Why had he done it?
She didn’t need this. Not tonight.
He reached behind him for something…glanced down a moment, then lifted it to his ear. His phone. A moment later hers rang.
Her heart did a panicky flip-flop, and she told herself that Starla was calling to apologize. Maybe her sister. Oh, God, what if the baby was early?
She sprang for the phone. “Hello?”
“You’re late tonight.”
His voice, but she couldn’t believe it. Once again she backtracked to look out the window.
“How did you get my number?”
“Far too easily. You should consider getting a private listing. You never know who could get hold of it.”
He was right. “I may do that.”
She waited for what would come next. Nothing did. He simply sat there watching her, and all she heard was his breathing.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said, although she’d wanted to wait him out. “That’s some close shave.”
“Took me three throw-away razors to get it all off.” He swept his hand over his hair. “Still need some work on the rest.”
She couldn’t resist. “Preparing for a new press photo?”
“Nothing so public,” he replied, a wry smile in his voice. “More like an apology.”
“Really? Who’s the lucky soul?”
“My neighbor.”
She wondered if he heard her heart trip all over itself on its race up her throat. “Any special reason?”
“Pick one. And I don’t like knowing I still have a conscience, but I like the nightmares you’ve given me even less.”
She wasn’t prepared for such frankness, either. If that’s what this was—with Zachary Denton, how did you tell? But with her pulse racing too fast, her body suddenly feeling too exposed in her leotards and tights, despite the shirt she’d tied around her waist, she found herself unable to trust what she was hearing.
“I…I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s been a tough day. I can’t do this.”
Despite hearing him call out her name, she crossed back to the kitchen counter and hung up the receiver. Breathing deeply, she then poured herself a glass of wine from Starla’s bottle of chardonnay in the refrigerator.
Before she finished pouring, the phone rang again. She glanced out the kitchen window. Because of the valance curtains, she couldn’t see him clearly, but enough to notice he was looking for her. Thanks to her dusty blue outfit and the full moon, it wasn’t that difficult.
After returning the bottle to the refrigerator, she left the room, the phone continuing its ringing. It didn’t stop until she shut off the living room light. Relieved, she flipped on the one at the foot of the stairs.
Just inside her bedroom, she hesitated. Once again she’d forgotten she’d left the night light on, and she’d opened the blinds for the African violets on the left night table. If she crossed to her bed or closet—anywhere—he would be able to see her. With the hall light behind her, no doubt he already could. She saw him easily enough.
The phone began ringing again.
“Damn it, Zach.”
She slumped against the door and slid the cool glass across her overwarm forehead. This time she knew better than to hope it might be someone else. Taking another sip of wine didn’t help her ignore it, either, nor did several seconds of meditational breathing exercises.
Fully intent on jerking the jack out of the wall, instead she picked up the receiver from the extension beside the violets. “Why are you doing this?” She hardly recognized her voice. Not even when she’d been jogging on the treadmill had she sounded this out of breath. Despite her suspicions of and concerns about Ger Sacks, she hadn’t felt this pushed to an edge.
“Something’s wrong. I want to help.”
“Then stop calling.”
“That’s interesting coming from someone who’s pushed herself into my business.”
Yet another clip on the chin. Willa trapped the receiver between her chin and shoulder and rubbed at the throb that was starting at her temple. Maybe if she ignored him, he might get the message how she no longer felt inclined to do so.
“Talk to me, Willa. What’s happened? Something has. You sound emotionally wiped out and look as if you’ve lost your best friend. Since word has it that you love your business and thrive under pressure, something fairly serious has to have happened. Combine that with the way you’re dressed, my guess is that you ignored what I’d said and tried a bit of detective work on your own. Am I warm?”
“A friend wanted to try a temporary membership at the club. I agreed to go along for moral support.” And go ahead and ask me when I’ll be ready to attempt anything like that again.
“Even knowing that one of the men who worked there could be dangerous? Hell, woman, what’s it going to take to make you listen?”
If it hadn’t been for his husky voice, the way he leaned forward, looking so intent and…damn it, yes, concerned, she might have been able to keep her emotional distance. “I thought I could help both of us.”
He sighed. “What happened?”
“I don’t care to discuss it.”
“Willa.”
“It’s personal, all right? It has nothing to do with you or your…situation.”
“Fine. Tell me about it anyway because someone or something hurt you tonight, and you know full well that if you don’t get it off your chest, you won’t get any sleep.”
The near gentleness in his tone threatened to shatter her armor. As it was, she had to set down her glass for fear of spilling the rest of her wine. “What are you, a warlock in your free time?”
“If I were, do you think I’d waste my time asking so many questions. What can I do to make you feel better?”
“Try humming a few bars of ‘Tomorrow.”’
“Sorry. I never perform out of costume, and unfortunately my red wig is at the cleaners.”
Willa smiled despite herself. “Yeah, no dog, either.”
“No. He didn’t survive the crash.”
Willa clapped her hand over her mouth to hold back a gasp. How could she have forgotten that along with the rest, he’d lost a beloved pet? “Oh, Zach,” she whispered, more miserable than ever. “I’m so sorry.”
“Remind me to show you his picture sometime. Bear was one of a kind. Big, rude and totally unflappable.”
“Be careful,” she replied softly. “I may take you up on that invitation.”
“Maybe I’m hoping you do.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Zach listened to the silence that followed and understood Willa’s surprise and doubt. He had his own questions about what he’d just said. If anyone had magical powers, it was her because without his wanting her to, she’d managed to get through his defenses and made him respond.
“May I ask you a question?”
He reached for his glass, then stopped. No, he thought, he wouldn’t hide this time.
“You can try. I don’t promise I’ll answer.”
“It’s not about you—well, not directly. It’s about me.”
“That sounds provocative.”
“It does?”
Zach frowned. “Where’s this sudden lack of confidence coming from?”
Her sigh sounded frustrated. “I don’t like it either. All right, here goes…do you see me as a flirt?”
The sound that rose from deep in his chest was part growl and part laugh. “Anyone who goes around dressed like that has no right to ask such a question.”
“This is important, Zach. Just because you know I have a business that focuses on making a woman feel beautiful and romantic, does that make you see me differently? Do I act as if I’m out to prove I can get any man I want?”
“Who suggested you were?” Zach replied, beginning to get a handle on this strange conversation.
“My assistant manager, who I’d also considered a dear friend. She’s the one who asked me to go to the club with her. She thinks that working out there
would help her meet more men.” Willa tugged off her hair band, and then the protective band creating her ponytail.
“And after agreeing to go with her, you were the one who attracted the most attention, is that it?”
“Exactly.” Willa paced from one corner of the window to the other. “I swear I didn’t want that. I followed her from machine to machine, I listened, but let her ask all the questions. I even complimented her several times on her stamina. I know I was getting beat.”
“Yet somehow you still made the fatal mistake of outshining her.”
“But that’s not true! I was simply there.”
“Maybe she thought you could at least have fallen off one of the machines, been criticized for having dimpled thighs—something. How ungracious of you, Mrs. Whitney.”
Willa uttered an exasperated sound. “I should have known better than to believe you were serious about helping.”
“But I am,” he assured her, aware she meant to hang up on him. “You’re simply not listening. What I’m telling you is that this is her distortion of reality, not yours.”
“Well, that so-called distortion sent her home in a huff, and now I have to wonder if she’s going to speak to me again, let alone come back to work tomorrow.”
“Mmm, but as Will Shakespeare warned in Othello, ‘O! beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”’ And, Zach mused, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. “Sounds to me as if you’d be better off without her.”
“But we’ve been a team since I started the store!”
“And through all that time you didn’t notice her low self-esteem? That she set you up almost on a pedestal, often making you feel uncomfortable, only to occasionally use you as a brunt of a joke either to your face or behind your back?”
He had his answer in her silence. “Let me ask you one more thing. Was there someone there who particularly interested her? Someone she thought attainable for herself, but he paid you more attention than he did her?” Through the slits in the blinds, he watched Willa bite at her lower lip. “Come on, out with it.”
“Gerald Sacks.”
Ah, hell, he thought, he’d dug his pit and had fallen in. As the green monster took hold of him, he had to fight the violent urge to sweep his glass off his desk and across the room. Of any of the responses she could have made, he hadn’t wanted to hear that one.
“Are…you…crazy? After what I told you, you two were toying around with him?”
The sound of the phone slamming sent a piercing pain through his head. He swore—but more at himself than for what she had done. He’d been a fool to explode. Even if she hadn’t already been stinging from a painful experience, the quickest way to shut down communications was to mock the confidant. He may have failed in marriage, but he knew the rules.
Leave it be. He should never have phoned her anyway. His net was working, his situation was getting more dangerous. The note that had come in today’s mail proved he may not have much time.
But for the moment he was safe, and she was so close…so tempting. Just hearing her voice kept him from slipping too deep into the darkness and depression that threatened to keep him a prisoner forever.
Zach reached for the phone and punched in the number that was now committed to memory. It rang and rang…eight times, nine, ten. On the twelfth she picked up the receiver and set it down again. He couldn’t see her actually doing it because she was out of view, somewhere to the left. He guessed she was sitting on her bed; that’s where he’d watched the movers carry the mattresses and headboard.
He punched in the numbers again, and waited. Six…seven…eight…
“You’re despicable.”
He watched the window, willing her to move back to it. “Don’t hang up. You know I’m going to apologize.”
“Save it for someone who wants to hear it.”
“You do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have answered the phone.”
“I answered so I could tell you what I thought of you,” she shot back a bit too quickly.
“If that’s what you want, why don’t you come over and do it in person?” he drawled, fighting a unique anxiety stirring inside him.
Seconds later she appeared by the window and jerked up the blinds. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” he murmured, drinking in the sight of her. Blinds or no blinds, she made him wish a number of things, and want a great deal more. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”
“Isn’t it amazing…all I have to do is mention a name like Ger Sacks and suddenly I get an invitation to the inner sanctum?”
“There’s no connection tonight.”
She shook her head. “Why, Zach?”
“The moon is full. I’m tired of fighting the obvious.”
“I don’t think so. Not you.”
He had to polish off what was left in his glass to bring himself to say the words. “We’ve been working toward this since the moment we met, Willa.”
“…your timing.”
“What?”
“I said this isn’t a good night to mention that.”
“It’s the best night. Someone tried to kick you in the teeth. Not because you deserved it, but because they were feeling sorry for themselves and it was easier to blame you than to work on their own problems. The worst thing you can do is to let them.” He was speaking for both of them, but she didn’t need to know that.
“You think the answer is to come over there instead?”
The tension coiling inside him threatened to snap something in his spine. “I suppose it is a ridiculous idea at that.”
Willa uttered a soft gasp. “That’s not what I meant, Zach.”
“No?” He grimaced inwardly, hating the need he heard in that one small word.
“Is this strictly about you and me? Not…” She sighed. “What changed your mind?”
Ah. She’d been kind and hit him a fly ball. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
She inclined her head in a way that could have been a bow, agreement or a salute for cleverly answering the question with a question. “What’s supposed to have changed my mind?”
“You mean is it safe to trust me?”
“Something like that. You’ve warned me off yourself. I might add, for more reasons than one.”
“What’s more, it’s been quiet in town these past few days. Unnaturally so,” he added, intentionally lowering his voice until he sounded like a radio actor in some matinee melodrama. “Do you suspect the beast is growing restless? Maybe to play it safe he’s going to pick on his neighbor as his victim?”
“Zach…” Willa ducked her head. “I don’t think I’m up to this.”
He dropped the theatrics and asked flat-out, “Is it the chair?”
“That’s a terrible thing to suggest!”
He knew better than to take too much pleasure in her quick reply, but he did anyway. “Is it? I thought it rather honest myself. A woman has a right to expect that a man will give as much satisfaction as he takes. Considering my situation, it’s only natural for you to have doubts about whether certain…things would be possible.”
Willa moistened her lips. “No, you already made it clear that there wouldn’t be any problem.”
“Then why are you turning me down?”
“I’m feeling too…breakable tonight. If I came over there, it would be all of me, do you understand? Because I don’t know how else to be. And if you said or did anything…”
He was almost ready to beg, to vow that he would take her any way he could get her, and barely managed to stop himself. “You’re right. Bad idea,” he forced himself to say with a flippancy he’d never even known as a kid. “Well, it’s time I get back to my mind games and gore anyway. Sweet dreams, fair Willa. Your watchdog on wheels is guarding the neighborhood as usual.”
“Zach?”
“Yeah?”
“Ask me again?”
“Who knows what tomorro
w will bring?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zack waited until Willa lowered the blinds and shut them before he turned back to his computer. But the woman remained a vivid and powerful influence in his mind. It was the way he needed her to be tonight. He had work to do.
He’d already begun to breathe fictional life into her through his words. She had become independent, enticing Brett, brave but vulnerable Brett, who was fast becoming his protagonist’s obsession. In the scene he’d been polishing before Willa had come home, he’d had Kane intent on seducing Brett, even though they’d barely known each other for more than a week. But as intrigued and effected as she’d been, she’d found his motives suspect, and he hadn’t been able to convince her otherwise—understandable since what was going on inside him was complicated and contradictory. Women didn’t react well to being pulled and pushed at the same time.
Zach smiled bitterly. “It’s the same way on this side of the screen, Kane, old man.”
Yes, understandable. But damned inconvenient.
Twisted by a malignant need for revenge, it had been Kane’s cold-blooded intention to use Brett as an unwitting decoy to draw out flashy, conniving Jade. Once, Jade had been his partner, first his researcher, then his lover, then his wife—until Kane learned of the unscrupulous ways the insatiable, heartless Jade did research. When she’d learned his intent to divorce her, she’d tried to kill him and collect the insurance money, to inherit everything because he hadn’t yet had time to change his will. But he’d fooled her. He’d survived.
Kane had let Brett believe he wanted her to stay away from Jade, then used their sexual chemistry to compel her to do otherwise. It was a despicable scenario for a character who had always written his novels with high ideals, no matter how seasoned they’d been with the macabre. Despicable, but again understandable. Because the tragedy that had taken away Kane’s ability to walk, combined with the revelation about the subterfuge and betrayal by those he’d once cared for and trusted, had devoured his soul like a cancer-ravaging flesh.
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