Only a Millionaire (The Sinclairs #6.5)(18)

He hadn’t just blown me off after having sex with me. I knew Liam, and he’d obviously been stewing all day about what happened . . . just like me.

“You’re not at the restaurant,” I said, not thinking about the fact that my comment wasn’t exactly brilliant. He obviously wasn’t at Sullivan’s. He was standing right in front of me.

“Tessa is there,” he grumbled. “If you agree to my terms, she’ll be covering a lot more for me, and I’ll pull somebody in to cover for you so we can spend some time together.”

I knew I needed to close my mouth and stop gawking at him, but I wasn’t sure how to accomplish it.

He wanted to . . . date me? We’d already had sex. “We slept together,” I said, still feeling like everything happening was surreal.

I’d never seen Liam act this way, and I was more than a little baffled.

Bottom line . . . he cared about me, and that was hard to comprehend. Even though I’d supposedly cheated with him, he still wanted to go out with me, have some kind of normal relationship.

Damn! I owed him the truth.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I blurted out, unable to stop myself. He’d put himself on the line to come here. I needed to come clean, too.

His eyes jerked to my face. “What do you mean?”

I walked past him and sat down on the couch so I could have something solid underneath me. “The guy you saw me with was my oldest brother, Noah. He came to see how I was doing. The jet belonged to Evan Sinclair.”

It was a relief to force the words from my mouth, but it left me feeling nervous.

“Why did you tell me he was your rich boyfriend?” he asked, sounding confused.

I clenched my fingers together on my lap. “First of all, my family isn’t rich. We lived incredibly poor our entire lives. We’re still putting funds together to help my youngest brother, Owen, get through his residency. Second, I never told you that Noah was my rich boyfriend. You assumed. I just didn’t really contradict your story. I couldn’t. If I did, I think there would have been more questions I couldn’t answer. I was hiding, Liam. And I was scared. Plus, I’d promised Evan and Noah I wouldn’t reveal anything. I couldn’t break that promise. They both went out of their way to help me, and they were trying to protect me.”

Liam’s face was stony and hard to read as he finally said, “So there was never anybody else?”

I shook my head. “No. You’re right about me. I could never have sex with somebody when I was committed to another guy. I’d have to break off the other relationship first.”

I was both elated and terrified that Liam had been able to see so much about me without really knowing who I was.

“I can’t say that I’m not relieved, but I wish you would have told me the truth,” he rumbled.

“I wanted to. I wanted to tell you so many times. I trusted you, Liam. But I made a promise I couldn’t break.” I kept our gazes locked, willing him to see the truth in my eyes.

He held up a hand. “Don’t, Brooke. Don’t be sorry. I get that you did what you thought you had to do.”

“But I don’t have to like it,” I said solemnly. “It’s been a tough year for me.”

“But it’s over,” he commented. “Now all I have to do is get you to go out with me. Spend some time with me, Brooke. No pressure. We both know that what happened last night doesn’t happen every day. Hell, I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve never felt like that.”

“It’s never happened to me, either,” I shared.

“Do we really want to walk away from it?” he asked huskily.

His green-eyed gaze was tumultuous, and I couldn’t resist stepping into the fire to tell him everything. “No. I never wanted to ignore it, and I knew the chemistry was there from the moment I met you. I just . . . couldn’t be me.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I saw you.”

My heart tripped. “I know.” I paused before I asked, “Where do we go from here, Liam? I have no idea.”

“We have some fun together. Pour our guts out about anything and everything. Isn’t that what people do on dates? I’m hoping to convince you to stay,” he warned. “I want you to know that up front.”

My heart was lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t speak. No guy had ever really cared whether I stayed with him or not. I’d had flings in college. But none of them had ever become real relationships. “I’ve never been in a serious relationship,” I admitted.

He shot me a grin. “I can’t say as I have, either. But we can make shit up as we go along.”

I smiled at him, blinking back the tears that wanted to fall just because he cared. “It’s a deal.”

He scooped me up and twirled me around the living-room floor. “You just made me a happy man, Brooke. And that’s not easy to do.”

I laughed as he put my feet back on the ground. There was so much underneath Liam’s crusty exterior. Maybe it was a little bit intimidating, but just like he’d seen me, I’d seen him, too. I’d been drawn to him from the very first day I’d reported to work at the restaurant.

“I think I like making you happy,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck.

His eyes went a deeper green. “Jesus! I love the way you smell. Like sweet vanilla.”