Dear Diary, I want to throw something at him!
Maddie sank onto the recliner in her darkened lounge, drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.
Like a blow to the stomach, Zach’s revelation spun her insides. She could hardly breathe around the constriction in her throat.
As tears tracked her cheeks, Maddie’s breath echoed around her in shallow, raspy hiccups. How could Zach betray their friendship, and marry Kimber, when Maddie had warned him about her infidelity? Deep down part of her knew she was overreacting, but it soothed her ego to hold onto the thought that he had. Technically, he hadn’t betrayed her, hadn’t believed Kimber cheated on him, so why would he put their friendship above a woman he’d clearly fallen in love with?
When did he marry her? Did they have kids?
Dear Lord, help me.
All these years she’d harboured a secret belief that she and Zach were destined to be together. She’d even daydreamed that one day he’d come looking for her when he was ready to settle down. Confess he’d always loved her—and only her. He’d ask her to marry him and they’d live the rest of their days in blissful happiness.
And so she’d waited, only to discover that in reality, Zach had more or less forgotten about her for the last ten years. Had only rediscovered her by chance.
Now she found she’d stupidly saved herself for the one man she loved—the man she wanted to father her children—only to discover he’d gone ahead and married someone else.
How pathetic was that?
Maddie yanked a couple of tissues from the box on the lamp table next to her and gave an inelegant blow. Clearly, it was time she accepted she and Zach were never meant to be more than acquaintances.
She moved through the darkened rooms until she got to the kitchen. She didn’t bother turning on lights. Misery deserved a place of darkness, hidden from the radiance of enlightenment.
Grabbing a glass from a cupboard, she filled it from the tap. Her best decision would be to wipe every romantic thought of Zach from her mind and concentrate on her show.
Who needed him? When she had a successful TV programme to keep her happy? She had the new property—with an old barn they were going to convert into a trendy high tech home—to restore, and once she won the bid for Andalucía, she’d be too busy to even remember he existed.
So why did fresh tears spill from her eyes? Why did her heart splinter a little more as she retraced her steps to her sitting room, with only a half empty glass of water to keep her company?
~*~
THINKING OF his ex-wife brought a grimace to Zach’s face. Marriage had been his biggest mistake. One he was never going to repeat.
He folded his arms. He could retreat into silence or he could follow Maddie and try to explain. Make her understand he’d married Kimber out of a sense of duty. Only to regret it almost as soon as he’d said, I do.
This was a strange experience for Zach. In all his thirty-three years he’d never felt the need to explain himself. So why was he still standing in Maddie’s back garden contemplating going after her, regardless of the hour?
Because they were friends—or at least they had been once—and it was a friendship he needed to repair. It had nothing to do with the surge of energy that had zapped him when he’d touched her earlier, or the way her slow, sexy smile yanked at his heart.
He pressed the button on her hot tub to turn off the jets, but instead of heading toward the gate at the bottom of Maddie’s garden, he found himself striding barefoot over the dewy grass to her patio. The door whispered open with surprising ease.
Obviously, Maddie had been too upset to bother to lock it. Zach tightened his lips against the desire to bellow for her and give her a good ticking off for such utter carelessness. The danger she’d left herself open to froze his mind.
While his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Maddie’s sniffles echoed in the still room, followed by a quiet nose-blow and a shuddering hiccup.
Guilt tangled his insides again. He’d made Maddie cry. The realisation brought with it a feeling of helplessness, of deep remorse. Why did he feel as if he’d somehow cheated on her? She’d been his best bud. He’d never allowed himself to feel anything for her beyond that—and never could.
Maddie by no means had feelings for him outside of friendship. For starters, she thought he was immature and in desperate need of mothering—something she did naturally.
Sure, she’d kissed him once, but she’d been so drunk she could hardly stand up. Thank God she’d come straight home to their house that night, and hadn’t hooked up with some opportunistic male. If he’d responded to that searing kiss, he would’ve been the same—an opportunist, taking advantage of her vulnerability—and he knew she’d hate him in the morning. So as difficult as it had been to make himself do it, he’d pried her arms from around his neck and put her to bed, making sure she understood he valued her friendship way too much to risk fouling it up.
Not that she had appreciated his effort—
“Get out of my house!” The command snapped him out of his thoughts a second before an object flew past his head and smashed against the wall behind him.
Natural instinct made him duck, even though it was a second too late. Thank the Lord for Maddie’s terrible aim. “Hey. Are you trying to kill me?”
Judging from the angle the object had collided with the wall he surmised Maddie was somewhere to his left. Within seconds, his gaze found her curled up on a recliner, a pile of used tissues on the side table next to her.
“There’s a thought.” Despite the angry words, her voice was soft and filled with hurt.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like that, Mad. You were right, and I should never have married Kimberley.” Zach’s stomach clenched with guilt, and he took a step toward her. As he moved, something sharp skewered his right heel. He muttered a curse and grabbed a hold of his foot, trying to peer through the gloom at it.
“What did you throw at me?”
“My water glass. Be thankful I missed.”
It must’ve been empty because the floor was dry. Zach didn’t relish a slip ‘n slide through broken glass. He leant back against the wall, daren’t move his other foot.
“I’m not entirely sure you did. Turn on the light, I’m bare-footed.”
“Oh.” Maddie leapt from her chair to flick on the main overhead light. A soft glow illuminated the room. Zach had a quick impression of clean curves and modern stylish furniture—sophisticated class. “Good grief, Zach. What have you done?”
Surprised by her response, and more than a little annoyed, his narrowed gaze clashed with Maddie’s as she rushed to him. “What have I done? You threw your glass at me, Maddison.”
She gingerly manoeuvred around the broken shards of glass and hunkered down in front of him. Zach was relieved to see she wore slippers, but was too aggravated to appreciate the soft feminine curves he noticed as her white towelling robe fell open.
“Technically,” she said, her voice husky from tears as she inspected his foot, “I threw it at the wall. You just happened to be nearby.”
Zach felt like an idiot, standing with his foot in her hands, while Maddie glided a finger over his heel. He was pretty sure he shouldn’t be noticing any of the things he suddenly found distracting about her. Like the light spicy fragrance of her perfume mixed with the chlorine from her hot tub. Combined, they produced a strange intoxication to his senses. Or the sensation of her fingers against his foot. And he definitely shouldn’t be ogling her cleavage either.
Maddie’s finger did a little circular motion in the middle of Zach’s heel that made his eyes roll back in his head as she tried to pinpoint where the glass had pierced his flesh. He bit back a groan. Not from pain, but because he’d just discovered his heel was an erogenous zone.
She pinched her thumb and forefinger nails together and plucked at his heel.
“There.” She held up a tiny glass splinter for him to see. But all he saw were her soft lips parted and inviting, her narrow turned-up nose pink from crying, and her incredible olive-green eyes surrounded by the most amazing long dark lashes blinking up at him with a hint of wariness. “I’m surprised you even felt it.”
“Thanks.” He put his foot on the bamboo floor, and tried to shake himself out of the peculiar fog he’d drifted into when he stepped inside Maddie’s house.
“Stay there.” She hurried off, leaving Zach to wonder why he’d never noticed how stunning she was before now.
The sight of her flat, toned stomach and lush breasts in her black bikini had him contemplating stepping on another piece of glass. Just so she’d hunker down in front of him again and run her hands over him, starting at his feet, and travelling all the way up to—
“Didn’t I tell you not to move?” Maddie’s brisk tone snapped him out of his fantasy.
He watched her sweep the debris into a yellow dustpan as she muttered something about hard-headed men and babies.
What was the matter with him? This was good ol’ Maddie. Someone he shared a beer and a laugh with, not visualised naked!
“...Zach.”
He actually started. Panic seized him, this was not happening. “What?”
“I said you’re free to go.”
“Look, Mad.” He reached for her, then thought better of it and let his hands drop back to his sides. “I know I hurt you. I swear I never meant to. I don’t want this to stand in the way of our friendship.”
Maddie put the dustpan and hand broom on a modern coffee table then turned back to him. She took a deep breath and scrubbed her slender hands over her face before dragging them through her tawny hair, undoing the loose knot so the bouncy curls spilled over her shoulders. An image of her hair trailing over his naked skin flew to mind.
“Zach, I really don’t think we have a friendship any longer. Maybe it’s time I accepted that.” She stuffed her hands into her robe’s pockets, looked away then back at him, her eyes bleak. “Ten years without contact isn’t a friendship. What we have is a memory of a great friendship. It’s stupid to expect to pick up where we left off when we don’t even know each other anymore.”
He was responsible for the sadness in her voice and it lacerated him, bringing him face to face with a nightmare—losing Maddie as a friend. Didn’t she realise the two of them had a bond that was unbreakable despite the decade between them? His friends were important to him. Anyone who knew Zach knew that. Kimber did, and had used it as a manipulation tool.
If he gave up his close friends, she’d said, it would prove he loved her. He’d stupidly complied because even though he’d come to realise marrying Kimber had been a mistake, he’d believed he had to do whatever it took to make it work.
Zach had never felt such devastating panic. Not even when he’d finally faced the truth about Kimber and that his marriage was over. He couldn’t let a decade of bad decisions get in the way of a friendship he valued—not now that he’d found Maddie again. The thought of losing her for a second time scared the iron right out of his blood. There was only one thing he could think to do. He dragged her into his arms, because there was no way Zach was going to allow Maddie to slip out of his life ever again.
She sucked in a stuttering breath that vibrated against him and sent a fluttery sensation to his gut. He knew he shouldn’t notice how delicious she felt pressed to him. Therefore, he ignored the stir to his senses and the soft female curves against his naked chest.
Something harried and wild was going on inside of him. He recognised it as panic.
Why was he suddenly reacting to Maddie this way?
He forced a laugh past the trepidation blocking his throat. “You don’t mean that, Mad. I agree it’s been a while and we have a lot of catching up to do.” He gave her a playful shake. “Come on, Maddie, we could never not be friends.” She blew the hair out of her eyes. “You’re like Keith and Dane—you’re my bud.” Surely, she knew how much she meant to him?
The look Maddie gave him as she pushed out of his grasp made Zach think she’d like to hit him.
“Your bud.” She nodded slowly, gave him a strained smile. Then what appeared to be a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Got it.”
She turned and headed toward the patio door, slid it open, and put a hand on her slender hip. “Good night, Zach. I don’t know about you, but I have to get up for work in...” she flicked a glance at a shell-shaped wall clock. “Six hours.”
He had to be up in four.
“Go home to your wife, Zach.”
“Kimber and I are divorced.”
Her gaze flicked to his face, an emotion he couldn’t identify filled her eyes, but she was obviously still annoyed, so Zach decided to give in for the moment. She looked worn-out, and he had to admit he was tired, too. They could catch up later.
Yeah, that was a great idea. Hang out in his back garden, sip a few beers, get back to old times.
He stopped in the doorway, overwhelmed with a strange impulse to kiss Maddie goodnight. He must be more tired than he thought, or he was having some kind of premature midlife crisis, because Maddie was too important to him to risk crossing that line.
Besides, she’d slap his face, and he could forget any revival of their friendship. No, what he had to do was show Maddie what a good friend he was. Then she’d never want to let him go. All he had to do was get these crazy images of Maddison de la Botella as a desirable woman out of his mind—or at least ignore them—then life would be perfect again.
Yeah, back to normal.
“What time do you leave work?” he asked.
She gave him a suspicious look. “Why?”
“I thought we could hang out. You know, catch up.” So he didn’t give in to the urge to play with the curl that lay against Maddie’s cheek, he folded his arms across his bare chest and leant back against the doorframe.
“I have plans.”
“Hot date?” Zach, man, you’re cracking up. You can’t be jealous. She’s your friend—nothing more.
“Sasha, Cristi, and I thought we’d take in the new jazz club in Sutton.”
He hated to admit it, but he was relieved Maddie’s plans didn’t include a lover.
“Just the three of you?” He had to make sure.
Her gaze slid to her feet. “Yes. Lisa’s married. She’ll only agree to come out with us once a week.”
She’d obviously misunderstood his question, which made him glad. The last thing Zach wanted was for Maddie to become aware of this loony attraction to her before he got it under control.
He was tainted. Through with forever kind of relationships. Maddie needed a man worthy of her, one who could give her the happy-ever-after she deserved. Zach freely admitted he was neither worthy, nor capable of creating happy-ever-afters. The best he could muster was to shove aside his unruly testosterone, and be the best friend Maddie ever had.
“Why don’t I invite Keith and Dane? We can make it a thing.”
Maddie gave him the oddest look then rubbed her hands over her face again. “Sure, whatever. We’re meeting at the club around nine.”
“Dinner?” Okay, maybe he didn’t get to hang out with Maddie—just the two of them—but this was the next best thing.
“What?” She seemed distracted, probably half-asleep on her feet, poor girl.
“I was asking whether you wanted to have dinner with me before the club.”
“Let’s just meet at the club. It’s not a date, Zach.” She puffed out a breath. “Look, I really have to...” She jerked her thumb behind her.
“Gotcha.” She was right. So why did he feel as if he’d worked up the courage to ask out the most popular girl, only to be shamed in front of his peers? “Good night, Maddie.”
“Good morning, Zach.” Her voice sounded soft and husky.
A lightning bolt image of Maddie waking next to him, warm from sleep and snuggling against him as dawn broke over the horizon, hit Zach. An image that had him gulping and making a hasty exit. He needed to get a grip.
“Sorry about your foot,” Maddie called after him.
He raised his hand without looking back, relieved to hear her slide the door shut and lock it. Right now, it wasn’t his foot that ached. He needed to put some space between them, that’s all. Then everything would be back in place. His world as he knew it, prior to this evening, restored.
Whatever had happened to him tonight would be sorted by the time he met up with Maddie at the jazz club later.
Guaranteed.