Dear Diary, Zach’s back!
“Mmm ... oh, yeah. Right there. That’s it ... just there.”
Zach Canady came alive the instant he heard the purring female voice. You always hear the good stuff when no one knows you’re listening. That was the first lesson he ever learned.
His childhood nanny would beg to differ. She always warned, “Eavesdroppers never hear well of themselves”.
“Don’t stop.” Disappointment laced the sensual voice drifting from the house next door. His neighbour and her girlfriends were in her hot tub again—third time this week. If he’d known England was going to be this entertaining, he would’ve moved back years ago.
His buddy, Dane, swallowed a mouthful of lager. “What do you think they do in that big ol’ hot tub?”
Zach lifted his dewy can from the square hardwood patio table. He enjoyed rare nights like this when he got to kick back in his garden with his buddies after a hard day at work.
He opened his mouth to answer then closed it when the giggly female voices filtered over the fence again. What his neighbours had to say was far more entertaining.
“Do me while I do you.”
“No. I’m too relaxed. Let Cristi do you.”
“Come on, you know you want to.”
Keith, his other buddy, leaned close, setting his can on the table. “Dunno, but I’d really like to find out.”
Zach’s smile grew. All he had to do was go upstairs to his third bedroom and peek over the fence separating his property from the one next door. Even so, he wasn’t about to encourage his buddies to spy on his neighbour. As tempting as it was to have a look, he’d managed to refrain from spying on them since his move back to Surrey two weeks ago, and he wasn’t going to start now.
Whatever they were up to was no business of his.
“Get off me! I’m not rubbing your foot.” The scandalized female voice preceded a loud splash and raucous laughter.
A champagne cork popped, followed by a squeal and more giggles. “Here’s to Maddie’s new property and what’s shaping up to be the best property show on TV.”
Whooping and cheering followed.
Zach took a sip from his can. He knew a Maddie back in university. The Maddie he knew didn’t do hot tubs or giggle. Maddison de la Botella was a geek. And he had been her only friend.
This Maddie was a party-animal.
Dane waggled his thick blond brows. “I think we should wait ‘til they’re good and liquored up, then go over and introduce ourselves.”
“Hey, Mad, have you met your new neighbour yet?” one female voice asked.
“I think I caught a glimpse of him the other day,” said another. “He’s a cutie.”
Zach had to put up with elbows in the ribs as Dane and Keith grinned.
“Hel-lo,” Keith stage-whispered. “Looks like this could be fun. How big is that hot tub anyway?”
“Shut up.” Zach put his lager on the patio table and crept closer to the fence. “I’m trying to listen.”
Keith and Dane followed close behind. “If you can’t hear what’s going on next door without pressing your ear up against that fence, mate, you need hearing aids.”
Zach elbowed Dane as they crouched next to the fence. “Hush.” He pressed his ear closer.
“I did notice signs of life,” a husky female voice replied. “But I haven’t had time to do the welcome-to-the-neighbourhood thing.”
Shock slammed into Zach. He’d know that voice anywhere. His Maddie was in a hot tub only a few feet away, separated from him by a wooden fence. How was it he could find himself living so close to his once-upon-a-time best friend, and not even know it?
~*~
“MADDIE?”
The baritone voice had Maddie jumping to her feet. She spun around in the warm water so fast her champagne sloshed over the side of her flute glass.
The giggles stopped. The sound of hot tub bubbles faded. All sound, and scent of flowers mixed with chlorine, vanished as Maddie’s gaze landed on the face staring over her fence.
She raised her free hand to her chest, covering the spot where her heart did a funny triple-beat-miss-a-couple-beats-speed-up thing.
Zachary Canady was looking over her fence—Zach Canady whom she hadn’t seen in years—the secret love of her life.
“Zach?” She managed to husk past the flutter in her throat as her senses kicked back to life.
He grinned as if elated she remembered him. How could any woman ever forget Zach? Over six foot, he exuded such male appeal a woman would have to be dead not to respond to him. Not that he ever noticed she was a living, breathing woman.
He had a smile that was a cross between wickedly reckless and shamelessly sexy. It did its job well. One flash of those perfect white teeth, and a woman swooned for days.
Twilight had turned to night an hour ago, and though her garden was well-lit, Maddie couldn’t see him clearly. She hadn’t realized how shadowed that part of her garden was until now. It unnerved her a little to realise that if Zach hadn’t spoken he could have watched her, Lisa, Sasha, and Cristi in the hot tub completely unnoticed.
“How long have you been there?”
Two additional heads popped up on either side of Zach’s before he could answer. Three pairs of male hands clawed over the top of her fence.
“Hi, gorgeous. Since you know our mate here, why don’t we come over there and join you in that hot tub?” one of the heads asked.
She couldn’t be sure, but from the distance and lighting, he looked blond and wasn’t as tall as Zach, his nose in line with the top of the fence.
The other guy was slightly taller and handsome with golden brown skin. She could see he grinned the way a cheeky little boy might.
“Yeah, sounds like you’re having a lot of fun, and our friend here is upset ’cause he just broke up with his girlfriend. I think you girls can make him feel better,” Cheeky Grin said.
Maddie heard a dull thud, and Cheeky Grin grunted, “Ow!”
“I apologise for my friends,” Zach said in his warm-chocolate-on-a-cold-winter’s-night voice. “They just got out of the zoo. I’m taking them back tomorrow. They’re obviously not ready for civilisation yet.”
Maddie’s friends giggled.
“Come on over,” Cristi said, leaning around Maddie. “We have plenty of champagne, and our Maddie here is the quintessential rebound girl. If she can’t make you feel better, no one can.”
Maddie gasped. Just because her last three dates had been on the rebound from their relationships didn’t make her some sort of rebound girl.
“You’ve had enough to drink.” She plucked Cristi’s glass from her hand. Laughter filled the air, but when Maddie looked over at Zach, she found, like her, he wasn’t laughing.
How would they have reacted to each other if their friends weren’t here? Would the last fight they had still stand between them? Would he tell her why he took off to America so suddenly, if she asked?
Would she ask?
“Hey!” Cristi reached for the glass Maddie held out of reach. “I’m celebrating here. Don’t be a party pooper.”
Maddie handed back the glass. Never let anyone say she couldn’t party with the best. She’d vowed her last year at university she’d never let anyone—and definitely not her best friends—call her unexciting ever again.
Zach had told her that once. He’d been trying to make her feel better when she couldn’t understand why none of the boys seemed to want to date her.
She cringed at the memory of Zach throwing a casual arm around her shoulders, completely unaware of what it did to her female hormones as he said, ‘Guys like girls who are a little more...’ He’d searched for the right word and had humiliated her with, ‘Exciting’.
Well she’d show him and his buddies how exciting she could be. “No need to apologise.” Maddie held Zach’s gaze while a strange thrill rolled through her body, reminding her of that old sensation of awareness she’d experienced every time she saw him. Despite the poorly lit fence area, she knew his eyes were as blue as her hot tub. “You’re welcome to join us.”
Zach shook his head. “Maybe some other time, we wouldn’t want to crash your party.”
“Are you kidding me?” Blond Guy said, and two seconds later vaulted the fence.
Maddie stifled a gasp.
Female whistles and catcalls ensued from the other women. Blond Guy took a bow and strutted over to the hot tub’s gazebo.
“Very impressive, but—” Maddie pointed over to the fence near the end of her garden. “We have a gate.”
Blond Guy grinned. He was better looking than the few inches of head peeking over her fence had led her to believe.
“See, if I use the gate how would I get to show off my athletic skills?” He stretched out his right hand to Maddie. “Hi, I’m Dane Line.”
She clasped his hand as the secret gate in her fence opened and Zach and Cheeky Grin walked in. “I’m Maddison de la Botella. My friends call me Maddie.”
Dane kept a hold of her hand. “You’re Spanish?”
“My ancestry is.” She pulled back her hand when it seemed he was happy to hang onto it. “I was born here in England, as were four generations of my family.”
Zach and his other friend stepped into the extra-large Bellis gazebo to join them. “I didn’t know that gate was there. It’s hidden behind a bush on my side.”
She moved a finger back and forth to indicate Zach’s house and hers. “The people who used to live here were friends, and their children played together. They installed the gate as a safe way for the children to move between the two houses.”
“Can’t help showing off, can you, Line?” Cheeky Grin said as he slapped Dane on the back. “I hope you ladies don’t think my boy here is the only athletic one among us, ’cause we all have skills. Just some of us have skills that aren’t allowed to be shown in public.”
Zach grimaced and gave a low groan. “Why do I hang out with the two of you?”
“Hate to break it to you, mate, but we’re the only reason you pull.”
Maddie smiled at the thought that Zach would need anyone to help him pick up women. He was what his friends used to call a chick magnet. Women gravitated toward him with no encouragement at all, and he’d always been extremely accommodating.
“Ah yes, I remember now,” Zach said with that sexy smile that made her knees forget how to work. “Without me you two would have no friends.”
Maddie had to force her laughter past a tight throat. There used to be a time when she would have been friendless if it weren’t for him.
Zach lifted a straight masculine brow. “Aren’t you going to introduce your friends, Maddie?”
“Don’t mind us,” Sasha said. “We’re enjoying the show.”
Maddie pointed to each of the females forming a semi-circle beside her in the bubbling water. “This is Sasha, Cristi, and Lisa.”
As an only child, she’d found sisters in the three women. A close working relationship had progressed to deep friendship over the last five years.
Zach nodded a greeting as he pushed his hands into the front pockets of his perfect-fit jeans. “Zach, Keith, and—” He tipped his head in Dane’s direction. “You’ve met Dane.”
As Zach made the introductions, she became conscious that she was half-naked in a tiny white bikini, highlighted by the lights in her hot tub, and he didn’t even seem to notice. It appeared nothing had changed in the last ten years—he was still oblivious to her.
“So, tell me,” Dane said. “How many people can fit into this thing?”
“Seven.” Maddie glanced at Zach, surprised to see him scowling. Cool-life-of-the-party-Zach looked uncomfortable.
“Perfect,” Dane continued with a calculating grin and a waggle of his brows.
“You do realise, Dane...” Keith dipped a couple of fingers in the water to test it. “We aren’t dressed for hot tubbing, right?”
Dane dropped a hand around Keith’s shoulders. “There’s only one thing for it.” The two men exchanged schoolboy glances, then said in unison, “We’ll have to go ... commando.”
Maddie forced herself not to gasp and run for the sanctuary of her house. Please, please don’t let these men strip naked and jump into my hot tub.
Meanwhile, her so-called friends started cheering them on. “Yeah! Off, off, off...” The girls chanted as they smacked their palms against the edge of the hot tub for emphasis.
Maddie grew frantic. All she wanted was to continue their private party, celebrating the acquisition of a new house to restore for her property show. What had she started by inviting these men over to her garden? She really didn’t know them. When she thought about it, she didn’t even know Zach any longer. He was fundamentally a stranger.
She must be an idiot.
She tried to look nonchalant. After all, she was thirty-two and worked in an industry where people did that sort of thing all the time. All she had to do was play it cool. Zach or anyone else here didn’t have to know she was a complete prude.
She could almost hear his deep-timbered voice beside her ear, Maddie, sweetheart. Guys like girls who are a little more ... exciting.
She was fairly sure Dane and Keith were jokers. The type of guys who talk the talk, but hardly ever walk the walk. On that guess, she slipped back into the water, grateful when her bottom connected with the seating ledge and she didn’t slide right off—something she’d done more than once.
She tipped her glass against her mouth then licked the moisture from her lips with the slow glide of the tip of her tongue. She tried to look as man-hungry as she could. Her mother used to say, ‘Honey, the best way to get rid of a man is to chase him’.
She was about to test that theory.
She gave Zach and his mates what she hoped was a feline smile that said, Boys; I’m going to eat you alive and still have room for more.
“Well, boys?” she said in her sexiest bedroom voice. “We’re waiting.”
Right on cue Lisa, Sasha and Cristi joined in, chanting again. “Come on, boys. Take. It. Off. Off, off, off!”
Zach extracted his hands from his pockets and ran them through his hair. He blew out a breath.
Keith and Dane turned wide-eyes toward each other.
“Um...did you hear that, Keith?”
“What was that, Dane?” The two men backed out from under the hot tub’s gazebo. “Yes, I hear it now. Your mobile.”
“I’m expecting a very important call.” Keith patted his pockets, evidently searching for said phone.
Maddie was both relieved and tickled to see how fast the two men back peddled. Tripping over themselves to make a hasty exit.
But the shock on Zach’s face was priceless.
~*~
THIS WAS not the Maddie Zach knew. His Maddie was sweet and pure and made him want to protect her.
The Maddie who luxuriated in a bubbling hot tub only inches from him, had need surging through him. She was tanned, lively, and altogether too desirable. And she made him ache to devour her in all the ways a man could enjoy a woman.
He stuffed his hands into his jean’s front pockets to stop himself from reaching for her, disliking the fact that five minutes in Maddie’s company turned him into a basic, primal male.
In fact, he hated it a lot.
She was not the kind of woman he ever thought he’d look at and think elegant, sexy. Back when he knew her in uni, he’d nicknamed her ragdoll since she never took much effort in her appearance.
So why was he standing like a moron just inside the hot tub’s gazebo with his hands in his pockets as he gawked at her? He cleared his throat of any potential trace of huskiness that would give away his X-rated thoughts. Deliberately sealed his expression and tightened his jaw against the febrile need vibrating through him.
“Great to see you again, Mad.” He turned and followed Keith and Dane as they headed toward his back garden.
“Same here, Zach.” Maddie’s voice was barely above a murmur and carried a pensive note.
His pace may have been unhurried, but every cell in Zach’s body leapt with an intense excitement as her husky voice stroked his senses. He didn’t want to feel like this about his ex-best friend.