leave. Then your sisters, who will still be here, will kick my butt every time they see me. Which, considering one of them is deep in cahoots with my best friend, means every damn day.”
Julia shook her head, the crease between her brows forcing him to fight to keep from smiling. “They won’t be mad at you. We’ll explain. Just to them, and Finn and Josiah, of course.” She paused. “And maybe Tamara as well.”
That last part wasn’t said with as much confidence.
“So what you’re asking me to do is either lie to my friends or lie to some of my friends.”
She looked a little more uncomfortable but stuck to her guns. “Please. We have to find a way to make this work because Brad is a good friend and I can’t let him be hurt. Not him or Hanna. I owe him too much.”
Another layer of mystery added to the situation. What had happened at that training school to connect the two of them so tightly?
She headed to the counter and plugged in the kettle, glancing over her shoulder. “I need a cup of tea. Want one?”
It wasn’t the whiskey he was looking forward to, but it would have to do. “Sure.”
He waited and let her fuss at the counter for a few minutes. Meanwhile, his gaze kept returning to the chair blocking her doorway. This entire mess would take some time to untangle, but the one thing he knew for certain?
She was not staying one more night in this damn apartment. It clearly had major security issues. Zach kicked his own ass for not finding this out sooner because the thought of her being in the apartment alone while someone marched in on her—
He took a deep breath and concentrated on pulling his temper back to normal levels.
A couple minutes later, she placed two cups on the table along with cream and sugar before settling across from him.
The three-legged stool under her was shorter than the chair he sat in. It put her chin about four inches above the surface of the table, and she looked like a little kid having a tea party.
Anger returned. “You want to discuss why you’ve got a chair in front of your door?”
A soft sigh escaped. Julia lifted her gaze but didn’t meet his eyes. “The locks don’t work very well. I drag the trunk in front of the door before I sleep.”
That comment only strengthened his resolve. “I see.”
He drank the tea without tasting a thing. He returned the cup to the table surface then placed both palms on either side of it. “We have some problem-solving to do. Pack a bag. You’re coming home with me.”
Her eyes widened. “I can’t do that.”
“My place or one of your sisters,” he offered. “But considering we need to talk about the dating thing…” Zach kept as still as possible, but his usual easygoing nonchalance had vanished sometime in the last minute. “I swear nothing will happen that you don’t want, but I need to get you somewhere safe before another person comes through the door and I hurt them.”
He said it calmly. Peacefully, even, but Julia’s eyes widened.
He had to assume that it’d been a hell of an evening. Julia was a caring, kind woman, and even though she was tough enough to be a damn good EMT, everything that happened tonight was breaking down the barriers.
And as good as his control was these days? He wasn’t kidding about the need to protect.
Julia took a final swallow of her tea before placing her cup beside his. She rose to her feet, pressed a hand on top of his briefly, then moved to pack as ordered.
There wasn’t a whole lot of talking going on. Zach had grabbed the duffel bag she’d filled, thrown it over his shoulder, and then firmly taken her hand in his as he guided her back toward the parking lot outside Rough Cut.
His strong fingers wrapped around hers were comforting after the chaos of the evening.
The start of the trip between town and the dude ranch Zach and Finn were setting up passed in silence. Julia barely registered she was getting a ride in Zach’s famous convertible, her brain scrambling to find a solution for what came next.
Impulsively tossing Zach into the mix had been brilliant and yet totally wrong. Annoyance crawled up her spine. Trying to do the right thing and still having things backfire was exasperating.
The cold stone in the pit of her stomach that she hated with