Wrecked (26 page)

But she was blatantly staring now.

And the lines and whirls around that blade settled into place, forming a very distinct image.

An
A
.

It was stylized, decorated, and worked to be part of the tattoo so it didn’t jump out and
scream
anything. But there it was. The letter
A
.

“Zane . . .”

She swallowed as she stroked the tip of her finger over that letter and then looked up at him.

He was watching her calmly. “It’s been there all the time, Abby. You just never saw it.”

Sucking in a ragged breath, she turned away.

Tears clogged her throat, but she couldn’t start to cry. Not right now.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quietly. “Come on. Let’s get this done. I need to go have a talk with this man of mine.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The absolute last thing Abigale thought she could
handle was that voice.

She didn’t know how her mother had tracked her cell phone number down this time. She didn’t know, and honestly, she didn’t care. All she knew was that the name glaring at her from the display was one she knew too well.

Blanche Levine
.

Her mother. Working on her fourth marriage now.

And still trying to drag Abigale back into her life.

Sighing, she took the call because it was either that or . . . run.

He’s afraid you’ll run
.

Zach was right about one thing. She ran away from things, too often. Too easily. It had to stop. With everything. Including this.

Just before the call would have ended, she hit the button and pushed it so that it rolled over to speaker. “Hello, Mother,” she said, keeping her gaze focused on the road in front of her. She still had a few hours before she’d reach her destination. Spending any of that time on the phone with Blanche wasn’t ideal, but getting it over with now was better than delaying it, she guessed.

There was a very brief pause but Abigale realized she’d surprised the other woman. “Abigale. Darling . . .”

“Stop it with the
darling
, mother. I’m not your
darling
anything. What do you want?”

“Can’t I call just to speak with you? I miss you, you know. It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen each other.”

Not long enough
. But instead of saying that, Abigale just shot the phone a glare before focusing back on the road. “It has been a while, hasn’t it? Let me think . . . twelve years, if I remember right. That’s when the judge ruled against you in court.”

“Yes, well. Water under the bridge, of course. Listen, I was hoping that you and I could—”

“No.” Abigale gripped the steering wheel.

“Darling, I haven’t even managed to say the words yet . . .” Blanche laughed and the sound was just as grating, just as fake and empty as it had been back when she’d been a child.

“It doesn’t matter. Unless you’re calling to apologize for breaking my father’s heart, for destroying him . . . unless you’re calling to apologize for the misery that you made of my life, unless you’re calling to tell me that you’re sorry for the disaster that was my childhood, you and I
can’t
do anything.” She swallowed the scream trying to rise up inside her.

Her mother heaved out a terrible, put-upon sigh. “Abigale, I know your father’s suicide was hard on you. It was hard on me, too, but—”

“Hard.” She laughed. “Yeah. It was hard. I mean, it wasn’t exactly
fun
for me, either, when the two of us walked in on you and that little swinging party you had going on. But I’ve dealt with that, because
you
don’t matter to me that much anymore. My father did. And you destroyed him. You humiliated him and he left me.”

“He killed himself,” Blanche said, her voice flat and empty. “
I
didn’t force that on him.”

“No. You didn’t. That was completely on him and maybe one day, I’ll stop being angry at him. But I’m done with you. I’m not angry at you, but you’re not welcome in my life, either. Now . . . please stop calling me.”

She disconnected the phone in the middle of whatever her mother was saying. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. Abigale braced herself, waited for the pain she knew would follow. But it wasn’t there.

She just felt . . . numb.

Her mother, at some point in the past few years, had ceased to matter.

Another ring belted through the air and she flinched.

“Rebel Yell.”

Damn it.

Zach.

She
still
wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.

She had a date, anyway.

One more thing to do before she went and confronted him.

She hit the button to ignore the call and punched in Marin’s number. As Marin came on the line, she asked, “Are you going to be able to make it or not?”

“Oh, hey, Abby! So nice to talk to you, too . . . yes, the flight was wonderful, and my goodness, it’s hot here in Arizona. No, I don’t mind a bit—”

“Ha, ha,” Abigale said, cutting into Marin’s chatter. “Hi, Marin. How are you, how was the flight, and of course it’s hot. It’s
always
hot around here. Are you going to make it?”

“I already said I’m here. So . . . have you figured out what you’re doing?”

Abigale rubbed the heel of her hand over her heart. “Yeah. I’ve got an idea. We just need to know where to go.”

“Leave that to me.”

* * *

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Zach listened as
Marin droned on. After about another sixty seconds, he’d had about all he could take.

“Marin . . . this isn’t helping. What I
need
is to know where in the hell she is.”

Two days, damn it. He hadn’t seen or heard from Abby in two days.

It was killing him.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Zach,” Marin said, sighing. “Look, just give her some time. She’ll calm down.”

“Time.” He closed his eyes but two seconds later, he forced his heavy lids back open and stared outside over the twinkling lights of the city. “Give her time, you say. I’ve given her plenty of time, Marin. I waited seventeen years. I was patient. I hoped. I waited. And then she sees
one
bad thing and she takes off. Now she won’t talk to me. How much more time am I supposed to give her?”

“She just walked in while you were kissing another woman,” Marin pointed out.

“
I
wasn’t kissing anybody!” he snapped. “Keelie kissed me and I stopped her the second I figured out what in the hell she was doing.
I
didn’t plan it and I sure as hell wasn’t on board with it.”

“Zach . . . I’m sorry and I get that. But you need to see it from her side. How would
you
feel if
you
walked in and some guy had his lips all over
her
?”

He snorted. “I’ve walked in and seen that a hundred times.” And he knew how he’d feel. It hurt. Like acid in a wound.

“But you never had a right to call her yours before now. It’s different. It’s a different matter entirely. She just needs to some time to cool down.”

“If she’d give me five damn seconds, I could tell her there’s nothing to cool down about,” he grumbled. Spinning away from the window, he started to pace. “And damn it, I need to know she’s okay. She’s not coming home. She’s not been to work. It’s like she disappeared.”

“You realize she’s a big girl, right?”

Groaning, he dropped down on the coach. “So that means I can’t worry? Is that what you’re saying? I’m not allowed to worry?”

“Worry all you want. But I can tell you that she’s fine. Okay?”

His gut tugged at him. Lowering the phone, he glared at it and then lifted it back to his ear. “Worry all I want . . . damn it, Marin. Is she in LA? Put her on the phone, damn it.”

“She’s not in LA.” Marin laughed and the sound was easy, light . . . and completely full of bullshit. He
knew
it. “Zach, sweetheart, you need to calm down a little. Chill out. Hell, go hook up with one of your brothers and have a drink or something.”

“None of my brothers
live
here,” he snapped. “Put her on the phone and don’t lie to me. She’s in LA with you, I know you too well.”

“She’s not in LA with me, Zach.” Marin stared across the room, eyeing Abigale narrowly as a thin Asian man with his hair dyed blond and done up in spikes bent over Abigale’s bared chest. She was tempted to take a picture and send it to Zach. But that would be a bad idea. It would piss him off and he’d figure out that Abigale
was
with her. No, she hadn’t lied. They weren’t in LA. They were in Phoenix.

Marin felt more than a little guilty when she’d talked Abigale into meeting her. Not so she could tell her friend that . . .
yeah . . . I knew
. But . . . hell. Abigale said she had to figure out how to deal with this, and she had a plan, but she needed to make it better.

So . . . voilà.

They met at the airport and Marin had left her assistant scrambling to cover a few things. It wasn’t anything major and it wasn’t like she couldn’t take a few days off. And even if it was major, even if she had to walk out on something very major, her friend needed her.

She wanted to go a little closer and look at the tattoo, but she knew Zach would pick up on the familiar sounds so she kept her distance. “Look, sweetie, she’ll be home when she’s home. If she’s out blowing off steam . . . ? Then maybe it’s because she needs to.”

“Blowing off steam?” Zach muttered. “You realize this is
Abby
we’re talking about. Her idea of blowing off steam is to lock herself in her kitchen and cook up a couple dozen ancho-chocolate-chili cupcakes.”

“Hmmm. Maybe she felt a change of pace was in order and she decided to lock herself in a tattoo parlor and get a tattoo of your name on her ass or something,” Marin said, smirking a little as Abigale flipped her head around and glared at her.

Shut up!
Abigale mouthed.

Marin smiled angelically.

“Marin . . . tell Abby to get her cute ass on the phone, or I’m going to call the damned paparazzi out on your butt,” Zach growled.

“Oh, man. You’re
really
pissed off.” She lowered the phone and glanced at it, thinking back over the past few hours. She hadn’t tweeted or posted anything to Facebook so there weren’t any of those stupid geotags and she’d never done that stupid Foursquare shit. And her assistant didn’t know
exactly
where she was. “Zach, one second, okay?” She muted the phone and looked up. “How much longer until we’re done?”

“Forty minutes.”

“If it’s possible to hurry it up without
messing
it up? Please do it.” Marin smiled at him and watched as a dull red flush crept up his neck. Hopefully it wouldn’t be necessary. But no point in taking chances. After she unmuted the phone, she lifted it back up to her ear. “Okay, sorry about that, Zach. Personal thing. Where were we?”

“We were at the point where you get Abby on the
fucking
phone!” he snarled.

“Oh.” She pursed her lips and studied her manicure. “I don’t remember that scene. I’ll tell you what. I’ll call her again and let her know you’re still looking for her. Zach . . . stop worrying so much. That’s her specialty, right? That and ancho-chocolate-chili cupcakes . . .”

She disconnected before he could say another word. Blowing out a breath, she put the phone away. Lifting her gaze, she focused on Abigale’s face. “Honey . . . I don’t know whether to pity you or be envious. That man is all but desperate to find you.”

Abigale closed her eyes.

“What are you going to do when you see him?”

“I’ll think about that then.”

Marin lifted a brow. “Maybe you should start thinking about it
now
,” she suggested. “Before he actually tracks you down.”

Abigale popped one eye open and focused on Marin’s face. “What?”

“He’s threatening to unleash paparazzi hell on my ass, sweetheart. He’s determined to find you and he’ll do it if you wait too long.” She tugged the phone out of her pocket as it started to ring again. It was her assistant Leo. She’d told him not to call unless it was urgent. “And he’s probably already on the move.”

* * *

It was mostly an empty threat.

Mostly
.

Because Zach knew one thing, almost as well as he knew his own name. Marin was with Abby.

Marin didn’t give a damn if he set the beasts from Hollywood hell loose on her ass. But Abby would. So it was a
mostly
empty threat. He’d hold it in reserve in case he didn’t track her down soon, but damn it, he was getting desperate—

The doorbell rang.

Hope was a funny thing.

It could burn inside him and turn everything inside him into electricity and even though he knew, he
knew
, that Abby was with Marin, he all but ran for the door.

He was less than a foot away when something was shoved under it.

The renovated loft where he lived was old. It was a wonderful place and he loved it, but it was old. Big open areas, huge windows . . . old doors. And whoever had just shoved that envelope under his door had absolutely no problem doing it.

He stared at the envelope for a split second and then lunged for the door.

The grate was already going down on the old freight elevator and he didn’t make it in time to stop it.

Swearing, he debated between chasing it down or going back to his place. He opted to go back, because he’d glimpsed something. It had been a guy. All he’d seen were the shoulders, but it sure as hell hadn’t been Abby.

Okay.

In the end, that was what mattered.

Back in the main room of his loft, he knelt down and scooped up the flat white envelope. It was the kind that Zane would send pictures in.

Zane . . . Narrowing his eyes, he jogged over to the window and stared down at the parking lot. He didn’t see his brother’s car. All he saw was somebody moving damn fast down the sidewalk, head bent, shoulders hunched, and a baseball cap tugged over his hair. And he was already too far away for Zach to get a good look at the guy.