by Jill Shalvis
One of his eyes opened, and when he saw her, his smile widened as his arm snaked out and grabbed her close.
“We’re cold,” she said inanely, gasping as he rolled and brought her in contact with his very warm chest and lower body.
“Well, give me a minute, I can change that.” His big hands stroked her chilled skin. “Remember how I warmed you last night?”
Yes, she remembered. And blushed furiously with the memory, thank you very much.
“Ah, you do.” He gave her a wicked smile.
She’d never forget. He’d warmed her over every single inch of her body until she’d been begging him for more. Begging. She wasn’t likely to forget how quickly he’d obliged her.
Or how she’d returned the favor, thrilling to the dark, needy sounds she’d dragged out of him.
“Hannah.”
She realized his smile had faded and he was watching her with utmost seriousness. In direct contrast, he tenderly stroked her face. “Last night, in the shower...I didn’t use a condom.”
“Oh.” Oh.
“I didn’t protect you. I’ve never forgotten before, never, and—”
“It...it wasn’t all your fault, I forgot too.”
His face twisted, and he dropped his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry.”
She knew the dangers of unprotected sex, and yet last night she’d never once thought about it. How could that have happened?
“I hate to leave without knowing,” he said slowly. “If you’re pregnant.”
She hated the way her heart constricted at the thought of him going, much more than worrying about the possible consequences of last night.
“I want you to promise to contact me if you are.”
“Zach—”
“Promise,” he urged, his eyes a fathomless blue. “If you don’t, I’m going to stay until I find out for myself.”
She stared at him for a long moment, seeing the genuine concern. He would stay, she knew that, he would think it his duty.
And in that moment, she couldn’t help but wonder, what would it be like to allow herself to be loved by such a man, with this all-consuming passion?
Would she want his baby?
Would she be wishing right now that they’d started a child last night?
“Hannah.”
“All right,” she murmured. “I promise.”
“I mean it. I don’t want you to face that alone.”
“I promised, Zach. I meant it.”
That seemed to relieve him, but all it did was up her confusion factor.
She’d resigned herself to him leaving, or at least had told herself she had, to accepting whatever it was they could share until that time. But if she wasn’t careful, she’d be yearning for things like a white lacy wedding dress, a dreamy honeymoon and a house with a white picket fence.
Zach lifted his head to speak, to probably say something that would make her heart squeeze all the more, and she couldn’t allow it. So she used the first distraction that came to mind, and tugged his head down to hers, kissed him, deepening it until he moaned and pulled her beneath him.
Talking was forgotten.
* * *
TARA AND ALEXI MET in the kitchen early that morning. It wasn’t a scheduled business meeting, but a secretive one, which explained why Hannah wasn’t invited.
They needed to discuss her.
“She’s falling for him,” Tara said confidently.
“And he’s falling for her, too,” Alexi said, but she paced the kitchen. “Still, he’s leaving soon and I don’t see her just walking away from here to be with him. Not that I want her to go—”
“Of course not! But there can be compromises.”
“Well, you would think so,” Alexi said with a sigh. “But they’re both so set in their lives.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Well damn, I don’t know. Who would have thought matchmaking would be so darned difficult? We gave her a push with that silly toilet challenge thing, I would have thought she could take it from there.” Irritably, Alexi started chewing on her nails. “I swear, you’d think I was the older sibling, the way I have to take charge of Zach’s life.”
“Excuse me?” Zach stepped into the kitchen, brow raised in query. “Take charge of my life? Since when?”
Tara stood. “Well, I’d love to stay but I have...stuff to do. Yeah, stuff.” She shot Alexi a long look, smiled weakly at Zach, and left.
“Chicken,” Alexi muttered. She forced a bright smile at Zach. “Hey, good morning. How about breakfast?”
“Hold on. I see that look in your eyes, and I know it all too well. You’re up to something, and unfortunately for me, it apparently involves my life. So spill it.”
“Are you kidding? And risk life and limb?”
“I’ve never hurt you.”
“What about the time you whacked me with a baseball?”
“I was nine and you’d just happened to wobble out on the back porch just as I hit it. I didn’t mean to!”
“Uh-huh.” She crossed her arms. “And how about the time you nearly lost me at Disneyland?”
“Hey, it’s absolutely not my fault you fell asleep behind a rock on Tom Sawyer’s island. I searched everywhere!”
Alexi smiled. “That was fun—you should have seen the look on your face when I popped up. You cried.”
“I did not!”
“It’s okay for a man to cry, Zach. In fact, it makes them sexy.”
“I was twelve! And you’re still doing it, you’re still driving me crazy.”
“That’s why you love me so much.”
“Yeah.” And because he was in a good mood, and also because he knew she hated it, he ruffled her hair.
She growled and made him laugh. “Love you, too,” he said with a grin.
“Oh, Zach.” With a sudden fierceness, she grabbed him close in a hug. “And you’re leaving again. I’ll miss you so much. Why can’t you be tired of the big city life by now? Avila really is a terrific place. You could be happy here if you tried.”
Slowly, gently, he untangled himself and helped himself to a glass of iced tea, which he downed in two swallows because suddenly his mouth was dry.
And his heart heavy.
In a matter of days he’d be back in Los Angeles, on a new case.
Back to the grind.
Only he didn’t think he was ready. For one thing, he was still tired. And for another...
Oh, who the hell was he kidding?
He was no longer tired.
He no longer hurt.
He was even in decent shape. There was no reason why he couldn’t go back to work—except that he didn’t want to.
He didn’t want to leave Hannah.
A longer leave might temporarily solve the problem, but as Hannah had pointed out, that would only make it worse when he did go back.
Way worse.
He turned away from his sister’s questing, worried gaze and looked out the window, which happened to overlook Hannah’s beautiful gardens.
She was out there on her knees, bent over a small pot of daisies. Probably talking to them, he thought with a reluctant smile. She was beautiful out there, with the wind in her hair, the ocean at her back.
And from deep within him came an unrelenting yearning for...for what? And wasn’t that just the problem? He couldn’t put a name to this terrible aching need, and because he couldn’t, he had no idea how to solve it.
“She’s very special.”
Zach turned his head to look at Alexi, who was standing solemnly beside him, looking out the same window at the same woman.
“I can see how you look at her,” Alexi said. “And the funny thing is, I just knew it would be this way between the two of you.”
“I belong in Los Angeles, Alexi. And Hannah...” He looked out the window again, saw the slight smile carving her lips as she tended to her beloved plants. “She belongs here.”
“No, she belongs with her heart. Which will be
with you wherever you are.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Love,” Alexi said simply. “I’m talking about love.”
“Alexi—”
“Okay.” She sighed. “Fine. We’ll do this your way and pretend nothing is happening. Tell me you haven’t felt an attraction for her. Tell me you haven’t kissed her, not even once, not even to lick off strawberry pie from her shoulder.”
“You’ve been spying on us!”
Alexi merely smiled smugly. “Well, really, Zach. How else do you expect me to help you?”
Zach groaned and turned back to the window.
Hannah was gone.
“Tell me,” his sister pressed. “Tell me there’s nothing between you two.”
“Alexi—”
“Ah-ha! So you have been sleeping together!”
“I absolutely did not say that.”
“Damn, you know what that means, don’t you? Lots of toilet cleaning in my future.” But she looked immensely pleased about it. “So...when do you move her down to Los Angeles? I’ll miss her, of course, but—”
“She’s not moving,” Zach said flatly.
“Why?”
“Because I work undercover, for one. I couldn’t see her anyway.”
“Ever thought about not working undercover?”
All the time, lately. “Yes, actually. But she’d hate it there.”
“Oh, right. Too much action and excitement, right?”
“It’s not her style. I would never ask her to leave here. Her whole life is here.”
“How do you know that for certain until you ask her?”
“I just know, all right?”
Alexi studied him for a long moment, her gaze full of disappointment and a growing anger. “You slept with her.”
“Would you stop saying that! This is between me and her!”
“You slept with her,” she repeated, undeterred. “You gave her that sparkle in her eyes, the one I’ve never seen before. You made her happy, dammit. And you’re going to leave without looking back?”
“I thought your concern was for me.”
“You are,” she breathed. “You’re going to turn what you had with her into...into a one-night stand! How could you!”
“You’re the one who told me to do it!”
“I thought it would mean too much to you to leave if you did. Hannah is not the one-nightstand type! You’ll kill her!”
“It’s not a one-night thing,” he retorted, nearly as loudly as his sister, who was shouting at him now. “Believe me, we both—”
“We both what, Zach?”
Hannah.
She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen with an absolutely indescribable, unreadable look on her face.
“You guys look a little surprised,” she noted coolly. “Let me give you a hint.” She leaned close and spoke in a stage whisper. “Next time you’re talking about someone, you might want to keep your voices down.”
Her glorious green eyes were all but shooting daggers at Zach, her cheeks red with anger.
Had he really thought her expression unreadable?
It wasn’t any longer, there could be no mistaking that vivid temper.
“And how dare you talk about me behind my back. Discussing me as if I don’t have a brain in my own head!”
“Hannah—”
“Oh, be quiet, Alexi,” Hannah said, not entirely unkindly. But when she turned to Zach, he was quite certain she wouldn’t be nearly so gentle with him. “Zach was right,” she said staring right at him. “This is between him and me.”
“Look, Hannah—”
“Save it,” she said succinctly. “For your curiosity’s sake, and probably Tara’s, yes, Zach and I had a one-night stand. Well, technically, it took more than one night, didn’t it, Zach? But who’s counting? This may come as a shock to you, Alexi, but I can make my own decisions.”
“Oh honey, that’s not what I meant—”
Hannah lifted up a hand. “I know. I know you love me, and I also know that you set up that toilet challenge in the hopes of something exactly like this happening. It was a crafty, underhanded, terrible thing to do, but I know that in your meddling, nosy way, you thought you were doing the right thing.”
Alexi blinked. “Um...yes.”
“But it’s over, even you must see that. Zach is going home. And I’m—”
She looked away, but not before emotion blazing from her eyes tore him to shreds. “And I’m going to be fine,” she whispered. “My life is going to be fine.”
He didn’t believe that, or didn’t want to believe it. If they’d been alone, he might have forced her to look directly into his eyes and say it, but they had a captive audience.
His overly curious, well-meaning, meddling sister.
He glared at her, but Alexi didn’t budge. Instead she glared right back and silently refused to give them the privacy he so desperately needed.
With exasperation, he turned to Hannah. “So what now?”
“You leave.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“You want me to stop caring about you? Just turn it off?”
“Try. And you, too,” she said to Alexi. “I want this whole thing just dropped, okay? No more tricks, no more matchmaking.”
“Ever?” Alexi asked. “Or—”
“Ever.”
“You going to just ignore me for the rest of my stay?” Zach asked, and was only marginally relieved to see that give her some pause.
“I don’t know. You’re hard to ignore.”
He was quite certain she didn’t mean that as a compliment, but he was going to take it as such.
He had no choice, it was all he had.
CHAPTER 13
ZACH FOLLOWED HER. Hannah knew this by the way the back of her neck tingled in delicious anticipation.
Clearly her body had not gotten the message her brain had sent it.
Stop lusting after him.
She’d have to work on it.
Well, she had the rest of her life to do that, or at least the next ten years until he decided to show up again.
Instead of acknowledging him, as a grown-up, mature sort of woman would have done, she kept walking. In fact, she sped up her pace, toeing off her sandals and scooping them up in her fingers so that her toes curled in the sand with each step she took.
He was probably following her just to make sure she wasn’t falling apart after that ridiculous little snit of hers in the kitchen.
God, she wished she hadn’t done that, hadn’t entered the kitchen as if she was a queen bee, telling two of the most important people in her life that she wanted them to stop caring about her.
How stupid.
How juvenile.
She liked that they cared about her. Actually, she liked it too much, she depended on it.
And as for Zach and what they’d shared...she liked that, too.
She just didn’t like that she’d fallen for him, when falling for him hadn’t been a smart thing to do. Oh sure, they would have phone calls in their future. E-mail, faxes, etc. Maybe even the occasional stolen weekend.
Maybe.
But Zach was a cop, which statistically speaking, meant he was married to his job. She had his last case as hard evidence, when he’d gone undercover and hadn’t surfaced for one year, and only then because he’d been shot.
“Definitely not dealing with this well,” she muttered, startled to realize it was nearly dark and that she’d come a mile down the beach, to the secluded little bay Tara jokingly referred to as Make-Out Rock.
By the time she walked to the far side, near the bluffs, the sun had disappeared completely, leaving an incredibly dark, gorgeous night sky.
She felt it again, that little shiver of awareness that told her Zach was near. She turned, finding him only ten feet away; tall, dark, gorgeous and silent.
Any light she might have used to determine his mood was gone. He was silhouetted by an early
moon, his face in the shadows. All she could see was his concerned gaze, which stoked the tornado of feelings just beneath her surface.
“As you can see,” she said calmly. “I’m not swimming in a storm. I’m not in danger of drowning. I’m perfectly safe.”
“Yes.”
Oh fine, he was going to be the reasonable one. “And actually, if I wanted to swim right now, I would. And you know what else? After you’re gone, I might even...”
“What, Hannah?”
Never be the same.
She was never going to be the same.
Her throat burned with the tears she refused to shed because she didn’t dare give in to them or she’d never stop.
There was no one around, no lights, nothing but the moon and the stars. The two of them were in their own little world, protected from view by the bluffs. A breeze danced over them, making Hannah’s skin turn to gooseflesh, and while she stared at the bumps covering her arms, Zach shrugged out of his denim jacket and held it out.
Somehow, that small, chivalrous gesture, the one that meant he hadn’t listened to her when she demanded he stop caring about her, broke her control. “Once again, I’m taking something from you,” she said. “Let’s see...first it was your body, and now—”
“It’s just a damn jacket.” He placed it around her shoulders.
“I’m fine,” she said in a much smaller voice now. “Really I am. I don’t need you, I just somehow...think I do.”
“Is needing me so bad?”
“It is when I have no idea how you feel.”
“I need you more than I need my next breath.”
“You...do?”
“Yeah.” He zipped up the jacket, his fingers lingering at her neck, then her jaw. Slowly he cupped her face, tipped it up and smiled. “I know how fiercely independent you are. I even know why, but that isn’t what this is about.”
“What is it about?”
“You. And me. Enjoying each other, wanting to be together. Sharing, laughing, talking, touching. We’re drawn to each other, helplessly drawn, you can’t fight it.”
“Guess I haven’t had much experience at this.”
“Neither have I,” he admitted, and at her startled look, he let out a rueful laugh. “Not with meaningful relationships, that is.”
“You haven’t had time?”
“I haven’t made time.” He hadn’t taken his hands off her, and now he ran them down her arms to her hands, linking them together with his. “I’ve never wanted to until now.”