward where Liam had disappeared into his office, their conversation from earlier tickling her memory.
“Why did you spend the summers with us anyway?”
“Didn’t get along with my mom and her boyfriends.”
Apparently, didn’t get along had been an understatement. Still, this was ridiculous. Or just very sad. And Jaz wasn’t about to stand for either scenario. “Well, I’ve spent many a waking moment dreaming up ways to make Liam furious, so we’re in good company.”
She rummaged through the wine cooler fridge that sat under Liam’s gleaming countertop and pulled out a bottle of red. After filling two glasses, she handed one to Patti and towed the woman to the breakfast island. “Ferns are such cool plants to have indoors, don’t you think?” Jaz pointed to Liam’s plants, which had fortunately survived their trip away. “It’s like living in a miniature rain forest. Though I’d have taken Liam as more of a cactus guy.”
Patti laughed. “Definitely not a cactus guy. He likes taking care of things, and cacti are too self-sufficient.”
Jaz echoed Patti’s laugh and built off the conversation to discover that Patti and Liam’s sister, Lisa, now lived in Ann Arbor, which was beautiful. Lisa liked to run, but wasn’t a competitive athlete like Jaz. Patti leaned in to listen about all the details of Jaz’s climbing, asking just the right probing questions and cheering along with successes. She actually enveloped Jaz in a spontaneous bear hug upon discovering that she was sponsored by Vector Ascent.
Patti was everything her parents weren’t, and Liam had no idea how lucky he was to have her. And yet the man never came out of his study. Not even when it really was time for Patti to get back to her hotel.
“I’m sorry about…” Jaz waved her hand toward the empty hallway. “I don’t know what has him acting like, well, like—”
“Sweetie, you wouldn’t.” Patti patted Jaz on the forearm. “But I wasn’t what anyone would call a good mother when the kids were growing up, and Liam has every right to feel betrayed by me. At the time, I made the decisions I did because I was young, naive, and saw no other choice. But I can’t go into all that. That was then, and this is now. And in this new now, Liam Rowan won’t be rid of me even if he brings the whole SEAL Team Six in.” Patti kissed Jaz’s cheek and showed herself out, leaving Jaz staring at the ferns and parsing out the evening.
Yes, well, there was little question as to where Liam got all his drive from.
Liam never spoke much about family—but he was so closed about everything that the silence seemed a natural extension of his personality. Now, Jaz knew it was more than just a personality trait. Liam was waging a war Jaz had known nothing about. But she would find out.
19
Liam
Liam circled Eli in the boxing ring, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. He struck a left-right-left combo. Eli ducked and swerved, only taking a glancing hit from Liam’s last slug, then returned the favor with a roundhouse into Liam’s gut.
Liam grunted at the impact, then went after Eli. It felt good to hit someone he didn’t worry about breaking. Good to have someone like Eli, who understood, without being told, that today was a no-holds-barred brawl.
Aiden looked on from the sidelines, his white shorts and shirt contrasting with bright blue mats. Wearing all white was a foolish move to Liam’s thinking. Blood was difficult to remove from light fabrics. But for now, they were just starting—the mats smelled of cleaner instead of sweat, and all the gym equipment, from the gleaming free weights to the practice weapons to the reflective yellow vests by the door to the jogging trails, lay and hung in orderly rows.
Liam shifted around the sparring ring again, keeping his back to the climber’s corner of the gym. The equipment made him think of Jaz, and that was not where he wanted his head just now. Especially not with her brother, Kyan, due to arrive in the gym any moment.
Not only was making a move on a best friend’s sister a violation of trust in general, but it being Liam specifically made everything a hundred times worse. Liam knew it. He got it. Hell, he even agreed. Sex, he could do. More than that? Everyone knew Liam wasn’t relationship material, as proven by the fact that he never had a real one. Not with his family, and certainly not with any of the women he’d been with. He cared about them the same way sheepdogs cared for their charges—he’d put himself in harm’s way to keep the wolves away, but there wouldn’t be a partnership involved.
The Tridents were the closest thing Liam had to a close bond, and the pain of losing Bar—their best friend who’d been killed in Afghanistan—made Liam rethink the wisdom of having let the men in as close as he had. The fact that Cullen, Eli, and Kyan all had healthy marriages now while Liam couldn’t even bring himself to enjoy women at play parties spoke to how different he was.
Liam was an exceedingly competent fighter, but a pissed-off Kyan could do unpleasant damage—and if Kyan ever caught wind of what happened between Liam and Jaz, he would most certainly be pissed off. Problem was that what happened didn’t account for one tenth of what Liam wanted to do to the fierce sprite of a mountain climber. The types of things that would get him justifiably murdered.
Then there was that unholy alliance between Jaz and Patti, whose presence in Denton Valley was still an unexplained and unwelcome phenomenon. Liam had even called Lisa, who just said that Patti was being bitchy and hung up. It was all getting to be too much. Liam had just had his life figured out, his company expanding, his mind on business, when the women’s intrusion sent cracks all along his plans.
“So you spend a week in Jazzy-girl’s tent.” Eli spoke over his volley of kicks, his voice breaking only slightly. “How did she not slit your throat while you slept?”
Liam blocked another roundhouse with his shin. “Took away her knives.”
Eli ducked under Liam’s hook. “Did you put the climbing rope to good use as well?”
Liam’s gut tightened, his next cross heading right for Eli’s damn mouth.
Eli grunted. Danced back. Dabbed his forearm against his bleeding lip. “What the bloody fuck, mate?” There was more curiosity than anger in the question. “Did I hit a nerve?”
“No, I did the hitting,” Liam snapped at the Brit. “You did the letting down your guard like a pleb.”
That was bullshit, and they both knew it. Before Eli could call him on it, Liam twisted to Aiden.
“Anything from our friends in the postal service?” Trident had called in some favors in hopes of IDing the origin of the threats, but it was a long shot.
“Nothing as yet,” Aiden reported from outside the ring, his arms slung over the ropes. His voice sounded muted, almost as if his throat were sore, and his freckled complexion betrayed a deeper fatigue. “But I’ve been keeping an eye out in case he mails any more. The computer geeks are monitoring social media as well and tracing IP addresses of anything vile.”