Zach’s boots thudded on the floor as he crossed over to where she was setting up for the day. She glanced up at him, her mismatched eyes glinting. One blue eye, one brown, and there was a sly smile in those eyes. “You look intense there, superstar.”
“You talked to Abby?”
“Nobody else here to talk to her.” She shrugged. “Called about twenty minutes ago.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Keelie rolled her eyes. “She called and asked for you. I told her that you weren’t in, to try your cell. She said she’d already tried that—you forgot to charge it again, didn’t you?”
Zach glared at her. Hell, he didn’t know if he’d forgotten to charge it. He’d left the damn thing in his office again. “Not the point, Keelie,” he said edgily.
“You’re grouchy. You didn’t sleep again?” As he continued to glare, she sighed and lifted her hands. Her black bangs fell into her face and she impatiently shoved them back as she met his gaze. “Lighten up. Man. Anyway, she said she just wanted to let you know that the wedding was off—and seriously off, so if you wanted to go ahead and make plans for June, you could.”
“And?”
“That’s it.” Keelie leaned a hip against the counter, pinning him with a steady look. “You going to stop pining after her and make a fucking move now?”
Instead of answering her, he turned around and headed for the door. “I’m going to call Javier, see if he can help out for a while this afternoon. I need to go see her.”
“You think you might want to wait a while?” she called out after him.
“She just called off her wedding.” He stopped in the door and looked back at her. Their gazes locked and he said softly, “She’s my best friend, Keelie. Where do you think I should be?”
* * *
It was a bit of a drive from his shop to her place on Swan. He’d quietly relocated to Tucson within six months of her setting up her catering business. It hadn’t been entirely easy convincing her that it had been pure luck that he’d found the ideal spot for the business he wanted to open right in the exact city where she’d chosen to call home . . . but he thought maybe she’d been relieved to see him.
Happy to have him around again.
They’d spent most of their childhood around each other, and nearly all of their teenaged years. They were best friends, and time, distance, and her impending marriage hadn’t changed that. Neither had the gut-wrenching need he had for her.
Hopefully she’d be glad to have him there now, and she wasn’t going to pack up and disappear again now that the wedding was off. He’d have a hard time convincing her that he’d accidentally ended up in the same city as her again, he figured.
Of course, it wouldn’t stop him from doing it. Wherever Abby went, that was where he’d go.
Her car, a restored ’69 Mustang, sat in the driveway. It was the one thing that didn’t fit the practical life she’d laid out for herself—he got why she needed the routine and structure. He really did.
Even when her mom had been planning her entire life down to the nth degree, Abby’s life had been sheer chaos. Early morning calls, the insane hours, not to mention her mother herself. It only made sense that Abby wanted to settle down and just have something . . . normal.
But sometimes he thought she’d gone a little too crazy with it. She was so focused on her plan, she never let herself live.
Abby hadn’t ever really had a chance to live. That bat-shit crazy mother of hers had seen to that. Back when they’d been doing the show, they’d worked their asses off, that was a fact, but he’d still gotten to have a life. His mom and dad had been damned determined about that. Hell, he suspected most of Abby’s good memories came from the times she’d spent with him and his folks. And there hadn’t been enough of those times, he knew.
The van for the catering business was in the drive as well. As he jogged up the steps, he debated about letting himself in. He’d had a key pretty much since the day he’d arrived in town, but that didn’t mean he went walking in whenever. Was now a good time to use it?
Muttering under his breath, he rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the door. “Okay. Knock first,” he told himself. That was what he’d do. If he knocked first, and she didn’t open, he’d let himself in.
* * *
As the third knock echoed through her empty house, Abigale pressed her face into the pillow. She didn’t need to look to know who it was, and she didn’t need to ask.
There was only one person who’d be there just then.
Zach.
She loved Zach dearly but she just couldn’t handle him right now. She couldn’t handle anything right now. She could barely handle the silence of the house. Thinking. Breathing.
Just existing hurt right now.
“Damn it, Abs, if you don’t open the fucking door, I’m going to let myself in,” he shouted. If she hadn’t left her window open a little, she never would have heard him.
She closed her eyes. “Just go away, Zach.”
“You’ve got thirty seconds, sugar!”
Groaning, she hugged the pillow tight and she huddled in on herself. He wasn’t going to go away, she knew that. But if she got up and tried to go down there to let him in, she’d just shatter. Or explode. She was barely staying in one piece as it was.
He had a damn key. He could use it. Assuming he remembered it. The bum barely even remembered to keep his phone charged. He didn’t like to check his e-mail. The ache in her chest spread and the sobs she’d been fighting crept further up her throat as she heard the beep from her alarm.
“Time’s up, Abs,” Zach called from downstairs.
* * *
He reset the alarm and locked the door. The quiet of the house gutted him. Abby didn’t do quiet. She loved music . . . it didn’t have to be loud or anything, but she loved music and if she was home, it was almost always playing.
Silence greeted him. Cold, brittle silence.
His first stop was the kitchen. When she was sad, happy, pissed, whatever, Abby cooked. That was just her thing. Like he went to his sketchbook and worked on new designs. But the kitchen was empty, silent.
The ache inside him spread just a little more. He paused by the hook just inside the door and touched the apron hanging there. Simple and efficient. Just like her. Sexy as hell. He had it bad. Groaning, he curled his hand into a fist and left the kitchen before she found him pawing the damned apron.
He’d managed to hide how he felt for more than seventeen years. Granted, it had started out as a bad crush that he’d kept hidden and it had just grown and grown. Still, it was what it was and he wasn’t going to let any clues slip now, of all days. Maybe later—
Stop, Barnes. Find her. Help fix it. Then worry about your own shit.
Being there for Abby had been all he’d ever wanted to do with his life. It wasn’t going to change now.
Since he was there, he checked out back, but the pretty little space she’d designed for herself was empty as well. She wasn’t in the library and as he moved through the painfully quiet house, dread curled through him, tightening his gut and sending goose bumps crawling across his skin.
That feeling increased as he mounted the stairs and then he looked inside her room.
For a hard, awful second, everything in the world stopped. Color drained, his heart ceased to beat, and everything just ended.
She lay on the bed, the bright banner of her hair spread around her like a cape. Her eyes were closed and her skin was unbelievably pale.
“Abby?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. The soft, dark brown eyes were dull. Lost.
Broken . . .
Then she closed her eyes. Not a single word was said.
Crossing the floor, he kicked off his boots and then settled on the bed behind her. He didn’t touch her, although everything inside him screamed for it. He wanted to wrap himself around her and rock her, hold her, stroke away the misery he knew was inside her. The raging beast of
want that lived inside him wanted to strip her naked and fuck her, but that was something he’d lived with for a long while and he could deal with it.
Her pain was harder to handle and he didn’t know how to fix it and make it go away.
The misery he sensed inside her made him want to howl and break things but at the same time, he needed to comfort her and just find a way to make it all better.
But he didn’t touch her.
He could wait until she was ready.
* * *
The soft, sad little sniffles started about a minute after he lay down. Two minutes after that, she rolled toward him and squirmed closer until she could settle her head on his chest. Once she’d done that, he let himself wrap his arm around her and the soft, sweet warmth of her body against his was both agony and ecstasy, the best kind of pleasure and pain known to man.
He kept his other hand on his belly and a minute later, Abby reached out and started to trace the tip of one shell pink nail over the barbed wire design he had entwining his wrist. Now, if she’d just keep that up . . . he had tats going up his entire arm and she could stroke him all damn day—
“Roger left me,” she whispered.
Don’t say anything, he told himself.
Abby sniffled again and shifted her finger to the next tattoo, an eastern dragon that wrapped around most of his forearm. “He says he can’t marry me because I’m not being true to myself,” she said.
Zach closed his eyes. He never thought there would be a day when he actually agreed with that tightwad. Why in the hell did they have to agree on the one thing that would cause Abby pain? Turning his head, he rubbed his cheek against her soft, crazy curls. “Roger is an asshole,” he said.
“Yes. And he’s fucking wrong,” she said, heated fury slipping into her voice.
He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any point. It wasn’t up to him to tell Abby how to live her life. Even if she was stifling herself. Even if she was miserable half the time. Even if—
“He started rambling on about how I’m supposed to be an actress. I belong in that world and I’m denying myself and if I can’t be true to who I am, then he can’t expect me to be true to him,” she said.
Zach opened his eyes. “He what?”
She sat up and shoved her hair back from her face. The red curls tumbled right back into place and her dark brown eyes sparked with fury. “You heard me.” She pulled away from him and slipped off the bed. “That dipshit honestly thinks I miss that life.”
She started to pace, the slim-fitting skirt she wore clinging to a world-class ass. Mentally slapping himself, he drew one knee up to hide his hard-on. “Lots of idiots in this world can’t get the idea that we don’t miss that life.” He shrugged, not too worked up about the idea of that. What pissed him off was that Roger had hurt her. “That’s their problem. He actually called the wedding off over this?”
“Yes!” she wailed. Then she started to cry.
It was another punch to the heart. He went to her and she tried to push him away. “Damn it, I’m fine,” she said even as she tried to catch a breath. “I just . . . just need to . . .”
“You just need to get this out,” he said, swinging her up into his arms.
“Zach! Put me down. I’m too heavy . . .”
“No, you’re not. And hey, I’ve always had this fantasy . . . sweeping a damsel into my arms and all that shit,” he teased, trying to make her smile. And he wasn’t even lying, really. He did dream of doing things like this . . . with her. Only her. Always her. As he settled on her bed, his back against the painted doors she’d used as her headboard, he stroked a hand down her curls. “You go on and cry, sugar. You need to do it.”
“Crying doesn’t solve anything,” she whispered. And tears continued to run down her cheeks.
She wasn’t a pretty crier. Her nose was red, her eyes were puffy. And all he wanted to do was wipe away every damn tear. Kiss her. Then go strangle Roger, beat some sense into him, whatever it took to make her happy. Hell, if he had to, he’d drag the fucker to the church for the damned wedding. Except Roger couldn’t make Abby happy. Not the way she deserved. That was the real bitch of it all.
“Not everything has to be solved. Not everything needs to be a solution or an answer.” Guiding her head to his chest, he hugged her. “Cry. Scream. Talk to me. Whatever you need to do, sugar.”
Chapter Two
The woman who shall not be named was calling again.
Abigale eyed the phone with acute dislike as she finished working on her list. She’d already contacted just about everybody regarding the now-cancelled wedding. The only thing she hadn’t done was cancel the honeymoon.
A trip to Alaska.
Roger had balked. He’d wanted to go on some world tour, but she’d wanted to go to Alaska. It had been a dream she’d had for several years, but the timing hadn’t ever been right. Until now. Why not for a honeymoon?
In the end, they’d compromised. She’d promised him a longer trip for their one-year anniversary if he’d do an Alaskan trip for their honeymoon. Now she wondered why he’d even bothered.
You’re not being true to yourself—
Groaning, she dropped her pen and pushed back from her desk.
Those words kept echoing through her head, over and over.
Even after nearly a week, she was still hearing those words. It was weird that she heard them more often than everything else. Those words chased her in her sleep. She’d been in the middle of putting together a dinner menu for a client and all of a sudden, nothing else in the world would matter, because she’d find herself remembering those words.
Those words.
The hell she wasn’t being true to herself. She’d gotten away from a life she’d hated. How much more true could she be? She’d been living her life exactly as she’d wanted and had been walking right down the path to the happy goal she’d set.
Until he derailed it.
And yet, here it was nearly ten o’clock on Friday, five days after the dismal, depressing end to her engagement, and she was still thinking about those words. Those words actually seemed to bother her more than the fact that he’d ended things, the bastard.
“What I need to do is make another plan,” she mumbled.
Her life, once more, had been thrown into chaos.
She left her office and headed upstairs to her bedroom. She hadn’t looked at her business plan since she’d marked the wedding off the list but it was time, she decided.
Grabbing her journal, she went back down to the office and settled on the couch. There was a pen tucked in a little loop and as she started to think, she pulled the pen out and tapped it against her lips.She didn’t start to make any notes. Not yet. Her thoughts needed to settle. Needed to focus.
Did she need a man? That was the question. She wasn’t one of those women who believed a man was necessary to fulfill or complete a life but Abby wanted a man. She wanted marriage. Her throat tightened a little as she thought about the other things she wanted . . . kids, at some point. Not just to have that happy, stable life she’d never had for herself, but she wanted a family. She saw a mom at a baby shower and her heart ached with envy.
Some women didn’t want to be mothers and she completely respected that; she understood. Hell, some women should never be moms. Her mother sure as hell didn’t need to procreate but she’d done it and made Abigale’s life hell.
Abigale would love whatever child she had.
“Maybe I should just think about doing it on my own.” But that thought left her cold. She wanted a family. With all that entailed. A father for her kids . . . a partner. Somebody who would make her laugh. Make her think. Keep her company when she wanted it and if she was in a bad mood, leave her alone. Somebody who could blow her mind away in bed and still be a friend.
“You want a fairy tale.”
Roger had been okay in bed, but he hadn’t exactly been a friend, something she could acknowledge . . . now. The only guy who had ever really made
her laugh, made her think, kept her company when she needed it, and left her alone when she wanted . . . hell. That was Zach. But he was her best friend.
When the alarm sounded sometime later, she yelped in surprise. Panic surged through her, until she realized it was the regular alert.
The annoying little computerized voice announced, “Disarmed.”
There was only one person it could be. She’d deactivated Roger’s code and even if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t come by this late without calling.
Zach, on the other hand . . .
He appeared at the door, gold-streaked brown hair falling into his eyes, five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw. The faded black t-shirt he wore left much of his arms bare, leaving his tattoos visible.
She’d never, ever tell anybody that she absolutely adored the way those tattoos looked.
Not in a million years.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. He was one of the very few people she didn’t mind seeing right now. Maybe even the only person.
The phone started to ring again.
Without saying anything, he ambled over to it and glanced at the display. A sneer curled his lip and he glanced at her. “She who shall not be named is calling.” A wicked smile danced across his face and he asked, “Can I talk to her? Pretty please?”
A laugh bubbled out of her and she grinned at him. “I don’t care. As long as I don’t have to.” She wondered just how in the world her mother had gotten her number. Again.
Zach grabbed the phone halfway through the second ring. “Heya, Blanche!”
Abigale propped her arm on the back of the couch and watched as he leaned against her desk, one arm folded over his chest. It had his bicep bulging and the scrolled design there caught her eye. Something warmed inside her. Shifted. Frowning, she looked away from his arms and watched his face.
“Yes. She’s here . . . Nah, I can’t put her on the phone. Why? Oh. She doesn’t want to talk to you. As in . . . ever. Remember that deal about how you kind of, sort of tried to keep her away from all the money she’d earned? How you tried to whore her out for any and every damn part that you could get? Expected her to go weeks living on nothing but water and salads because she was getting too female?” He didn’t look so happy now. Fire snapped in his blue eyes and a growl had edged into his voice.
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