Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 276 - 14

Chapter 276: Chapter 14

Rayne opened the door to two smiling waiters, one of them in her late twenties, the other in his late forties.

"How was your dinner, miss?" the younger waiter asked as she wheeled in a cart.

"Wonderful." Rayne couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for dinner and she sounded a little breathless.

"Was our fine wine to your taste?" the older waiter inquired, stepping carefully around the sleeping dog.

"Yes," Rayne said. "It was," she added with a quick smile, trying to recover her balance that had been lost after the kiss.

She checked to be sure Eric was all right; then she smoothed her hair down and stepped back outside onto the terrace. Liam was standing in the garden with his hands shoved in his pockets, staring out across the moonlit water as if lost in thought.

The music had begun again, and as Rayne moved around the table, the female waiter paused in her struggle to force the cork back into the unfinished bottle of red wine. "There’s a private party going on down there," she said. "I hope the music has not disturbed you and your husband in anyway."

"We—I’ve enjoyed it very much," Rayne said, but the word husband made her falter momentarily, not because Liam wasn’t her husband, but because she realized how awkward this situation would feel tomorrow night, or the night after, if these same waiters served Max and her a meal.

It hit her then that the same possibility might have occurred to Liam and that was why he’d moved off into the darkness at the far end of the garden.

Rayne forced her worries about the future aside and stepped off the terrace onto the grass. Soon enough, she would have to cope with the aftermath of her decision to be with Liam tonight, but for now, that decision was made.

She couldn’t turn back. She didn’t want to turn back. Not after their kiss. There had never been a kiss like that—not for her—and she had the thrilling feeling that Liam had been almost as surprised and carried away by it as she’d been.

He turned toward her, and Rayne searched his features for some sign that the kiss had affected him as much as she thought it had. She wanted to believe it had been no ordinary kiss to him.

She needed to believe it, and yet in the pale moonlight, he almost seemed to be frowning at her. However, he was too far away for her to gauge his expression accurately, so Rayne smiled at him and tried to decide what to say to him when she was close enough.

He didn’t smile back at her, and she wondered why.

Liam wasn’t smiling because he was studying the woman who had just managed to drive him to the brink of uncontrollable, possessive lust with one kiss, and he wasn’t entirely happy with what he saw.

With her hands clasped behind her back and the breeze teasing her long hair and ruffling the hem of her long pants, she reminded him of an innocent choir girl, and the beguiling outfit she was wearing—which he’d mentally stripped off her during dinner—now struck him as being virginal white.

Rayne Wallace was not at all in his normal style nor was she his type of woman, and neither was his profound physical reaction to a single kiss.

Earlier, when she dumped that Michelada on him, his desire to see her again had been an ordinary response to a captivating face framed by a captivating mass of red hair.

Tonight, however, his attraction to her had intensified so fiercely with everything she did and said that a simple kiss—which he’d intended to be nothing more than an expression of languid desire soon to be satisfied—became something much different: a kiss of wild urgency.

He watched her as she stopped to pluck a white flower from a bush covered with white blooms. She held the bloom to her nose, inhaling its fragrance as she looked out across the water.

Suddenly, Liam was taken five years back in time to a party he’d attended at the home of one of his father’s business partners. Bored with the party, Liam had taken his drink outside, where he eventually wandered down a path that ended at the entrance to a small, torchlit garden at the edge of a cliff.

In the center of the garden stood a life-size statue of a young woman with flowing hair holding a flower in her hand.

Based on the garments she was wearing, the statue was fairly recent, but something about her had captivated him. ’Do you mind if I join you, young lady?’ he’d asked the statue as he studied her features.

That question had been as idiotic, Liam realized, as the fact that he was now comparing a redheaded woman to a Greek statue he’d seen five years ago.

His response to Rayne Wallace was not only unreal, it was unpredictable, and although Liam had no idea why she affected him that way, or exactly where all this was heading, he was suddenly a little wary of the general direction it had taken him.

He resolved to chart the remainder of the course more carefully and on his terms.

Rayne stopped in front of him and glanced over his shoulder toward the beach, where the musicians were starting to play another music.

"The music is playing again," she remarked lightly, trying not to feel uneasy about the fact that he was looking at her with a rather cool smile and keeping his hands in his pockets. "I guess the party down the beach will last overnight," she added.

Liam shifted his gaze in the direction she indicated and named the song the musicians were playing on the beach. "The Girl from Ipanema," he said, but he didn’t make a move to dance with her, and Rayne decided the continued presence of the waiters on the terrace was the explanation for his hesitant behavior.

Since she couldn’t restore the mood to what it had been just before the waiters arrived, she decided to try for the friendly banter she’d shared with him at dinner and, hopefully, an opportunity to learn a little more about the man she was about to go to bed with.

"I know you like music," she said lightly. "I can tell that from the way you dance along the music. What’s your favorite kind of music?"

"Jazz."

Rayne sighed in exaggerated despair. "Men prefer jazz because you don’t bother listening to lyrics. With jazz, you don’t even have to pretend you’re listening to them. What’s your second favorite kind of music?"

"Classical," Liam replied.

"Which has no lyrics to listen to," she said so smugly that Liam grinned in spite of himself. "What’s your third favorite?" she asked.

"Opera," Liam replied.

"Which has lyrics you don’t understand," Rayne pointed out drily, lifting her palms as if his answers had completely proven her point, but a hesitant flicker in his expression made her drop her hands and study him more closely, and then she noticed something in his features she hadn’t paid much attention to in ages.

"Do you understand Mandarin?"

Mandarin was Liam’s mother’s first language, not English, but rather than tell her that and provoke more questions, he nodded and said a dismissive, "Yes."

"Do you speak it as well? I mean, are you fluent in Mandarin as well as English and Italian?"

"I’m not fluent in Italian," he reminded her.

From that reply, Rayne deduced that he was, however, fluent in Mandarin, and she looked as impressed and fascinated as she felt. "How many languages do you speak?"

"I’ve never counted them."

"Let’s do that now," Rayne joked, and started to hold up her fingers.

"Let’s not," Liam replied curtly, dousing her smile and her enthusiasm with a swift efficiency that made him dislike himself so thoroughly that he made a quick, clumsy effort to atone for his rudeness and ended up giving her an ill-advised explanation that confused her and required clarification.

"My father is an European, and most of them are multilingual," he said.

"You’re so fluent in English that I never imagined you’re a mix Asian and European." She whispered in disbelief. His features says a lot but no one would know he was mix unless he admitted it himself.

"I’m not."

"Then what are you?" she asked, her green eyes searching his.

"I’m neither," Liam replied bluntly. "I’m a hybrid," he added, because that’s exactly how he thought of himself, but when he realized that he’d just been lulled by a soft voice and shining eyes into saying something he’d never admitted aloud, he didn’t like the feeling it gave him.

Impatiently, he glanced toward the terrace, and then he put his hand under Rayne’s elbow, turning her in that direction. "The waiters have left. Let’s go inside," he said, intending to take her to bed without further conversation.

When she nodded and walked obediently beside him, Liam assumed she was willing to go along with that plan, but when they stepped onto the terrace, she foiled him either purposely or inadvertently by backing up and sitting on the stone balustrade.

"Liam—" She said his name for the first time in a low, sweet voice; then she glanced down and paused as if saying his name had given her the same twinge of surprised pleasure that he’d felt hearing it.

Liam perched his hip on the opposite balustrade and folded his arms over his chest. "Yes?" he said, resigned to naming a few foreign languages he spoke before he could get her to go inside with him.

She lifted her face to his, her smile quizzical. "Why did you call yourself a ’hybrid’?"

"Because I’m an European by birth and half blood and a Chinese by... Half blood."

She nodded as if satisfied. "Do you have blood related siblings?"

Startled and annoyed by her unexpected line of questioning, Liam said shortly, "No, not really."

"Not really," she repeated, and then half-jokingly she said, "What about the sisters I used to hear you had?"

"They’re not my sisters."

"I know your father passed away a while back, what about your mom?"

He shrugged impatiently and didn’t reply.

"You have no family anywhere, is that it?"

"What the hell of a difference does it make?"

"None, really, I suppose," she said, but a hint of sadness and resignation had crept into her voice, giving Liam the distinct impression that for some reason, any further refusal to answer her questions was going to weigh heavily against him in whatever decision she was struggling with.

"I have a niece, Lilly, who you’ve already met, and a grandma," he conceded in a clipped voice, refusing to acknowledge the existence of his other family.

"How can you have a niece if you have no brothers and no sisters?" She’d always known Lilly was his niece but she’d never known who birthed the girl or how she became Liam’s niece as the Thompson’s personal life was kept out of the media’s reach and private.

"Where is this conversation going?" he said shortly. "Are you some kind of CIA or something?" If he hadn’t been so annoyed, he would have laughed.

"Why are you avoiding the topic of your family so much?" she said lightly, standing up.

Liam stood up and answered with a curt, impatient question of his own. "Are you always so inquisitive?" It was a thinly veiled reprimand and a warning to back off. And Rayne backed off—literally as well as figuratively.

Turning away from him, she faced the cold reality of the situation and not the dreamy idyll she’d cherished a short while ago. The only thing he wanted to share was an hour or so in her bed, and his only interest in her was as a convenient sex partner.

For a moment she actually considered settling for that, but she already had all the sorrow and uncertainty she could shoulder waiting for her when she returned to Zen. She didn’t need to add humiliation and guilt to her burdens.

Her body language was unmistakable, and Liam suddenly decided the evening was better off ending exactly this way. Much better off. In fact, he was relieved it was ending like this.

Tomorrow, when they were in town to see the vet, he could enjoy her at arm’s length—mentally and physically.

"It’s getting late," he said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. "I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow."

Instead of agreeing to that as he expected, she shook her head; then she cleared her throat and said, "No. I’ll manage on my own tomorrow, but thank you for your help and it was nice meeting you again, Mr. Thompson."