The sudden gruffness in his voice makes my heart start to thud. “Um…when?”
“Now.” His exhale is aggravated. “Except I can’t get away until later tonight. I’m not sure when.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Come over whenever you can.”
“It might be late. Very late.”
“Okay. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
He groans softly.
“What’s wrong?”
“You should say no to me.”
I wrinkle my forehead and huff out a disbelieving laugh. “I don’t think those words have ever been spoken by a man before in the whole of human history.”
“It’s for your own good.” His voice turns dark. “Because I’m going to ask you things that you should say no to, Tru. Things you should slap me for and throw me out of your apartment for. Things that are so fucking selfish and wrong they should make you run away screaming no, no, a thousand times no.”
After a moment of stunned silence, I clear my throat. “See, now I’m just more intrigued.”
He demands, “Promise me you’ll consider it.”
I cover my face with my hand and laugh. “This is honestly the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“I’m not joking. I want you to give serious consideration to not only saying no to what I’m going to propose, but also to not ever seeing me again. To not letting me into your apartment later tonight. To hanging up on me right now and forgetting you ever met—”
“Liam.”
“Aye, lass.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
He makes a low, aggravated sound in his throat, like an animal’s growl.
“Snarl at me all you want, but you’re being ridiculous. The only way I can judge if what you’re going to say is selfish, wrong, and slap worthy is for you to say it. To my face. Without all the hazard lights flashing and the fire alarms going off. Deal?”
Silence.
Then comes the sound of heavy footsteps. Half a dozen steps, a pause, half a dozen more, another pause. The steps begin again.
“Are you pacing?”
“I keep underestimating you.”
“Thank you. I think. How is that related to your pacing?”
He growls, “I’m frustrated.”
“Because…”
“I don’t misjudge people.”
I make a face. “Then I guess I’m glad to disappoint you?”
Another growl. A low, sexy, masculine sound of discontent that I would happily listen to on replay for the rest of my life.
“Liam, look. I appreciate that you’re trying to keep me safe. I understand that you have a great deal of ambivalence about me, and that you think us, together, is a bad idea. What I don’t understand is why. If you’d tell me the problem—other than an unhelpful ‘I wouldn’t be good for you’—I’d be in a much better position to judge the argument on its merits.”
He mutters, “You’re going to make a very good attorney.”
“Thank you. As I was saying…just spit it out. Tell me the deal. Are you…” I try to think of something that could really put a damper on a relationship. “In the witness protection program?”
His laugh is low and dark. “I wish.”
I know he won’t tell me what that means, so I forge ahead. “Married?”
“Ach. No.”
He sounds truly appalled by the idea, so I believe him. “A spy? A drug lord? A superhero vigilante?”
He says drily, “You have a vivid imagination, lass.”
“This is what happens in the absence of facts. Imagination kicks into gear to fill the vacuum and suddenly that little bump on my neck turns into an inoperable tumor rapidly metastasizing through all my vital organs, and I only have weeks left to live.”
After a pause, he says, “You should stay off the internet.”
“I know. I once convinced myself from reading Web MD that the little twitch in my left hand was the early stages of MS. Don’t change the subject. What’s your deal, Liam Black?”
He says nothing for a moment. I hold my breath, gripping the phone, listening hard into the crackling silence.
“I…I’m in a very dangerous line of work.”
His voice is so low it’s almost inaudible. I don’t dare say a word, because I can tell he had to fight himself to reveal even that much, and I want him to keep going.
He takes a breath. “The kind of work that could follow me home. Which is why I don’t have anything in my life that isn’t expendable.”
I can’t help myself. I need more. “Expendable…”
“I have to be able to walk away from everything at a moment’s notice, and never look back. It’s the way I live. The way I’ve lived for a very long time. I can’t have ties, you understand? Anyone I’d be close to would become…”
When he doesn’t continue, I whisper, “A target?”
“A liability,” he corrects, his voice gaining an edge. “A responsibility I can’t afford.”
My heart hammers against my sternum, banging so wildly it’s hard to catch my breath. “And this dangerous work of yours…what exactly is it?”
After a tense pause, he says darkly, “Enforcement.”
Why that sounds so damn ominous, I don’t know. “Like…law enforcement?”
“Aye. Exactly like that. Except outside the law.” He pauses again. “Your laws, anyway.”
I swallow, my pulse going gangbusters and my hands starting to shake. “Okay. This is a lot. To be honest, it sounds like you’re telling me you’re a criminal.”
His voice softens. “You know what I’m capable of.”
“The devil himself is afraid of that man.” I hear Buddy’s words in my head, but push them aside in frustration. “You did what you did to help me. Criminals don’t put other people’s well-being before their own.”
“Perhaps we have different definitions of what a criminal is.”
I say hotly, “Which one of us in this conversation is going to be a criminal defense attorney, me or you?”
This pause is the longest so far. Then, softly, disbelievingly, Liam starts to laugh. “You’re studying to be a criminal defense attorney?”
“Don’t laugh. From what you’re telling me, you might need me one day.”
“I need you now,” is his sharp, instant response. “And not for your skills in the courtroom. Which is why this is such a disaster in the making, and I keep warning you away.”
We sit in tense silence for a while, until I say, “If you truly think this is such a disaster in the making, then you’re the one who should stay away. I don’t know all the facts. I’m lacking half the evidence. I can’t make an educated decision, but you can.”
His voice goes rough. “Aye. And for almost a year, I’ve been telling myself every time I see you that it’s the last time, but it never is. So I’ve thought of something that might be a workable solution for us both. But you should still say no.”
I think for a moment, then give up. “Okay. No.”