“Sure we can, dollface. We just need to hurry.”
Her hands on his wrists stopped him as he reached for his fly. “No. Stop.”
The tears in her eyes just about killed him. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so in love with you,” she said, her voice catching. His heart burst at her confession. “But I’m scared, because I-” A tear slid down her cheek. “Because I-”
He pressed a finger to her soft lips, then replaced it with a kiss. “I’m scared, too,” he said, tasting her salty tears. “And I’m so in love with you, too.” He kissed her until little sounds of pleasure echoed in her throat. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he unzipped his jeans and freed himself from their confines. Her thigh-high stockings presented no barrier to his need, and he quickly pushed himself into her ready heat. She gasped and arched her neck as he filled her up.
“Oh, baby,” he groaned against her shoulder. “You’re killing me.”
She squeezed her thighs together, drawing him deeper inside. He thrust into her over and over, harder and harder until they climaxed together. He swallowed her moans of ecstasy with his mouth. His family might suspect why he and Ava had disappeared, but they didn’t need their suspicions confirmed by her passionate cries.
After a few moments of afterglow, with his arms wrapped tightly around her and her hands pressed into the counter behind her hips, they pulled apart.
“My God, Ava. I don’t think I could love you any more than I do right now.”
She lowered her chin to her chest. “Is this just about sex, Zach?” she murmured, her gaze downcast.
With his finger, he tipped her face up to peer into her gorgeous eyes. “You don’t honestly think that, do you?”
After a moment, she shook her head.
“Ava. Yes, I love the sex.” He grinned. “But I love you. I love everything about you. Okay?”
Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut, but not before he saw her vulnerability and fear.
“Ava.” He kissed her forehead.
A sob leapt from her throat.
“Oh, sweetheart.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I know we’re moving fast. But don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”
Her shoulders shuddered. He wrapped her into his arms and held her tight. Her hands clutched his shoulders as if she feared she’d never see him again.
They reentered the main living area a few minutes later, hand in hand. Ava’s flushed face told everyone present that they’d slipped away for some hanky-panky before dinner. Zach didn’t care, and he couldn’t stop smiling.
After some small talk with the family, and more than a few knowing looks from his father and brother-in-law, and even one from the dignified Stoudt, Zach tugged Ava into the corner of the room, to a shadowed area beside a large ficus. Her demeanor was as stiff as the old butler’s posture. Obviously, his family still made her uncomfortable. He knew just what to do to prove to her his family’s opinion didn’t matter to him.
“I think we should make it official,” he said, hearing the catch in his voice.
“Make what official?” she asked.
He lifted her left hand to his mouth, and kissed the backs of her fingers before holding the sparkling diamond up between them, the ring she’d been wearing just for show. Until now. “This.”
Her free hand pressed over her chest, and her body trembled against his. “Wh-what?”
He kissed her hand again, then placed it over his heart. “I’m saying I love you, and want to be with you for the rest of my life.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to speak. “Ideally, that means marriage and kids someday, but if you’re not up for those things, I’m okay with that. I just want to be with you.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth quivered at the corners.
“Holy Christ,” muttered his father.
“Oh, my.” That from Theresa.
“What the hell?” Allan sounded stunned.
Grace Banister merely gasped.
Zach turned, thinking they’d overheard his whispered proposal.
His family, every one of them, stared slack-jawed toward the doorway. Then they turned as a unit to stare at him and Ava.
“What’s going on?” Ava murmured, and both she and Zach moved out of their corner to see what was causing all the fuss.
Zach blinked. Ava stood in the doorway. He turned to the woman beside him. And Ava stood right next to him, their fingers still entwined. He released her hand, and had the vague notion of it falling to her side. He barely registered her gasp.
“What is going on?” thundered Garrett.
“Audrey?” Zach asked, looking at the woman in the doorway.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, pointing to Ava beside him. “Talk to her.”
Zach’s brows pulled together, and a knot of something very uncomfortable began to coil in his gut. He turned to the woman beside him. “What’s she talking about?”
Tears welled in Ava’s eyes. “She’s not Audrey,” she said, pointing to her sister. “I am.” She placed a hand on his arm. “Could we go someplace private to talk about this?”
Zach grabbed her shoulders and peered into her eyes. Guilt flickered in the green depths. No! His stomach muscles clenched as if he’d just been sucker-punched. “Who did I just spend the weekend with?”
The woman who was apparently Audrey blinked a couple of times. “You can’t tell?”
He released her, feeling a wall close off around his heart. “Enlighten me.”
Audrey glanced at her twin as if to draw her support, but Ava stood fast in the doorway. No help there. “It was me,” she cried, tears falling down her face. “You spent the weekend with me. Please. Could we go somewhere-”
“No. I think right here is just fine.”
“Will somebody please tell us what the hell is going on?” demanded Garrett.
Everyone ignored him, absorbed in the unfolding scene, which wrung out Zach’s soul and left it dry and crumpled.
“Go on,” he said to this Audrey, a woman he apparently didn’t know at all. “I’m all ears.”
She twisted her hands in front of her and once again looked to her sister. Out of the corner of his eye, Zach saw Ava nod. “When you asked Ava here for the weekend, she, um, was under the impression that-” She looked over his shoulder to his fascinated family. “Are you sure you want to do this here?”
He glared at her, refusing to let her quaking voice get to him.
“Okay. Um…anyway, remember Ava was under the impression that you wanted her to be your real fiancée, and didn’t hear the part about you just wanting a fake girlfriend for the weekend?”
Zach waited for his family to explode into applause, but to their credit, they remained silent.
“Ava’s always had a hard time breaking it off with men, so she asked me to do it for her. I figured I’d break up with you that first night and go home, with you none the wiser, but then you-” Her voice caught, and she looked away. “But then you proposed, and no one’s ever proposed to me before, and I couldn’t say no, and…well, you know the rest.”
“So this has all just been a game to you.” He kept his voice flat, emotionless.
“No! I mean, at first it was, but everything we shared, everything we-” She glanced away, “-talked about, was real.” She curled and uncurled her hands around each other, holding them over her heart.
He stared at her face, waiting for her to meet his gaze. When she did, he had to steel himself against the torment in her eyes. Her beautiful, deceitful eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
More tears cascaded onto her cheeks. He wouldn’t let it bother him. She was no better than the women who’d come before her.
When he’d taken a few steps away, when he’d created enough distance between them that he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her, he said, “I want you and your sister gone within the hour.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and strode out of the room, past the gaping m
ouths of his family, avoiding their looks.
Ava-the real Ava-still stood on the step. She wore the same stunned expression as everyone else. As he passed her, he said, “Ava?”
She looked up, expectant.
“You’re fired.”
Chapter Twelve
Audrey stood frozen except for the stream of tears sliding down her cheeks. No one in the room moved.
Finally, Ava came over and took Audrey’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get your things.”
Audrey let herself be led across the room, past Zach’s family who, amazingly, hadn’t said a word. She paused at the threshold to the foyer. “I’m really sorry,” she said, her voice tight. “I never meant for this to happen.” She swiped at a tear with the back of her wrist. “I never meant to hurt Zach. I…just wanted you to know that.”
She pulled the diamond ring from her left hand and approached Theresa. She held out the ring. “Could you please give this to your brother?”
Theresa took it, and their gazes connected for the briefest of moments. Theresa’s mouth pressed into a small, sympathetic smile. Audrey followed her sister out of the room, moving like an automaton as they headed upstairs.
As soon as Ava shut the bedroom door, Audrey collapsed into a heap on the floor beside the bed, burying her face in her hands. She’d been so stupid. So stupid. And now she had nothing.
“That went well,” Ava deadpanned.
Audrey sobbed through her fingers. “I blew it.”
“Yeah, you did.” Ava sat beside her, wrapping an arm around her.
Audrey suddenly remembered what had spurred the whole horrible scene, and pulled out of her sister’s embrace. “You blew it for me. You ruined everything by coming downstairs dressed like that. Everything would have worked out fine if you’d come down as me, like I’d asked.”
Ava crossed her arms over her chest, silent.
“I would still be with Zachary, and he would still think I was-”
“He would still think you were what, Aud? This had to happen eventually. Maybe I shouldn’t have forced your hand, but you kept talking yourself out of telling him. I was afraid you’d put it off until it was way too late.”
“It’s way too late now,” Audrey whispered, amazed she could put a coherent sentence together when her entire soul felt ripped apart. “He looked at me like he hated me. Like he didn’t know me.”
Someone knocked on the door.
Audrey jumped up and sprinted across the room, stilettos and all. With hope lifting her heart, she flung open the door.
“I came to see if you needed anything, miss,” Stoudt said.
Hope crashed and burned. She tried to smile, but her quivering mouth resisted. “Have you seen Zach?”
Stoudt glanced away briefly, and Audrey could tell the loyal and discreet employee battled with his humanity. Finally, he said, “I think he’s showering.”
Meaning he wanted to wash all traces of her from his body. She looked at the ceiling and resisted the tears.
She touched Stoudt’s arm. “When you see him, would you tell him I’m sorry?”
Stoudt patted her hand, then backed up a step. “That is not my place, miss.”
Her fingers curled around the edge of the door, and her ears hummed. “Oh. Of course.”
“Miss Divine, er, Miss Thompson?” He reddened at the gaffe. “It was a pleasure serving you this weekend.” His soft tone conveyed sincerity, and Audrey wanted to cry. He bowed. “Good luck, Miss.”
*****
“I don’t want to hear it,” Zach snapped as he tossed his bags into the back of his Jeep. His heart felt like a sledgehammer had pounded it flat.
“Zach, if you could have seen her face-” Theresa began.
He gave her his most threatening look. “I. Don’t. Care. And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why you do. You made your feelings about her very clear.”
Theresa cleared her throat. “Yes, well, that was when she was pretending to be…someone else.”
“You still don’t know who she is. Neither do I.”
“I know she cares about you, and the way you’re acting tells me you care about her, too. That’s why I care.”
“You’ll get over it.”
She reached out and smoothed his hair from his forehead, like she used to do when she’d been his only mother-figure as a child. He jerked away, but she gave him that sympathetic look. “You love her, don’t you?”
He ignored the knife through his heart. “Love is for movies.”
“You realize this whole charade was your idea, don’t you?”
“Whatever.”
“She was only doing what you asked her to do.”
Zach pointed his finger at Theresa’s chest. “I asked Ava to help me out. I thought I was with Ava. Not Audrey. It was all a lie.”
“Was it?”
He blew a sound of disgust between his clenched teeth. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
She held up her hands. “Yours, of course. But Zach.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Think about something for a second, will you?”
He turned his head away, not caring.
“Why are you any better than Audrey in this scenario? She’s never played this game before, as far as I know. You and I have been doing it for years. I don’t recall either of us stopping to consider the repercussions of our practical jokes on our parents. Do you?”
“Thanks for the morals pep talk, but I gotta go.”
She grabbed his arm. He glared at her hand until she released him. “Maybe if you and I were strong enough to be honest with Mother and Dad over our relationship choices,” she paused and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, “we could actually find someone we truly want to be with.”
For the first time in years, his sister looked vulnerable, like the girl she used to be. Before Allan.
He shook his head. None of that mattered. Not any more. “I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
“Away from here.”
*****
The three-hour drive back to Boise dragged on and on. The scenery rushed past in a blur of blue and green and brown, partly because of Ava’s fast driving, but mostly due to Audrey’s tears.
She’d made a royal mess of things. If only she’d come clean when she’d learned Zach had asked Ava there as a phony fiancée. If only she’d never let herself be talked into this scheme in the first place. If only she hadn’t let herself fall so madly in love. She sighed and stared out the window as rugged mountain peaks gave way to grassy plains.
If only.
If she’d never agreed to the scheme, she’d never have met him. And if she’d never met him, then she would never have known his love. But if she’d never fallen in love, she’d never have had her heart broken. She doubted it would ever completely mend.
Rain splatted on the windshield. Ava cursed as she turned on the wipers. “You said it never rains in Boise.”
“We’re not in Boise yet.”
“It was sunny two minutes ago. Look, I can still see sunshine in the rearview mirror.” Ava sounded almost as grouchy as she did.
“Tell it to Mother Nature,” Audrey grumped. “Why are you in such a bad mood?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because my sister lost the man she loves because of me, or because I lost my job. Take your pick.”
Oh, God. She’d been so selfish, so wrapped up in her own misery, she’d ignored her sister’s. “Oh, Ava,” she said, turning in the seat. “It’s not all your fault. I dug my own hole.”
“Yeah, but you dug it with my shovel.”
Audrey reached across the console and touched Ava’s arm. “And I’m sorry about your job.”
Ava shrugged. “I was getting kind of bored with it, anyway.” She had never been one to wallow in self-pity for long. She pointed out the window. “Oh, look. A rainbow. See it?”
“Yeah, I see it.” Audrey couldn’t have cared less.
“Remember when we were kids, we’d
ride our bikes really fast, trying to find the end of the rainbow?”
Audrey didn’t say anything, even though she remembered those days fondly.
“Remember when we’d watch The Wizard of Oz?” Ava went on. “We’d fast-forward through all the boring black-and-white scenes, except for the rainbow song?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Audrey said, her mind no longer on childhood memories. Her Technicolor moments had faded, and her boring black-and-white world-the one she’d tried to fast-forward through-had returned.
By the time they reached Boise, Audrey realized she didn’t want to fast-forward any more. She liked her life-it just lacked a key ingredient. And she thought she knew a way to get it back.
Audrey pointed to a store. “Turn in there.”
Ava grimaced. “Wal-Mart?”
“Don’t be such a snob. I need to buy something.”
Ava waited in the car while Audrey scurried inside. She found what she was looking for, then picked up a padded manila envelope, and rushed through the checkout line.
Back in the car, she pulled her purchase out of the bag. “That’s what you were in such a hurry to buy?” Ava said. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s for Zach. He’ll get it,” Audrey said, not bothering to tear off the label and price tag before sliding it into the envelope. “And if he doesn’t get it, then he’s not the man I think he is.” She couldn’t bear that thought.
She wrote his name in big block letters, then paused as she was about to write the address. “I don’t know where to send it. What if he doesn’t go home?” A smile curved her lips. “I’ll send it to Stoudt. He’ll know where to forward it.”
“Today’s Sunday, Aud. And tomorrow’s a holiday.”
Only a smidgen of air went out of Audrey’s balloon. “Then I’ll mail it first thing Tuesday.”
*****
As the four-wheeler bounced over the uneven terrain, Zach tried not to think about the last time he was at his cabin. With her.
Not thinking about her lasted about a millisecond.
He could almost feel her body pressed against his, her breasts crushing against his back every time they went over a bump.
Audrey. Audrey Thompson. He still wasn’t used to thinking of her by that name. It fit her. It was nice. Normal. Just like—
Passionate Kisses 2 Boxed Set: Love in Bloom Page 135