Chapter 3
Three
Travis went straight for the bar and poured himself a tall shot of whiskey, which took his breath away when it burned all the way through him.
You deserve to hurt, you idiot. The wounded face, the tears, the dress, the whole picture was more than he could bear to remember.
Goddamn it! Why did you have to be exactly what she expected you to be?
Oh, but that kiss, that feeling of having finally found the missing piece . . . Would he ever be able to forget how perfectly she fit against him, the satiny feel of her skin, the mysterious scent that belonged only to her, and those violet eyes that gave away her every emotion?
Damn it, she had kissed him back! He had done enough kissing in his life to be able to gauge when his partner was reciprocating, and Liana had done a hell of a lot more than reciprocate.
He could almost still feel her fingers in his hair, for Christ’s sake!
Despite her claims to the contrary, he had not read the signals wrong. No way.
The bedroom door opened and she came out wearing his Stanford T-shirt and shorts that were so big on her she’d had to roll the top down a couple of times to anchor them to her slim hips. She drew the puffy dress from under her arm and held it against her middle like a protective shield.
Travis finished the last of his whiskey and put the glass down on the granite bar.
He ached when he saw her tear-stained face, and it was all he could do to resist the urge to take her into his arms and hold her, to soothe away the tension that had gathered in her forehead, to kiss away the sadness radiating from her.
That surge of tenderness for someone who had treated him the same way she might treat Jack the Ripper astounded him.
She flinched when he brushed past her on his way into his bedroom.
He came back with his keys and crossed the room to the elevator without a word. Punching a button on the wall, Travis kept his back to her while he waited. The doors opened, and he held one side open for her.
In the elevator Liana fixated on a light in the corner. She seemed smaller next to him than she had earlier, and Travis realized she was barefooted when he noticed the stiletto heels dangling from her fingers.
The elevator deposited them into the parking garage in the basement of The Tower, and he walked to his burgundy Jaguar without so much as a glance over his shoulder to see if she had followed him.
He opened the passenger door for her and went around to slide into the driver’s seat.
Only when he heard her seatbelt click into place did he turn on the car.
She had bunched the dress onto the floor, so when he turned to back out of the parking space he got his first look at her long, smooth legs and high, firm breasts outlined in all their plump perfection by the seatbelt.
Oh God, what that horrible dress had hidden!
He cringed when his body reacted with embarrassing predictability.
With tremendous effort he tore his eyes off her and navigated the car through the small garage.
Once they had emerged into the sultry summer night, he continued to try his best to ignore the desire that beat through him as her scent filled the small space.
Suddenly in need of air, and lots of it, he pushed a button to open the driver’s side window.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked in a soft, quiet voice.
She sounded so defeated he wanted to pull over and give her whatever it was she needed, but he knew she’d never take it from him. “I know where McCorrie Lane is, but you’ll have to show me which house it is.”
Turning to look out her window, she didn’t say another word as he drove through the sleeping town of Portsmouth.
On their way from the west side of the island to the east, they passed everything from million-dollar homes to shacks.
Ten minutes later, he pulled onto McCorrie Lane, which wound down a hill that ended at the shores of the Sakonnet River.
About halfway down the hill, she pointed to a neat white ranch house with royal-blue shutters.
A light over the front door cast a glow on the well-tended flower gardens that lined the shrubbery and walkway.
Travis pulled into the driveway behind a tan sedan.
Liana reached for the door handle. “Thank you for the ride.”
As it occurred to him that he might never see her again, a sudden wave of desperation hit him. “Liana.”
She turned to him.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” Surprised, he asked, “For what?”
Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. “You were right.”
“About?”
“I did kiss you back,” she whispered.
Reaching for her hand, he closed his fingers around hers. “Liana, I want to see you again. Give me another chance.” He brought her hand to his lips. “Please.”
With what seemed to be great reluctance she took back her hand. “There’s no point. I’m only going to be here for two weeks, and I have to take care of my mother.”
“I’m only suggesting dinner. Surely you can squeeze in one dinner in the next fourteen days.”
She drew in her lower lip as she held his gaze and appeared to be weighing it all out.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally looking away after a long moment of silence during which neither of them seemed to breathe.
“I just can’t. Thank you again for the ride home.
” Before Travis could reply, she bolted from the car.
In that moment of indecision he had seen in her a hint of longing—for what he couldn’t be sure. But he had little doubt that she had wanted to say yes to him. So he would have to change her mind. He waited until the porch light went off before he backed out of the driveway.
Travis North had developed a few skills that had gotten him where he wanted to be in life. Liana McDermott would soon discover that persistence was the greatest of all those skills.
Liana dumped the dress and her shoes in a lump on the sofa and tiptoed through the quiet house.
She peeked into her mother’s room and was relieved to find her sleeping.
Where did I think she would be? Liana leaned against the doorframe and remembered crawling into that bed in search of comfort during thunderstorms and bad dreams. She had always found exactly what she needed in the arms of her mother.
How she wished she could crawl into that bed right now so her mother could tell her everything would be all right.
Instead, she went into her own room, which remained just as she had left it ten years earlier when she’d moved to New York two weeks after graduating from Portsmouth High School.
Her diploma and Portsmouth Patriots pennant sat next to her cheerleading megaphone on a shelf where her mother had placed a framed copy of her first Vogue cover.
Liana ran a finger over the frame as she studied the girl in the stylized photograph.
Had she ever really been that young and na?ve?
If she had known then what she knew now about celebrity would she still have wanted it so badly?
And what was it exactly that she had? A fat portfolio, a handful of people she trusted to manage her life and her career but no close friends, no husband, no children, and nothing but the next assignment to look forward to.
And when was the last time she had gotten excited about an assignment?
She had been to almost every exotic location in the world but had rarely taken the time to enjoy any of them.
Trading on her beauty, she had built a career that was the envy of millions, but she had begun to spend more time lately thinking about how empty and shallow it all was.
Thanks to her acclaim, she couldn’t even spend time with a handsome man without being wary of his ulterior motives.
She had learned the hard way to be cautious as one relationship after another failed under the glare of the spotlight, the pursuit of paparazzi, and the disingenuous motives of the men she had dated.
So she no longer trusted her own judgment, even when it was telling her she had nothing to fear as it had earlier with Travis.
Sinking down onto the narrow twin bed, she relived the embarrassing encounter with him.
He probably thought she was a tease, and was there anything worse you could say about a woman?
Well, I suppose there is, but there’s nothing worse you could say about me.
She cringed when she recalled the way she had treated him, as if he had tried to rape her or something.
You’re a freak, a total freak. Any other red-blooded woman would have jumped all over a hot guy like him without a second thought.
Hell, he probably has women standing in line for the opportunity you turned down tonight.
He had seemed so, well, different was the only word that came to mind.
Despite what had happened between them, she honestly believed he hadn’t brought her to his home with that in mind.
She couldn’t deny it had happened so naturally and hadn’t felt at all like a practiced move.
And if anything, he had been even more rattled afterward than she was.
Liana reclined on the bed from her childhood and gazed at the mementos from another lifetime.
As she looked around the room, she tried to remember what she had dreamed about while growing up here.
All she recalled was the desire to be rich and famous.
Well, she was both those things now, but money and fame were funny things—for all their supposed glamour, they didn’t hold you during a thunderstorm, they didn’t comfort you after a bad dream, and they sure as hell didn’t keep you warm at night.
Her thoughts wandered back to Travis North and how incredibly sexy he had been in the Armani tux.
He had worn the suit like a man who belonged in it.
Oddly enough, he had looked just as at home in a T-shirt and jeans.
Liana never would have expected to meet a man like him in little old Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
In Paris or Milan, yes, but not in Portsmouth.
We’re both single. At least I think he’s single. Surely Enid would have confirmed an important detail like that before pushing Liana to have a fling with him.
A fling.
Had she ever had one? Not that she could recall. Relationships? Yes. Doomed relationships? Several. No one would be harmed if they indulged in a little fling, right?
Liana sighed. How she wished she could be that kind of girl, but she wasn’t about to become that kind of girl in the next two weeks.
So it would be best if she just forgot about him and how his lips had devoured hers, how his hands had felt on her bare back, his muscular body stretched out on top of hers .
. . Ugh! She rolled her heated face into the pillow. No way would she forget that.