Liam watched Talia surreptitiously from the kitchen as she finished dessert with his parents at the dining room table. Exhausted as she had to be, like always she was beautiful to him. Her light golden skin glowed against the black fabric of her lacy shirt, the slight tilt of her hazel eyes highlighting her partial Japanese heritage. She’d twisted all that long, rich brown hair up with some sort of clip, showing off the elegant line of her slender throat. It pulled his gaze down to the neckline of her shirt, where he caught a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. She was damned sexy, despite that protective shell she wore to keep everyone out, him included. Many times he’d fantasized about breaching that wall to touch the vulnerable woman inside it. Dragging his gaze back up to her face, he studied her expression. She seemed relaxed enough on the surface, but beneath that calm veneer he sensed something else entirely. He’d always made her nervous. That wasn’t new. Something was different tonight, however.
