by Lori Wilde
“Your grandfather would have to admit he was spying on you.”
“Then I guess he won’t do that.”
She stepped inside, and Zack followed.
“It was worth it to demonstrate to my grandfather how dangerous blind dates can be,” she said with a light laugh.
“Ours was dangerous?”
“No, but…”
He was standing behind her, and she wasn’t surprised when he circled her waist with his arms.
“The door.” She had a comical vision of her two elderly neighbors lying on their bellies so they could spy on her through the crack under their door.
He released her to close it.
“I sort of thought you’d be on the other side of it,” she said.
“I’ll go if you’d like.”
He kissed her. It felt better than sex, although she readily conceded she had yet to reach the pinnacle of success in that field.
“You’re tense,” he said.
“There’s a strange man in my home. Why shouldn’t I be tense?”
“We’re hardly strangers. You tried to give me a milk bath in my bed.”
“You’ve thrown my show into chaos with your burly muscles and too-tight jeans,” she snapped without thinking.
“My jeans are too tight? They feel all right to me.”
“Well, they don’t look all right.”
Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? He provoked her like no man ever had.
“How did you happen to notice this alleged tightness?”
He was toying with her, and she was torn between sputtering and giggling.
“How about when you bend over. Or when you stick both hands in your pockets, so the cloth is pulled tight over… Oh, never mind.”
“You’re observant.” He was smirking. “I thought only men check for panty lines and speculate about hidden treasures.”
She was backing up into the still-dark interior of her living room guided by the faint glow of the overhead fixture in the hallway.
“You really look nice tonight,” Zack said.
“So do you. I never thought of how you might look in big-boy clothes.”
They were buying time, she suspected.
Then his arms closed around her again. He wasn’t play-acting now. Neither was she, and it was scary.
He kissed her until the skin around her lips burned and tingled, then their kisses deepened until the back of her neck was throbbing and her legs were wobbly.
Megan thought of protesting when he slowly slid the zipper on the back of her dress down to her waist, but she was liking it too much.
He’d opened the top three buttons on his white dress shirt when he left his tie in the car. The thatch of dark hair that had escaped was silky against her chin, and she slowly unbuttoned his shirt some more to snuggle her cheek against his warm chest.
His hands were on her bare shoulders, caressing until she quivered.
There was something she should consider, she knew, but too much was going on. He unhooked her bra and took the weight of her breasts in his hands, teasing her nipples into hard, pulsating knobs.
“Touch me,” he murmured, trailing his lips over her lids, down her cheek to her lips again, increasing the pressure of his fingers on her breasts until she was dizzy with pleasure.
He was erect and hard against the side of her thigh, and she had to struggle for a reason not to satisfy her curiosity. It had to be curiosity. She couldn’t possibly want Zack to make love to her.
It would complicate her life beyond belief. She wasn’t a great actress. She couldn’t endure doing another show with him if she knew how he looked naked. Her eyes would give her away. She might look at him that way.
And he’d be unbearable if he thought he could seduce her any time he liked. She wanted a real love affair someday, but not before she reached her career goals—to move to a bigger market and a better show.
Her dress had fallen to the floor, and Zack’s calloused palm rasped slightly against the nylon of her pantyhose.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, should we?” she asked with a noticeable lack of conviction as his fingers caressed her thigh, then pressed insistently where she needed him.
“It’s the dumbest thing I’ve done since Cole talked me into doing your show.”
“We’ll hate ourselves in the morning.”
“Probably.” His voice was low and husky.
She touched him through his trousers and wondered if he ached as much as she did.
“We don’t even like each other.” She was arguing with herself, not him.
“You’re the most annoying female I’ve ever met.”
“You’re bossy, overbearing, rude, inconsiderate…”
“I’d rather roll naked in the snow than do your show.”
“You’ve turned it into a male strip show for the bored and the brainless.”
“Who do you think watches your shtick? Brain surgeons and corporate lawyers?”
“I used to have a good show.”
She wiggled away from the hand trying to roll down her pantyhose and pushed at his chest for leverage to get to her feet. She didn’t even remember sitting on the couch.
“This was a lousy idea,” he growled, standing up.
“It certainly wasn’t mine. You’re the one with all the bright ideas.”
He was buttoning his shirt and trying to stuff the tail under his waistband.
“You’re a walking cold shower, Danbury.”
“You weren’t invited here.”
“No? If wiggling your butt all the way up the stairs wasn’t an invitation, I’ve never seen one.”
“Like I need a big macho man following me home.”
“You don’t know how to let a man treat you well.”
“I suppose you’re an expert on what women want.”
“I damn well know you wanted this a few minutes ago.”
He ground her lips with a rough kiss that was more excitement than she could handle at the moment. She opened her mouth to tell him where to go—and he was gone.
9
She suffered from an overdose of Zack Bailey, and the only antidote was a long heart-to-heart with her best friend, Andrea Byrne, whom she hadn’t seen in forever.
They already had plans for lunch on Sunday, the day after her bizarre blind date with Zack.
When the phone rang a little before noon that day, she hoped Andrea wasn’t canceling.
“This is me, live and in person,” she said, answering without checking the caller ID.
“Nah, must be a machine,” a familiar male voice said. “The real Megan Danbury always snarls at me.”
“Why are you calling, Zack?”
She wanted to talk about him, not to him.
“My grandfather was so impressed by our performance, he wants us to come to his place for dinner tonight.”
“Did he admit to spying on us?”
“Marsh confess? No way. He claimed the two matchmakers just wanted to surprise us with a nice evening out. Didn’t even bother denying they’d thought we needed a push.”
“Well, tell him no, thank you. He’s done enough manipulating.”
She picked up a pen and pad lying beside the phone and started making a list, something she always did when she was agitated.
“You’re forgetting our deal,” he reminded her. “I showed up at the Home Stop. Now it’s your turn to come through for me.”
“How do you expect to fool him? He’ll expect a lovey-dovey couple. That is not us.”
She’d started listing all the reasons she couldn’t stand him on the little pad. One page wasn’t enough for all of them.
“Just smile and look pretty. It’s not as hard as fending off a mob of shirt-grabbing souvenir hunters.”
She added sarcastic to her list.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Neither do I. I’ll pick you up at five-fifteen. He never gives up, so we might as well get it over with.”
She’d just written fantastic buns. She blacked it out.
“Okay, but only because we made a deal. This is stupid, you know.”
“Agreed.” He hung up without a goodbye.
She ripped the list into tiny pieces and dropped them in the wastebasket.
Andrea was waiting at Olivia’s Garden Cafe when Megan got there. The restaurant was busy, but most people came in larger groups on Sunday at noon, so they got a table for two fairly quickly.
“This was a great idea,” Andrea said when they were seated. “I’ve been dying to hear about the guy on your show. I watched the last episode four times. Where did you find him?”
Not you, too, Megan wanted to say, but instead she smiled weakly.
“Ed met him when Bailey Construction did some renovations for a friend. It was a few years ago.”
“Does he look as good in person as he does on TV?”
Megan sighed and looked at her best friend since high school. Andrea was six inches taller than she was with dark-brown hair and eyes, and in most ways, they were as different as night and day. They’d never liked the same boys in high school.
She couldn’t possibly tell Andrea how she felt about Zack when her friend was raving like one of his fans.
“What are you going to have?” Megan asked, picking up a menu.
What was there to say about Bailey, anyway? He was maddening, and she didn’t want to feel the way she did about him. Absolutely nothing could come of it. Look at the extreme measures he was taking to avoid matrimony. She’d be crazy to hope he’d ever commit himself.
She wasn’t quite thirty—yet. Once she met her career goals, there would be plenty of time to find Mr. Right. He had to love kids and want a family of his own, which certainly eliminated Bailey.
“Earth to Megan. Have you tried the crab salad croissant?” Andrea asked.
“Sorry, no, I haven’t. Sounds good, though.”
She smiled at her friend and turned the conversation to less sensitive subjects. Much as she cherished her friendship with Andrea, Megan realized she wasn’t ready to confide in her or anyone else about Zack. Instead, she had to find a way to exorcise him from her system.
They lingered over lunch until Andrea had to leave to play tennis with her current not-too-serious boyfriend. The rest of the afternoon Megan tried to keep busy with little jobs around her apartment. Mostly she tried on clothes, trying to decide what a girlfriend of Zack’s would wear to dinner at his grandfather’s.
At five-fourteen, she was dressed in black Capri pants with black flats and an open shoulder ruffled blouse. She took a final look in the full-length mirror on the bedroom door. What was she thinking? She looked like a Swiss milkmaid.
The door buzzer sounded promptly at five-fifteen as she grabbed a knee-length muted blue T-shirt dress. She was still shimmying into it as she opened the door.
“New look?” he asked, tweaking the tag sticking out the front of her neckline.
She grimaced. The damn dress was on backward.
“Wait here,” she said.
“You can count on it.”
This dress was too clingy for a command appearance at his grandfather’s house. She stripped it off, tossed it on the bed with the milkmaid costume—something she never did—and settled on a flowery ivory sundress with wide straps and a hemline that fluttered just above her ankles.
“Ready?” he asked when she reappeared.
“I guess. Do you think it will rain before we get back? Maybe I should take an umbrella.” She opened the door of her coat closet.
“Never mind. Let’s get this over with,” he grumbled.
He led her out to his vintage Mustang, the forest-green paint gleaming from a heavy wax job.
The car looked better than it sounded. She wasn’t at all sure it would start, but the motor sputtered to life.
“We could take my car,” she suggested.
“I just put seven hundred dollars under the hood, and it can damn well get us to Bloomfield Hills.”
“Maybe you need gas,” she suggested mildly when the car bucked and bumped its way up a ramp to the freeway.
“The gas gauge is goofy—another thing to fix,” he grumbled. “I should have plenty left.”
“Isn’t this car a little old for city driving?”
“I love this car.”
“Oh, dear.”
They were losing speed, and Zack pulled onto the shoulder just as the motor conked out completely.
“Are you out of gas?”
“Don’t see how I can be,” he said none too happily. “I filled it up…”
“When?”
“Maybe two weeks ago,” he admitted crossly.
“You should have stopped for gas.”
“I intended to, but you fussed around changing your clothes. Marsh is a bear about being late. I’ll hike down the ramp. There’s a service station not far from where we got on.”
Big drops of rain splattered on the windshield. A semi roared past, making the car shake.
“First I’d better call Marsh and tell him we’ll be late,” he said unhappily, picking up his cell phone.
“There’s nothing like a nice sprint in the rain,” she said, looking at the heavy gray cloud cover over the city.
Heavy drops pelted the roof of the car, and another semi passed, practically sucking the Mustang into its wake.
“I’m not sitting here in this tin can while you walk all the way to a station,” she said. “It’s barely off the pavement.”
Zack connected with his grandfather and ignored her protest. The rain got heavier as he talked, obscuring everything outside the windows.
He hung up the phone and tried the motor again, which, of course, only gave him a mechanical raspberry.
“If you have a better plan, I’d really like to hear it,” she said.
“I’ll call a tow truck.”
“Have you ever thought of trading this for a car that runs?”
She was feeling really, really irritable. The windows were so fogged up she couldn’t see the ravine on her side of the car, but she knew it was deep and muddy.
“No, I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” Zack was saying into the cell phone, “but I’m sure we need a tow. Shouldn’t be long,” he said after he turned off the phone.
“Fine.”
The car shook as another truck threw oily water against the exposed side of the Mustang.
She shivered. The rain was cooling the interior of the car, but darned if she’d mention how nice a warm arm around her shoulders would feel.
“What did your grandfather say?” she asked over the roar of another truck.
“Get a better car.”
Wrong answer.
The windows were steamed, and she couldn’t resist drawing a tic-tac-toe game on the windshield with the tip of her finger.
“X or O?” she asked.
“X.”
He put his mark in the center square. There went any chance she had of winning. The game ended in a tie, and she wiped her wet finger on a tissue in her purse.
“Breath mint?” she asked, holding out a little plastic container.
“Will I need one?”
“I was only being polite.” She dropped a couple of little candies onto his outstretched palm. “This isn’t much of an entertainment center you have here.”
“We could count trucks or bet on the water drops running down the windshield,” he suggested with a crooked grin.
“Too exciting for me,” she said dryly.
“What is your idea of fun?”
He touched her cheek with the back of one finger, trailing it under her chin to the other cheek.
“That tickles.” She hunched her shoulders against the shiver that ran through them.
“No, it doesn’t. This does.”
He leaned close and nuzzled her ear, his warm breath making her giggle.
“Pretty dress.” He fingered the gauzy material of her shoulder strap. “Worth the wait.”
“Hard telling.”
“Those trucks are making me nervous.”
Another zoomed by, and she could imagine the car toppling down the ravine.
“Are you sure it’s the trucks making you nervous?” He tickled the tip of her nose with his fingertip.
“What else?” She tried for levity, but it fell flat.
“I think you’re afraid I’m going to kiss you.”
“Are you?” She was embarrassed by a little spark of hope.
“Almost certainly.”
He cupped her chin in one hand and ran a finger from one corner of her lips to the other, slightly parting them.
“Zack,” she whispered.
His lips were only a fraction of an inch from hers. She dropped her lids expectantly, but bright lights made her jerk them open.
“Tow truck,” Zack said. “Stay here.”
He got out on the highway side and sprinted to the cab of the rescue vehicle. Megan peered through the foggy windshield but couldn’t see much except flashing yellow dome lights and red taillights.
Zack seemed to be out there forever, but it was probably only a few minutes. When he came back and opened the passenger door, his hair was plastered to his head, and rain was streaming down his face.
“He’ll tow the car to the service station. We’ll have to hope I’m only out of gas. Come on.”
She looked beyond him at the rain beating down on the muddy shoulder.
“We have to ride in the cab of the truck,” he explained.
“I know that.” Knowing was not doing. She couldn’t have picked a worse dress for a deluge. “I should have brought my umbrella.”
She thought longingly of her tiger print umbrella with jungle cats silhouetted around the edge.
“Wouldn’t help. The wind is blowing the rain too much. Let’s go.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the car, putting his hand between her and the top of the doorframe so she wouldn’t conk her head. Her foot landed on the ground with a splash, and they ran for the shelter of the tow truck. She was so glad to get inside, she almost ignored where Zack’s hand lingered while boosting her up.
Almost. She’d add his wandering fingers to her long list of grievances when she recovered from his idea of a waiting-in-the-car-in-a-rainstorm game.