by Bonnie Pega
Warning bells, beeps, and sirens went off in her head, telling her not to go to Zac’s, but she ignored them all. Was it foolish to accompany the lion right into his den? Probably. But she didn’t think she could have not gone for anything in the world. It was dangerous to be alone with him, but she really wanted to see where he lived, to see what else it revealed about the man.
Neither spoke in the car. Yet they communicated as surely as if the words had been shouted. His whole body radiated hot, heady desire, hers radiated the same thing, though covered with the cloak of caution. And when they pulled up in the parking lot of his condominium, she pulled that cloak even tighter around her.
When he opened his door, he looked at her for a moment, then nodded slightly as if having made a decision. “I’ll put some coffee on. Decaf. Living room is that way.” He went into the kitchen.
Libby was thankful for a few minutes alone to catch her breath and credited Zac with being sensitive enough to know she needed it. She looked around the foyer, and a small frown wrinkled her forehead as she surveyed the black floor, white walls, black enameled table with black and white ceramic figurines.
She stepped into the living room and suppressed a shudder. The walls, carpet, and sofa were all white with touches of black in the throw pillows, ceramic lamps, and knickknacks. More black in the marble of the mantel over the white stone fireplace.
She knelt down in front of the octagonal fish tank and watched the black and white fish swim around. Somehow all this didn’t seem like the Zac she knew—the Zac who had held her with such tenderness in the hospital, the Zac who had, when she had nearly given up, pulled her through with the sheer force of his will.
No, the Zac she knew shimmered with humor and heart and color and sound. This bland, colorless, quiet-as-a-tomb environment belonged to somebody else, somebody she didn’t know. And if this was what he thought he wanted, he was kidding himself.
She poked her head into the kitchen—another black-and-white room. “What are the names of your fish?”
“The small iridescent ones are white tetras, the solid black ones are black mollies and the striped ones are angelfish.”
“No, I mean what are their names?”
“I haven’t named them.” He sounded incredulous that someone should actually think he’d name fish.
Libby grimaced. She even named her houseplants. “Can I help you with anything?”
“No, I’ve got it all under control. It’ll be another couple of minutes.”
“May I use, that is, where is the—”
“First door on the right down the hall.”
“Thanks.” She could have cried at the unfulfilled potential of the bathroom. The skylights and greenhouse windows cried out for greenery, but all he had was one fake ficus tree in the corner next to the Jacuzzi. At least the black and white here was accented by the candy-apple-red towel tossed over the towel bar.
Had he used that towel to wipe the water from his naked body earlier as he’d stepped from a long soak in the swirling waters of the hot tub? What would it feel like to sit in there, leaning back against him, his arms around her, his hands filling themselves with her breasts?
She drew in her breath as the warm rush of desire made her breasts tingle. Or were they tingling because it had been nearly four hours since she’d nursed Victoria? Sighing, she stuffed a couple of tissues in the cups of her bra just in case they leaked.
She couldn’t resist peeking into Zac’s bedroom to see if it too, was the horrible black-and-white, only to find a pleasant surprise. The luxurious carpet provided a wickedly thick pearl-gray background to the fire-engine red bedspread and curtains. A crowded bookshelf took up one whole wall, old movie posters another, and photographs covered the other two. She smiled to herself. Now, this was the Zac she knew.
Libby stepped inside to get a closer look. When the heels of her sandals sank two inches into the carpet, she couldn’t resist taking them off and letting her toes wriggle in the plush fibers.
“Here’s your coffee.”
Libby jumped and turned around, embarrassed at having been caught snooping. But Zac didn’t seem to mind. He simply handed her the cup and pointed to a picture of an attractive dark-haired man and a willowy blond.
“This is my brother Matt and his wife Alice. And this is Ben.” Zac indicated a photograph of a younger Hannah looking adoringly at a tall, dark, rather dangerous-looking man. “It was taken just a few months before they separated.”
There was a picture of the three brothers together, all wearing cutoffs and standing in front of a lake, Ben on one side of Zac, Matt on the other.
“And this picture?” Libby pointed to a photo showing a definitely panic-stricken Zac staring down at a baby in one arm and a toddler in the other.
“Gee, they don’t seem to be screaming or anything.”
“They started wailing about two minutes after that picture was taken,” Zac said dryly, then added in a totally different tone of voice, “I’ve thought a lot about getting you into my bedroom. I just didn’t think we’d be discussing old photos at the time.”
That reminded Libby of why they were there. “Yeah, well, I think we should take our coffee back into the living room and talk.” When she noticed Zac seemed to be staring with utter fascination at her feet, she curled her toes into the carpet.
“You may be right,” he said in a strangled voice. “Why don’t we go into the living room?”
Whose bright idea was it to talk anyway? Zac stared at the steaming cup of coffee clutched in his hand. “So what do you want to talk about?” he finally asked after several uncomfortable minutes of silence.
Libby carefully set her nearly full cup on the table and clenched her hands together in her lap. “I think you know. About you and me. Um, us. Our relationship. If we have one—”
“We do.” Zac emphasized the words. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather discuss than our relationship. And how to advance it.”
“That’s what I want to talk about. Zac, this is only our third date.”
“So? A lot of relationships have begun on even less than three dates.”
“I still think things are moving too fast.”
“Maybe. But then, we didn’t exactly get to know each other in your usual run-of-the-mill way either. We learned more important things about each other during your labor than most people learn about each other in weeks of dinners and movies.”
He leaned back on the sofa and stretched out his legs, looking comfortable. Libby only wished she could feel as at ease, much less look it. She knew she had twisted her hands together in her lap—she usually did when she got nervous. And Zac made her so nervous that it was a wonder she hadn’t tied her fingers in knots—or a hangman’s noose.
“But we still don’t know each other. Going through labor gave us a sense of intimacy that makes us feel as if—as if—”
“As if we should be more heavily involved than we are.”
“Right.”
“Have you stopped to think that these feelings might be right?”
“Have you stopped to think that they might not?” Libby fell silent for a moment, trying to put her feelings in words, then continued slowly. “If those feelings were right, then I’d feel better about becoming—becoming—”
“Intimate.”
She felt a moment of pique that he’d finished a sentence of hers for the second time. On the other hand, she wasn’t doing such a great job of finishing them herself. She sighed. “Right. Intimate. But my head is saying that we really don’t know each other yet.”
“I can’t imagine a better way to get to know each other than by making love.”
“Physically, maybe, but not mentally. And not emotionally.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Zac sighed in exasperation. “I know you. I know you like science fiction, murder mysteries, dogs, plants, and Italian food. You like pre-Columbian art and orchids. You like old movies, you wax eloquent about teaching kids, you’re a politi
cal liberal and an economic conservative.”
“But, Zac, you still don’t know me. I could hate dogs and little kids for all you know.”
He looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Yeah. Right.”
“There are plenty of other things you don’t know too. I might be a really horrible person or something.”
Zac sighed. “So tell me something really horrible you’ve done.”
“Well, I—I …” She stopped for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “I know. I cheated on a test once.”
“Mmm-hmm. And how old were you at the time?”
Libby looked down at her hands and mumbled something.
“What? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said, I was eight. Satisfied?”
“God, we have a real criminal element here, don’t we?”
“But we could,” Libby said earnestly. “Don’t you see?”
“So tell me something, Libby. Tell me something about yourself that I really need to know.”
“I’m impatient. And I can be, um, obstinate, on occasion.”
“I’d already figured that one out,” he murmured dryly. “And I’m both of those things too. So tell me something I don’t know.”
“Zac, this is silly.”
“You think so? Let me tell you something, Libby. We know each other better than you think. We went through an incredible experience together. And you learn a lot about people during things like that. I already know you better than I knew most of the women I’ve been involved with.”
He flashed a sudden grin. “So what do you need to know about me—besides the fact that I’m an all-around great guy?”
“How about your favorite color?” Libby ventured cautiously, though she really wanted to know more about those other women.
“Red.”
After seeing his bedroom and his fire-engine-red BMW, that came as no surprise. “I sort of suspected as much. Then why is most of your apartment done in black and white?”
Zac looked less comfortable than he had a minute earlier. “I told the decorator I wanted something clean and uncluttered-looking, and this is what she came up with.”
“Do you like it?” Libby watched him thoughtfully. He couldn’t possibly like this sterile, static environment.
“Of course!” There was a defiant tone to his voice. “I find it very—er—uncluttered. Let’s get back to the subject at hand. You already know my favorite books, food, and movies. Your politics agree with mine, and you know I also like pre-Columbian art. And you know my favorite color. What else do you need to know?”
Libby smiled. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Need you ask?”
“Italian?”
“Bingo. Shrimp scampi, to be exact, though I also have a soft spot for fettuccine Alfredo. Anything else you need to know? My life’s an open book.”
“What’s your hobby?”
“What do you mean, what’s my hobby?”
“What do you do for fun?” Libby asked.
Zac stopped. For fun? He finally said, “I play handball four times a week with Ryan Miller. He’s my vice president.” But was that really fun? he thought. He did it because he knew he had a sedentary job and it helped him keep in shape. When was the last time he really did anything because he enjoyed it?
“What do you do for fun?” He’d turn the tables on her. Let’s see if you find it so easy to answer.
“I read, I garden. I rent old sci-fi movies and huddle down with potato chips and onion dip. I also ride my bicycle.”
“I have a bike.” Of course he hadn’t ridden it in fifteen years, but it probably still worked. They didn’t usually fall to pieces of old age, did they?
“Maybe we can meet over at the park sometime and ride together.” Libby gave him an ingenuous smile.
“Maybe.” Was it true that you never forgot how to ride a bike? He hoped so. He liked the idea of cuddling down with her in front of an old sci-fi movie better, though. With any luck at all, they’d not only miss most of the movie, they’d crush the potato chips. And he could think of some real interesting things to do with the onion dip. “Now, back to the excuses you’re trying to find for us not to go to bed together—”
“How about I don’t do casual sex?”
Zac gave her a look as hot and strong as black coffee. “Baby, I doubt sex between us would be casual. It would be hot and sweaty and intense.”
“I’m sure it would,” Libby murmured almost without thinking. “But it would still be a short-term, here-and-now thing. I want more than that.”
“What do you want, Libby?” He reached out and snared a strand of her hair, twirling it around the end of his finger. “Happily ever after? The prince on the white horse?”
“Maybe. What’s the matter with that?”
“You’ll be waiting a long time.”
“You don’t believe in love and marriage?”
“I’m not sure if love exists or not. Marriage does, but who’s to say it’s a good thing?”
“People who are happily married might disagree with you.”
“Who’s happily married? Look at Hannah and you. And Deb.”
“How about your brother and his wife? From the pictures, they look happy.”
“They seem to be, but how do we know it’ll last?”
Libby shrugged. “How do you know it won’t? There are just some things you have to take on faith. If you go into marriage with the attitude that it’s a temporary thing and you can always get out of it, maybe you’re not inclined to work hard at it.”
“And did you work at it?”
Libby looked straight at him with eyes as clear and blue as a summer sky. “With everything that was in me. We started seeing a marriage counselor after the first year of marriage. When Bobby decided it wasn’t his problem and stopped going, I continued to see the counselor on my own. And even when I left Bobby, I did it, hoping to shock him into seeing what was happening to our marriage.”
“Do you still love him?”
She shook her head. “No. That died somewhere between the second and third year of our marriage. About the time he’d lost his seventh or eighth job, about the time that he’d been through his third or fourth girlfriend. But if he had been willing to try to work things out, I probably would have.”
“But you still believe that happy marriages exist.”
“I’ve seen a few. My parents, my grandparents, numerous aunts and uncles.”
“But you’re not going to wait forever for the knight in shining armor, are you? They just don’t exist.”
“Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.” And sometimes, maybe they stand by you during labor and deliver your baby. “Anyway, I have a baby now. I have to think about setting an example for my daughter. She’s going to notice everything I do.”
“I hardly think a two-month-old baby is noticing examples,” Zac said.
“Zac, you’re not listening to what I’m saying.”
“I’m listening.”
“No, you’re hearing it, but you’re not listening to it. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Maybe I should go home now. It’s getting late, anyway.” She looked around. “Where’s my purse?”
Zac leaned even farther back on the sofa, managing not to wince as the clasp of her purse dug into the small of his back. “Gee, I don’t know. Did you leave it in the bathroom?”
She continued to look around the room. “No, I could’ve sworn— There it is.” She pointed to the strap showing from beneath his thigh.
Zac watched her with an all-too-innocent look. “If you want it, here it is.”
Libby stared at his come-and-get-it-I-dare-you smile and a mischievous smile lit her own face. “You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?”
“I don’t think you’ve got the nerve.” Zac’s eyes laughed at her as he tucked the strap all the way under his leg.
Libby pursed her lips, difficult to do with the wide smile pulling at them, and tilted her head to one side. She
got up from the white leather chair she’d been sitting in and stepped over to the sofa. With her arms crossed in front of her, she made a big production of observing Zac from all sides, as if trying to decide the best method by which to obtain her objective. With a wicked gleam in her eye she made a sudden jab at one side of his ribs with her fingers.
He jumped and she giggled, poking a finger at the other side. When he twisted to one side to avoid her, she grabbed her purse from behind him.
“Hey, no fair,” he exclaimed with a laugh. “You play dirty.”
“I do, don’t I?” she agreed smugly. Heavens, what a laugh he had. Full-bodied and contagious, it contained an intimate invitation to join in.
“I can play dirty too,” he murmured, and hooked an arm around her waist, tugging her down into his lap. When she laughingly struggled, he wrapped both arms around her and held her in place. “I suggest you stop squirming,” he warned her.
“Why should I?”
“Well …” His voice trailed off and his gaze held hers in a meaningful look as a slow, wicked grin spread over his face. “You can keep on wiggling if you want to, but you’ll have to take responsibility for any consequences.” He settled her more securely on his lap, where he knew she could feel his growing arousal.
Libby immediately stilled. “Let me up, Zac.”
“Please.” His voice caressed the word as he said it.
“Please let me up.”
“In a minute. Right now I want to enjoy the way you feel.”
Libby knew exactly how she felt. She felt hot. Heat spread like an epidemic throughout her body, and again she wondered if her never-blushing cheeks were doing just that, because her face burned. And it burned even hotter when his hands brushed the outside of her breasts, then slid around to cup them.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the car. Do you remember?” he whispered.
Heaven help her, she’d never forget.
“I’ve wanted to see if you were really as full and soft as you seemed.” He gently squeezed her breasts, closing his eyes as if to savor the pleasure it brought. “You are. Even more than I dreamed.”