ZANE - THE WILD ONE

by Bronwyn Jameson

  "Not really." And she smiled back. Man, he loved that smile. It seemed to reach right over and extract the remaining dregs of his fury, to suck them right out of his body. "I had fun."

  "Up until the end."

  "Oh, I was pretty much enjoying myself then, too. I've never seen a barroom brawl before."

  "You shouldn't have been in a position—"

  "Will you stop taking responsibility for that? Please?" She looked down, then up again, a slightly abashed look on her face. "Perhaps I should apologize for attacking you the way I did."

  "It was … unexpected."

  "Yes, well, it kind of shocked me, as well. That's not what I would have expected myself to do, and certainly not what others would expect of me. No wonder those guys were so surprised."

  "Your workmates, too."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "The way they stared. It was obvious they didn't expect to see you with someone like me."

  Julia laughed dryly and shook her head. "They were staring because, in Mel's words, you're hubba-hubba. They didn't expect to see you with someone like me."

  "A good girl like you?"

  "I'm no bad girl, that's for sure."

  "You have a piercing." He cut her a sidelong look. "And if it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, why do you still wear the ring?"

  Perceptive. Julia had known that all along, had probably known it as a teenager, when he'd unnerved her so easily. It was his watchfulness. The way he looked right into her, seeing more than she wanted to show.

  "You sure you weren't trying to be a bad girl?" he teased. "Did you invite Kree to move in to tutor you?"

  "We always got along. It's that yin and yang thing."

  They both smiled, but Julia felt a change in the mood, a subtle shift, as if they both were contemplating the need for yin and yang to make a whole.

  Or the more pragmatic option: opposites attract.

  The screech of tires accelerating on bitumen sliced through the balmy night air, and Zane crossed behind her, positioning himself between her and the road. Julia felt a peculiar little zap of pleasure at the protective gesture. Then the car responsible sped by them, and she shook her head reproachfully.

  "You know that punk?"

  "Brandon Jeffreys. He's heading down the same street as his brother." She caught his quizzical glance. "You made his acquaintance a little while back. Little guy with a big mouth. Name of Bart."

  "Plenty's own band of yobbos—who'd have thought it?"

  "You think we're all model citizens?"

  "There are enough who think of themselves that way to make the rest of us move on real fast."

  With Mrs. H.'s condemnation still fresh in her mind, it felt wrong to disagree. Yet Julia did disagree. If he kept on moving, how could the town's Mrs. H.'s get to know him, to see that he'd outgrown his past, that he was quite the gentleman? She smiled at that.

  "I'm wondering what the model citizens would make of your gentlemanly manners."

  He made a scoffing sound. Then, as if he couldn't help himself, he asked, "Why do you say that?"

  "Oh, the fact that when you heard that car, you shifted to get between me and the road. And the way you tried to shield me back at the hotel. And seeing me home isn't something those model citizens would expect you to do, either."

  "They'd assume I have ulterior motives."

  "The kind where you invite yourself in for coffee and we both know it's not for coffee?" She deliberately chose a light, teasing tone, because they had arrived at her gate and her stomach felt anything but light, her mood anything but teasing.

  Smile firmly in place, she turned to face him. He wasn't smiling. It was quiet but for the booming beat of her heart, and far off, perhaps at the brand-new traffic lights back on Main, the squeal of tires under heavy punishment.

  He lifted his head as if listening to that sound; then he took a step back, and Julia's chest tightened with unexplainable panic. She didn't want him to walk away, didn't want the night to end here.

  "So … would you like to come in? For coffee?" She tried the teasing smile again but knew it didn't come off. It felt strained, unnatural.

  "I don't drink coffee."

  "I know."

  Something flickered across the surface of his eyes like the touch of moonlight on water, but that was the only thing that moved. "I'm leaving soon. Could be any day now."

  "I know," she said calmly. And despite the warm stillness of the summer night that surrounded them like a velvet cloak, a shiver skittered up her spine.

  That was the point, wasn't it? The whole heady excitement of this surreal night. With Zane O'Sullivan she didn't want those other days, she only wanted now. For all those other days, she would choose safe and secure and responsible.

  Her gaze shifted from those difficult eyes to where a lucky fist had connected with his cheekbone. "I can put something on your face, so why don't you come in anyway?"

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  «^»

  "I'll just put the kettle on, and then I'll go get what I need."

  "What is it you need?"

  Halfway to the kitchen, Julia stopped, took a deep breath and turned back to face him.

  He stood in the entrance hall, no further into her house than when she'd closed the front door. Its powder-blue panels framed the hard lines of his big, tensely held body—his shoulders looked broad enough to span the space between her rose-sprig-papered walls. Beyond his left arm she could just make out one delicate curl of a porcelain coat hook. At this moment it looked insubstantial, incapable of supporting a muslin throw, let alone an overcoat.

  Yes, he looked pretty much as she'd imagined he would that first night when he'd driven her home. Big, broad, masculine—and completely out of place.

  And his unsmiling sharp-eyed intensity sent another of those stray shivers scuttling through her system. Oh, dear Lord, he'd asked what she needed, and he hadn't been referring to first-aid supplies. Back at the hotel she'd been so certain. Outside her front gate the doubt-bunny had tapped her on the shoulder, yet she'd still felt relatively sure. As for now…

  Should she say she'd made a mistake? Could she simply ask him to leave?

  Her troubled gaze shifted left and snagged on the reddening graze high on his cheekbone. Superficial, she decided, but that didn't stop the sudden sick churning in her stomach. What if that fist had really connected? What if his skin had split, or the bone beneath had broken? All because she had waylaid him, had called him back down into that courtyard.

  "You need something on that," she said, although the truth was more tangled in her need to treat him than his need of treatment.

  "Something?"

  "When Joshua progressed from walking to running, he skinned his knee every other day. I have salve. I have plasters."

  One corner of his mouth quirked. "They work?"

  More relieved by that hint of humor than she had any right to be, Julia smiled. "I'm not sure. I suspect the magic is in the third ingredient."

  "Which is?"

  "I kiss it better."

  And because her nerves hadn't entirely settled, because making such a sassy suggestion surprised her almost as much as her aggression had done back in the hotel yard, she turned and walked away.

  Relax, she told herself. You can do this. You like having people in your home. Hospitality is your thing.

  "Come through," she called over her shoulder. "Make yourself comfortable."

  He came through, but he didn't bother taking her up on the second part of her offer. Standing dead-center of her minute square of Axminster, legs spread and hands on hips, he made the whole darn room look uncomfortable.

  "I'm making tea, if you'd like a cup. Or perhaps you'd prefer a drink, although there's not a lot of choice. We definitely do not run to bourbon." She opened the refrigerator door. "Let's see … there's a half of Chardonnay and some cask Lambrusca, and if you're lucky Kree might have left a beer… Yes, the lucky last!"

  Brigh
t smile fixed in place, she held the bottle up for his perusal. He nodded. "I'll try the beer."

  That didn't surprise her. He didn't look like a Chardonnay kind of man. Setting the bottle on the table that divided kitchen and living area seemed safer than walking over there and placing it in his hand. That might involve skin contact. Her nerves jumped again. The silence—his silence—was getting to her, so she briskly crossed the room and flicked the switch on Kree's stereo.

  With each step she felt both his watchfulness and the responsive flare of heat deep in her belly.

  "Where is Kree?"

  "Over at Cliffton, at Tagg's. She's staying over."

  Julia hadn't thought it possible, but the implication of Kree staying over at her boyfriend's house wound the tension in the tiny room even tighter. Unbearably so.

  The smile she tossed his way fell under the same description. "The things I need are in the bathroom. I won't be long."

  In the bathroom, she had to grasp the edge of the basin while she took several deep breaths. It helped ground her a little. Music started playing in the living room—had she actually selected a CD, or had Zane done that? Interested in what might or might not have been his choice, she listened intently to a lengthy instrumental intro to a bluesy track. Nice. She hoped it was his taste.

  But when a sultry female voice slunk into the mix, crooning about how she was gonna "dive on in at the shallow end," Julia gave a sardonic little snort. She hadn't bothered with the shallow end. Driven by a curious compulsion to do something outside her usual sphere, along with a more familiar longing to fill that yawning hollowness inside, she had dived right in at the deep end. From the very top of the high tower. Without so much as testing the water.

  Without a life jacket.

  She supposed the new hairdo and a sampling from Kree's cosmetics tray might have provided some sort of buoyancy … or illusion thereof. She turned to the mirror and saw that her make-up was long gone, and as for the sexy new hair—well, it still fell in interesting layers around her face, but it was no more than a new hairstyle.

  She thought about how she'd felt with her face snuggled against Zane's chest, with his lips on her throat and his body pressed hard against hers, and she wondered how much of that had been an illusion, too. How could he feel so right in her arms, yet so wrong in her living room? It didn't make sense. She supposed she was pretty much floundering. She was definitely out of her depth.

  With a heavy sigh, she reached up to open the small cupboard where she stored the first-aid bits and pieces. At least half a dozen boxes and spray packs tumbled out. Shaking her head, she bent to retrieve them. Kree's disposable razors, Kree's deodorant, Kree's Q-Tips, Kree's styling mousse—tidiness was not her housemate's strong suit.

  After she'd gathered all the escapees and lined them up on the vanity, Julia reached to the back of the middle shelf. And there they were, the tube of salve and a pack of plasters, obviously shoved out of the way by shelf-hogging Kree. She retrieved both and was about to start repacking when she noticed a pack right at the back. A little black box that made her mouth go dry and her pulse skip a beat. She had forgotten all about it…

  * * *

  Zane poured the rest of his beer down the drain. Truth was, he didn't like beer any better than coffee. Truth was, he didn't want to drink anything. That wasn't why he'd followed her inside.

  So why did you, bud?

  Dumb question, given her come-in-for-coffee crack. His body had jumped to instant attention. Even while his mind was advising him not to get involved, that rigid body was screaming in his other ear. She wants to jump your bones, and you're thinking of going home? Are you nuts?

  Coming to grips with the concept of Julia Goodwin wanting to jump anyone's bones was his problem. He'd tagged her as the virtuous, careful, slow-moving type from the start. Hell, he knew she was that type. Maybe the belly button ring qualified as non-standard equipment, but the rest was genuine, top-of-the-line, out-of-his-price-range Good Girl.

  What about the way she danced? The way she kissed?

  So, okay, he'd been wrong to make assumptions based on how she looked and how she'd been brought up. Wasn't that his exact beef with this town? The fact that it had made up its mind about him twenty years ago and was unprepared to accept that he'd changed? Same as he was doing with her.

  Disconcerted by the notion but unsure how far he wanted to pursue it, he searched for somewhere to dispose of his bottle. It took him a while to find the bin, seeing as she'd covered it with a flowery skirt thingamajig. On the outside Julia looked all soft and flowery, like that bin camouflage, but underneath she was one surprise after another.

  Tonight she'd shown a quiet strength that was just as seductive to Zane as all that pale-skinned, dawn-scented softness. Back at the Lion, when she'd looked up at him on the stairs, her eyes had smoldered with fury. But she didn't yell. She didn't throw her arms around and stomp her feet. She barely raised her voice.

  With a gentle tenacity, she went after what she wanted. The way she sought him out at the bar and then conned him into slow-dancing, the way she followed him and kissed him as though she never wanted to stop—it all pointed to her wanting him. She hadn't been coy about inviting him inside, either, but once that door clicked shut, then she'd pasted on that fake smile and started playing Perfect Hostess.

  Make yourself comfortable, she'd said. What would you like to drink?

  Obviously she'd taken one look at him inside her pretty flower-swathed walls and wondered what she'd been thinking. Right now she was likely sitting on the side of her bathtub biting her lip while she tried to come up with a way to let him down lightly. Because politeness wouldn't allow her to come right out and say it.

  I've made a mistake. Turns out I don't want to sleep with you after all.

  His whole being bucked at the thought. No, dammit, he wasn't going to give her the chance.

  * * *

  Her old-fashioned, claw-footed bathtub was exactly as Zane had pictured it … except without Julia perched on its wide rim. She was standing at the sink, stretching on bare feet to replace something in a high cabinet. Her shoes lay discarded to one side.

  Clearly she hadn't heard his arrival, and that was okay, because it gave him a chance to study the long exposed line of her sweet-tasting throat, the jut of her breasts outlined by her tightly stretched top and the glimpse of pale midriff bared by her upward stretch.

  He must have made some sound—probably a groan, given the sudden painful tightness of his jeans—because she swung around, clearly startled. Flustered, too, because she dropped the box she'd held in her hand, then knocked a couple of other things over in her fumbling attempt at a catch. The box ricocheted off the edge of the basin to land at Zane's feet.

  Eyes wide, cheeks flushed the same rosy-pink as her bathroom walls, she started babbling about Kree not packing her things away properly and them all falling out when she opened the door to look for the antiseptic.

  Chick stuff, Zane thought. That's why she's blushing. It was kinda cute, and he had to battle to keep a straight face. He stooped to retrieve the box, then set it on the edge of the vanity. But he couldn't help noticing it wasn't chick stuff. It was guy stuff.

  Condoms, to be precise.

  She grabbed the box and shoved it away. Then she bent and picked up the other things she'd knocked over. Put them away in neat soldiery rows, unlike the box she'd juggled into that cupboard as if it were a lump of hot coal. "Kree's stuff," she'd said. Evidence of his kid sister's sex life, which he could do without. Although he should be happy that she was acting smart, that she was practicing safe—

  "Why are you so embarrassed if they're Kree's?" he demanded.

  "Why do you assume they're hers?" But before he could even think about how to answer, she held up a hand. Her shoulders slumped a little as she let out a long sigh. "Don't bother answering that. It's patently obvious that I'm not used to handling them."

  The thought of her hands touching, stretching, rolling … Za
ne had to clear his throat of thick, cloying heat before he could speak. "So they are Kree's?"

  "Actually, they're mine."

  If her face grew any hotter, Julia thought, they would have to send the fire brigade to put it out. How had she gotten herself into this discussion? How could she get her-self out of it? She raked the hair back from her face and squared her slumped shoulders.

  "I bought them a while back and put them away for a rainy day." And that was all she was saying on the matter. "You wanted something? The bathroom, maybe? As you can see, you found it."

  "I came to see what was taking so long." He inclined his head toward the first-aid supplies on the vanity. "And to see if you're ready to play nurse."

  His jokey tone should have eased Julia's nerves, but he also took two steps into the room and somehow managed to fill all the available space. Perhaps if he were sitting, instead of standing so close…

  She pulled out the bathroom stool. "Why don't you take a seat?"

  "You want me to sit on that little thing?" He stared at it suspiciously, as if judging whether it would support his weight.

  Perhaps he had a point… "Would the edge of the bathtub be better?"

  He eyed it with similar mistrust but sat. And stretched out his long legs so Julia had to step around them to fetch the salve.

  To apply it, she had to step between them.

  Oh, dear Lord. Julia took a deep breath. How do real nurses do this? How do they maintain a clinical detachment?

  Perhaps if she thought of him as Joshua—a bigger version, who didn't squirm and chatter nonstop. She turned and almost tripped over one of his feet. At least size fourteen, she thought light-headedly.

  No. Thinking of him as a child was definitely too much to ask of her imagination. What she really needed was to keep her imagination occupied. Perhaps some idle chatter of her own would help.

  "About my décor," she began, looking around for somewhere to put the lid she'd taken off the salve.

  "Here."

  He took it, set it on one thigh. One wide, hard, denim-encased thigh.

  "Your décor?" he prompted.

  "You don't like it, do you?"