Escaping Reality (The Secret Life of Amy Bensen #1)(36)

“Liam—”

He brushes his lips over mine, and while I have no idea what was going to come out of my mouth, I think this is another case of him saving me from saying something we both might regret. “Let’s go eat, baby.”

Let’s go eat, baby. I like how familiar this sounds. How not alone it makes me feel. “Yes,”

I whisper, willing accepting the reprieve I am certain he has intentionally offered me. “Let’s go eat.”

His eyes light with approval, his fingers lacing with mine, and in silent agreement we begin to walk and my mind replays that first time I’d seen Liam in the airport. Even from across a room, he’d spoken to me. I think of making love to him. I think of him picking me up today from the store and then kissing me in front of the hotel. I think of every second I’ve spent with this man, so absorbed that I blink and we are stopped at a restaurant a few doors down from Liam’s hotel. Suddenly, I realize that for all of my thinking I managed on this walk, remarkably, there’s one thing I haven’t had on my mind. Godzilla. I have not thought about what monster is watching or lurking around the corner. And Liam did that for me.

He holds the door to the restaurant open for me and for a moment I just stare at him, this brilliantly talented, amazingly generous man, who epitomizes tall, dark, and handsome, and I think I am crazy. Crazy for him.

And I’m selfish. So very selfish because I have been alone and now he is here and I don’t know how I can walk away from him. I don’t deserve him and he absolutely does not deserve me.





Chapter Eleven


Ten minutes after arriving for our reservations at North, a chic modern restaurant with frosty dangling lights and steel and glass tables, Liam and I are sitting inside a high-backed half-moon-shaped booth that seems to hug us in privacy. Our twenty-something attractive blonde waitress takes our orders of pasta and salads, batting her eyes at Liam in the process, clearly smitten with him, but then so are most of the females in the place from what I could tell on our arrival. He, however, is a perfect, suave gentlemen, neither disrespectful to her nor encouraging for that matter, casting me warm looks in the process. I am charmed and remarkably at ease with her flirtation considering my inexperience and his good looks.

Reluctantly the woman tears her eyes from Liam and departs, and a waiter appears by our table with the insanely expensive bottle of champagne Liam has ordered for us. Once the top has been popped and our glasses are filled, Liam and I are finally alone.

Liam lifts his glass, shifting in his seat to stare down at me and his blue eyes might as well be red fire, they burn so hot. “To new friends and lovers.”

Goose bumps lift on my skin at the intimacy of his words, ripples of awareness tingling across my chest, down to my belly, and I am blown away by how easily Liam affects me. No one has ever come close to doing this to me, but then, I know the sweetness of his mouth on mine.

The perfection of his body intimately molded against me. I know what it is like to fall asleep in his arms.

I clink my glass to his, but I cannot repeat the sultry words of his toast. Liam waylays my escape, reaching forward as my hand withdraws, and gently shackles my wrist. He arches a dark brow and his face is etched in silent reproach and yes, challenge. This man challenges me at every turn.

Irrationally, nerves flutter in my stomach. I have been naked with Liam, with my fingers laced behind my back, and somehow, I feel more naked here and now than I did then. But I am so very tired of hiding from everything, most especially myself. And somehow hiding from me is hiding from him.

Delicately, I clear my throat. “To new friends and lovers,” I repeat, and I watch the approval in his eyes, and suddenly I know what feels different about this moment than when we’d been making love, or rather, f*cking, as Liam has called it. Here, in public, there is no veil of spontaneity to hide behind, and in this moment, there is no lie spoken to deny what is burning between us. This is the most intimate I have been with this man, or any man for that matter.

We both sip our champagne and the bubbles blossom in my mouth, both tart and sweet, like this night with Liam. Like everything with Liam.

“Good?” he inquires.

I nod and set my glass down and he does the same. “It’s delicious.”

“So are you.”

Blood rushes to my cheeks and I am so out of my safe zone it’s not





even funny. Or maybe it is, considering I cannot stop the nervous laughter bubbling from my lips. “If someone had told me I would be sitting in Denver, having dinner with a gorgeous prodigy billionaire architect tonight who’d be giving me compliments, I’d have suggested they needed medical attention.” I reach for my champagne and sip.

“I’m not a recluse. I just wish I could be sometimes.”

“And the most bizarre part of that reply is your arguing that you aren’t a recluse.

Billionaire”—I lift my hand—“no argument there.”

He sets his glass down, and his hand goes to my leg, sending darts of heat up my thigh. “I am what I am.”

It is a sobering statement and, probably compliments of the champagne, I cannot seem to hold back a wistful reply of, “That’s an enviable trait.”

“And that means what?”

I down my champagne and he arches a surprised brow. I’m pretty surprised myself. I value a tightly controlled tongue. “I don’t drink much and I haven’t eaten all day so that probably wasn’t smart.”