Chapter Seventeen
He took the next day off. There was only so much he could get done with the repairs and shit on a Sunday anyway. Abby wasn’t around—she had a wedding to cater and he was so sore, so damned sore, it hurt to move. Why in the hell was today even worse than the past two days? Unless of course it was because he was pushing it so hard, and that was entirely possible. Not that he’d mention it to Abby because she’d absolutely say I told you so.
All in all, it was a wise, wise decision, because he spent most of that day in more agony than he cared to think about. Between hot baths, a couple of narcotic-induced naps, and a lot of cussing and swearing, he made it through.
But he wasn’t happy about it.
One thing that distracted him was thinking about the conversation he planned to have with Keelie that night. He wasn’t going in to work. He wasn’t going in to do a damned thing except talk to her.
It was a conversation that was past due, he figured.
Sebastian was nosing around in his business. Granted, brothers did that, but still, enough was enough.
Keelie, she was like a kid sister to him and had been since they’d met six or seven years ago. But again . . . enough was enough.
Sundays were their shortest business day and he waited until five thirty before he headed over. Javi would be hanging around until Keelie left, because they weren’t doing this shit anymore. Nobody was going to be in the shop alone from here on out, not even him. Zach was seriously thinking about moving, although that wasn’t ideal for business. He couldn’t risk one of his employees getting hurt, either. Up until the other day, nobody had ever been around during the break-ins, but this . . . yeah. He needed to reconsider.
It was just after six when he pulled into his spot behind Steel Ink. Javi’s bike was there and so was Keelie’s Jeep. He let himself in the back and checked out the front of the shop. A quick look in Javi’s work space told him that he was finishing up. Keelie was in the process of explaining the aftercare . . . perfect timing.
They had time for their little chat and then he could get back home and be there when Abby got in, whenever the hell that was. He continued to stare at the back of Keelie’s head until she realized he was there. When she turned her head to look at him, he lifted a brow and jerked his head toward his office. She nodded and he turned around, satisfied she’d gotten the message.
He did a detour by the break room, eyeing the quick fix somebody had done on the door. Probably Javi. It was enough to let the door close, keep it locked so they could keep the system armed, but that was it.
Sighing, he opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. He half expected to see it was running low since he hadn’t been able to make the supply run he usually did on Saturdays, but everything was in there, freshly stocked. He twisted the top off the bottle and turned around to find Keelie standing in the doorway.
“I picked up what we needed before I came in today,” she said, rocking back on her heels and tucking her hands into her pockets. “I didn’t figure we’d see you until tomorrow. You don’t need to be here, you know.”
“Yeah, I do.” He edged around her and moved down the hall. “Let’s go to my office.”
He didn’t bother to look back and see if she was there. He knew she was.
He listened as the door shut behind them and made his way over to his desk, pausing at the site of the manila folder sitting there. “What’s this?”
“The insurance forms.” She jerked a shoulder in a shrug as she flopped in the leather chair tucked up close to his desk. “I called our agent, asked her to come by and do whatever she had to do so we could get things rolling.”
He quirked a brow at her. “Damn, Keelie. I didn’t know you even had any clue about what we’d have to do.”
“I’m not an idiot, Zach,” she snapped. “Just because I prefer not to handle the business end of things doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“You never showed much interest in it, that’s all I meant.” He flipped through the forms and grimaced. “What am I doing, just signing?”
“Yes. She’s coming back out tomorrow.”
He nodded shortly and then settled in his chair, raking his hair back as he tried to figure the best way to approach this. Subtle and Keelie didn’t have a passing acquaintance, but he knew if he just jumped on her, she’d get pissed and wouldn’t hear a damn thing he had to say.
And Keelie needed to hear this . . . needed to hear it very, very clearly.
* * *
It had been a wonderful wedding, a small affair that had pulled her out of bed before the crack of dawn, but now it was done. As her crew went about cleaning up, she sought out her assistant Paul and asked, “Can you handle the rest?”
“Sure.” His brows arched over his eyes and he leaned a hip against the counter, studying her curiously. “Everything okay? You never cut out early.”
“Yeah.” She fidgeted with the tie on her apron for a second and then finally just shrugged. “My . . .” Say it, you twit. It’s not that hard. “My boyfriend had somebody break into his shop the other day. He was there when it happened and he’s fine, but I just . . . well, I want to be there.”
“Your boyfriend,” Paul said slowly, shaking his head. “What is this? You just broke off your engagement a few weeks ago and now there’s a boyfriend?”
“It’s been more than a month,” she said. Then she shrugged. “Yeah, there’s a boyfriend.” She licked her lips and then tugged off the apron, wadding it up into a ball. Tossing it into the bin where the dirty linens were collected, she looked back at Paul and said softly, “I’m seeing Zach.”
To her shock, he didn’t blink at her like she’d sprouted another head and he didn’t go, Zach who?
Instead, a wide grin split his face and he started to laugh.
She stood there for about fifteen seconds, shuffling her feet and then she lightly punched him in the arm. “Damn it, knock it off. What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, shaking his head and looking back at her, that grin still dancing in his eyes. “I was just wondering when that would happen.”
Squirming, she turned away from him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, come on, Abigale. The guy’s only been crazy about you for years. Shit, I kept expecting him to blow a gasket every time I saw you with Roger, but . . .”
Abigale frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
He shrugged. “Just that. I mean, I’ve been working with you almost since the beginning, right? When he first moved here, the way he looked at you and all, I thought there was already something there, but then . . . well. Anyway, I figured out it wasn’t a two-way thing. But hell, anybody with eyes can see it,” he said, reaching for a rag to dry his hands off. He studied her face for a minute and then added softly, “I’m just kind of shocked it took you so long to figure it out.”
Surprise had her going still and for a minute, she just couldn’t move.
When he first moved here . . .
The way he looked at you . . .
Slowly, she shook her head. “Zach hasn’t been . . .” She stopped and cleared her throat. “Zach hasn’t been waiting all this . . .”
I’ve only been waiting for you to kiss me for a good long while now . . .
I’ve been waiting for this for a lifetime.
“Son of a bitch.” She turned around and braced her hands on the counter.
“Abigale?”
Slowly, she turned around to look at him. “I . . .” Licking her lips, she shook her head and asked, “Are you serious? I mean . . . really, are you serious?”
Paul blinked, shaking his head as he looked at her. “What, you didn’t know? Hell, Abby. It’s like . . .” He paused like he just didn’t know what to say. One hand lifted like he thought that might make it easier to pull the words out of the air. “I remember the way I’d see him watching you. There was this party once. At your place. I was standing there talking to him, asking him about a tattoo I wanted to get and all of a sudden, he just stops talking to me. He’s staring over my shoulder and I look back, thinking maybe that gorgeous friend of yours . . .” He grimaced and added, “Not that you aren’t beautiful, but I thought maybe it was Marin Del Marco or something. But you were standing at the door, and he just stared at you. It’s like when you’re there, nobody else exists.”
She never seemed to notice that I was staring at her when she walked into the room.
Zach had said those words to her. Just over a month ago when she’d asked if he’d been in love before.
Oh, shit.
Other bits and pieces seemed to connect inside her head.
“Hey, Abby . . . are you okay?”
Jerking her head up, she met Paul’s gaze and nodded. “I’m fine. I . . . um. If you’re sure you can handle this, I’m heading out.”
She didn’t even bother to wait for an answer, just grabbed her keys and hit the door.
She never seemed to notice that I was staring at her when she walked into the room.
Those words echoed in her mind every step of the way as she ran for her car.
Zach . . . ?
Was that even possible? she wondered. But her brain already had the answer for that. Yes. It was possible. It had been there, she realized, for a very long time. And she hadn’t seen it.
The real question was just how did she feel about it?
But the answer to that question wasn’t so hard.
A warm, lovely sensation bloomed through her and she pulled out of the lot so fast, she practically left rubber on the pavement.
She could hear that voice of his, so low and familiar, soft as velvet and sinful as Death by Chocolate, as he murmured, When you walked into a room, it would have showed on his face . . . if he really loved you.
It would have showed on his face . . . And it did show. It just showed on the face of a man she hadn’t bothered to look at for far too long. Zach. The man who’d always been there.
Her throat was tight as she thought back over the past few weeks. Zach’s face. He could be talking to somebody, anybody, and he’d know when she was there. He’d look up at her, and that smile would come across his face.
Something warm and easy, but . . . more than that.
It made her heart ache more than once, and there was something in his eyes, too: possessive, hungry, proud, and wondering. It might have been too much, but when she looked at him now, she felt the same way.
She never seemed to notice that I was staring . . .
“Me.” She slowed down at a red light. Had he really been talking about her?
But then she thought back to last night. Just last night. She pressed the heel of her hand to the tattoo he’d painted across her torso and thought back. He’d never really given her a straight answer, she realized.
She went to turn right, but abruptly realized she didn’t want to go to the shop wearing her work clothes, smelling like she’d just spent the entire day cooking. Hell, the muleheaded man ought to be home but she knew he wouldn’t be.
Groaning, she checked the time. He’d be there for another couple of hours. She could go home, but that would take most of those hours and she couldn’t wait.
His place, though, that was close.
She usually kept an extra outfit for work, and a pair of jeans and a t-shirt there, although that wasn’t exactly ideal. She’d make do.
On the drive, she replayed the conversation from last night through her head.
Sometimes, sugar, people come into your life and they mean everything.
So she means a lot to you.
People come and go all the time. But there’s only been one woman who came and stayed and mattered . . . it’s you.
That’s not what I was asking, Zach. I know I’m important to you. I just—
Important . . . Abby. Important describes what I have to do by April 14. Important describes getting my license renewed, my bills paid, payroll . . . Abby. You’re not important. You’re everything.
Everything . . .
Yeah. The way he made her feel when he looked at her, when he touched her. She could believe that.
* * *
The drive to his condo took far too long, at least in her opinion. The clock said it was only fifteen minutes but what did the clock know?
Five minutes after she’d parked the car, she was letting herself inside. She reset the alarm and she tore into his bedroom, dumping her spare clothes on the bed as she stripped out of her dirty ones. With her fingers working the buttons of her shirt, she headed to his closet. Maybe she’d borrow a shirt . . .
Yeah.
There was a green silk one that she thought would work just fine.
He spent most of his time in t-shirts and boots, but he knew his way around nicer pieces of clothing. And he could rock a suit like nobody’s business. She stroked a hand down the sleeve of a steel gray jacket and thought about seeing him in that . . . maybe soon, she thought. Maybe soon.
But for now, she was going to have to get her butt ready and go corner him in his office. And if he thought he could put her off this time, he was out of his skull.
* * *
“Keelie, you and I need to talk about something, and you’re going to listen very carefully to what I have to say,” he said softly, picking up a pencil and starting to sketch out a design absently. Better to do that than look at her, because he wanted to keep his temper. Keep his cool.
“Look, if you’re going to rip me a new one because I took care of things after the break-in, then you can just kiss my ass. You had enough going on and I wanted to help,” she said. He glanced up as she surged out of the chair and started to pace, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, her strides long and angry. “Besides, I own half the place, remember? I have just as much right as you do.”
“You’re right.” He shook his head. “I’m not denying that. I appreciate you stepping up there a lot.”
He dropped the pencil and stood up, moving around to cut her off as she started another circuit across the room. “But this isn’t about the shop. It’s not about the break-in. It’s about something else entirely.”
She lifted a brow and then turned away, sauntered over to his desk, and leaned back against it, arms crossed over her chest. “Okay. I’m all ears.”
“You better be.”
Her eyes widened just a fraction before she shot him a smirk.
Nervous, kid? Good. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops as he continued to watch her for a minute, trying to figure out just how he’d made her mad enough at him that she’d decided it would be okay to f*ck with his life. Hell, if she didn’t know what Abby meant to him it would be one thing, but she did.
But he couldn’t quite figure it out. He couldn’t.
“Why, Keelie?” he asked softly. “Can you just tell me why?”
Her brows arched over her mismatched eyes. “Ah . . . tell you why what?”
“Why are you trying to get in between me and Abby? It doesn’t concern you so why are you trying to mess with it?”
Her lids flickered and then she sneered. “Hell, what is that glamour girl telling you? I didn’t do shit to her, Zach. Not a damn thing. So whatever she said—”
“I love her,” he said softly. “My entire life, I’ve only loved one woman. I didn’t have crushes on any of the girls we worked with. I didn’t go chasing after anybody when I tried to make it for a while after the show ended. I didn’t fall for anybody in college. I dated some but it was more because I wanted to try and forget about her, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. She’s it for me, Keelie. You understand that? I love her. More than I’m ever going to be able to love anybody. And now I finally have the chance I’ve been waiting my whole life for . . . and you and Sebastian are f*cking things up. The two of you are making her doubt what we have going. Why in the hell are you doing that?”
She snapped her mouth shut with a click.
Shoving past him, she started to pace. “Look, man, I didn’t do anything. I don’t like her, but why in the hell should I? She doesn’t see what’s staring her right in the face. She can’t appreciate you and she’s hurt you a hundred times and she doesn’t even see it.” She sent him a seething look over her shoulder and demanded, “Why should I like her?”
“You don’t have to like her,” Zach pointed out. “But damn it, are we friends or not? Because I always thought we were. If we are, why would you try to mess this up for me?”
“I wasn’t trying to!” She stopped and turned around, glaring at him. “She just . . . shit. She asked me what my problem was and I . . . just. Hell, she can’t see it, damn you. And it hurts you and I can’t stand it. How can she not see it?”
“Because I didn’t let her.” He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “And that’s not a good enough reason.”
“She didn’t see it because she didn’t want to,” Keelie muttered. “She doesn’t deserve you, Zach. You need somebody who’ll see what you have to offer, who’ll appreciate you and everything you are.”
Her voice softened as she crossed the floor to stand in front of him.
Alarm started to flare in his head as she murmured, “Love like that really can’t be hidden, Zach. Don’t you feel it when somebody loves you?”
She stopped just in front of him and that alarm screeched louder. “Keelie, look, this has nothing do with whether or not Abby saw anything before now. She’s seeing it now and this doesn’t even involve you. This is about the fact that you are causing me problems and when you hurt her, you hurt me. Why the hell do you want to do that?”
“Hurting you is the last thing I want to do,” Keelie said. She reached out and caught his arm.
And that alarm in his head just screamed louder.
“When you look at me, do you see anything more than a friend looking back at you?” she asked and her voice was soft. Full of things he’d never heard before.
And damn it all to hell, as he stared into her eyes, he realized he hadn’t been the only one hiding things.
“Keelie, the only thing I see in you is a friend,” he said, shaking his head.
She slid her hand higher. “Just a friend, Zach? Is that all we can ever be?”
He caught her arm and nudged her hand down. “That’s all we are.”
“Because you’ve never given us a chance for something more. Maybe it’s time you did.”
And then she leaned in. Right as she touched her lips to his, the door opened.
* * *
Abigale smoothed a hand down the green silk shirt she wore and took a deep breath.
It was quiet in Zach’s office. Very quiet.
The shop wasn’t very busy and if she hadn’t seen his car, she might have wondered if he was there.
With her heart knocking against her ribs, she went to push the door open.
And then, her heart stopped knocking against anything as it turned to ashes. All those ashes drifted away on the wind as she stared at the scene before her. If the scene had been written by some of the best in the biz, they couldn’t have done it any more perfectly.
A gritty urban scene, she thought absently. The rugged, street-smart male with his face all battered from his latest battle. His hands curled around the woman’s wrists as he stared down at her face. The woman, dressed in skintight black pants and a white tank under a fishnet top, stared up at him and the emotion on her face was as sharp as a blade. Even the lights around them seemed to be chosen to play it all up to perfection as Keelie leaned in and pressed her mouth to Zach’s.
For that one brief moment, time froze.
And then it shattered, just like her heart.
Zach was the first one to notice, his head swinging around her way and those wicked, warm blue eyes locked on her face. That intensity that Abby had been so convinced was there just for her was in his eyes, all right. But a second ago, he’d been staring at Keelie with a hell of a lot of focus, too.
“Abby,” he said, his voice rough.
She just stared at him for a moment and then she shot Keelie a dark look. To her surprise, the woman didn’t meet her glare with a cocky smile, and she didn’t glare back.
Instead, to her surprise, Keelie lowered her head and stared at her feet.
Abby opened her mouth to say something. Anything. But the pain ripping through her just wouldn’t let her speak.
All she wanted to do was cry.
But screw that.
Grabbing the doorknob, she jerked the door shut with a slam and then she took off, running down the hallway.
She was almost at the door when she heard Zach roaring out her name.
But she didn’t slow down.