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For some reason—the same reason that had made him scowl at her and no one else for the past two weeks, she assumed—his smile was wiped clean off his face, and he gave her the full blue stare of which he was capable. Beyond the two of them, the sounds of the others coming down from their laughing fit seemed to be happening outside the room. Thea wondered why he didn’t like her, and he frowned and raised an eyebrow and looked away, as if dislike were too strong a term.

♦

At the end of the session, Thea followed everyone out to their cars. She waved to Chloe and the twins and hugged Zahra but hovered near Liam.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, opening his truck door, which required a bit of a lift and a jimmy before it would cooperate.

“Liam,” she said as the others drove away. “How long did your father make you wait?”

He paused with the door open. She couldn’t see his eyes in the dwindling light. “Five years,” he said. “It’s a five-year apprenticeship.”

Five years. Five years to wait, to live someone else’s dream before you were allowed to follow your own. “You could have quit.”

He shook his head, still looking into the car. “I’d promised.”

She’d given up on hearing more than a few words at a time from him, so she was surprised when he said, “He was hoping I’d change my mind. And I’d be making more money if I’d stayed in it. Especially after—”

He seemed to notice that he’d put a couple of sentences together in front of her. He threw his tools in the bed of his truck. “Bye,” he said abruptly.

“Wait.” Thea put a hand on his arm. She didn’t know why; there was just some vague feeling that she would like to know what it would be like to have him smile ather.

Mistake.

His arm was bare, exposed by the shirtsleeve he’d rolled up—which couldn’t go up a whole lot, the shirt being tight and his forearm big. There was something about the muscles in his arms that justgotto her. Unbidden thoughts of what he could with his hands flooded her. Her eyes went from her office-job white hand on his tan skin to his eyes.

He raised one eyebrow. Oneexcuse me, what the fuck do you think you’re doing, touching me?eyebrow. Thea jerked her hand away as though he’d caught fire.

“Sorry,” she said.Argh! Never apologize!The whole point of asking him this was to stop herself feeling so wrong-footed around him.

“What is it?” he said. Dusk was falling around them, throwing his face into shadows and planes of light from the porch light. She wished she could see more than the outline of his face.

“Uh…”What was it again? Oh, yeah. “Next week, could you come a few minutes early? Will you teach me what you did to fix the faucet and the toilet?”

A white slash of a smile in his dark-red beard.There. “Sure. I’ll show you.”

He slammed the passenger door closed, which required him stepping closer to her. Thea nearly didn’t step away. He didn’t seem to notice but went around and got in the driver’s side. The truck started up with its 1950s roar.

Thea was breathless and worried that she’d come across as too needy. The only way she knew to cover it was to be sarcastic. “You got a hazardous goods license for that exhaust?” she called over the din.

“You got one for that mouth?” he replied through the open passenger window. Then he cracked a laugh. A proper, good, loud laugh. A laugh that buzzed through her head to her chest to some other quickly awakening parts of her.

“Bye, Thea,” he said and pulled away, leaving her standing on the sidewalk.

Chapter 4

But after their next class, Liam regretted his decision.

He’d convinced himself he was merely helping out a single mom who was overwhelmed and needed it. The faucet and the toilet were small potatoes, hadn’t taken more than ten minutes each. It was the tidying up afterward and the trip to the hardware store that had added the time. He could take twenty minutes out of his nonexistent life to help out the mom of a former student, couldn’t he?

And she’d asked him to teach her how to fix the plumbing herself, which meant she wasn’t some helpless chick used to a guy doing everything for her, and he wasn’t being a macho asshole by doing those small things. She’d overreacted the first time, but now that they were clear on the parameters, there was no reason for him not to teach her how to help herself. Maybe he could relax a little when he was there next time. Talk to her kids. Learn how to be sociable again.

Then she came into their classroom the day before he was supposed to go to her house, and he caught himself making a sound under his breath reminiscent of his truck.

Thea had her hair down, one long, beautiful sheet of chestnut brown that highlighted her dark eyes and had a curl at the ends he wanted to wrap around his wrist. She was wearing a dusty pink T-shirt that made her look healthier than she had that first night and a brown skirt that swung around her hips.

She saw their group and smiled big, and now Liam was really glad he was sitting down. She had that kind of artless, toothy grin that only Julia Roberts should be allowed. It was genuine, unforced, and brightened her tired eyes. It was also vaguely familiar; he’d seen it somewhere before, and not on Julia Roberts.

But she wasn’t smiling at him. She was smiling at Zahra and Chloe and then at Seth and David. When she saw him the smile faltered.What the hell?What did he do to deserve that?