“I’ve found a place.”
“Where?”
She rounded on him then, all fury and fire. “Who the hell do you think you are, sabotaging my job and then demanding answers from me like I’m some bought-and-paid-for dinner date? Not to mention the fact that you stole my notes!”
“I didn’t steal them,” he ground out.
“What, you ‘borrowed’ them?” she asked, her air quotes exaggerated. “Couldn’t keep up with all the shit you’d changed so you needed my paperwork to be in the right place at the right time to see this house of cards fall?”
“It wasn’t like that.” But nothing he could say would change her mind, and he knew it. Besides, part of her accusation stung with truth. Perhaps he’d wanted this more than he’d thought. “I don’t want...” He tugged at the neck of his suddenly tight shirt.
“What, Liam? What is it you don’t want so badly that you’d destroy my career?” When he didn’t answer right away, she shouted, “Tell me.”
Something in Liam snapped, and the truth poured out of him in a tsunami. Devastating. Unstoppable. Catastrophic in force. “I don’t want Jenna marrying that son of a bitch, okay? She deserves better than him. All he wants is her money, her fame—a key to her house and her car and her heart. But what’s he giving her in return? What is it he brings to the table, Ella? The answer is nothing. The man brings nothing.”
She stared at him, mouth slack with shock. “You’re standing in front of me telling me you truly believe you’re a better judge of what’s best for your sister than she is?”
“She’s blinded by love, or what she thinks is love.”
“Did you stop even once to think that maybe love isexactlywhat she’s found?”
“It’s not possible.”
“Why, Liam? Why couldn’t she have fallen into something beautiful and grand and promising? Tell me. Convince me it’s not possible.”
“Because love isn’t real, Ella!” The shouted words echoed in the heart of who he was. “It’s a figment of imagination, something propagated by industries like yours. You lie to people every day to get them to buy in to the idea that there’s this utopian life on the other side of commitment where it’s sunshine and champagne every damn day, where people love each other forever and no one ever leaves.”
Ella looked so sad just then, standing there staring at him like she’d never seen him before. “You’re wrong, Liam. So wrong. Love is a very real thing. And what I do isn’t propagating a lie. It’s celebrating a new beginning. It’s rejoicing that you’ve finally found that one person who truly gets you. The person who always has your back. The one who will be there on Sunday morning so you don’t have to do the crossword puzzle alone and when you need someone to hold back your hair because you’re sick.”
“So, if love is real, why is the divorce rate so high? Why are there a million country songs and rock ballads about heartache and loss? Why are there weekends with dads and visitations with moms for kids from divided households? Where’s the power of love in these people’s lives, Ella? Tell me, because I don’t see it.”
“It’s right in front of you,” she whispered. “People make bad choices sometimes, but—”
“Which is what I’m trying to prevent Jenna from doing,” he said.
“Don’t you get it? It’s not your decision to make, Liam. Her life is not yours to micromanage.”
“I promised our father I would make sure she was happy.” Raking his hands through his hair, he spun away from her and stalked to the open patio doors. Beyond the railing lay the infinite sea, as dark at night as it was brilliant during the day. “I swore I would make sure Jenna was happy.”
“Then trust her to make sure that happens and be there to help if she asks for it. But don’t you dare take over her life and try to make it into your version of happy.”
He didn’t respond right away, just stood there staring out over the water.
“You don’t get to choose for people, Liam. You don’t get to live others’ lives by proxy, to decide what’s best for them under any given circumstance.” The soles of her shoes tapped across the hardwood floor, the sound telling him she’d stopped somewhere nearby. “What did you see happening here, between us?”
There were a hundred things he wanted to say, each of them the truth, but like the apology that wouldn’t come, neither would a single answer to her question.
“Did you seduce me so you could have free rein where this wedding was concerned, or did you seduce me because you wanted me?”
There was heartache in that question, and fury as well. What struck him the hardest was the sour note of regret she couldn’t, or didn’t bother to, hide.
So no more lies. No more deception. “Both.”
She laughed, the sound brittle on the soft night air. “I can’t believe I fell for you, let you use me like you did.”
He rounded on her. “I didn’t use you.”
She looked up slowly as if she’d been stunned. “You did, and by your own admission. You seduced me. And I fell for it.” She shook her head. “You must really think I’m a fool. I sure as hell do.” She stepped away from him, and he moved to catch her when she swayed. She stumbled out of his reach and then froze, not looking at him when she spoke. “Touch me again, Liam Baggett, and I swear I will cause you a world of hurt.”