and Evan Miller, would also be late. They usually were, and Rae didn’t blame them: if she had to watch a man like Evan get ready, she’d be late all the time, as well.
So. Deliciously. Late.
“Penny for your thoughts.” The voice was low and warm, like sunlight through the clouds. Zach.
She looked up to find him looming over her, fully dressed—unfortunately—and handsome as ever. He wore black jeans and a white shirt, like an echo of his jet-black hair and pale skin. His eyes were like that, too: winter-frost irises surrounded by a blue-black ring. His gaze was the kind of exhilarating cold that burned.
She pulled herself together and said primly, “My thoughts are not fit for public consumption.”
His fine, expressive mouth curled. “Now you’re just driving up the price.” He dragged a chair closer to her, sitting with the sprawling grace reserved for tall men who knew every inch of their bodies. For a moment, she salivated over the pretty-boy definition of his jaw and the tiny mole above his eyebrow. Then she remembered that the mole was on his left side. Which meant he’d just gone out of his way to sit on her right side.
Her fingers itched to flutter over the scars there, but she curled her hand into a fist and lifted her chin. Rae always wore her hair pulled back for a reason: she refused to hide. And anyway, Zach never stared, or studied, or dissected her scars with a guilty, sliding gaze.
He simply looked.
"So,” he said, shattering her thoughts. “Since we’re alone…”
…Fancy a quickie in the bathroom?
“Any chance you want to talk about the thing that’s not bothering you?” he finished.
Rae bit back a smile at her own wild thoughts and said, “No. And it’s not bothering me.” God, she was such a bloody liar. But, no matter how much she liked Zach, she couldn’t pour her messy, bleeding heart out to him. It was too embarrassing. It was too vulnerable. The idea made her vaguely nauseated. With him, she was Ravenswood Rae, and that was how she wanted things to be.
He sighed dramatically, irreverent as ever, and raked a hand through his hair. At least ten pairs of covetous eyes drank down the sight, but he seemed oblivious. “Come on, sunshine. You’re really going to deny this face?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “It’s for your own good.”
He cocked a brow. “Because…?”
“Someone has to tell you no once in a while.”
His grin was slow and sexy and clearly delighted. He leaned closer, the electric force of his presence crackling over her skin. “You don’t think I hear it enough? Why’s that, Rae?”
This was the part where she said something almost flirtatious and definitely outrageous, and he fell about laughing, and she felt ten feet tall. That was how they worked. Only, tonight, with the weight of everything crushing her, she suddenly didn’t have the energy. She opened her mouth, but nothing witty sprang to mind, and she was tired of working for it. Of working for everything. She tapped her tongue against the inside of her cheek and shrugged.
Zach shot her a frown, confusion with an edge of concern. “You’re really upset, aren’t you?”
She reached down to stroke Duke, avoiding Zach’s gaze. “Don’t be ridiculous. About what?”
“I don’t know.”
She straightened. He reached out and took her hand. A jolt of electric awareness crackled through her, inconvenient and uncontrollable, her nerve endings alive with pointless anticipation. She tried not to fall out of her chair, or faint, or float away like a balloon. Inappropriate lust: twice as buoyant as helium. That’s what the newsreader would say, during the human interest segment on Rae’s mind-blowing spontaneous flight.
Zach leaned in, his voice low in a way that made her stomach dip. “Seriously. Talk to me. Please?”
She blinked like a bamboozled chicken, which was appropriate, because she felt like a bamboozled chicken. “It’s… I’m…” I’m fine is what she meant to say. But his hand. His big, broad hand with its calloused palm, holding hers so gently. And the frown on his face, so disarming with its obvious concern.
All that worry, just for her. She marvelled at the way her life had transformed. As a child, she’d hidden sadness by whatever means necessary, knowing her mother would take it as a personal insult and punish her accordingly. With Kevin, Rae’s negative emotions were evidence that she considered him a terrible husband—no matter how many times she tried to explain that it was about work, or something she’d seen on