She didn’t even bother to wait for an answer, just grabbed her keys and hit the door.
She never seemed to notice that I was staring at her when she walked into the room.
Those words echoed in her mind every step of the way as she ran for her car.
Zach . . . ?
Was that even possible? she wondered. But her brain already had the answer for that. Yes. It was possible. It had been there, she realized, for a very long time. And she hadn’t seen it.
The real question was just how did she feel about it?
But the answer to that question wasn’t so hard.
A warm, lovely sensation bloomed through her and she pulled out of the lot so fast, she practically left rubber on the pavement.
She could hear that voice of his, so low and familiar, soft as velvet and sinful as Death by Chocolate, as he murmured, When you walked into a room, it would have showed on his face . . . if he really loved you.
It would have showed on his face . . . And it did show. It just showed on the face of a man she hadn’t bothered to look at for far too long. Zach. The man who’d always been there.
Her throat was tight as she thought back over the past few weeks. Zach’s face. He could be talking to somebody, anybody, and he’d know when she was there. He’d look up at her, and that smile would come across his face.
Something warm and easy, but . . . more than that.
It made her heart ache more than once, and there was something in his eyes, too: possessive, hungry, proud, and wondering. It might have been too much, but when she looked at him now, she felt the same way.
She never seemed to notice that I was staring . . .
“Me.” She slowed down at a red light. Had he really been talking about her?
But then she thought back to last night. Just last night. She pressed the heel of her hand to the tattoo he’d painted across her torso and thought back. He’d never really given her a straight answer, she realized.
She went to turn right, but abruptly realized she didn’t want to go to the shop wearing her work clothes, smelling like she’d just spent the entire day cooking. Hell, the muleheaded man ought to be home but she knew he wouldn’t be.
Groaning, she checked the time. He’d be there for another couple of hours. She could go home, but that would take most of those hours and she couldn’t wait.
His place, though, that was close.
She usually kept an extra outfit for work, and a pair of jeans and a t-shirt there, although that wasn’t exactly ideal. She’d make do.
On the drive, she replayed the conversation from last night through her head.
Sometimes, sugar, people come into your life and they mean everything.
So she means a lot to you.
People come and go all the time. But there’s only been one woman who came and stayed and mattered . . . it’s you.
That’s not what I was asking, Zach. I know I’m important to you. I just—
Important . . . Abby. Important describes what I have to do by April 14. Important describes getting my license renewed, my bills paid, payroll . . . Abby. You’re not important. You’re everything.
Everything . . .
Yeah. The way he made her feel when he looked at her, when he touched her. She could believe that.
* * *
The drive to his condo took far too long, at least in her opinion. The clock said it was only fifteen minutes but what did the clock know?
Five minutes after she’d parked the car, she was letting herself inside. She reset the alarm and she tore into his bedroom, dumping her spare clothes on the bed as she stripped out of her dirty ones. With her fingers working the buttons of her shirt, she headed to his closet. Maybe she’d borrow a shirt . . .
Yeah.
There was a green silk one that she thought would work just fine.
He spent most of his time in t-shirts and boots, but he knew his way around nicer pieces of clothing. And he could rock a suit like nobody’s business. She stroked a hand down the sleeve of a steel gray jacket and thought about seeing him in that . . . maybe soon, she thought. Maybe soon.
But for now, she was going to have to get her butt ready and go corner him in his office. And if he thought he could put her off this time, he was out of his skull.
* * *
“Keelie, you and I need to talk about something, and you’re going to listen very carefully to what I have to say,” he said softly, picking up a pencil and starting to sketch out a design absently. Better to do that than look at her, because he wanted to keep his temper. Keep his cool.
“Look, if you’re going to rip me a new one because I took care of things after the break-in, then you can just kiss my ass. You had enough going on and I wanted to help,” she said. He glanced up as she surged out of the chair and started to pace, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, her strides long and angry. “Besides, I own half the place, remember? I have just as much right as you do.”
“You’re right.” He shook his head. “I’m not denying that. I appreciate you stepping up there a lot.”
He dropped the pencil and stood up, moving around to cut her off as she started another circuit across the room. “But this isn’t about the shop. It’s not about the break-in. It’s about something else entirely.”
She lifted a brow and then turned away, sauntered over to his desk, and leaned back against it, arms crossed over her chest. “Okay. I’m all ears.”
“You better be.”
Her eyes widened just a fraction before she shot him a smirk.
Nervous, kid? Good. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops as he continued to watch her for a minute, trying to figure out just how he’d made her mad enough at him that she’d decided it would be okay to fuck with his life. Hell, if she didn’t know what Abby meant to him it would be one thing, but she did.
But he couldn’t quite figure it out. He couldn’t.
“Why, Keelie?” he asked softly. “Can you just tell me why?”
Her brows arched over her mismatched eyes. “Ah . . . tell you why what?”
“Why are you trying to get in between me and Abby? It doesn’t concern you so why are you trying to mess with it?”
Her lids flickered and then she sneered. “Hell, what is that glamour girl telling you? I didn’t do shit to her, Zach. Not a damn thing. So whatever she said—”
“I love her,” he said softly. “My entire life, I’ve only loved one woman. I didn’t have crushes on any of the girls we worked with. I didn’t go chasing after anybody when I tried to make it for a while after the show ended. I didn’t fall for anybody in college. I dated some but it was more because I wanted to try and forget about her, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. She’s it for me, Keelie. You understand that? I love her. More than I’m ever going to be able to love anybody. And now I finally have the chance I’ve been waiting my whole life for . . . and you and Sebastian are fucking things up. The two of you are making her doubt what we have going. Why in the hell are you doing that?”
She snapped her mouth shut with a click.
Shoving past him, she started to pace. “Look, man, I didn’t do anything. I don’t like her, but why in the hell should I? She doesn’t see what’s staring her right in the face. She can’t appreciate you and she’s hurt you a hundred times and she doesn’t even see it.” She sent him a seething look over her shoulder and demanded, “Why should I like her?”
“You don’t have to like her,” Zach pointed out. “But damn it, are we friends or not? Because I always thought we were. If we are, why would you try to mess this up for me?”
“I wasn’t trying to!” She stopped and turned around, glaring at him. “She just . . . shit. She asked me what my problem was and I . . . just. Hell, she can’t see it, damn you. And it hurts you and I can’t stand it. How can she not see it?”
“Because I didn’t let her.” He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “And that’s not a good enough reason.”
&n
bsp; “She didn’t see it because she didn’t want to,” Keelie muttered. “She doesn’t deserve you, Zach. You need somebody who’ll see what you have to offer, who’ll appreciate you and everything you are.”
Her voice softened as she crossed the floor to stand in front of him.
Alarm started to flare in his head as she murmured, “Love like that really can’t be hidden, Zach. Don’t you feel it when somebody loves you?”
She stopped just in front of him and that alarm screeched louder. “Keelie, look, this has nothing do with whether or not Abby saw anything before now. She’s seeing it now and this doesn’t even involve you. This is about the fact that you are causing me problems and when you hurt her, you hurt me. Why the hell do you want to do that?”
“Hurting you is the last thing I want to do,” Keelie said. She reached out and caught his arm.
And that alarm in his head just screamed louder.
“When you look at me, do you see anything more than a friend looking back at you?” she asked and her voice was soft. Full of things he’d never heard before.
And damn it all to hell, as he stared into her eyes, he realized he hadn’t been the only one hiding things.
“Keelie, the only thing I see in you is a friend,” he said, shaking his head.
She slid her hand higher. “Just a friend, Zach? Is that all we can ever be?”
He caught her arm and nudged her hand down. “That’s all we are.”
“Because you’ve never given us a chance for something more. Maybe it’s time you did.”
And then she leaned in. Right as she touched her lips to his, the door opened.
* * *
Abigale smoothed a hand down the green silk shirt she wore and took a deep breath.
It was quiet in Zach’s office. Very quiet.
The shop wasn’t very busy and if she hadn’t seen his car, she might have wondered if he was there.
With her heart knocking against her ribs, she went to push the door open.
And then, her heart stopped knocking against anything as it turned to ashes. All those ashes drifted away on the wind as she stared at the scene before her. If the scene had been written by some of the best in the biz, they couldn’t have done it any more perfectly.
A gritty urban scene, she thought absently. The rugged, street-smart male with his face all battered from his latest battle. His hands curled around the woman’s wrists as he stared down at her face. The woman, dressed in skintight black pants and a white tank under a fishnet top, stared up at him and the emotion on her face was as sharp as a blade. Even the lights around them seemed to be chosen to play it all up to perfection as Keelie leaned in and pressed her mouth to Zach’s.
For that one brief moment, time froze.
And then it shattered, just like her heart.
Zach was the first one to notice, his head swinging around her way and those wicked, warm blue eyes locked on her face. That intensity that Abby had been so convinced was there just for her was in his eyes, all right. But a second ago, he’d been staring at Keelie with a hell of a lot of focus, too.
“Abby,” he said, his voice rough.
She just stared at him for a moment and then she shot Keelie a dark look. To her surprise, the woman didn’t meet her glare with a cocky smile, and she didn’t glare back.
Instead, to her surprise, Keelie lowered her head and stared at her feet.
Abby opened her mouth to say something. Anything. But the pain ripping through her just wouldn’t let her speak.
All she wanted to do was cry.
But screw that.
Grabbing the doorknob, she jerked the door shut with a slam and then she took off, running down the hallway.
She was almost at the door when she heard Zach roaring out her name.
But she didn’t slow down.
Chapter Eighteen
For one brief moment, Zach wondered if maybe he’d taken one of those damned pain pills and just forgotten about it, because that might explain why in the hell everything had just started to trip out on him.
But the pain pills had always made things just glide and float, even if they did fuck his head up.
They didn’t turn the world into a nightmare and that’s what this was, he thought, jerking back from Keelie and staring at her like he didn’t even know her. What the hell—
And then he realized they weren’t alone.
Swinging his head around, he thought, Not Abby, not Abby, not Abby . . .
But he already knew who it was.
It was Abby, standing there, staring at him like he had just jerked her heart out of her chest and smashed it to the ground. And he imagined that just might be how she felt. He knew the feeling pretty damned well, but any time he’d ever seen her kissing that fuckhead boyfriend of hers, Abby hadn’t ever belonged to Zach. He couldn’t call it a betrayal.
This, though . . .
“Abby . . .”
She just stared at him for a long moment and then, without saying anything, she jerked the door closed.
“What the hell . . .”
“Zach . . .”
He shot Keelie a narrow look and then took off running out the hall after Abby. But she was running away again.
And this time, she was running from him.
“Abby!”
She shoved through the door before he could catch up to her and he watched as she bolted down the sidewalk. “Damn it,” he snarled, shoving the door open. But she was inside her car. And then, seconds later, she was tearing off into the traffic on 4th Avenue.
Stunned, sick inside, Zach stared down the street after her. He’d wasted valuable seconds trying to chase after her, instead of going around to get his car from the back. There was no way he could catch her now.
He’d just have to talk to her at home.
Skimming a hand back over his hair, he nodded to himself. “Yeah. At home.”
Shoving back inside, he ignored the wide-eyed looks coming from the patrons, he ignored Javi’s concerned comment, and he ignored Keelie, who was standing in the hallway, a nervous look on her face.
In his office, he grabbed his keys and turned back around.
Keelie was in the doorway.
“You need to move,” he said quietly.
“Look, let me call her or something,” she said, misery on her face.
“You need to move,” he said again.
“Damn it, Zach!” She stared at him, tears glinting in her eyes.
Part of him wanted to feel bad for her, but he just couldn’t care that much right then. “Stop,” he said quietly. “I don’t want the poor Keelie routine. I don’t give a flying fuck that you didn’t know she was there—it doesn’t matter. You know I’m dating her and you know I’m serious about her. Serious . . .” he trailed off, shaking his head.
Abruptly, he started to laugh, although there wasn’t anything at all humorous about this. Not a damn thing was funny. But just then, he felt like if he didn’t laugh, he just might lose it.
“Serious,” he said again. “Yeah. I’m serious about her.”
Saying he was serious about Abby was kind of like calling Arizona hot in the dead of summer. Slanting a dark look at Keelie, he said softly, “I love her, damn it. She’s my world. What the fuck possessed you to pull something like that?”
“What possessed me?” she asked, staring at him. Then she sighed and shook her head. “The same thing that possesses you to chase after the same woman for seventeen years. I love you.”
I love you.
Those words didn’t want to come together in his head. Oh, he knew what they meant, but coming from Keelie? Swearing, he shoved the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. “What the hell . . .”
“Yeah. What the hell. That pretty much describes all of this pretty damn well, Zach.”
He lowered his hands to stare at her but she wasn’t looking at him. She started to pace, her long legs scissoring as she stalked across his office, her head bent, eyes on the floor.
“You wanted to know why and there you go. And now, maybe I get it. Because you’re looking at me like I’m crazy. I’ve loved you for years. And you didn’t know, did you?”
“No. Look . . .” He blew out a breath, trying to think past the haze of anger. But he just couldn’t. Not then. “I’m sorry, Keelie. I can’t talk about this right now, but it . . . it wouldn’t ever work and you know it. Even if she walks away from me and never speaks to me again, I’ll never . . . well. You’re a friend, but that’s it.”
“I always thought . . .” She licked her lips and shook her head. “Part of me thought you knew and just pretended otherwise because you didn’t want to embarrass me. Okay. I guess maybe sometimes people don’t know.” She flicked him another look and moved out of the doorway. “I’m sorry, Zach.”
“I’m not the one who just had my heart ripped out,” he said quietly.
He headed down the hallway, his mind already intent on finding Abby, on what he would say to her, on what he could say.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been kissing Keelie, that he hadn’t been putting the moves on her or anything.
What mattered was that Abby had been hurt and he had to fix it.
Behind him, Keelie moved to stare after him. As he disappeared through the door, she rubbed the heel of her hand over her chest and sighed.
“No,” she said, even though she was talking to thin air. He wasn’t the one who had just had his heart ripped out. She had to agree there. That pleasure belonged to Abby . . . and herself.
But in the end, her heart was a problem of her own making. Something she’d have to deal with.
She hadn’t been very fair to Abby, she decided. She had to find a way to fix that.
But figuring out how to do that was going to be hard.
* * *
“You haven’t talked to Abby, have you?”
“Give me a minute, Zach.”
Marin’s assistant Leo put the phone on speaker, but judging by the sound of Zach’s voice, she might have to rethink that decision. Facedown on the massage table, she glanced at Leo and said, “I need some privacy, Leo.” She wasn’t too concerned about the masseuse, Rosa. Rosa was paid to be discreet and uber-professional.
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