Unforgettable

by Ann Christopher

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve been standing across the street waiting for you two kids to finish your conversation,” Sean called as he strode up the sidewalk and through the gate. “I can’t keep loitering. People will think I’m a stalker.”

  “Great to see you again, Sean,” Zoya said, turning to him without missing a beat. “You seem like a nice guy. Too bad you keep such terrible company.”

  “Daniel’s my wingman,” Sean said. “I let people spend a few minutes with this loser, then I look like a real genius when I show up.”

  Zoya burst into unexpected laughter that caught Daniel around the throat and held him in an iron grip. It was real laughter, the kind that engaged her whole face and made her eyes sparkle with warmth. Daniel, fool that he was, soaked it up with gratitude the way a man dying of thirst drops to his knees and drinks dirty water from a puddle.

  “Brilliant plan,” Zoya told Sean. “I knew I liked you.”

  “What did you ever see in this guy anyway?” Sean asked, grinning.

  Everything inside Daniel waited at attention.

  “Honestly?” She shrugged, her amusement vanishing. “No idea.”

  Everything inside Daniel flinched.

  Lobbing a last, scathing look in Daniel’s direction, she swept off and went back to Spun Gold.

  Daniel resisted the surly urge to flip the table and hurry after her so they could finish this, one way or the other, for once and for all.

  He rubbed his hands over the top of his head, feeling as though he’d OD’d on caffeine. His heart thumped. His leg jiggled. He resented the intrusion of the rest of the world. Freaking tourists walking around without a care in the world when he hadn’t had a turmoil-free second since he arrived back in this burg.

  Freaking Sean with his bemused expression.

  Daniel jabbed two fingers in his face as he sat down. “I want zero shit from you right now.”

  “You don’t want me to talk about how whipped you are? How I’m pretty sure I saw your withered balls in her hand when she marched off?”

  “No.”

  “You got it.”

  Brief moment of silence.

  Daniel fumed.

  “You’re going to get your ass booted out of the International Brotherhood of Men if you don’t get that kicked puppy look off your face,” Sean noted darkly, reaching for the menu.

  Daniel didn’t have the heart to argue. They sat for a minute in silence. When Daniel found himself looking over at Spun Gold to see if maybe Zoya had decided to come back and give him a second piece of her mind (she hadn’t), his level of self-disgust hit a new high.

  Or new low, depending on how you looked at it.

  “What’ve you been up to?” he asked Sean, deciding to make more of an effort to engage.

  “Smelling the streets. I like it here. This town’s got everything. Did you see the kayak landing and the dog park? I always wanted a dog. My brother Mike was allergic.”

  Daniel eyed him warily. “Is this about to turn into a rant about how Mike ruined your life?”

  “Not this time.” Sean studied the menu. “How was your family breakfast?”

  “Remember that Norman Rockwell painting about Thanksgiving, where everyone’s happy and well behaved?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was the opposite of that.”

  Sean cringed. “Wow.”

  “Food was good, though—”

  “You must be Daniel Harper,” called a new voice.

  They looked around in time to see a man come through the gate with two dogs—a husky and a Jack Russell terrier, both wearing orange bandanas in fall prints—on leashes. The man was older than Daniel, with fair skin and silver hair. He wore a sports jacket with plaid wool trousers.

  “Don’t tell me I look like my brothers,” Daniel said, standing to greet him. “Let’s not get this relationship off to a rocky start.”

  The man grinned and extended his hand. “Raymond Martin. Great to meet you. You Harpers are everywhere around town.”

  “Don’t blame me for that. I just got back here. This is my buddy Sean Baldwin from Napa.”

  “Sorry I didn’t get to meet you gents at the wedding last night,” Raymond said, now shaking Sean’s hand. “That was a great time, wasn’t it? My husband and I haven’t danced that much since our wedding. By the way, this is my dog, Bobsy—”

  Bobsy the Jack Russell sat and stared at Daniel with clever eyes; Daniel decided he was going to keep his eyes on him.

  “—and I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to meet your brother James’s dog, Frank,” Raymond continued. “We’re taking care of him while the newlyweds are on their honeymoon.”

  Frank, a blue-eyed husky, sat and extended a paw.

  Daniel grinned, shook and scratched Frank’s head. “What’s up, Frank? You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

  Bobsy got up and edged between Daniel and Frank, so that Daniel suddenly found himself scratching Bobsy’s head.

  “Yeah, I figured you were trouble, Bobsy,” Daniel said.

  “You have no idea,” Raymond muttered. “We’ll take a minute and get settled, then go inside and order. Okay, you dogs. Sit.”

  The dogs found a shady spot under the table and stretched out while Raymond sat and pulled a tablet computer out of his briefcase before sitting on Sean’s side of the table.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got several choices for you, but I wasn’t sure what you had in mind. River view? Two-bedroom in case you need a home office or workout room? Covered parking?”

  “I can’t get too worked up about it,” Daniel said, flapping a hand. “Anything that gets me out of my parents’ carriage house yesterday and is inexpensive. I’ll be working a lot, so I won’t be home much. I’ll probably want to buy a house in the next year anyway. I appreciate your help.”

  “My pleasure. Okay…” Raymond said thoughtfully, scrolling through pictures while Sean looked over his shoulder. “So that one’s out...that one’s out...looking...”

  “That’s nice,” Sean said, pointing.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful. Great river views on all sides. Zoya Thomas lives there actually. She loves it—”

  “I’ll take it,” Daniel said quickly, his blood humming with sudden pleasure, and his wave and keep going edict long forgotten.

  “Come on, man,” Sean groaned, making zero effort to hide his disgust.

  Raymond glanced up, looking startled. “You don’t want this one, Daniel. You’re paying a fifty percent premium just for the views.”

  “Eh. It’s only money,” Daniel said.

  “Don’t you want to see it?” Raymond asked, incredulous.

  “Why waste time?” For the first time all day, Daniel couldn’t stop grinning. “When can I move in?”

  Chapter 9

  By one forty-four that night, Zoya had had enough. Tying her plaid flannel pajama bottoms more firmly around her waist and throwing on a hoodie, she left her apartment and marched up the fire exit stairs as fast as her fuzzy slippers would carry her, fuming all the way.

  One forty-four. In the a.m.! And the fool above her had been thumping and banging around for the last three hours. Who did that? What moron didn’t know that late on a Saturday night was not the time to be moving furniture and clomping around like a herd of tap-dancing dinosaurs?

  It was her new neighbor, clearly, she thought, rounding the turn and reaching for the heavy metal door. She’d been spoiled these last few months, with no upstairs tenant to disrupt her peace with heavy footsteps. Those glorious days were now over. Fine. She could tolerate a couple of thuds and the occasional muffled music. But this kind of commotion? As if the idiot was trying to be a nuisance? And Saturday Night Live was over and the pleasant buzz from her couple of taco-night margaritas had faded?

  Oh, hell no.

  Plus, she was on a shorter fuse than usual what with the whole Daniel debacle. He was back. She had to deal with it whether she wanted to or not.

  What she didn’t have t
o do? Be cheerful.

  She emerged into the elegant hallway, where wall sconces provided a soothing glow, and walked up to the door. She told herself to be calm and neighborly, but when she raised her hand, her fist produced a Police! Open up! kind of pounding rather than a genteel knock.

  Rustling from inside, then the sound of the lock turning.

  Be nice, Zoya. Don’t act ignorant.

  “Are you crazy?” she cried as the door swung open. “Do you know what time it—Daniel?”

  Absolute shock locked down her mouth after that.

  Because it wasn’t enough that he had shown up and invaded her town, thoughts and body.

  Now he had to invade her small apartment building as well.

  The one damn sanctuary she had left.

  “Zoya. Hey.” Dark eyes agleam with amusement, he stepped aside to let her in. She sleepwalked past him in absolute stupefaction, and he shut the door behind her. “It’s a little late for a visit. But thanks for stopping by to welcome me to the building.”

  She turned in a slow circle and noted, in no particular order, the moving boxes, neatly stacked around the perimeter. Daniel had always been a neat freak. The black leather sofa and coffee table, already in place. The dining room table. Various kitchen gadgets laid out in a perfect row along the counter, together with an open bottle of Glenfidditch and a tumbler. The mega-screen TV already mounted over the fireplace. The crackling fire.

  The man himself, with his white T-shirt, knit shorts and ill-concealed smirk.

  The smirk’s message: Gotcha.

  Zoya tried to collect herself. She really did. They were in a battle of wills here, a cat-and-mouse death match, and she did not want to be the first one to break. What would it mean to break? She had no idea, other than the repugnant certainty that it would involve Daniel knowing that he’d gotten to her.

  If one of them was going to break, it sure as hell wouldn’t be her.

  But...

  It was late and her defenses weren’t as firmly in place as they should have been. He’d caught her by surprise. As he’d done earlier, when she’d looked up, seen him walking down the sidewalk and thought, for one misguided second, that he’d come because he wanted to see her. To talk to her.

  Only it was the same old story, which was that Daniel came and Daniel went, and the only thing that remained constant was that he would disappoint and/or hurt her every chance he got.

  Oh, she was determined to never break and give him the upper hand, yeah, sure, but tonight...

  By showing up as her new neighbor, he’d put a tiny crack in her hard shell.

  Because she couldn’t deal with this.

  “I...I didn’t stop by to welcome you to the building. I stopped by because my new neighbor was making way too much noise,” she managed.

  “Sorry about that,” he said easily. “You like the sofa there? Or should I switch it with the chairs? Sean says it’s okay there, but he needs to stick to helping me move the furniture. His interior design skills are sketchy.”

  “I don’t care about your sofa.” She gaped at him in utter disbelief. “Why would you move in here?”

  He looked politely puzzled. “Why not? It’s a great building. Look at the river view.”

  “It’s my building!”

  “There you go with the possessives again. Do you own the building? Is your name on the deed?”

  “What are you trying to do here, Daniel? What’s your plan?”

  “I told you,” he said, his smirk vanishing behind a cold front that swallowed up his eyes and his voice. “I want you out of my head.”

  “So you show up here?” she asked, a vague feeling of panic making her shrill.

  “I gotta live somewhere. And this’ll make it easier for us.”

  “For us to what?”

  He gave her a lingering once-over as he settled on the arm of his sofa. “Come here and let me see what’s under all those clothes. I’ll show you.”

  “No.” She crossed her arms and huddled inside her hoodie. “We went over this earlier.”

  “Now you’ve had a chance to reconsider.”

  “Hmm...yeah, still no. Find someone else.”

  “I could, but I’d just be putting your face on her when I fucked her. Is that fair?”

  The image—Daniel thinking about her when he was with some other woman—inexplicably turned her on.

  And also made her want to punch him in his sleek nose.

  She opened her mouth, ready to really lose it and rage at him for upsetting her in the middle of the night and filling her head with erotic thoughts. Until she remembered that she must not break and give him the upper hand—

  Hang on. Wait one freaking minute.

  She smiled as a new thought came to her. A lovely new thought. She dropped her arms and took a couple steps forward, the better to get in his face about it.

  “I just had a thought. You’re stalking me. You poor thing. You want me back, don’t you? You actually think it’s possible.”

  Daniel stiffened, a wary new light in his eyes. “I want to keep screwing you, yeah. Not a news flash.”

  His body language always gave her all the clues she needed. She laughed because she knew it would infuriate him. Sure enough, a muscle in his temple began to throb.

  “No, no, no. You actually think that we could, I don’t know, talk it all out or some such. As if anything you could say would make me forgive you for walking out on me—”

  “Forgive me?” he asked in a strangled voice. “Are you that delusional?”

  “You still care about me,” she concluded triumphantly.

  He hesitated, furious color flooding his face. Then his lips twisted into the bastard cousin of a smile.

  “The only thing I care about is right there between those legs. You want to give it to me as much as I want to take it. So let’s stop wasting time with your fairy-tale fantasies.”

  Zoya froze, replaying his ugly words in her mind. Then, with a humiliated cry, she raised a hand—

  Way too quick for her, he reached up and caught her by the wrist. With the other hand, he pried open her fingers and slapped something into her palm. Then he thrust her away from him and went to the counter, where he grabbed his tumbler of Scotch and drained it.

  Zoya backed up a hasty step, then looked to see what he’d given her.

  It was a key.

  “What the hell is this?” she snarled.

  “It’s my spare key,” he said, his color still high as that muscle pulsed in his temple. “When you’re downstairs thinking about me tonight—or any other night—and you’re done cutting off your nose to spite your face, come back. With no judgments and no strings. Just you and me and the dark.”

  Zoya’s heart kept pounding, but her blood flowed hot and thick as she stared into his flashing eyes.

  The idea that she would take him up on the offer was so self-destructive. So illicit.

  So tempting.

  Be a good girl, Zoya. Do the right thing, said her father’s voice in her head.

  But her father wouldn’t be with her and Daniel in the dark.

  It took her a long few seconds to gather her words into a sentence. “Do you have any idea,” she said, her voice and the pit of her stomach both trembling, “how much I hate you?”

  His face contorted into a snarl.

  “You think I care?” His laughter sounded soft. Derisive. But whether he was laughing at her or himself, she couldn’t say. “Angry fucking is still fucking. And I want you any way I can get you.”

  Zoya stared at him, wondering how they’d come to this. What had happened to the man-boy she’d loved back in college? Had he ever truly existed?

  Why was this angry Daniel every bit as fascinating?

  “You won’t be happy until you’ve ruined everything good between us, will you?” she asked, incredulous.

  He splashed more Scotch in his glass and gulped it down before facing her.

  “You might as well know, Kitten. I plan to s
corch some earth.”

  Chapter 10

  Daniel punched his pillow for the billionth time, arranged it under his head and flopped back onto it. Since his body was strung tighter than circus tightrope, making sleep as impossible as using the spare change under his sofa cushions to buy a Ferrari, he stared up at the ceiling in gritty-eyed exhaustion. After a few seconds of watching the moonlight and the shadows battle for domination, he checked his watch:

  Three-oh-two. And she wasn’t coming.

  Just like she hadn’t come at two-fifteen or two twenty-eight.

  He could lie here all through the night, willing her to come, but it would never make the slightest difference. Why? Because it was the same old story between them: she laughed while tying him up in knots.

  Bottom line? She’d never cared about him the way he’d cared about her.

  And even though he was armed with that crucial knowledge, he couldn’t raise his hand and volunteer to be her fool fast enough.

  But, hey. He was a professional fool. Really put his heart into the job. Who else would give his spare key to a woman who didn’t want it?

  She hadn’t given it back, though, had she?

  It was probably a mistake to hang his entire emotional existence on that one small fact, but he had to hang it somewhere.

  And here he’d thought he’d wave and keep going. He snorted into the darkness. See? There was that fool thing again.

  At least the night hadn’t been a total loss, he thought, sighing as he rolled onto his side and arranged the covers. He’d unpacked most of his—

  His front door softly opened and closed.

  The sudden leap in his pulse rate threatened to send him into cardiac arrest. He sat up, listening to her quiet footsteps as they came down the hallway, and the covers slid down his bare chest to pool in his lap.

  She appeared in the doorway and paused, a shadow among shadows. Her face was invisible, but her tiny figure flowed with the swish of silk. She’d changed into a robe, he realized, and showered before that because he could detect the clean scent of lotion on her skin.