Free Off the Hook by Laura Drewry Page B

credit. As far as apologies went, that one was pretty good, especially considering he was being heckled while he did it. The facts that his cheeks flamed and he managed to look her in the eye the whole time were points in his favor, too.
    He really was sorry, anyone could see that, but it was still awkward being up on that roof with him all afternoon. Sure, they threw a little small talk around, but their past hung between them. They’d slept together, got married, and then separated, all within the five days.
    Who did stuff like that?
    She and Liam managed to finish the roof on Orange before it got too dark, and while he and the others cleaned up and carted wheelbarrow loads of the old shingles down to the boat, Kate took her turn in the kitchen.
    Normally she would have happily let someone else do it, but, damn, she was tired. And cold. She guessed that’s what she got for spending so much time working indoors these last eight years; her body wasn’t used to the manual labor anymore.
    Besides, coming indoors gave the rest of them a bit of time away from her. They were like a unit, those three, and, sure, they might argue and what all, but Kate had a pretty good sense already that the O’Donnells stuck together, and even though Jessie wasn’t an O’Donnell, you’d never know it by the way they treated her. She was their family.

    Kate, on the other hand, was an outsider who felt a little like a vulture, hovering around its prey until it could swoop in and claim the corpse.
    Unfortunately for all of them, she’d told Jessie the truth about her cooking skills, so dinner wasn’t going to be anything spectacular, but even Kate couldn’t screw up pasta. With the beef browning for the sauce and the big pot of water on to boil, she puttered around the kitchen, chopping up veggies and cutting up the last half of a loaf of French bread. Every meal was better with garlic bread, right?
    And the whole time she worked, one part of Liam’s apology played over and over in her head, so she was thankful he was the first one into the kitchen, because that gave her a chance to ask him about it in relative privacy.
    “What did you mean earlier when you said, no matter what I wanted, you couldn’t change who you were?”
    “Well, I couldn’t,” he said, as if that cleared it all up.
    It took Kate a second to say anything else, because she was stupidly distracted by the way his T-shirt stretched over the expanse of his back when he reached into the fridge for some beers. If only she didn’t know what it felt like to slide her hands up that back and—
    Stop it!
    Over a long blink, she turned back toward the stove to stir the sauce, which was already bubbling over a little.
    “But what does that mean? What did you think I wanted?”

    When he didn’t answer right away, she glanced over her shoulder to see him frowning as he popped the tops off the bottles and set them down.
    “Well, looking back, I don’t think I honestly knew what you wanted; I only knew what I wanted.”
    And that obviously wasn’t her.
    “I wanted to play ball, Kate, I had to play ball, and I couldn’t risk getting off track by what anyone else wanted. And I sure as hell couldn’t do something like set up house with you in Vancouver when my home was in Detroit.”
    “What are you talking about, setting up house?” And why were her hands trembling like that? It wasn’t as if it was news to her that he hadn’t wanted her back then, so why did it still hurt? “I never said anything about you giving up Detroit, did I?”
    “Maybe not directly, but…”
    “But what?” Spinning, Kate accidentally knocked the wooden spoon out of the pot and sent it flying to the floor. “I must have said or done something to make you leave like that.”
    “I don’t remember exactly,” he said, his frown deepening. “Just that you started talking about finding us an apartment in Vancouver and…I don’t know. Stuff.”
    “Well, yeah,” she scoffed as she wiped