Escaping Reality

the reprieve I am certain he has
    intentionally offered me. “Let’s go eat.”
    His eyes light with approval, his fingers lacing with mine, and in silent
    agreement we begin to walk and my mind replays that first time I’d seen
    Liam in the airport. Even from across a room, he’d spoken to me. I think of
    making love to him. I think of him picking me up today from the store and
    then kissing me in front of the hotel. I think of every second I’ve spent with
    this man, so absorbed that I blink and we are stopped at a restaurant a few
    doors down from Liam’s hotel. Suddenly, I realize that for all of my thinking
    I managed on this walk, remarkably, there’s one thing I haven’t had on my
    mind. Godzilla. I have not thought about what monster is watching or
    lurking around the corner. And Liam did that for me.
    He holds the door to the restaurant open for me and for a moment I
    just stare at him, this brilliantly talented, amazingly generous man, who
    epitomizes tall, dark, and handsome, and I think I am crazy. Crazy for him.
    And I’m selfish. So very selfish because I have been alone and now he is
    here and I don’t know how I can walk away from him. I don’t deserve him
    and he absolutely does not deserve me.

Chapter Eleven

    Ten minutes after arriving for our reservations at North, a chic
    modern restaurant with frosty dangling lights and steel and glass tables,
    Liam and I are sitting inside a high-backed half-moon-shaped booth that
    seems to hug us in privacy. Our twenty-something attractive blonde
    waitress takes our orders of pasta and salads, batting her eyes at Liam in
    the process, clearly smitten with him, but then so are most of the females
    in the place from what I could tell on our arrival. He, however, is a perfect,
    suave gentlemen, neither disrespectful to her nor encouraging for that
    matter, casting me warm looks in the process. I am charmed and
    remarkably at ease with her flirtation considering my inexperience and his
    good looks.
    Reluctantly the woman tears her eyes from Liam and departs, and a
    waiter appears by our table with the insanely expensive bottle of
    champagne Liam has ordered for us. Once the top has been popped and
    our glasses are filled, Liam and I are finally alone.
    Liam lifts his glass, shifting in his seat to stare down at me and his
    blue eyes might as well be red fire, they burn so hot. “To new friends and
    lovers.”
    Goose bumps lift on my skin at the intimacy of his words, ripples of
    awareness tingling across my chest, down to my belly, and I am blown away
    by how easily Liam affects me. No one has ever come close to doing this to
    me, but then, I know the sweetness of his mouth on mine.
    The perfection of his body intimately molded against me. I know
    what it is like to fall asleep in his arms.
    I clink my glass to his, but I cannot repeat the sultry words of his
    toast. Liam waylays my escape, reaching forward as my hand withdraws,
    and gently shackles my wrist. He arches a dark brow and his face is etched
    in silent reproach and yes, challenge. This man challenges me at every turn.
    Irrationally, nerves flutter in my stomach. I have been naked with Liam,
    with my fingers laced behind my back, and somehow, I feel more naked
    here and now than I did then. But I am so very tired of hiding from
    everything, most especially myself. And somehow hiding from me is hiding
    from him.
    Delicately, I clear my throat. “To new friends and lovers,” I repeat,
    and I watch the approval in his eyes, and suddenly I know what feels
    different about this moment than when we’d been making love, or rather,
    fucking, as Liam has called it. Here, in public, there is no veil of spontaneity
    to hide behind, and in this moment, there is no lie spoken to deny what is
    burning between us. This is the most intimate I have been with this man, or
    any man for that matter.
    We both sip our champagne and the bubbles blossom in my mouth,
    both tart and sweet, like this night with Liam. Like everything with Liam.
    “Good?” he inquires.
    I nod and set my glass down and he does the same. “It’s delicious.”
    “So are you.”
    Blood rushes to my cheeks and I am so out of my safe zone it’s not

even funny. Or maybe it is, considering I cannot stop the nervous laughter
    bubbling from my lips. “If someone had told me I would be sitting in
    Denver, having dinner with a gorgeous prodigy billionaire architect tonight
    who’d be giving me compliments, I’d have suggested they