Chapter Two
The woman who shall not be named was calling again.
Abigale eyed the phone with acute dislike as she finished working on her list. She’d already contacted just about everybody regarding the now-cancelled wedding. The only thing she hadn’t done was cancel the honeymoon.
A trip to Alaska.
Roger had balked. He’d wanted to go on some world tour, but she’d wanted to go to Alaska. It had been a dream she’d had for several years, but the timing hadn’t ever been right. Until now. Why not for a honeymoon?
In the end, they’d compromised. She’d promised him a longer trip for their one-year anniversary if he’d do an Alaskan trip for their honeymoon. Now she wondered why he’d even bothered.
You’re not being true to yourself—
Groaning, she dropped her pen and pushed back from her desk.
Those words kept echoing through her head, over and over.
Even after nearly a week, she was still hearing those words. It was weird that she heard them more often than everything else. Those words chased her in her sleep. She’d been in the middle of putting together a dinner menu for a client and all of a sudden, nothing else in the world would matter, because she’d find herself remembering those words.
Those words.
The hell she wasn’t being true to herself. She’d gotten away from a life she’d hated. How much more true could she be? She’d been living her life exactly as she’d wanted and had been walking right down the path to the happy goal she’d set.
Until he derailed it.
And yet, here it was nearly ten o’clock on Friday, five days after the dismal, depressing end to her engagement, and she was still thinking about those words. Those words actually seemed to bother her more than the fact that he’d ended things, the bastard.
“What I need to do is make another plan,” she mumbled.
Her life, once more, had been thrown into chaos.
She left her office and headed upstairs to her bedroom. She hadn’t looked at her business plan since she’d marked the wedding off the list but it was time, she decided.
Grabbing her journal, she went back down to the office and settled on the couch. There was a pen tucked in a little loop and as she started to think, she pulled the pen out and tapped it against her lips.She didn’t start to make any notes. Not yet. Her thoughts needed to settle. Needed to focus.
Did she need a man? That was the question. She wasn’t one of those women who believed a man was necessary to fulfill or complete a life but Abby wanted a man. She wanted marriage. Her throat tightened a little as she thought about the other things she wanted . . . kids, at some point. Not just to have that happy, stable life she’d never had for herself, but she wanted a family. She saw a mom at a baby shower and her heart ached with envy.
Some women didn’t want to be mothers and she completely respected that; she understood. Hell, some women should never be moms. Her mother sure as hell didn’t need to procreate but she’d done it and made Abigale’s life hell.
Abigale would love whatever child she had.
“Maybe I should just think about doing it on my own.” But that thought left her cold. She wanted a family. With all that entailed. A father for her kids . . . a partner. Somebody who would make her laugh. Make her think. Keep her company when she wanted it and if she was in a bad mood, leave her alone. Somebody who could blow her mind away in bed and still be a friend.
“You want a fairy tale.”
Roger had been okay in bed, but he hadn’t exactly been a friend, something she could acknowledge . . . now. The only guy who had ever really made her laugh, made her think, kept her company when she needed it, and left her alone when she wanted . . . hell. That was Zach. But he was her best friend.
When the alarm sounded sometime later, she yelped in surprise. Panic surged through her, until she realized it was the regular alert.
The annoying little computerized voice announced, “Disarmed.”
There was only one person it could be. She’d deactivated Roger’s code and even if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t come by this late without calling.
Zach, on the other hand . . .
He appeared at the door, gold-streaked brown hair falling into his eyes, five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw. The faded black t-shirt he wore left much of his arms bare, leaving his tattoos visible.
She’d never, ever tell anybody that she absolutely adored the way those tattoos looked.
Not in a million years.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. He was one of the very few people she didn’t mind seeing right now. Maybe even the only person.
The phone started to ring again.
Without saying anything, he ambled over to it and glanced at the display. A sneer curled his lip and he glanced at her. “She who shall not be named is calling.” A wicked smile danced across his face and he asked, “Can I talk to her? Pretty please?”
A laugh bubbled out of her and she grinned at him. “I don’t care. As long as I don’t have to.” She wondered just how in the world her mother had gotten her number. Again.
Zach grabbed the phone halfway through the second ring. “Heya, Blanche!”
Abigale propped her arm on the back of the couch and watched as he leaned against her desk, one arm folded over his chest. It had his bicep bulging and the scrolled design there caught her eye. Something warmed inside her. Shifted. Frowning, she looked away from his arms and watched his face.
“Yes. She’s here . . . Nah, I can’t put her on the phone. Why? Oh. She doesn’t want to talk to you. As in . . . ever. Remember that deal about how you kind of, sort of tried to keep her away from all the money she’d earned? How you tried to whore her out for any and every damn part that you could get? Expected her to go weeks living on nothing but water and salads because she was getting too female?” He didn’t look so happy now. Fire snapped in his blue eyes and a growl had edged into his voice.
Okay. Maybe she should—
“Then there was that shit about how I caught one of your f*cking boyfriends trying to paw her. Remember that? Oh, you f*cking bitch, don’t you tell me I don’t know what I saw—yeah, you do that. Crazy piece of work.” He slammed the phone down and then looked over at her.
“Your mom doesn’t remember me,” he said soberly.
Abigale lifted an eyebrow at him. “Really? I can’t imagine how she could ever forget you.”
He grinned as he came to flop down on the couch. He settled down and stretched out long, jean-clad legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle as he rolled his head over to look at her.
He had something in his hand. A book, she noted. He glanced at her journal and then up at her face. Some of the heated anger had faded from his eyes. Some. Not all.
Abruptly, she reached out and touched his cheek. The rough stubble abraded her palm as she said quietly, “Always my knight in shining armor, Zach. Thank you.”
A dull red flush crept up his cheeks. “I’m no knight, Abs.”
“You’ve always been mine.” She shrugged and pulled her hand back. Tucking the pen back into her journal, she closed it and tossed it onto the table in front of them. “You and I both know what that boyfriend of hers was trying to do when you showed up at the house that day.”
It had been nearly seventeen years since that day. An awful day. Every once in a blue moon, she’d find herself waking from a nightmare where Zach hadn’t arrived in time and—
Stop it.
It hadn’t happened.
Once her mother had started making merry with her money, she’d started making merry with lots of other things. Like drugs, booze, and her wedding vows. Oh, she’d probably been sleeping around before, but as Abigale got older, it was more obvious just how screwed up her mother was.
While her dad was out, still working a job because her mother insisted it provided a sense of normalcy, her mother had used those hours to bring countless men into the home that had been built with money Abigale had earned.
When she was fourteen, one of those men had crept into the study where Abigale had been working on a school assignment. He’d been drunk, his hands big and hard and cruel.
Her mother had been passed out on the couch and the housekeeper was out shopping.
Trapped and scared, Abigale had screamed for help.
Help had come in the form of a pissed off fifteen-year-old Zach Barnes who’d had his mom drop him off. He had his skateboard and he’d used it like a club, bringing it down on the bastard’s head.
It wasn’t the first time Zach had saved her.
It hadn’t been the last. He’d been saving her from herself, saving her from a variety of things, throughout their entire friendship. Maybe he didn’t see himself as her knight, but she sure as hell did.
He leaned forward and touched a hand to the stamped leather journal. “Writing bad poetry and sonnets about your unending love for Roger the Rat?” he asked.
“No. I gave up on the bad poetry when you threatened to show my journal to Luke Perry so he could see what I had written about him.” She snorted and drew her legs up, shifting to look at him. “I’m trying to think up the plan for my life now that it’s been thrown off track.”
He groaned and dropped his head back on the seat. Eyes closed, he dragged a hand over his face. “Sugar, you can’t plan life.” He looked back over at her and said softly, “Life is supposed to just happen.”
“Hey, I planned quite a bit of my life,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
Her heart stuttered to a stop for one brief second and then it started to race. Hard and fast, like it did on the rare occasions when she let herself take the Mustang out to the desert and just open her up. The moment shattered as he looked away and she wanted to smack herself.
This was Zach, damn it.
Yeah, she was no longer engaged to a guy who’d been . . . well . . . uninspiring in bed and maybe she needed to live a little bit. But this was Zach. Her best friend. Her oldest friend.
“But you tried to plan your personal life . . . who you’d fall in love with. It doesn’t work that way,” he pointed out. “You practically chose him out of a catalog, Abs, and that’s not how it works. Look at The Bachelor and see what a f*cking joke that is.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hey, are they still calling you about that celebrity thing they want you to do?”
“Not after I told them I wasn’t a good fit since I had the bodies of two dead girlfriends stored in my freezer.” He shrugged and started to tap the book in his hand against his leg.
Her jaw dropped. “You didn’t!”
With a sly grin on his lips, he glanced at her. “Now, Abs, sugar. You know me better than anybody else in the world. Would I really say something like that?”
“Oh, shit.” She cringed and covered her face with her hands.
He started to laugh.
“You are insane!” She kicked him in the thigh. Her foot bounced off the muscled length and he just laughed harder. “One of these days, you’ll say something like that and the cops will show up at your door, Zach.”
“Hey, wouldn’t be the first time.” He shrugged.
Glaring at him, she kicked him again. “That’s not funny.” He had had cops show up at his door; the first time had been after he’d hit that bastard in the head with his skateboard. The son of a bitch had tried to press assault charges. She’d been hiding out over at the Barnes’ place—a normal thing for her, really—and when the police showed up, she’d almost fallen apart.
He caught her ankle in his hand and turned around to face her. Dropping the book in his lap, he kept one hand wrapped around her ankle and used the other to rub her foot. She jumped as he ran his thumb down the arch, too firmly to tickle, but there was something about the touch that managed to send shivers up her spine. What the hell? He’d touched her plenty and it hadn’t ever hit her like this; she knew it hadn’t.
“So tell me about this new life plan of yours,” he said.
“I can’t.” She closed her eyes. Seemed to be a wise move, she thought. If she wasn’t looking at him, she might stop having these weird, hot little pangs hitting her square in the belly. Except the pangs just kept getting worse.
“Why?” He tickled her.
She yelped and jerked on her foot. “Stop that!” Opening her eyes, she glared at him.
“You used to tell me everything,” he said, smiling at her.
“Yeah, well, I can’t tell you a plan that I haven’t come up with,” she pointed out, still squirming.
“Be still.” He went back to work and despite herself, she all but whimpered as he hit a spot on her arch with his thumb. “So you don’t know what you’re going to do next. That’s got to have you all twisted up.”
Yes. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.” He smiled as he said it. “You don’t know how to not do plans. What do you want to do?”
You—
Blood rushed to her face and she dipped her head, letting her hair fall down to shield her expression while she tried to figure out just what in the hell was wrong with her.
Had she lost her mind?
Swallowing, she said, “I don’t know what I want right now, Zach.”
The embarrassment faded as those words hit her square in the chest. It was the absolute truth. She had absolutely no idea what she wanted in life. Well, other than this bizarre urge to jump Zach, and she was positive that stemmed from the fact that she was just suffering from some sort of post-breakup stress.
Panic slammed into her and she started to shake.
“Zach . . . I don’t know what I want.” She tried to pull her foot away. She needed to get up and move. I have to think. Got to get this planned out. Have to know—
“Abby.”
She jerked on her foot again. “Let me go,” she snapped.
“Not happening. All you want to do is get up and start having a meltdown, sugar.” He tugged on her foot and said, “Come here.”
She blinked at him. “What?”
Heaving out a sigh, he reached for her and hauled her into his lap.
She stiffened and shoved against his chest. “Zach, would you—”
“Calm down,” he said easily. He settled her on his lap. She’d spent more than a few nights like this when she’d been falling apart. Either on his lap while she cried after her dad died, or curled up against him after a marathon movie session. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Why it suddenly felt so different, she didn’t know. Unless it was just post-breakup stress. Yeah. Had to be that.
“You’re too wound up about this,” Zach said quietly. He stroked a hand down her back and eased her against his chest.
Wound up. Yes, she was definitely that and there was no denying that she was certainly freaked out about the current chaos of her life, but that wasn’t the only problem. That was what really had her sitting there so rigid and unyielding, despite the fact that she wanted to wilt against him and just . . . be. Just like that.
Except if she didn’t relax, he was going to figure out, fast, that something was up. Then she’d have to lie or something because she couldn’t very well tell him that she was having these crazy thoughts. And great, now she was rambling inside her own head.
Get a grip. She took a slow, deep breath and blew it out. Focusing on the dragon that wrapped around his left bicep, she stared at the scales. Wound up. Yes. She was. But it was hard to say what she was more worked up over, the screwed-up wreck that was her life, or the hot mess that was her body.
But she couldn’t exactly relay that last bit. He’d get the first bit. And it was definitely not helping that she didn’t have a plan. Slowly, she said, “You know how I am, Zach. I just work better with a plan. I’ll figure this out and get my head together and make a plan.”
She lapsed into silence, still staring at the dragon on his arm. The scales were green, done with such incredible detail that it had left her speechless when she saw it for the first time. It hadn’t helped much when she realized he’d been the one who had come up with the original design.
“So this plan. You just need to figure out what you want,” he said, toying with a lock of her hair.
“How am I supposed to figure it out?” she said quietly, forcing herself to focus on what he was saying.
“I dunno. Although if it’s that hard to understand, you could always try just going with the flow for a while. Just live a little.”
“Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.” The heat inside her veins started to spread as she shifted around and her hip bumped against something long, thick, and hard—wonderfully hard, branding itself against her hip. Oh . . . hell. Her heart sped up and she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was going to lose her damned mind, but then he shifted and moved her back onto the couch. So casually. So easily.
Like he just adjusted his shirt collar or something.
But instead of adjusting a collar, he leaned forward and grabbed the book from the coffee table.
“Here. I bought you something.”
Her heart thudded, slow and heavy, and her tongue seemed to glue itself to the roof of her mouth and her fingers were all shaky. Not to mention her belly was tight and hot and the butterflies dancing inside her gut were going haywire.
A little dazed, she looked down at the book. It took a minute for the title to make sense. Then it took another minute for her to really get what she was reading. Once she finally did, she looked up at him. “Ah . . . is this a joke?”
“Nope.”
Frowning, she stroked a hand down it and murmured, “Wreck This Journal?”
“You’re always writing your plans, making your notes in nice, neat, pretty little journals. Maybe you need to take a different approach. Granted, I didn’t realize you were having business plan hang-ups when I saw this, but . . .” He finished with a shrug and reached out, caught a lock of her hair again.
She swallowed and pretended not to notice. “So you bought me a journal that I’m supposed to . . . what?”
“Open it up.”
She frowned and opened it up, scowling when she saw a warning on the second page. “What the . . .”
“Keep reading.”
Two seconds later, she put it down.
He laughed and took it away.
She cringed as he opened it wide and cracked the spine on the book. “There,” he said, putting it into her lap. “I took care of that one. I know how you are about breaking spines.”
“That isn’t a journal,” she said, shaking her head. “A journal is where I can write my thoughts. My plan.”
“You can still do that.” He leaned in and flipped through the pages. “Look, there’s room. But there’s also other stuff. You need to quit focusing so much on how you think your life is supposed to go and just let your life go. Live it, sugar. Stop trying to control it.”
* * *
Live it.
An hour after Zach had left, Abigale found herself laying on her belly, staring at the very odd journal with its badly cracked spine.
Wreck This Journal.
“What do I want?”
An image of Zach flashed through her mind and she pushed the idea out. Maybe it wasn’t Zach she wanted. Just . . . something. Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d been controlling herself for too long. Stifling herself. It could just be some innate urge to live.
Although damn it, her body . . . and more . . . kept trying to flash images of Zach at her. Zach with his lazy smile and the way he’d wrap her hair around his finger, the way he’d understood the thing with the journal.
“Stop it,” she muttered. “Zach is a friend. Your friend. Your best friend. Think about the plan, okay?”
Her hand shook a little as she reached for the pen tucked inside her pretty, neat leather journal.
Wreck This Journal.
It had some insane things inside it. Things like spill coffee on the pages. Mail it to herself. Take it in the frigging shower, for crying out loud. She didn’t know if she’d be able to do all of those things, but she was going to try.
And she had a plan in mind now.
Two pages after the spine-cracking instructions, she found a blank page and there, she wrote up at the top:
Wreck this life: My new plan
Her hand started to shake and she had to stop, suck in a deep breath. “Wreck my life. What in the hell . . .”
She almost sat up and closed the silly thing, almost put it away. This was nuts.
But even as she thought about it, she made herself remember what Zach had said.
Stop trying to plan her life so much. Start trying to just live.
For her, that was practically anathema. But that was what she needed to do. What she needed to focus on.
“Just write it down, damn it.” Gripping the pen, she wrote a neat little 1.
1. Stop worrying so much about the future
Okay. The first step. The next idea was easy.
2. Call Roger and tell him off
Once she had that down, the next few things came in an outright rush.
3. Flip off the next photographer you see
4. Get a tattoo
5. Have a torrid affair with a hot guy
Staring at it, she rubbed her fingers over her lips, reading it through again. And again. Stop worrying. Call Roger. Flip off photographer . . . get a tattoo?
Have an affair . . . !
Her belly was in knots now, just looking at the list. Completely knotted and twisted and she thought she just might be sick. And when she thought about number five, images of Zach kept dancing through her mind. Part of her was gleefully shrieking, Yeah, try to convince yourself that you don’t want him . . .
But it was Zach. How could she want him?
Another little voice whispered, how can you not?
He was hot, hot as lightning-hot, and in theory, she knew that. It was a little different with somebody you’d known all your life. Hell, the two of them had sat around snickering together when they’d discovered how to find bad porn on the Web back when they were still kids. Zach had really gotten in trouble over that one and he’d never once told his mom that Abby was the one who’d showed it to him.
But it wasn’t just that he was hot. She was a child of Hollywood and she’d grown up around beautiful people. Maybe she didn’t live that life anymore, but she knew how superficial beauty could be. Zach was anything but superficial. He was real. He was kind. He was funny. And under the kindness and the humor, there was an edge to him that had emerged . . . somehow. She didn’t really know when, but sometimes just standing near him, even knowing him as well as she did, it sucked the breath out of her.
Yeah, why shouldn’t she think about it?
But thinking about it and doing something about it were two different things. She couldn’t go chasing after her best friend. She’d barely managed to seduce the guy she was engaged to.
With a weak laugh, she rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Zach was no Roger. Even she could admit that . . . Zach was a hell of a lot more, and she couldn’t even keep Roger interested in her.
Zach was a friend. A sexy friend. Her best friend, but it was going to stay on a friendly level and she just needed to get this whatever-it-was out of her head. Grabbing the journal again, she opened and read the list through. Nerves pulsed inside her. Could she do this? she wondered.
Panic gripped her, hard and tight and she was almost certain that she couldn’t. Didn’t know how and the longer she stared at the list, the harder it got. No. That was it. She couldn’t do this. Reaching for the page, she went to rip it out.
Before she could crumple it in her fist to do so, though, she stopped. Stopped and sat up, staring down at the page while her heart started to race. “What’s so damned hard about any of this?” she whispered.
Zach had a gazillion tattoos and it wasn’t like he’d mind giving her one.
She could handle that.
Telling Roger off? She wanted to do that and hey, what a way to prove him wrong. He thought she wasn’t being true to herself? Here was just one more way to show him how very wrong he was.
Flipping off a photographer was a bit more than she’d ever thought about doing, but if she started to get hesitant about it, she’d just remember how they always seemed to grab the worst pictures imaginable and then turned around and sold them to the worst gossip rags . . . hey, flipping them off was taking the high road, really.
Stop worrying would be hard, but she needed to do it.
The last one was the one that made her belly cramp and twist with fear.
She’d never had a fling. Yeah, maybe she’d thought about it a time or two, maybe there had been some really hot guys who had caught her eye, but memories of all those guys her mom had brought home? The thought of just casual sex left a bad taste in her mouth. In all of her life, she had two lovers. That was it.
But if she was going to reach out and grab life . . . why not?
She’d needed a plan.
Now she had one.
“I’m going to do it.” She stroked a finger down the list and stopped by number four. It was going to be the easiest, she figured. Get that done, because once she committed herself to the plan, she would be a lot less likely to back out of it.
Tomorrow, she’d take the first step in checking things off her list. It wasn’t going to be the cohesive life plan her last one had been, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
After all, look at where her last plan had landed her.