Dear Diary, I wish he were mine!
Tonight Maddie wasn't going to think about her deal going under. She needed some fun after her stressful day followed by the task of breaking the news to her mum that they’d lost Andalucía. She shouldn’t be attached to the old house, shouldn’t feel as though she’d lost a part of herself. But the thought of some company demolishing her ancestral home in order to build a high-tech hotel and spa country retreat for the rich and pampered was so sad it made her heart hurt.
“You look fantastic.” Cristi winked at Maddie as they entered the dim-lit jazz club. A low haunting blues tune from a baritone sax filled the club as Maddie stared back at Cristi with trepidation. Why was she so nervous? She took a slow deep breath to ease her tension. She hadn’t realized how unprepared she was to see Zach again so soon. The sheer power of his presence sent nervous prickles through her.
Relax! What are you, sixteen on a first date?
Cristi and Sasha sandwiched her, linking their arms with hers. She glanced down at the red body-con dress, compliments of Sasha.
This morning, after she told her friends about meeting up with Zach and his buddies at the jazz club, Sasha had appeared with a black garment bag and handed it to her as she headed out with Lisa to their meeting with Damien Wallbank’s solicitors. At the time, too caught up with the prospect of finalizing the deal to pay attention, Maddie had taken the bag without checking inside because she trusted her friend. A stylist by profession, Sasha made sure her girlfriends always looked their best. The fact she was the stylist on Return To New gave Sasha a sense of responsibility for making sure Maddie always looked fabulous.
It had taken some getting used to, but Maddie had finally accepted her friend’s input on her outfit choices. Sasha’s advice had never been wrong.
Until now.
Maddie was having second thoughts about letting Sasha pick out her clothes in future. When she’d laid out the dress on her bed this evening just before her shower, it had looked pretty in a simple sort of way and Maddie liked simple. Even after she’d slipped it on, it hadn’t seemed overly revealing. But now, with the force of Zach’s presence, she suddenly felt naked. How was it possible for a dress to seem perfectly acceptable one minute and the next morph into something of an exhibition?
“Is it meant to reveal this much cleavage?”
Maddie withstood Sasha smacking at her hands as she tugged anxiously at the V dipping between her breasts. Her fingers grappled with three rows of Swarovski crystals, which surrounded the neck and bust line.
“Will you stop it?” Sasha grabbed her hands and pulled them away from the garment. “You’ve been tugging at that thing since we got here. I’m shocked you haven’t ripped it yet.”
A tiny spark of forbidden excitement rippled through Maddie as she spotted Zach over Sasha’s shoulder. He sat at a booth, tucked away in the shadows, forty feet from the dais where the five-member jazz band played.
He spoke into his mobile, a glass of what looked to be lager in his other hand. Keith and Dane sat to his left, carrying on a conversation. He must have come straight from the office. Where his buddies wore jeans teamed with casual shirts, Zach wore suit trousers and a dark blue twill shirt, sleeves turned up to his elbows, navy tie loosened—suit jacket flung over the back of the booth.
Maddie pulled her gaze from Zach’s sensual mouth and chiselled jaw line. She tried to suck in her chest, hunching her shoulders to make her bust appear smaller.
“I think I need a wrap, or something.” Heaven forbid Zach should think she was trying to capture his attention with an exhibit of a little too much cleavage.
“You need to leave it alone.”
She endured Sasha’s scowl for a second before seeking Cristi’s help. “Do you have a safety pin? It won’t be so bad if I—”
“You can’t pin Couture!” Sasha sounded so outraged Maddie had to smile.
“Why did I listen to you?” Maddie stage-whispered as Cristi and Sasha tugged her toward the corner booth where Zach, Dane, and Keith waited. “I shouldn’t have worn this dress; it’s something you wear on hot dates.”
“Relax, Maddie, you look fine. It’s not as bad as you think.” Cristi cut into Maddie’s fretful mutterings.
She refused to admit how conscious she became of her body when she was around Zach. She’d hate him to think she was trying to attract him. Especially since he’d made it clear there was nothing but friendship between them.
Besides, she was still smarting from the way he’d held her last night—technically this morning—and said, You’re like Keith and Dane, you’re my bud. She’d wanted to bop him on the nose. Then when he’d suggested dinner, she’d let her heart consider—just for a moment—that he was asking her out on a date. But of course Zach would never ask her on a date. She’d had to make herself say the words—‘it’s not a date’—to ensure her foolish heart heard them.
As they approached the guys, Maddie held her breath. Don’t look up. Don’t look up. She wanted to get to the booth and slide into the seat without them noticing.
~*~
JUST AS the jazz band began to play, I’m In The Mood For Love, Zach glanced up, and had the breath knocked right out of him.
“Wow.” He heard Keith and Dane echo the sentiment.
Maddie and her friends headed toward him, arms linked and looking so carefree, he wanted to be part of their group. Correction, he wanted to be the only one linking arms with Maddie—to be alone with the most beautiful woman in the world.
“We’ll finish this in the morning, Ben.” Zach ended the call from his acquisitions manager and dropped his phone on the tabletop without looking to see where it landed.
He was sure Dane’s low whistle travelled straight to the three women headed their way.
Maddie looked stunning in a red figure-hugging dress that ended just above her knees, her long hair swept up into a classy style with soft tendrils framing her face. Zach’s gaze riveted to the hypnotic sway of her hips as he watched her close the distance between them. A distance he realized last night was more than physical. He was going to have to work hard to obtain her forgiveness.
If the escalation to his heartbeat, and the peculiar dip in his gut were anything to go by, he’d also kidded himself when he’d thought whatever had started this crazy awareness of Maddie as a woman would disappear overnight.
Dane’s gaze seemed to be as riveted to Maddie as his was. “Are those diamonds on her dress?”
Zach suddenly realized every man in the place could see what he could—Maddie’s amazing cleavage. As he noticed the coveting male glances that followed her, jealousy gripped him, and he had to fight a possessive impulse to grab his suit jacket, run over to her, and shield her. He wanted to be the only man to have the right to ogle her.
Instead, he gave Dane a warning glare.
“Not diamonds.” Keith reached for his lager. “Crystals.”
Zach put his glass on the beer mat in front of him. “How on earth would you know that?”
“I know women’s clothes.” Keith took a sip from his glass. “I worked four summers in my mum’s boutique, remember?” He waggled his eyebrows. “It was a great place to meet women.”
Dane fidgeted as the girls got closer. “Boy, she makes me nervous.”
Zach suppressed the Neanderthal impulse to deck his friend, and every other man in the club, for ogling Maddie. When he thought about it, he’d always had this protective instinct toward her. In fact, he’d had to have a word with a few of Maddie’s would-be suitors back in university. Just to make sure they understood if they tried anything other than friendship with her, they’d have to answer to him. He wasn’t about to give anyone the chance to hurt her.
Realization dawned on Zach.
That was it!
He wasn’t attracted to Maddie; he’d just never lost his desire to protect her from opportunistic males.
And from what he could see, the jazz club was full of them.
“Which ‘she’ are you referring to?” He kept his voice low, even, so his impulse to pin his friend against the nearest wall didn’t show.
Dane turned to him. “Now that I think about it, my jitters may be the result of the mean glares you’ve been giving me. But to alleviate your worry, I was talking about Cristi.”
Keith’s quiet laughter drew another of Zach’s frowns, forcing Keith to hold up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Mate, I didn’t say a word. But if I were to guess, I’d say you’ve got a thing for our Miss de la Botella.”
“I told you the other night; Maddie is just a friend I knew back in uni. I’d hate to see her fall to hounds like the two of you.”
What was it her friends had said? Our Maddie is the quintessential rebound girl. Proof she hadn’t been able to find the right man ... yet.
Dane leaned close to him, his low tone almost frantic. “If I say, uh ... umm ... er ... or what? Kick me.”
“Gladly,” Zach said.
“Hounds?” Keith put down his lager, his dark brows climbing as if only just realising Zach had included him along with every other man in the club. “Did you see her last night? She’s a party girl. I don’t think your Maddie needs any protection from you.”
A fierce unfamiliar anger ricocheted through Zach at Keith’s throwaway remark. “If you ever talk about her like that again, I’ll—”
“Hi.” Three female voices interrupted Zach’s admonition, but he was sure Keith got the message.
Zach scrambled to his feet, saw Keith and Dane do the same, as he dodged the same guilty sensation he’d had as a child caught with his mouth full of dessert after claiming he was too full to finish his dinner.
“Hi, Maddie. Girls.” He stepped out of the way so they could slide into the booth. Maddie smelled great. The other girls did, too, but Maddie’s scent coiled around his testosterone and gave it a good shake.
“Hi, Zach.” Her gaze locked with his for a sizzling moment before she switched her attention to their friends. “Keith, Dane, you remember Cristi and Sasha?”
They all exchanged casual greetings as Sasha slid onto the black leather bench seat next to Dane, Keith waited for Cristi to slide in next to Dane from the opposite side before sitting at the end.
Maddie hesitated, her gaze shifting from the only available seat—which would be next to Zach—to the opposite end of the booth.
“After you.” He indicated the space next to Sasha, forcing Maddie to either comply and sit between him and her friend, or try to park herself on the very end of the bench beside Keith. If this Maddie was anything like the Maddie he remembered, she wouldn’t cause a fuss.
She flicked him a half smile. Her gaze swept to his mouth, lingered for a second that shouldn’t have mattered, yet the glance affected him as if she’d leaned in and brushed her full, glossy lips against his. His body reacted with a tingling rush of blood that tightened his groin and shocked him. Her gaze went kind of sparkly before she dropped it, and he would’ve loved to know what went through her mind at that moment.
By the time she slipped past him and joined her friends on the semi-circular seat he was ready to drag her from the club to some place private—his bedroom to be exact—and satisfy his erotic curiosity. He slid in next to her. The booth was a good size, allowing them elbowroom, while the high back offered a touch of privacy. Despite the generous seating, Zach’s body continued to react as though Maddie was sitting on his lap.
Fifteen minutes later when the waitress had delivered their round of drinks Zach was almost sweating, certain Maddie regretted agreeing to meet him at the club. She wouldn’t meet his gaze and any attempt he made at conversation only got one-syllable answers, while she sat stiffly at his side. So much for thinking he could saunter onto the path to renewing his friendship with Maddie by hijacking her evening with her girlfriends.
The thing he couldn’t understand was how he’d moved from seeing Maddie as a friend to having one word vibrate through him every time he looked at her.
SEX!
Sex with Maddie was all he could think about—slow and intense. Wild, hot and incredibly sweaty. Standing, sitting, lying. Half-dressed, completely naked. Every position, every available opportunity, and all over the place. Even now as he looked around the dim lit club, his imagination made good use of the dark corners and hidden booths in the back of the lounge.
There was no denying he wanted Maddie.
Badly.
The question was, what was he going to do about it? Starting a relationship with Maddison would only lead to heartache for her. He was no good at commitment. He didn’t even know how to love—
Whoa!
Who said anything about love? This was lust, pure and simple. Nothing more. And blatant proof that he’d kidded himself when he’d reasoned he wasn’t attracted to her.
Maddie shifted beside him, her arm brushed his as she leant forward, sending a peculiar tingle up his arm and into his chest. Her shadow fell across his lap and even that was enough to squeeze the already tight knot of lust low in his gut.
He ignored the weird visceral reactions to Maddie and steered his thoughts toward safer topics.
“I’m curious to find out how quiet Maddie turned out to be a TV personality.” Proper introductions earlier had unveiled that Maddie presented a DIY show on television and her girlfriends worked with her. Sasha as stylist, Cristi was the interior designer, and Lisa production manager.
Maddie crossed her arms, making her mouth-watering cleavage more pronounced. “What you mean is how did nerdy Maddie get a TV job.”
Dragging his gaze from her chest with difficulty, he met her defensive stare.
“You were never a nerd, just extremely focused. I really admired that about you.”
She bit her lip, shifted her focus to his mobile on the table in front of them.
“I sort of stumbled into it.” Apparently satisfied his curiosity was genuine, she opened up, reached for her glass, sipped, and he couldn’t haul his attention from her mouth. “A few years ago a friend in the business heard of a production company who was looking for new talent to present a DIY programme and suggested I go after the job. I auditioned and didn’t get it. A few months later, the same company contacted me with an offer to present a new programme called Return To New they were about to produce. The rest as they say...”
Something about the name of the show rang a bell, but he shrugged off the prickle of memory and smiled. He always knew Maddie would be hugely successful. There was no way he could tamp down his pride in her so he didn’t try.
“You did good, Maddie. I’m proud of you.”
There was that smile again, the one that sent a fiery rush of excitement through him.
“Can I ask you something?” Her gaze found his, held for a moment before she returned her attention to her wineglass.
“Sure.” He took a swallow of his lager. Whatever she wanted to ask didn’t matter; he was just elated she was talking to him at last.
She took a deep breath as she concentrated on rotating her wineglass by its stem on the tabletop in a precise circle. Zach got the feeling she was taking a moment to work up courage to pose the question she’d wanted to ask. Suddenly he regretted his swift concur.
“Of all the women you hooked up with, what made you commit to Kimber?”
He wished he’d stopped her from voicing her question. Should’ve known Maddie would query his sanity once she got over the initial shock of discovering he’d married Kimberley Harrison.
He met her gaze, glad that the other members of their group were absorbed in their own conversation. “I thought she needed me.”
Maddie winced. “I see.”
But she didn’t. How could she? What she thought was nothing like the way it was. Kimber was a great actress, and he had been a perfect idiot. To admit that to Maddie right now was tantamount to admitting he was weak, a namby-pamby halfwit, as dear Dad had called him on more than one occasion. And Zach would never agree with his father about anything.
“So why did you get divorced?”
He shuttered his gaze, guarded his inner thoughts from Maddie’s penetrating stare. “We turned out to be incompatible.” He gave the vague explanation a flip note he hoped conveyed a clear message to leave the subject.
“‘Incompatible’?” Maddie’s persistence almost made him smile. She may have changed physically, developed a far more desirable body than he remembered, but in all the ways that counted, she was the same. Heaven forbid she should find interest in a subject, because once she did, Mad studied it until she knew everything there was to know. The last thing he wanted was for her to be interested in the subject of his broken marriage.
“Let’s just say when you said she was a crazy trollop, you weren’t wrong.”
Maddie dropped her gaze, but not before Zach read residual hurt in her eyes. He knew her thoughts must’ve travelled in the same direction as his—that had been their last fight. She had tried to warn him about Kimber after first catching her in bed with Sam—a man he would have laid bets was his best bud—then spotting her in the back seat of a car with some guy. He cringed to remember how easy it had been to give Kimber the benefit of the doubt and turn his anger on Maddie instead. He had accused her of trying to make trouble for Kimber, of being jealous of the other woman.
On balance, Kimber had it all—she was fun, beautiful, and popular—while Maddie was quiet, studious, and far too level-headed to indulge the kind of fun Kimber and her followers enjoyed. He had no doubt his remark had wounded her deeply. His gut still twisted with remorse.
Zach had known Maddie would never forgive him, so he hadn’t even attempted to apologise, knowing it was in retaliation for him accusing her of being jealous of Kimber that Maddie had angrily screamed, “You’re a fool, Zach! Obviously blinded to Kimber’s real personality. You deserve everything she does behind your back!” She’d slammed out of the house.
He’d packed, forcing himself to scrawl a note that said nothing of what he really wanted to say, and left before she returned.
In actuality, he’d wanted to beg her forgiveness. Tell her he needed her. Didn’t want to lose her. That if he could do things over he’d choose her, regardless of the fact he didn’t have the first clue how to sustain a real relationship.
But all of that had been irrelevant since Kimber had told him only that morning she was pregnant. He’d tried to find Maddie, had looked all over campus, but she hadn’t been at any of her usual spots and no one had seen her. He still hated himself for walking out of Maddie’s life with only a brief note as goodbye.
He didn’t lift his gaze from his almost empty pint glass, didn’t trust his eyes not to tell her how right she’d been and how much self-condemnation he carried.
“Kimber and I was a miserable mistake. One I have no wish to mull over.” When he finally met her gaze, he thought he saw a little of what he felt mirrored in the moss-coloured depths. “I’d much rather talk about you.”
She pulled back; a heart-rending smile changed her mouth from sexy to sad. “There’s nothing to tell, I’m really rather boring.”
How was it possible to experience the sensation of throwing off a thick duvet in mid-winter just because Maddie’s shadow had left him? “I don’t believe that for a second. You’re what? Thirty-two? Single?”
Okay so he was fishing big time, hated to admit he desperately wanted to know. So far, he hadn’t encountered a Mr. Maddie, which made him optimistic that she was single. Then again, he hadn’t stumbled upon Maddie until last night. She could be married and her husband worked away for all he knew.
“And childless. See? Completely boring.”
So she was single. He wanted to grin like an idiot but settled for a playful smile. “Not if you take the hot tub parties into account.”
Maddie groaned. “After you guys left, I replayed the scene we had just before you showed up. I can’t imagine what you must have thought.”
Zach narrowed the space between them, leaned until his mouth was almost touching her ear. “My predominant thought was that I’d have given anything to possess the power of invisibility.” He pulled back in time to see her lips twitch.
“You would’ve been so disappointed.”
That tiny movement of her mouth had his elevated testosterone ordering him to speed things along and just kiss her. He wanted to glide the pad of his thumb over the dusky pink gloss of her full bottom lip to see if it was as soft as it looked in the dim light.
Fighting the urge took surprising effort. “That depends on how you look at it.”
“I think I can pretty much guess your line of thought, and why you would wish to be invisible.”
“If you’re guessing I was dying to see what made your girlfriends purr like that, you’d be wrong.”
“Really?” Her gaze flicked to his, lingered, the eye contact fired his blood like exceptional malt whisky. “I thought all men had pervy fantasies about half-naked women together.”
Because he could no longer resist the urge to touch her, he traced the curve of her tanned shoulder with his thumb. She was warm, her skin smooth under his light caress. The contact sent an explosion of something primal through Zach. If any other woman had attracted him this intensely, he would have suggested they ditch their friends and find somewhere a little more private. But this wasn’t some random one-night stand—not that he did one-night stands—this was Maddison, and he respected her.
“Not me,” he said. “Want to guess what I was thinking?” Why couldn’t he stop flirting with her?
“I don’t think I wish to know.”
He breathed in her subtle yet potent-to-his-senses-scent. “In my imagination I was the only one in that hot tub with you. I was responsible for making you moan.”
Maddie gasped, shot a scandalized glance over at the rest of their group as if to make sure they hadn’t overheard him. When she saw they were absorbed in their own conversation she turned back to him.
“Bet that changed the second you saw me.” Her voice was low, almost a murmur, yet it tingled along his skin like a tentative caress.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s face it, Zach. I’m not exciting enough for you.”
Was it him, or had she placed emphasis on the word exciting? If anything, discovering Maddie was his sexy neighbour had fuelled some pretty graphic fantasies. She filled his thoughts to the point where he’d found himself distracted, drifting off in the middle of important meetings to a decadent daydream world with Maddie. If the way she’d heightened his senses, had desire throbbing behind his zip was any indication, he found her plenty exciting.
He considered telling her just that when Sasha said, “So how did you two meet?”
Hating the interruption, Zach couldn’t temper the scowl tightening his brows together as Sasha unwrapped a red-polished forefinger from her glass long enough to point it at him. “Maddie has remained tight-lipped about you. We can’t get anything out of her. What gives?”
He glanced at Maddie, scrubbed at the sudden itch of his evening stubble. Why hadn’t she spoken about their friendship to her girlfriends?
She shrugged as if she read the question in his gaze. He turned back to the four sharing their table. “Maddie rescued me from getting the salvation knocked out of me my second week at Sheffield University.”
Maddie rolled her eyes.
The others looked at her slender frame with scepticism.
“It’s true.” Zach reached for his drink, took a sip of the bitter amber liquid.
Maddie gave him a mock-stern look. “I should’ve sat on the park bench and watched him teach you a lesson.” But the twinkle of mirth in her green eyes told him she didn’t mean it. Not that he would have condemned her for such a reaction.
Maddie playful? This was something he could get used to. When she lifted her glass, he clinked his against it.
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
As Zach told the story of how he and Maddie met, laughter filled the space around them. Maddie threw her head back and joined in the merriment. His gaze fell on the graceful arc of her throat, slid to the deep V of her dress, where crystals shimmered like diamonds under the low light.
And right then, he couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to be in a relationship with Maddie.