Jo Leigh - One-Click Buy - September Harlequin Blaze

“Liam, I never meant to hurt you. You’ve got to believe that.”

“I won’t be played for a fool, Katie, and I won’t tolerate deception in any form. Especially, not from the woman I’m dating.” He snatched his suitcase off the bed and carried it out the door.

She stood there dumbfounded, hands on her hips, watching him stride away. She could understand that he didn’t think the dare was funny. She could understand why he might be put out, but this angry reaction was over the top.

See, see, this is why you should avoid commitment, shouted the voice that had always kept her from investing in a long-term relationship.

But then another part of her, a wiser part of her she’d never heard before whispered, This isn’t about you. He’s got an old wound and you just knocked off the scab.

When she returned to the living room, she found him on the phone, calling for a taxi to the airport. “You’re really doing this. You’re really going?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t leave you stranded,” he said as he hung up, forever a man of honor. “I’ll take the next commercial flight off the island. I’ll leave my jet for you.”

“Liam, you’re blowing this all out of proportion. You’re a rational man, I don’t get why you’re acting so betrayed.” She reached out to grab his wrist and pushed up the wristband of his watch in the process, revealing the tattoo that marked him.

All at once the anger rolled out of him. She could see it in the sag of his shoulders, the tired shake of his head. “I’m sorry, Katie, I thought we had something, but now I see we don’t. You’re a blue-blooded Brahmin from Beacon Hill and no matter how much money I make I’ll always be the gangster kid from the South Boston projects.”

“Where you come from doesn’t mean a damn thing to me,” she cried.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But it matters to me.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

He snorted. “How can I be? We were never together. I was only your dare, remember?”

The taxi horn honked outside. He picked up his suitcase, lumbered out of the bungalow.

“Liam, don’t leave. We can talk this out. Work it out. Liam, please!”

But he didn’t hear her. He was already climbing into the taxi, the sound of the ocean wind blowing her voice back into her face with the cold, hard slap of reality.

The man had just broken her heart.

ABOUT HALFWAY over the Pacific, Liam’s anger evaporated. He thought of Katie and how forlorn she’d looked standing in the doorway of the bungalow, barefooted and wearing nothing but his white dress shirt.

You did the right thing, he tried to convince himself. How could they have a relationship if she was going to keep secrets from him?

Dude, he could almost hear Tony’s voice in his head, it was just a silly dare. Get over it.

Liam shook his head. It wasn’t the dare that bothered him. It was the level of deception she’d gone to in order to lure him to Fiji. It was the fact that she’d used him for her own gratification while he’d been falling in love with her. He thought of how Arianna had humiliated him back in college. Katie was exactly like her, another privileged female toying with the heart of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks for her own amusement.

That’s where you’re dead wrong. Katie is nothing like Arianna and you know it.

In fact, Katie was unlike any woman he’d ever met.

She was sweet and lively, imaginative and generous. She threw herself headlong into everything she attempted. She was unusual, intense, complex and gorgeous as all get out. There were so many things he liked about Katie. Her upbeat attitude and how he instantly felt better whenever he was near her. He loved how she surprised and delighted him with her sense of wonder and adventure. He admired her fearlessness in going after what she wanted.

After he’d met her, he’d put his issues with Finn Delancy on hold. For the first time since he’d found out Delancy was his father, his grudge had taken a backseat to something else. Being with Katie had him letting go of his secret shame and embracing life. And for these past few weeks, he’d felt free.

And he’d walked out on her. All because of an idiotic dare.

What in the hell was the matter with him?

“Would you care for something to drink, sir?” asked the flight attendant as she came around the first-class cabin.

“Whiskey,” he ordered, hoping the alcohol would take his mind off his mistakes.

He remembered the last time he’d drank whiskey. It had been at Finn Delancy’s dinner party. He recalled what had happened later in the park, after he’d confessed his secret to Katie. She’d never judged, just offered her body up to him as solace.

His heart ached and his body tightened with need. Yet he’d never make love to Katie again. Random images of her flashed in his mind-strutting her stuff in that provocative French-maid costume, kicking his butt in bowling, holding his hand as they walked along the beach.

Each freeze-frame tugged at his desire, mocked his stupidity. It was as if his whole life were looped on instant replay, a poignant déjà vu of how he’d flubbed up.

To distract himself from the pain, he tugged the in-flight magazine from the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him and listlessly leafed through the pages, but it didn’t hold his attention.

Liam noticed a man get up and walk down the aisle to the lavatory. A few minutes later, a sexy, long-legged blonde woman followed, squeezing into the same lavatory the man had entered ahead of her.

Clearly, they were angling to become members of the mile-high club. He grinned. It looked like they were in for a fun ride to the States.

Great. He sounded just like Katie. Everything’s a lark, even when it’s inappropriate or probably illegal.

That’s right. Hold on to the negative aspects of her personality. That way you don’t have to remember what her lips feel like on yours, or the adorable sounds she makes during sex, or how good it felt to hold her in your arms.

Determined to lose himself in the printed word, Liam purposely forced his attention onto the in-flight magazine. He turned the page.

The headline of the article grabbed hold of his stomach with a vicious twist. TEN BEST U.S. CITY MAYORS. Quickly, his gaze ran down the list. Boston, he perused. Mayor Finn Delancy.

Bitter disgust rose up his throat. Gritting his teeth, he read the article. It was a glowing review of what Delancy had done for the city. But what really chafed Liam was the section on what a fine father Delancy was. There was a picture showing Finn tossing around a football with his teenage sons on the lawn of his Beacon Hill home.

Liam’s half brothers.

Emotions he’d been suppressing for three decades fell in on him. He felt cheated, wronged, jealous and unloved. But most of all he felt betrayed. He crumpled the magazine in his fist and closed his eyes. Luckily the seat next to him was empty so he didn’t have to defend himself against a prying seatmate.

He reached down deep inside himself, fighting for self-control, trying to tamp down the emotions that until now, he managed to hide under the umbrella of vengeance. He’d wanted to get even with Delancy for betraying him and for hurting his mother.

And then the realization struck him.

He knew why he’d overreacted to Katie’s confession that she’d seduced him on a dare. Why he’d felt so deceived. Why he’d always had a difficult time tolerating deception of any kind.

It was because he’d been hiding from the truth. He’d been deceiving himself. He’d projected his fears and shortcomings onto Katie.

All these years he’d kept his identity a secret, telling no one who his father was until the night he’d confessed to Katie. Even to himself, he’d denied he was part blue blood, had eschewed that gene of his DNA.