Keep On Loving you

by Christie Ridgway

  To jerk awake at the sound of his strangled voice.

  “No. God, no.” Zan thrashed, fighting with the covers.

  Mac jackknifed up and struggled out of the blanket wrapped around her legs. The wool rug was soft against her bare feet as she made for the bed.

  “Simone,” he said, stopping Mac’s headlong rush. “Please, baby. Simone.”

  Simone? She ignored the new twist of her heart. “Zan,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “You’re having a dream.”

  “Don’t leave me,” he begged.

  Licking her lips, she crept closer to the bed. “It’s me, Mac,” she said. “You’re at the lake house. In the mountains.”

  “Noo,” he moaned again.

  In the light from the fireplace, she could see that his eyes were pinched tightly shut. “Zan.” She reached out a tentative hand, brushed his hair from his warm forehead. “It’s all right.”

  “Simone.” He sounded urgent, anxious, and his head turned in her direction. His eyes opened, but they stared at Mac, unseeing. “Come back, baby. You’ve got to come back.”

  “Shh.” She stroked his hair again. “You’re having a dream.”

  “Didn’t happen?” His eyes closed again and his body seemed to relax.

  “Didn’t happen,” she whispered.

  When he seemed to slip back into slumber, she leaned over the bed to straighten the sheets and duvet around him. In a quick movement, he snatched her off her feet and yanked her into his body.

  “Zan—”

  “Shh,” he said, echoing her from moments before. Tucking himself around her, he pinned her to him with a heavy arm across her waist. “Sleep now,” he muttered. “Go to sleep.”

  Wriggling away was futile. Every time she tried to move, he mumbled into her hair and tightened his grip. Just a few minutes, she told herself, relaxing into his hold, even as she registered the dangerous sense of rightness she felt with his body curled around hers. Once he returned to deep sleep, she’d slide away.

  Leave him alone with his memories of Simone.

  Simone, baby. Had Mac stiffened? Because he nuzzled her hair now. “Shh, shh, shh,” he said, his voice low, slumberous.

  The sound of it was mesmerizing, yet there was still that alertness inside of her, her guarded heart keeping its barriers high and strong. But as time passed and he breathed deeply and slowly behind her, it was impossible not to melt a little against his heat.

  His mind is on another woman, she reminded herself, which sent her wiggling again.

  Zan’s arm hitched her closer and his breath tickled her ear, raising goose bumps along her neck. “Rest, Mackenzie Marie,” he said. “Rest.”

  Mackenzie Marie? Zan knew it was her he held?

  He knew it was her. But the thought didn’t give her any ease at all. Because as she lay wrapped in his arms, a new, uncomfortable awareness grew. Someone else was most definitely sharing the bed with them—and it wasn’t Simone.

  Instead, it was the ghost of her past love for him.

  Her breath caught. Oh, how she wished it wasn’t true, but there was something here beyond the tepid remains of a former friendship. Though she had recovered from his leaving her ten years before, though she was sure she was telling the truth when she asserted she was over Zan, with him pressed close to her back and his arm tucked under her breasts, her heart beat in an erratic rhythm and her skin felt both tender and much too warm.

  What they’d once had no longer could be dismissed from her mind and memory. With his return, it was resurrected as a renewed, palpable presence in her life.

  She swallowed a humorless chuckle. It turned out the Elliott mansion—or perhaps just Mac herself?—was haunted, after all.

  She could only hope the ghost would disappear when Zan once again went away.

  * * *

  ZAN CAME AWAKE by degrees, with each passing moment a new muscle screaming at him, protesting that he was conscious, that he was breathing. Had he been hit by a truck? He’d seen the aftermath of such an accident, but—

  Something stirred in his arms.

  He blinked, wincing at the pain in his eyelids, and took in the back of a woman’s head. Her dark hair. Inhaling, he breathed in her scent.

  Mac.

  What the hell?

  Snippets came back to him. Running into her and Brett at Oscar’s. His own pleasure at the meeting. Her frosty attitude.

  The antagonism had disappointed him. The only good thing he’d considered about coming back to Blue Arrow Lake under the circumstances was the chance to reconnect with the Walkers. If he had to be bound to someplace for a couple of weeks, at least it was where the companions of his childhood were firmly rooted.

  But Brett, and then Mac, hadn’t been particularly welcoming.

  Yeah, it had stung.

  So he’d stood to leave, and then... It went blurry after that. He remembered the dizziness, the sudden heat followed by the sudden cold. Mac again, grabbing him before he could get out the door.

  I have a few things to say to you.

  But it went mostly blank after that, so he could only suppose he’d looked sick enough that even a hostile Mac took pity on him...and somehow ended up in bed with him.

  Now, at the thought, another muscle was making itself known. A morning erection was nothing new, of course, but this one was starting to ache like a sore tooth. With his body curved around Mac’s, if he didn’t take a stern stand with himself he’d be grinding into her most excellent ass at any moment.

  A fine way to reestablish a friendship with her...not.

  Willing himself not to move, he shifted his gaze out the window, where he could see the blue sky and an even bluer lake, surrounded by peaks bristling with dark evergreens. In his mind’s eye he saw the day he’d first arrived here, a boy trudging up the steps beside the grandfather he knew, but not well. In a just-the-facts style, the man had pointed out the amenities—the billiards room, the in-home theater, the Olympic-size pool in its glass capsule a few steps from the main house. Then there’d been the boathouse and docks. The speedboat he’d be able to drive at twelve, the small sailboat he could learn to maneuver straightaway, the paddleboat they could buy if Zan wanted one.

  He’d wanted nothing but to return to the house at the beach. It had been spacious but not showy. The ocean views grand, as had been the life he’d led as the youngest of three kids. He’d skateboarded with his big sister and boogie-boarded with his older brother, and his mother had made cookies and his father had good-naturedly cursed the grill that seemed to burn everything he’d laid upon it.

  The community of Blue Arrow Lake had seemed as alien as the moon to him, as void of warmth, until that boy in his class at school had said, “You fish?” and Zan had found a way to hang on.

  And people to hang on to until he finally surrendered to his itchy feet and restless soul and turned his truck down the mountain.

  The woman in his arms stirred now.

  Zan kept himself completely still, though he was supremely aware of the softness of her breasts just above the band of the arm he’d flung over her.

  Then she froze, too, as if suddenly aware of their positions. He was naked and she looked as if she was wearing his flannel shirt, but their bare legs were tangled and their position was almost as intimate as two lovers’ could be.

  “Zan?” she whispered, her head still turned away from his.

  “You crawl into other ill men’s beds often enough that you don’t know?”

  In an instant, she’d flipped over to face him, her expression indignant. “I didn’t crawl, I’ll have you know! You manhandled me onto the mattress.”

  His smile even hurt, but that didn’t stop it from spreading. “Sorry. I hope I’m not contagious. But if so, I promise to take off all your clothes and—”

/>   “You did that yourself, too!” she said, scowling at him. Then she put her cool hand against his forehead. “Fever’s gone.”

  He caught her fingers in his, kissed the back of her hand. “Yeah. Thanks. I’m not a hundred percent, but I know where I am now. Who I’m with.”

  Her gaze shifting away from him, she tugged her hand from his clasp. “Um...”

  “This is a first,” he said. “We never woke up beside each other, did we?” While they’d made love dozens of times, they’d never had the luxury of spending an entire night together. Maybe he should have coaxed her down the hill at some point and booked a hotel room, he thought, frowning. Why hadn’t he done that?

  “I beg to differ,” Mac said now. “I recall several times waking up with you in that old tent we pitched in our backyard.”

  He nodded, conceding the point. “When we were kids. All of us packed in there, Brett, you, Poppy, Shay and me. It smelled like mildew and Poppy screeched at every critter scurry.”

  “Our scaredy-cat.”

  “When we finally stumbled into your kitchen in the morning your mom would make cheesy scrambled eggs and bacon. I’ve had some good meals in my life, but those breakfasts were the best.”

  “Yeah,” Mac said, reaching out to brush his hair back. Then her eyes went wide, as if bothered by her own offhand, clearly unplanned intimacy. “Um...why don’t I make those for you now? Could you eat?”

  His stomach growled in response. “What do you think?” And he watched her roll off the bed. He was sad to see her go, but happy to have one of his oldest friends heading down to the kitchen, where they would share a meal.

  By the time he got down there himself, however, freshly showered and shaved and feeling somewhat close to human, Mac had that chip squarely rebalanced on her shoulder; he could tell by the wary way she eyed him as he entered the room, her cell phone to her ear. “He’s here now, Brett. We’ll eat some breakfast, and then I’ll be off to work.”

  After ending the call, she slid her phone into her pocket and turned toward the pan on the stove. “Cheesy eggs,” she said, spooning them onto plates. “OJ and bacon out already.”

  He glanced over to see the small breakfast table in the nook had been set. Taking both plates from her, he carried them over himself. Once they were settled on the place mats, he pulled out her chair for her.

  Mac’s brows shot up in surprise. “Manners?”

  Showing her he had them might dull her at-the-ready thorns and render her a little more approachable. He was serious about wanting to reconnect with the Walkers, if only for his short time in their mountains.

  Noting the two pain reliever tablets set by one of the glasses of orange juice, he smiled a little. “Taking care of me some more?” he asked, scooping them up. “Is that what you do—nursing?”

  She made a face. “Hardly.”

  Odd that she didn’t elaborate. “Well? Should I guess?” He cast his mind back to her childhood ambitions. “Snake charmer? Fortune-teller?”

  At her snort, he tilted his head, considered the lovely angles of her face and the crystalline quality of her blue eyes. “Fashion model?”

  She rolled them. “No.”

  He waggled his brows. “Lingerie model?”

  A flush pinkened her face. “I clean houses.”

  “Clean houses.”

  “Yes! There’s nothing wrong with honest work, you know.”

  “I never said there was.” Jeez, she was so touchy now. “You clean houses. Good for you.”

  “I run my own business,” she mumbled, gaze on her plate. “Maids by Mac.”

  “I’m not surprised, Mackenzie Marie.”

  Her head came up, her eyes narrowed. “What? That I clean up other people’s messes for a living?”

  “That you’re a businessperson. That you’re in charge.”

  “Oh,” she said, her expression evening out.

  “You always were a bossy little thing,” he added.

  “Oh!” She tossed her balled-up paper napkin at him.

  He laughed. “Tell me everything about everyone. About Brett and Poppy and Shay. And anyone else I used to know.”

  “Does that mean you’ve missed us?”

  “I...” Christ, had he?

  Instead of waiting for him to answer, she began to talk. It was grudging at first, he decided, but soon her voice warmed as she filled him in on her brother and sisters. In a few minutes he knew about Brett’s landscape business and his wife, Angelica, about Shay with a stepdaughter-to-be and the builder she was about to marry. Finally, he heard about Poppy, her little boy, Mason, and Ryan Hamilton, former actor-turned-producer whose bride she would become in a few weeks.

  “How could all this have happened?” he wondered aloud.

  “Ten years,” Mac said, her demeanor cooling again. “It’s been ten years. Maybe if you’d bothered to stay in contact, none of this would come as such a shock.”

  He hadn’t wanted to stay in contact. At the time, it had seemed smartest to leave without backward glances.

  “So...you?” Mac gathered up their plates and took them to the sink.

  “Let me do that,” he protested, but she ignored him.

  “Pay me back,” she said. “Your last ten years?”

  Exciting. Challenging. Wearying.

  “Something about a documentary?”

  At his puzzled glance, she explained. “I heard you talking to Mr. and Mrs. Robbins at Oscar’s yesterday. Earth Unfiltered?”

  “Oh. Yeah. In my travels, I stumbled upon the crew in their early days. Joined them. Learned a hell of a lot, at first from just humping shit from place to place, then I did more. Research, camera work, a little writing.”

  “Wow.”

  It had been wow so much of the time. But there’d been arduous treks, long delays, bad reactions to strange foods...and, finally, a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction. “Traveling to remote corners of the world has a way of making one feel small. And unconnected.”

  Mac was looking at him funny. He tried to make a joke of it. “Did I just say that out loud?”

  “A person can feel alone anywhere,” she said, then turned her back to put the plates and utensils in the dishwasher.

  A weird vibe entered the room. Zan rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to dissipate the sense of needle-toed fairies dancing over his skin. Christ, he’d thought conversation would get him comfortable with Mac, bring them back to friendly footing. But so far...

  “Who’s Simone?” she suddenly asked.

  “What?” It came out like a squawk.

  “Simone. You talked about her in your sleep last night.”

  Simone. Zan squeezed shut his eyes, saw her golden tan, her wild, streaky hair, heard her throaty laugh. They’d been two of a kind, each recognizing the other instantly. Wanderers. Adventurers. Nomads.

  People tied to no one.

  “Zan?”

  He cleared his throat. “She was part of the documentary crew the last couple of years. We were...coworkers.”

  “Lovers.” She didn’t say it like a question.

  “For a time we shared a bed on occasion.” He glanced up at Mac, but her back was still to him. “For a very short time. Neither one of us was interested in anything remotely permanent.”

  Mac’s head bobbed in a nod. “Where is she now?”

  He hesitated.

  “You wanted her to come back.” She shut the dishwasher door with a clack. “That’s what you said last night, anyway.”

  Oh, shit.

  “She can’t. She died.” He winced, hearing the bald way he’d said the words when Mac stiffened. “I’m sorry to put it like that. It’s just...”

  Mac turned and leaned back against the counter, regarding him with serious eyes. �
�It’s just...what?”

  “It was such a random thing. The act of a moment.” Zan scrubbed his hand over his face. “We’d been to the Russian steppes and the Sahara Desert and the Solomon Islands. Cozied up to tribal warlords and run from violent warthogs. Scaled slippery waterfalls and explored deep, bat-filled caves. We ate things that make my belly cringe thinking about, not wanting to offend our hosts. Any one of those things could have ended in death.”

  Mac reached for a fresh glass, filled it with water, then brought it over to him. Grateful, he took a long swallow. “It was in Berlin. We were walking to lunch, the lot of us. Simone was trailing behind, looking at her phone, checking the weather for our next day’s flight. As mundane as that.”

  “And?”

  “And she stepped off a curb without looking. A truck took her out. The driver couldn’t stop in time—there was no time.” He closed his eyes. “No time left for Simone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Mac’s voice was low. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He was sorry that Simone was gone, too. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  And how sorry was it that he wanted to turn into Mac’s body so badly. Bury his head between her breasts and bury his sadness in the familiarity of her body. Lose himself in his lust for her that apparently hadn’t dissipated in ten years.

  Hold her as if she was more than just an old, old friend.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS SHE CLIMBED out of her shabby sedan, Tilda Smith glared up at the gathering clouds, hoping a challenging stare would stave off the predicted rain...at least for the time it would take her to collect the groceries stored in the backseat and cart them up the walkway and steps that led to the fancy house.

  She took another quick peek at the place, exhorting herself not to be intimidated by its amazing lakefront location, its immense size, the wealth that it testified to. The area surrounding Blue Arrow Lake had been home her entire life and the divide between the haves and have-nots something she’d breathed in like the clean mountain air.

  Most locals didn’t resent the rich who had homes on the choicest coves or the most stupendous mountainsides. Without them, what jobs would they have? The way things were, there was a need for grocers and Realtors and restaurateurs to serve the needs of the affluent who came up the hill with their inherited fortunes or with the money they made from TV or tech or investing other loaded peoples’ dollars.