Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 272 - 10

Chapter 272: Chapter 10

As he neared the table, she reached up and brushed a wayward strand of hair off her soft cheek. He watched the unconsciously feminine gesture as if he’d never seen hundreds of other women do it before.

"Please sit down," she said graciously when he started around the table to pull out her chair for her. "You’ve already had to wait too long for this meal."

Rayne’s earlier nervousness had vanished. She was on familiar territory now, standing beside an elegant, candlelit table and hovering near a special guest whom she wanted to make feel important this evening to pay back a debt. It was a role she could play to perfection. She’d learned from her father before he passed away.

But he was never again going to see her play this role to perfection like he’d always wanted her to.

Blinking back a sudden sheen of moisture in her eyes, Rayne reached for the open wine bottle on a small table beside her. "May I pour you some wine?" she asked, smiling at his face through a blur of tears that blinded her to his sudden grin.

"That depends on where you’re planning to pour it, and how good your aim is."

Rayne’s emotions veered abruptly from anguish to laughter. "I have excellent aim," she assured him, leaning toward his glass.

"I don’t think so, you aim was terrible with the Michelada," Liam pointed out. To Liam’s dismay, she retaliated by smiling straight into his eyes while she poured just the right amount of red wine into his glass.

"Actually," she informed him, "I hit exactly what I was aiming for that time, too."

Before Liam could be sure whether she was serious, she turned away. He studied her closely as she slid into the chair across from his, her expression serenely calm. "Are you implying that you intended to douse me with that Michelada?" he asked, surprised.

"You know what they say about temperamental redheads," Rayne replied as she unfolded her napkin; then she leaned forward and looked at him as if a horrifying, but amusing, possibility had just occurred to her. "Surely you don’t think i wasn’t aiming for you earlier today?"

Liam was dumbfounded to think she’d actually thrown a drink at him in a fit of childish, uncontrolled pique. He didn’t want to believe he was wrong about her, and he didn’t want to consider why it was becoming important to him that this one woman be all the things she seemed. With deceptive nonchalance, he said, "Did you really do it on purpose?"

"Do you promise not to be angry?"

He smiled good-naturedly. "No."

A startled giggle nearly escaped Rayne at the vast contrast between his agreeable expression and his negative reply. "Then, will you promise never to bring the subject up again if I tell you the truth?"

Another lazy smile accompanied his answer. "No."

Rayne bit her lip to keep from laughing. "At least you’re honest and direct—in a misleading sort of way."Needing to avert her gaze from his, she picked up a basket of crusty rolls from the center of the table and offered it to him.

"Are you being honest and direct?" he asked with a smile, taking a roll from the basket.

Despite his friendly attitude, Rayne had an odd feeling of something more beneath the surface. She knew he was playing a game with her, like cat and mouse, and he was a master at it. But she sensed he wasn’t really enjoying it.

Her goal was to repay his kindness by making the evening pleasant for him, so she decided to end the pretense. Looking him in the eyes, she said sincerely, "I didn’t spill the drink on purpose. I only pretended I did to get back at you for teasing me about the Michelada."

Liam heard her words, but the softness in her green eyes and the expression on her lovely face interfered with the pathways to his brain.

He decided it didn’t matter if she’d done it on purpose. Then he realized she hadn’t, and that mattered much more than he thought it should. Though he despised her brother so much that he had wanted to crush Rayne in the past because of Jason’s constant bullying at camp, he realized he’d made a terrible mistake by not acknowledging her little crush on him back then. If he’d let her continue to crush on him without calling her ugly indirectly in one of his letters, would she still like him so much now?

She had grown into a beautiful and unpredictable woman with a quirky sense of humor, a captivating smile, and a fierce love for injured stray dogs. In short, she was everything he admired in a woman.

Liam picked up his butter knife. "Where are you living now?" he asked casually, though he was really curious because he had heard that the Wallaces’ main mansion in Mirage Mesa had been sold by Jason.

"Zen," she replied with a smile.

He looked up sharply, his disbelief evident, so Rayne felt the need to clarify. "I moved back to Zen a year ago," she repeated. "I was born there and went to school there. What about you? Where are you originally from, and where do you stay now?"

Zen. Liam managed to hide his distaste for her answer, but he was now on guard. "I’ve never lived anywhere long enough to call it home," he said, giving her the vague answer that usually satisfied anyone who asked. He knew people typically asked just to make conversation. But unfortunately Rayne Wallace wasn’t like most people.

"What places did you live in before you were taken to the military—but not long enough to actually be ’from’ any of them?"

"Various places in the country," Liam replied, intending to immediately change the subject. "Where do you live now?" she asked, before he could.

"Wherever my work takes me. I have apartments in several countries." His work occasionally took him to Zen too, but he didn’t want to mention that to Rayne, because he wanted to avoid the inevitable discussion about where he lived there and his family.

Though many knew the Thompsons, none knew what actually happened in the family circle and why he was now trying to distance himself from them and the city they lived in. Talking about his family home would bring up the topics he was avoiding, and the last thing he wanted to do was discuss what actually went wrong with his family after his father’s death years ago.

Rayne waited for him to offer a clue as to which countries and cities those apartments were in, or what he had been up to lately, as she knew little to nothing about him personally nor his family.

All she knew was that he was a Thompson. When he didn’t, she assumed he wanted to skip those specific topics. That struck her as odd. In her experience, men loved to talk about their work and achievements. She didn’t want to pry into information Liam didn’t want to offer, but she couldn’t gracefully switch immediately to another topic, so she said instead,

"What about your family members? I thought you had siblings a while back?"

"None were blood-related." When she looked at him strangely, Liam said, "From the expression on your face, I gather you find that a little odd?"

"Not odd, just difficult to believe." On the assumption that if she offered personal information freely, he might be inclined to follow suit, Rayne said, "I am the only daughter of the Wallace family, as you may have heard. I went to Ivy Grove University in Zen City, and after I graduated, I got a job at the country’s top radio station."

With a feeling approaching amused disbelief, Liam realized that he actually knew nothing about Rayne despite the fact that she was his best friend’s wife’s friend. He never knew she even worked at a radio station and believed all this while that she worked in the family business like most of the rich, spoiled girls.

"Why did you decide to go for journalism instead of the restaurant business? I suppose you probably had enough of that business when you were growing up," he added, answering his own question.

"It wasn’t exactly like that. I just wanted to do something different to stay away from the media’s attention. I hate being the center of attention, so I decided to be the one who’d make people uncomfortable instead of the other way around," she said with a small smile, wishing she had at least paid more attention to the family business to be of use when her father was alive.

She didn’t know why she was telling Liam Thompson about her life, but talking to him strangely made her feel better and made her forget about her grief. Perhaps she was so lonely that she didn’t mind being in the company of a Casanova.

If it were in the past, the thought of sitting with him would have made her so angry she couldn’t imagine even having a conversation with him like they were friends. But now, she wished they’d keep on talking and the night would be longer than usual. It had been a long time since she enjoyed male company other than Max, who never gave her the attention and time she deserved as his girlfriend.