What had Adesola said, what had she hinted at? Something was going on.
I took a few steps into the room, taking care to avoid the papers strewn across the floor.
Dark curls stood up from one end of the couch.
I eased closer. She was asleep on the couch, legs curled into her chest. It was the first time I’d seen her face completely free of tension. Limp curls obscured the top half of her face. One hand loosely held the dark blanket draped over, under and along the valley of her hips and waist while the other hand propped up her head.
I stood, frozen, trapped in a million memories, remembering all the times I’d snuck into Zora’s room and been greeted by this very sight. I wished I could once again run a finger along the rounded curve of her nose, past the generous turn of her lip and down the length of her neck.
If I woke her, we’d resume our current farce of being polite strangers. I’d likely never have an opportunity to see her this way again.
Soft. Unguarded.
I took a moment to drink in the sight, allowed my traitorous thoughts to engage in a dangerous game of “What If.” What if my mother had done something different that night? What if I’d responded differently? What if Zora hadn’t sent her ring back? What if I hadn’t given up? Was there any alternate universe in which it might have been possible for me to wake to those same curves against me, in our own bed, every morning?
Jesus, Nick.
Enough. There was no value in musing about alternative universes; there was only this reality. Where she hated me.
I needed answers, but the last thing I wanted to do was wake her. This had all the signs of a late-night work-a-thon: empty bottles of Coke in the trash, a nearly depleted bottle of an energy drink on her desk. There was no point in waking her. The meeting, the focus groups would be just fine without us in attendance. My team was there, and more than capable of running things.
I’d wait, I decided. And then we’d get to the bottom of everything. Once and for all.
“Nick?”
I froze at the sound of Zora’s sleep-rasped voice and checked my watch.
Three hours.
In that time, I’d cleaned out my email inbox and reviewed all outstanding reports while sitting at Zora’s disaster of a meeting table. My team had assured me the focus group sessions were well underway and completely under control. We were expected to attend the next session in two days.
Now, it was time for Zora and me to have our reckoning.
“What are you doing here?”
She pushed curls out of her eyes and pushed to a sitting position. The blanket drifted down, revealed a good three inches of caramel skin below her rumpled shirt.
My breath caught, eyes trapped on the rise of her breasts as she stretched. The shirt stretched higher . . .
What was I reduced to, begging God for just another sliver of that honey skin?
“The better question is, why am I here?” The blood in my head rushed south. Thank God I was sitting.
“Answer whatever question you want.” She knuckled her eyes, smearing black makeup above her cheeks. “Start with how you got in here and why you decided to sit your happy ass at my table.”
“Your door wasn’t all the way closed. My being here probably has something to do with the fact our ‘happy asses’ were supposed to be in Green Valley for focus groups over two hours ago.”
“Shit!”
“Yep. It’s all in the emails you obviously didn’t read.”
She threw her blanketed legs to the floor, eyes wide. “What emails? Why didn’t you wake me up? God. They’re going to kill me!”
I studied her, and the very real fear on her face. Interesting.
“Who’s going to kill you, exactly? I’m here with you. We’re fine.”
“But the—”
“I took care of it. It was more important for you to sleep.”
“You can’t do that.” She pounded her fists against her thighs. “That wasn’t your decision to make. You should have woken me up—”
“You were going to be asleep on that couch, dead to the world, if I hadn’t wandered by to check on you anyway. This way both our teams think you’re showing me something important here on campus. You needed the sleep more than you needed to be there.” I allowed a few seconds for a strategic pause before I delivered the killing blow that would get just the reaction I wanted. I hadn’t spent all of my childhood and adolescence teasing Zora for nothing. I knew how to get her goat, and I needed her fired up, off-balance, and talking if I was going to pry information out of her. “God knows you’re somehow even more gorgeous than I’d remembered. But I think you need a little more sleep. Just to round out a few exhausted edges.”
Of course, I knew Zora was beautiful. But I’d also noticed that something had diminished her glow and left her obviously sleep-deprived and anxious. I needed her to take care of herself, to turn her attention to herself. It worried me, seeing her this tired and . . . desperate? Teasing her would be the most effective route to persuading the truth out of her, and in short order.
She gasped like we were in some Victorian melodrama. I choked back laughter at her bewildered expression. Yep. Just need to keep her outraged. Keep her talking.
There was a lot I needed to know.
“What a shitty thing to say.”
“Sounds like you’re in a shitty situation. And who are you, Oscar the Grouch?” I cast a look around her office. “Since when do you like living in a trash can?”
“You know what, Nick?” Her eyes narrowed in just the way I remembered and my heart kicked an extra beat. Ah. Just like old times. Back then, this kind of spark ignited the best kind of fun, the most exquisite pleasure.
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“You can go and—”
“What kind of trouble are you in?”
She hesitated. “I—”
“Start with the truth. Save us both some time, I’ll find out anyway. For a modest donation, those thirsty development folks’ll sell you out in a heartbeat.”
“What do you care?” Her head tilted, flattened curls going skyward as her mouth screwed up. “You couldn’t get out of here fast enough all those years ago, you never even looked back. Now you wanna carry my burdens? Now you care so much about what’s going on, when you couldn’t be bothered, didn’t at least have the courtesy to tell me where you’d disappeared to in the first place? Get out. And I mean that.”
I leaned forward, paperwork forgotten.
Finally. This was the fight we’d both been spoiling for.
And I wanted it. I wanted to see what awaited us both on the other side.
“I left you a note. I told you I was coming back. You sent the ring back, you. That was all you.”
“It was two years later when I sent that ring back,” she screeched, and for a moment I thought she would throw her blanket at me in her rage. “What did you think? That I’d put my life on ice until you decided you were ready to start something up again? And you’d more than moved on before I even sent the ring back.”
What was she talking about? “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nick.” She buried her head in her hands. “I’m not inclined to review your history with redheads in coffee shop kitchens.”
What the actual fuck was she talking about?
“What are you talking about? I’ve never even dated any redheads. I don’t even know any—”
She pushed back the covers and stood. “I don’t have time for any of this. I need to get to the community center—” She paused. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
My lungs slammed shut. My dick perked up.
You rang?
God was punishing me. That was it. He was using Zora to punish me right now for every broken promise, every misdeed.
“Zora. You’re not wearing any pants.” The words drifted out on the current of a painful exhale, and I found my eyes wouldn’t move from the glorious display in front of me.
&nb
sp; She actually patted her naked thighs before she looked down, as if she didn’t believe me. Meanwhile, my eyes feasted on the sweet mandolin curves below her wrinkled yellow shirt. The sweetly rounded hips, delicious full thighs, and . . .
Wonder Woman underwear.
She was going to kill me. And my cock.
Her awareness seemed to be on a delay, as if she hadn’t quite accepted the reality that she was half-naked. She gaped down at herself for a full five seconds before finally reacting. “Oh, God,” she squeaked, and turned back to the couch to tear through its contents.
Which left her ass facing me, allowing my eyes to devour the sight of the underwear that barely contained the glorious curves. Cute dimples just above winked at me. Her cheeks jiggled enticingly as she frantically threw the blanket and an assortment of clothing to the floor in her frantic search.
God, this was the prettiest, juiciest peach I’d ever seen.
So this was how I died. Death by Zora’s ass. Not how I’d expected, but still, an amazing way to go.
I gritted my teeth at the insistent throbbing of my cock against my fly. There was no way I could stand, not if I wanted to appear a gentleman.
“Zora.” I closed my eyes briefly, reluctant to lose more than a millisecond of the splendid sight in front of me. This woman. Twelve years later and she hadn’t changed. She was still as off-beat, as wonderfully awkward as before, and still had the potential to drive me out of my mind with lust. “Why the hell are you sleeping naked on a couch with the door open?”
“The door was closed, or at least I thought it was, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Maybe I didn’t pull it completely closed.”
“Why are you sleeping without your pants?” But thank you for doing so.
“I can’t sleep in jeans.” She’d moved her search to the back of the couch, as if a pair of pants would magically sprout along the wall. “I usually take them off so I can sleep, really sleep, for a few hours while I’m working on an application and need a break—”
Frustration warred with lust. “Usually? So you do this often. What’s so pressing you’re sleeping in this godforsaken office?”
“Money,” she yelled, turning to face me. “I need money. For tenure. To fund my employees.”
“Okay,” I said, lost. “How are you making it in this office?”
“Grants, dummy.” She said it in precisely the same tone she’d used when we were kids and I’d baited her by doing something deliberately idiotic.
She pulled up short and blinked at me.
I snorted with laughter. “Yes. Yes, you did just call me dummy.”
We blinked at each other in reluctant amusement, suddenly back to being the children who relentlessly teased and harassed each other.
God, I missed her. God, I missed this.
All things considered, I was making progress. I’d take the bloodlust in her eyes over wounded resentment any day.
“Help me find my pants.” Her hands crossed at her crotch. “And stop looking at me.”
“While you’re like that? Impossible. But I will help you find your pants.”
Jesus, how to do this? Well, she was exposed and asking for my help, so maybe it just made us even.
I hesitated, then stood.
“God.” Her gaze snapped to my dick, which certainly wasn’t going to make it go down any faster. I swallowed a comment, decided I was better than that. I was an honorable man, above asking if it was more than she was used to. Although, fuck honor when it came to Jackson James.
I moved around the table, unable to break my gaze away from her legs, her thighs, which led up to—
“Nick!”
“Sorry, sorry. Shouldn’t you know where you left your own pants? How far could they have—”
“There they are.” She rushed past me, her soft hip brushing my leg as she ripped a blur of denim from one of the meeting chairs. I looked away as she went through the tortuous process of wiggling and jiggling into her jeans.
I wanted my hands on her, helping. But if I helped, they were going back down.
Good Lord. Was life on her planet always this upside down?
I turned my gaze from the reflection of her glorious ass disappearing into her jeans in the opposite window. As delectable as this distraction had been, I needed to get back on course, find out what was going on.
“Is that what they’ve got on you, Zora? You need grant money to keep your job?”
Her shoulders slumped. She spoke over her shoulder to me.
“Yes, Nick. Yes. Happy? You’ve caught me at my lowest. Again. Not only am I half-naked this time, but I’m at the end of my career. I came here—” She gestured at her paper-covered desk and let her arm fall against her side. “Adesola came across a last-minute funding opportunity and I just had to try. It probably won’t work. Nothing else has. But I had less than a day to get it done and in.”
It killed me seeing her like this. Tired. Broken. Hopeless. “How long have you been doing this?”
“For a while now. A year.” She lifted one shoulder.
“My team told me all about your publishing record and your previous grants. Everyone here at the med school and the hospital loves you. They can’t say enough for how much you’ve done. You single-handedly turned around their Patient Experience office. What’s the issue? Federal grant funding nowadays is uncertain, because budgets are cut.”
“It’s a condition of my tenure.” She shook her head. “I had to have a very specific grant by now.”
“Or what?”
“What do you mean, or what?” Her arms folded. “I’m not going to have a job. And it’s not just me, I’m more worried about my research staff. My existing grants are expiring, and if I don’t find new ones, I can’t afford to pay them. Which means they won’t have jobs because I’ve failed them.”
Her voice broke over the last few words, and I had to shove aside a rising tide of anger. What kind of fuckery was this, and why was she assigning personal blame to herself over it all? God, she hadn’t changed.
But I was here now, and she wasn’t going to struggle a minute more if I could help it. I reached for my phone. This didn’t need to be difficult; it could be easily resolved. “How much do you need?”
She shook her head, her expression resolute. “No. I don’t want your money.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? Not even to keep your staff employed?”
Her mouth opened. Closed.
“I know you, Z. You’re the same. Still setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm. This, really, is what you want to fight for? When you’ve got administrators stringing you up over a grant? With all you’ve done for this hospital?”
I took a chance, risked a few steps in her direction. Counted it a win when she didn’t back away from my hands on her shoulders.
“I’ll take care of it. Rocket Enterprises can easily make a gift that’ll keep them on longer. It’ll give you time to decide what you want to do, without worrying about everyone else. You’re not happy here—”
She jerked away, her face mutinous. “You don’t know what I am, and you lost the right to any opinion about my life or what I should do.”
Damn. This was hard. How much longer could I go without telling her what had happened all those years ago? Why had I let the deception go on this long? Why hadn’t I tracked her down, fought harder when that ring came back in the mail?
Why had I thought she’d be better off fighting her battles alone in this world than with me? Even if I was fucked up?
I opened my mouth to unleash the truth, to set us both free from the deception of the past.
And then I remembered the pact I’d made with her parents all those years ago. The Leffersbees had gone along with my wishes, but demanded I give them advance notice if I ever returned with plans to disclose the truth. They believed they owed it to Zora, as her parents, to tell her why they’d participated in my departure.
I wanted Zora back. I wanted to repair all th
e hurt and pain I’d caused her all those years ago in my attempt to keep her safe. I wanted to make up for all of the years I’d been gone and to solve all of her present problems. But an ill-timed confession could lead to my very worst nightmare: Losing her again. Permanently this time, while creating a rift between Zora and her parents.
“It’s not what you think.” It was hard to breathe past the million cracks in my chest. “When I left, I didn’t have a choice, and I did it for you. You have to believe that.”
“For me? Nick, get out. I can’t take anymore.”
“What you said before? About me catching you at your lowest? Hardly. I wish you could see yourself the way I do, Zora. I wish you knew how long I prayed for the moment when I could set eyes on the miracle of you again. Let me help. Let me set you free from all this so you can be happy.”
She backed a step away. My chest squeezed at the moisture in her eyes. “I am happy. Can’t you tell? I’m so damn happy. All on my own. And I’m going to fix this problem and any other one that comes up. Just like I’ve been doing, long before you saw fit to show up again. But thank you for offering. Now, let’s both get this business between us done so we can get back to our lives.”
“I don’t wanna go back, Zora.” It wasn’t me saying it. The words took on a life of their own, slid past my mouth, crawled, arrowed to her. “Not without you. I want you back. I want us back.”
“I’m trying to be an adult. I’m trying to be a professional, a colleague, your friend, as much as it hurts. Isn’t that enough?” Her voice cracked and she closed her eyes as she sighed out, “Haven’t you taken enough?”
“I don’t wanna be your fucking friend. And it’ll never be nearly enough.” I walked past her and headed to the door. “See you soon.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nick
My palms were sweating.
I knew this house, knew the woodgrain pattern of the big door by heart. I’d gripped the brass lip of the intricate lion head knocker countless times, even helped pick out the four-foot giant brass statue of a honey bee that resided next to the door.
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