Читать книгу His Forever Family - Sarah M. Anderson - Страница 13

Six

Liberty stood on the sidewalk in a state of shock. She knew she needed to pull herself together but she was weirdly numb right now.

“That place was a time warp,” Marcus said, stepping around her to the car and opening the passenger door for her.

She blinked at him. Hazel was a warm, loving, capable woman who had only one child in her charge and, by all appearances, would dote on William as if he were her own. That was weird enough, but now? Marcus Warren was opening her door for her. In what world did any of this make sense?

“Liberty?” Then he was touching her again, his hand in the small of her back as he gently propelled her toward his waiting car as if he was her chauffeur instead of her billionaire boss. Warmth flowed up her back from where he touched her and she wanted nothing more than to lean into him. “Are you all right?”

No. No, she wasn’t. Everything had changed and she didn’t know how she’d ever be the same again. But she had to try. “I can’t—you don’t have to come back.”

Marcus snorted in amusement. “I never have to do something I don’t want,” he said. “You were right. We can’t lose him.”

“We?” That word sounded different in her ears now, foreign almost. There was no “we” where Marcus and she were concerned. Not outside the office or off the jogging path. Or beyond her carefully guarded fantasies. “But...”

“Come on,” he said, almost pushing her into the car. “Let’s get some dinner. We can talk then.”

“Dinner?” She couldn’t make sense of anything he was saying. We. Dinner. “No—wait,” she said when he got into the driver’s seat. “You don’t have to take me to dinner. You should be taking a potential wedding date—not me.”

“Maybe I am taking a potential date to dinner.”

And they were right back to where they’d been earlier. Well, this time she was not going to mess around. The sooner he realized how radically inappropriate she’d be as a wedding date, the sooner they could get back to their regularly scheduled programming. “Marcus, I’m not going. I’m not good enough for you, for that crowd. I know it. Everyone else there will know it. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to realize it.”

“That’s not—”

She cut him off because he had to see reason. She didn’t know how much longer she could be this strong. “That’s not all. Why would I want to go to this wedding? Why would I want to watch Lillibeth hurt you again? Because you know she’s going to try. And everyone will be watching to see how bad it’s going to be. You’ll be back in the media again. And I don’t want to be a part of that. I don’t want to be another reason people try to tear you down. I care too much about you to let that happen.”

The last part just slipped out. She hadn’t meant to say that she cared about him at all, but she’d built up a head of steam. But it was the truth—a truth that she couldn’t bury anymore.

“Liberty,” he said. And then something horrible and wonderful happened—Marcus touched her. He cupped her face in the palm of his hand.

“I just don’t want you to be hurt again,” she breathed. And even though she knew she shouldn’t, she reached up and held his palm against her skin.

“You won’t hurt me. I know you too well for that.”

There it was again, that blind trust he had in her. And she knew—knew—that if he learned the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about her junkie mom and her unknown father, he would be hurt.

She wanted to lean into his touch, but she couldn’t because she was already starting to slip up and if she let herself get swept away in his touch, in his longing looks, something even more damaging might come out of her mouth.

So she shook him off. “If you don’t want to, don’t. Don’t go to the wedding. Don’t do the reality show. You said it yourself—your reputation isn’t everything. You don’t need to do any of that stuff. Do what you want.”

He stared at her for a moment, but she refused to make eye contact because she didn’t know if she could handle it. One searing look from Marcus Warren might break her resolve. So she kept her gaze locked on the windshield.

He started the car and began to drive without answering.

“Please take me back to the office. I’ll finish the work I didn’t get done earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He sounded distant.

She fought the urge to apologize, to backpedal—to take it all back. She wanted to go back to the way things had been a week ago, when he’d tease her during the run and she earned his respect by being invaluable to his business, when she didn’t offer opinions on his personal life and she didn’t run the risk of letting the facts of her life slip out at every turn.

But then, that’d mean not finding William—not knowing that he was alive and healthy and cared for. And she couldn’t imagine that. She’d seen that baby for a total of an hour and a half and she couldn’t imagine life without him.

You two should consider applying for adoption. Liberty would be lying to herself if Hazel’s idea didn’t sound like a dream come true. She’d long fantasized about Marcus. He was gorgeous, one of the richest men in the city, and she liked him. She hated running but she liked running with him. She liked his jokes and how he treated her and how he’d put that shower in the ladies’ room so she could change without going all the way back to her apartment in Logan Square.

And she’d liked the way he looked holding that baby and smiling down at him as if he really did care. It hadn’t mattered that he’d had on a suit that probably cost thousands or that William was one burp away from ruining that suit. Marcus had smiled and cooed and held his hand anyway. William was important to Marcus because William was important to her.

She’d spent her entire adolescence and adulthood trying so hard to overcome her abandonment. Her life was built around making sure no one could forget about her again. She worked harder than anyone else. She never stopped working. In college, she’d held down two jobs and carried a full class load and never done anything fun like party or date. Never. She’d passed as white because she could and because it meant she was that much further away from Jackie Reese’s life, because passing meant that she had to work only twice as hard to get ahead, not four times as hard.