“Honestly, Evan, you won’t die of a little upchuck. Josh is the one who’s bleeding, not you, and he’s making less noise.”
Barely keeping a lid on her boiling temper, Amy held out a hot washcloth to her ex while cradling a sobbing — smelly — Louisa to her shoulder. “Just wash off his knee and put a Band-Aid on it, or hold Louisa so I can do it.”
She didn’t even bother turning to Zack for help. The great Olympic champion looked green and was pouring a second glass of wine at the far end of the kitchen. He’d been doing amazingly well earlier, until the kids reached the crying, bleeding, throwing-up part that was the downside of parenthood. She could excuse him for not joining in. She assumed he’d had little experience in dealing with crying children, and these weren’t his kids.
But Evan ought to be smacked upside the head with a wet flounder for caring more about his clothes than his weeping children.
At the moment, Evan was too busy stripping off his ruined shirt to find bandages. “This is a Joseph Abboud, dammit! I just bought it. Why the hell are you having a party when she’s sick? She ought to be home in bed.”
“Just put the damned shirt in the wash. At least finish cooking the hamburgers so the boys don’t start gnawing on their knuckles.”
Balancing Louisa in one arm, she rubbed the soapy washcloth on Josh’s knee and ignored Evan as he strode half naked through the kitchen to deposit his precious designer shirt in the laundry room. She’d grown up doing without luxuries just as he had, but she still knew people were more important than material things. Maybe men should nurse children so they could get in touch with their inner nature. Providing men had any inner nature, other than a need to succeed.
Zack remained frozen and pale near the back door, intelligently staying out of her way. She didn’t expect him to step up to the plate when it came to crying children. It wasn’t his responsibility. It was Evan’s.
When she lifted her head to glare angrily at Mr. Stupid for ignoring her second request, she noticed Zack’s handsome mouth tightening. Not only was he looking a little green, but his usually laughing eyes looked unhappy and stared at some point beyond her shoulder, as if not seeing the room at all.
If she needed any reminder of their differences, the kids had offered the perfect opportunity. Any sexual fantasies she may have entertained fled in this crash with reality. This was simply a mundane family scene of the sort she handled every day. It infuriated her that Evan refused to deal with it, but Zack’s reaction was not only useless, but puzzling. First, he had looked terrified, and now he didn’t seem to be present at all.
She was amazed he wasn’t spinning the Bentley’s wheels in escape. “Will someone please rescue the hamburgers?” she shouted.
Abruptly drawing back to the chaos in the kitchen, Zack finally met her gaze and set aside his glass. Looking relieved at finding an excuse to escape, he nodded and slipped out the door.
She sighed in relief at this lifting of one small burden. He might not handle crying children, but he did what he could, more than she could rightfully expect.
Murmuring comforting words to her sobbing children, Amy began the process of restoring their fragile world to normal. The men were adults. They could damned well take care of themselves.
* * *
He was a coward.
Utterly amazed at that discovery, Zack had spent a lonely night roaming mountain roads, unable to tolerate the haunting emptiness of Amy’s once beautiful home. Luigi hadn’t returned from the city. And Amy had refused to bring the children back to the house, insisting home was where their beds were — in that tiny little apartment. Where he couldn’t go.
And he’d been relieved.
How the hell had that happened? He’d always nursed Danielle’s bruises. He was an expert at bruises, after all. Pentathlons did not happen without pain. He’d always been the one to get up with her when she was ill. He hadn’t been squeamish — as Gabrielle had been — until the night they’d died, and then he’d started seeing Danielle in his nightmares, with blood streaming down her head, crying for him, and his heart had cracked irreparably. He hadn’t been there for her that night. He’d arrived too late.
Crying children had sliced his cracked heart into sushi ever since.
After ten years, the nightmares were gone, but at the moment, his head was spinning so hard that past, present, and future were all jumbled inside him. That had not been little Danielle getting sick last night. He’d had nothing to do with Josh’s bleeding knee. None of it was his fault, no more than Gabrielle’s accident had been his fault. That was guilt by association, as the therapist said. Irrelevant.
He’d run from the painful recollection of his nightmares.
It had taken him the entire night to work that through his head, and he’d only examined his actions because it had felt wrong to leave Amy. He’d always been able to blithely extricate himself from personal responsibility, but this time, he’d felt like a bloody heel.
Amy had been in grave distress last night, and like her poor excuse for an ex-husband, Zack had wimped out. He was pretty certain that was the expression the teenagers used. He’d flipped hamburgers, talked music with Flint’s sons, and left Amy to deal with bloody knees and sobbing angels.
He had always prided himself on his courage, but a child’s tears left him helpless. At least he’d stayed until Flint and Joella had returned. Evan had stormed out after a loud and furious argument they could hear from the backyard.
Having parked the Bentley in the upper lot, empty stomach churning, Zack walked down an early-Sunday-morning Main Street with his arms loaded with grocery bags. The sun was just a pale orange promise on the horizon, but he knew the path through the shadows. Even the café lights weren’t on yet.
He’d dug out his oldest shirt, the one with the frayed collar and cuffs he couldn’t bear to throw out because he’d worn it the day he’d won the bid for his first job. It was his lucky shirt. He’d meant to wear it the day he’d won the mill bid, but he’d had Amy on his mind and had forgotten. And he’d still won. So maybe the shirt didn’t have much to do with his success.
He had Amy on his mind a lot these days. He hoped it was just because he was in desperate need of sex, because their lifestyles would never suit them for anything else. In any other circumstances, he would have backed off to regroup with a partying woman, away from the marrying kind.
But today, he felt the need to prove that he wasn’t a coward. It mattered that Amy didn’t think of him as one.
He almost tripped over his feet. Amy mattered. How in hell had that happened?
If he had any sense at all, he’d run the other way before he’d committed himself to more than the mill. What else was he liable to commit to while under the influence of Amy?
More than he could handle.
Never. He never backed down.
He’d been small as a boy and had learned martial arts to prove to the bullies in boarding school that size didn’t matter against courage. As a pampered only child, he hadn’t been allowed by his parents to compete in the rougher contact sports like soccer. In retaliation, he had excelled at fencing, artillery, and equestrian athletics.
He had a history of standing up to naysayers, of tackling impossible projects and overcoming overwhelming odds.
He’d spent these last ten years rebuilding his shattered life to an image of his own choosing. He’d even dared to let Amy’s charming children get close to him, without sliding into a blue funk. He hadn’t fallen into an abyss of despair or terror after the Porsche accident.
But he’d run away because of a bloody knee and a little vomit? Impossible. If his nightmares had returned, they were now one more fear he must conquer.
He climbed the loft stairs and heard the cries of “Mommy!” that indicated the household was awake. Light streamed from the apartment’s second-story window overlooking the mountain. He assumed Amy had been up for a while, maybe longer, if he correctly remembered nights with a sick child.
He’d had grand plans for this day, but he understood that Amy would never leave an unwell Louisa to come out and play with him. He had an immense amount of work he could be doing instead of coming here. He usually used this time of day to review e-mails and return phone calls to his European projects.
But this was Sunday. He was entitled to a day off.
Balancing the plastic bags on both arms and in his hands, he rapped on the door. A tousle-haired Josh, still in his pajamas, opened it.
“Good morning, Josh. How’s that knee today?” Not waiting for an invitation, Zack shouldered the door wider and strode past the wide-eyed little boy. “Good morning, Amy,” he called over the sound of rushing water from the apartment’s small bathroom.
He smiled broadly at a chirp of surprise from the bathroom. The water suddenly shut off while he placed his bags on the galley kitchen counter.
He lifted Josh to the counter so the boy could show him his colorful bandage. Zack’s heart stuttered painfully at the towhead’s eagerness to display his hurt and declare himself too big to cry.
Zack nodded gravely as he emptied a bag. “How would you like to try my favorite breakfast, Sir Josh of the Brave Knee?”
“I like Cocoa Puffs,” Josh declared.
“You can have Cocoa Puffs anytime,” Zack scoffed. “Only today can you have Zack’s Amazing Raspberry Scrumptious Cheese Crepes.”
Sensing Amy’s presence, Zack took a deep breath to steady his nerves before he turned around.
“Crepes?” she asked. Layered curls falling over her forehead, she expressed suspicion and surprise in a deliciously sleepy combination.
Her unfettered curves looked wondrously sexy even in striped seersucker boxer pajamas, and he had to rein in his sudden rush of lust with concern.
“Coffee first,” Zack affirmed, examining the dark circles beneath her eyes. “Do you prefer Hawaiian or Peruvian?” He produced both kinds to show her.
Holding a pale cherub against her shoulder, she rubbed her eyes and stared as if he were a mirage. “I prefer tea, I think. What are you doing here?” A puzzled frown marred her brow.
“Did we not have a date for today?” Wiggling his eyebrows mockingly, he returned to rummaging in the sacks, producing several cellophane-wrapped boxes. “I could only find a supermarket open last night. Their tea choices leave much to be desired. Do any of these appeal?”
She stared back and forth from the stack of tea boxes to him until he feared she was about to heave him out upon his presumptuous ass. He breathed a sigh of relief when she finally replied.
“Are you a hallucination? Or have you been up drinking all night and your fuddled mind thought this would be fun?”
“You wound me, Amy. You forgot we had a date.” He found her teakettle and filled it at the faucet, and then began looking for a mixing bowl and spoon. “Sir Josh, if you will look in that bag beside you, you will find plates with which to set the table. Can you do that?”
Josh tilted the Wal-Mart bag and removed the child-sized plastic plates. “Oh, boy, X-Men!” Generously, he held up a second plate for his sister to inspect. “Look, Lou, Dora!”
Louisa brightened and held out a chubby hand for the pink plate. “Dora!” she confirmed.
“They have to be washed first,” Amy warned, setting her daughter down, then lifting Josh from the counter.
Zack tried very hard not to watch as the child’s weight dragged the pajama top down her breasts, but he was a man, and she was very much a woman, and her lovely curves made him sigh in gratitude.
“I like your hair that way,” he murmured once the children grabbed their prizes and ran off — apparently to wash them in the tub. “It is all sexy and curly, as if you just rose from your pillow.”
She ran her fingers through the rumpled layers, and from her expression, he assumed she was deciding whether to bark, bite, or bait him. Holding the discovered bowl and spoon, he leaned over to kiss her nose before she could do any of them.
“I have not done this in a long time,” he whispered. “Let me see if I remember how.”
She blinked in surprise and warily stepped out of reach. “Why are you doing this now? And what exactly is it that you are doing?”
“Always the practical American.” He waved his spoon in despair, then added flour to his bowl. “A European woman, now, would smile mysteriously, kiss my cheek, and wiggle sexily toward the bedroom, where she would change into something both frothy and erotic before returning with an ice cold bottle of champagne for us to share.”
A broad smile reluctantly transformed her face. “European women keep chilled champagne in their bedrooms?”
When he reached into the apparently bottomless grocery bag to produce the champagne, she burst into laughter. “You are insane! I am employed by a madman. Perfect, absolutely perfect. I think I’ll go find something ‘frothy’ to put on. That way, when Louisa throws up again, I’ll be dressed for it.”
Trailing gales of laughter — or hysteria, depending on how sleep-deprived she was — Amy ran up the stairs to her loft bedroom.
Zack straightened his shoulders and attacked the crepe batter. He thought that had gone rather well. She hadn’t thrown him out, and he hadn’t run in panic at the heart-wrenching sight of mother and children in Sunday morning dishabille.
* * *
“I promised to come get them,” Jo reminded Amy over the phone line. “If Louisa isn’t running a fever, she should be fine. You’re entitled to some time off, and it sounds like Zack is working hard for his reward.”
Amy could hear her sister’s grin. Instead of laughing, though, Amy was freaking out.
She wasn’t used to having a man in her kitchen — much less one who could produce devastatingly delicious raspberry cheese crepes, then clean up after himself.
She wasn’t used to a man who had a gleam in his eye when he looked at her, to match the glitter in his earring when he tilted his head to listen to a child’s prattle. Zack was wearing an old frayed dress shirt and jeans, and he still looked like a modern pirate. His looks stole her breath, but his gentleness with her children was in danger of stealing her heart, and she simply couldn’t afford the loss.
She’d had a brief moment of hope when Louisa had turned pale over breakfast and declared she was about to throw up again. Zack had turned equally pale and froze in the middle of a silly song involving geese and unfriendly ducklings. She’d thought he’d excuse himself and flee when she hastily hauled Louisa to the commode.
Instead, he’d arrived minutes later carrying a warm washcloth and had taken Louisa into his strong arms, relieving Amy’s aching ones.
She’d wanted to cry with the realization that real men were amazingly masculine when they did gentle things with their big competent hands. Real men didn’t have to bully and intimidate to be macho. That’s when panic had set in.
“Another time, Jo,” she told her sister. “I don’t want you exposing the boys if she has a bug, and you have to guard your voice if you’re going to Nashville next weekend.”
After finally talking Jo out of babysitting, Amy hung up the phone to find Zack holding Louisa and watching Amy curiously.
“Did you wish to take them to church this morning?” he asked without inflection. “She really didn’t throw up. She’s just frightened she will.”
Amy didn’t hear condemnation in his voice for her having turned down this opportunity she’d given him every right to expect, and after he’d been so wonderful and understanding, too.
She’d made no promises. She didn’t have to apologize or explain. She knew that if she went to bed with this man, he’d have her heart in his hands. She simply wasn’t modern enough to have sex without a relationship, so she might as well establish the parameters now. She had to think of her children first.
Elise had reminded her that no man was ever this wonderful once he had what he wanted. Yet the longer she knew Zack, the more she wanted to be with him — at the mill, at home…in bed. She was on rocky ground here.
For the sake of the children, she had to resist Zack’s appeal. It wasn’t as if he’d made any pretense that he intended to hang around for the long term, and not only did the kids not deserve that kind of heartbreak again, they didn’t need to see their mother fall apart at the seams just when she was getting her act together.
She shook her head regretfully. “No, I think Louisa needs to stay home and be quiet for a while,” she murmured. He really was the kind of man she’d love to love, had there been any chance that he wanted what she did. But he didn’t. “You can go, if you like. I really appreciate breakfast. I was exhausted.”
He nodded as if he understood. “It is harder to see them ill than it is to go without sleep. It is not something I am eager to repeat soon. You are a very brave, strong woman.”
Repeat? Amy brushed her hair out of her eyes and shook her head at this over-the-top flattery. At least he was honest about not wanting to be around sick children, although she had to wonder where he’d gained his experience. He’d said he wasn’t married, and he’d mentioned no children — but something in his regretful look said otherwise.
That was what dating was about — getting to know each other. Except she knew in her bones that getting to know this man would be a dangerous step in the wrong direction.
“She ate too many green apples,” she said, giving him time to offer answers before she had to ask the questions popping to mind. “It was hardly a life threatening situation. Parents get used to it.”
“Not all parents,” he murmured, returning Louisa to her. “And you can never know for certain that it is just green apples. We would have lost Danielle to meningitis if the doctor had not finally realized it was more than a cold bug. Any illness can be life threatening at that age.”
Danielle? The name opened a door to an intimacy that she’d tried to avoid, shattering her shield of denial. Zack fit the image of carefree bachelor so easily. Only — except for his reaction last night — he had acted like a parent from the moment he’d seen Louisa. Amy’s soft heart responded instantly, wondering if he’d suffered a disastrous divorce, if he missed his daughter, or worse yet….
She hugged a sleepy Louisa tighter and studied the pain in his dark eyes. She knew at once that he’d lost a child. Had that been why he’d withdrawn last night? It broke her heart just imagining a father’s anguish at losing a child. Had his wife taken their daughter away?
“But she survived the illness, didn’t she?” she asked, dropping all her sorry defenses in a need to reach out to him.
Zack’s smile disappeared and his eyes wrinkled in weariness. “Yes, with proper treatment, I got to keep her for another year.”
She knew she shouldn’t ask. She knew exchanging private thoughts would break down any barrier remaining. Zack obviously wasn’t one to talk of losses, but that kind of pain shouldn’t be pent up and buried beneath a layer so fragile as smiles and charm. Like a festering boil, it needed to be lanced and drained if he was to heal. It wasn’t her duty to heal him, but she couldn’t bear to watch him suffer. “What happened?” she whispered.
He shrugged carelessly. “I married too young. Gabrielle was even less mature, and I indulged her too much. And then, when it was not expedient to indulge her, I expected her to grow up. That was very stupid and arrogant of me.” His voice broke, and a corner of his mouth slanted upward in a self-deprecating smile.
That explained nothing. She wanted to smack him for his evasiveness, but men despised letting people see their pain.
Just knowing he’d been married before, knowing his wife’s name, was difficult. She should back off now, let him throw up the charming barrier he used to prevent anyone from getting close. If she started removing the barrier, brick by brick.… She hesitated, knowing she teetered on a dangerous brink.
Elise would tell her to back off, to not get mixed up in his problems, but she wasn’t Elise. She needed to see the man behind the charm. She abruptly realized this was why she couldn’t relate intimately with this fascinating man — he was holding her to the same distance as she held him.
If she pushed for more now, it would be admitting that she wanted the distance eliminated.
“How old were you?” she asked, throwing him an easy question that didn’t commit either of them. Yet.
She thought he wouldn’t reply. He strolled into her crowded living room and gazed out the enormous windows to the street below.
But instead of retreating behind his usual cheerfulness, he stuffed his hands into his back pockets and, not looking at her, began to speak. “I was old enough, but I should have given Gabrielle more time to experience life. One does not consider these things when a woman carries your child. We married in college and were deliriously happy. Danielle was the love of our lives.”
She could hear the adoration behind the pain. Tears lined her eyes. She had known this man hid layers of depth she’d barely glimpsed. She could hear the passion and devotion crying out from the bottom of a deep well where he’d buried them. He must have suffered horribly to bury a character as strong as his. And she could no longer resist removing the next brick in the wall.
“Children change us,” she whispered in agreement.
He nodded and finally turned to look at her. Grief carved lines beside his eyes, but his chiseled lips tilted in self-mockery as he studied Louisa’s golden curls on her shoulder.
“Our daughter did not change me enough. I have always been too ambitious, too centered on my own concerns. It was our anniversary. We were to have a lovely vacation in the Italian Alps. We were in Florence, an amazing city. You must see it sometime.”
Amy would give half her teeth to see Italy. She merely nodded agreement.
“I was just starting my software business. I had an important prospect who was running late. He asked me to wait until the next day to meet with him. Gabrielle had spent the day packing and was all excited. She loved the Alps. Danielle looked adorable in her new ski suit.”
His anguish revealed the ghost of a man whose life had been destroyed. Amy suspected he never let anyone see this man who knew what it was to lose everything. She wanted to take him in her arms and tell him…. What? There was nothing she could say that he hadn’t already heard. Her heart ached for him.
He managed a short careless shrug that no longer rang true. She understood better than she had that he wasn’t a careless man, nor a thoughtless one.
“We argued. Gabrielle wished us to leave right then. We had a babysitter waiting and a romantic dinner planned. I told her business was more important. That was no doubt the stupidest thing I have ever said.”
Amy leaned her head against Louisa’s. “No, it isn’t,” she murmured. Louisa had fallen back to sleep. “You were planning for their futures, and that was very important to you.”
That was the excuse she had given for Evan’s behavior for years. In Zack’s case, it might actually be true. Still, it was another bad sign.
Zack smiled briefly as he approached to cup Louisa’s head, perhaps looking for an anchor against what he had to say next. “You’re too kind. Gabrielle’s feelings were hurt, and she could be quite stubborn. It was convenient for me to overlook that. Any other time, I would have found some pleasant entertainment to distract her from the disappointment and promised her the moon if she waited. But I was too busy.” He said the last in a tone of self-disgust.
Amy touched his bare arm, aware of the crackles of electricity between them. His words had to be said before they could proceed further. She waited silently, expectantly.
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. Pain tightened the muscles of his jaw. “When I returned to work, she took our car and our daughter and headed for the Alps on her own. The weather turned poor. The car was not designed for icy conditions. Perhaps the angels deserted them, I do not know. A moment was all it took. I should have been with them.”
Tears streamed down Amy’s cheeks. She heard his resignation, knew he thought the angels had deserted him as well. And he’d spent these last years going to hell to prove it. She shook her head, but words could not come. There were no words for such devastation. It was obvious he’d loved them both deeply. The way he stared down at Louisa proved he still had the capacity to care, though he worked hard to hide the fact. His deliberate nonchalance wouldn’t wash with her ever again.
His revelation had destroyed her shield of wariness as well as his own. “I’m sorry,” was all she knew to say. Arms full of sleeping child, she rubbed her cheek against his bare arm in a gesture meant to comfort.
Zack stiffened at the contact, but she didn’t step back or offer the pity he feared. “The hurt never really goes away, does it?” she asked. “Or the guilt.”
His eyes darkened with anguish, and he cupped Louisa’s curls. “No, it never does. I have tried burying it, but you.…” He traced his finger down Amy’s cheek. “I would not hide from you. I suppose, sometimes…a burden shared becomes lighter.”
Amy couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything except meet his gaze above Louisa’s head. Panicking, she thought she would have been better off not knowing that she might be the first person he’d shared his sorrow with in a long time. The warmth building between them terrified her. This wasn’t just sex.
Still, she didn’t regret knowing that he was a man who felt deeply. No one could doubt the humanity of a man who had done what was right and opened the mill to operations, risking his business in the process. She’d been drawn to him from their first conversation, with its lack of awkward or strained silences. The connection of sharing felt too right.
Everything about him seemed right. It was their situation that was impossible.
Saving her from sailing around the bend and out of sight, Zack smiled impishly again, and kissed Amy’s nose. “I never had that tour of your lovely new home. Shall we see how it looks in morning light?”