Liam's POV cont'd ;"Damn you, " she cried. "I hate this. Do you know how much I hate this? I wasn't even a person to you. I was a project. You couldn't be bothered to get involved yourself." "It wasn't like that. I wanted you to be safe. I didn't want you with the wrong guy."Just a sec…we've got a ad loading up."Yes."She dropped her arms to her sides, then stared up at me with tears in her eyes. "So who's the right guy? Or does he exist?" "I don't know.""It's not you."She wasn't asking a question, but I answered it anyway. "No. I'm not him." "Just the devil?""I'm not that bad.""You are to me," she said and turned away. "You shouldn't have done it, Liam. It's a zero-sum game. All or nothing. You can't hide in the middle. Emmett would be disappointed, and so am I. It would have been better to just disappear. At least that would have been honest. I could have respected that.""I don't need your respect," I said, then realized that maybe I did. For some reason, Eva's opinion m
Eva's POV cont'd ;I blinked several times, then swallowed. "I can't stay with you, Liam." He hadn't thought about me leaving until I said I had to, and now he didn't want me to go. I scrambled out of the bed and pulled on my clothes. "This is crazy. All of it. I don't know what I was thinking. I had this great plan. Sloane warned me, but did I listen? And I'm supposed to be the smart one." "What are you talking about?"I slid on my T-shirt, then looked at him. "You have to stop it, Liam. You're not allowed to spy on me anymore. I know you'd call it looking after me. Whatever it is, you have to stop. I'm a grown woman and I can take care of myself. If there are mistakes to be made, then I'll make them. Stop protecting me.""I don't want to.""This isn't about you."He didn't understand. They'd just made love. It had been great. So why was she leaving? And when the hell had it gotten so cold in this room? "Just like that?" he asked, getting angry because it was easy and something h
He hadn't expected to ever see her again. Then she'd been here and he'd been thrown. She'd wanted to seduce him and he knew he couldn't let that happen. Because of what he owned both her and Emmett. Liam's POV ;I walked into the empty living room and stared at the perfectly arranged furniture. It was all so comfortable. I wanted to throw things, break things, mess it all up. Because life wasn't tidy or comfortable. It was a pain in the ass. I turned to leave, then spotted a DVD case on the floor, by the sofa. Someone had dropped it. Or left it on purpose. Eva? Sloane? Emmett? I picked it up and stared at the plain black cover. Someone had stuck on a piece of paper covered with a single word. Emmett. Against my better judgment, I walked to the DVD player and put in the disk. Then I turned on the television and braced myself for the pain. Someone had taken the time to transfer Emmett's home movies, I thought as I watched snippets of the first confusing days at Yale. There were sh
"I love you, Eva. I have for a long time. I always thought..." He shrugged. "I thought there was something between us back then. But you were young and I was young and then Emmett got sick. I couldn't deal, so I ran. You know all this. I ran, but I couldn't let go. I took the coward's way out. I spied on you. You were right to call it that. I kept track from a distance, where it was safe. Where I was safe."She had to sit down. Her legs felt weak and the room was spinning. Instead she reached for him, and he caught her and held her as if he might never let go. "I missed you," he murmured, speaking into her hair. "I missed you so much. Not just the past three weeks, although they were hell, but for the past nine years. I'm sorry I didn't know before. I love you, Eva. I want to be with you. I want to make this right." He grabbed her by her upper arms and held her in front of him. "Can you forgive me? Can you tell me what to do to make it right? Can you ever care about me?" She began
His arm draped around Sarah's shoulders, Ian looked around at the Sixth Heavens who'd finally gathered together again. Emmett had brought about this reunion, thanks to his will. Emmett had always been the glue that had bound them together, and now they were his legacy. Ian looked down at Sarah. They'd been married just weeks, but they'd been the best damn weeks he'd had in a long time. Since before his mother and Emmett had died, in fact. He felt alive again. They'd gotten married in an intimate ceremony in Napa Valley. Eunice and Gary had served as the matron of honor and best man. Because it was summer break, he'd been able to fly them in, along with their kids, for a family vacation. He grinned thinking about how thrilled Sarah's friends had been to get away to a romantic place, even if it was with the kids in tow. He and Sarah would be in the same situation in a few years, especially if they kept having the same steamy nights they'd been having the past few weeks. Sarah glanc
Nine years ago...Eva Cole spent the afternoon of her seventeenth birthday curled up on her narrow bed, sobbing uncontrollably.Everything about her life was a disaster. It was never going to be better-and what if she was one of the unlucky people who peaked in her teenage years?What if this was the best it was going to be?Seriously, she should just throw herself out her dorm room window and be done with it.Of course, she was only on the fourth floor, so she was not going to actually kill herself. The most likely event was maiming.She sat up and wiped her face. "Given the distance to the ground and the speed at impact," she murmured to herself, then sniffed. "Depending on my position..."She reached for a piece of paper. "If I fell feet first-unlikely, but it could happen-then the majority of the stress would be on my..."She started doing the calculations. Bone density versus a hard concrete landing or a softer grass landing. Assuming a coefficient of-Eva threw down the pencil a
Present dayLiam Sanz had driven two days straight to get to California. He could have flown his jet, then picked up a rental car for the month he was going to be forced to stay at Emmett's house, but he'd needed the downtime to clear his head.His assistant had been frantic, unable to reach him in the more rural parts of the country, but he'd enjoyed the silence. There hadn't been enough silence in his life for a long, long time. Even when he was alone, there were still the damn ghosts to contend with.He drove down a long driveway toward a barely visible log house.The place stood surrounded by trees with a view of a lake behind. There were windows and stone steps, along with a heavy double wood door.Liam parked, then climbed out of his Mercedes.Emmett's house had been built just recently, nearly ten years after the death of his friend, but Liam had a feeling that Emmett had left detailed instructions on what it should look like.The place reminded him of Emmett, which was both go
The next morning Eva woke up feeling much better about everything. After leaving out food for Liam, she'd escaped to her room, where she'd had a bath and a good cry.Some of her tears had been about her brother, but a lot of them had been for herself. For the geek she'd been and the losses she'd suffered.After Emmett had died, their father had totally lost it. He'd been less than useless to her. Within a year he'd started dating nineteen-year-olds, and in the eight years since, his girlfriends had stayed depressingly young.She'd been on her own and she'd survived.Wasn't that what mattered? That she'd managed to get the help she'd needed to move forward and thrive?She turned on her clock's radio and rocked her hips to the disco music that blasted into the room.She was sorry she'd missed the disco years-the music had such a driving beat. Of course, she was a total spaz on the dance floor, but what she lacked in style and grace she made up for in enthusiasm.After brushing out her