And deep down, I know they’d do the same for me.
So why did he say such a thing? Is it a demonstration of the people he has or had, at some point, in his life? The reason he can’t understand loyalty? That when the going gets tough, the majority flee?
The realization that his parents, his family and all of his relations save a great-grandmother have all ostracized him, could explain it. As soon as G.I Zane ceased to be that All American hero I was talking about, and did something unorthodox, he became an outcast.
I need to know if that’s the reason for his comments, and so I ask, “Why do you think I’d be a burden to my friends? They love me. They’re my family.”
My eyes are glued to the windshield, the glaring headlights hurt my senses, but so does the sound of the city that never sleeps. The tooting, the shouts, the still-packed sidewalks as clubbers seem to take this moment for a mass exodus from all the nightspots.
I want to hide. Curl up into a ball and hibernate. Maybe when I wake up, the only pictures I have of my granddad won’t be burnt to shreds. My poems, the words I’ve poured my heart and soul into, will still exist.
“Because most friends disappear if your status changes in any way.”
The grimness to his voice isn’t exactly a new note, there’s always a slight tang of cynicism. Something I’ve gradually grown accustomed to in my short acquaintance with the man. But this bridges new lows.
“When you married Jake, you didn’t just lose your family’s support, did you?”
The gleam of his teeth and the snarled ruffle of his lips are an answer in itself. “No. I lost pretty much everyone. But I gained Jake. It was a huge trade-off, but sometimes, you have to follow your gut.”
Hurting for him, I reach out a hand and rest it on his thigh. My fingers gently squeeze the roped muscle and his hand drops down to rest an inch away from mine, as though he’d like to connect but doesn’t dare chance a rebuff.
With no compunction, I bridge the gap. As soon as our palms rub together, I can’t say that I’m happy. I can’t even say that I’m filled with peace at the connection. But I feel a little better. I’m not alone. Zane is too large, too robust, too Zane for me to ignore his presence. With the simple union of our hands, any isolated part of me is suddenly filled with him.
“I’m guessing your gut got you out of some pretty nasty situations in Iraq, right?”
“Yeah. Amazing how people forget that, though. I was accused of insanity, at one point. They blamed the blast, the injury, my retirement. It had to be anything but the truth.” He sucks in a breath and shakes his head. “Why are we even talking about this? We’ve bigger things to worry about at the moment.”
Strange how with the change of subject pronoun, from you to we, he makes me feel a ton better. A physical reminder and now a verbal one, I’m not alone.
“Are you sure you don’t mind me staying at your apartment? I know you had bad experiences, but Marina and Eddie would do pretty much anything for me. I stayed with Marina, when I got divorced a few years back, but Eddie offered too. She had a roommate and a sister at the time, so I didn’t want to intrude any more than necessary.”
He nods, but from the tense line of his jaw, I can tell he doesn’t believe in the power of friendship. His cynicism hurts me. Not in the way it did earlier. I get why he’s distrusting. It hurts me because, as the saying goes, no man is an island. And Zane is doing a pretty good impression of just that.
A part of me wonders at his interactions with Jake. How he deals with him and how Jake handles Zane’s inability to trust. It must make life very hard for their relationship. Although that being said, maybe Zane can’t trust, not only because of his background, but also because he himself isn’t trustworthy. Who’s the one cheating around on his husband? Zane is.
It’s difficult to believe the rest of the human race possesses a quality, when the entire world around you seems incapable of it, and you yourself don’t have it either. I get the feeling that trust, to Zane, is as mythical as a unicorn. And even in New York, where the weirdest shit goes down, we don’t get many of them galloping around.
“I don’t mind you staying there at all. Hell, it’s for you anyway.”
“Do you really own that place?” Even though I know he’s rich and that his family is too, it still seems incredible that someone in my circle of acquaintances owns a place that has views of Central Park. And it’s even weirder that he wants me to live there.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe you evicted a tenant for me.”
He shrugs. “Good thing I did. You’re not the sort to appreciate hotels.”
Amazed at that throw-away insight, I turn to him and ask, “And how the hell do you know that? Wait a minute, it wasn’t in my file, was it? Because the only reason that I haven’t been in a hotel is because I’ve never been on vacation.”
He shoots me a look. “If you had gone on vacation, would you have stayed in a hotel?”
Busted. “No. I don’t like the idea of sleeping on something a thousand strangers have as well. When you’re a cleaner, you see a lot of nasty things. I like to sleep on my own bed with my own germs.”
“So I was right?”
“‘I told you so’,” I mock, hiding my smile at the flash of his teeth again. This time with humor and not cold hurt.
It’s starting to feel like every time I get a laugh or a smile out of him, I’ve won the lottery.
To say that I’ve never felt this way before is an understatement.
I’m beginning to understand what Zane means. Life can’t always be cookie-cutter perfect, and you have to grab what happiness you can when fate is kind enough to hand you it.
It’s all well and good me saying this now, after my home has just turned into toaster scrapings. But I think, in many ways, it clarifies my feelings. I have nothing and so, there’s nothing to lose.
The idea of him believing I’m using him as an unpaid landlord does disconcert me, though. I’ll sit on my change of heart for the meantime, let it incubate and make sure that I really do want this for my future.
A change of heart is one thing when you’ve just slalomed past the bottom rung and there’s no end in sight, but situations can and do change. I’ll accept his kindness tonight and see how I feel first thing in the morning.
“It would be unseemly of me to say anything like that. But yeah, I told you so.”
His southern drawl has made an abrupt reappearance. “Unseemly, huh? That’s a mighty fancy word for this time of the morning.”
“We do accommodate all walks of life,” he teases, and smiles again at my chuckle. “Seriously though, I don’t mind at all. You use my place for as long as you need and if you decide to never leave, then that’s even better.”
“We’ll see how it goes, but I really appreciate this, Zane. I won’t forget your kindness.”
With my hand still tucked in his, the gentle squeeze demonstrates a tenderness I would never have thought he possessed. With my thoughts at peace for the moment, I let him drive me back to where the evening, in all honesty, started to go downhill.
In comparison to my shitty place, which is even shittier now, his building is a dream. Art-deco-esque, it’s smaller than the other skyscrapers surrounding it. It’s still pretty huge, but this is no monument to steel and glass. Gray stone with cream touches, ornate cornices and heavy, almost Palladian, window surrounds.
That this could be the place I call home, astounds me.
There’s no parking, but I don’t have a car and can’t drive and the man at the concierge desk, who snapped at me earlier, glaring at me and my pinafore as though I was shit on his shoes before directing me to the service entrance, hits new levels of fawning when I appear at Zane’s side. There’s still a sneer at my uniform, but it’s quickly brought under control when a muscular arm is wrapped around my shoulder.
“Park the car, please, Henry,” Zane orders, handing the man the key. “In the morning, send out for a personal shopper.
I’ll need her here as early as possible.”
With that being said, the pair of us walk over to the elevators. The layout of the building is such that four apartments have the top floor. The penthouses are all on different levels but they don’t overlap. Zane’s is one of the lowest and, in the old-fashioned cage and grill elevator, we make our way to the top.
“Don’t worry. It might look old, but it’s just made to look it. It’s as high-tech as any elevator in the city.”
“No, I’m not worried about the elevator.”
“Then why the frown?”
“Why do you want a personal shopper?”
“Guess,” he retorts wryly.
Biting my lip, I stare down at the floor. “I don’t like it.”
“You have nothing, Mona. Nothing except your uniform. Let me help you. It’s nothing to me, hell, think of it this way, because of you, I’m not staying at the Kensington Park. You’ve saved me a fortune on a hotel bill.”
“And cost you a fortune, because you’re missing out on the rent from this place.”
He clicks his tongue. “It’s negligible. And you don’t understand. I want to help you. I want to do a hell of a lot more for you, but until you let me, a basic wardrobe is a necessity and something I doubt you can afford.”
“That investigation didn’t happen to run into my bank account, did it?”
“Perhaps.”
For a minute I fume, and then when I realize I don’t have the energy to feel anger, my shoulders slump. Humiliation at him knowing the depths of my poverty adds a little starch to my spine but not enough. At this very moment, I’m bone-deep tired.
As we enter the penthouse, directly from the elevator as Zane had to key in an entry code, he immediately ushers me to the bedroom.
“I cleaned this place, so I know where you’re taking me. I know there’s only the one bedroom too.”
“You’ll also know that there’s a rather large sofa. I can sleep on there.”
I snort. “Yeah. That’s practical.”
“You need a better night’s sleep than I do.”
I remain silent, because he’s right. All of a sudden, the weariness of the day overpowers me and my knees feel weak and wobbly. Not only have I put in a twelve-hour shift at work, gone home to a heart-wringing discussion with friends, been forced to work again, I’ve then been pulled through the wringer once more with Zane, only to watch my home and all of my possessions plunge into a pit of fire.
Yeah. I’m exhausted.
It’s ironic then that, as soon as Zane leaves, closing the door without a word and I strip down to my underwear as I fall into bed, too tired to even take a shower, I suddenly wake up.
My body is weary, my mind is too, but my brain won’t let me sleep. I’ve always been a planner. Never been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl. And there’s a lot to plan and organize. A new life, a new place to live, clothes and stuff to buy… that is, if I don’t let myself be swallowed up in the tide of life that is Zane.
Beside the bed there’s an alarm clock, and I watch the minutes tick by. The red digits taunting me with their slowly shifting shadows.
An hour before dawn, a time when I’m usually up and about preparing to go to work, the door opens.
At first, it’s a slight creak and I make sure to regulate my breathing to appear as though I’m sleeping. I learnt this as a child. I’m a pro sleep-faker. It was the only way to avoid my father at night time. His nightly lectures could only be evaded if I went to sleep, or pretended to, at eight o’clock.
He never seemed to catch on. Or if he did, he was glad to get me out of the way.
I can hear Zane’s breathing in the quiet of the room. It’s steady, rhythmic, but still loud. His footsteps are mere whispers of sound as he moves closer to the bed.
Even though I’m regulating my own breathing, it quickens slightly at the very idea that he’s there and watching me. Maybe I should feel disturbed, my privacy violated, but I’m curious more than anything else.
More whispers of sound appear as he rounds the bed and then there’s the slight gush of wind as he lifts the covers. A slight jostle of the mattress, a minute movement considering his bulk, then, he’s there. Beside me.
In another agile move, he turns to me and wraps an arm over my waist.
I fake a moan, a slight whimper of sleep-disturbed sound, just to see what he’ll do next.
“Ssh, honey,” he whispers, rubbing his nose against my temple. “Sleep. I’ll take care of everything in the morning. You’re safe.”
With that, he presses a kiss to the upper curve of my cheekbone and settles beside me.
And the irony is that for the first time since I got into bed, I do feel safe. And I do feel at peace.
Within minutes of his arrival, I fall into a deep sleep.
Chapter Six
That night pretty much set the benchmark for the remainder of the week. I’d go to bed, be unable to sleep, pretend to be deeply asleep when he popped his head around the door, and then drift off as soon as he wrapped me up in his arms.
Sounds stupid or sappy? Well, I guess it was really. I’ve never been able to rely on a guy and this week, as dangerous as it might have been, I’ve started to depend on Zane.
My nights end well, if innocently, but the days start off shittily and for the most part have carried on in that vein.
Why?
Because when I wake up, Zane isn’t there.
And after a week of hide and go seek, it’s getting a bit tedious.
Monday was officially one of the worst days of my life and I’ve had some doozies in my time. I didn’t expect the remainder of the week to improve, but the only highlight of every day was being with Zane.
And that all hung in the balance on Tuesday morning, when I could have taken out a lot of upset, hurt and anger on him.
Not for the most obvious of reasons either. Not because it was the morning after the night before and I was officially homeless, without a thing to my name save a pinafore that didn’t belong to me and a pair of sneakers I wished didn’t. But because he was right.
Marina and Eddie did and have let me down.
I’ve always been slightly apart, detached even, by New York standards. But with those two women, I thought I’d found friends for life, family. And to learn that I can’t rely upon them, even in a time of need, well, it pretty much devastated me.
Marina called me, in fairness. She said she’d heard about the fire on the news and she did sound pretty frantic, her worry for my wellness warming me in ways she would probably never understand. No one has ever really cared about me, not my parents or grandparents. My ex-Marine grandpa did, but he died when I was young. Being alone has become the status quo and knowing that someone out there cared for me just warmed me to the depth of my soul.
And then, I told her I had nowhere to stay.
I lied to her. Honest to God lied. Because I did have somewhere to stay but I was testing her. And even now, even though they did let me down, I feel guilty about that.
But Zane’s complete lack of faith in the human race rubbed off on me that morning and I wanted to know how the women I classed as sisters would react.
Marina offered me money. As did Eddie. The pair of them offered to put me up in a hotel for as long as I needed. But neither of them welcomed me into their house as I would have done, if the circumstances were reversed. Maybe it’s a southern thing, either that or part of my church teachings. When someone is in need, you help them as best you can.
I don’t like the anonymity of hotels, in fact I hate them and they know that. But still, they tried to shove me in one.
Their charity was kind, I guess. But I didn’t want them to offer me that. I didn’t want money or to be made to feel like I was in the market for donations. I didn’t want to cost them a dime, just wanted shelter for as long as it took to get me back on my feet. I wanted them to offer me what a relative stranger had done—Zane had welcomed me into his home, why couldn’t th
ey have done that?
And now, I feel like what I wanted was a huge request, but I know that if they’d come to me, I’d have done all I could to help them and make them feel welcome.
I ended the call pretty abruptly after Marina offered me cash to tide me over. And when I called Eddie to let her know and she let me down too, I switched off my cell and have remained out of contact to the world at large.
It’s cruel, really. Eddie was as concerned as Marina, her need to know if I was okay as urgent as her offer to give me money had been freely suggested. They don’t know where I am, if I’m okay or if I’m on the streets and still, I haven’t switched on my phone to let them know I’m alright.
I don’t particularly like this part of my nature. It isn’t at all fair, but I can’t find it in me to care. I’m hurting and feeling betrayed and let down. Top that to feeling shit about losing everything I ever owned, my mood hasn’t exactly perked up.
Zane doesn’t know that I called them, but he’s too damned clever to not realize that something’s happened and that I’m not happy about it.
Especially as ever since that day, I’ve been… reckless.
There’s no other word to describe it really. Other than a prick tease, that is.
I’ve accidentally walked into the living room in nothing but a towel. Wandered around in a shirt and nothing else, even though he bought me something he considers a basic wardrobe, but is in fact more clothes than I’ve ever owned at one time.
I’ve bent over, exposing my boobs. I’ve strutted into the bathroom, which for some reason has no lock on the door, when I know he’s in the shower. And the sights I’ve seen as the bathroom is nothing more than a washroom… yikes. Zane, stood in the center of the room, bared to me. Water sluicing down his body. Olive skin gleaming with vitality, muscles flexing, tattoos rippling. Yum.
And do you know what? I’ve loved every damned minute of it.
I love how Zane frowns at me, whenever I walk in a room. And I don’t have to be psychic to realize that he’s trying to figure out what I’m doing. Or what mischief I’m up to this time.
Sinfully Theirs: Naughty Nookie Part I Page 9