ZANE - THE WILD ONE

by Bronwyn Jameson

  Struggling under the surge of emotion, enormous and elemental, he pocketed his hands in his jeans. Grimaced because that was painful. "How about we go inside? Sit down? We need to talk about a few things."

  The gravity of his tone, his resolute expression, wrenched Julia from her state of sensual bliss. They needed to talk. About a few things. And she needed to be sitting to hear them.

  "Okay," she agreed, but her voice sounded strangely strangled. But please don't tell me you've changed your mind about marrying me. Please, not that.

  He waited. She stood. He gestured toward the door. And finally it registered what he was waiting for. Stiff with nervous tension, she turned and opened the door, managed to coax her legs to take her inside, but when she started for the kitchen, he stopped her.

  "Leave it, Julia. Just sit."

  Heart pounding, she sat. "Is this about where we're going to live?" Please let that be it. "Did you find somewhere?"

  He shook his head, blew out a breath. "I found plenty of places, but I didn't think any of them would suit you. Us. None of them felt … right."

  Us. Relief eased her taut nerves. Perhaps he hadn't changed his mind about marrying her. And he hadn't tied himself into an alternative. Hope blazed bright in her heart. "It doesn't matter, because I have some good news."

  "I haven't finish—"

  "I know, but I have to tell you this. I wanted to ring to tell you right away, but I didn't know how to contact you. Bill, Gav, Kree—no one knew how to find you." She clasped her hands tight and hoped the effort might also hold her voice together, stop it trembling with nerves, excitement, trepidation. "I spoke to Bill about selling his business."

  Silence.

  "You said he'd likely die with a wrench in his had," she continued, determined not to let his lack of response unsettle her. "But I thought, why make assumptions? Perhaps he'd like to go fishing every week instead of twice a year. And you probably think it's too small a business to support a family, but I had an accountant take a good look at the books, and while the cashflow isn't wonderful at the moment, there's a lot of potential…"

  Her voice trailed off under his hard-eyed glare. What was he thinking? Apprehension churned in her stomach.

  "So you're saying Bill's garage is like your cottage? A doer-upper at the poor end of town?"

  "I'm saying there's growth potential. For a start, there are council contracts that go out of town. With your heavy machinery experience, you'd stand a great chance."

  He made a disparaging sound. "With my new mother-in-law as mayor, I'd be a shoo-in."

  "No. No! I didn't think that at all!"

  "What did you think, Julia?" he asked, his tone ominously even. But his hard eyes glinted like steel. Hot steel. "That I wasn't capable of finding a means of supporting you? Or did you simply decide you weren't moving and you'd make your own arrangements? My wishes be damned?"

  "No. I saw Bill, and I made inquiries."

  "You did more than inquire. You checked the books!"

  "Because Bill insisted," she countered. "He said I had to do that before I started getting my hopes up in the clouds."

  With an effort, she paused her wild rush of words, forced herself to speak more slowly, but with no less passion. "He wants to sell. He wants to retire. A few years back he even thought about listing, but the agent was so negative about his chances, he didn't pursue it." She gazed up at him, appealing for understanding. "He let me inspect the books, but he wouldn't let me take it any further. He said he'd only deal with you, Zane."

  His posture and expression remained as uncompromising as ever, and Julia had no idea if she was getting through to him. But she had to keep trying. She would keep on trying, keep on talking, until she collapsed in a hoarse, gasping heap at his feet.

  "Bill thinks an awful lot of you, as a mechanic and as a man. You're the closest thing he has to family." She moistened her lips. "He even mentioned giving the business to you."

  "I wouldn't take it."

  Of course you wouldn't. "I told him that, and do you know what he said? 'He'll bloody well have to take it when I die!'"

  Stunned eyes connected with hers. Stunned eyes no longer hard, no longer difficult to read. They pulsed with emotion.

  "Now, will you please sit down? I'm sick of getting a cricked neck every time we have one of these debates."

  She waited, heart in throat, as if this innocuous request—please sit—was the most important she would ever make. Perhaps it was. It felt symbolic, a chance for him to show he could give.

  "Is this the way our marriage is going to be, Julia? You making decisions that affect us both, then going behind my back to set them in motion?"

  "No," she said with her own quiet determination. "If you had been here, or if I'd been able to contact you, I wouldn't have had to speak to Bill on my own."

  "You didn't have to speak to Bill at all."

  "Yes, I did."

  "Because you won't live anywhere else?"

  "No. And if you sit down, I'll tell you why."

  For a long tense minute she thought he would stand his stubborn ground, but finally, with obvious reluctance, he sat. Call her warped, but there was something in his inflexibility, in that knock-me-over glare, that filled her heart to bursting. She imagined that love colored her voice when she smiled at him. "I did it for you, Zane. Because I want you to be happy."

  He stared at her, his expression blank, and that happy rosy glow dipped and dimmed.

  "Not much of an explanation, I see."

  "Why?" he asked hoarsely, eventually.

  She released a long breath, stared at her hands. "I was thinking about your past, how every time you drive into Plenty you enter this time warp where all you can see is the way things used to be. All you can feel is the shame and the distrust, and that colors how you see yourself and how you see me. I don't think that will ever change unless you face up to that past. Until you prove you've outgrown it. Until you show this town the man you've become."

  "What kind of man is that?"

  Kree's advice whispered in her ear. Don't be subtle. Tell him, Julia, so there's no mistake. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and looked him right in those difficult-to-read eyes. "I want them to see what I see. A man whose sense of duty brings him back twice a year to a town he hates, even though his debt's been repaid twenty times over. A man who takes leave from his job to help out a mate when his wife has a new baby. A man a toddler trusts instinctively from the first 'Hey, bud.' A man who takes my breath away. A man I love with all my heart."

  There she'd said it, all of it, and he sat staring back at her as if she had lost her marbles. Damn him. Unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears.

  "And that's about all I have to say, except that if I didn't love you, I would never have agreed to marry you, pregnant or not. And besides that, if I didn't love you, I would never have been pregnant in the first place, because I wouldn't have slept with you."

  "Are you finished?"

  Blinking away the tears, she nodded. And with clearer vision she noted he didn't look quite so stunned. Still a little dazed, but a softness she'd never seen before hazed his expression.

  And she remembered one last thing. "But if Bill's business doesn't suit, then that's okay."

  "Okay, how?"

  "I mean I will still marry you. I will live with you wherever you choose."

  "Even the city?"

  "If you're there."

  And if the previous five minutes hadn't blown Zane completely away, that little shrug would surely have finished the job. If you're there. For a long time emotion choked any chance of reply. It welled from deep inside, a complex blend of tenderness and passion and incredulity.

  Julia Goodwin loved him. What had he done to deserve this?

  He knew he would do anything to keep that love alive, to make himself a better man, a respected man, a worthy man. He reached for her hands, linked his fingers through hers, cleared the huge lump from his throat.

  "I don't k
now if Bill's business will suit me or not, but what I do know is you suit me. Your house suits me. Even this miserable town is growing on me. It took me five weeks to work that out. I kept blindly searching, not even knowing what I was missing, driving on to the next place, all the while thinking something would leap out and yell, 'This is it!'

  "Only one place has ever done that. I suspect it's because you're in it, but as long as you are, that's where I want to live, too."

  "You do?" Her smile crawled into him, coiled around his heart.

  "Didn't I just say so?"

  "Is that all? Have you finished?" Softly mocking.

  "No, I haven't got to the most important bit." He squeezed her fingers. "I want to do this right, but I can't do the down-on-one-knee thing yet."

  Her eyes rounded. "Does it still hurt?"

  "Only if I put too much pressure on it." He leaned forward, expression solemn. "I want you to be my wife, Julia. In my bed, in my life, to have and to hold, forever. Will you marry me?"

  "You know I will."

  "When?"

  She laughed with obvious delight. "That's something we have to talk about."

  "Haven't you organized it yet?" He tugged at her hands, hauling her close to his side. It wasn't close enough and she thought so, too. Her eyes sparkled contemplatively; then she slid onto his lap, straddling his thighs. His hands settled on her waist. "Much better."

  "I thought seeing as I've organized where we'll live—" she traced a teasing hand down his jaw "—you could make the wedding decisions."

  "Okay." He shrugged. "Tomorrow. This garden."

  "I would love nothing better, but with winter coming, the garden might not be the best solution."

  "We could wait till spring."

  "Would that matter? I mean, I will be really … big."

  "You think that's going to bother me?" He shifted one hand from her waist to cradle her belly, felt his voice thicken with emotion. "I can't wait until I feel our child here. Until I know everyone can see you carrying my child."

  Eyes misting, she bit her lip. "Will you please just kiss me?"

  "I don't have a problem with that."

  And when he'd kissed them both breathless, he pulled back and saw that her eyes burned with the same kind of emotion he felt through his whole body. His whole being. One had cupped his face, jaw to chin, and he felt it tremble as she acknowledged the intensity of feeling. Eyes fixed on hers, he turned his face until his lips touched her soft palm, then the inside of her wrist. He felt the kick of her pulse and the answering drum of his own.

  "When I saw you in the yard, when you told me you were wearing this shirt for comfort, I couldn't help wondering what was, or wasn't, underneath."

  She smiled primly. "Do you really think a good girl like me would walk out the back door with nothing under her shirt?"

  He fixed her with a level gaze. "Am I about to find out?"

  "I guess it's your lucky day."

  "Amen to that."

  Their eyes met, held, and Julia wondered how she'd ever thought his cold. Right now, as she reached for the hem of her shirt, they sparked with blue heat. Slowly she eased it upward, baring her legs, then the broad denim spread of his thighs. They looked—they felt—incredibly erotic between hers.

  "Good Girl panties." He brushed his knuckles against a cluster of mauve daisies, and Julia dragged in a breath.

  Incredibly turned on by that one simple touch, she licked her lips and shimmied the shirt higher, over the curve of her belly and the swell of her breasts. Then she ripped it from her arms and tossed it behind her. She saw the dip of his Adam's apple, the flare of his nostrils, and she felt the singe of blue flame. Her nipples beaded against the lace of her demi-cup bra with an intensity akin to pain.

  "That is not a Good Girl bra," he rasped tightly. Then, "It looks uncomfortable. I think you should take it off."

  Her trembling fingers fumbled twice, three times, with the tricky hooks at her back before the thing fell away.

  "And your hair. It needs to be down."

  When she reached up for the scrunchie, she felt the warm rush of his exhalation. Against her bare breasts. And then her hair swung loose, and she swore she felt the caress of every individual strand against her oversensitized skin.

  "Beautiful," he whispered.

  At the first stroke of his fingertip, she closed her eyes. When he continued to tease, a knuckle brushing the soft underswell, a fingertip tracing the outer rum of her areola, she fidgeted with impatience. His hands gripped her hips, held her still, as he dragged his tongue across one nipple.

  Fingers clenching in his hair, she implored him to stop the torture, and when finally his mouth closed around her distended nipple, she cried out with the exquisite pleasure.

  His unhurried hands and generous mouth moved from breast to throat, from shoulder to earlobe, until she thought she might die with frustration. She reached for his jeans, felt him suck in his stomach as she slid the button free. The zip wasn't so easy.

  "It seems to be stuck on something," she decided.

  His hoarse bark of laughter didn't discourage her, and she managed to get the fastener down, to find him and free him into her hand. Strong, smooth, glistening.

  "Beautiful," she whispered. "And all mine."

  She touched her tongue to her top lip, and he groaned. When she startled to wiggle down, he grabbed her firmly by the waist. "Not a good idea."

  "I thought it was inspired."

  Laughter rumbled low in his chest, and she leaned forward to rest her cheek there, to absorb the sound. And she made a solemn promise to herself. She would make him laugh every day of his life.

  "I have a better idea," he said, pulling her upright.

  "Does it involve getting me out of these panties?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Sounds like a plan."

  Naked, she scrambled back onto his lap, but he held her away while they kissed, while he gazed into her soul.

  "There's something about your eyes," he murmured solemnly as he eased her over him, "that gets me every time."

  "There's something about you," she murmured solemnly as he filled her with exquisite incredible pleasure, "that completes me every time."

  They smiled into each other as she moved against him, as her body quickened around his silky heat, and then there was nothing but heat and sensation, and the quest to ride it to its final shuddering climax.

  Spent, she collapsed against him and finally heard the words she'd craved. "I love you. I hope you know that."

  She pressed a kiss to his chest and snuggled closer. "Yes, but it's about time you told me."

  And she knew that this was what she had wanted all along. To be loved. Extravagantly, completely, unrestrainedly.

  By this man. Her man. Her love.

  * * *

  Epilogue

  «^

  It was exactly like a scene from the movies.

  The action cut to slow motion as the first notes of the wedding march rang out, bringing the guests to an instant hushed stillness. The camera zoomed in for a closeup as Julia wrestled for control of her trembling limbs. As her two bridesmaids—sister and soon-to-be sister-in-law—fussed over the fall of her skirt and a stray curl of hair.

  There was a sense of time standing still. A sudden clarity of thought, sound, motion.

  She was about to marry the man she loved, the man who loved her, in the garden of their home on Bower Street

  . It was, without question, the happiest day of her life.

  She smoothed a hand over the prominent curve of her belly, then tucked her fingers firmly into the crook of her father's arm.

  "Ready, honey?"

  Her smile glowed right from her heart. "Oh, yes, Dad. Absolutely."

  * * *

  When the whispers of "Here she comes" rippled through the guests, Zane dragged a deep draft of heavily fragrant air into his lungs and slowly turned. His gaze found her instantly, and the sight of her drove all that air right back out ag
ain. Gliding on her father's arm through the wild riot of plants, her full skirt lifting in a subtle shift of the breeze, she looked like some ethereal beauty born of the garden itself.

  Zane's heart pounded thickly. A pall of tension seemed to race her down the aisle, to circle and settle over him like a shroud. He squeezed his eyes closed and heard the escalating murmurs of an appreciative audience, a riffle of paper as the celebrant opened her book, the soft crunch of autumn leaves under the fall of approaching feet. And when he opened his eyes she was right there, her fingers reaching for his, her smile anchoring him with its warmth and love.

  "Helluva place for a wedding," he drawled as he linked his fingers with hers and took them to his lips. Julia laughed huskily and wondered if she would ever become accustomed to the impact of that smoke-and-whisky voice.

  The celebrant cleared her throat. "Are we ready to begin?"

  "Absolutely," they both said at once, and she felt his hand squeeze hers. Felt an overwhelming surge of love and squeezed right back.

  "Absolutely," she repeated, but before the vows began, she took a minute to turn and drink it all in.

  Their house, the guests, Mrs. H.'s happy tears and her parents' pride. Kree's wink and the silent message Chantal mouthed.

  Mission: Marriage—successful.

  Oh, yes indeed.

  * * * *