her when she came to him and told him she was getting married . . . to a man who didn’t deserve her.
And now she was laying out a plan to go and have a torrid affair. With who?
Curling one hand into a fist, he crossed back to his desk.
“Why in the hell not me?”
Chapter Four
Wine would have been a good idea, Abby thought. Maybe he didn’t want her drinking before he got started, but after? Yeah, it would have helped.
Stretched out on her belly, she closed her eyes and tried to think about anything but the pain.
“You okay?”
Zach’s hands on her weren’t helping her zone out, she decided. It was one hell of a distraction, but it wasn’t helping her zone out.
Swallowing the knot in her throat, she croaked out, “I’m as good as I think I can expect to be.”
“And how good is that?”
“Lousy.”
He laughed a little. “Why don’t you talk to me? We’re halfway done,” he said. “If you talk, you’ll get distracted and it will be done before you know it.”
“Okay.” She scrunched her eyes tightly closed and tried to think of something to say. Her mind was blank. “I don’t know what to talk about.”
“You always have something to talk about,” he teased, his voice low and easy, and she knew even without looking at him that he was smiling.
“Not right now I don’t.” Well, she could think of a thing or two. But those weren’t really things she could say. Were they? No. She’d thought this through. She wasn’t going down that road with Zach.
“Okay. I’ll help. What is this new life plan you’ve got laid out? Besides the tattoo?”
I plan on flipping my life upside down.
She bit her lip to keep from blurting that out. That would make him worry. She loved him dearly and she didn’t need him worrying about her right now. “It’s not a life plan exactly. It’s just a for now plan,” she said slowly. “Some things to keep me distracted until I figure out what I’m going to do with myself. There’s the tattoo thing, which you’re obviously helping with. I’m going to try to stop worrying so much. One of them, though . . . I plan on calling up Roger and telling him off.”
He grunted. “Good plan.” Something soft brushed against her lower back and she hissed a little.
Damn it, that hurt. It felt like something was slicing right through her skin.
Distraction. Talk, damn it. About anything.
“I don’t get it,” she said softly, some of the confusion and pain breaking free. “I mean . . . I thought he loved me. How could he love me and walk away like that? Over the life I used to have? That’s what it’s all about. I used to be an actress. I’m not anymore—I haven’t been for years and I’m happy with that. How can he not see that? If he loved me, wouldn’t he be able to see that I don’t want to act anymore?”
Zach didn’t answer.
Turning her head, she peered over her shoulder at him.
He had his head bowed, the gold-streaked strands falling down and hiding his features from her.
“Zach?”
He sighed. “Do you really want to hear what I have to say about this right now, sugar?”
“I always want to hear what you have to say.”
“Okay.” He used the cloth again on her back and then bent down, staring at her skin like there was nothing else in the world but her back and the design he was inking on her flesh. “He never loved you.”
It was a strike, square to her heart.
She closed her eyes.
“If he loved you, he wouldn’t treat you the way he did. When you walked into a room, it would have showed on his face . . . if he really loved you. Either he’d have been so busy staring at you because he just had to see you, or he would have been looking away so nobody could see it. Except he was going to marry you—you were his and he had every right to let the world see how he felt.” Zach dabbed at her back again, still focused on the work.
She was almost glad of the pain now, because it was easier to think about how much it hurt than to think about what he had to say.
“But when you walked into a room, that fucking prick was too busy either messing with his damned gadgets or looking at everybody else to see what they thought about you.