Broken River - Ruby Shae Page 0,22
pantry, and ended with the first batch sitting in front of them, and how they turned out nothing like the mama and baby that she had been going for.
His family had followed her lead on pretending that everything was normal, and soon, they were all sitting at the table eating the failed cookies while Lael and Levi told stories of their worst customers of the day. Every now and then, Liam would give her hand a squeeze, but other than that, he remained his normal, non-laughing self through the rest of the evening. And that was fine with her. She liked Liam—whether or not he was smiling—and she was happy to be by his side.
A few days ago, she wasn’t sure what would happen between herself and Liam, or what her brother had been thinking with his contract forcing them to marry so she could get her inheritance, but now she knew. She and Liam needed each other, and Gavin had done them both a favor by pairing them together.
Liam glanced at Elle sitting next to him in the golf cart, and he longed to kiss her again. Not just because she was beautiful, which she was, but because of what she had done when he’d started laughing with his siblings earlier.
Hell, the noise had sounded strange, even to him, but it just burst out. He had no idea why, but for the first time in years, he had actually wanted to laugh. Seeing everyone hovering over the stove had already been an odd sight, but when he saw the cookies, happiness rolled over him in waves. The feeling had been absent from his life for so long, it had stunned him, but seeing the shocked faces of his siblings had started to push the feeling away.
His stomach had turned, and the need to run had started to consume him until Elle slipped her hand inside his. The touch of her hand, combined with her reassuring smile, suddenly made everything okay, and when she launched into her story, a sense of peace rolled over him.
Nothing else had made him laugh for the rest of the night, and like usual, he doubted he even smiled, but for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like an outcast. Not that his family ever made him feel that way. They didn’t. Not ever. But sometimes those feelings were there anyway, and tonight they weren’t.
Because of Elle.
He glanced at her again, and marveled at how beautiful she looked in the darkness. The moon was hidden behind a cloud, but the stars were out, and their light seemed to make her honey blond hair sparkle. Her eyes sparkled, too, and she looked like a beacon of light against the backdrop of the dark forest of trees.
He parked the golf cart in the carport, and followed her into the house. It was late, and they both needed rest, but they also needed to talk. He didn’t want to hide from her for one more day, and even though he couldn’t tell her everything, yet, he wanted her to know what she was getting into with him if she decided to give their marriage a real chance.
He glanced at the wound on her forehead, and was happy to see that the small cut had apparently stopped bleeding. She had changed the bandage once while he’d been doing errands, and he couldn’t see any fresh blood through the gauze. The cuts on her hands were still there, obviously, but the scrapes had already scabbed over, and Elle had been taking care of them by keeping them in plastic gloves all day, so they hadn’t been bothering her.
“If you’re not too tired,” he said, “I’d like to show you something.”
“I’m not too tired,” she smiled.
He was glad because he had been trying to figure out how to start this conversation all day, and now that he finally knew what to say, or at least had a plan in mind, he didn’t want to wait one more minute.
He grabbed a throw blanket off the couch, and then started walking up the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor. Elle followed him without a word, and he wondered what she was thinking, but he didn’t ask. When they reached the second floor, he opened the first of three windows that occupied one of the walls, and crawled out of it. He stood on a wooden ledge, and held out his hand to help her through the window.
The