Shaken (15 page)

“The atmosphere, the bartenders, the fact that we can sit at a table for five hours and no one ever tries to toss us out or make us feel like we’re taking up too much space. And a few months ago, when Kaley found that place over on fiftieth, I told her no, and we argued to stay at Coveted because you were there.”

They’d been going to Coveted years before Tony showed up, but no way in hell was she losing her one opportunity a week to see him.

“If I leave?”

“Just tell me where to show up.” She grinned. “Unless you’re tired of me, and then….”

But she didn’t get to finish the statement because he suddenly stood and hopped over the table to tackle her lightly to the floor. Rolling her right into the piles of receipts, but she didn’t care because his mouth slanted across hers and his kiss left her breathless.

“I haven’t been home in a week except to grab clean clothes. I’ve spent the last three days trying to figure out how to get my ass back here so I don’t have to go to home, and the only good thing about saying good-bye to you in the morning is knowing I’m going to see you in the evening. I am as far from tired of you as I can get. In fact, I’m already hating tomorrow because I’ll be at Coveted by the time you get home.”

The long, masculine feel of him weighed on her, and Zip reveled in the drape of his body. “I’ll come by after work and have dinner at the bar. At least then I can see you.”

His countenance softened. “I would love that.”

“But only if you promise to come back here after work.”

“I was hoping you’d ask, but you need to sleep.”

“No, I don’t. What I need is to see you.” She’d never felt so vulnerable. A year of longing glances fulfilled in eight days of mind-blowing sex and lazy conversations, coupled with a sense of belonging she’d never experienced, had left her shaken.

His fingers caressed her cheeks, tracing the outline of her face as he studied her. “I don’t want to screw this up.”

“Me neither. But I’m willing to risk it…risk anything, really…just for a chance to spend more time with you.” She fumbled the words and probably sounded like a fool. Who fell in love in a week? But the truth was, she’d loved him before she’d walked over to the bar and asked him out.

She couldn’t even pinpoint when it was she fell in love with him, or when he’d become so damn important. She only knew, even when the girls were out of town, she had to be at Coveted on Friday nights, and only self-preservation kept her from stopping by every night after work.

“Not that I’m complaining, but why did you ask me out that Friday? How did you know it was time to risk it?” Of course, he would ask.

“You’re gonna think it’s stupid.”

“No, I’m not.” He shook his head with such certainty.

“Jem had a job to reinvent the Magic 8 Ball.” The desire sweeping her from head to toe was only partially due to the steady pressure of his cock on her leg. Her pussy was already damp and clenching, but nothing about his posture said provocative. Instead, he seemed almost protective and tender. “You know what those are, right?”

“Yeah.” His tone remained careful and guarded, but his eyes were alive with curiosity.

“We were joking and laughing. Veronica had just found out her guy had been cheating on her, and, for the first time in years, we were all single. Kaley knew, I think they all knew, that I had the hugest crush on you.” She looked down, staring steadily at the pulse in his throat. It was more than a little humbling to admit she was over the moon for him. “So, we said what if you could ask the Magic 8 Ball what to do with your love life, take the chances you were willing to take in school, but not as an adult when you ask yourself about all the things that can go wrong or list all the bad experiences you’ve had?”

“You asked it about me.” Was that a note of wonder in his voice?

Zip glanced up. “I asked it if I should go over and ask you out.”

“What did it tell you?”

“‘Without a doubt.’” The corners of her lips twitched. “I’d had two glasses of wine and three martinis, and I pooled all my liquid courage together and walked over to the bar.”

He kissed her, long, hard, and searing, blotting out all the doubts that crept up under the surface of her embarrassment and, by the time he let go of her, they were both breathing heavily. “I’m going to kiss your friend with the 8 ball square on the mouth, too. I just want you to know that.”

“Okay,” she giggled. “But I get to do it first.”

“Sounds good.” His thumb stroked her cheek. “That’s insane, but I love it—I love you.”

Everything in her stuttered on the words, and she froze. “What?”

“I love you. I’ve loved you for a while, but I was too busy trying to do what needed to be done, what I thought I had to do, to do the right thing, that I kept sweeping it aside. But you never went away. Not once from the moment I saw you. You burrowed your way in here until I marked my week by Friday nights.”

“Tony, it’s only been….”

“I don’t care. You can make a list of excuses why we shouldn’t, or why I can’t possibly, and they will all be valid and perfectly reasonable, and I won’t give a damn. My point is, Zip, I planned everything with Robin, and I tried to do everything exactly right. I didn’t take risks. I planned it all out, and it blew up. You took a risk coming over to that bar and asking me out, and I want to keep taking risks…. I want us to be more than just a fling. You’re already a hell of a lot more than a fling to me.”

“You’re a hell of a lot more than a fling to me, too,” Zip admitted, giving verbal proof to the emotion swelling inside of her. “I’m not a huge risk taker. My mom always said practical was perfect, and I’ve been as practical as I know how, except with you.”

“Good. Then I have a business proposal for you….”

“Business?”

“Hmm-hmm.” Tony’s mouth slanted over hers, his tongue caressing the seam of her lips, beckoning access, and she opened up to him, hands thrusting into his hair as he took possession. Her pulse hammered by the time he broke from the kiss and teased his way down to her ear, tickling the earlobe and nibbling it. “I want you to give me one year.”

“For what?” The words rode out on a breathless exhale.

“To prove you can’t live without me and that we’re gonna be an unbeatable team. That we work, and then you’ll let me propose, and you can make an honest man out of me.”

Chapter Twelve

Thursday

“Oh, my God, what did you say?” Kaley squealed over the phone. It was after ten on Thursday, and Zip hadn’t seen Tony since kissing him good-bye Monday morning. It took everything she had not to read anything into his absence. Maybe he was giving her time to think, or maybe something had come up at work. God knew she’d been buried every day and got home later and later each evening. Still, his absence hurt—and she’d called Kaley because, of all her girlfriends, she’d be the most likely to go where her impulses took her. She wouldn’t look five days ahead if she was having fun right now. She lived in the moment, exulted in it.

Zip cringed. “I said I had to think about it.”

“Think about it? Are you insane?” The woman’s voice skyrocketed over the sounds of traffic and the train. Kaley was probably on her way back from some art event. Music pulsed in a two-tone beat behind her words.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Kaley, he’s amazing. He’s funny, he’s smart, he’s sexy as hell, and I’ve never had anyone touch me the way he does. I get turned on when he looks at me or hands me a cup of coffee.”

“So? Go with it, girl. Ride that man until you can’t walk.”

“But what if it doesn’t work out?”

“What if you get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow? You can’t plan everything, Zip. You can’t do one of those stupid analyses on a relationship.”

“It’s not stupid.” She flipped the notebook closed on the SWOT—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—she’d been writing. Her heart hurt. “I went by to talk to him last night, but he wasn’t at Coveted, and he hasn’t come by all week.”

She’d sat at Coveted for two hours, planning to surprise him. It was Tiffany who finally told her Tony called in sick. A first for him. In a year of managing the night bar, he’d never been late or called out. Not even during the blizzard the winter before.

“Hmm.” She practically heard the wheels turning in Kaley’s mind and imagined her wrapping a long lock of dark hair around one finger and curling it over and over. “Did you call him?”

She sank lower on the sofa. “No. I thought about going by Coveted tonight after work, but then I just came home.”

“Zip, what are you thinking?”

“It’s only been two weeks, Kaley. Not even. I can’t be in love with him, and planning my life around a Magic 8 Ball is just stupid.”

“Is it? Or are you just afraid that you care too much already and you have no idea where it’s going?” Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

“I suck at relationships.”

“No, you don’t. Just all your relationships sucked. You went for guys you worked with, jackasses who were screwing around on their wives and girlfriends and using you as the patsy to do it. This guy likes you. He likes you enough to put himself out there, to confess all his own mistakes and his hopes and his dreams….”

“And what if I’m terrible for him?”

“What if you’re the best thing that ever happened to him? What if he’s the best thing that ever happened to you?” Kaley’s voice softened. “Zip, you remember Chris Sorenson from school?”

“Yeah. You guys were crazy for each other.”

“Well, that weekend we went to Vegas, we got married.”

“What?” Zip shot up straight on the sofa. The co-eds had taken a flying weekend to Vegas in their junior year.

“Yeah. We got married. We went there, we were having fun, we always had fun, and he was heading to Basic at the end of the summer. He’d already decided to enlist in the Army. We wanted to make it a weekend to remember. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”

“You never said anything.” The words were half-accusation, half heartbreaking sadness. Chris Sorenson had died in a training accident during their senior year. Kaley’d gone off the rails for weeks, and she’d never been the same.

“Yep. Because it was ours. Our private moment together. We got married, and we made a deal. He would go in the Army, and I would finish my degree, and, when I was done, I’d follow him to whatever base assignment he got.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”

“No.” Kaley’s voice took on an edge Zip had never heard. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. We had four fantastic weekends after we got married. Four weekends of mind-blowing sex, laughter ’til we cried, tender kisses, sweet good-byes, and even sweeter hellos. I miss him every day, but I don’t regret one minute we spent together. You can make all the plans you want, you can study all the angles, you can put together contingencies and what ifs, but life happens whether you’re participating or not. You get your ass out there and you find that guy, and you hold onto him. You throw yourself into today, tomorrow, and the day after that, and you ride the whirlwind.”

“And if it doesn’t work out?”

“Then we get a tub of ice cream, a pitcher of martinis, and we get stinking drunk and do it again. Love him, Zip. If he loves you, go for it.”

“It hasn’t been long enough….”

“It takes seconds for one sperm to fertilize one egg, it takes less than that to end a life…. Don’t worry about what if. Embrace what is.”

God, she wanted to be Kaley. She wanted to love with abandon, throw herself out there, but….

But what? What’s stopping me?

“Sweetie, I know you’re afraid. I know V made you feel bad on Friday—yes, Lucy told me—and I know your mom drilled into you to examine every risk, to weigh every opportunity, to do the practical thing. But let me ask you this; if you don’t go after him, if you don’t do this, are you going to regret it?”

Zip’s feet hit the floor with a thump. “I gotta go.”

“Get ’em, tiger.” Kaley laughed. “I love you, sister.”

“I love you, too.”

After hanging up, she tossed the phone on the sofa and glanced down. She’d dragged on her rattiest pajamas when she got home, already six-feet deep in her own private pity party. So she hadn’t heard from him since Wednesday, but anything could have happened. He should have called her.

But, then again, she should have called him.

Racing into her bedroom, she grabbed jeans from the dresser. She would get dressed and call him. If he was at Coveted, she’d take a taxi to Midtown; if not, she’d find his address and….

Zip froze. He lived in Manhattan—he’d said he’d inherited his grandmother’s rent-controlled apartment.

But where?

Scowling, she jerked a sweatshirt off the rack and pulled it on over her pajama tank. A swipe of the brush through her hair and she twisted it up into a ponytail. She barely spared her reflection a look. Manhattan was huge, but his parents lived in Queens. So did his ex.

Okay, first, call Coveted. Next, call Tony.

After that, she’d start hunting up Giordano phone numbers in the local area. He had a brother there, too. Somewhere.

She’d find him.

One pair of socks and Skechers later, and she hurried into the living room. She’d just dialed Coveted’s phone number when three knocks struck her front door. Phone in hand, she flipped on the porch light and peered through the peephole.

A harsh exhale of relief flooded out of her, and she twisted the locks and jerked the door open. She threw her arms around Tony and hugged him tight.

“Hey.” He laughed a little, but didn’t let go.

Zip gave herself a full minute to get it together so she didn’t start crying like some overwrought teenager before pulling away and fixing a stern look on her face. “You weren’t at work last night.”

“No, I wasn’t, and I’m sorry.” He kissed her forehead and herded her into the warmth of the house. He gave her the once over and released her long enough to swing the door shut. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Um, well, I was calling to see if you were at work tonight, and then I figured I’d call every Giordano in Manhattan….” Embarrassment swam through her. “It occurred to me that I didn’t have your cell number or your address.”