Tonight, Friday, he stood in his office doorway watching her pack up her airbrush and paint supplies. He told himself that tonight would be the first night that he’d let her go home alone.
You weak bastard, a voice said in the back of his mind. At least be honest with yourself if not Zoe.
Because there was no way he was letting her go.
Maybe if she hadn’t been wearing jeans that hugged every smooth curve of her hips and butt he’d have half a chance. Maybe if she didn’t have her hair piled high on the back of her head, exposing the provocative tattoo around her neck, and maybe if he hadn’t been haunted by her scent all day.
Zoe Ford had been the girl of his dreams, and now she was the woman who stood center stage in his life. He couldn’t imagine a time when he wouldn’t want her. He couldn’t imagine a time when he wouldn’t place her happiness above his own.
As he stood watching her, when he really wanted to be holding her, he forced himself to acknowledge the truth—she’d stayed with him through the years, buried deep inside him. And now he’d found her again and he wasn’t sure he had the strength to let her go a second time.
And sometimes, like right now as he watched her push a strand of hair out of her eyes, he wondered why he had to give her up at all.
She could move in with him. She could continue to explore her art both at the workshop and via Jacinta and the gallery. They could argue and make love and make each other laugh and grow old together.
He pushed the thought away. He couldn’t allow himself to start contemplating the life he could have with Zoe if he invited her home tonight and didn’t let her go again.
Liam pushed himself away from the door frame and forced himself to return to his desk.
He wasn’t the man for Zoe. He had scars all over his body and an almost constant ringing in his ear from his long-ago perforated eardrum to remind him of exactly why.
“Okay, that’s me. I’m off.”
He looked up to find her standing in the doorway.
“I guess I’ll see you Monday, then,” he made himself say.
She nodded. He could see she was disappointed he hadn’t mentioned the weekend, or even asked what she was doing tonight.
You need to end it, he told himself.
“Your neighbor still looking in on Lucky and the kittens for you?” he asked instead.
“Yes.”
“Want to have dinner?” he asked.
Both of them ignored the fact that five seconds ago he’d just indicated he wouldn’t see her till Monday. They’d been playing this game all week, back and forth, neither of them acknowledging what they were circling around.
“What were you thinking?”
“Fish and chips on the beach?”
She nodded. “Sounds good.”
He closed his eyes as she exited his office. He really was a weak prick. He knew what he had to do and it wasn’t going to get any easier.
So much for putting Zoe’s happiness first. But why should he be surprised? His father had been a selfish, possessive asshole, too.
The thought sent a chill down his spine. He almost called Zoe back. But he didn’t. Because he was weak.
She was waiting in front of his house when he pulled into the driveway. He heard her footsteps on the pavement as he exited the Mustang. Then she was standing in front of him, a smile on her face. Somehow she managed to look cocky and vulnerable at the same time. Sexy and uncertain.
Brave and scared.
He pulled her close, combing his fingers into her hair as he kissed her. She opened to him easily.
He was hard in seconds as she pressed herself against him. She trailed kisses down his neck to his chest, pulling the neck of his T-shirt out of the way so she could tongue his collarbone. Then she slid her hand beneath the waistband of his jeans to find his cock.
“Shut the garage door,” she murmured against his chest.
He saw the wicked glint in her eyes. He hit the automatic door button as Zoe sank to her knees.
Man, she was unbelievable. He felt his cock spring free as she unzipped his jeans, then her hot, wet mouth was closing over him. He hissed in a breath as her tongue traced the head of his cock.
She curled one hand around the back of his thigh to hold him close and took all of him at once.
He stood it for as long as he could then he pulled her up and away from him.
“Enough,” he said when she started to protest.
He hustled her into the house. They made it to the living room before he had her on the couch, tugging her jeans off. She wrapped her legs around his hips as he slid inside her.
“Hard and fast,” she begged. “Please.”
He gave her what she wanted, loving the way her eyes went distant and smoky and the way she bit her lip and arched her back as her climax approached.
His own climax hit him and he stroked into her one last time, feeling her beginning to come apart around him. She cried out, her thighs clenching around his hips. He pressed his face into the soft skin beneath her ear and inhaled the smell of her. Spice and sex and Zoe. He could never get enough of it.
He rolled to one side afterward. Zoe levered herself up so that she was resting on an elbow. She stared at herself—naked from the waist down, still wearing her bra and long-sleeved T-shirt, her jeans discarded in a tangle a few steps away. She laughed, the sound low and earthy.
“You’d think we’d be able to at least get our clothes off by now,” she said.
“Practice makes perfect,” he said.
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. He could feel her breath against his neck, warm and moist. He didn’t want to let her go.
“So, those fish and chips you lured me over here with,” Zoe said after a few minutes. “Were they real or just bait to get me to put out?”
“You want dinner and sex?” he asked, reluctantly letting her roll away from him.
She stood. “I’m high maintenance, baby. Haven’t you worked that out yet?” She laughed.
He lifted his hips so he could drag his jeans and boxer-briefs back up. Zoe hopped on one leg as she pulled her underwear on. He eyed the shadows between her thighs and wanted to tear her underwear off all over again.
“Stop looking at me like that or we’ll starve to death,” she said.
The rumble of his stomach decided the issue. They tidied themselves and walked around the corner to the local shops. They ordered up big, and Zoe insisted on buying Coke to cut through the grease of their heart-stopping meal. Ten minutes later, a warm paper-wrapped bundle under his arm, he led her to the beach.
It was only dusk but the streetlights were already on along the shore. The sand was still warm from the sun and they found a spot near the seawall. He unwrapped their meal and watched Zoe attack the food with zeal.
Fifteen minutes later she collapsed back on the sand holding her belly.
“My God, I haven’t had so much salt and grease in one hit in a long time. How can I feel so satisfied yet so guilty all at the same time?”
“I remember your folks used to order fish and chips every Friday night,” he said, staring out at the ink-dark ocean. “I thought I was in paradise when I first came to live with you guys.”
“Really? Don’t tell me your mom was a health freak?”
He shrugged.
“To be honest, I can’t really remember what she used to feed me. I know we didn’t do takeout a lot. Couldn’t afford it.”
Zoe was silent for a moment.
“It must have been hard, watching her die. I can’t even imagine how hard,” she said finally.
He shrugged. “It was harder watching my dad lay into her. At least with the cancer I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Zoe screwed the leftovers of their meal into a big paper ball and pushed it to one side. He felt the warmth of her body as she shifted closer to him, copying his knees-drawn-to-chest posture.
“There’s no way you could have stopped your father, Liam. You were just a kid.”
“Yeah.”
She nudged him with an elbow.
“Is that a ‘yeah, I know,’ or a ‘yeah, I still should have done something’?” she asked.
He shifted restlessly.
“He was a big guy. I tried to stop him a few times but it only made him angrier.”
Why had he even mentioned his father? He hated talking about this shit.
“Have you ever heard from him?”
He stiffened. “No.”
He could feel her looking at him.
“You ever wonder where he is, whether he’s still alive…?”
Liam turned to meet her eyes. “No.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
Silence stretched between them for a few minutes as they both stared out at sea.
“I think about Marty Johannsen sometimes,” she said after a while. “Whether he’s married with kids, that kind of thing.” She paused, then huffed out a breath. “Stupid, huh? It wasn’t as though he tried to get me pregnant. But still…It didn’t change his life, what happened that night. He can still have kids, a family.”
A cool breeze blew off the water and she shivered. Liam dropped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer against his side.
“He never spoke to me afterward, you know. He and his mates used to laugh when I walked past them at school, but not once did he look me in the eye. And after my operation…Well, a lot of kids didn’t look me in the eye after that. Like I was the school freak or something.”
He knew how hard it was for Zoe to talk about the past and her feelings. He’d seen how much it had hurt her when he pushed her for the truth. He also knew that she was offering up her stories to make it easier for him to tell his. She wanted to know about his dad. She wanted to share his pain the way he’d shared hers.
He couldn’t do it. Everything in him balked at the thought of unpacking all the ugliness he’d stowed away.
The warm weight of Zoe’s head fell onto his shoulder. He felt the tickle of her hair against his jaw and forced himself to unclench his teeth.
“He was a drunk,” he said quietly. “I can’t remember seeing him sober. He must have been, because he had a job some of the time. But I can’t remember seeing him without a glass or a bottle in his hand.”
She remained silent, the only sound the breaking of the waves and the hum of traffic on the road behind them.
“Me and Mom used to gauge his mood by the way he came home. If he slammed the front door, we knew we were in for it.”
He shook his head, remembering.
“He was a scary bastard. The first time we ran away and he came after us, I thought he’d killed her, she was so quiet afterward.”
Zoe stirred beside him, turning so that she could wrap her arms and legs around him. Only then did he realize he was shaking.
“You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to,” she said.
She was soft and warm against him. He took a deep breath, then another. She leaned closer and pressed a kiss to his cheekbone.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
They dusted off the sand from their clothes and disposed of their leftovers. They were both cold after sitting for so long in the cool ocean breeze, and Zoe went straight to his en suite when they got home and started running a bath.
“I’ve always wanted to try this monster tub of yours out,” she said as she started stripping her clothes.
They soaked for nearly an hour, washing each other’s backs, talking about the comp bike, the business, her art, small incidents from the day. Afterward he toweled her dry and carried her to his bed where he made love to her for a second time.
Her sighs and caresses and the thump of her heart against his own made him want to draw it out for as long as he could. But finally he lost control and things got a little wild and crazy.
He woke to the increasingly familiar sound of Zoe dressing in the dark. He reached out to grab her when she stood up after zipping her boots.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“It’s late,” she said, gently trying to tug her arm free.
“Don’t go,” he repeated.
His words hung between them, heavy in the dark. He drew her toward him, pulled her onto the bed. He kissed her, ran his hands down her back.
“I want you to stay,” he said against her lips.
Her breath eased out and her body relaxed.
“Okay.”
She was staying. Something in his chest expanded at the thought. He would wake in the morning and find her beside him.
God, he loved her.
He stilled as the thought registered.
Jesus, when had that happened?
But he knew: it had happened the moment he looked into her eyes again after twelve long years.
Zoe wriggled in his arms, and he realized his hands were fisted in her clothing.
“You going to let me get undressed again?” she asked, amused.
He forced himself to release his grip. She moved away from him and he listened to the sounds of her clothes hitting the floor. Then the mattress dipped with her weight and she was sliding into bed next to him.
Emotion burned in his belly, expanded in his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face into the warm skin of her neck. Zoe. His, at last. He felt as though he’d been waiting for this moment all his life.
No wonder he hadn’t been able to walk away from her.
For a few short seconds, panic gripped him as he thought of his father and his mother and the promise he’d made to himself. Then Zoe’s arms came around him and she rested her head on his chest.
Slowly his body relaxed as he gave himself up to it. It wasn’t like he had a choice. He loved her.
He always had.
10
FOUR WEEKS LATER Zoe stood with her eyes tightly closed, Liam’s chest warm and solid behind her. His hands covered her eyes and his voice rumbled through her body every time he spoke.
“No peeking,” he said.
“Stop fussing. I want to be surprised,” she said.
She could hear the guys talking amongst themselves and the scuff of footsteps on the floor, along with the faint click of metal on metal. Nerves thrummed in her belly, sending adrenaline tingling into her fingertips.
This was it, the great unveiling of their competition chopper. She was about to see if her ideas had worked, if art and form and function had come together in a cohesive whole—or if between them they’d created Frankenstein’s monster.