10. Liam

10

LIAM

“ W hat’s that face for?” I ask Marley when she walks in that evening from work while I’m swiffering the floor. Every muscle in her face is tight and her shoulders are so high she looks like a linebacker. An adorable linebacker, but I’m not allowing myself to think like that.

“Is it that obvious?” She sighs, her shoulders slump to the point that her shoulder bag slides down her arm and catches on her hand.

“I mean I’m pretty good at reading people, but I think your stress might be visible from space.”

“Great,” she mutters, slumping to the sofa and collapsing forward like an exhausted toddler, her cheek resting on the back of the couch, the rest of her body in the fetal position.

Biting back a smile, I keep swiffering. “Want to talk about it?”

She lets out a groan and rolls over so her rump is on the cushions. Her coat is still on, her bag is still hanging from her hand, and she looks like a harried mother of seven after a trip to the grocery store. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. We haven’t talked much at all, much less about how our personal lives are going. Mostly by design on my behalf because I’m not good at relationships of any kind. The only reason I still have my brothers is because they are required to put up with me. Short of the condition of the building on her first day, I know very little about what she’s been up to. “Tell me how it’s going at the Post.”

She lets out a dry laugh and follows me with her eyes as I keep working. “I’ve never met anyone as clean as you,” she comments. “Who cleans the toilet every day ?”

I stop my progress and give her a narrowed look, unwilling to tell her I also disinfect the kitchen every night after she goes to bed. It’s the only way I know how to keep control of everything. It’s how I’m still kicking after… I shake the thought away. “I do, and you’re avoiding the subject.” I swiffer toward her, and she lifts her feet for me to keep going.

“Crazy, weird, exciting, stressful, overwhelming,” she answers after a heavy sigh. “I could keep going.”

“Please do.”

She narrows her eyes at me as if she’s trying to decide if I actually want to hear it. “The contractors have done a lot of work in a short time, so the building itself is getting sorted. But Mr. Schuster, the owner, wants to do a printed paper.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Exactly,” she answers. “I thought we’d want to see how the digital version went first before we even dreamt of a physical paper. But he has it in his head that I’m some sort of miracle worker that will strike gold immediately.”

I stop my progress around the room and lean on the Swiffer handle. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

“I know.” She closes her eyes and takes a breath. “And today, I got to meet my new assistant slash receptionist. Finola Schuster, his granddaughter.”

The tightness of her mouth and the crinkle between her brows tells me all I need to know about how she feels about Finola. “Oof. His granddaughter?”

She nods. “And she’s this stunning blonde—fashionable, gorgeous—but…”

“Not the brightest bulb in the LiteBrite?”

“I don’t know what a LiteBrite is, but I guess so. At least, that’s my impression. I haven’t really given her a chance yet. I suppose there’s room for her to surprise me.”

“You don’t know what a LiteBrite is?” I ask, completely disregarding the rest of her sentence. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-three,” she answers, looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“That’s a tragedy.” It was one of my favorite toys as a kid. I loved the precision of putting each colored peg into its correct spot, and the utter joy of turning on the lightbulb to see it illuminate from inside. The fury I felt when Elliot would come through and kick it over… “I think I have mine in storage. I’m going to see if I can find it.”

Marley purses her lips. “Do what you’ve got to do, I guess. Anyway, Schuster suggested that Finola needs direction and guidance. A purpose. She starts full-time next week.” She rubs her hands down her face. “I have enough on my hands just trying to get a newspaper going. And now I’m a life coach?”

“That’s a lot,” I tell her, focusing on her again. “I’m sorry he’s put so much on your shoulders.”

She looks up at me and I feel the familiar kick in my stomach. Her light green gaze meets mine. “Thank you. It’s not that I don’t think I can handle it. It’s just that…”

“Too many surprises?”

“ Yes ,” she sighs. “I’m almost afraid to walk in the building every day to see what madness awaits me. Like who’s to say he won’t swoop in tomorrow and insist I open part of the building to teach hip-hop dance.”

I chuckle. “I’d take that class.”

She laughs, and when her cheeks flare pink, she looks away.

The kick in my stomach becomes more insistent as if it’s trying to get me closer to her, to find out if she blushes that beautiful rose-pink everywhere. When my mind takes me to trailing my tongue down her neck, I clear my throat and begin cleaning again.

The previously relaxed vibe in the room tenses and I wish I had kept my mouth shut.

“Well,” she says, pushing herself up to a sitting position. She doesn’t look at me. “I suppose I should change out of these clothes and get some more work done.”

“Want dinner? I’m going to make some quinoa and salmon.”

She makes a face as if she couldn’t think of anything more disgusting. “Uh, no, I’ll throw a sandwich together or something.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” I tell her as she trudges to her bedroom.

Just before she goes through the door, she looks over her shoulder. “You know what? I’m okay with that.”

Chuckling, I watch as the door closes behind her. The second she’s out of sight, I let out a heavy breath and spear a hand through my hair. What am I doing? The very last thing I need is to spend more time with her.

Even worse is feeling disappointed when she declines.

Fuck .