The mighty Quinns: Liam - By Kate Hoffmann Page 0,39

than you and me.”

“She walked out on us, Li. You were just a baby and I was three years old. She says she had to get away and she did. But why didn’t she come back?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Because I don’t want to hear her answer.”

Liam shrugged. “Suit yourself.” With that he grabbed a bottle of champagne and decided to find Ellie. Right now he needed to hear her voice, to remember what they’d shared together in her bathroom and how good it felt to touch her. He didn’t need to worry about whether he was lusting after a criminal or whether her boyfriend was out to cause her harm.

He caught Ellie’s gaze from across the room and motioned her to meet him near the front door. She sent him a coy smile and then a tiny frown, but Liam wasn’t about to give up. He slipped out of the apartment, leaned up against the wall and waited for her. A few seconds later she poked her head out the door. He reached over and grabbed her, pulling her out into the hall, the door slamming behind her.

“Come on,” he murmured, heading for the stairs. They walked down two flights until they reached the street. Liam shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around Ellie’s shoulders as they stepped outside. After they sat down on the front stoop, he popped the cork on the champagne bottle. “I didn’t bring glasses,” he said. “We’ll have to drink from the bottle.”

Liam took a sip, then handed the bottle to Ellie. She tipped it up, but the champagne bubbled in her mouth. She wrinkled her nose as she swallowed, then coughed softly. Liam used the opportunity to pull her into his arms. “I should never have brought you here,” he said, pressing his mouth against her neck.

“Why is that?”

“Because I prefer to kiss you whenever I feel like kissing you.”

“Then you’d better get kissing,” Ellie teased, “because if we stay out here too long, we’ll be missed.”

Liam pulled back and looked down into her pretty face. There were times when he felt he could see into the corners of her soul. And then, other times, he wondered if he was just fooling himself. But as he captured her mouth with his, tasting the sweet champagne, all of his doubts seemed to dissolve. For now, Ellie was simply the woman who made his blood run hot and his heart pound hard.

For now, that was enough.

“NOW YOU’RE A TRUE Bostonian,” Liam said, tugging on the brim of Ellie’s brand new Boston Red Sox cap. “You’ve been to Fenway and seen someone hit a home run over the big Green Monster. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of our players.”

She stared out the front window of his car as they waited for the light to change. “I’ve never been much of a baseball fan. In New York, you have to choose sides—Mets or Yankees. I never knew enough about baseball, so I stayed neutral and didn’t get involved.”

“I’ve loved baseball since I was a kid,” Liam said, turning the car onto Charlestown Avenue. “I remember the first time I went to Fenway, I must have been about seven or eight. I walked in and it was so green. We’d come from Southie on the T and it was the middle of a heat wave. Our neighborhood was dry and dusty and everything was faded by the sun. And then we walked into Fenway and it was like an oasis—although I didn’t know what an oasis was back then.”

“Did you go to a lot of games as a kid?” Ellie asked.

“No. We didn’t have the money for tickets. But Conor had a couple of buddies who sold popcorn at the park, and if the crowd was thin, they’d let us in before the seventh inning stretch. We never got to see a complete game, but we’d hang around outside afterward and get the players to sign our baseball cards.”

“Sounds like fun,” Ellie said.

“It was. We didn’t have much, but we always had fun.” He chuckled softly. “When I first saw Fenway, I thought it was Ireland.”

“What?”

“I’d always heard my older brothers and father talking about how green Ireland was. They were all born there. And Fenway was the greenest thing I’d ever seen, so I thought it was Ireland. I wasn’t ever good with geography, at least not in second grade.”

Ellie nodded. “When I was a kid, I used to think that my teachers lived at the