Keep On Loving you (15 page)

Still, it gave Zan pause, not that he'd admit it out loud. “I bet the girls were worried.”

“My sisters, yeah. But it turns out the scars actually seemed to attract women.”

“Bet you hated that,” Zan remarked drily.

“Of course I didn't. While I was enjoying my share of female company, I also earned a degree in landscape architecture and started a business up here that was mostly mow and blow and a little bit of design. Now I'm trying to flip that equation.”

“Flip it?”

“Mostly design, a little less mow and blow.”

Zan thought of that picture he'd seen on Brett's wife's phone—a rendering of the lodge he and Mac and Brett had dreamed of long ago. The lodge that belonged on Walker mountain.

Which they didn't own anymore, not one piece, including the cabins, because all of it now belonged to him.

Guilt had him throwing back the rest of his beer, and he considered sharing with his old friend the truth. But he'd made a promise.

Shit.
A promise to Mac, who was just another problem he didn't want to contemplate right now.
Want to be sex buddies?

She'd actually asked him that yesterday.

Seeing the bartender was occupied down at the other end, Zan reached over and grabbed up Brett's beer. “Hey,” the other man snatched it back.

“I'm trying to do you a favor. I imagine that beautiful wife of yours wants you horny not sleepy when you get home tonight.”

A slow grin overtook Brett's face.

Zan put on a disgusted expression and shook his head. “I never thought I'd see it, but you're totally gone.” And he was glad for his friend.

“You said it, ‘beautiful wife.'”

“Is that why you're doing more design now, and less mow and blow?”

Brett's expression turned serious. “If you're asking if Angelica is behind that, pushing for me to make more money or something, you've got it all wrong.”

“Okay.”

“That woman...what she wants is all she has already with my ring on her finger. A place to call home, a family—husband, sisters, a nephew, a niece—more of all that to come in the future.”

“What she has is the Walkers.”

“Yeah.” Brett let that sit, and then he grinned again. “And my prowess in the sack, of course.”

“Always so modest.” Zan shook his head. “I'll tell her you said that.”

His friend's expression turned smug. “She won't deny it.”

Christ. “You're married, Brett. You're really married.”

“Yep.”

“Poppy and Shay minutes from walking down the aisle, too.”

“We've all grown up.”

With plans and futures they were making, while Zan didn't even have a clue where he was going to go next and what he would do when he got there.

In the mirror, his gaze caught on a new patron entering the bar. Mac.

He hunched around his beer, hoping she wouldn't spot him, even as he didn't take his eyes off her. She was dressed to socialize, in a pair of tight jeans, high-heeled boots and a sweater that clung to every curve. As she passed a booth, someone grabbed her arm and she turned, a smile breaking out for the woman who dragged her onto the seat beside her.

Want to be sex buddies?

“So what about you?” Brett said. “A steady woman been in your life?”

Mac, all those years ago. Zan shook his head to dislodge that thought.
Want to be sex buddies?

What the hell was he going to do with that?

He felt Brett's attention on him. “What?” he demanded, without looking over.

“Christ, you're surly,” Brett complained. “When was the last time you got laid?”

“Really? We're getting all touchy-feely now?” Zan said, echoing the other man's earlier words to avoid spilling how he'd almost gotten laid by the other man's sister.
Want to be sex buddies?

Of course he wanted to have sex with Mac. There was no doubt about that. But
sex buddies
? Once she'd left him at the house, he'd had a clearer head to contemplate that proposition.

He'd been sex buddies with Simone. Mac was not Simone.

Then a man strode into the bar, in jeans, a snap-fronted shirt and cowboy boots. He glanced around, and then his gaze landed on Mac. At her name, she looked up, smiled at the newcomer, then slid out from beneath the table where she sat.

At the hug she gave the guy and the kiss he pressed to her cheek, Zan realized that Mac wasn't just at Mr. Frank's to socialize. She was here to have a
date
.

“Who the hell is that with your sister?” Zan said, lifting his chin to indicate the pair in the mirror.

Brett took a gander. “Friend of hers. Stuart Christianson.”

“Should I remember him?”

“Used to often go around with Glory Hallett—she's married to someone else now.”

“What the hell!” He watched Mac and Stuart Christianson seat themselves at a table for two. “Is this matrimony central, or what?”

“Time didn't stand still when you ran off, and we all didn't stand still, either.”

Not for the first time, Zan wondered if that's what he'd expected. Everyone in the mountains staying the same, just waiting for the occasion of his return to reanimate and then start moving about their lives again.

Okay, that was self-centered.

“I thought about visiting before,” he confessed to Brett. Uh-oh. Maybe getting shit-faced wasn't the right thing to do.

“So why didn't you?”

“I suppose I was waiting for the right moment.”

“The right moment for what?”

How the hell did he know? The moment when he was settled enough within himself to come back to them, maybe. The moment when he'd be convinced the ghosts were gone from the mountains—which was ridiculous, because he'd carried them with him all this time.

The only thing he'd managed to do in ten years was to ignore their presence by immersing himself in new challenges, new sights, new people.

But always, just as surely as the ghosts rode his shoulders, there had lingered a thought in the back of his mind. A thought that there might come a day when he'd return and pick up where he'd left off with Mac, and...what?

Want to be sex buddies?

In the mirror, he found her again, leaning toward Stuart Christianson, who wore a smile on his face and kept his eyes on Mac's. A few couples were moving around the dance floor now, and as he watched, Stuart Christianson and Mac joined them. It was something slow and country, and Stuart Christianson took the opportunity to pull Mac in close. Too close, for a weeknight at Mr. Frank's, if you asked Zan.

And it was then he realized, with a pang, that though he'd come out tonight to forget...he'd only been focused on regrets.

And at the top of that list would be losing out on Mac if he didn't do something about her. Tonight.

CHAPTER TEN

A
SH
SPOTTED
T
ILDA
the instant she walked into the bar. Though he'd been debating with himself about how much time he should let pass before asking her out again, now he didn't hesitate to vault from his chair. Her arrival had to be a sign that tonight he should make his move. Coming up behind her, he laid a hand on her shoulder.

She whirled, surprise shifting to a quick smile that she smothered too soon for his liking. “You.”

He grinned. “Me.” Again she was dressed in that too-thin jacket, which she wore over jeans, a long sweater and sneakers with a hole in one toe. “You look cold. Let me buy you something to warm you up.”

“I...” She shook her head. “No, no, thanks.” Her head twisted to take a look around the bar.

“Are you meeting someone?” That would be disappointing, since she was here, practically in his lap.

Which sounded very nice, by the way.

Her gaze still roamed the patrons of Mr. Frank's. “I'm looking for a friend.”

“Come on, I'll get you that drink. You can sit with me until she arrives.”

She threw a glance at him. “It's a he.”

Shit.
He should have sewed up the second date before he'd let the first one end! In the two days that had passed since they went out, some other guy had already moved into Ash's territory.

He winced at the proprietary thought. His parents had raised him to be more gentlemanly than that. A woman wasn't his property, of course. Backing off, he gave her his best polite smile. “Have a nice night.”

“Thanks,” Tilda said in an absent voice, then seemed to mutter to herself. “It was an off chance he'd be here, anyway.”

That sounded as if she
didn't
have a date.

The fingers of Ash's right hand curled into his palm and he tapped it against his thigh in surreptitious victory. “A drink from me's a sure thing,” he said.

“I need to find Lee.”

Ash's gaze narrowed. “Lee's your mechanic friend.”

“Um...yeah.” She seemed surprised he remembered.

His teeth clenched, and then he tried to relax his jaw. “What's wrong?”

She shook her head. “I thought there were good things coming...” she murmured, the words trailed off on a shrug. “But never mind. It's no big deal.”

“Is your car giving you trouble again?”

“It's no big deal.”

“You keep saying that, but ‘no big deal' is not what I'm seeing on your face, Tilda.” It was true. Now that he knew there was a problem, he noticed the faint line of stress between her dark brows.

“I'm handling it.”

Ash felt a burn kindle in his belly. Since he was a little kid, fuming on the soccer field because the other five-year-olds kept clumping around the ball and didn't get the concept of
pass
, he knew he had a temper. His father had talked to him about it for years, encouraging him to put a choke hold on the feeling when it arose.
Deep breaths, son. Nothing's worth losing control of yourself.

So he hauled in a breath and did his best to channel John Robbins, and be the cool and calm customer his dad expected. “I can look at it again,” he said. “Wouldn't be a problem.”

“It's too dark to now. I left it in the market parking lot.”

“Tomorrow, then,” he said.

She acted as if she hadn't heard him and shoved the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder. “Well, uh, nice bumping into you.”

“How are you getting home?”

“Um...” Her gaze darted around as if the answer might be written on the walls.

“Come on, let me give you a ride.” He smiled. “My dad would never forgive me if I left a damsel in distress.”

She stiffened. “Your dad,” she began, then shook her head again. “I really need to go.”

“With me,” Ash said. “Are you ready to take off now, or would you like to have that drink or something to eat first?”

Her front teeth hit her full bottom lip, and she sucked it into her mouth. Stalling, he thought, and she had no idea how damn sexy he considered the move.

Even with his dick getting hard, his temper fired again. Why was she always so resistant? “Hell, Tilda, do you have to make this so effing hard?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe things come too easy for you,” she snapped back.

He liked the show of spirit, but her stubbornness wasn't going to win the day...or get her back to her place. “Done with this,” he said and grabbed her hand. “Let's get out of here.” Then he remembered why he was at Mr. Frank's, so instead of immediately heading toward the exit, he towed her over to Zan.

“I have someone else to drive home,” he told the other man. “I'll be back.”

Another guy sitting beside Zan glanced over his shoulder. “I can do it.”

That was enough for Ash. Ignoring Tilda's sputters, he hauled her out of Mr. Frank's. Once the cold night air hit him, his temper cooled and his mood jumped from frustrated to feeling pretty damn happy. After all, he had Tilda's small hand in his. He was the one who was taking her home.

All good.

“You can be annoyingly arrogant, you know,” she said when she slid into the passenger seat.

He shut her door and rounded to his side, smiling at the snotty tone of her voice. It meant he was getting to her, he decided.

Yeah, annoyingly arrogant.

But she was in his car and he was going to turn the heater on and make sure she was warm for the ride, too-thin coat or not.

“Directions?” he asked when he settled behind the wheel.

A new vibe entered the small space of the car. As he tried figuring it out, he started the engine, fiddled with the heater controls and adjusted the vents so they'd blow on her. That small hand had been near-freezing.

“Which way do I go?”

She was hesitating again, that bottom lip in her mouth.

Instead of getting mad this time, he softened his voice and smoothed his palm over her hair. “I can't get you there if you won't tell me.”

“I suppose you're right,” she said on a sigh. Then she told him how to get to her place.

It took a while on the dark roads that were unfamiliar to him. They passed the outskirts of the village and then wound through forested land. Instead of going up, this route took them beyond a tiny hamlet in the notch of two mountains. On the outskirts of that, they passed a couple of bared lots that held nothing but snow-clearing equipment.

Then they were at the mouth of an even narrower lane.

“You can drop me off right here,” Tilda said.

He looked out his windshield at the dark night, the dark pavement ahead, the darker shadows created by the trees crowded alongside it. Then he turned his head to Tilda. “You've got to be kidding me.”

She sighed. “It's about a quarter-mile along here.” Her voice sounded resigned.

Ash thought it was the perfect setting for a teen horror movie. Up ahead, he could see a dilapidated two-story building of six units, the only lighting bare bulbs highlighting the apartment numbers. As his tires crunched on the gravel in the adjacent parking lot, he kept his eyes peeled for an ax murderer or even a rabid bear.

Continuing forward, he noted a bent and rusted screen over the door to the nearest apartment was flapping in an errant breeze, letting out a scratchy squeal each time it moved. Seriously creepy. Before he had a chance to turn off the ignition, she was half out of the car. “Thanks.”

He caught her by the arm. “I'll walk you to the door.”

“Totally unnecessary.”

As if he would let her go without seeing her safely inside, if
safely
was a word that could be applied in any way, shape or form to this run-down set of apartments. “Again, I couldn't look my dad in the eye if I didn't.”

She yanked her arm out of his hold. “Believe me. It's better this way.”

Before he could blink, she was on the gravel and scurrying toward a set of rickety stairs to the second floor. Cursing under his breath, Ash followed. Though she had to hear his footsteps on the metal steps behind her, she didn't acknowledge him. Instead, she made her way to a door marked with a five. No light seeped from the curtain-covered window beside it.

With her keys in hand, she paused, though she didn't look at him. “Okay, your duty's done. You can leave now.”

“Or you can ask me inside.” He stepped up behind her, wanting her again so damn much. “We can talk.” Bending his head, he touched his cheek to hers, then pulled her around to face him.

For a long moment, she only stared up at his face. Then he saw her lips move.

Had she mouthed “gorgeous”? Running a knuckle down her cheek, he smiled at her, hopeful again. “Or we can not talk. I'd be content just to spend time with you.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He lowered his voice. “Aren't you aware we're good together?”

Though she nodded, there was a battle going on inside her, he could see that.

Watching her, he touched her cheek again, his finger trailing down to stroke the side of her neck. At her full-body shudder, he gave up.

“You're cold,” he said and began to move back. “Go inside.”

Tilda grabbed his hand and pulled him close again. “I'm not cold,” she said. “That's not why I'm shivering.”

It was Ash's turn to still. “Then why not let me in?”

“Because...” She glanced over her shoulder, then back at him. “Right now it's because I don't want you to see this place. I don't want you to know how I live.”

His heart felt twisted by her two small hands. “Tilda—”

“It's nothing like you're accustomed to.”

He was accustomed to things being way too easy. She'd been right about that. But now it was his turn to make things easier for her. With his free fingers, he found her keys and plucked them from her.

She let them go and she also let him nudge her to the side so he could unlock the door. Pushing it open, he noted that while the place smelled like pine cleaner, the air was barely warmer than the outside temperature.

He pulled her inside and shut the door. A dim light was on, illuminating a tiny kitchen and a living room with a futon and a clunky TV on a metal stand. “Roommates home?” he asked, guessing that she had them.

“They waitress at one of the ski lodges. They won't be back until late.”

“Can we get this place any warmer?” he asked, glancing around for a thermostat.

She remained by the door, as if second-guessing her decision. “The heat hardly works. When it's cold like this, we hang in our bedrooms, under blankets.”

“You share a room?”

He heard her swallow. “I have the single.”

Crossing to her, he took her hand. “Take me there.”

At her hesitation, he drew her against him, then softly kissed her mouth. She trembled in his arms and he could feel warmth rise to the surface of her skin. “Take me there,” he said again.

Now she moved, guiding him along threadbare carpet into a short hallway. They passed a bedroom, a small bathroom, and then she opened a door. The space was tiny, almost dominated by a single bed heaped in blankets, a tiny stand beside it holding an even smaller lamp that was letting off a faint glow. Some plastic drawers were tucked in a corner and a curved metal rod—maybe formerly for a shower?—was bolted into a wall for hanging clothes.

“They made the closet into another bathroom,” she said, pointing to another narrow door.

Inside was only a toilet and a tiny sink.

“It's awful,” she whispered.

“It's cold.” He crossed to the bed and pulled back the covers. “Come on. Slip off your shoes and get in here.”

When she did as he asked, he unlaced his boots, slipped off his coat and crawled in beside her. She scooted to make room for him, but he pulled her against him, cuddling her close.

She went stiff in his arms. “I'm worried about this, Ash.”

“We're only getting better acquainted,” he said.

“You might not like what you learn about me.”

“Not a chance.” Because he felt as if all the questions had been asked and answered months ago, when he'd looked over at the table of young women and his gaze had lit upon her—the paper crown listing on her mane of hair, the sweet, pouting lower lip, the way her eyes had lit with pleasure when the server handed her the drink he'd sent over. Her head had turned his way, a smile tilting the corners of her mouth, and he'd known.

There you are
, he'd thought.

His parents had been college sweethearts and he admired and wanted a relationship like theirs, so he'd expected to find his own sweetheart during those years. But while he'd enjoyed himself and admired plenty of girls and dated a few, not one had given him that instant sense of certainty.

There you are.

“I couldn't get you out of my head, the whole time I've been gone.”

Tilda turned her face into his neck. “I wanted to forget you,” she said, her mouth moving against his skin. “I wanted to forget everything about that night and especially about leaving you the next morning.”

The first of that didn't sound promising. Only the last bit was slightly better. But Ash figured he couldn't be here, in this bed with her, if she really was serious about wanting to forget him.

Using his finger under her chin, he tilted her mouth toward his. Then he was kissing her, soft at first, and then with more heat and desire. Her body turned more deeply into his and then he felt her stubborn resistance finally fall away.

But when he broke the kiss he could tell she was still worrying too much by the way her gaze was anxious on his. God, all he wanted to do was make things simple and easy for her. Be her comfort instead of her concern.

“This place,” she whispered, “is a dump. I still wish—”