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He nodded slowly, his eyes steady on her face, before he took a swallow of tea and set down his glass on a wrought-iron table.
“Then you might know that for a half year before the accident, the Securities and Exchange Commission had been investigating Langford for fraudulent financial statements. As chief counsel for Langford, my father was a major part of that investigation.”
Her pulse began to throb in her throat. She’d wondered about this very issue. Was Liam saying that his father had acted so irresponsibly on that night sixteen years ago because he knew he might be implicated in Langford’s fraudulent practices?
“I had heard about it,” she said quietly. “Just an occasional reference here and there in some old news clippings about the crash. The SEC came out several weeks after the accident and announced that no charges would be made following an investigation at Langford. I thought no wrongdoing was found.”
“There wasn’t any wrongdoing,” Liam said soberly.
“Then…why are you telling me this?”
He paused to take a sip of his tea before he continued. Natalie found herself admiring the muscular movement of his tanned throat as he swallowed. She guiltily met his gaze when he spoke.
“I’m telling you because I figured that you, like most people, would have come up with some sort of conspiracy angle when they heard about the SEC’s investigation. It goes something like this, I can imagine—Derry Kavanaugh swindles thousands of honest shareholders with fraudulent financial reports. When he gets caught by the SEC, though, he can’t stand the prospect of his family and the public knowing he’s nothing but a dirty criminal. He’d rather die than face the music. So he gets smashed one night and in the process of offing himself, selfishly takes three other lives as well.”
Her cheeks burned at his seemingly casual recital. Maybe he’d stated it bluntly to make a point, but what he’d said was true. She had wondered if something akin to that was behind Derry Kavanaugh’s erratic actions that night. Despite her embarrassment, she refused to be cowed by Liam’s subtle sarcasm.
“I’ll admit I wondered about the SEC’s investigation. Even if he’d been innocent, your father might have been overwrought. The investigation had gone on for months. That’s a terrific amount of pressure to live under, especially when he had to keep working and putting up a brave front. Many people would crack under stress like that.”
She paused, feeling self-conscious when Liam said nothing but just studied her, his long legs bent before him and his arms sprawled on the sides of the chair. Beneath his seeming insouciance, she sensed a diamond-hard edge, however, a tension that belied all that relaxed male brawn.
It made her wary, this difficulty she had in reading him. Was he angry?
“How do you know that wasn’t the case with your father?” she persisted, despite her uncertainty.
“Because my father knew that the SEC wasn’t going to level any charges at the time of the accident.”
“What?” Natalie asked, sitting forward. “But the SEC didn’t announce that until weeks after the crash.”
“True,” Liam said briskly. “But I accessed Langford’s financial disclosures. The details of the investigation are in the files. The SEC had finished their investigation and made their determination weeks before the accident. The announcement just wasn’t made to the public until a stockholders’ meeting several weeks later. As chief legal counsel, my father knew the SEC’s decision as soon as it was made. I have a dated memo that proves that fact. My father definitely knew Lang-ford was cleared of any wrongdoing at the time of the accident.”
“I see.”
“Disappointed?” he asked.
“No. No, of course not,” she said, irritated. How could he be so warm at times, and at others, downright confronta-tional? “I want the truth, not easy answers.”
Something about the tilt of his mouth before he took another swallow of his tea made her think he doubted her.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked impulsively.
“Sure.”
“Did you already know what you just told me, or was it news to you?”
He shooed a buzzing fly away with a lazy flip of his hand before he answered. “I knew, but in a family-knowledge kind of way. I wasn’t sure of the facts.”
“What do you mean?” Natalie asked. She leaned forward even farther in her chair. She couldn’t help it. She was sitting with a man who had known firsthand the secrets of the Kavanaugh house. Things that Natalie had wondered about incessantly were common knowledge to Liam.
Something sparked in his eyes when he noticed her curi-osity…her eagerness.
“So this is the part where it’s handy to have an inside man for your investigator?” he asked softly.
“It’s not bizarre that I would want to know what you know.”
His nostrils flared slightly as he studied her, but then he sighed and glanced toward the lake. The sunlight reflecting off the water seemed to make his eyes even more electric blue than usual.
“True. But your interest makes me uncomfortable. People tend to keep family stuff close. Until Mari Itani came back to town a year ago, we hardly ever mentioned the crash amongst ourselves. Hell, my sister Deidre took off after the crash and hasn’t been back to Harbor Town since, let alone sat around for chats about our father getting bombed one night and killing himself and three other people.”
Guilt seeped into her awareness. She wasn’t the only one who carried open wounds. For a few seconds, she wasn’t sure what to say.
“You wonder if I’ve asked you to unlock Pandora’s box,” she said quietly after a moment.
His gaze narrowed on her, and Natalie realized she’d been correct in what she’d said. This was the source of the conflict she sensed in him.
“My mother told us when we were young that people might make snide comments about Dad being mixed up in fraud soon after the accident. She was right. Kids can be cruel. They overhear their parents saying stuff, and they might not understand the content, but they get the tone. My mom prepared us by explaining that the investigation at Langford had showed no wrongdoing. Until you asked me to look into matters officially, I had no way of proving what my mother told us, though. Now I can. I’ve seen the records.” He flashed a hard look before he took a sip of his tea. “Turns out that my mother was right all along. My father didn’t have a meltdown on that night because he thought he was going to be exposed as a crook.”
“Do you really think I’m disappointed because you didn’t discover some dirt on your father?” she asked incredulously.
His teeth flashed white in his tanned face, but he hardly looked amused. “It would have been a convenient story for you. Something to hang your hat on.”
“I told you I was interested in the truth, whatever that may be,” she countered. “I’m not your enemy, Liam. I’d like to think we’re on the same side.”
“It might seem like we’re on the same side until I uncover something that makes my father look worse than he already does. Did you ever think about that when you cooked up this little scheme?”
She sat rigid in her chair. His voice had been quiet, but she sensed his volatility.
“I didn’t do this to take your memories of your father away from you. If it’s true that you discover something about him that you don’t like in this process, I’m sorry. More sorry than you know. But if that were the case, it wouldn’t be me that changed the way you thought of your father. It would have been him, Liam. And you…because you were honest enough to look for the truth.”
His stare burned all the way down to her heart, but she didn’t back down.
“I hired you for several different reasons,” she continued in a hushed tone, “but the main one was that you search for the truth at all costs. That’s the conclusion I came to after I spoke with Mari and after I read all those articles about your undercover work that exposed all those corrupt cops.”
He abruptly collapsed back in his chair, the palpable tension in his muscles dissipating. He exhaled heavily.
“I hope you made a good decision,” he said.
“I did. Besides, has it ever occurred to you that the opposite might occur?”
His drawn brows told her he wasn’t following.
“You might uncover something that makes you understand your father better than ever before. You might gain an even clearer picture of Derry Kavanaugh. Perhaps you’ll be able to love your father more…not less.”
Something flashed in his eyes that she couldn’t interpret. For a few seconds, only the sounds of the waves hitting the beach and the birds twittering in the trees reached her ears.
“How long have you danced?” he asked abruptly, taking her by surprise.
“What?”
A lopsided grin tilted his mouth. “How long have you danced?” he repeated slowly. “It’s pretty obvious you’ve been doing it a long time. You’re very talented.” His gaze turned warm. “I had no idea accountants could be so…flexible.”
She blushed. Damn him. His was turning the focus of the conversation onto her to keep it off himself. He constantly made her feel like an awkward adolescent. And he did it without effort. She sipped her tea and glanced out at the lake, squinting behind her sunglasses.
“I told you no one was meant to see that. It’s not very kind of you to keep bringing it up,” she said coolly.
He looked genuinely confused by her statement. “I’m not being unkind, I’m just…fascinated.”
She turned to him, her lips parted. “Fascinated? By what?”
“By you. Does that surprise you?”
“Yes,” she said quickly.
He laughed after a second. She couldn’t imagine why he seemed so bewildered when she was the one who was utterly baffled.
“So…how long? Have you danced?” he clarified when she just continued to gape at him.
“I started ballet when I was eight years old,” she said.
“You’re good enough to do it professionally. Don’t you want to?” he asked matter-of-factly.
She was the one to laugh this time. “Forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think you’re much of an expert.” When he quirked his eyebrows at her, she laughed some more. “I like to dance for fun. I still take lessons. It’s a hobby, but I think it’d be a monumental mistake to quit my day job.”
His shrug seemed to say he’d let her have her way because he didn’t want to ruffle her feathers any more than he already had. Natalie decided that it was imperative to bring this conversation back to professional matters.
“Liam—” She paused when he tensed. His steady gaze unnerved her. “What…why are you looking at me like that?” she mumbled incredulously.
“It’s nice…the way you say my name. So, where were you going when I called you?” he asked. Natalie blinked. Had he really just said he liked the sound of her saying his name with so much heat, and then switched the topic as casually as if he was making a comment about the weather?
“I was on my way to my brother’s. I was going to make him dinner, if he was available.”
“Why don’t you let me make you dinner instead? I grill a mean steak and make a mediocre salad.”
“That’s not necessary—”
“I know it’s not necessary. I want to. Why are you so surprised by that?”
“It’ll take more than Liam Kavanaugh offering to cook a meal to surprise me,” she shot back in the midst of her rising confusion.
Her breath caught when he leaned forward and examined her through a narrowed gaze.
“You’re not being honest,” he murmured, his light tone belying his X-raying gaze. “You’re surprised that I want to have dinner with you. Why would you be surprised that a man would want to have dinner with a beautiful woman, Natalie?”
Chapter Three
He’d give anything to comprehend what was going on in that brain of hers. One second she was acting like a skittish colt and the next she was saying something deadpan in that low, sexy voice of hers, reminding him for all the world of a sophisticated Bacall baiting Bogie.
She was a puzzle, and the detective in him needed to figure her out.
Liam bit off a potent urge to ask her to take off her glasses. He knew she wore them to protect her sensitive eye, so he refrained. Barely. They’d sat there and talked for the past half hour and almost the entire time he’d been hungry to look into those soft, dark eyes…When he wasn’t admiring her elegant arms, or the slope of her shoulders, or her legs or her firm, full breasts.
He felt guilty about it, but he wasn’t really sorry that the cleaning lady had switched on that light the other night. He was greedy. If that light hadn’t gone on, he wouldn’t have been gifted with the vision of Natalie’s exquisite face and huge, startled eyes.
He wouldn’t have sacrificed that.
Why did he have this almost overwhelming need to touch her again, like he had the other night? She’d quivered in his arms like a shaking leaf, but she’d felt so soft.
She’d fit against him perfectly. He couldn’t quiet the desire to explore every nuance of that fit.
It was a mistake to ask her to dinner. He saw how tense she’d gone at his suggestion and he sank back in his chair.
“It’s just dinner, Natalie.”
“I know that,” she replied quickly.
He felt bad. Gone was the impenetrable woman with the quick tongue. She seemed flustered. He thought it would be prudent to give her some space to gather herself. He stood. “I’ll go and defrost some steaks and then take a quick shower. Are you going to be okay out here for a few minutes?”
“I…yes, but—”
“Great, because I’ll be back before you know it. I’ll tell you the rest of what I found out over dinner.”
“There’s more?” she asked, sitting up straighter.
Bingo, Liam thought. He’d hit the right button. He wondered, though, when she spoke next.
“Don’t defrost the steaks,” she said suddenly. Liam was positive she was about to say it would be prudent for her to leave.
“I was just at the grocery store. I have steaks in the car. If we don’t eat them, they’ll go bad.”
He forced himself not to grin too widely as he asked her for her keys and went to retrieve the meat.
While Liam showered, Natalie wandered through the yard and climbed out onto the rocky breakwater that partially surrounded the small beach. The breakwater seemed ancient. Natalie wondered if it had been created by the cottage’s first owners. She stood on a slick slab of dark gray granite, breathing deeply of the fresh air.
“Don’t fall. Those rocks are sharp enough to do some damage,” Liam yelled from the terrace.
Natalie spun around. He stood on the terrace, his hair still damp from the shower, the wind causing his blue cotton shirt to billow around his torso. She hopped from one rock to another and rose up the incline to the terrace.
“The wind has really picked up,” she said as she sprang up the steps. She paused when she saw his expression. She smoothed several loose wisps of hair that had escaped her bun, suddenly self-conscious under his stare.
“Hmm,” Liam mused as he regarded her. “Guess I don’t have to warn you about falling on the rocks. Might as well tell a gazelle not to be clumsy.”
Embarrassment and pleasure flooded her in equal measure. She glanced away. “Why don’t you let me make the salad? I can do a few grades better than mediocre.”
“Sure, if you don’t think you’ll mind the smell.”
Actually, the odor from the floor stain was barely noticeable and Natalie said so when Liam led her into the house. Thanks to all the open windows and the wind coming off Lake Michigan the house smelled as fresh as a wild meadow.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in surprise when she followed Liam into the kitchen. “You didn’t tell me you put in new cabinets. They look wonderful. And the floors…they’re gorgeous,” she said, peering into the empty dining room just off the kitchen.
