by SJ McCoy
Austin grinned at them. “Hey, congratulations, is all I can say. I’ll help you find a place where I hope you’ll be very happy together. I brought you out here first, because it matches everything on your wish list, right down to the closed-circuit security system. It’s funny, when Clay bought his place, I had a lot of sellers wanting to add camera systems and beef up the security features on their properties. I think they’re hoping that other celebrities might want to move here and will be looking for that kind of thing. Though, I’m sure they won’t mind that you’re not celebrities.”
“Celebrities aren’t the only people who value their privacy,” said Zack.
“Apparently not,” agreed Austin. He handed Zack a brochure. “These are all the details on this place. It’s well under your budget—both on rent and on listing price, if you decide you want to buy it.”
Maria squeezed his hand tightly and he noticed that she was looking at the price with wide eyes. He slid the brochure into the door pocket and nodded. He wanted to tell Austin he was more interested in finding the right property than in how much it cost, but he didn’t want to say that in front of Maria. Money wasn’t an issue for him, and he was hoping it wouldn’t be one for her either.
“Let’s get in there and take a look then.” He squeezed Maria’s hand. “See if the lady approves.”
She seemed to approve very much as they followed Austin down the long driveway. She stared out the window at the lake. It was the perfect spring day—just right for a new beginning, he couldn’t help thinking. The sky was a pale blue, dotted with white clouds, and the lake reflected the colors in its wind-ruffled surface. The first spring flowers brightened the flower-beds set into the manicured lawns that swept down to the water’s edge.
When they pulled up in front of the house, Zack had to laugh at the look on Maria’s face. “Do you want to go see inside?”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Hell, no! I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life!”
Austin came to his window, making Zack realize that he was standing there waiting to take them inside and show them around. “Come see it with me? If you don’t like it—if it’s too much, we’ll find something else.”
Maria looked uncertain, but she nodded and climbed out of the truck.
Austin grinned at them. “I’ll let you in and leave you to it. You guys look around, see what you think. I’ll be out here if you have any questions.”
“Thanks.” Zack was grateful Austin didn’t want to give them the tour. He wanted to have Maria to himself while they looked around. He could see it was a lot for her to take in.
~ ~ ~
Maria went straight through to the living room and stood looking out of the windows at the amazing view of the lake. She looked over her shoulder when Zack came to stand behind her and rested his hands on her hips.
“Do you want to do this?” He spoke next to her ear, his warm breath sending shivers chasing each other down her spine.
She shook her head and blew out a sigh. “Which bit?”
He slid his arms around her waist and held her back against him. “Any of it.”
She rested her head against his shoulder and looked up into his eyes. “I want to do you.”
He smiled and landed a kiss on her lips. “I want to do you, too, but I think we should maybe wait until the place is ours.”
She made a face at him. “You know what I mean. I want to be with you. I like the idea of moving in with you—it’s fast, but it’s not like we don’t know each other well enough. But I thought you meant at your place, or mine. Not something like this.” She swung her arm out to indicate the huge great room with its view of the lake, and the open loft above.
“You don’t like it?”
She had to laugh. “I love it! But it’s so … so … big, so much. I never … I don’t …” She blew out a sigh. “Zack. We know each other fairly well, but just like I didn’t know your history, you don’t know mine. I grew up in a freaking trailer park. All my family still live there. I never expected to live somewhere like this. I don’t need all this.”
He held her gaze for a long moment and she was worried she’d offended him. This was no doubt what he was used to, maybe what he’d been longing to get back to after all his years in hiding.
“I’m sorry.”
“Please, don’t be! I must sound horrible. I’m not saying no, I’m just saying that if you’re doing this for me, you don’t need to.” She cupped his face between her hands and kissed him. “All I want is to be with you.”
He smiled. “And that’s all I want, too. I admit it, I do want to be able to give us a nice home, but I’ll go with whatever your idea of nice is—afterward. The reason I want to look at places like this right now is only partly to impress you and maybe sweep you off your feet.”
She felt bad when he gave her a sad smile. “I seem to have failed at that. But a house like this will be really useful for the next few weeks, at least. Hopefully not much longer. The whole place is monitored by a CCTV system. There’s room for Manny and his guys to stay in one wing of the house and be on hand if we need them, without having them in our space. I don’t see us spending the evenings sitting in front of the TV in your living room with them—do you?”
She shook her head. “No, of course. I get it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be … whatever, about this place. It’s beautiful, and of course, you’re right. It’s perfect for what you need. That’s what matters.”
He hugged her to him. “You’re what matters. Everything else is just detail. Big house or small house. Dead or alive. None of it matters if I’m not with you.”
She squeezed her arms tight around his waist. “Don’t you dare say that. Dead or alive matters. It always matters.”
He nodded. “You’re right. It does. It matters a whole lot more since I met you.”
She smiled up at him. “It does to me, too. I don’t have anyone out to get me or anything, and I was happy with my life before. But now we’re together, I’m looking forward to how great life can be—once we get this crazy man of yours taken care of.” She looked around at the beautiful house. “And if us living here for a while can help you take care of him once and for all, then I suppose I can put up with it.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad you can put a positive spin on it.”
She made a face at him. “It’s not exactly hard. It’s an amazing house.”
He nodded. “I like it. Let’s look around a bit more, and if you think you’re okay with it, we’ll tell Austin we’ll take it.”
Maria nodded. “How long of a lease do they want?”
Zack shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him.”
~ ~ ~
Zack watched her wander around the kitchen, opening drawers and peeking inside the fridge while he stood with Manny in the great room. The house was perfect for what he’d been thinking of. When Manny had asked this morning if he and the guys could stay with them it had given him a game plan. His primary objective was to keep Maria safe. Having the guys stay with them would go a long way to making sure that happened. Like he’d told Maria, there was no way he could see the guys coming to stay at either of their places. But moving in to a place like this would mean that he and Maria could finally be open about the fact that they were together—not just together but living together. Once people knew that, Morales would think Zack was getting careless, and would no doubt think it was time to make his move. He just hoped that Manny and the guys were being careful enough about not making their presence known. In a place like this it’d be easier to keep them out of sight than if they were coming and going on his street or Maria’s. What he hadn’t told her was the reason he’d wanted to see this particular property first. Yes, there was the big front gate and the long driveway, like most of the other properties on this section of the waterfront, but there was also a back entrance. A lane that came through the woods and led to a gate on the back of the proper
ty. That would allow Manny and the guys to come and go, while he and Maria appeared to be the only ones using the front gate.
Manny raised an eyebrow at him. “It all looks good to me.”
“And you all came in the back way?”
“No, the guys did. I followed you.”
“I didn’t see you.”
Manny smirked at him. “Did you expect to?”
Zack smiled. “I half hoped.”
“You should know better than that. So, are you going to tell Austin that you’ll take the place?”
“I am.”
“Good, and then we need to get to work, setting up a routine that you can follow every day. Can you think of anything that would be a natural weak point? A time and a place that would make it easy for him to make his move?”
Zack shook his head. “I can’t. Honestly, right now, I can’t focus on all that. First, I need to get this place locked in with Austin and then I need to spend some time with Maria. She says she’s okay with it, but it’s a lot to take in. And … before we move in here, she’s going to want to tell people—so am I, for that matter. It’s time we went public.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
Zack nodded. “I’ve wanted to do it ever since I started seeing her. It’s important to me. I want the world to know—for my sake, and more importantly for hers. I don’t want her to feel like I’m keeping her hidden away. She needs to know how proud I am that she wants to be with me.”
Manny smiled. “I always wondered if it would come down to this.”
“To what?”
“You’ve stayed in hiding for a long time. I know you didn’t want to, but you did it for your dad.”
Zack nodded. “He’s never gotten over the guilt he feels that they took me. They took me to get to his money. He feels like it’s all his fault. I never saw it that way. It was all down to them and the choices they made. They chose to become criminals. It’s not Dad’s fault, but it still eats him up. If it were just for me, I would have gone about my life and taken my chances, but I know that if Morales had found me and killed me, it would have killed my dad, too. He wanted me to stay hidden—to stay safe—so I’ve done that all these years for him.”
“But now, because of Maria, you can’t do it anymore. It’s taken the love of a good woman. She’s the one for you, isn’t she?”
Zack nodded. “She is.” He glanced over at her again, wondering if she knew that—and why he hadn’t told her yet.
She caught him watching her and looked a little guilty as she closed the dishwasher.
“Today is her only day off this week. I want to go sign the paperwork with Austin and then take her to get our things so we can spend the night here. She’s back at work in the morning. Can we wait till then to go over my new routine?”
“Sure,” said Manny. “It can wait. The guys and I can get set up around here. The mother-in-law apartment is perfect. We’ll be here with you but not on top of you.”
“Exactly.”
~ ~ ~
As they wandered up and down the aisles of the grocery store, Maria kept looking back over her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” asked Zack.
She smiled up at him. “Yes, sorry. I should make it less obvious, shouldn’t I? I just find it hard to believe that one of Manny’s guys is here. I haven’t spotted him once.”
Zack smiled. “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“I know, but I always thought it was so far-fetched. You see it on movies, but I thought that in real life, you’d spot them. I didn’t think people could be that sneaky.”
“People can be very sneaky.”
Her smile faded. “I hope Morales isn’t as good at it as they are.”
“He’s managed to avoid them for all this time.”
Maria couldn’t think about that—about the scary reality. She shook her head. “Yes, but they haven’t been looking for him full time and expecting him like they are now. They didn’t know where he was most of the time and he wasn’t around you.”
“True.” He slung his arm around her shoulders. “Hopefully, it’ll all be over soon.”
She shrugged his arm off in a panic. “We’re not supposed to …” and then she stopped. “But we can now, can’t we?”
He smiled. “We can. If you want to. I want to shout it from the rooftops and tell everyone that we’re together—that we’re so together that you’re moving in with me.”
Her heart started to race.
“You don’t want to tell everyone?”
“I do, but I need to tell my family. They’ll want to meet you. They’ll have all kinds of questions, they’ll want to know…” She stopped herself. She could hardly tell him that her parents wouldn’t be happy about them living together because they’d expect them to at least be engaged first. When she was younger, a young couple moving in together was seen as a terrible thing—it brought shame on the family. Over the years, thanks to all her cousins, her family had accepted that it happened—but only if the couple planned to marry. It was acceptable if they were engaged and saving for their wedding.
“What?” Zack was watching her, waiting for her to finish the sentence.
“They’ll want to know all about you. They’re old-fashioned. I don’t think they’ll approve of us moving in together.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. She wished she knew what was going on behind those big brown eyes. “Not unless I plan to marry you?”
Her tummy flipped over as she nodded. She didn’t know what he meant by that half smile he gave her. Was he thinking that was a ridiculous idea—that they were just enjoying something casual, if you could live with someone casually? Maybe that’s all it was to him. Or was he sympathizing that she had such old-fashioned parents? Or …what? She didn’t know and she felt stupid.
“I look forward to meeting them.”
She smiled. At least, he wasn’t put off by it, or saying anything about how behind the times they were. She nodded. Hoping that someday he would meet them.
While they stood in line at the checkout, Maria looked around again. She was still wondering if she might spot one of Manny’s men, but she was also wondering if anyone might spot her and Zack together. He was holding her hand, not hiding that they were together.
Her question was answered when she heard Roxy’s not so dulcet tones calling her name. “Maria!”
She waved to her friend who had just finished paying for her groceries a couple of lines over. She came and stood next to the cashier and grinned. “Well, aren’t you two cute? And what’s all this?” She looked into the bags and at the items the cashier was ringing up. “This looks like more than dinner for two, this look like several dinners for two. Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Maria looked up at Zack. He’d said they could tell their friends, but had he meant so openly, in the middle of the grocery store?
Apparently, he had. He smiled at her and then at Roxy. “You’re right, there’s everything we need for dinner for two for the next week, till we come grocery shopping again.”
Roxy’s eyes grew wide as she smiled at him.
“In fact, we also bought enough for guests, since we were thinking about inviting you and Angel and Luke and the guys over to our new place this weekend.”
Roxy’s mouth fell open, but she recovered quickly. “Run that one by my again. Did you just say our new place?”
Zack nodded at her and Maria grinned.
“Oh, my God! Please tell me I helped you along? I know I was out of order that night at Angel’s telling you I couldn’t share the taxi, but it was only because I wanted to help get you two together.”
Maria laughed. “You did help. Thank you.”
Zack grinned. “Yeah, I owe you one—big time. I shall be forever grateful.”
Roxy grinned back at him. “You don’t owe me a damned thing. You just made me so happy!” She looked at Maria. “But moving in together, so quickly?”
Maria nodded. “We
both know it’s what we want, so why not?”
Roxy clasped her hands together. “Why not indeed. You go for it, guys. I have to get out of here. I’m working the night shift tonight, but call me, okay? Oh, wait, no. I’ll see you on Thursday. You can tell me all about it then.”
She left just as the cashier got finished. Maria pulled her purse out and beat Zack to it. He frowned at her, but she just smiled. “I pay my way, Mister. You’d better get used to it.” She was relieved that he smiled and accepted it graciously. He was going to have to let her do what she could. She’d seen how much the rent was for the house, and there was no way she could afford that!
Chapter Fourteen
Zack knew he would always remember that first night they spent in the house. When they got back from the store, he and Maria put the groceries away. It didn’t feel strange to him to be in a new kitchen, figuring out between the two of them where they wanted things to go. It felt right. He’d lived in so many different places, but this didn’t feel like just one more. It felt like he was finally making a home.
Maria closed the fridge and came over to slide her arms around his waist. “What’s up? You look lost in thought. You’re not regretting this already, are you?”
He rested his hands on her shoulders and landed a kiss on her lips. “No. I’m not regretting it at all. Just the opposite, in fact.” She looked up into his eyes and he tangled his fingers in her long, dark hair. “I was thinking that of all the times I’ve moved, of all the new places I’ve set myself up in, this one is the best.” He wanted to say he hoped it would be the last, too, but he knew she was a little uncomfortable with such a big house. He hoped it would grow on her, but it wasn’t the house that was making him feel like he’d finally found his home. It was her.
She smiled. “It is an amazing place. I didn’t mean that I don’t like it earlier. It’s just a bit grander than I’m used to.”
He hugged her to his chest. “I know. And I’m not thinking that it’s the best because it’s big or because it’s so nice. It’s the best, because you’re here. I love this place, because it’s our place.” He looked down into her eyes. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t even about loving the house—it was because he loved her.