Liam stared at the check uncertainly.
He’d run the gamut of emotion in the past few minutes, and now Natalie had the nerve to make him feel even more. He’d leaped at the opportunity to see her face, then experienced a rush of guilt for his curiosity…his hunger. It wasn’t seeing her scars that made him feel guilty, it was her palpable vulnerability.
The bone structure of her face was as finely made as her body. Natalie’s wasn’t a run-of-the-mill beauty, but the haunting kind. There were several smaller scars near her temple, but the most prominent was a half-inch-thick one that ran all the way from her eyelid and disappeared below her hairline. It only seemed to highlight the perfection of everything else about her.
It saddened him, that scar—saddened him on a bone-deep level. It was a reminder of the months and probably years of pain that a young, innocent girl had endured.
But his sorrow didn’t blind him to the beauty of the woman beneath that scar. In fact it only added to it.
His father had caused this; he’d been responsible for making this exquisite woman shrink into herself like she’d thought her face would actually harm an onlooker.
Seeing that had hurt him in a way he couldn’t quite put into words.
For a few tension-filled seconds Liam considered telling her to keep her money. Natalie Reyes was far, far from being the devil, but somehow making this pact with her intimidated him.
Accepting that check sealed the deal.
For sixteen years, Liam had struggled to create a cohesive image of his father. He’d loved his dad like crazy. All four Kavanaugh children had. He’d been charismatic, fun…someone he’d always respected. It’d been a trial for Liam to come to terms with the drastically different pictures of his father that he’d received after the crash: the laughing, powerful patriarch…the selfish, heartless drunk…
Who the hell was Derry Kavanaugh?
Part of him had always been curious about what had happened that night. He shared that same internal pressure as Natalie Reyes. Problem was, he’d been disillusioned by his father once—when he was fifteen years old. Taking that check from Natalie would set him on a path where he might discover even uglier truths about his dad.
He hesitated on a knife’s edge. Why did he waver now when he’d dived headfirst into drastically more risky and dangerous situations in the past?
The image of Natalie sitting behind her desk, cloaked in shadow, penetrated his awareness. For some stupid, incomprehensible reason, he wanted to walk behind that desk and undo the knot at the back of her head. He wanted to fill his hands with that glorious spill of hair he’d seen on the beach and here in her office the other night.
It irritated him, this dichotomy of feelings she inspired in him. He wanted to shake her sometimes. He also wanted to protect her. Most of all, he wanted to tear through her facade so he could lay bare that woman he’d glimpsed on the beach.
He must be losing his mind.
He reached out and swiped the check.
“I’ll make a report to you when…if I get anything of substance. Which I doubt very seriously,” he said pointedly before he walked out of the office.
A few days later Natalie was putting some groceries in her trunk when her cell phone rang. Her heart leaped with a mixture of anxiety and excitement when she noticed the identity of the caller.
Ridiculous. She really needed to get past this girlhood crush she’d had on Liam Kavanaugh. She wasn’t that girl anymore. Children had a license to dream, and Natalie knew how dangerous dreaming could be for a grown woman.
“Hello?” she said as she got into her car. She’d planned to drop by her brother, Eric’s, place and maybe make him some dinner with the groceries she’d just purchased.
“It’s Liam. I was wondering if you want me to give you periodic reports on what I’ve found.”
“Oh…I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. Have you found something important?”
“No. Well…maybe.” He made a sound of impatience. “Problem is, I don’t know what you’d think is worthwhile or not. What are you doing right now?”
“I’m in the Shop and Save parking lot. I just finished some errands.”
“Why don’t you swing by my place? I stained the hard-wood floors earlier, but we could talk out on the terrace.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he added, “I won’t take more than twenty minutes of your time.”
She felt contrite. She was the one who had proposed a business arrangement between them. Why would she hesitate to meet with him? A voice inside her head taunted her, accusing her of being gun-shy because of that embrace the other day, but Natalie willfully ignored it.
“Of course. What’s your address?”
He gave it to her. Natalie had lived in Harbor Town her whole life, so she knew precisely which house he referred to.
“You bought the Myerson cottage?” she clarified.