Their Soul Mate [The Hot Millionaires #5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (6 page)

“So you got out?”

Cody shrugged. “Caught my wife cheating on me, which was my wake-up call. I divorced her, hooked up with Zac, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“I admire that. It can’t have been easy to walk away from a life you knew so well.”

“Trust me, it was a breeze. I felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I now feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, and I’ve never regretted it.”

“Working with Zac probably doesn’t leave you with much time to get bored. I can quite see that.”

“Right.” He swung into the driveway at Grantham Park. “Here we are.”

Zac greeted them at the door. All the workmen had left for the day, but Zac and Cody between them lugged her gear up to her room.

“Get unpacked, do what you need to, and meet us downstairs for supper,” Zac said. “Just follow the smell of burnt meat and you’ll find the kitchen.”

“Sounds appetising.”

“Don’t get too excited.” Zac flashed a droll grin. “I’m on chef’s duty tonight.”

“Ah, okay. I’ve just lowered my expectations.”

She actually heard him chuckle as he walked away.

She took a little time ruminating on her good fortune as her possessions that filled every square inch of her previous abode, frequently causing her to trip over them, were lost in her new space. She used her pristine new shower, pulled on a pair of worn jeans and a comfortable top and joined them in the old-fashioned kitchen.

A large scrubbed pine table, laid up for three, dominated the space, and a bottle of red wine was open and breathing in its centre.

“Ah, just in time.”

Zac gave her the once-over and appeared to approve of what he saw. She’d unwound her hair, washed it in the shower, and left it loose to dry. She hadn’t bothered with make-up. She was here to work, not try to make an impression.

“Everything okay?” Cody asked.

“Fine, thanks.”

“That’s good because the master chef is about to serve his offering to his helpless victims.”

“Hate to say this,” Justine said, taking the chair Cody held out for her, “but something smells good. That’s probably only because I’m starving, though.” She wagged a finger playfully at Zac. “So don’t get carried away. I didn’t get a chance to eat today.”

“Get used to it,” Cody advised. “It’s nothing but work, work, work ’round these parts.”

“Haven’t seen you doing too much today,” Zac said to Cody.

“I packed up our new assistant’s home for her, and I fixed her car.”

“Poor Malcolm. I hope the mechanic treats him gently.”

“God, we’ve employed a mad woman,” Zac said, dolling out platefuls of beef casserole. “She treats her car like it’s a living thing.”

“Are you telling me he isn’t?” Justine lowered her fork and adopted a stricken expression. “I’ve been misled all these years?”

Both men seemed to find her amusing.

“You’re gonna fit in around here just fine,” Cody told her.

* * * *

And so it proved to be the case. A worrying number of dusty boxes of papers, photographs, and official-looking documents were hauled down from the loft and dumped her in office. It already seemed overcrowded.

“We’ll let you start with those,” Zac said, watching her as she picked through the first box. “But be warned, there are plenty more where they came from.”

They disappeared and left her to it. Justine decided that if she wasn’t going to be overwhelmed then she needed a system. One corner for photographs, one for official papers, one for letters, and so on. Once things were sorted into categories, she’d go through them one by one, starting with the official papers.

She wasn’t sure what the guys got up to, but there were lots of comings and goings throughout the days. Sometimes they both disappeared for hours at a time. On other occasions, they received visitors in Zac’s study or remained glued to their computer screens.

Malcolm was returned to her, shiny, bright, and good as new. She couldn’t remember the last time his engine had sounded so smooth.

All the workmen had been told to come to her with problems or queries, and so far she’d managed to deal with them without involving Zac and Cody. Apart from meal time, which meant one or the other of them cooking, she didn’t see them at all. She wondered if she was expected to cook. She could do so, after a fashion, but figured she’d wait and see if they wanted to risk it. Some men apparently liked cooking, but up until now, she hadn’t met any.

On her third day, she received a call from Jason that knocked her for six.

“Where are you?” he asked. “I’ve been calling your cell all morning.”

“I’ve got a new job out in the country. Cell reception isn’t good. That’s why I left this landline number for you.”

“You still work for me.”

“Only in an advisory capacity on the Mansell thing. So I’m ready to advise. What do you need?”

“What’s this new job then?”

“None of your business.”

“Hey, there’s no need to be so snappy. I was just being friendly.”

“We’re not friends, Jason. We used to be lovers. Now I don’t love you anymore. Get over it.”

“Yeah, you do, babe.” He sounded annoyingly sure of himself. “It’s not possible to turn love on and off, just like that.”

“You don’t seem to have any trouble. Now, what do you want?”

He told her what he needed to know, proving that it was a completely unnecessary call. Gloria in the office could have put him straight, and well he knew it. She suspected he was just curious to know what she’d gotten herself involved with now. He didn’t want her but didn’t want anyone else to have her. Talk about dog in the manger.

“Okay,” she said. “If that’s all you want, I need to get back to work.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said in a voice that was probably meant to be seductive. “Back here. Come back, babe. I made a mistake. It’s over between me and Judith, and I want you back.”

Justine couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you serious?”

“You know we were meant to be together,” he said, supremely confident in his ability to talk her round.

Justine didn’t know what to say. All she knew was that she no longer cared about Jason. How had that happened? She was pretty sure that up to a week ago she would have forgiven him, eventually. Now she could see him for…well, what Cody would describe as the ultimate jerk.

“Sorry, Jason, I don’t want to know.”

“Okay, you’re upset, I get that, and you have a right to be. But I’ll make it up to you. Just chuck the job you’ve taken and come back to town. We’ll talk about it.”

“Get lost.”

Justine slung the receiver down and burst into tears. Naturally, Zac chose that moment to walk into her office. He almost never disturbed her during the day, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught weeping for a man who didn’t deserve it.

* * * *

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Zac had been having second thoughts about employing Justine. Not because he didn’t think she could do the job. After only a couple of days, she was proving to be remarkably efficient. It was more a case of fatal compatibility. He felt comfortable with her in the house, which bothered him because he’d started letting his guard down when she was around. She appealed to him at a level that had nothing to do with her professional abilities. She was feisty, opinionated, far more attractive than she gave herself credit for being, and touchingly vulnerable.

The idiot who had used her and then dumped her had shattered her self-confidence, causing her to question her
raison
d’être
. He’d noticed that she only picked at her food, constantly making comments about the need to diet. Hell, she didn’t need to lose an ounce. She was just about perfect the way she was, but Zac couldn’t tell her that. She wouldn’t believe it, and anyway, he wanted to keep her at arm’s length.

Watching her now, sobbing her heart out, all such thoughts flew out the window. All he cared about was righting her wrongs and making the hurt leave her lovely eyes. He wanted to either see her smile again or have her resume hurling the pithy retorts at him that he’d started to expect from her. He couldn’t recall a woman ever treating him so offhandedly before, which made her unique.

She glanced up at him, tears streaming down her face, and sniffed.

“Bastard!” she said.

He threw up his hands. “Hey, I only asked what’s wrong.”

“Not you, him.” She pointed to the telephone as though it explained everything.

“Ah, now I get it. The ubiquitous ex, I take it?”

“Yes.” She sniffed again, reached for a tissue from the box on her desk, and blew her nose. “He’s had a change of heart and thinks I’ll go running back, just like that.”

Zac’s heart lurched. “What will you do?”

“I told him to take a hike.” She snuffled into a fresh tissue. “Well, those weren’t the precise words I used, but I don’t want to upset your delicate sensibilities.”

“You told him to fuck off, in other words.” Justine nodded, a smile breaking through the tears. “Did you mean it?”

“Yes.”

He shot her a shrewd look. “But it was hard?”

“No, it wasn’t hard because I’m still so damned mad at him. It’s just that we were together for quite a while.” Justine sighed. “He’s confident and popular…all the things I’m not, in other words.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“When you’ve been as publicly dumped as I have, it’s not easy to put that sort of humiliation behind you and start again,” she said, ignoring his question. “I thought I’d managed it, and then he seems to think he can just waft back into my life like what he did was no big deal and that I’d be desperate to let him.” She glanced at Zac, her eyes flooding again. “Do I seem desperate to you?”

Zac stood behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders and massaged the knots. “You’re as stiff as a board.”

“Is that surprising?” She rolled her shoulders, threw her head back and closed her eyes. “God, that feels good.”

Yeah, and it’s slowly killing me. You’re not the only one as stiff as a board.

“Don’t let him get to you, babe.”

“Easy for you to say. I loved him once.”

“And part of you still does.” He dug his hands deeper, not liking that thought one little bit.

“No!” she said, protesting a little too loudly, fresh tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “It’s over. I can see him now for the slimeball that he really is.”

“Come next door.”

What Justine needed was comforting—some sort of gesture that would restore her self-confidence—and it couldn’t be done here in this crowded office with reminders of his family every which way he looked. He reached out a hand, and she slipped hers into it without hesitation. Once in the living room, Zac sat in the corner of the sofa and pulled her onto his lap, the hell with keeping his distance. He’d been fighting his attraction toward her since the first time he saw her, and she simply wasn’t allowed to be upset—not on his watch.

“Hey,” he said, running a hand softly down her hair. “Don’t let the jerk upset you. Cody would never forgive you if that happened.”

She managed a watery smile. “I’m not so much upset, more angry with myself.” She glanced down at him, not appearing to mind sitting on his lap since she didn’t attempt to move. “Have I always been such a soft touch?”

He chuckled. “You haven’t given me an easy time.”

“Yes, but we’re not emotionally involved, so it’s different.”

“No, we’re not.” Zac rested his forehead against the top of her head. “But it’s a tempting proposition.”

“It wasn’t a proposition. It was an observation.” She sat bolt upright, doing severe damage to his erection without appearing to even notice it. “Stop being nice to me. That’s as bad as being pitied, or laughed at and scorned, like I was by my coworkers when Jason flipped on me.”

Zac didn’t get her attitude. Okay, so she wasn’t interested. She only had to say so. Her job was safe enough, and his ego would recover eventually.

“I’m not being nice. I don’t do nice.” He shrugged. “I’m just saying that being involved wouldn’t be so very bad, would it?”

“Why would you want to be involved with me? I’m a mess.”

“Emotionally, you mean?” He expelled a mirthless chuckle. “Join the club, babe. You’ve seen what I’m like about my mother.”

“That’s not what I meant. You can pick and choose your women. Even Miss Vogue looked besotted, but I’m a mess because I’m fat. I’m not good looking. I don’t dress—”

Zac cut off her objections with a searing kiss, irrationally pleased that it wasn’t him she objected to, even though it would make life a damned sight easier if it were. He absolutely didn’t need this complication but couldn’t seem to help himself. The moment she relaxed against him and returned his kiss, he knew it was definitely too late to have second thoughts. The heady nature of her response went straight to his cock, which was already taking a keen interest in proceedings. He absolutely shouldn’t do this, but it would take more than a herd of wild horses to stop him now.