The Dating Plan(6)
Seemingly nonplussed by Salena Auntie’s inability to say his name, Liam held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Salena Patel.” She shook his hand, mollified by his warm smile and easy charm. “What kind of name is Limb?”
Daisy sighed. “His name is Liam, but it doesn’t really matter—”
“‘It doesn’t matter’?” Salena Auntie staggered back, hand over her heart as if she were about to collapse. Her matchmaking aunt put the queen in drama queen. “You are secretly engaged and it doesn’t matter? When did this happen? What does he do? Who is his family? Your poor father . . .”
Madison mouthed a sympathetic goodbye and turned away, tugging Orson behind her, as a slew of questions tumbled from Salena Auntie’s lips: Who? Why? Where? What? When?
“It only just happened today.” Daisy interrupted her aunt with an apologetic shrug. “You’re the first to know. I’m going to tell the rest of the family when dad gets back from his trip.” Her dad had flown to Belize with his new girlfriend, Priya, and they weren’t due back for another three weeks. By then, she hopefully would have come up with a story about how she’d been engaged and then unengaged and have found another way to put her matchmaking aunties off the scent.
Salena Auntie’s eyes narrowed. “Why not tell him now? Marriage is a family affair. You shouldn’t have done this without speaking to him first.”
“I didn’t want to bother him on his holiday with something so . . . trivial.”
“An unmarried woman of your age left alone to roam the streets is no trivial matter.” Salena Auntie shook her finger. “Look what happened. Your father goes away and this Limb boy took advantage. It isn’t right.”
“I’m not old!” Daisy protested.
Liam lifted an eyebrow. “In some countries, you’d have been put out to pasture by now.”
She shot him a sideways look. “Stay out of this.”
“I don’t think you’re old,” Roshan countered.
“Such a good boy.” Salena Auntie patted his arm. “Don’t worry. I have another niece for you. Her name is Sonam. Beautiful girl. Very smart. She’s a lawyer, but don’t hold it against her. Her office isn’t far.” She narrowed her eyes at Daisy. “And you . . . We’ll speak later after I’ve talked to your aunties. Everyone will need to meet Limb.”
“It’s Liam.”
Her aunt waved as she turned away. “Goodbye, Daisy and Limb.”
After bidding farewell to Roshan and her aunt, Daisy lifted Liam’s arm from her shoulders. “Thanks. You didn’t have to play along.”
“Anytime you need a fabulously handsome fake fiancé, my lips are at your service.” He made a theatrical bow. “It’s the least I can do after you managed not to throw up from my kiss.”
Daisy shook her head, unsettled by his teasing warmth. He didn’t act like a man who would stand her up and disappear for ten years without a word. He acted like the old Liam, the one who’d made her feel like her quirks and lists and plans were perfectly normal, the one who’d made her laugh and kept her safe and filled the hole in her chest that her mother had left when she moved to New York, leaving her young family behind.
“Nothing has changed, Liam.” She heard the chill in her voice. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”
He flinched the tiniest bit, but a slight smile still played on his lips. “So the engagement is off? I’d say it was a pleasure but . . .”
“It wasn’t.” Daisy finished his sentence.
A shadow of sorrow flickered across his face so quickly she wondered if she’d seen it. “See you in another ten years.” His softened tone, unwanted and unexpected, rippled gently over her senses like a warm summer breeze.
Disconcerted by the flare of heat that flooded her skin, she stumbled over her final words. “That will be too soon.”
She left him in the foyer and hurried down the hall. After so many years, she’d finally gotten her closure. So why was her heart still pounding? And why did her lips still tingle from his kiss?
? 3 ?
LIAM Murphy had to hand it to the cocky entrepreneur standing in front of him: the dude didn’t waste time. And in the world of venture capital funding, time was everything.
“Disposable, biodegradable, edible, sustainable sex toys made with kombucha slime.” The thin weasel-like man with slicked down hair and a peach-fuzz moustache held up a thick ring made of what looked to be amber-colored plastic laced with oil.
“What’s our scorecard for sex toys this afternoon?” Liam murmured to his junior associate, James Sunjata. After scrambling to be noticed in New York, James had jumped at the chance to move to San Francisco to help Liam open the new West Coast office, with a view to taking over when Liam joined the partnership.
Evolution’s management had all but promised Liam a seat at the partnership table, and that would mean a permanent return to New York. It would be the pinnacle of his career. He would show the world that a high school delinquent could rise to the top of his profession, even without a college degree.
If only his grandfather were alive to share in his success. It was life’s cruel irony that only a few weeks after Liam had moved back to San Francisco and reconnected with his grandfather after an almost twenty-year estrangement, the old man had passed away. Between the houseful of Irish relatives, the funeral arrangements, the wake, and the pressures of working in a temporary space while he and James tried to find a new office, he hadn’t had time to properly mourn.