voice was soft. Full of things he’d never heard before.
And damn it all to hell, as he stared into her eyes, he realized he hadn’t been the only one hiding things.
“Keelie, the only thing I see in you is a friend,” he said, shaking his head.
She slid her hand higher. “Just a friend, Zach? Is that all we can ever be?”
He caught her arm and nudged her hand down. “That’s all we are.”
“Because you’ve never given us a chance for something more. Maybe it’s time you did.”
And then she leaned in. Right as she touched her lips to his, the door opened.
* * *
Abigale smoothed a hand down the green silk shirt she wore and took a deep breath.
It was quiet in Zach’s office. Very quiet.
The shop wasn’t very busy and if she hadn’t seen his car, she might have wondered if he was there.
With her heart knocking against her ribs, she went to push the door open.
And then, her heart stopped knocking against anything as it turned to ashes. All those ashes drifted away on the wind as she stared at the scene before her. If the scene had been written by some of the best in the biz, they couldn’t have done it any more perfectly.
A gritty urban scene, she thought absently. The rugged, street-smart male with his face all battered from his latest battle. His hands curled around the woman’s wrists as he stared down at her face. The woman, dressed in skintight black pants and a white tank under a fishnet top, stared up at him and the emotion on her face was as sharp as a blade. Even the lights around them seemed to be chosen to play it all up to perfection as Keelie leaned in and pressed her mouth to Zach’s.
For that one brief moment, time froze.
And then it shattered, just like her heart.
Zach was the first one to notice, his head swinging around her way and those wicked, warm blue eyes locked on her face. That intensity that Abby had been so convinced was there just for her was in his eyes, all right. But a second ago, he’d been staring at Keelie with a hell of a lot of focus, too.
“Abby,” he said, his voice rough.
She just stared at him for a moment and then she shot Keelie a dark look. To her surprise, the woman didn’t meet her glare with a cocky smile, and she didn’t glare back.
Instead, to her surprise, Keelie lowered her head and stared at her feet.
Abby opened her mouth to say something. Anything. But the pain ripping through her just wouldn’t let her speak.
All she wanted to do was cry.
But screw that.
Grabbing the doorknob, she jerked the door shut with a slam and then she took off, running down the hallway.
She was almost at the door when she heard Zach roaring out her name.
But she didn’t slow down.
Chapter Eighteen
For one brief moment, Zach wondered if maybe he’d taken one of those damned pain pills and just forgotten about it, because that might explain why in the hell everything had just started to trip out on him.
But the pain pills had always made things just glide and float, even if they did fuck his head up.
They didn’t turn the world into a nightmare and that’s what this was, he thought, jerking back from Keelie and staring at her like he didn’t even know her. What the hell—
And then he realized they weren’t alone.
Swinging his head around, he thought, Not Abby, not Abby, not Abby . . .
But he already knew who it was.
It was Abby, standing there, staring at him like he had just jerked her heart out of her chest and smashed it to the ground. And he imagined that just might be how she felt. He knew the feeling pretty damned well, but any time he’d ever seen her kissing that fuckhead boyfriend of hers, Abby hadn’t ever belonged to Zach. He couldn’t call it a betrayal.
This, though . . .
“Abby . . .”
She just stared at him for a long moment and then, without saying anything, she jerked the door closed.
“What the hell . . .”
“Zach . . .”
He shot Keelie a narrow look and then took off running out the hall after Abby. But she was running away again.
And this time, she was running from him.
“Abby!”
She shoved through the door before he could catch up to her and he watched as she bolted down the sidewalk. “Damn it,” he snarled, shoving the door