Barefoot in the Sun (Barefoot Bay)

chapter Eleven

The Glenlivet burned on the way down his throat, but Oliver didn’t bother to chase the shot with water. Instead he drew in a slow, deep breath so the bittersweet flavors of the scotch worked their way up into his head, clearing it.

And still he stared at the silver-blue pool and imagined he could see Zoe, swimming naked like some kind of laughing, loving water nymph with flowing blonde hair and luscious wet skin.

Well, that beat the darker images that usually haunted him when he was alone in a house. So far the little villa on the beach hadn’t triggered any old memories, but maybe that was because Evan was here. In Chicago the house had never been empty; even if Adele had been traveling and Evan had been sent to stay at his grandmother’s, they’d had live-in staff.

He’d never had to come home to an empty house.

He pushed the glass to the side and returned his attention to the tablet computer on the table, forcing himself to finish the report to Raj and the team, bringing them all up to speed on their newest case and the schedule for tests and treatment.

Still, the words blurred in front of him and his mind wandered back to Zoe.

She wasn’t going to try to fix Pasha’s legal problems. Why did Zoe have to be so driven by loyalty and emotions and an invisible sense of duty when that could be steering her aunt all wrong?

He tapped into the Internet and opened a search bar, an attempt to pull up some facts based on the little information she’d ever given him.

Bridget. Corpus Christi. Foster Child. Missing.

He sipped while a few results flashed on the screen, mostly recent stories that couldn’t possibly be connected to something that had happened about twenty-five years ago.

He took another drink and started to skim the links but a sound at the fence caught his attention. Looking past the pool screen, he peered into the darkness, expecting to see an animal.

Every light in the house was off, the fiber-optic pool lights were too dim to cast much glow, so he listened, definitely hearing something thud against the privacy fence.

And the soft intake of breath.

An intruder at the resort? Without making a sound, he unlatched the screen door and stepped onto the narrow strip of grass around the patio. He walked along the wall, cocking his ear.

Another thud, and this time two hands appeared at the top of the fence, along with a loud bump—someone hoisting themselves up on the other side, probably balancing on the crossbeam that ran along the back of the stockade-style wooden fence.

A ballsy intruder, then.

He hid behind a thick hibiscus bush, placing himself between the intruder and any entrance to the house. He didn’t have a weapon, but he had his bare hands and he’d use them before anyone got near—

Blonde hair popped over the fence.

What the hell was she doing?

Zoe pushed herself up higher and one foot in a bright-yellow flip-flop came over the fence, a short black dress riding up to reveal her bare thigh. Turning her head from side to side, she peered into the darkness and then hoisted herself higher.

Jesus, she was fearless. And crazy. And gorgeous. And here.

He managed not to make a sound or move, watching as she maneuvered over the fence and angled herself to—she wouldn’t jump, would she?

Of course she would. She’d do anything. That was why she made him hard and hot and flat-out insane with how much he wanted to capture her and hold her down and force her to stay still and be his and not leave him.

But if she did that, she wouldn’t be Zoe. She wouldn’t be the woman who climbed fences and…

Jumped. He sucked in a breath as she leaped into the air like a bird, arms out, hair flying, dress high enough for him to see that she was bare-ass naked underneath.

She landed with a soft thump, tumbling to her knees like she was born to be a cat burglar. But something told him she wasn’t here to steal anything, except his sanity. And his breath. And his heart.

Or maybe she just wanted to get laid.

“Can I help you?” He stepped out from behind the bush and earned a loud gasp of shock.

“Oh my God, you scared me!”

He smiled, the irony too obvious to comment on. He reached down to give her a hand. “Let’s see…you didn’t want to knock and wake Evan?”

She let him pull her up. “I was strolling the grounds and ended up back there.”

“By chance?”

“Luck.” She grinned. “Did you think I was a heavily armed intruder?”

“Not when the dress flew up. Don’t know where you’d hide a weapon.” He gestured toward the screen door, letting her brush by him. She left a trail of something that smelled like honeysuckle and sin behind her.

And he followed like a f*cking dog in heat.

Inside the patio, she went straight to the table and his heart stopped. If she looked at that tablet screen…

What difference did it make? Why not let her know exactly what he was doing? He was trying to help.

She lifted the glass and sniffed, made a face, then sipped. “Ewww. That tastes like lighter fluid filtered through swamp water. Why would anyone drink that?”

“It’s manly.”

Laughing, she dropped into his empty chair and draped her arms over the side. “Can I have something girly? Like, you know, beer or vodka?”

“Stay here.”

He went into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of Grey Goose he’d picked up when supply shopping, telling himself it wasn’t because he knew she liked it, poured it over ice, tore into a juice box, and added a splash. Before going back out, he slipped into the living room and broke the bloom off a bright-pink flower from a bouquet to garnish the drink.

He half expected her to be skimming his tablet and following his last Internet search when he came out, but she was sitting at the edge of the shallow end, her feet dangling in the water.

He joined her, sticking his feet in the pool as he presented the drink. “Girly enough for you?”

“Perfect.” She raised her glass. “Let’s drink to…”

“Whatever made you come over here.”

“Dead batteries.”

He laughed. “At least you’re honest.”

“Except when I’m not.” She tapped his glass with hers, casting her eyes downward. “It’s hard to live life as a liar when you’re as open as I am.”

“I imagine it is.”

She lifted the flower and laid it down before sipping her drink, closing her eyes and moaning appreciatively. “Damn, that’s good.” She tasted again. “Cranberry juice?”

“Apple Raspberry Juicy Juice.”

She smiled. “The mixer of champions.”

“So, Zoe, why don’t you stop lying if it’s so hard for you?”

“It’s become a way of life.” The blunt candor actually surprised him. “In fact, just moments ago, life handed me the perfect opportunity to share all my secrets with one of my very best friends and what do you think I did?”

He didn’t answer because he was still trying to process that her friends didn’t know her past.

“That’s right,” she answered for him. “Nothing. Not exactly a lie, unless you count omission.”

“You mean to tell me that Lacey and Tessa and Jocelyn don’t know that Pasha’s not really your great-aunt?”

“They know she’s sick,” she said, as if that were a huge bit of progress. “But the rest of my sad tale of woe?” She lifted her glass again. “Only you, doc. Only you.”

He would have liked to hold on to the sideways compliment, but he was still too perplexed by her confession. “But they’re your best friends, Zoe. They can give you advice and be sounding boards.”

“And I might even be able to return the favor by helping them. At least I could set Tessa straight on the truth about foster kids.” She splashed her feet in the water, creating ripples that danced across the teal water. “But there is a downside.”

“Surely you don’t think they’d turn Pahsa in.”

“No. But they might hate me for not coming clean.”

He let his knuckles brush her exposed thigh, trying not to think about what wasn’t on under that thin dress. It would take one second to have her naked and in his arms. One second.

He lingered on the thought for a lot longer than that, watching her drink and think.

“I don’t believe they’d hate you,” he finally said. “You are judging yourself far more harshly than they would.”

“Hate’s a strong word,” she agreed. “But how do you think they’re going to feel when I tell them I’m not…” She closed her eyes and whispered, “I’m not a girl named Zoe Tamarin.”

He put down his drink and reached for her, wrapping his hands around the slender column of her throat and holding her jaw with his thumbs. “No one cares what your name is, Zoe. You are you. An amazing, funny, beautiful woman. You owe your friends the truth.”

She looked away, refusing to make eye contact.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked.

“I could lose them, like I…lost you.”

He tightened his grip. “You didn’t lose me. Surely you believe that by now.”

Finally, she shifted her gaze to meet his. “I’m ashamed,” she said softly.

“You were a kid.”

“But I let this lifestyle go on and on for years,” she said, inching free to make her point. “Every time I had a choice—including that day in Chicago when Pasha said I should stay—I took the chickenshit, lazy, easy, loser choice.”

Yet she was none of those things. “You and Pasha simply got yourself painted into a corner, Zoe. She protected you and you protected her and neither one of you could get off—”

“Don’t make my excuses for me.” She took a lusty gulp and put the glass down so hard he thought it might crack on the stone pavers. In a second, she turned to him, her eyes bright.

“Then don’t make your own,” he said.

“Touché. So you noticed that I’m naked under this?” She fluttered the hem of the dress seductively.

Of course, she wanted to plow over the tough stuff with sex. And as much as he wanted to drive that plow, he refused.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Her brows drew together. “When?”

“I know you say Pasha’s at risk of being charged for kidnapping, but what actually happened?”

She tilted her head, a smile pulling. “You don’t want to have sex with me?”

“I’m going to assume that’s a rhetorical question. What I don’t want to do is derail this conversation yet.”

Without warning, her hand landed on his crotch, squeezing, a bolt of lightning shooting right into his balls. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you’re a guy.”

He put his hand over hers and pressed, his erection growing with each passing heartbeat. “I’m not a guy. I’m the guy. I’m the one who knows you, Zoe.” Very slowly, because it hurt like a motherf*cker even to think about making the move, he lifted her hand and put it on her lap. “Now tell me the story. What happened when Pasha ‘kidnapped’ you? I take it she didn’t throw you in a trunk and drive off.” He frowned when she didn’t reply. “Did she?”

“Of course not.” She picked up her hand and looked at it like her very fingers had betrayed her. “I’m really losing my touch.”

“Your touch is…” Insane. “Fine. And my kid’s asleep upstairs,” he added, more to assuage her humiliation than anything. “I’ve waited nine years, Zoe.”

“For sex with me?”

“For this story.”

Puffing out some air, she leaned back on her hands, breaking their contact but staying close enough that he could feel the silk of her calves against his and the splash of warm water between them. “She did drive off. But I was in the passenger seat, not the trunk.”

“Ten years old?” The threads of her story had stayed in his mind over the years, but no real tapestry had emerged. She’d been in trouble, run away, found safety with Pasha, and—that was all he knew. “How did it happen?”

She didn’t answer for a while, drinking instead.

He gave her leg a nudge.

“Okay, okay. I’m getting fortified.” One more luscious sip, this one with her eyes closed and head tilted back. It took everything in him not to dip his head and kiss her exposed throat. “I have never spoken this story out loud,” she announced as she set the drink down next to her. “Not once, not even to myself. So bear with me.”

“I have all night and an eight-pack of Juicy Juice. Talk to me.”

She exhaled a soft whistle and looked out over the water, gathering her thoughts. “I was raised in foster homes. I think I mentioned that on our balloon ride.”

He nodded his head, but she didn’t even look at him. “Yes, you did. But when we were dating, you told me your parents died in a car accident, and that Pasha was your father’s aunt and your only living relative and she was appointed as your legal guardian. But…” His voice trailed off as it hit him then—really hit him like a brick to the brain.

Zoe had lied to him from day one. She’d never told him the truth.

She glanced at him, no doubt reading his expression. “And I only knew you a month. Can you imagine how my lifelong friends are going to feel?”

Yes, actually, he could. They’d feel betrayed and hurt and cheated. Those emotions strangled enough that he couldn’t talk.

“Sometimes,” Zoe said, “you tell a lie for so long it becomes the truth.”

“No,” he managed to reply. “It never becomes the truth.”

“I’m sorry, Oliver.” She angled her head toward him. “I wasn’t happy about lying to you. That’s why I took you on that balloon ride. I wanted to tell you the real truth up there. I did, I tried, anyway.”

“Tell me now, down here.”

“Okay. I might have to go back to, you know, the beginning.” She took another drink, then continued. “I have no idea who my father is. I doubt my mother did, either, but she overdosed when I was four, I think. I really don’t know. I was truly an orphan—she was a runaway, too, and…” Her voice cracked.

“Shhh. Zoe, don’t cry.” He put his hand on her shoulder, but she wiggled out of his touch.

“I’m not crying. My voice always cracks when I’m nervous.”

“Why are you nervous? This is me.”

She looked at him and, for a woman who said she wasn’t crying, her eyes were pretty bright. “I’m nervous because it’s you. And you matter.”

Which might have been the nicest thing she’d said since she’d shown up in his office. “Zoe, it’s not your fault who or what your mother was.”

“It’s my legacy. A long line of runaways. Not exactly the bloodline you married into.”

“Adele isn’t here, and she won’t ever be. You are. Please.” He managed to settle his hand on her bare thigh. “I’m not judging you.”

“All right.” She reached for the drink, then shook her head and put it down. “Anyway, they put me in foster care and from there the State of Texas pretty much forgot I existed until whatever family had me got sick of me.”

“How could anyone get sick of you?”

She gave a dry laugh. “I was mouthy, sarcastic, irreverent, impolite, and never met a rule I couldn’t break.”

“All the things I love about you.”

She startled a little, making him realize what he’d said. He opened his mouth to correct himself, but closed it again.

For a long, heavy moment, neither said a word, but when he looked down at the water, her toes were curled into tight little balls.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I was in Corpus Christi last, with a family who had three foster kids. I really don’t know why they took fosters, probably for the subsidy money and free labor. And free…” She shook off the thought. “Anyway, about two doors away, this incredibly sweet lady moved in. Her name was Patricia Hobarth.”

“Pasha?”

She nodded. “She lived alone and we became friends that summer. I’d visit her almost every day. She taught me how to play cards and do crafts and”—she laughed softly—“read tea leaves. She was…sad. Lonely and lost, like I was, and we formed an unlikely friendship.”

She was quiet for a moment, maybe holding on to an old memory, but he let her go, waiting for her to finish.

“So I spent a lot of time there because…the father at the house where I lived…” She fought for a breath and his heart fell down somewhere into his gut.

“God, tell me he didn’t hurt you.” White-hot rage blasted through him, and she hadn’t even told him anything yet.

She swallowed hard and shook her head. “Not me. At least, well, no. He had sex with one of the other girls. She was fourteen.”

“F*ck.”

She closed her eyes and stayed quiet a really long time. “Every night. In the next bed.”

“Oh, shit, Zoe. How do you handle something like that?”

“Run, Zoe, run.” The words were no more than the breath of a sad sigh, hardly discernable.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s when the voice started.” At his look, she gave a dry laugh. “No, I don’t hear voices. Well, one. And it’s mine, but it’s…loud. Usually telling me to do something that goes against common sense. But it started in that room, on those nights, when I’d stick my head under the pillow and try to drown it all out. The voice…helped.”

He reached for her, putting his arm around her back, pulling her closer, trying to warm the chill that probably started deep inside her. “This voice told you to run.”

“Fast and far. I wanted to get…away.”

“So it’s not your life on the lam with Aunt Pasha that makes you so impossible to hold.”

“I have to have an escape route,” she admitted. “In fact, I kind of freak out if I don’t have a way out of…anything.”

Anything like a relationship, a permanent hometown, even her friendships. Very slowly, threads of that tapestry that was Zoe started to form a picture.

“Life with Pasha just magnified that trait,” she said. “First, Pasha was my escape hatch, then that lifestyle felt normal. I know anyone hearing this, even close friends, will have a hard time understanding that, but it’s true.”

He tried to imagine that life but couldn’t. Not that he couldn’t imagine how she had lived that way, but why? “Why not try to change the situation? Why run? Why not fix it?”

“I’m not the fixer you are, Oliver. I’m the runner, remember?”

“But why didn’t you report the guy to the social service people who checked on you?”

She shook her head as if the question was crazy. “You don’t understand. The other girl threatened me.”

“She threatened you?”

She lost the battle not to drink, picking up the glass and gulping. “It wasn’t rape. She wanted to have sex with him, and in return she got stuff: clothes, money, drugs. She was his favorite, and it worked for her. I had to shut up and cover my ears, always, always under that pillow.”

He tried to imagine the suffocating feel of the bedding, the sounds, the horror for a little girl, and it turned his stomach.

“But I listened to that voice,” she said quickly, as if she were more concerned about how he felt right then than the memories. “The voice would soothe me. The voice told me what it would be like when I ran, when I was safe, when I could roll around beautiful green hills or even fly.” She smiled wistfully. “I wanted to fly so much. And not a plane, although I had to take those flying lessons, too, but I wanted to float.” She closed her eyes and sighed the word. “Just go up and away and hear silence. That was my greatest fantasy. A quiet, far away balloon has always been my happy place.”

“So Pasha helped you?” he asked.

“That summer, foster a*shole guy lost his job and he was home all the time with that girl.” She closed her eyes. “They…did stuff all the time. So during the day I spent every possible moment with Pasha.”

“Did you tell her what was going on at your house?”

“No, I was too scared. But she knew something was wrong, because she read my palm.”

“And figured it out?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“She saw the fingernail gouges from me digging into my own hands.” She gave a wry smile. “Say what you will about her fortune-telling skills, the woman is intuitive as hell, and she recognized a kid who was getting progressively more f*cked up as the days went by.”

“Is that why she took you?”

Zoe shook her head, kicking her feet in the water to make waves again. “That girl, the fostertute, as I liked to call her, got taken away. There was some trouble or something. The state services person was on the take, I think. I don’t know. I was too young to understand it, but when she was gone, I knew I’d be next.”

More unholy heat blasted through him. “What happened?”

She turned, her eyes dark with pain. “He managed to corner me and…try. Got his hand down my pants and his tongue down my throat.”

He buckled a little like he’d been shot. “You were ten?”

“He liked ’em young, doc.”

Bile rose in his throat. “What did you do?”

She almost smiled. “What do you think?”

“Ran?”

“After I bit his f*cking tongue until it bled and slammed my knee in his nuts, yeah. I ran like hell to Pash—Mrs. Hobarth’s.” She nearly drained her glass before finishing. “And Pasha, it turned out, has a superpower. That woman can pack and disappear in less time than it takes most people to take a shower. She knew it was no use reporting that guy, and it was only a matter of time until I was his next…” She shook her head. “The voice screamed ‘Run, Zoe, run,’ and, this time, I did. With her.”

“She saved you, Zoe.”

She turned to him, her eyes wide. “Duh. Why do you think I’m so determined to do the same for her?”

“You’re covering for her by running and hiding,” he shot back. “That’s not saving her.”

She didn’t answer, turning away.

“You could argue that to any judge,” he insisted. “Or police or FBI or sheriff—”

“Stop. I would never talk to those people.”

“Or a lawyer,” he continued, undeterred. “She doesn’t have to live with this sword hanging over her head anymore. Hell, you could find that foster father and—”

“He’s dead. I’ve kept tabs on him and he died in a house fire. I hope he’s still burning.” She shuddered a little. “You have to know what Pasha did is illegal, by any stretch. She broke every law there is by using fake IDs and dead people’s Social Security numbers. She had this whole underground network of people who are all up to their asses in criminal shit.”

He thought about Pasha for a moment, about how little he knew about a woman whose life he wanted so much to save. “How’d she do it? Didn’t anyone check up on you? How did you get into schools or rent apartments or make money?”

“Pasha has money, thousands in cash, she keeps stashed in places like the freezer or—God, this is so cliché but true—under the mattress.”

“Where does it come from?”

“I really don’t know, but we never were destitute. She always found odd jobs, and then I did. Waitress, sales clerk, cleaning lady, seamstress. Whatever, until people started asking questions and then, sometimes for no reason I could figure, we’d blow out of town and move to the next place.”

“How did you get into college?” he asked.

“Miracles. Strings pulled. Pasha’s relentless determination that I get a degree. She homeschooled me and made sure I passed every test. She managed to find people who make fake IDs and create real people out of thin air. I even have a birth certificate and I do have a Social Security card. I got into the University of Florida, for crying out loud. She made that happen—it was so, so important to her that I go to college.”

She kicked her legs a few more times, the soft splash punctuating the pride in her voice. “But that’s just the story of what happened, Oliver. That’s not the story.”

He gave her a questioning look, not following.

“What I mean is, that’s not who or what my Aunt Pasha is made of. She saved me, yes, and maybe what she did was illegal and wrong in the eyes of the law, but she sacrificed her entire life for me, too. She’s my friend, my confidante, my mother, my sister, my soul mate. She would die for…” She dropped her head into her hands. “But I don’t want her to.”

He settled her against him the way her pain settled on his heart. “We’ll do everything possible and more,” he promised.

“Can you save her life?”

He inched her around to look at him. “Zoe, I will do everything in my power and in the power of my team to save this woman who saved you. You have my word.”

She inched back. “There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“There is,” he acknowledged. “I’ll save her if I can, but what will you do with that life if we save her?”

She didn’t answer.

“Zoe, I can see the agony in your eyes and practically hear that voice in your head.”

“Yeah? What’s it saying?”

“Take the easy way. Run, hide, and avoid the trouble. Protect yourself and Pasha and don’t take any chances.”

She gave him a slow smile. “You can hear that voice in my head?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Then why don’t you do what it’s screaming at you to do?”

He leaned closer, wrapping both arms around her. “This?”

“You must be stone deaf.” She put her hands on his face and brought his mouth to hers. “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. Hear that now?”

He did, and it was music to his ears.