When We Kiss Read Free Page B

grown bored by the six-month mark, prompting him to stop seeing her when he came to town.
    He suddenly realized their thing had been similar to what he’d done with Aubrey last year. Except with Whitney, she’d done all the initiating, while with Aubrey, it had been more mutual. The other exception was that Liam had tired of Whitney, but he still couldn’t get enough of Aubrey. And it wasn’t just her body, because Whitney could’ve fulfilled that need at any time. With Aubrey it had been something more, something he couldn’t define and didn’t want to.
    Hell, there was no point thinking about that right now. Or ever really. A vision of her laughing with her lame-ass date rose in his mind, and he shoved it all away. He looked from Kyle to Sean, who’d secretly married their sister Tori in Vegas on the eve of their brother’s suicide, much to Tori’s absolute devastation. She’d spent most of last year pushing everyone away, including her secret husband, but they’d found their way back to each other last fall. They had settled into Ribbon Ridge like an old married couple—her with a burgeoning architecture firm and Sean with his production company, which he co-owned with Evan’s new wife, the spectacularly famous actress Alaina Pierce.
    â€œWhat, no response?” Kyle asked, narrowing his eyes. “What’s up with you, Liam?”
    â€œNothing.” He pulled himself back to the conversation about Parker. “That’s effed up. Glad to know our business matters are someone else’s revenge trip.”
    Kyle paused in lifting his glass to drink. “ ‘Our’ business matters? You just mean Archer business, since you don’t really have anything to do with them, right?”
    Liam got the dig, and he deserved it. Immediately following Alex’s suicide, he hadn’t been the only one who’d refused to come home, but the others who had—Kyle and Evan—had both returned since then and had done so in spades. Kyle had exceeded everyone’s expectations, taking over for Hayden as COO at Archer when Hayden had accepted the wine-making internship in France and jumping into The Alex project like he’d been there from the start. He’d even found a top-notch landscape architect and groundskeeper in his fiancée, Maggie. Meanwhile, Evan had taken over Alex’s old job at Archer as creative director, plus he was managing the creative aspects for The Alex. Everyone had a hand in the family business. Everyone but Liam.
    Not that he cared—he had his own real-estate development company in Denver. He’d taken over the true family business that their forefathers had started when they’d founded Ribbon Ridge. The Archers owned half the town, and Liam had inherited his great-grandfather’s head for development and business. So Dad had repeatedly told him. Liam could’ve easily stepped into that role at Archer, freeing Dad up to focus more on his true love: crafting beer. But Liam hadn’t wanted a hand-me-down. He’d wanted to build something from nothing. And he’d wanted to do it nice and far away from Ribbon Ridge.
    More accurately, he’d wanted to do it nice and far away from his family.
    Oh, come on, asshole, you can at least be honest with yourself—you wanted to be far away from Alex.
    He gulped down half his beer. “Nope, none of it has anything to do with me. You’re right about that,” he said at last.
    â€œWhy is that?” Sean asked, leaning on the counter and looking at Liam. “How come you’re the only one who stays away?”
    Because I was a constant reminder to my twin of what he could never be.
    But now that twin was gone. Why couldn’t he come home? Ugh, too much shit to think about when all he wanted was a really good buzz. And since jumping out of an airplane wasn’t going to happen at eight o’clock on a Saturday night, he’d