She's Got It Bad

by Sarah Mayberry

  “Zoe—”

  “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “That shouldn’t have happened.”

  She looked at him, anger searing through the regret and hurt of his withdrawal.

  “Don’t apologize to me. Don’t stand there and tell me how you never meant to touch me, how much you wish you hadn’t. It was good. Don’t ruin it.”

  She pushed past him. The guys all pretended to be very involved with their work when she exited the file room and strode toward the door.

  She drove home and showered, scrubbing off the makeup, trying to wash away the red suck marks he’d left on her breasts and thighs.

  How could a man want her so much one moment, then barely be able to look at her the next? She didn’t understand it. Did he think she wanted a commitment, was that it? Did he think she would put pressure on him, ask for things he wasn’t prepared to give?

  She shook her head angrily as she dressed. If only he knew. She was in no position to ask anything of him.

  Maybe she should tell him, let him know he was off the hook for all the commitments that women usually wanted from men. She was never going to ask him to marry her or have a child with her. She was every red-blooded guy’s wet dream—a woman who liked sex and would never, ever make demands. Liam had no idea what a good deal he was turning his back on.

  She drove back to the workshop dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a damp ponytail. She’d been gone forty minutes and she didn’t look at anyone as she made her way to her workbench.

  She kept her shoulders square as she picked up her pencil. It wasn’t until she’d been working for ten minutes and Liam still hadn’t come to talk to her that she realized she’d been waiting for him to do just that.

  Finally, after another ten minutes had passed, she glanced over her shoulder toward his office.

  The seat behind his desk was empty.

  She stared at it for a long moment, then turned back to her work.

  Easy come, easy go.

  Pity she didn’t believe it.

  LIAM LEANED LOW over the handlebars of his custom chopper and let the wind rip at his clothes.

  He had to find a way to deal with Zoe.

  He had to find a way to stop wanting her.

  It wasn’t until he saw a tall, green line of cypress pines ahead that he realized where his subconscious had led him. He turned the bike into the sedately curved driveway of the Springvale Cemetery and throttled back. He parked in a designated spot and carried his helmet under his arm as he walked across the lawn to the memorial garden where his mother was buried.

  A small bronze plaque marked her resting place. The grass was neatly trimmed around it but a few old leaves obscured her name. He squatted and brushed them aside so that he could see her properly. Marianne Louise Masters. Dead at the too-early age of thirty-nine.

  She’d had a hard life. Not a lot of money when she was growing up, then she’d fallen pregnant to Graham Masters, her high-school boyfriend, when she was just nineteen. They’d married but she’d lost the baby. Liam had come along a few years later. By then his father had already developed into a problem drinker. He’d always had a volatile temper and with alcohol in the mix it hadn’t been long before he started taking his frustrations out on his wife and child. By the time Liam was eight he’d had a broken arm, a perforated eardrum and two separate cases of broken ribs. His mother had fared far worse. A broken jaw. A dislocated shoulder. Lost teeth, blackened eyes. And whatever punishment his father had meted out in the bedroom.

  They’d run away twice. Both times his father had hunted them down. They’d left too many clues, trusted the wrong people. The last time they ran, they took only what they could carry and went as far as they could with the money his mother had managed to hide from the weekly budget. All the way from Queensland down the coast of Australia, then across to Adelaide. For the first couple of years they’d moved every few months, just to be safe. They’d wound up in Melbourne when Liam was twelve. The three years they’d spent there had been the best of his young life.

  Then his mom had gotten sick.

  Liam stood and stared along the green swathe of lawn. A few graves had withered flowers on them, others had plastic posies faded by the harsh Australian sun. His mom had never encouraged flowers. Not when she was sick, and she hadn’t wanted them at her funeral.

  He pressed a kiss to his fingers and bent to transfer it to the plaque. Then he walked back down the hill.

  It had been good to come here. He’d needed to remind himself what was at stake. He’d needed to stare the ugly truth in the eye, absorb it, make it a part of him again.

  Because he would never put himself in a situation where he had the opportunity to become his father’s son.

  In the years after leaving the sanctuary of the Fords’ he’d lived hard. He’d drunk a lot, fought a lot, screwed around a lot. Then one day he’d gotten wasted and wound up in a bar fight for no good reason other than that he was drunk and spoiling for a fight and some guy had looked at him funny. He’d woken up the next day and looked in the mirror and seen his father staring back at him. It had chilled him to the bone. From that day on, he’d never been drunk, and he’d never hit a man in anger.

  And he’d never let himself get serious with a woman. There was too much of his father in him for him to risk trying for a wife and family of his own. For his mother’s sake he would ensure that the cycle of violence ended with him. It was a promise he’d made her long ago, and he’d keep it if it killed him.

  Which meant he had to find a way to come to terms with his feelings for Zoe. He would not embark on a relationship with her that would lead nowhere. He’d hurt women in the past with his refusal to commit. Zoe would not be one of them.

  He was no closer to having an answer to his dilemma by the time he rode into the parking lot at Masters Mechanics an hour later. Zoe had been under his skin since he was kid. He had no idea how to get her out.

  She was working with the airbrush when he walked past her. She didn’t look up and he didn’t stop to talk to her. There were things that needed to be said, but he couldn’t say them right now.

  He managed to avoid her for the rest of the day. He was congratulating himself on the fact when a knock sounded on his office door and he looked up to see her standing there.

  “You got a minute?” she asked. Her expression was absolutely neutral. He braced himself.

  “Sure.”

  She didn’t come right in. Instead, she went to her workbench to collect the Harley fuel tank and her sketch pad. She placed the tank front and center on his desk, slapping the sketch pad down beside it.

  “This is what I’ve come up with,” she said.

  He studied the intricate image she’d created on the teardrop-shaped fuel tank. A woman’s face and torso pushed out from the front like the old-fashioned figurehead on a ship. Wings sprouted from her shoulders and ran down the sides of the tank. Toward the rear, flames licked, a blaze of glory trailing behind her, tangling with her flowing hair. He studied the detail of Zoe’s image, picking up on the little visual cues in her work.

  “She’s like an old sailor’s tattoo. Almost a mermaid,” he said, slowly getting it. “Old school.”

  She nodded, arms crossed over her chest. “That’s right.”

  She stood very still, her gaze on his face. Waiting for his verdict.

  “It’s great,” he said.

  “You still want me to do the bike, then?”

  “Of course. Definitely. This is very, very cool. What did the guys think?”

  “They like it. Paul suggested a candied-cherry base coat, more flames on the fenders.”

  Liam nodded. “Yeah. And let’s pick up this orange and purple from her hair.”

  “Okay. Good. I’ll do some more practice runs on the scrap Vinnie found for me while you guys do your bit with fabrication,” she said.

  She collected the fuel tank and her sketch book and turned to go. He kne
w it made him the biggest pussy in the world but he was glad that their talk had been all business.

  She was almost out the door when he caught the expression on her face. She looked disappointed. Hurt.

  Shit.

  He was trying to do what he could to protect her, but every time he touched her he made things more confusing. For both of them.

  He ran a hand through his hair.

  “Zoe, wait.”

  6

  LIAM HAD TO SAY SOMETHING. He’d had sex with her twice, and both times he’d screwed things up. He needed to somehow make her understand that keeping things platonic was the best way to go.

  Zoe waited in the doorway, half turned toward him. She held the fuel tank in front of her like a shield.

  “What?”

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  She gave him a cool look. “Isn’t that my line?”

  “You need to understand something. Whatever this is between us, it can’t go anywhere. I’m not relationship material. I’m never going to get married or settle down.”

  He held her gaze even though it was tough to see the way she withdrew into herself more and more with every word he said.

  “What happened before and at the club…I shouldn’t have lost control. I didn’t mean to mislead you,” he said.

  Zoe raised her eyes to the ceiling as though seeking patience.

  “You are one arrogant son of a bitch, you know that?” she said.

  He blinked. Not what he’d expected.

  “You think that every woman you sleep with wants happy ever after and a white picket fence with you? Think again. In case you hadn’t noticed, there were two people in the room every time we got naked. Two people who lost control or whatever you called it. I did what I did with you because I wanted to sleep with you. Nothing more.”

  “You deserve more than a one-night stand,” he said.

  “You don’t get it, do you? Shock, horror, Liam, but not all of us want to settle down in Pleasantville with you for the rest of eternity. You’re a sexy guy with a hot body. That’s the sum total of everything I’m interested in.”

  He shook his head, rejecting her cut-and-dried take on the situation. Whatever was between him and Zoe was about more than sex. They were drawn together. Always had been.

  “No,” he said.

  She frowned. “What is it with you always thinking you know me better than I know myself? I’m not the girl you knew twelve years ago, Liam. I’m all grown up and I know what I want. At the moment, that happens to be sex with you. But that will probably change in a couple of weeks.

  Usually does.” She eyed him steadily. “You don’t owe me anything. You don’t need to protect me or feel guilty about anything we do together. If you want to sleep with me, all you have to do is say so. That’s how easy it is.”

  She was offering him a free pass, an invitation to sleep with her with no strings attached. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say. He wanted her. But he also wanted more than sex. That was the problem.

  Zoe hovered in the doorway. When he didn’t say anything she shrugged.

  “Fine. You know where to find me if you ever decide to stop living in the past. But don’t wait too long. I’m not exactly known for my quiet lifestyle.”

  She left his office, shoulders straight. He swore and kicked his desk.

  He was trying to do the right thing by Zoe, by the Fords. It was why he’d left her all those years ago—he’d been trying to save her from himself. Even back then he’d known he was bad for her.

  But now she was telling him she didn’t want to be saved, that she didn’t want any of the things he thought she did.

  He didn’t know what to do. She’d been the great unknown of his life for so long, the perfect, generous girl he’d denied himself because he’d been determined to do the right thing. But Zoe had just told him that she wasn’t that perfect girl anymore. He knew she was right—but he also knew in his gut that she was wrong, too. She would always be the perfect girl he fell in love with. But there was no denying that she had grown up and that she was a far different, more daring, more difficult woman than he’d ever imagined.

  He wanted to take her up on her offer so much that he literally ached. He wanted to make her come a million different ways. He wanted to swallow her cries and devour her body.

  He was in way over his head.

  He forced himself to sit behind his desk rather than go after her. He knew himself well enough to know that having a little of what he wanted would be far worse than never having had it at all.

  Witness his constant awareness of Zoe after only two hard-and-fast encounters. How would he ever walk away from her if he indulged himself fully? Far better not to put himself in such a stupid position in the first place.

  He could control things at the moment. Just. As long as he didn’t spend too much time alone with her.

  He opened his diary, scanning the pages. He could organize a bunch of off-site meetings over the next few weeks, make himself scarce around the place. And there was that trip to Sydney he’d been putting off. If he worked at it, he could find plenty of ways to make sure temptation never drew him into Zoe’s arms again.

  He was settled in his own mind that that was the best course of action. Yet somehow when he drove home that night, he found himself standing in front of Zoe’s portrait. He’d unwrapped it a few nights ago and he stood staring at her a long time. Then he grabbed the painting and walked it through to the garage, where he covered it with a drop cloth.

  Enough. No more temptation. He’d never been a masochist, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  LUCKY LICKED ZOE’S HAND affectionately when she picked the cat up from the vet clinic later that night. She lay curled in the bottom of the expensive pet carrier Zoe had bought, her four kittens snugged against her belly. Zoe kept glancing at the tiny, fuzzy little kittens as she drove home, delighted by their small squashed faces and determinedly closed eyes. They would need to stay with Lucky for at least six weeks to make sure they got all the nutrients they needed, but after that Zoe would have to find them homes. Even at her most optimistic, she couldn’t imagine herself being able to comfortably house five cats in her tiny studio.

  For the first time in a long time her apartment felt like home as she settled mother and babies into “their” corner. She’d splashed out on a basket and various cat toys as well as the carrier, and she spent nearly an hour lying on her belly, stroking Lucky and the kittens, inhaling their soft, warm smell.

  Despite herself, her thoughts kept drifting to Liam, to what he’d said and what she’d said to him in return. She didn’t understand why he was holding back—especially now she’d let him know there would never be any strings attached to any physical relationship they might have. She was a past master of the casual fling—sex for as long as it felt good and stayed fun. She knew absolutely that she and Liam could have a lot of fun together if he let them. But he wasn’t interested, apparently. Despite how good the sex was.

  Useless to pretend that his rejection didn’t sting. It wasn’t the first time he’d kept her at arm’s length. Question was, when was she going to learn where he was concerned?

  Satisfied the cats were safe and warm, Zoe finally put herself to bed. She got up twice during the night to make sure they were doing okay, then found herself anguishing about leaving them at home on their own when she went to work. It was a Saturday and technically she didn’t have to be there but she knew Liam and most of the guys were pulling overtime to finish bikes and get them out of the way so they could concentrate on the competition chopper.

  After a few minutes of indecision the following morning she packed Lucky and her kittens into the pet carrier again. All they did at the moment was eat and sleep; they wouldn’t be a problem if she kept them beside her workbench.

  To her surprise, she’d no sooner put the carrier down than she had a crowd of big, tough guys gathered around taking turns to stroke small furry bodies and su
ggest names for Lucky’s children. She’d rejected Bruiser, Snoozer, Loser and Cruiser along with a host of other equally inappropriate names by the time she felt the instinctive prickle on the back of her neck that told her Liam had arrived.

  She glanced up from her position kneeling beside the carrier to find him standing there, arms crossed over his chest.

  “They won’t be a problem, I promise,” she said quickly. “Lucky just sleeps all day and the kittens haven’t even opened their eyes yet.”

  “Although Bruiser there is definitely making an effort,” Vinnie said. He’d already put his hand up for the little black and white kitten.

  Liam still didn’t say anything. The guys exchanged glances and drifted to their work stations.

  Zoe stood and smoothed her hands down the thighs of her jeans.

  “Look, if it’s going to be a problem just say so,” she said.

  “I was thinking they might be warmer in my office,” Liam said. “There’s a bit of a draft through here.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, then realized she didn’t know what to say.

  She finally opted for “Thanks.”

  He shrugged one big shoulder and leaned down to pick up the carrier. She followed him to his office and crouched down to arrange Lucky’s water bowl in front of the carrier as he settled it in the corner.

  “You’re right, it’s definitely warmer in here,” she said. Suddenly she felt awkward around him.

  Which was stupid. They’d cleared the air yesterday, hadn’t they? She’d made an offer, he’d rejected it. In doing so, they’d established their relationship was all about work and nothing else.

  “Yeah.”

  She was fussing unnecessarily with Lucky’s blanket and she pushed herself to her feet.

  “Better get back to it,” she said. “I hear the boss is a real hard-ass.”

  He rewarded her small joke with a half smile. She searched his face, trying to interpret his mood.

  He seemed…withdrawn. Reserved. She dropped her gaze. This was probably the way it was going to be between them from now on—friendly but professional. Distant.