“My parents called you?” He sat up straighter, his spine rigid. He was a grown man. What the hell reason would his parents have for calling his boss?
“They didn’t have a choice. You weren’t answering your phone, and they wanted to warn you.”
He palmed his phone in his pocket and pulled it out. Sure enough, he hadn’t remembered to take it off do-not-disturb mode when he woke up. Or had it been silent even longer than that? “Warn me about what?”
“Your ex-wife.” She winced.
“My ex-wife?” How the hell did that damn woman continue to feature in half his conversations? He hadn’t thought about her in years, and now the ghost of their relationship seemed to be this unwelcome presence keeping him from everything he wanted and Michelle deserved.
“Apparently, she called your parents, wanting to get information about you. When they told her you’d been reanimated, she got all excited and said she was heading here.”
“What?” he shouted, jumping up from the chair. “Here? As in here here? The bunker?”
Temple nodded. She winced. She had been his boss from the moment he’d arrived at the bunker to work, and she knew nearly all the gory details about Meredith. Everyone did. They were a close-knit group. Not to mention his drama had topped everyone’s at the time, making for ongoing dinner conversation since most of the original team hadn’t had significant others or any excitement to speak of. “Your mom said she was acting strange and talked too fast. She seemed way too excited to hear you had been reanimated.”
“When did this happen?”
“Late last night. I wasn’t in my office. Your mom left a message. I just now had a chance to return her call.”
“Well, Meredith is wasting her time coming here. She can’t get onto the grounds.”
“She can if we let her.”
Zeke groaned as he lowered himself back onto the chair. “Why would we do that?”
Temple shrugged. “In order to find out what her angle is. I’m skeptical about her sudden interest in you, and I don’t want any media blowback from a half-cocked ex-wife looking to sell her story.”
He lifted a brow. “You and me both. It’s crazy.”
“That’s why I think you should go ahead and meet with her. Here. In the conference room. That way you can feel her out on our turf, figure out if she’s got an agenda, and get rid of her.”
Zeke couldn’t imagine why the woman would want to see him. As far as he was concerned, they had divorced four years ago. For her, it had been fourteen.
He shook his head. “You don’t know Meredith. She’s manipulative and always has an agenda. She isn’t coming here for her health.”
“So find out what it is. See what she has to say and put an end to it.”
Zeke groaned. His brain was overloaded today. He had yet to fully process whatever what happening between him and Michelle. He was functioning on little sleep. And the entire bunker was in upheaval over ongoing computer issues. This situation with his ex-wife was more than he could stomach. “Fine. Jesus. Fuck. How about next week? Let’s put her off.”
Temple sighed. “Well, your mom said Meredith was on her way, so she may show up within the next few hours, not next week. Just get it over with so we can all get back to work.”
Adrenaline pumped through his system. This day was about to become the day from hell. Zeke stood and began to pace. “This is crazy. In her world, I haven’t seen her in fourteen years.”
Temple nodded. “I know. I have an undercover officer working out front now. She’s been informed. Nicole will text me when Meredith shows up and give us a heads-up.”
Zeke sighed. “I have nothing to say to Meredith. Not a single word. I never did. That crazy bitch cheated on me and left me. What the hell would she need to see me now?”
Temple stood. “No idea. But face her, deal with it, move on. I’m suspicious of everyone these days. We don’t need someone with an axe to grind. I remember how she left you without a word. She could be unhinged. It’s best if we know what she’s after so we can get ahead of it. We don’t need her talking to the press.”
Zeke blew out a long breath. He considered telling Temple fuck no and then heading to his suite to hide from the world. But his boss was right. He needed to pull his shit together and face the crazy woman he never should have gotten involved with in the first place.
He was also reminded why he’d sworn off women. Obviously, he had horrible bitch radar. He’d been too naïve when he fell for her charm and let her into his life. He wasn’t at all sure he wasn’t still that naïve. There was a reason he never dated after she left. Not just because he was married to his job, but also out of self-preservation.
What about Michelle? She was nothing like Meredith. He knew in his soul she would not intentionally fuck him over. He also knew she couldn’t do so if he didn’t let her. Walls that had slowly crumbled around him over the past several weeks slammed back up.
He needed to get rid of Meredith and then reevaluate any thought he’d had about starting up something with Michelle. He’d only been reanimated for six weeks. It was way too soon to get involved with someone. His life was in an upheaval; his priority needed to be catching up in the field of immunology and all the new technology that had been invented in the last decade.
What he didn’t need was to allow himself to be led by his dick just because a pretty woman crossed his path and showed an interest.
“Fine.”
Temple nodded. “I’ll have her escorted to the conference room when she gets here.”
Without a word, Zeke turned around and stomped from the room. He needed to regroup before he faced his ex. Instead of returning to the lab, he headed for his suite. He had no desire to face anyone else right now, especially not Michelle, who would read his mood and ask him questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.
Sure enough, Temple was right when she suspected Meredith would be there that very day. Not two hours later, she showed up. Zeke was a little surprised when he first entered the conference room. Meredith hadn’t changed much in fourteen years. Her physique was nearly the same. Either she worked out hard or she hadn’t had children. Or both. Her hair was shorter—just below her shoulders—and styled differently, but it was the same shade of brown. There might have been a few more wrinkles on her face, but other than that, she looked good.
She would be forty now.
Her eyes widened when she saw him, and her mouth fell open. “Wow. You haven’t aged a bit.”
He sighed. “That’s what happens when you’re cryonically preserved for a decade. What are you doing here, Meredith?”
She gasped, putting a hand over her heart dramatically as if he’d insulted her. What had he ever seen in his woman? “When I heard the news, I had to see you. I mean, seriously, Zeke, of course I would come as fast as I could. We used to be married. We have a connection. It means something to me.”
He searched her lying, cheating eyes and dropped into a chair. This was insane. What was her agenda? “I repeat, what are you doing here?”
She lowered herself elegantly onto a chair across from him. She was wearing a pencil skirt and a pale pink blouse that did nothing to hide the lace of her bra. Were her boobs bigger? He almost laughed. If anyone was vain enough to get a boob job, it would be Meredith. He wondered who was funding her expensive habits.
She pasted on a fake pout, complete with a comically protruding bottom lip. “Zeke,” she crooned in a voice he might have once considered seductive, “don’t be so stoic. People care about you. I’m one of them.” She sat straighter and switched from a pout to a smile. “You look great, by the way. How do you feel?”
“I feel like I want you to say what you have to say and get out of here so I can work. I have things to do.”
She glanced through the window that faced the hallway. Every few seconds, people hurried by. He felt guilty sitting here while the rest of the bunker was working hard. He also ignored everyone who walked by, wishing he wouldn’t have to explain himself l
ater.
There was no hope for that, however. He was certain everyone in the bunker already had the memo, and word of his damn ex-wife would be circulating fast. And that would include Michelle hearing about it.
Meredith stared out the window again. “Seems really hectic around here. What’s everyone in such a hurry for?”
Zeke leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and narrowing his gaze at her. “Nothing has changed in fourteen years, Meredith. This is still a government bunker. Anything that occurs in this facility is classified.”
She nodded. “Right. Of course. I just didn’t expect so many people and so much rushing.”
He said nothing.
She sighed and trailed her pointer over the top of the table, tilting her head to one side. “Are they taking care of you? I mean, please tell me the government is paying all of you a huge settlement for what you’ve been through.”
He lost every ounce of control at that statement, throwing his head back and laughing so hard his stomach muscles hurt. He even had to wipe his eyes by the time he’d finished.
Meredith’s cheeks were red and her face was pinched. “What’s so funny? Honestly, Zeke, I do not understand you sometimes.”
Sobering, he responded. “You never understood me for a single moment. You never even tried. You didn’t care. All you saw were dollar signs when you expected a PhD student at Harvard to be rich enough to support your lavish lifestyle. It must have really stung when you found out you were wrong.
“Surely, with your looks and ability to fool anyone with a dick, you managed to snag someone else to support you? What happened to him? Or were there several men who fell for your stunts before wising up and leaving after you wiped out their bank accounts?
“How much plastic surgery have you had? You must be conveniently between men and hoping to score with your first husband again if you were willing to go to all this trouble to see me.”
“Zeke!” she said in her placating voice.
He rose, set his hands on the table, and leaned closer. “You guessed wrong about the settlement. Let me save you the trouble. There was no windfall of money. I’m still just as poor as I was the day you left me when I couldn’t afford your manicures and hundreds of pairs of shoes anymore. So, you’ve wasted your time. Get out of here. Look elsewhere. I pity the next man who falls victim to your schemes, but I have important work to do.”
He spun around, opened the door, and waved a hand toward the hallway. “Let’s go,” he continued when she didn’t jump up fast enough.
With a loud hmph, she finally rose, held her head high, and paused in the entrance to address him again. “You would think a man who came so close to death would have softened and become less of an asshole from the experience. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Obviously,” he confirmed.
She threw her hands in the air and then stomped down the hallway.
He stayed on her heels until they reached the front desk where he told the guard to escort her off the property and inform the security team at the front gate not to admit her again for any reason.
Luckily, Meredith didn’t bother to speak again.
Michelle’s hands were shaking so badly that she had to excuse herself from the lab. She hurried down the hallway and slid undetected into her suite at the other end of the bunker, exhaling long and slow when she was finally alone.
The entire morning had been a shit storm, and the afternoon had not been better. But nothing had prepared her for the rumor that circulated around that Zeke’s ex-wife was in the building meeting with him in the conference room.
She could kick herself for giving a single shit and heading that direction. A small piece of her had been pissed that he hadn’t told her Meredith was coming, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he might be in need of moral support. Plus, she badly wanted to see the woman he had originally thought looked like Michelle.
What she had not been prepared for was rounding the corner to the conference room and finding him inside with his head tipped back laughing as though the woman had just told him the most fascinating joke on the planet.
She blinked several times while he continued to laugh, glancing only briefly at Meredith across from him to find her expression oddly weary. She indeed had brown hair, though it was shorter than Michelle’s.
She also didn’t look old enough to have been married to him fourteen years ago. Seated at the table, it was difficult to tell how tall she was, but it was true she was slender. Her breasts however were huge.
Michelle shoved off the door and headed for the fridge. She grabbed a bottle of water when what she really wanted was several shots of tequila or something hard like that. She didn’t have any hard alcohol in her suite, however.
Plus, she needed to find a way to pull herself back together and get back to work. Everybody in the bunker was needed, including the recently revived. They’d had a small break-through with Myasthenia Gravis. Not a cure yet, but a possible inoculation vaccine. Everyone was buzzing.
Only the last four who had been brought out of their comas two weeks ago and were still gaining enough strength to stand and walk were excluded from the hustle and bustle of the lab. Zeke’s entire group of four from six weeks ago were all hard at work in whatever capacity they could manage.
Oh, wait. Zeke wasn’t working with the others. Noooo. He was currently having a laugh-fest with his ex-wife.
Michelle took long swigs of water, set the bottle on the counter, and then tipped her head from side to side to work out the kinks. After several deep breaths and a short pep talk about what idiots men were and how she didn’t need one now or ever, she headed for the door.
She would have to claim temporary insanity for having jumped Zeke so thoroughly on several occasions now. Thank God she hadn’t slept with him. A few kisses and some groping wasn’t that big of deal. Right?
Apparently, kissing and groping hadn’t meant a damn thing to him if he didn’t think it was necessary to inform her he was meeting with his ex-wife, and then somehow found the woman to be so hilarious that he smiled and laughed harder than Michelle imagined he’d ever done in his life.
He sure hadn’t done anything like that in front of her or anyone else in the bunker. His sour expression initially put everyone on edge. Sure, she’d made some sort of headway with him the past few weeks, helped bring out the occasional smile, but laughter?
Fuck him.
No longer feeling sorry for herself, Michelle made her way back to the lab where she summarily ignored Zeke and proceeded to get an update from two of her coworkers working on the vaccine.
She didn’t permit herself to glance at Zeke a single time for the rest of the day. She didn’t even go to the cafeteria to eat dinner, instead asking Emily to please make her a plate when she went herself.
Michelle returned to her suite late that evening, but she barely kicked off her shoes before someone knocked on the door. Half-expecting to find Zeke outside, she groaned as she looked through the peephole.
Emily. Thank God.
She opened the door to let her friend in, not realizing until then that she had Kate with her.
Michelle held the door open politely even though she was exhausted and would prefer to take a long bath, drink a half a bottle of wine, and drown herself in her self-inflicted sorrows.
“What’s up?” she asked as they filed in.
Kate held up a bottle of wine, though she had one in each hand. “We need an update.”
“Update on what?” she asked, feigning innocence.
Emily narrowed her gaze. “Something happened after Kate colored your hair last week. And I bet it’s happened more than once. So spill.” She flopped down on Michelle’s sofa and held out her glass toward Kate. “Get that wine open. We’re going to need it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michelle lied.
Kate moved to the kitchenette to find a cork screw and spoke when she held it up in victory. “Yeah, that
’s not going to work with us. We know you better than that.”
Michelle lowered herself into the armchair, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. “What are you guys, psychic?”
Emily responded, “It would be far more interesting if we pretended we were, but the truth is much less interesting. Ryan told me Meredith was here earlier. He also told me you and Zeke used his office one day last week.”
Michelle jerked her head up. “Shit.”
Emily giggled. “He isn’t mad. No big deal. He doesn’t care. He just turned around and went the other way to give you guys privacy, which apparently you needed. And, rumor has it you two stopped fighting in the lab all the time.”
Michelle groaned. The last thing she wanted was for people to know she’d had any interaction with Zeke at this point. Too late.
Kate handed Michelle a glass of wine and sat next to Emily on the sofa. “So, what led up to whatever has been going on with Zeke? I mean, surely the man didn’t walk into the lab, see your gorgeous new highlights, and yank you into a closet to make out.” She laughed. “Or is that exactly what happened?” She faked a swoon, tossing the back of her hand across her forehead and leaning to one side.
“Good grief,” Michelle said, “your imagination is out of control. Besides, it doesn’t matter what’s been happening between me and Zeke. It’s over now.”
“So something did happen.” Emily leaned forward. “Why is it over?”
“Something happened all right. I took leave of my senses and let the man get under my skin. More than once. But today my mind is clearer. Obviously he’s not over his ex-wife. I’m not stupid. I don’t want anything to do with that.”
Emily jerked. “What the hell makes you say that? He hates her.”
“Didn’t look like it from where I stood when I walked by the conference room this afternoon. He was laughing so hard at whatever cute thing she said that his face was about to split open.”
Kate frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Zeke. Laughing?”
Michelle smirked. “Yep. The kind of laughter that leaves you wiping your tears away.” She shuddered. “I can’t believe I fell for his story about how quickly he was over her and how long it had been since he’d even thought about her. He must have been trying to convince himself instead of me. I should have seen the signs on the wall when it seemed his ex was still impacting how he interacted with other women.”
Reviving Zeke Page 10