Keep On Loving you (14 page)

“Sex buddies,” she repeated, liking the idea better by the moment. “Are you familiar with the concept?”

It took him just seconds to recover. His smile shone white again as he once again leaned into the doorjamb. “Familiar...and quite fond, as a matter of fact.”

Of course he'd be quite fond of no strings, she thought, wanting to frown. But she forced herself to let go of her quick resentment.

“I just wasn't sure about you,” he continued.

She shrugged and spun a finger between the two of them again. “This...you know. Thing. Force. It's not going away.”

“True.” He continued to study her face as if assessing her seriousness.

“You don't have a girlfriend or a wife anywhere, do you?”

“No.”

“And you're not planning on becoming a permanent fixture in Blue Arrow, right?”

“I'm temporary, you know that.”

“Thus the perfect sex buddy,” she said, with the air of someone reaching a logical conclusion.

His gaze narrowed now. “Is this something you do a lot?”

Again, she stifled her resentment. She was a grown woman, with needs, thank you very much. “Is that any of your business?”

Zan didn't seem too happy about her counter question.

In the distance, came the ding of an appliance. “I'll just start another load and give you a chance to think about my proposition,” she said in a nonchalant tone as she breezed past him on the way to the laundry room.

While descending the staircase, she heard the doorbell's distinctive melody. “I'll get that,” she called over her shoulder and jogged toward the entry.

It wasn't the courier Wes on the porch, but a regular mail carrier who needed a signature, and hers would do. She signed for the parcel, then was handed it, along with a short stack of envelopes.

One being a very familiar envelope.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

Quickly, she ducked into the kitchen and dropped all the mail but that one piece on the counter, the one piece that could screw the pooch on her whole casual and uncomplicated sex buddies solution to the Zan problem.

Looking around, she tried deciding how best to get rid of the envelope.

The one containing the invitation to her sister Shay's wedding.

Zan was to be a temporary amusement. Her potential gorgeous-in-bed. And if that happened, it would be no strings, all surface. Having him on hand at a family event, a very emotional and romantic family event, could cause trouble for her.

Remembering Brett and Angelica's celebration, she was aware such an occasion could chisel a chink in the very hardest of hearts, creating the means for a man to find his way in.

Zan was never getting into hers again.

Suddenly, he loomed large in the room. “What do you have there?”

Mac gave a guilty jump, then whipped the invitation behind her and stuffed it into her jeans at the small of her back. The same place a PI shoved his gun in detective shows when he went out on a mission. This situation might be just as dangerous.

“A pile of mail came for you,” she said, nodding to where she'd set it down. Then she sidled in the direction of the staircase. “I'll just get back to work.”

He stepped in front of her, blocking her easy escape.

Then, without thinking, she feinted in the other direction. He shifted that way, too, and his move gave her enough space to make it between him and the door frame. Then she took off running.

There was no grand plan forming in her mind. But when she heard footsteps at her back, the most insane urge to giggle crawled up her throat.

She gave in to it as she raced into the living room. Despite being dead serious about keeping him from the wedding, a giddy playfulness welled up inside her. For a moment she felt like a girl again.

The new space was wide and rectangular, with big pieces of furniture and a grand piano in one corner. Skirting a low, heavy-legged coffee table, Mac took refuge behind a massive couch upholstered in dark gold.

Her breath heaved in and out as Zan entered the room. His gaze trained on her face, he stalked toward her. “Now, what's all this running away about, honey?” His croon was deceptively sweet, because his eyes were narrowed and intent.

Mac moved along the back of the couch, putting more distance between them as she stifled another wild urge to laugh. Maybe she needed this, too. Hardworking Mac getting a sex buddy and a chance to explore her mischievous side, too. “Why, I don't know what you're talking about, darling.”

A feral smile overtook his face. “I know that look, Mac. It's the exact same one you wore when you'd hidden my keys before my big date with Harmonie.”

She used to do things like that, Mac remembered, then gave an exaggerated sniff. “She was too old for you.”

“It's the same age difference between you and me.” He prowled closer.

Eyes on him, she began sidling again.

Then he pounced. It didn't seem possible, because he appeared to be half the room away, but in one leap he had his hands on her and was lifting her over the couch. She let out a very unadult shriek—half gleeful, half alarmed—and twisted from his grasp just to make another mad dash...

Only to have him corner her in the room, beside an ornate desk.
Gah! Trapped!
Laughter bubbled again, and she felt alive as she hadn't in years.

“Well, well, well,” he said with a mock leer, palms on either side of the wall, caging her in with his body.

Then, while she was still struggling to keep a straight face, he dived his hand behind her back and found paper. She gasped but then he had it in his hold and stepped back to stare down at it.

“What the heck?” he asked, glancing up at Mac's face. “I thought Publishers Clearing House had finally delivered my check and you were attempting to steal it.”

Now she did laugh. “It's an invitation to Shay's wedding,” she finally said. There was no chance to hide it from him anymore. “I don't want you to go.”

His eyebrows rose. “Because...”

Would he understand? “Because we're sex buddies. Or possibly we're sex buddies—”

“About that.” He moved in close again.

The heat of his body was all along the front of hers and she found herself holding her breath. If pressed, she'd have to admit she'd actually never done the sex buddies thing—the out-front, bodies-only, hormones-in-charge kind of relationship. But if she wanted Zan—and, oh, she did—that was the way it had to be. If she went in with shallow expectations, she figured when it was over she'd escape deep hurt.

Tough Mac, grown-up Mac, was smart enough to know that.

His head bent. But instead of touching his lips to hers, he found the skin at the side of her neck. She trembled. Okay, she was trembly, but tough. “Well...?”

“I'm game if that's what you want,” he said, his breath hot on the thin skin over her pulse.

She trembled again, her body charged with anticipation, lust rushing through her veins, so that she felt on fire.

Then he tongued her flesh, sucked. She jolted in reaction, her body hitting that fancy desk next to her and causing something on top of it to slide to the floor with a thunk.

They both looked down at their feet.

She heard the harsh crinkle of paper as Zan's hand fisted around the invitation.

A heavy photo album sat on the floor, with an eight-by-ten color picture inserted in the plastic-covered slot on its front. The image was of a family posed on a beach. A mom, a dad, a boy, a girl, a smaller boy.

Chills ran down Mac's spine.

As if in slow motion, Zan bent and picked it up, set it back on the desk. Then he stared at the album as if it was spiders, snakes and alligators.

Mac knew his parents and siblings had died in a private airplane crash. He'd not been on the flight. Instead, he'd stayed home with a babysitter for the weekend because of an ear infection.

What she hadn't known until this very moment was that Zan's wounds from that loss still went to the core. As a boy, he'd never talked about it. As a teen, she'd never pressed.

As a woman, she recognized pain that scored to the marrow of one's bones. She saw it etched on his face now, the lines of it harder than normal, the bleak expression in his hazel eyes leaching the green and leaving only darkness behind.

And it turned out that Zan's pain...well, she couldn't deal with it, not now, no matter how tough she professed to be.

To keep from touching him, she fisted her hands at her sides. Another woman, or the Mac she'd been before, would want to comfort him, kiss him, talk to him about his loss. But then their relationship couldn't be merely shallow, merely surface. And getting close to him emotionally as well as physically...that would be her downfall.

She could be a friend or she could be a sex buddy, but not both.

Still, she felt craven as she slipped around him. “I'll leave now,” she whispered, her chest burning, her throat tight.

He didn't try to stop her.

* * *

A
T
HIS
NOW
-
FAVORITE
stool drawn up to the bar at Mr. Frank's—it was on the end and in deep shadow—Zan acknowledged that coming back to the mountains had been a mistake. For years he'd managed to outrun his memories with a globe-trotting lifestyle that required he be both mentally and physically alert and always in the moment. But now, with former lovers and photo albums in his face, the past felt as if it was looming like a big-ass insect swatter poised to squash him like a bug.

So tonight he was planning on getting drunk and forgetting about everything but booze and whatever game was playing on the TV.

The young bartender was not much busier tonight than during Zan's last visit, but since he barely looked up from his beer when the guy tried to start a conversation, the man wandered away. Zan savored another long swallow of beer and his solitude. A buzz couldn't come soon enough.

It was just beginning to build when someone slid onto the stool beside his. Zan didn't glance over, not wanting to encourage any kind of exchange. He was an old hat at this, after years of long and short flights. If he kept his head down, he'd keep hold of his separateness.

Only when he signaled for another beer and a shot of tequila did the person beside him clear his throat.

“Going for it hard, huh?” Brett Walker asked.

Zan stifled his groan. “What? Are you my conscience now?”

“It would be like old times, then.”

Not looking at his friend, Zan tipped back the shot glass and poured the tequila down his throat, embracing the burn. Then he coughed once. “I have a DD,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of a small table where Ash Robbins was nursing a soda, his attention on the game showing on the overhead TV.

Brett turned his head, turned back. “How come you're not sitting with your designated driver?”

“Because I'm not feeling sociable.” He glanced over at Brett to see if he got the point.

“I'm here to meet a client.” The other man took a sip of his own draft. “But you could do your drinking at home if you truly wanted to avoid the huddled masses.”

He wanted to avoid the empty house. That photo album. The memory of Mac saying,
Want to be sex buddies?

“Is this any of your business, Brett?” he asked, completely aware of his testy tone.

“I guess not,” the other man retorted, “since you never bothered to find out about
my
business during the last ten years.”

He signaled for another shot. “I always said I was going down the hill. Never hid the fact that I wanted to get out of the mountains.”

“You never explained that meant it would appear you fell off the face of the earth, either.”

“That's not exactly true. I...” Zan didn't want to go there. Explaining he'd kept a kind-of contact with Mac would only lead to more questions.

“Yeah, I know what you did. Those effing postcards, no words on them and only signed with the letter
Z
. Quite the prolific correspondent you are.”

Shit. “But—”

“I'm sure my sister appreciated keeping up with your travels. Maybe she would have liked to let you know what was going on with her life, but hey, like I said, you couldn't be bothered.”

“I never knew my next mailing address,” Zan muttered.

“Let me explain about this little thing called email. It moves from computer to computer, no stamps, no physical mailbox necessary.”

Zan swallowed down half his beer. “Sarcasm doesn't become you.”

“I'm not kidding about how pissed I am that you left the way you did.”

“Jesus. I always said I was going to get out of here!”

“You never said that you'd leave your family behind like that. No real words from you, no way to keep in touch.”

Family?
His head started to pound as if he already had the hangover he anticipated for the next morning.

Then his mouth opened, and words came out of it without his permission. “How'd you get those scars?”

It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to know about them since his first glimpse of them at Oscar's. One bisected an eyebrow and another crossed the bridge of Brett's nose, and anyone could see they weren't cat scratches. But, Christ, a man might be self-conscious and not want someone to pry...just as Zan didn't want to let anyone in on the scars he had, the ones on the inside.

“Forget I asked,” he muttered, when Brett remained silent.

“Are we gonna get all touchy-feely now?” the other man said, his voice mild.

“Screw you—”

“I went into the army. Saw action in Afghanistan, followed up by doing hurricane relief effort work in Florida. It was there that a house fell on me.”

“Like the Wicked Witch of the East?” Zan couldn't help but ask.

Brett snorted. “Didn't die, just lost some of my pretty looks.”