Wrecked (8 page)

“Oh, I know.” She tried to get rid of some of the tension trapped inside, but instead of subsiding, it was mounting. Her skin felt hot and her heart was racing. Faster and faster. Still, as she took another sip of her juice, she was damned proud to see that her hand was steady. “I was planning on doing it this week, but it’s like everything known to man has gone wrong. A couple of my employees were sick so I was working shorthanded. Then I had to cover for Grace . . .”

She trailed off and shrugged. “It’s been one thing after another. Endlessly.”

A sly grin curled his lips as he looked at her. “You could call him now.”

“You just want to hear me tell him off,” she said, laughing a little. She’d always suspected Zach hadn’t exactly loved the guy, but she hadn’t realized just how deep his dislike had run. He’d kept it hidden pretty damn well, because she’d never
seen
it, and she should have.

“Maybe I do.” He shrugged a little and shifted around on the stool, lifting one leg to brace his foot on her stool, while stretching his other out behind her. She could feel the heat of him, he was so close. She felt almost surrounded by him now. “How’s the
not worrying
thing going?”

A faint smile curled her lips and she shot a look at him. Immediately, her heart flipped over a little in her chest and she had to remind herself just what she was supposed to be doing. Saying . . . he’d asked something . . . oh, yeah. She remembered now. “That’s actually going a little easier. I’m not all keyed up to get to every single thing on the list right away, which is good. There are a
few
things I wanted to do right away, but I’m not letting it twist me up.”

“Was Roger one of them?”

“Yeah.” She reached for her juice but instead of drinking it, she just braced it between her hands and spun it back and forth, staring down into the glass. “I know what I want to say to him. I have it all jotted down . . .”

“Jotted down.” He started to laugh. “Abby, did you go and make a damned script or something?”

She glared at him.

He just laughed harder.

She shot out a hand and poked him in the ribs. It was like jabbing a hand into a rock wall. “You jackass,” she muttered as he kept on laughing. She shoved a hand against his shoulder and he caught her hand around the wrist. “It wasn’t a
script
. I just . . . hell. I made notes.”

“Notes . . .” He stroked his thumb over her wrist. “So you made notes. Why haven’t you called him?”

She tugged on her wrist but he didn’t let go. Sighing, she shrugged. “It just hasn’t happened yet. You know . . . Never mind.” She went to slide off the stool, but before she could, the hand on her wrist slid up to her arm.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

His thumb stroked against the inside of her arm and the dark blue of his eyes bored into hers, like he could see clear into her soul. “That look on your face isn’t nothing, Abs,” Zach said, his voice a low, soft rumble. “Something’s bothering you.”

She swallowed and stared off past his shoulder. “It’s Roger . . .”

The grip on her arm tightened for just a second and then he tugged her off the stool, into the vee of his legs. Her heart, already racing, jumped up into a gallop that just couldn’t be healthy. That scent of his, all soap and male skin and the detergent he used on his clothes, shot straight to her head. Her mouth started to water and instead of looking up at him, she rested her head on his shoulder. “You can’t keep letting that dickhead twist you up, Abby,” he said, stroking a hand up her back to curve it over the back of her neck.

She wanted to whimper. Instead, she forced herself to talk. “It’s not that. Not exactly.” The last thing she wanted him thinking was that she was still all terribly upset over what had happened with Roger. Logically, she
should
be but she just wasn’t. “It’s what he said . . . about not being true to myself. I
know
I don’t want that life back. He’s out of his mind, and I know it. But I keep hearing him say that,
You’re not being true to yourself
, and it’s echoing in my mind. Now I’m wondering if maybe there’s something else that is missing from my life that I just can’t see. Does that make sense? Something that I
do
want, but I can’t see it?”

He sighed. She felt the motion of it, felt his chest rise and fall against hers and she had to bite back a whimper. Then he pressed a kiss to her temple. “You’ve spent so much of your life trying to control everything you could, Abby. There are probably a lot of things you want that you can’t see. Just . . . hell, just try not to worry. Let your life happen for a while.” Then his voice took on a teasing slant as he added, “After all, she who shall not be named can’t exactly come back into your life and take things over again, right?”

She laughed a little and lifted her head to look at him. “That’s true,” she murmured.

The breath caught in her lungs as their gazes locked.

Things that she wanted that she couldn’t see . . . Right now the problem was that she knew exactly
what
 . . . no . . . she knew
who
she wanted. But it wasn’t a good idea . . .

He reached up and tugged on her hair. “So what’s the other thing you planned on doing, Abby?”

You
.

The word almost jumped out of her. She had to fight to keep it locked inside and not just because it sounded trashier than hell. She wasn’t exactly planning on
doing
a man. She’d planned to have an affair. A torrid affair. With a hot guy.

Yet the only guy she could even imagine doing this with right now was Zach.

“Ah . . .”

That familiar smile of his, a little devious, a little wicked, curled his lips as he wound one of her curls around his finger. “What is it, Abby? You weren’t planning something really bad, were you? Going to rob a bank? Get a part-time job as a stripper?”

She snorted and eased back away from him, reminding herself that she needed to breathe. She needed to think. That was what she needed to do. “Sure, Zach. I’m going to become the Stripper Bank Robber. I’ll wear a mask and a G-string and pasties.”

“Can I be your getaway driver? I’d love to see this,” he teased, his voice husky.

And the look in his eyes was . . .

Whoa. Her mouth went dry and again, her skin felt all hot and tight. She couldn’t seem to suck in enough oxygen. “Well, you’ll just have to picture it your dreams. Stripping and bank robbing weren’t on the list.”

“I dunno . . .” A wicked light glinted in his eyes and he leaned in closer. “You look awful guilty, sugar. Just what else is on the list?”

Get up. Walk away. You need to think
—

That voice, the voice of reason, the voice of sense, the voice she’d listened to her entire adult life, seemed to shriek at her, blaring a warning loud and long as she stared at him.

Another voice, sly and seductive, whispered,
you said you’d stop worrying. You wanted to live . . .

* * *

The dark brown of her eyes seemed to burn as she
stared at him.

Zach was torn between just closing the distance between them and just calling this whole idea off. More than seventeen fucking years, damn it. That’s how long he’d loved her and she’d never known.

But you’ve never told her.

Yeah, because she’d never seemed to—

Abby slid her off her stool.

Mentally, he sighed. Shoving a hand through his hair, he glanced away from her, tried to find something else to look at, focus on, think about. He’d been teasing her and pushing her as far as he figured he could go without saying outright, “I read the damn journal. If you have to have an affair, why not me?” But she wasn’t exactly following and—

Her hand touched his shoulder.

Zach looked back her. His heart seemed to jump up into his throat as she closed the distance between them.

Everything in the world faded away as she pushed up onto her toes.

And then, as she leaned in and pressed her lips to his, Zach realized this was what it was like to have a dream actually come true. As her mouth parted under his, he was almost certain he was dying. Maybe he’d already died. Yeah. He’d been eating something and choked, died, and now he was in heaven.

Except he figured there was no way he would end up there.

So maybe Abby really was kissing him. Groaning, he reached for her and hauled her closer, pulling her to stand between his legs. With one arm wrapped around her waist, he slid his free hand up her back and tangled it in the crazy, soft curls of her hair. Soft as silk, just like he remembered.

And her mouth was sweet, every bit as sweet as he remembered, but there was no director, no crew, no brilliant stage lights shining down and this kiss wasn’t choreographed or scripted.

Abby wasn’t kissing him because she had to, wasn’t kissing him because it was in some fucking script, and she wasn’t going to pull away and make some stupid joke to break the tension.

Abby
was kissing him, damn it.

It was
real
.

Real, and he was going to make the most of it.

Using his grip on her hair to tug her head back, he tasted and teased the curve of her lower lip and dipped inside her mouth to stroke her tongue with his own.

She whimpered and arched closer.

Closer, so that through the thin silk of the tank she’d pulled on, he could feel the soft weight of her breasts, the lush curves of her body and it wasn’t enough. He wanted, no, he
needed
more, but . . .

Tearing his mouth away, he buried his face against her neck.

Her body vibrated against his.

“Abby . . .” he whispered, all too aware of how ragged his voice sounded. All too aware of the fact that his hands were probably shaking and the muscles in his body were bunched, tensed, ready to take.

But what in the hell was going on?

Her hands stroked up his arms, one curving around his neck while the other slid into his hair.

Her lips brushed against his cheek as she turned her head. “I could tell you one of the other steps, Zach, but you’d either think I was crazy or you’d worry about me.”

Lifting his head, he stared at her with a narrow gaze. Her face was flushed and her eyes were a little glassy. But she didn’t look away. Long seconds ticked by and then she tried to ease back from him.

No, damn it. She wasn’t pulling back now.

Glancing around, he studied their surroundings and then he grabbed his stool with one hand, keeping his right arm banded around her waist. He managed to drag the damn thing a foot or two down the length of the breakfast nook to the bar and then he sat down.

Abby yelped as he lifted her up onto his lap and the skin on his burned hand screamed at him. He ignored both. Her skirt tangled around her legs and
that
was a bit of a hindrance, but he tugged and pulled until she was sitting astride him with the skirt tucked up around the sweet swell of her hips.

Rushing it, man. Pushing too far
, a calm, rational voice said. But how the hell could he be rushing it? He’d loved her for most of his life and his problem was that he’d never made a move. Now
she
had and damn it, he wasn’t letting her walk away just like that.

“The only thing that worries me about your life is the fact that you never really live it,” he said, hooking his arm around her shoulders and staring at her.

Her face was flushed and her eyes were overbright. Her gaze bounced around like she couldn’t look at him and she kept squirming around—considering her position, that made things
very
interesting. “Abby . . . be still, damn it.”

She wiggled even more. “Put me down, Zach.”

“Why?”

“Because . . .” She stopped and then lifted her eyes to stare at him. Her tongue came out to wet her lips and because he just couldn’t stop himself, he pushed his hand into her hair, tangled it around his fingers, and took her mouth.

The way he’d always dreamed about.

It was a moment made for dreams, it seemed.

Every time he’d thought about doing this, he’d been certain he’d get any reaction other than this. Anything but her hunger. Anything but her meeting him ragged breath for ragged breath, hungry touch for hungry touch. Desperate kiss for desperate kiss.

A soft, startled gasp escaped her and he swallowed it down. Yet another dream came true as he felt her wiggle closer and wrap her legs around his hips and arch closer. Abby . . . he had Abby on his lap and she had those lush, wonderful legs wrapped around him.

Fisting one hand in the tangle of her skirt, he dragged it higher, forcing the layers of material up out of the way until he could rest his palm on bare skin. The fabric brushed against the back of his burnt hand and pain slashed through him, but it faded in comparison to everything else.

Her arms wrapped around his neck as he slid his hand back behind her hips, nudging her closer. Closer . . .

Fuck . . . right there—

A broken moan escaped her as she tore her mouth away, her head falling forward to slump on his shoulder. Her nails bit into his shoulders, tension rocketing through her body as she started to rock against him and through her panties, through his jeans, he felt the heat of her.

Using his grip on her curls, he tugged her head back and pressed his lips to the hollow at the base of her neck. At the same time, he held her hips steady and started to move her, battling back the urge to come up off the damn stool and spread her out on the bar next to him.

No. Not the bar. Not enough room there.

The floor . . . nah. The table. Room there. Lots of it. He could undo the tie on her skirt, like he was unwrapping a present. Strip away her tank . . .

He settled for guiding her hips back and forth across the painfully hard ridge of his cock, listening to her broken gasps. When he heard her whisper his name, her voice a little dazed, he almost lost it. Damn near came in his jeans like a teenager.

Her hands came up, dipping into his hair as he used his chin to nudge the strap of her tank out of the way, nuzzling and nibbling his way down the smooth, pale flesh. The swell of her breasts was right there . . . so fucking close.