He laughed a little. “Why don’t you talk to me? We’re halfway done,” he said. “If you talk, you’ll get distracted and it will be done before you know it.”
“Okay.” She scrunched her eyes tightly closed and tried to think of something to say. Her mind was blank. “I don’t know what to talk about.”
“You always have something to talk about,” he teased, his voice low and easy, and she knew even without looking at him that he was smiling.
“Not right now I don’t.” Well, she could think of a thing or two. But those weren’t really things she could say. Were they? No. She’d thought this through. She wasn’t going down that road with Zach.
“Okay. I’ll help. What is this new life plan you’ve got laid out? Besides the tattoo?”
I plan on flipping my life upside down.
She bit her lip to keep from blurting that out. That would make him worry. She loved him dearly and she didn’t need him worrying about her right now. “It’s not a life plan exactly. It’s just a for now plan,” she said slowly. “Some things to keep me distracted until I figure out what I’m going to do with myself. There’s the tattoo thing, which you’re obviously helping with. I’m going to try to stop worrying so much. One of them, though . . . I plan on calling up Roger and telling him off.”
He grunted. “Good plan.” Something soft brushed against her lower back and she hissed a little.
Damn it, that hurt. It felt like something was slicing right through her skin.
Distraction. Talk, damn it. About anything.
“I don’t get it,” she said softly, some of the confusion and pain breaking free. “I mean . . . I thought he loved me. How could he love me and walk away like that? Over the life I used to have? That’s what it’s all about. I used to be an actress. I’m not anymore—I haven’t been for years and I’m happy with that. How can he not see that? If he loved me, wouldn’t he be able to see that I don’t want to act anymore?”
Zach didn’t answer.
Turning her head, she peered over her shoulder at him.
He had his head bowed, the gold-streaked strands falling down and hiding his features from her.
“Zach?”
He sighed. “Do you really want to hear what I have to say about this right now, sugar?”
“I always want to hear what you have to say.”
“Okay.” He used the cloth again on her back and then bent down, staring at her skin like there was nothing else in the world but her back and the design he was inking on her flesh. “He never loved you.”
It was a strike, square to her heart.
She closed her eyes.
“If he loved you, he wouldn’t treat you the way he did. When you walked into a room, it would have showed on his face . . . if he really loved you. Either he’d have been so busy staring at you because he just had to see you, or he would have been looking away so nobody could see it. Except he was going to marry you—you were his and he had every right to let the world see how he felt.” Zach dabbed at her back again, still focused on the work.
She was almost glad of the pain now, because it was easier to think about how much it hurt than to think about what he had to say.
“But when you walked into a room, that fucking prick was too busy either messing with his damned gadgets or looking at everybody else to see what they thought about you. He was in love with the idea of having Kate the cutie on his arm—the son of a bitch just loved to talk about his fiancée, the actress . . . and don’t tell me you never noticed. He might have loved the idea of being with Kate . . . but he never loved you.”
He paused what he was doing and for a brief second, the world fell away as he looked up and met her eyes. “He never loved you, and the son of a bitch sure as hell didn’t deserve you, sugar.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs as his blue gaze held hers.
And then, as it started to feel like all the oxygen in the room had dwindled away, he turned his attention back to the task at hand.
It felt like he was flaying the flesh from her bones. And she decided that was just fine, because now she needed that distraction.
Was he right? she wondered.
She’d noticed, and tried to ignore, Roger’s fascination with her old life, but she’d chalked it up to him just wanting to know about her. They were getting married . . . they should know about each other. But what if Zach was right?
What if Roger had never really loved her at all?
And that thought, as much as it infuriated her, also made her wonder one simple thing.
Had she loved him?
* * *
“Okay, here are the important things,” Zach said as he studied the design. It was cute and sexy as hell. If he found out another guy was the one who got to press his lips to that dragonfly where it curved low over the flare of her left hip, he thought he just might go insane. “I’ll send you home with some instructions on how to care for it, but you need to make sure you keep it clean. No scrubbing at it or anything—you need to be gentle when you wash it. I’ve got some ointment I’ll send home with you and I’ll go into detail about using that, too.”
She was still staring at it over her shoulder in the mirror. Worrying her lower lip with her teeth and eyeing the dragonfly like she expected it to take flight or something.
“I need to get the bandage on,” he said softly.
“What? Oh.”
She continued to stand there and he reached up, pressed his hand between her shoulder blades. “Lean forward a little.”
Hunger screamed, jerking on the leash inside him as he eased the waistband of her skirt just a little lower so he could get the bandage in place. Bent over the table like that, he could so easily imagine pulling the hem of the skirt up. Slipping his hand between her thighs. Would she sigh? Moan?
No. This was Abby and she’d freak the hell out and then she’d run away and he’d lose her—
A soft, shaky sigh caught his attention as he smoothed the bandage down. Keeping his head bowed, he checked the mirror from under his lashes and his knees almost buckled.
Fuck.
Abby was staring at their reflection and her face was flushed.
What. The. Hell.
Abruptly, he stepped back and moved away. If he didn’t move away immediately, he was going to grab her and do things he should never do to his best friend. The woman he loved. That was the problem. He’d loved her for too long and he was misreading the signals and—
“Do you really think all that’s true? About Roger?”
Hearing that shithead’s name on her lips snapped his temper. He turned around and glared at her. “If I didn’t think that was the case, Abs, I wouldn’t have said it. He’s an egotistical, arrogant piece of work and he never loved you. You deserved a hell of a lot better and I knew it all along. But he was what you wanted so who in the hell was I to say any different?”
“You’re my best friend,” she said quietly.
“Shit.” He went to pass a hand over his face and stopped. He still had his gloves on. Stripping them off, he tossed them into the red trash can near the door and headed over to start cleaning up. “Yes. I am. You asked me what I thought and I told you. But I can’t tell you what is in that fucker’s head. You can always ask him when you call him to tell him off, although I doubt he’ll tell you the truth. He doesn’t even see the truth anyway.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
In the middle of gathering up his supplies, he paused. Zach closed his eyes and started to mouth every single foul, nasty curse he could think of. He had four brothers. He could think of a lot of cusswords. Halfway through one that involved anatomical improbabilities and a goat, a hand touched his shoulder.
“Zach?”
Damn it, he couldn’t do this. Moving away, he started grabbing his supplies at random. Dumping trash, slamming the tools here, there. Being fucking careless with them, but he couldn’t look at her yet. If he did, she might see—
He went to dump
the trash and turned around.
Abby was right there, dark brown eyes locked on his face, her shirt still knotted just under her breasts, leaving her belly bare.
“What is this?” she teased. “You make me play twenty questions all the time.”
Edging around her, he focused on cleaning up. “I’m thirty-two years old, Abby. Yeah. I’ve been in love,” he said, keeping his voice flat and his eyes on the task at hand. “It didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
“She never seemed to notice that I was staring at her when she walked into the room.” Eventually, he had to stop staring, because other people did notice . . . and then she started dating Roger, got engaged. She wasn’t his and he spent night after endless night wondering about all the chances he might have had.
Was he going to let that happen again?
Had fate dropped one more chance into his lap?
From the corner of his eye, he saw Abby approaching and he tensed. She leaned in and he blamed it on insanity, the devil, or his own desperate desire, but something pushed him. Turning his head at the very last moment so that the kiss she’d meant to brush against his cheek hit his lips.
It was light, quick, and soft . . . and he felt her gasp. The taste of her went straight down to his dick, tightening every muscle in his body, sending his heart into a full-on gallop.
Lust and love tangled inside him and he fisted his hands on the metal tray in front of him to keep from reaching for her.
A second later, it was over and Abby backed away. Fast. So fast, she practically tripped over her feet.
He pretended not to notice as he went back to work.
“Um. Well. Whoever she is, she’s got to be wrong in the head for not noticing you.”
* * *
Two a.m. . . . and all’s not well . . .
Abby lay on her right side, staring into the darkness and trying not to think. It wasn’t working well because every time she closed her eyes, she could only think about Zach. And that bare whisper of a kiss.
She should be sleeping.
If not sleeping, she should be working on the books. Running your own business meant there was always something to keep you busy.
If not that, she could be writing out a nice little script for what she planned to tell Roger when she called him.
But what was she doing?
Thinking about Zach.
Her heart stuttered in her chest as one very, very vivid memory flashed through her mind. As he’d been slipping the bandage onto her hip, she’d glanced over. Something about the look on his face, taut and unyielding, had sent her pulse racing up into the near-dangerous zone. His other hand had rested higher on her back and she could recall the way his touch had felt.
And damned if she hadn’t wanted to move back against him.
What would he have done?
“He would have thought you’d lost your mind.”
Groaning, she snatched the phone.
Zach was her best friend. But he was a guy and there were some things she just couldn’t discuss with a guy. Even when the guy was somebody you’d laughed with over bad porn back when you were teens.
For certain things, a girl just needed the ear of a girlfriend. For those things, she called Marin. Marin, another former child star, had thrived on the life and was currently one of Hollywood’s darlings.
Punching in Marin’s cell, she rolled onto her back and then yelped as her newly tattooed skin came in contact with the bed.
“Ah . . . Abby? Is that you?”
“Hey, Marin,” she said, easing into a sitting position and groaning. “Yeah, it’s me. I need . . .” she stopped and blew out a breath. Then she groaned as her eyes caught the clock. She’d totally forgotten how late it was. “I’m an idiot, calling this late.”
“Well, I’m awake anyway. Just got in. Why are you calling?” She paused and then asked softly, “Still upset about Roger the Rat?”
“You and Zach need to stop,” Abby muttered. “I’m going to start picturing him with a long tail and big teeth.”
“And the problem with this is . . .? Seriously, baby, you need to quit worrying and hurting over him. I know that—”
“He’s not why I’m calling.” Zach’s blue eyes flashed through her mind, and her skin, still hot even though it had been hours . . .
“Okay. So why are you calling at two in the morning?”
“Zach.”
“Zach?”
“I . . .” She bit her lower lip. Because she felt better with something in her hands, she hit the light and grabbed her new journal. “I’ve got this new plan.”
“Abby, you and your damn plans—”
“Would you just listen?” she snapped. “It’s not a life plan thing. It’s just to get me . . . rebooted or something. I need to quit freaking out and trying to plan things. I know that. So I made a new plan. I’m going to stop worrying so much about the future. That’s the first thing. Second thing is to tell Roger off. I might do that tomorrow . . . or today, actually. Third up is to flip off the photographers next time I’m in LA. I already did the fourth one—get a tattoo.”
“You got a tattoo? What is it? Did Zach do it?”
Abigale rolled her eyes. “Who else would I let do it? And yes. It’s a dragonfly, on my left hip, before you interrupt again.” She cleared her throat. “The last one . . . well. It’s having a torrid affair.”
“A torrid affair.” Marin said it slowly, like she was rolling the words around on her tongue. “Just what do you mean by a torrid affair? Have you ever had one?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Exactly. For you, a torrid affair would be having sex with a guy you’re attracted to . . . not somebody you were dating for months. Just how many lovers have you had, Abby?”
Abby made a face. “I’ve had two. And the first one was pretty damn good, too. It’s not my fault he turned out to be a two-timing, scum-sucking son of a bitch.”
“True. Actually, we might be able to count Jason as a torrid affair . . . he was just one that lasted for six months. Are you looking at a short-term thing or long-term thing?”
“I haven’t planned that out.” Abby started to pace the bedroom, tapping her journal against her thigh and trying to think about how to say this next part. She needed Marin to talk her down. But she needed Marin to understand she hadn’t lost her mind or something. She was just having a minor breakdown. That was all. Understandable. “I just . . . I want somebody who’ll make my heart stop, and then make it race all over again. I want somebody who’ll make me remember every damn second we were together, and not just the moment we were in bed. I want something to remember, Marin.”
Her friend laughed softly. “Damn, if you succeed, I’m going to be seriously envious, sweetie.” Then she sighed and said, “So have you thought about who you want this to be with? After all, strangers aren’t exactly safe, you know.”
“I know. I . . .”
Her throat closed up.
“Abby?”
“I—”
Marin muttered something and then demanded, “You said you were calling about Zach. Are you thinking about having an affair with Zach? Our Zach?”
She opened her mouth to say, “No. I want you to talk me out of it. It’s a bad idea.”
But what she heard herself saying was, “Yes.”
Damn it, you moron! She smacked herself in the forehead and stormed over to her window, shoving open the curtains so she could stare out into the night. The desert and the mountains spread out in front of her, usually a sight that calmed her, but try as she might, she couldn’t get anything to calm her tonight.
“It’s a stupid idea, I know,” she said quietly. “I know that. I just need you to talk me out of it.”
“Why would I do that?” Marin yawned. “Sorry. Long day. Anyway. I think you should go for it. He’s hot. He cares about you. And if you’re attracted to him? Go for it.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. “You’re not
helping,” she whispered quietly. “Damn it, he’s my best friend. Things like this don’t tend to end well and I can’t lose him. You know what he means to me. You’re supposed to talk me out of this. That’s why I called you . . . so you could make this easier.”
Marin laughed. “Hey, friends aren’t supposed to be about making it easier. Besides, you didn’t tell me this was one of those tell me what I want to hear discussions. I gotta go . . . love you!”
* * *
Marin stood there, arms crossed over her chest as she stared at the phone. It was late and she had to be out of the house by seven a.m. for an interview. But oddly, she wasn’t at all tired.
Marin was one of the other kids from the Kate + Nate show, although she had been Kate the cutie’s rival on the show. In real life, they’d liked each other. Quite a bit. Of course, Marin had been jealous as hell of Abigale for a long while, because while Zach had been eyeballing Abigale, Marin had been eyeballing him. She’d gotten over her infatuation. Zach never had, because his thing for Abigale went a hell of a lot deeper. It wasn’t just infatuation, something Marin had figured out a long time ago. He was shitfaced in love with Abigale, but for some reason, he’d never made a move on her.
And if Abigale wasn’t so damned set on planning her entire life down to the nth degree, then she might have figured out one crucial detail. The perfect guy had been waiting for her all along.
“And she thinks I’m going to tell her to back away from having an affair?”
Marin snorted as she turned away.
The only question in mind for her was whether or not to warn Zach.
Nah. She figured it would be more fun for both of them this way.
Chapter Five
Abigale looked up as a rather domineering and arrogant chef appeared in her line of vision. His name was Raul. At least that was the name he’d given her when she’d told him that she was going to help cover for her friend Grace. Grace was supposed to make the desserts at a bat mitzvah and she’d gotten sick—a bad stomach flu was going around and she’d asked Abigale to cover for her. They were friendly and when she could, she liked to help her friends.
Raul was not her friend.
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