Zach knew the exact moment Sophie drifted off to sleep by the way her body relaxed and grew heavy against him. He pressed his lips to the top of her head, silently wishing her sweet dreams.
Although he was physically shattered, his mind was racing. What had he done? His life was complicated enough already without dragging Sophie into the mix. He should have exhibited some of the restraint Alex had always teased him about—sealed himself behind his so-called ice-man exterior and kept Sophie at bay.
Until last weekend’s dinner, he’d had no real clue about how she felt about him. She’d always been warm and friendly, efficient and accommodating. But their kiss that night and her behavior since had steadily chipped through his resolve.
He inhaled the scent of her hair mixed with the fragrance she’d worn recently. Together, they were a heady blend and he could feel his body stir in response. Feel the tendrils of heat curl through him, inch by inch.
No one had ever made him feel like this. He’d never wanted anyone with quite this unadulterated desperation. He wanted more, he wanted to explore whether they could actually enjoy a relationship together. Learn all there was to know about one another. They already had the physical harmony down pat. There had been none of the awkwardness of discovering what worked or didn’t. Every stroke had been sure, every touch adept. And the way he felt when he entered her body—it was the most sublime experience he’d ever enjoyed. If they could achieve the same synchronicity and understanding mentally, theirs would be a relationship without comparison.
A stab of guilt hit him fair and square in the chest. With Anna in such a vulnerable position, could he allow himself the indulgence of thinking like this, of feeling this way about another woman? What would it do to her? He didn’t want to begin to think of how she might react. She depended on him emotionally, so much. It was a burden he’d taken without question. He owed it to her. After all, he should never have bowed to her father’s pressure to marry her. He’d been ambitious and stupid, losing sight of his long-term goals and believing that he could shortcut the steps he himself had laid out for his future. Anna had been innocent in all of that.
He was doing his best for her now. Short of actually staying with her and physically taking care of her, which she’d made perfectly clear to him on several occasions that she did not want, he’d done the next best thing in sending her home to her mom and dad.
How would she cope, he wondered, if she heard he was in a new relationship? Zach tightened his hold on Sophie’s sleeping form and relished the warmth and feel of her against his naked body. He had barely dated since he and Anna had divorced. He certainly hadn’t entered into any intimacy with anyone else—until now. Since she’d fielded the occasional call at the office, Sophie had some idea of Anna’s dependency on him. How would she feel, he wondered, about his ex-wife’s strong presence in his life? While he was concerned that finding out he had a new woman in his life could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back in Anna’s case, would Anna be that for Sophie in return?
He clenched his eyes shut. Life could be so complicated. He’d thought he’d had it all under control when he was younger. What a stupid, arrogant fool he’d been to think he could merely follow a plan. People couldn’t be categorized so easily, lives couldn’t be forced to conform to his expectations. If he’d learned anything from his marriage to Anna, it had been how to adapt to change.
So what about the current change in his life now? Could he embark on what was a potentially precarious office romance, at a time when the office was already in a state of flux? Had the instability of having his business partner missing driven the two of them together and artificially accelerated their feelings for one another? Zach turned the thoughts over and over in his head.
He buried his face in the curve of Sophie’s neck, inhaled the scent of her skin and her hair and felt the tension that had been coiling tight inside of him begin to unwind. Even while she was asleep, she did that for him. Soothed him. Eased his worries. And didn’t he deserve that? Didn’t he deserve some happiness? Some respite from his responsibilities? Sophie brought him that, and more. A decision settled over him before he even realized it. He was going to take what was his to take and let their affair lead where it may. He owed it to himself and he owed it to Sophie.
His body began to relax and he finally allowed sleep to claim him, secure in the knowledge that he could cope with this—one step at a time.
* * *
They were running late when they finally hit the office the next morning. A couple of times during the night they’d stirred, reaching for one another in the plush darkness of Zach’s master suite to rediscover the highs they could share together. By the time dawn broke, Sophie felt both well used and completely sated. After breakfast in his gourmet kitchen, which had had her itching to inspect the contents of the refrigerator and try out the appliances with some of her favorite recipes, they’d made it to her house in time for her to shower and change into fresh work clothes, applying her makeup even as they drove to work.
Aside from a few raised eyebrows as they entered the building together—Sophie’s cheeks flushed and eyes bright from the kiss Zach had planted on her in the elevator—no one had said anything. In fact, it seemed as if today was business as usual, with the exception that her body still hummed with contentment even though she had the odd twinge here and there to remind her of muscles she hadn’t used in a while.
She hugged her arms around herself tightly for just a moment and let loose with a grin that spread from ear to ear.
“You look happy,” Zach said from behind her. His hand pushed away a swath of her hair, exposing her neck, where he placed a hot, wet kiss just behind her ear. “I have a bone to pick with you.”
“Really?” she said, fighting to control the shiver of longing that swept her body at his touch.
“I’m finding it incredibly difficult to focus on the work on my desk today.”
Sophie swallowed. She could quite imagine. She got tingles every time she had looked toward his office door this morning.
Zach continued. “Do you have plans for tomorrow night?”
“Me? No, why?”
“The welcome party at the TCC is tomorrow evening, now that my application for membership has been approved. Would you like to come?”
He cast the invitation her way very casually, but she knew what a big deal this was. It was Royal’s mark of acceptance from the very elite—the people to whom he looked for business, the people he asked to trust him with their financial stability. No small ask in these turbulent times.
“I’d be honored to attend with you. These events are usually quite formal, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Then I’ll make sure I do you proud.” She hesitated a moment, seeing a small frown crease his forehead, seeing his eyes look just that little bit distant. “You’re thinking about Alex, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. It’ll be strange accepting the membership offer without my sponsor there. It won’t be the same without Alex.”
Sophie studied his face carefully, confused by her conflicting thoughts. If Zach truly did have something to do with Alex’s disappearance, would he look so genuinely sorry that his friend couldn’t be there with him to share the occasion of his entrée into Royal society? Or was he simply a very good actor?
If that was the case, what did that make her? All kidding aside, when she’d decided to investigate whether Zach had anything to do with Alex going missing—at any cost—had she really considered the emotional cost of entering into a physical relationship with him? She’d been stupidly naive not to realize that her heart was already intrinsically wound up in this man. Knowing she was falling for him, could she honestly believe that he was involved?
“Hey,” Zach said, tipping her chin up with his knuckle. “I didn’t mean to bring you down.”
“It’s okay. I can only imagine how tough it’ll be for you tomorrow.”
“I’m glad you’ll be there with me,” he said simply and the words hit her like blows to her gut.
The laughter she and Mia had shared over Operation: Seduction was a far cry from this reality. From the obvious pain Zach was feeling. There were probably a million reasons why he’d been more reserved than usual recently, why he was spending so much time on the telephone behind a closed office door. Lost for words, she could only give Zach a smile in return.
Work was busy and Zach was out most of the rest of the day with client meetings. It was later in the afternoon and Sophie had just received the call logs for the office and was about to go through them when she picked up an incoming call on Zach’s line. Usually he diverted his calls to his cell phone when he was out, because the nature of his work meant he needed to be accessible to his clients, so Sophie was surprised to see his line light up.
“Zach Lassiter’s office, this is Sophie speaking,” she answered crisply.
“Mr. Lassiter, please,” a male voice responded.
“I’m sorry, he’s unable to take your call. I could get him to phone when he’s available. Who’s calling, please?”
“No, I won’t leave a message, thanks.”
And just like that, the call ended. Sophie couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about the call, about the man making the call, set off her suspicions. She made a note on a message pad and tried to put it out of her mind for now, but curiosity kept pecking at her like a demented hen. There’d been noise in the caller’s background, busy noise, and a voice over a PA system if she wasn’t mistaken, paging someone. She closed her eyes and replayed the call in the back of her mind, but for the life of her she couldn’t filter through the sounds to identify anything conclusive.
“Dreaming of me?”
Zach’s voice startled her and her eyes flew open.
“Oh, always,” she answered dryly. “You just missed a call, by the way. He wouldn’t leave a message.”
Zach flicked a glance at his watch. “Darn, I’d hoped to be here in time for that. Never mind, I’ll give them a call back.”
So he’d been expecting the call? Sophie tried to ignore the frisson of unease that raised the hairs on the back of her neck as he turned his back on her and went to his office and firmly closed the door behind him. Whatever it was he expected to discuss, it wasn’t something he wanted her to overhear—again.
She forced her attention to the call logs, coding them as she went so the accounts department could apportion them accordingly. Alex had been a stickler for detail and while this was the kind of work normally assigned to someone on a far lower pay scale than Sophie’s, he’d insisted it be part of her duties. So many of the numbers were familiar to her already, being those of people she knew who lived in and around Royal, but there was a new number cropping up in there over and over again. Sophie flicked back through the pages. There was no sign of that number being called while Alex had still been at the office, in fact, it appeared to be something that had only begun to occur recently and only from Zach’s line.
Curious, Sophie picked up her phone and dialed the number.
“Good afternoon, you’ve reached the Philmore Clinic, how may I help you?”
“I’m sorry, I’ve dialed the wrong number.”
Sophie put the phone down and turned to her computer, searching for the clinic. Her breath caught in her throat as the results lined up on her screen. She clicked on the main one, the website of the Philmore Clinic itself. Her eyes flicked across the screen as she read the home page, then more on the “about us” section of the site. It seemed the center was one for rehabilitation but also housed a secure-care facility for patients deemed mentally unstable and a danger to themselves or others.
Her thoughts boggled on the information even as she closed the window on her computer. Was that where Alex was? Had Zach somehow had him committed? Surely not. He wouldn’t have been able to do something like that without medical intervention in some form, and surely if Alex had been unstable she or others would have noticed something, seen some warning signs. Maybe Zach just had a client who worked from there. Yes, that’s what it had to be, she tried to convince herself. But even so, a little niggle of concern continued to hover at the back of her mind.
Maybe she should just ask Zach outright, she thought, her pen still hovering over the numbers. He came out of his office—his face drawn and his short hair rumpled, as if he’d been running his fingers through it—and his laptop case in his hand.
“Something’s come up,” he said heading for the main office door. “I’m going to a meeting, and I probably won’t be back to the office tonight.”
“Before you go, can you check this off for me? It’s a number I can’t code on the call log.”
He strode over to her desk and swiveled the paper around to face him. “Just code it to me, personally,” he said, his face grim.
“Personally,” she repeated.
“Yeah, anything else?”
“Um, no,” she replied, stung a little by his abruptness. Last night and this morning, Zach had been a different man altogether. It was clear something was bothering him. “Except, is there anything I can help you out with?”
“I wish you could, but no.”
“Well, when do you expect to be back?” she asked, pressing gently for some kind of response that might give her an insight as to where he was going. “I thought maybe I could cook for you tonight, at my place.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I have no idea of when I’ll be free tonight, so better not make plans. I’ll pick you up tomorrow evening for the TCC event, okay? Look, I’m sorry I have to race out now. I’d hoped...”
“Don’t worry. I understand.”
Sophie interrupted before he delivered some platitude she couldn’t bear to hear and while she mouthed the words of understanding, she did so without sentiment. She didn’t understand. Not one bit. Where had the man she’d spent the night with gone? She’d thought they were maybe at the start of something new together. Something they both wanted. But here she was—left staring at the door as he went out to the main office and then, presumably, off to his unexpected meeting, leaving her with far more questions than answers.