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