Riptide (A Renegades Novel)

by Skye Jordan

  Zach was ready in record time and when he reached Ka’ana, his stomach rolled with hunger. The rest of his body also sported a deep craving—but that was for Tessa.

  He pushed through the door to the lobby of the restaurant and found the typical crowd waiting for a table—a hip, young group of millennials in everything from tight skirts and kitten heels to bikini tops and sarongs. Zach searched the space for Tessa, hoping she was as pretty as he remembered. He’d had a number of beers by the time he’d met her at the bar, and their night had been largely spent in nothing but moonlight. But after thinking about it for another millisecond, he knew he didn’t care.

  He wandered through the waiting area and around the bar. When he didn’t see anyone immediately recognizable, Zach returned to the lobby and pulled out his phone to text her.

  “Zach.”

  A female voice brought his head up. A young woman walked toward him from the dimly lit bar. He returned his gaze to his phone and started tapping out the text, hoping to brush her off. If he got this role for Hawaiian Heat, he’d have to get better with hats and sunglasses.

  Instead of hanging back, she came right up to him and placed a hand on his arm. “Zach.”

  He looked up again with Sorry, I’m meeting someone on his tongue. But found himself looking into Tessa’s blue eyes. “Oh, hey. I was just—”

  Her hair was down, and her stiff suit was gone, replaced by a loose, semi-sheer tank top printed in a pale abstract floral. The fabric fell like liquid over her breasts, and a familiar craving rolled through his gut. Her jeans were worn denim capris that stopped midcalf, and she wore honest-to-God Teva flip-flops on her feet.

  Island girl, was his first thought, and excitement fluttered under his ribs.

  “You look amazing.” She was gorgeous. Natural, sun-kissed, easy-on-the-eyes gorgeous.

  He didn’t wait to read signals or give her room to make the first move. As far as he was concerned, she’d made it by contacting him. He slipped his arms around her and eased her into a little alcove carved out by the entrance to the bathrooms. She immediately felt perfect in his arms. Her body felt just as amazing as it had that first night. Unable to wait a minute longer, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  But she didn’t respond like he expected. Instead of melting, she tensed. Instead of sliding her arms around his neck, she gripped his forearms. Zach broke the kiss, angled his head, and approached her again with more passion.

  “Zach—”

  He caught her open mouth under his and exploited it with his tongue, just a slow glide along the inside of her lower lip to warm things up. A sound ebbed from her throat, and her body softened a little. Now they were getting somewhere. Zach eased her against the wall and sank into the kiss. And when she sighed into his mouth, when her hands loosened on his arms, he let his body lean into hers. That was when she finally kissed him back. Her lashes fluttered closed, her head tilted, and her hands combed into his hair.

  In the time it took to strike a match, all their heat from that first night returned in one fiery explosion. She met his tongue with her own, sucked at his lips, and arched her body into his. Zach doubled his arms around her, letting himself get lost in her taste, her heat, her musky wildflower scent. His cock rubbed against his jeans as Tessa rubbed against him.

  Fuck dinner. He wanted her somewhere they could get horizontal. Yesterday.

  He lifted his mouth from hers, just enough to murmur, “Let’s skip dinner.” He kissed her again. “You can be my appetizer, my entrée, and my dessert. I’m starving.”

  When he met her lips again, she moaned and pulled back. “I’m sorry.” She licked her lips and unhooked her arms from his neck. When she looked up again, her discomfort showed in her expression. “I really need to talk to you for a few.”

  Zach laughed at himself. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Okay. Sorry, I got carried away.” He kept his arm around her and glanced toward the waiting area. “Did you get reservations?”

  “It’s a long wait. Want to sit in the bar?”

  “Sure.” The darker and more private, the better.

  She stepped away, but Zach didn’t release the hand at her waist and pulled her in beside him for the short walk. When she slid onto the seat of a booth, Zach moved in beside her. There was already a half-empty glass of red wine and a manila envelope sitting under her purse on the table.

  He turned toward her, laid an arm along the back of the small booth, and stroked a hand over her hair. She smiled, but she seemed…distracted was the only way he could describe it. Maybe a little distant. He could appreciate that. They were strangers in pretty much every way but the most intimate, and she wasn’t someone who picked up guys regularly.

  “I’m so glad you called,” he said.

  “Thanks for seeing me.”

  That felt like an odd thing to say, but she was definitely unique. “I’ve been thinking about you. How long will you be in town?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure.”

  Something was off. This felt too…formal. “Why’d you stay?”

  She lifted her gaze and met his eyes directly. “Because we need to talk.”

  His plans for the night hit a wall. “We need to talk” was never a good phrase coming from a woman’s mouth, but he tried to act like they didn’t chase a cold streak down his spine. “That sounds…ominous.”

  She licked her lips again and tucked one side of her hair behind her ear. “You want a drink? A beer, maybe? Something stronger?”

  A knot formed at the pit of his stomach. “I’d like you to tell me why I’m here, because it doesn’t feel like we’re on the same page right now.”

  Her eyes lowered to his shirt. She licked her lips again. Exhaled.

  Now he was nervous. And frustrated. “Tessa.”

  “I’m trying to find a way to say this without—”

  “Don’t. Just say it.”

  She took a breath. “When I met you the other night, I told you I was looking for your, you know, your double, your twin, your costar—”

  “Yeah, Ian.”

  “That’s where the problem begins.”

  “What problem?”

  She took a deep breath. “I was there looking for you, and you thought I was looking for Ian.”

  Zach’s brain hitched. His defenses went up.

  “It was an honest mistake, really,” she said. “The women watching from the sidelines said you’d probably be at the club. Since I couldn’t find another way to connect with you, I took the chance.”

  “Whoa, whoa. Back up.” He leaned away. “Are you telling me you slept with me because you thought I was Ian?”

  “No. Yes.” She huffed. “Not…exactly.”

  “Not…exactly?” Zach took a sledgehammer to the chest. Pain erupted beneath his ribs. Anger immediately followed. “Are you serious right now?”

  “Look, I can understand you’d be a little miffed over the mix-up, but you were the one posing as Ian. You were the one scrawling Ian’s name on their bodies. Your crew member told me Zach had a cut on his forehead. It was totally reasonable for me to think you were Ian, not Zach. Everyone else did.”

  “Fuck me.” Zach pressed an elbow to the table and covered his eyes with his hand. This was a real killer. He was stunned at just how disappointed he was. How hurt he was.

  “Then I saw Ian on Good Morning Los Angeles the next day,” Tessa said, her voice tainted with frustration. “Imagine my surprise when I realized he wasn’t the man I’d spent the night with.”

  He dropped his hand against the table and met her angry gaze with one of his own. “Well, excuse me. Sorry to disappoint you, sugar. You didn’t sleep with a star.”

  “Stop. You know that doesn’t matter to me. In fact, I slept with you in spite of believing you were a television star, not because of it.”

  “Really.” He narrowed his eyes on her. “Because I remember you agreeing with me on several of Ian’s less-than-complimentary characteristics. Which really meant you thought th
ose belonged to me.”

  She sighed, like she was so over this conversation. “Whatever I heard or thought I knew was negated by what I learned while we were together.”

  Negated?

  “And you’re right. I owe you an apology for forming an opinion of you based on the limited information I had.”

  He sat back and shook his head. This was a very different version of the woman he’d been with the other night. And knowing she’d thought she’d slept with Ian made it impossible for him to pull this from the fire. “Whatever. It’s over.”

  He slid to the edge of the booth.

  Tessa grabbed his arm. “We still need to talk.”

  “The hell we do.” He pulled away and stood. His gaze caught on the manila envelope beneath her purse, and his stomach went cold. He glanced around for the exit.

  “Zach.” The steel in her tone sent a chill down his spine. “This is important.”

  He exhaled in a slow, controlled stream through his teeth. The muscles along his shoulders constricted with tension. He was already annoyed. And yeah, his ego was bruised. Even stranger, his feelings were really hurt. But those were minor when compared to the unease crawling up his spine over that damned manila envelope sitting on the table like a ticking time bomb.

  He glanced back at her. “Look, there’s nothing to—”

  “Please.” She reached for his hand, and her pretty blue eyes begged him. They were just begging for the wrong thing. “I’ll make it as quick and as painless as possible. You’ll never have to see me again, and you can forget all about this. Please just hear me out.”

  Fuck. She’d gotten under his skin. If she hadn’t, Zach would have walked out and never looked back.

  He faced the table again, teeth clenched. He was pissed. Pissed because he’d been thinking about her for days when she’d thought she’d fucked Ian. Pissed she hadn’t made this date to see him, she’d made it to get business done. And the only reason he even considered listening to what she had to say was because he didn’t want that damned manila envelope to come back and bite him in the ass. “Five minutes.”

  “We have someone in common,” she said. “My best friend and one of your hookups.”

  Oh, hell. “Who?”

  “Corinne Westerly.”

  Corinne Westerly. He rolled the name around in his head a few times. Corinne, Corinne, Corinne. He shook his head. “I don’t recognize the name.”

  Her expression turned surly. “Try harder.”

  Zach lowered his gaze to the table and ran a hand through his hair. His mind tumbled over the last year, his memory touched on four, maybe six women. Corinne wasn’t exactly an ordinary name. Zach shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t remember a Corinne.”

  Her disbelief turned her expression as dark as she’d turned his mood. “Do you sleep with so many women that you don’t remember their names?”

  His patience snapped. “I don’t keep a fuckin’ diary, okay? How long ago was it?”

  “Four years.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Four years? Do you seriously expect me to remember a hookup from four years ago? Do you remember the name of every man you’ve ever slept with?”

  “Yes.” She answered immediately, confidently, and with just enough censure to light his temper.

  “Then tell me this—how will you be putting me into that memory bank? As Zach or Ian?”

  That took an edge off her self-righteousness. “You wouldn’t just know her from sleeping with her once. You also heard from her a year later, at which time you paid her twenty-five thousand dollars to go away. In my opinion, that gives you twenty-five thousand and one reasons to remember her name.”

  He laughed, a caustic, ugly laugh. “No. You’ve still got me mixed up with Ian. If I want someone to leave me alone, I tell them to leave me alone. I’d never pay someone to go away—to say nothing of the fact that I don’t have that kind of money to throw around.”

  Tessa’s lips compressed in a look of determination. She reached for the envelope, and another chill washed over Zach.

  “I don’t know where you got this idea,” he said, “or what stories people are telling you, but you’ve got the wrong—”

  She slapped a piece of paper in front of him.

  “What’s that?”

  “The payment you’re denying.”

  Jesus Christ. He sighed, dropped to the edge of the bench across from her and rested his head in his hand as he scanned the image. It was a cashier’s check made out to Corinne Westerly in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. He opened his mouth to tell her this didn’t have anything to do with him, when his gaze scanned across the bottom left-hand corner of the check—and all his words dried up. Zach was named as the remitter. And it had come from a bank where Zach had accounts. His gaze darted to the last four digits on the account number: Nine-one-zero-seven. Those corresponded to one of his accounts.

  For the first time, the inkling of personal involvement in whatever Tessa was talking about peeked through. But he shook his head, trying to make sense of it. “This is an account I set up for my agent so he could deposit paychecks that came through while I was traveling. He takes his cut and deposits the balance in this account. I’ve never written checks out of it, and I didn’t get this cashier’s check. I don’t even leave more than a hundred bucks in it.”

  “Yet this,” she pointed to the memo line, “is a payment.”

  It read: Payment in full.

  Zach had a sudden, rabid need to get ahold of Marshall. He sure as shit had some explaining to do.

  “I did not pull this check from my account.” He shook his head, utterly baffled. “I don’t know what to tell you. What does this have to do with you, anyway?”

  Her annoyed, knowing expression had faded. Now she looked suspicious and a little baffled. “Like I said, she was my best friend. We were friends since we were kids.”

  He shook his head, shrugged. “And?”

  “You really don’t remember, do you?” She huffed a disgusted sound and sat back in the booth, crossing her arms. “Here’s the short, memory-jolting version. You slept with Corinne. Corinne got pregnant. When she reached out to tell you, you didn’t want to have anything to do with her or the baby and offered her money to get lost.”

  The word “pregnant” spun Zach like a top, and his body temperature plummeted. “No.” His denial was immediate and adamant. “No, no, no. You’re wrong.” He shoved the copy at her. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull or what you think you know, but you’re wrong.” His voice rose, and his vehemence doubled. “I don’t tap it unless I wrap it. I didn’t get anyone pregnant.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What…did you just say?”

  “I just said you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” He knew he was losing his shit when the people from the neighboring booth looked over. Zach grasped at threads of control. He waved a hand at the photocopy. “I’ll talk to Marshall about this, but whatever it is, it’s not what you’re saying it is.”

  Tessa slapped another piece of paper in front of him.

  Zach slid out of the booth and swiveled to face her, his hands flat on the table. He looked her in the eye. “I’m not listening to any more of this bull—”

  “Your name is on the birth certificate.”

  Zach’s tongue caught in his throat. At least it felt that way. He held Tessa’s determined gaze, unable, unwilling to look down at any more evidence he was involved in that whole…that whole…pregnant thing. God, he even hated the word—pregnant. What kind of word was that anyway?

  After a moment of thick silence, Tess exhaled heavily. “Look, I don’t want anything from you, okay? In fact, I want to make all this go away.”

  Another dose of dread washed through his belly. Zach slowly straightened, prepping for whatever fraudulent scam she was selling. It just figured, didn’t it? The first woman who’d spiked his interest in way too long, and she was a scam artist.

  “All I need is your signatur
e on these papers.” She pulled a few more sheets from the envelope and added them to the pile, but Zach didn’t even glance at them. “And I’ll walk away. You’ll never have to hear from me or see me again. This birth certificate becomes null and void. You’re free—no ties, no obligations.”

  “This has to be the most convoluted, ridiculous scam I’ve ever heard of. You’re either the lousiest con artist or the most corrupt lawyer on the planet.”

  “Watch it.” Her chin dipped, and her eyes flashed. “I know I made a mistake in the beginning by sleeping with you, but I’m doing my best to right that. I’m doing my best to make this as easy as possible on you.”

  “Yeah. I’m just one big fucking mistake, aren’t I?” Story of his life. “That’s the perfect cherry on this pile of bullshit.” He waved at the papers. “I’m not signing shit—”

  “You will if you don’t want to be held legally responsible for a three-year-old girl.”

  An image popped into his head—the darling little face in the picture on her phone. His gut tweaked, but he pushed the fear aside. She could have gotten that image from anywhere.

  He looked at the papers. “What is this? No, never mind. I don’t care—”

  “It’s a release of your parental rights.”

  Zach’s mouth hung open mid-sentence. Icy heat speared his gut. He straightened, dropped his head back, and stared at the ceiling for a couple of heartbeats, caught between shaking this woman until she stopped spewing bullshit and running as fast as he could. He turned in a circle and threaded both hands into his hair. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  “It’s best for everyone involved.” Tessa’s voice softened, infused with compassion and edged with urgency, but she remained as grounded as Zach was frantic. “I’m the only constant in her life. I’m her legal guardian. I’ve been with her since before she was born, and I want to adopt her, Zach. I want to make it legal and move on with our lives. I know you’re pissed at me, and I know you don’t want to be a father, but please work this out with me outside of court—for Sophia.”

  Outside of court? Another shaft of fear cut through him. He stopped pacing and dropped his hands to his hips. This was a man’s worst nightmare—being as careful as humanly possible while sleeping around, yet getting a chick pregnant.