Zane (Alluring Indulgence) (3 page)

When
they approached Travis’ Silverado pickup, Zane suddenly missed his own Jeep. It
was strange to be outside, and even more so to be climbing into a vehicle.
Three months were a long damn time to be cooped up inside of a building, never
allowed to go too far because he was pretty sure they feared he’d run.

He
would’ve.

“Need
help getting in?” Travis smirked as he moved around to the driver’s door.

Zane
grinned, shot Travis the finger, but didn’t say a word.

He
never thought it possible, but he had missed his brothers harassing him. Being
the youngest of seven, he was intimately familiar with the constant pestering
and irritating comments that his brothers bestowed upon him. At twenty four,
he’d had years to get used to it, although that was easier said than done.
Although, at that moment, Zane didn’t necessarily hate the snide comments he
knew would be directed at him. He actually welcomed them. At least for a little
while.

“Where
to?” Travis asked when they were pulling out of the hospital parking lot a minute
later.

“V’s,”
Zane said without hesitation. He hadn’t been able to do anything about her
avoiding him for the last couple of months, but now that he was out of the
hospital, he was the one who would be calling the shots from here on out.

“You
sure?” Travis questioned, and Zane promptly hated his brother’s inquisition.

If
Zane was smart, he would go home, get his Jeep and head over to V’s without
involving his brother. It was apparent that he needed to acclimate to being out
in the real world a little while longer before he opened his big mouth. Before
he could say anything more, Travis’ phone was dialing through the Bluetooth
speaker in the truck at his brother’s voice command.

Shit.

“You
get him?” Kaleb’s voice reverberated through the interior of the truck, and
Zane rolled his eyes. He was fucking twenty four years old, and it still galled
him how much his brothers tried to baby him.

“Yep,”
Travis replied.

“Y’all
do realize I’m sitting right here?” Zane glared at his brother.

Travis
didn’t even bother to look at him, but both Kaleb’s and Travis’ laughter filled
the truck.

Zane
couldn’t help but smile.

It
felt damn good to be back.

♀♂

V’s
phone rang as soon as she walked through her front door. Glancing down at the
screen, she noticed it was Zoey, and she wondered if her friend had forgotten
something. They’d just spent the better part of the day cleaning houses, so V
couldn’t imagine what else they had to talk about that was noteworthy enough
for her to call so soon.

“Hey!”
V greeted Zoey when she answered the phone. “Miss me already?”

“I
always miss you.” V could hear the smile in Zoey’s voice, but it didn’t help to
explain what she was calling about.

“What’s
up?”

“Kaleb
just told me that Zane got released from the hospital today.”

Wow
.
V had to sit down for a second. “Already? The doctors think he’s ready?”

“It
would seem so. He’s been officially released, and Travis is on his way to get him
now.”

“That’s
fantastic.” V knew her voice didn’t back up the words she muttered, but she was
having difficulty breathing. It truly was terrific that Zane was finally coming
home, but V had been dreading this day for too long to actually be excited about
it.

“He
wants Travis to take him to your house, V.”

The
words out of Zoey’s mouth were like a punch to the solar plexus, leaving V
feeling even more out of breath than she already was. And a little dizzy.

“No.
He can’t come here.”

He
couldn’t. Not after what had happened. Not after Jake Sanders and his friends
had beaten the shit out of Zane right there in her front yard. V still couldn’t
come and go through her front door without seeing the gruesome image playing
through her mind, making her stomach churn and her heart ache. In fact, the
overwhelming terror was beginning to wear on her.

“I
don’t think we’ll be able to stop him.”

“You
have to. Call Travis. Tell him not to bring him over here,” V rambled. “I’ll...
I’ll meet Zane at his house.”

She
might be able to handle that much. Seeing him was going to be hard enough, but
she definitely wouldn’t be able to see him at her house.

“Today?”
V barely heard Zoey’s question, her head still reeling from the memories
flooding her.

V
wasn’t sure when a good time to see Zane was, but she knew she wouldn’t be able
to put it off much longer. Especially not if he was out of the hospital.

“You
have to go see him today, V. I won’t be able to convince him otherwise.”

“Fine,”
V huffed. “I’ll go see him in a couple of hours.”

V
could hear Zoey’s muffled voice as she plainly told Kaleb what they were
talking about.

V
held her cell phone to her ear with one hand and her face in the other, her
elbows propped on her knees as she sat on her couch. She wasn’t sure how she’d
gotten to this point in her life, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to dig
out of the despair that had plagued her ever since that horrific day. The
overwhelming sense of responsibility for what happened was almost debilitating
in its intensity. All because of that jackass Jake and his big fucking mouth.

V
had grown accustomed to being flirted with, she’d even gotten used to the
assumptions that most men made because of whom her mother was, but it would
appear Zane hadn’t been able to brush off the nasty comments the way V had.
Instead, he’d confronted Jake in front of a large group of people. That was the
day Jake made the threat, one no one paid much attention to because of his
penchant for unsubstantiated threats.

Jake
Sanders had grown up with most of them, although he was several years older
than V and Zoey. Since he was held back a couple of years in school, they’d
actually attended high school at the same time. He hadn’t been well liked back
then, and his reputation hadn’t improved significantly over the years either.
He was one of those men who liked to stir up trouble, spouting bullshit
whenever anyone was close enough to listen. Most people had learned to tune him
out, or flat out ignore him, which was what they had done the day he’d
threatened Zane.

She
remembered the day they’d been at Anderson Croft’s mother’s house, trying to clean
out the house after the woman spent years hoarding everything she could get her
hands on. That particular day had started out like many others; everyone
talking, laughing and actually enjoying what they had set out to accomplish.
That was until Jake’s unruly mouth got out of control like it tended to do.

Jake
seemingly set his sights on her, and V tried to be as polite as she could be,
ignoring his snide comments and even avoiding him for a good part of the day. At
one point, he began saying nasty things about V’s mother, long after V had
refused his numerous advances.

Although
the things Jake said about her mother, then about her, had broken her heart,
she’d learned long ago not to let the stones shatter the tough exterior she’d
carefully erected.

It
had taken her a long time to be able to stand up tall and ignore what others
said about her mother, some of them true, others made up over the years through
various versions of one story or another. Living in a small town like Coyote
Ridge didn’t make it easy to avoid the various rumors and lies, but V had
somehow managed to ignore them.

Mostly.

“V?”

Zoey’s
voice broke through her thoughts, and she stood up, shaking off the despair
that threatened to consume her all over again.

Taking
a deep breath, she answered as strongly as she could, “I’m here.”

“There’s
one more thing you need to know.”

Shit.

V
wasn’t sure she could handle any more grim news, and Zoey’s tone didn’t sound
like she was about to tell her that she won the lottery or something equally as
exciting.

It
seemed as though bad news was all she was getting these days, and it was certainly
having an impact on her mood. How was she supposed to fake the happy-go-lucky
girl when everything seemed to be crumbling around her?

“What?”
she finally asked when she felt she could handle whatever Zoey was going to
throw at her.

“Braydon
told Zane about Jake harassing you.” Zoey didn’t sound happy, not that V
expected her to.

“Dammit.”
V knew she shouldn’t have said anything to Zoey.

“I’m
sorry, V. I told Kaleb because I thought someone needed to know. This is
serious. Look what he did to Zane.”

V
didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t like she told Zoey not to say anything,
although, looking back on it now, she should have.

“You
need to be careful, V. About Jake. He’s crazy.”

The
man was crazy all right. And homicidal. What he had done to Zane wasn’t just a warning.
He and his friends had beaten Zane so badly, V was certain if she hadn’t been
there to alert her neighbors, they probably would have killed him.

“And
Zane’s changed,” Zoey continued. “He’s not the same man he was before. His
brothers are keeping an eye on him.”

V
sighed.

She
had purposely stayed away from Zane for the last couple of months, choosing to
find out how he was doing by asking Zoey or Beau. Zane’s reputation was more of
a fighter than a lover, unlike most of his brothers. He had a short fuse to
begin with and a protective streak a mile wide. V hadn’t wanted to provoke the
first, and she didn’t deserve the second, so she had avoided him at all costs.

Zane
wasn’t a man to mess with. He didn’t have the laidback country boy attitude
that Kaleb and Sawyer did, and he wasn’t the fun loving, attention grabbers
like the twins, Braydon and Brendon either. Zane Walker was edgy. He was hard,
and what made it worse, he was infused with a passion so fierce, those he cared
about risked the chance at getting burned from time to time

“I’ll
go talk to him.” V could do that much.

With
a quick goodbye, she hung up the phone and dropped it onto the couch cushion as
she paced back and forth continuously.

Why
did Zane have to be so damn stubborn?

Why
did she have to care about him so much?

It
wasn’t like the past couple of months had been easy on her. She’d stayed away
out of necessity, not because she wanted to. There were times it had been so
damned difficult to ignore Zane’s phone calls and texts, but she had managed
for the most part.

On
occasion, she would break down and answer, but that was usually after she’d
spent hours thinking about him. Since the day he woke up, V refused to go back
to the hospital to see him, mostly because she feared she wouldn’t be able to
walk away. V refused to get too attached to a man who would eventually slip
right through her fingers. She wasn’t interested in forever, and Zane wasn’t
the forever kind of guy.

Before
the assault, they had shared a few memorable moments together. Most of them
resulted in the two of them being naked, or close to it. Not that V was
complaining. Considering she hadn’t had sex with anyone other than Zane in the
last two years, she welcomed those memories. Especially now, after three months
of celibacy, when she wondered if she ever would have sex again.

V
wasn’t naive enough to believe she could keep Zane at arm’s length, no matter
how much her heart begged her to. Now that he was out of the hospital, she was
going to have to see him. She just hadn’t expected to have to see him so soon.

Moving
toward her bedroom, V checked the front door one more time to make sure it was
locked. She did that frequently these days. Almost to the point that she was
beginning to wonder whether she had OCD. She knew her nerves were primarily the
reason for her sudden paranoia, but she still worried.

Once
in her bedroom, V shut and locked her bedroom door as well before moving to the
closet. She needed to shower before she went to see Zane. With a full day’s
worth of dirt and grime caked on her skin, she clearly needed some time to freshen
up. Not to mention, maybe an hour or two to steel her resolve.

She
was going to see Zane today.

If
she wasn’t happy about that, then why did her stomach churn with anticipation?

♀♂

Two
hours later, V was standing on Zane’s front porch. For at least five minutes –
maybe more, she wasn’t sure – she had been pacing back and forth, trying to
convince herself to knock on the door.

She
couldn’t bring herself to do it.

When
the door slowly opened, V stopped mid step and stared at the man standing
casually in the doorway. Her eyes traced every graceful line of his lean,
magnificent body as he braced his hands on the top of the doorjamb and leaned
into it, his smoke blue eyes fixated on her. The movements made every muscle in
his upper body stand out in stark relief.