Unforgettable

by Ann Christopher

  Was this a truce? Was this what peace felt like? All he knew was that his shoulders no longer felt crushed beneath the weight of the world. The pressure seemed to have shifted to his chest, where his heart swelled the longer he looked at her in this quiet moment, and he felt like the possibilities were endless.

  Something about Zoya had captured his attention a long time ago and kept it. Those gleaming brown eyes, so clever and earnest. The sleek apples of her cheeks. The curve of her lips. Her wicked humor. The unrelenting strength and passion in that small and sexy package. Swear to God, everything he needed was right here. He doubted he’d ever notice if the rest of the universe disappeared into thin air.

  Zoya stared right back at him, as riveted as he was.

  “What now, Daniel?”

  He managed a shaky exhale. “Beats me. All I know is I want you to smile at me again. The way you used to. That’s what I need.”

  Her lips twisted with amusement, but it wasn’t what he had in mind. Not at all. “Simple man, are you?”

  “Simple man.”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe we shouldn’t aim for the way things used to be. If they were so great, they probably wouldn’t have been so easy to screw up.”

  That idea didn’t sit well with him. “Or maybe we didn’t appreciate the value of what we had and we let it go too easily.”

  “We’ve been really angry for a long time. Maybe our relationship is too broken to be fixed.”

  “Maybe it’s not, Debbie Downer. What then?”

  This seemed to be a bridge too far. She abruptly turned away, staring across the room at things he couldn’t see, her expression troubled.

  “Zoya?”

  She shook it off. “Wow, look at us. Talking without bloodshed. Can you believe it?”

  “Yeah, I can believe it. It’s a long damn time coming. And we need to get this figured out. One way or the other. You know that, don’t you?”

  She nodded, that vague frown still marring her forehead. “I’d better go. Time to get to work.”

  “Come on. I’ll walk you out.”

  They were very polite about it. Very genteel. He helped her with her chair, jacket and the door. She thanked him. They walked to her shop side by side in shell-shocked silence, which was a real feat for him when the tips of his feet barely touched the ground.

  They’d had a true breakthrough. They’d talked. They were well on their way to understanding each other.

  And he could breathe again. For what felt like the first time in years.

  They got to the door of Spun Gold much too soon, turning to each other with all the awkwardness of teenagers trying to decide whether to kiss or not at the end of their first date.

  He opened his mouth, an urgent when will I see you again on his lips (he couldn’t sit patiently in his apartment every night, praying she’d show up), when she spoke first and surprised him again.

  “I’d love to show you around Spun Gold.” Blushing, she gestured vaguely over her shoulder, inside the dark store. “When you have a minute sometime.”

  “I have time now,” he said, even though he was hovering at around half an hour late for work.

  Dimpling at him, she unlocked the door, let him in and clicked on the lights.

  Daniel whistled with appreciation. Precious little remained from the old Sheldon’s Tailoring days, and it was all for the good. The walls were painted a pale blue, with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in every bit of available light. Built-in shelves lined the perimeter, each stocked with baskets of yarn and all kinds of little knitting needles and accessories. Completed sweaters and hats served as examples of what customers could make. Bolts of fabric. Round tables and chairs, with cheerful signs inviting customers to stay for various knit-alongs and classes. A fireplace, dark now, but laid with logs for later. A back room with giant sewing machines he’d never seen before.

  And there, hanging on the walls, were Zoya’s masterpieces. Two beautiful quilts, one in all kinds of blues, the other in purples, both with intricate patterns of pieces so tiny they made his head spin just to think about the work that must have gone into them.

  He took his time, absorbing it all.

  “There’s a galley kitchen in the back,” she said. “Sometimes people like to bring snacks for the knit-alongs. And we’re thinking of adding a couple more long-arm sewing machines for the quilting, but that’s a huge investment. So, anyway. It’s small, but I’m focusing on growing a community—”

  “Zoya. It’s amazing.”

  She brightened. “You like it?”

  “Of course I like it. It’s got your fingerprints all over it. You enjoy running it?”

  “I do. It’s fun.”

  “Now you create fiber art instead of music, eh?”

  “Well, yeah.” She hesitated, some of her enthusiasm dimming. “As long as I can create.”

  She might put a game face on it, but this could never scratch her creative itch like her music did, and he knew it. In ye olden days, Zoya had glowed when she played the cello. All but levitated with happiness and contentment. This thing she was doing here? He’d call it making the best of a less than ideal situation. Paying the bills. But a woman like Zoya needed to glow. Hell, she needed to fly. If a nudge or two in that direction helped send her on her way, then so be it. In fact, he had an idea or two about that bookmarked for later...

  “Can I ask you something?” she asked. “About your first day at the vineyard?”

  He tensed, not wanting to bring the Dictator into this peaceful moment with her.

  On the other hand, if she wanted to talk, he was talking.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “What happened with your father? It wasn’t really that bad, was it?”

  Daniel sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I mean…There’s a difference between how things look on paper and how they are on the ground. On paper, my father wants me and all my brothers here in town. On paper, he’s had a traumatic heart attack and realizes that he needs to slow down. He can’t micromanage the vineyard, the winery and the restaurant. He’s got a good team in place, right? Good people in charge. On paper, he loved the idea of handing the wine business off to his son.”

  “And on the ground?”

  “On the ground, he hasn’t changed a damn thing.” Daniel couldn’t quite keep the annoyance out of his voice. “He talks a good game, but he’s still got his fingers stuck in all the pies. And all the pies are half-burnt because he won’t step back and let his people run them properly.”

  Her face fell. She nodded thoughtfully.

  He waited, eager to hear her take on things. Like her father, Zoya had always been the closest thing Daniel had to an on-call shrink when it came to doling out words of wisdom. Her advice, in his experience, was like a visit to the doctor’s office: generally wasn’t fun, might even be painful, but if you took the medicine, you invariably felt better soon.

  “I know your father can be a pain in the ass,” she said, “but you’ve got to give him a minute to get used to you being there and realize you’re on his side.”

  “On his side? Who the hell’s side would I be on?” Daniel felt the first flare of his temper and tried to rein it in. “And speaking of sides, why aren’t you on mine? I quit a great job to—”

  “Slow down there, Anger Boy,” she said wryly, holding up a hand. “Wow. Some things don’t change much, do they? You’re still in the attack first, ask questions later camp, aren’t you?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and glowered at her. “Is there a point?”

  “Just be patient with him.”

  Easy for her to say. “It’s hard to be patient when we’re bleeding money here. Course, there’ll be a lot more time for patience after we declare bankruptcy, so...”

  “You can’t bulldoze your way in and act like you’re eager to undo everything he’s done.”

  “I am eager to undo everything he’s done,” he said flatly.

  “No, you’re not
. Harper Rose is an established, well-loved brand. You’ve got a great foundation to build on. And he’s the one who built it. Not you.”

  “He’s not about to let me do anything significant anyway, so this whole discussion is moot.”

  “Take it from someone who successfully took over the family business from her father. He will let you. He’s desperate for you to take some of the burden off his shoulders. You just have to be diplomatic and give him a graceful way off the playing field. Treat him like the elder statesman whose advice you treasure. Not the old steer you’re putting out to pasture. He’s getting to the end of his life. He wants to know that everything he did will last because it means something.”

  Whoa.

  That got him.

  Daniel paused, his head reeling from this new perspective.

  In a typical Zoya move he remembered well, she tipped her chin up and met his gaze looking smugly satisfied.

  He grinned. “Wow. You’re not just a gorgeous face, are you?”

  “I’m multifaceted. I thought you knew.”

  “I do know. Come here. Give me a good-bye kiss before I go to work.”

  He held out a hand.

  She took it, but then a shadow rolled over her face.

  He’d meant to pull her into his arms, but she was suddenly much too far away.

  “What’s wrong, Kitten?”

  She made a brave attempt at a smile, but the sudden sparkle of tears gave her away.

  “It’s so easy to fall back into old patterns with you,” she said.

  And wasn’t that a beautiful thing? “I know.”

  “Is that what we have here? Old habits?”

  He shook his head, narrowing his eyes at her. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re building something new and improved. What’s going on?”

  She pulled her hand free with a shaky laugh. “What’s going on is that I’m a tough person. I can take care of sick fathers and take over family businesses and spin gold out of near bankruptcy.” She swiped her nose. “What I can’t do is let you break my heart again. I can’t deal with you hating me again. So if you think there’s the slightest chance of that happening, then we need to let Zaniel go right now.”

  He snorted with surprise. “Zaniel?”

  “DanZo, then. Whatever you want to call us. Our couples name.”

  He watched her, noting the growing red stains across her cheeks, the vulnerability in her eyes and the stubborn set of her mouth. Much as he wanted to reassure her—in the strongest possible terms—he was afraid of the types of professions that might spring out of his mouth if he opened it now, when his heart was so full of hope and new possibilities.

  Above all, he didn’t want to scare her away.

  So he held out his hand again, dialing back as much of his intensity as he could.

  But, man, he wanted to swallow this amazing woman whole.

  After a long hesitation, she took his hand and raised her wary gaze to his.

  “I never hated you,” he said quietly, not trusting his gruff voice. “Not really.”

  She expelled a long and serrated breath. “You do a good impression of hate.”

  “It was a lie.”

  Since she seemed less than convinced, he decided to spill his other biggest secret. Why not, right? Didn’t desperate times call for desperate measures?

  He leaned down. Pressed his mouth to her ear. Absorbed her body’s shiver.

  “If I knew how to let you go, I’d have done it way before now. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Much as he needed to get to work—the Dictator was probably typing up Daniel’s official termination letter at this point—he found it impossible to let her go. Especially when her neck felt so smooth and smelled so sweet, and she turned to liquid gold in his arms, shimmering when he touched her.

  “Daniel,” she said as her head tipped back and her eyes rolled closed.

  “I have to go.” He gathered her closer, nipping her throat until she cried out for him. She could have her cello music; he’d take her earthy sighs and moans every time. “What time should I look for you tonight?”

  She pulled back, her eyes heavy-lidded with desire, and licked her lips as her gaze flickered to his mouth. “I’m not coming.”

  His muscles froze up, putting the kibosh on what had been a promising erection.

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “Don’t get surly. I just think we need to take a breath. Get to know each other again. Set some new ground rules that don’t include sex for a while.”

  “I have no problems getting to know you again while making you come. I’m a freaking genius at multitasking.”

  “Will you be serious?”

  “I’m dead serious.”

  “So am I.” Her expression turned flinty. “Now take your hands off me.”

  Grumbling, he let her go and folded his arms across his chest. She met his sullen gaze, unperturbed.

  “Don’t go away mad,” she said.

  “I’m going away mad and hard. You’ll have to make it up to me. We need a date.”

  “A date?”

  He felt a wave of her sudden tension pulse through the air.

  “Relax. How about dinner tomorrow?”

  “Well…” She pursed her lips. “I always pay my debts.”

  “You owe me a big one right now for letting you go when what I really want to do is take you into the back room and kiss that sweet pussy of yours.” She gasped, much to his delight. “I’d like to see how wet you are for me.”

  Her color rose and her eyes glittered with undisguised heat. “And what would you do if I was very wet?”

  His heart rate sped up until he could feel his pulse pounding in his ears. “Lick you. Stroke you. Finger you.”

  “Until...?”

  “Until you came and called my name, or begged me to fuck you and called my name,” he said, staring her in the face. “Maybe both.”

  He reached out, hooked his fingers in the waistband of her jeans and pulled her in close.

  “I like the dirty talk, I must say,” she said huskily.

  He grinned. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  She tipped her head back and manufactured an exaggerated pout. “So now you’re just going to leave me? All hot and wishing you were between my legs right now?”

  “Now I’m just going to leave you to suffer,” he said, angling his mouth over hers. “And I hope you’ve learned your lesson about coming up with rules.”

  “Kiss?”

  “Nah. Your kisses are repugnant.”

  “Repugnant?”

  That did it.

  To his stunned amazement, she burst into exactly the kind of laughter he’d been craving. The kind that activated her dimples and lit up her whole face, from her mouth to her eyes.

  It was throaty. Unabashed.

  And it absolutely stopped his heart every damn time.

  Funny how he could lose his heart to her and still feel it ache in the dead center of his chest.

  The sudden burn of emotion in his throat made speaking impossible, much less generating a coherent sentence. So he just watched her, one persistent thought running through his otherwise empty head:

  I love you.

  I love you.

  I. Love. You.

  Chapter 18

  “Welcome to Harper Rose Bistro!” Ada cried the second Daniel opened the heavy front door and stepped through the vestibule that evening. “Thank you for com—Oh, Daniel, it’s you.”

  Daniel tried to look hurt as he watched his mother deflate on the spot. “What? You’re not happy to see me? I’m meeting Sean. You’ve been telling us to stop by all week.”

  His mother glumly submitted to a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad to see you, but we need real paying customers. Not more sons who eat their weight in groceries and try to sneak out without paying their bar tab.”

  Daniel shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the rack. “It’s not that we don’t want to pay. It’
s just that we figure we’ll get all the profits back in our inheritance, so why not skip a step?”

  “There won’t be any inheritances if things keep up like this,” Ada said in a dire undertone, tipping her head in the general direction of the dining room.

  It was dead empty.

  Daniel could almost hear the chorus of crickets.

  He tried to school his features and wipe some of the well, shit off his face, but it was hard. He hadn’t laid eyes on the place in a while, and it was really starting to show its age. Worn booths. Faded wallpaper. The kind of smooth jazz version of “Unforgettable” that made you want to look around for an elevator and climb into it.

  “It is a weeknight,” he pointed out.

  “It’s always like this these days.” She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “You should see our online reviews. And the write-up the food critic gave us in the Daily Commotion.”

  “Bad?”

  “Savage is the word you’re looking for. This just has not been a good year for the restaurant. We had to lay off a couple servers because the work wasn’t there, and then a couple of them quit because they weren’t earning enough in tips to make working here worthwhile. So now I’ve had to hire Alyssa Banks from church.”

  “Alyssa?”

  Right on cue, the door from the kitchen swung open and a young-ish woman strode out carrying a tray of silverware. She had a ducked-head, stoop-shouldered walk, as though her fondest wish was to blend in with the shadows so she never had to interact with humans. It took a lot of pointed effort, but she managed not to make eye contact with either of them as she slunk by on her way to some tables in the back.

  Daniel let go of his pleasant smile and shot his mother a dubious look. “How is she with the customers?”

  “How do you think?” Ada asked, glaring at him.

  “Well, why’d you hire her?”

  “It’s a long story,” Ada said, sighing again. “Her mother was a friend of mine from church. She died from lung cancer about six months ago. Alyssa took care of her, and now she’s all alone, rattling around alone in the house her mother left her. She needed a job and we needed a server. So now here she is.”