When Summer awoke the next day, she sat up slowly, her heart racing, as she thought about Zach upstairs in his own bed. Except for the birds, the house seemed too quiet and dark. But that was only because she was used to pedestrians on the sidewalks and tenants on the stairs, to sirens and traffic, to garbage trucks making their early rounds as the Upper West Side woke up.
Fearing Zach might not have slept any better than she had, she crept noiselessly from her bed to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth, washed her face and combed her hair.
Rummaging through her suitcase, she put on a T-shirt and a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Okay, so he’d probably comment on how tight they were, but she didn’t own any other kind.
Grabbing her script, she headed for the kitchen where she found a bag of coffee. She closed all the doors before she ground the coffee and started a pot. Listening to the birds, she decided it might be more fun to work on the porch.
She went to the door and was taking great pains to open it without making the slightest sound, when the security alarm began to blare.
With a little scream, she clamped her hands over her ears and fought without success to remember the code.
“Blast it!” she muttered as Zach slammed down the stairs.
Wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, and dragging a golf club, he hurled himself into the kitchen.
“My fault. I forgot about the alarm,” she said, staring at his chest and finding him heart-throbbingly magnificent. “I was trying so hard not to wake you.”
He punched in the code and set the golf club down. “It’s okay. Usually I get up way before now. Coffee smells good.” He raked his hands through his hair.
“It does, doesn’t it?” She broke off, tongue-tied as usual around him, maybe because his gaze left her breathless.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asked in a rough tone.
“I guess.”
“I had a tough night, too,” he murmured, grinning sheepishly.
His super-hot gaze made her tummy flip. Suddenly, sharing the kitchen with him when he was sexily shirtless, when he kept his eyes welded to hers, seemed too intimate. She felt as awkward as she would have on a first date when she knew something might happen but didn’t know what. Quickly, she turned away and poured herself a coffee. Then she scurried outside. Behind her she heard his knowing chuckle.
Not that she could work out here, she mused, not when he was bustling about in the kitchen.
Concentrate on something else! Anything else but him!
The morning air was fresh and cool, and the sky a vivid pink. As her frantic gaze wandered to the fringe of trees that edged the far corner of his property, three doe and a tiny fawn picked their way out of the woods in a swirl of ground fog to nibble a clump of damp grass.
Summer tiptoed back to the kitchen door and pushed it open. Holding a fingertip against her lips, she waved to Zach to come out.
When he joined her, he smiled, as charmed by the scene as she.
“I’ll bet you never see anything like that in Manhattan.”
“There are all sorts of amazing sights in Manhattan,” she murmured in a futile attempt to discount the awe that sharing the dawn with him inspired.
“I’ll bet somebody as famous as you could never live anywhere as boring as Louisiana or Texas again. Or be serious about anybody who wasn’t a movie star like Jones.”
“I didn’t say that!”
His hard eyes darkened as they clashed with hers.
An awkward minute passed as she tried to imagine herself living with Zach, here, in Houston, anywhere. Impossible-she was an actress, who lived in Manhattan.
“To change the subject-what do you want to do today?” he asked casually.
“I need to study those scenes I have to shoot next week.”
“That’s fine. I did make tentative plans for us to meet Tuck and Gram at the new Cajun cafe on the bayou. Over lunch I thought we could encourage Tuck to enroll in one of the tech programs at the junior college.”
“Tuck’s not interested in school.”
“Really? When I informed him I might press charges if he didn’t take some responsible action about his future, he told me he’d like to take some courses that could lead to a career as a utility lineman.”
“I can’t believe this! You’re threatening Tuck, too, now.”
“It’s way past time he stepped up to the plate. I took him over to the junior college Wednesday and introduced him to Travis Cooper, who’s the young, enthusiastic head of that particular program. He was a late bloomer, like your Tuck, which may be why the two of them hit it off immediately.”
“Okay-I can do lunch,” she replied. “I like your results, even if I don’t approve of your tactics. Then I’ll need to study my scenes this afternoon…since I procrastinated last night.”
“Okay. While you do that, I’ll inspect one of my building projects.”
He took a long breath, his black eyes assessing her with such frank male boldness her tummy went hollow. “But, I’ll want to spend the evening with you. Alone. Here.”
“Of course,” she whispered, her skin heating even as she fought to look indifferent.
Without warning, he stepped closer and grinned down at her. “I’m glad you agreed so easily. I want you to be eager.”
He bent his handsome black head toward hers, and she was so sure he would kiss her, she actually pursed her lips and stood on her tiptoes as if in feverish anticipation.
But he only laughed, as if he was pleased he had her wanting him. “Save it for tonight, sweetheart.”
A very colorful curse word popped into her mind, but she bit her lips and made do with a frown.
Lunch with Tuck and Gram was amazing. First, the succulent fried shrimp, which were crunchy and light, were so addictive Summer had to sit on fisted hands to keep from stealing the one Zach left on his plate just to tempt her. As she was staring at that shrimp, Tuck finished his gumbo and astonished her by informing Zach that, yes, he’d decided he was fine with giving Cooper and his dumb program a chance. She was further amazed when she listened to him converse easily and intelligently with Zach, as Tuck rarely did with her. She could tell that Zach really had been devoting a great deal of time to Tuck, and that Tuck was lapping up the attention.
Despite all that was enjoyable about lunch, she didn’t like the attention from surrounding diners, who stared and snapped pictures with their phones.
“Did you have an ulterior motive for lunching with all of us so publicly?” Summer asked after they dropped off Tuck and Gram and were driving home.
Zach’s mouth was tight as he stared grimly at the road. “Being railroaded on felony charges and then being tried in the court of public opinion wasn’t any picnic, either.”
“That still doesn’t make it right for you to use Tuck and Gram to get even with me.”
“Maybe I just want people to see that I have a normal relationship with all of you,” Zach said.
“But you don’t. You’re blackmailing me.”
“Right.” His dark eyes glittering, he turned toward her. The sudden intimacy between them stunned her. “Well, I want people to know that you’re not afraid of me. That you never were. That you liked me, loved me even. That I was not someone who’d take a young, unwilling girl off to the woods to molest her. Is that so wrong?”
His face blurred as she forced herself to focus on the trees streaming past his window instead of him. The realization of how profoundly she’d hurt him hit her anew.
Yes, he’d hurt her, too, and yes, he’d gone on to achieve phenomenal success. But he’d never gotten over the deep injury her betrayal had inflicted-any more than she’d gotten over losing him and the baby.
Because of her, Zach had been accused of kidnapping and worse. All he’d ever tried to do was help her.
When a talent scout had been wowed by her high-school performance in Grease, her stepfather had forbidden her to go back to her theater-arts class. He’d sworn he wouldn’t pay for her to study theater arts in college,
