violently, she gasped his name.
“Zach… I’m sorry,” she murmured as warm tears leaked from her eyes and trickled down her cheek. She feathered gentle fingertips through his thick, inky hair. “I wronged you, and I’m so sorry. For years I’ve wanted to make it up to you.” She hesitated. “But… You hurt me, too.”
For fifteen years, she’d been dead in the arms of every other man who’d held her.
She hadn’t felt this alive since she’d last been in Zach’s embrace.
His hand closed over her breast, stroking a nipple until it hardened. The other hand had moved down to cup her hip.
Next he undid the buttons of her blouse so that it parted for his exploration. For one glorious moment she was her younger self and wildly in love with him again. Back then she had trusted him completely. She’d given him everything of herself. With a sigh, she leaned into him as he stroked her, and her response sent him over some edge.
He rasped in a breath. Then, in the next shuddering instant, he ended their kiss, tearing his lips free, leaving her desolate, abandoned.
Loosening his grip, he let her go and staggered free of her as if he’d been burned. He raked a large, shaking hand through his hair and swore violently, staring anywhere but at her.
“Damn you,” he muttered, inhaling deeply. “I see why you do so well on Broadway. You’re like a tigress in heat. Is that why Hugh Jones took up with you so fast?”
Summer was about to confess she felt nothing when Hugh kissed her-nothing-but Zach spoke first.
“Brilliant performance,” he said. “You deserve an Oscar.”
“So do you,” she whispered in breathless agony as she dried her cheeks with the back of her hand. She couldn’t let him know that for a few magical seconds she’d actually cared.
“I’d better go before I do something incredibly stupid,” he said.
“Like what?” she murmured, feeling dazed from his mesmerizing kiss and savage embrace.
“Like take you back to my house to do whatever the hell I want to do with you…for as long as I want.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t look at me like that! I know what you are. Damn you for making me want the impossible,” he muttered.
She clenched her fists, not any happier than he was to realize that she wanted the impossible, too.
He didn’t like her. With good reason. Their past was too painful to revisit. What burned inside her, and in him, was lust-visceral and destructive.
Gram opened the front door. Her violet, silver-lashed eyes wide, she peered out at them with excessive interest, causing Summer, whose blouse was still unbuttoned, to blush with shame even as she quickly pulled the edges back together. The last thing she wanted to do was get Gram’s hopes up about a romantic reunion with Zach.
“Oh, my go-o-o-d-ness.” Gram worked hard to hide her pleasure at the sight of Zach’s blazing eyes and her granddaughter’s scarlet face and state of dishabille. “I’m so sorry.” In a softer voice directed toward Summer, she said, “And I thought you told me you wanted nothing more to do with him.” There was that sly note of satisfaction in her tone again.
“I don’t,” Summer cried, but the door had already closed behind her triumphant grandmother. “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming over?” she called after Gram. Then Summer turned and said to Zach, “Why did I even ask, when I specifically ordered her not to mention you?”
Zach’s eyes went flat and cold. “As far as I’m concerned, this never happened. But-if you see me again-you’d better run. You and I have more unfinished business than I realized. Don’t give me any more reasons to come after you and finish what you started.”
Suspecting he must want revenge, she swallowed. “Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise, a warning. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from me.”
As if to emphasize his words, he strode over to her. Reaching up his hand, he ran a calloused fingertip along her damp cheek, causing her to shiver involuntarily.
“I want you in my bed. I want you to pay for what you did. In every way that I demand.”
Startled, because the image he painted-of lying under him on a soft bed-aroused her to such a shocking degree, she jumped back. Out of his sensually lethal reach, her voice was firm. “I won’t be seeing you again.”
“Good. Tell your grandmother I’ll call her after you leave town.”
His gorgeous mouth curled. Looking every bit as furious and ashamed as Summer was beginning to feel, Zach turned on his heel and strode down the gravel drive, leaving her to wonder how she could have stood there like a besotted idiot and let him touch her again after sharing such an embarrassing kiss.
“None of this happened,” Summer whispered consolingly to herself when she finally heard the roar of his car. Too aware of gravel spinning viciously, she sank down onto the steps and hugged her knees tightly.
She felt cold and hot at the same time.
It was all a horrible mistake. Zach didn’t like that it had happened any more than she did.
She was glad he felt that way.
She was glad!
Somehow she had to make Gram and Tuck understand that Zach was dangerous, that he’d threatened her.
Tuck, who’d gotten in trouble too many times to count, could not continue to work for Zach, who would use whatever her brother did to his own advantage.
Squaring her shoulders, Summer got to her feet and picked up the remaining pages of her script. Then she ran into the house and up the stairs where she took a long, cold shower and brushed her teeth.
Not that she could wash away his taste or the memory of his touch or the answering excitement in her system.
That night, when she awoke, breathing hard from a vivid dream about Zach kissing her even more boldly, it was impossible to ignore the hunger that was both ancient and familiar lighting every nerve ending in her being.
Wild for him, she sat up in the darkness and pushed her damp hair back from her hot face. “It was just a stupid kiss. It doesn’t matter! Zach can’t stand me any more than I can stand him.”
So, why are you dreaming about him, aching for him, even when you know he despises you?
Two
One month later
Once back in New York, Zach’s kiss lingered on the edges of Summer’s consciousness almost all the time, despite the fact that she’d willed herself to forget him. Despite the fact that she’d decided it was best not to obsess over things she couldn’t control, like Tuck’s refusal to quit his job and Gram’s support of his decision.
And because the memory of Zach’s kiss lingered, she drove herself to work harder than ever.
Summer read every script her agent gave her. She auditioned tirelessly for any part that was halfway right for her. When she was home alone she compulsively cleaned and dusted every item in her already immaculate apartment in a vain attempt to shove Zach Torr and his stupid kiss and his ridiculous threats back into the past where they belonged.
Not that she could stop herself from calling certain gossips in Bonne Terre to get a picture of what he was up to back home or stop herself from reading her hometown’s newspaper online to get the latest news about his riverboat gambling project. Everything she read was annoyingly favorable. People were more impressed by him every day. He was the town’s favorite son. Rumors abounded about the lavishness of the riverboat he was building and the luxurious amenities and hotels he was constructing onshore.
On impulse, maybe to prove to those blockheads back home how little she cared for Zach, she let Hugh Jones join one of her interviews.
Naturally, the young, bright-eyed journalist went gaga over beautiful, golden Hugh, whose immense ego was hugely gratified at being fawned over.
