The 48 Hour Hookup (Chase Brothers) (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Liam felt like utter shit. He never should have made that bet with Sawyer. Liam of all people knew how much it sucked to be at the center of a media obsession. He should have been the
last
person to fall on that runaway bride label. Claire Stevens wasn’t a novelty. She was an amazing woman who didn’t take shit from anyone. Not even on her wedding day.

And he was an ass.

He hadn’t slept with her because of that bet, but knowing it had been there made him sick. He wasn’t like his brother, whose only credentials for sex before meeting his wife were
warm
and
willing
. Sex had to mean at least a little something, and that something should never come from a bet. Even though it hadn’t, directly, Liam couldn’t push the guilt out of his mind.

And she wanted to know if he’d
visit
.

In some other world, where he’d never been Hot HVAC Guy, and she was someone he could associate with without inevitably dragging them both back into the headlines, maybe. But not in this world.

Not when his brother had thrown that bet out there.

There was no way he could continue a relationship with her with that little bit of shrapnel between them, whether said or unsaid. Because whether or not she knew it, he’d been the fourth man to betray her trust. Not because he’d screwed the catering assistant before the ceremony, but because he’d made love to her.

Her words. They’d felt like a slap at the time, but now they felt right.

Only it was so goddamned wrong he wasn’t sure he could breathe. As much as she’d been hurt, she’d thrown that out there like it was nothing. Only it was something, whether or not she realized it.

It was something he hadn’t deserved.

Not from her.

Ending up in a pile of tangled limbs and snow skis had been one thing. The incident with the sleigh and the hot chocolate and the fact that he’d had enough jingling bells to last a lifetime had been another. The tree falling over and the raccoon invading the kitchen…apparently fulfilling a pattern.

Making love…that had been a mistake.

And so had that damned bet. His first mistake, and one he had kept right on making because he hadn’t told Sawyer the bet was off.

That, he had to put an end to.

Claire was still asleep, so he eased out of the makeshift bed and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. Barefoot, he walked to the back of the lodge, into what she’d called a club room. It still smelled faintly of old cigar smoke, and decks of cards still littered the tables. He flipped over a dusty, discarded hand, still lying on the table like it had been dropped five minutes ago. Royal flush. He shook his head, almost smiling over the irony of that winning hand left abandoned, wondering if the game had ended right then and there. He looked at the outline left on the table by the dust and put the cards down, almost in the same place, leaving them as undisturbed as possible.

Yeah, that was the goal. Leave everything the way he’d found it.

Leaving Claire.

The floor was cold and rough under his feet. He went over to the window where he was most likely to have reception. Once he maneuvered into a two-bar position, he called his brother. It was early enough the whole crew—Sawyer, Ethan, and their parents—would probably be in the office. Their oldest brother, Crosby, used to be as much a fixture there as the computer and the overhead light, but he’d moved with his landscape-artist wife outside of the five boroughs. They had a nice family home and a couple of the most meticulously designed acres Liam had ever seen in his life. From there, Crosby had opened another branch of Fusion, though he was back and forth to the city with enough frequency that Liam hadn’t yet had a chance to miss him.

Sawyer answered on the second ring. “How’s the
job
, little brother?”

“I should be finished going over everything tonight. I’m going to hit Ethan up for a ride tomorrow.”

“Why not me?” Sawyer had the nerve to sound offended. Liam tried not to let it grate on him too much. Sawyer was just being Sawyer. It was Liam who had changed.

“Because,” Liam said, “Ethan isn’t going to spend the entire ride home asking me if I managed to nail the Runaway Bride.”

“You don’t know that,” Sawyer replied, feigning innocence a bit too well. “Besides, I wouldn’t ask more than once.”

“Let me spare you the trouble then.” Because just saying it would be so much better than fielding questions later. “I slept with her.”

Sawyer was uncharacteristically quiet for a beat. Then he said, “The fact that you’re planning to hit Ethan up for a ride suggests that didn’t go so well.”

“Oh, it went plenty well,” Liam said, a week’s worth of frustrations bubbling dangerously close to the surface. “She wants me to visit, and I just want to go home and forget this whole week ever happened. Good luck figuring out who won
that
bet.” If things could be different between them—if Liam wasn’t Hot HVAC Guy and she wasn’t the Runaway Bride—they could be a definite thing, but they weren’t and they couldn’t. And with that not changing, he just wanted to put it all behind him. It sure as hell beat falling for her, knowing damn well it was pointless. Wanting it anyway.

After another bout with silence, Sawyer said, “Admittedly, I didn’t see that coming.”

“Neither did I.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I’ll tell you about it when I get home. I need to finish this estimate so I can leave. Hey, do me a favor and look up the body shop in the little town here. Monk’s something. Get the insurance company to get an estimate with a breakdown and a timeline out of him. I’m almost certain if I want my truck back in the next few weeks I’m better off paying him for his time and towing it somewhere closer to home for repair.” He didn’t bother the part about how that quaint little Main Street would remind him entirely too much of a few unrepeatable moments with a woman for whom he’d fallen a little too hard. The only solace he had was there couldn’t be anything there for them even if he hadn’t let Sawyer talk him into that stupid bet. But that didn’t appease his conscience.

“No problem,” Sawyer said. “I’ll give Ethan a heads up.”

“Thanks.” Liam ended the call.

When he turned, Claire was standing in the doorway.

Shit.
He froze like a deer in headlights the size of the fucking sun.

Her face was blank, but he didn’t have to wonder long what she’d heard. “
What. Bet
?”

In two words, she managed to convey enough dead calm that he just
knew
she knew, and that she’d already resigned herself to the fact that he was ass number four. But wasn’t he?

“That was
not
what it sounded like,” he said.

She crossed her arms and looked at him with so much ferocity that he wouldn’t have been surprised to find the trees through the window behind him had uprooted and fallen off the side of the mountain. “So you
didn’t
nail the Runaway Bride?” she asked.

She was never going to believe that bet had nothing to do with what happened with them, and he couldn’t exactly blame her. But he wanted her to understand. He
needed
her to. “I sure as shit wasn’t going to tell him I spent hours devouring every inch of your body.”

She fired back without missing a beat. “But you had to tell him something, right? Something about the way you
screwed
me.”

“Claire—”

“I can’t believe you told anyone it was me,” she said, a hitch in her voice. “I mean, brag about your sexual exploits all you want, but why would you take my
one
place of solace and ruin that for me?
Why do you keep telling people I’m here
?”

“That’s not quite how it happened.”

“Then how?” she yelled. “How do you justify what you’ve done to me?”

Yeah, because it was
entirely
his fault. “Originally,” he said tightly, “it went a little something like, I just got here, and
guess who just dropped a fucking tree on my truck
?”

She uncrossed and re-crossed her arms and hugged herself, and the gesture made her seem so unbelievably small and hurt that he thought that knot in his chest would puncture a lung or something. “That was then,” she said, her voice almost a whisper that made him wish she’d go back to yelling. “That was before you spent a fortune on ornaments for my tree. That was before you tried to give me a sleigh ride and managed to get me on skis and bought wine and that godawful beer and held me and made me
believe
in you. And all this while you were either winning or losing a bet, because apparently you’re not sure which, and
nailing
me because I’m here?”

“That bet was about me,” he said evenly. “Not you.”

“If it had to do with sleeping with me, it’s about me.”

“No.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “I suck at dating, relationships, small talk. Pretty much everything. He bet me I couldn’t keep your interest, us stuck here together after you wrecked my truck, which was a dig at me, not you.”

“Oh, well, then. As long as it wasn’t
supposed
to hurt me.”

“Claire—”

“Here’s the thing, Liam. I don’t care what you said about me two weeks ago when you didn’t know the person behind the headlines. I don’t really care what you said five minutes after we met when there was a tree lying on your truck. None of that matters. What matters is that you’ve spent these past few days being amazing. Touching me,
nailing
me, putting up the tree—twice—and giving me a thousand new memories to treasure. And I never thought for one minute you and I could ever be a thing, but we had this. You gave me
this
. You made me believe that maybe there is a decent guy out there, and I just hadn’t found him. And then you took it all away. It was my fault for putting any trust in you, but everything you just took from me—”

“
Claire
.”

Her eyes flashed. “Actually, I gave it to you, didn’t I? Just handed it all over. Well, you know what? You can keep it.”

“I’m not exactly sure what I’m keeping,” he said, sarcasm creeping in, because what the hell did she even mean?

“Do us both a favor and just finish your estimate, so you can leave. Since you want to forget it all anyway.”

“Claire, it’s not what you think.”
This
was why relationships sucked. This right here. Only in a relationship with her, versus any other woman, there’d be paparazzi camped out on the fire escape, catching every word, and he’d be jeopardizing his family business—the livelihoods of
four
families now, plus him—over this bullshit. “The bet wasn’t to sleep with you. It was whether you’d ever talk to me again after I left. It was about having
coffee
, not sex.”

“Right. It never is what I thought, is it? You’d think I’d figure that out eventually. But you never know, Liam. Maybe this is the one that did the trick.” With a final hard look, one so filled with sadness he thought his heart would break, she left him there.

More alone than he’d been in a long damn time.

Chapter Sixteen

Claire wasn’t the least bit surprised her Fusion-recommending friend Jessie agreed to meet her, though she expected to at least have to meet her halfway between the lodge and the city. Turned out, however, that Jessie was actually a bit further upstate and headed home, so they made plans to grab coffee in town while Liam worked on the heating system. It would have to be the same place she’d ordered Liam’s coffee the day before. The barista remembered her. “Black regular coffee with a shot of nothing?”

Jessie looked at Claire in surprise. “That is
so
not how you drink your coffee.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not. I asked for it yesterday for someone else and apparently it was memorable.” She ordered her favorite frothy white concoction—one that was about as far from black coffee as she could get without just drinking milk—then tossed down enough cash to pay for herself and whatever Jessie wanted, and took a table all the way in the back. Jessie gave her a strange look, but kept her distance until the coffee was ready. Upon joining Claire at the table, carrying both cups, she didn’t mince words.

“So who drinks black coffee?”

Claire didn’t mince anything, either. “He bet his brother whether he could sleep with me, or whether I’d talk to him if he did or something like that.” The thought of that…
ugh
. If only anger and hurt could erase memories, because she so did not need any good ones of him. Not then. Not ever.

“He
who
? He the black coffee drinker, or he the brother? And I’m sorry, but did you just tell me you were having sex with someone? You, who swore off ever getting
near
another man?”

Claire ignored the question about sex, especially since Jessie had all but announced her entire question to everyone in the shop. Fortunately, there weren’t many people there to hear. The sleek, espresso-wood and chrome store was mostly empty, save for a group of elderly women near the front. “The black coffee drinker,” Claire said, “who likes beer and thinks
Stanley
is a good name for a raccoon apparently bet, or accepted a bet, from his brother as to whether the he, black coffee drinker, could
nail
me without me running from him.”

“There’s a raccoon named Stanley?” Jessie blinked. “Why do I feel like I’m missing about three quarters of this story?”

Claire shrugged. “There was nowhere to run.”

“Is there vodka in that drink?”

With a sigh, Claire said, “Liam, from Fusion Air—that place you recommended—knew who I was. Apparently there are some bonus points in catching the…a runaway.”

Jessie’s eyes brightened with understanding, though lacked what Claire would have considered a reasonable amount of remorse. “So you
did
sleep with him?” she asked.

“Not the point.”

“Ah, I get it.” She gave a knowing nod. “You slept with him and had expectations.”

“I definitely did not have expectations.”

“Then why are you hurt?”

Claire sat back in the chair and tried not to cry. Fortunately, being pissed off that she felt the urge was enough to stave away the tears. “There were no expectations, yet he was this ridiculously amazing guy who did everything right. A random encounter kind of guy shouldn’t do everything right.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Jessie said, her tone brimming with skepticism, “but it doesn’t sound like he did.”

“The thing is,” Claire said, “he wasn’t wrong to want out. It got intense. Like, we were
together
. That’s not something either of us wanted, so for me to hear him say he couldn’t wait to get home should have come as a huge relief. Instead it just…hurt.”

“So if you don’t blame him, is it safe to assume we won’t find his body in the basement?”

Claire appreciated Jessie’s stab at humor, but it hit a little too close to the truth. Because Liam was leaving, and she
needed
him to. “I believe he planned on spending the day in the basement. One can hope he’s still breathing.”

Jessie met her gaze across her cup lid and cocked a brow. When she lowered the cup, she said, “You know, you look good. I think this place agrees with you.”

The change of subject was a bit abrupt, but not entirely unwelcome. It wasn’t like there was any fixing this thing with Liam. “There’s something to be said for not waking at four in the morning to have someone else paint my face on so the cameras will find me palatable. Heaven forbid I show up on the screen and ruin anyone’s breakfast.”

“You don’t need your face painted,” Jessie said. “Frankly, it’s disgusting.”

“Um, thank you?”

“No need to thank me. I just kind of hate you for not scaring small children when you’re not wearing makeup. In fact, it’s safe to say most people would hate you for that, but we all have our crosses to bear. So, why can’t you and this guy be a thing?”

“Headlines. I can’t deal with that all over again. I can’t be in a normal relationship with
anyone
, not with everyone waiting and judging and mocking. And that was
before
I found out he was one of the judgers and mockers.”

“If he actually did that, then I’ll find him and hurt him myself. But if there’s any chance it was a misunderstanding, give it a month. No one will remember you. You’ll be free to frolic in the middle of Times Square, and no one will be the wiser.”

“First of all, it’s been
three years
since wedding fail number two
,
and they haven’t exactly forgotten, and with that publicity tour and rumors of a book deal for bachelor number three, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.”

Jessie’s brow lifted. She stared over her drink. “People are going to stop paying attention. Trust me. So you didn’t get married twice. You have guts and self-respect. It’s awesome, but it’s not as news-worthy as they make it.”

“No, that’s not it. I mean, that’s not
all
of it.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He’s…likewise viral.”

Her face twisting, Jessie said, “That does not even remotely sound like something you should be having sex with.”

“
Not. Like. That
.” Claire looked around, feeling somewhat ridiculous, but
ridiculous
was what small-town rumors were made of. Finding them sufficiently alone, she said, “He’s Hot HVAC Guy.”

Jessie’s eyes flew wide. “You
slept
with
Hot HVAC Guy
?”

Claire could have died a thousand times at the volume of Jessie’s voice. “Could you
not
?”

Jessie shook her head. “Um, no.
No one
could not. You’re kidding me, right?”

“
You
told me to call them.”

“I didn’t know he was from Fusion!”

Claire almost spit out her coffee. “How could you
not
know that?”

“Because I’m a grown-ass woman with a job. I don’t follow that stuff.”

“Yet you knew who he was.”

“I saw the picture,” Jessie admitted, “and it may have contributed to an orgasm or two—which, by the way, you’ve just ruined—but I didn’t do a background check. God, no. If I’d found he had a wife and a couple of kids, that would have killed the fantasy. Kind of like finding out my best friend
actually
slept with him. What are you doing?”

Claire looked up from her phone, where she’d been rapidly keying in Liam’s name. “I’m making sure he’s not married.”

“What if he is?”

“He’ll go back to her in pieces.” After a moment, she sat back, relieved. Not married. No kids, either. Just three look-alike brothers, all gorgeous, one of whom had bet Liam he couldn’t catch the Runaway Bride.

Where the hell was anyone betting
her
she couldn’t get away?

…

Ironic, Liam thought, that the job had been one of the easiest he’d done. There was no need for an estimate. Not anymore. He’d pulled numbers off the furnace and called the manufacturer. The so-called old furnace had been installed six years before, which was plenty new when they were expected to last a good twenty years. When Ethan arrived, they’d gone through and tested everything, cleaned it up, and Claire was good to go.

And gone.

He wasn’t sure where she’d headed off to, and he knew he shouldn’t care. In fact, he should have been grateful there would be no awkward good-bye. Instead, he packed his stuff while Ethan wrote up the service ticket. Before he left, he put a banana on Stanley’s window sill and checked the fire, which as far as he knew hadn’t been re-lit that morning.

“Nice place,” Ethan said. He’d been oddly quiet.

“Yeah, it is.” And that was all Liam said, which probably meant he, too, was oddly quiet. Which was fine. Ethan would respect that.

Or so Liam had thought.

He took a long last look around the lodge before he closed the door on those few surreal days of life with Claire. Doing so hurt, but there weren’t any decisions to be made. No regrets to ponder. Just…done.

With that thought nevertheless heavy in his mind, he put his stuff in the back of the truck and strapped the snowboard on top of it while Ethan stowed what was left of the equipment. Approximately thirty seconds after Ethan fired up the pickup and the doors were shut, he gave Liam a look.

“So what happened?”

Liam sighed and turned the hot air vent so it didn’t blow in his face. “What have you heard?”

“Not a word from you,” Ethan said pointedly.

“For the record, I really don’t want to talk about this. And so I won’t have to, I’ll say this: Sawyer bet me I couldn’t hang onto the Runaway Bride, and I was dumb enough to not immediately hang up on him.”

“Wait a minute.
The
Runaway Bride? Claire…something.”

“Stevens.” Liam was surprised Sawyer hadn’t relayed that piece of information.

Ethan gave him a puzzled look. “That’s not the name I just wrote on that paperwork.”

“No, it’s not.” Liam sighed and eased back in the seat, wishing he had a hat to pull over his eyes. He trusted Ethan to get them off the mountain in one piece. Mostly. “That’s her television name. She came up here for some anonymity, so needless to say, she left that name in the city. The attention was driving her nuts.”

“I imagine. Every time I have to field a phone call from a teenage girl looking for you before I’ve even had my coffee, I want to hop on the next plane to wherever Rue is and stay there.”

Ethan’s fiancé, Rue, traveled for work, which was putting it mildly. “Where is she now?”

“Hopefully somewhere over the Atlantic,” Ethan said, sounding suddenly light.
Elated
. “I’m meeting her plane tonight. She had a long layover in London that she spent with her brother.”

“Pretty smart for the two of you to actually spend some time on the same continent before the wedding,” Liam said dryly. Rue was an award-winning conservation photographer who’d made a fast name for herself. The downside was that she was always off in remote places, many of which Liam hadn’t heard of until she was boarding a plane in each respective direction. He didn’t know how Ethan slept at night, knowing she was off the coast of fucking Yemen in Socotra taking pictures of those dragon’s blood trees, or north of the Arctic Circle in some remote Norwegian village, but Ethan was quite literally the happiest Liam had ever seen him.

Which made that knowing look he was giving him twice as annoying as it needed to be.

“What?” Liam snapped.

“Maybe you need to talk to Crosby. Find out the next step in the
just slept
with
a
client
playbook.” He shook his head in mock defeat. “If we had an HR department, they’d quit. En masse.”

Liam didn’t say anything. Crosby had met his wife on a service call.

Liam most fucking certainly had not.

Ethan hit the brakes, earning a dirty look from Liam.

“What? Was I supposed to plow over that rabbit? It probably had a family.”

Wordlessly, Liam closed his eyes again. He didn’t need to see the mountain or the snow or really anything but the inside of his apartment back in the city.

“You afraid if you’re not single, the phone calls will stop?” Ethan asked.

Liam snorted. “I’d marry
you
if I thought it would make the calls stop.”

Ethan shot him a knowing look. “You didn’t exactly deny sleeping with her. And I didn’t say a word about marriage.”

“For fuck’s sake, Ethan, I don’t want to marry her. I’ve known her
days
.” Truck cabs were too damned small. Maybe he should ditch his wrecked one and trade up for a crew cab. A loud, noisy four-door that required absolutely no proximity and would always be heard over the sound of a chainsaw.

“Maybe you’ve noticed,” Ethan said, “us Chase men get swept off our feet pretty much on day one. When it’s the right person, that is.”

“And maybe you’ve noticed,” Liam shot back, “my feet are still firmly on the floorboard.” Then he realized he had one ankle sitting on the opposite knee and jerked his foot to the floor mat. The last thing Ethan needed was to make a point, however idiotic.

Ethan just shook his head and grinned.

It was going to be a long ride home, and Ethan clearly wasn’t going to shut up, so Liam changed the subject. “How are the wedding plans coming?” Ethan and Rue were getting married in the spring, and Liam had a feeling it wouldn’t be at the church on the corner. “Am I going to need a passport?”

Liam had been joking, but Ethan nodded. “Yep, you might want to get on that.”

Was he serious? “Are we just shutting down the business for your wedding?”

“Just for a couple of days.”

Liam swore.

“Hey, Mom and Dad could use the vacation, and I don’t know how else we were going to force them to take one.”

“Good point.” He sighed. “She doesn’t snowboard. Or ski. She can’t even ride in a sleigh without disaster striking.”

“Who, Mom?”

Liam rolled his eyes. “No, asshole. Claire.”

Ethan choked on a laugh. “What kind of disaster struck on a sleigh?”

“The horse apparently found the harness bells as annoying as the rest of us and went home early, after which I publicly outed her as the Runaway Bride. We had a thirty-minute walk back.”