by Janie Crouch
“Mia, you and I don’t really know each other. We’re not friends. I’m not sure how what I do or who I do it with is any of your business.”
“You’ve been gone from Oak Creek a long time.”
Nobody was more aware of that than Anne. “Yes, I have.”
“Things have changed since you’ve been gone.”
It didn’t really seem like things had changed that much. Mia was still the gorgeous girl at school who pretty much held court whenever she wanted. Anne was doing something Mia didn’t like, so she’d been hauled before the throne.
Anne walked to her desk and got her purse out of the bottom drawer. She wasn’t going to fight with Mia—one, because she had no idea how to fight interpersonal battles that had no rules, and two, because even if she did, there was no way she would win against someone like Mia, who lived for them.
“I would certainly hope we’ve all changed since high school.”
Mia blew one perfect curl off her forehead with a breath. “Look, I’m not trying to come in here and be all Mean Girls, okay?”
“Okay,” she said slowly. Dealing with a reasonable Mia wasn’t going to be as easy as ignoring Prom Queen Bitch Mia.
“Zac’s not with me. I get it. We only went out a few times and he never made any promises, so I can’t fault him for that.”
“Okay,” Anne said again, waiting for the sucker punch.
“Everybody likes Zac, and rightfully so. He’s the town golden boy, made even more so by the tragedy of Becky and the baby’s death.”
“Micah. His name was Micah.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “Of course, you know that even after all these years. I’m not sure if it’s because you’re super smart or you’re in love with him. Or both.”
She knew because Becky and Micah had both been people important to her and Zac. “What’s your point, Mia?”
“I just want you to be careful.” She held out a hand, palm up. “I know that sounds ridiculous, because, well, it’s me, and I’m a bitch. But like you said, we’ve all changed since high school, since Becky’s death. I don’t know that Zac is emotionally capable of committing to anyone anymore. Maybe that died with Becky.”
Mia smoothed back a little of her perfect blonde hair. “Zac dates but keeps a part of himself distant. He’s notorious for it.”
Anne took a step forward. She really didn’t want to hear this. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I’m not trying to upset you. Just, I thought someone should let you know, okay? So, you’re not going into the situation blind. You’re new and shiny, so he wants to play. But don’t let your heart get involved.”
Anne grit her teeth. “Again, thanks for the advice.”
She shook her head. “Now I’ve made you mad. I wasn’t trying to. I just don’t want to see you get hurt, see you in another situation where everyone is talking behind your back like in Florida.”
Point made, Mia turned and left.
Anne took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Mia had been checking up on her at the hospital in Tampa. It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to get details from Anne’s previous place of employment. Everybody knew the drama of the two Dr. Griffins. One moving forward and the other left behind.
Maybe it really was a friendly warning, or thinly disguised jealousy. But Mia wanted her to know that she was out of her league with Zac. Anne was going to ignore her.
After all, she’d been telling herself the exact same thing since the beginning.
Zac sat at a booth at The Eagle’s Nest, a beer he hadn’t taken more than two sips of growing warm on the table. He glanced at the door for the tenth time in as many minutes.
“Not like you to be nervous before a date.” Finn was sitting across from him, grinning like a moron, drinking his own beer. “Of course, not like you to meet a woman for a date rather than pick her up. Didn’t you get your motorcycle for the express purpose of impressing women?”
“Meeting here wasn’t my choice.” He respected it, but he was also half afraid Annie wasn’t going to show up. If he had known Finn was going to sit with him and give him a hard time, he wouldn’t have arrived thirty minutes early.
“I’m assuming you got all that stuff worked out about what you told me before, or Annie wouldn’t be agreeing to a date with you.”
His eyes moved from the door to his friend. “Yeah, ends up I was definitely a colossal bastard, but I didn’t attack her that night.”
He told Finn what he’d remembered, didn’t hold back the ugly details of it even though the thought of it still made him a little sick.
“Dayum.” Finn shook his head, took a big gulp of beer. “You’re going to need to find more stuff for us to do around Annie’s house.”
“Pretty sure I could build her a mansion from the ground up and it wouldn’t make up for what I did. Crazy thing is, I know if Becky was here, she’d kick my ass, not for sleeping with Annie, but for the way I treated her after.” Not only the stupid stuff he’d forgotten, but for not staying in touch with her. Not checking on her. He’d lost his wife, but Annie had lost her best friend. He’d had friends, family, and his brothers in the Army to get him through. Annie hadn’t had anyone, especially once she’d left.
“So, what is this? Some sort of pity date? Trying to make up for past sins?”
There was nothing he could do that would ever make up for that night. And pity? “Hell, no. I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind from the minute she walked into that hospital room. If anything, she’s taking pity on me by agreeing. I just want to be with her, you know?”
Any way he could. Physically, yes. Oh God, yes, he hoped he could eventually get her to give him another chance. But if not, it was like he’d told her at the hospital. He wanted the now Zac to get to know the now Annie.
Finn nodded solemnly. “I get it, man. Love is a battlefield.”
Zac couldn’t stop his grin. “Did you just throw Pat Benatar at me, jackass? Are we gonna have a dance-off now?”
Finn laughed. “You know I would totally beat you in one. I have moves you’ve never even dreamed of.”
“You wish. I—”
He nearly swallowed his tongue. Annie had just walked through the door.
“Holy shit,” Finn whispered. “This really wasn’t a pity date. Good luck, brother.” Finn left the booth, but Zac couldn’t tear his eyes away from Annie.
He realized immediately he’d made multiple tactical errors. For someone known for assessing a situation and immediately recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of manifold routes forward, it was an unusual feeling. He shouldn’t have chosen here for their date.
Word had already gotten around that they were going out. People were looking at Annie and she was panicking. He should’ve picked somewhere quieter, more intimate.
And people—men—were eyeing her, finally realizing what he had known all along: she was fucking gorgeous. She downplayed her beauty all the time because she didn’t know how to deal with the attention it drew. But she wasn’t hiding it tonight.
Gorgeous.
He immediately stood and made his way to her. One, because she looked like she was going to run out the door at any second. Two, because if he waited another ten seconds, one of these other guys was going to beat him to her.
“Hi,” he murmured, reaching down to kiss her on the cheek. “You look fantastic.”
Black tank under a jean jacket, black denim miniskirt that showed off her long legs before they ended in red cowboy boots.
Zac was going to be dreaming about those for a long time.
She grimaced. “I became Wavy and Riley’s science project.”
“Thank God for science,” he murmured, taking her arm and leading her toward the table.
“One would think I wouldn’t be able to fit into one of Riley’s skirts, given that she’s four inches shorter than me.”
He glanced down at her legs again, resisting the urge to wipe under his chin in case he was drooling. “One would i
ndeed think that.”
They sat down at the booth. Her back ramrod straight. “Everybody is s-s-staring at us.”
He took her hands on the table and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “You know how small towns are: gossip for a second about something before moving on. It’s Friday, so soon everyone will be drinking and line dancing, not paying any attention to us.”
She nodded, taking a breath. “O-o-okay.” She grit her teeth, her frustration with herself obvious.
He didn’t let go of her hands. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I thought it would be good to go somewhere familiar, but I didn’t take your anxiety into account. I know you don’t like to be the center of attention.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose then out through her mouth. She repeated the process. Her hands slid out from under his and he let her go, recognizing the need for whatever ritual she was doing to calm herself. She touched her thumbs to each of her four fingers, then repeated the motion.
When her eyes opened she looked better. This was obviously a tactic she’d used before. “I actually don’t like crowds where I’m expected to mingle and make small talk or, heaven forbid, public speaking. Here, as long as the band is playing loud, and everyone is ignoring me, I-I’ll be fine.”
Her hands touched his again. He turned one over and ran his finger gently across her palm and up her wrist, smiling when she shivered slightly. “Not everyone will be ignoring you.”
He had a feeling no one would. As much as he loved the sight of her legs in that skirt and those boots, and how big her brown eyes looked with no glasses blocking half her face, not to mention her hair falling around her shoulders and beyond...he sort of wished he could have her back in her scrubs and glasses.
The waitress came over, and they ordered food and talked as best they could over the din. Zac had been here countless times to hang out with the guys. And for dates sometimes. He’d never realized how crowded it was. Or how noisy.
Probably because he’d never really been trying to make meaningful conversation with anyone.
Their burgers and fries arrived. He enjoyed watching Annie attack her food with such gusto.
She caught him staring, finished chewing, and put a hand in front of her mouth, eyes worried. “Am I eating too fast? I always do.”
“No, not at all. I’m sure working at the hospital all day builds up your appetite.”
She looked relieved that he understood. “Yes. Some days there’s no time to stop for meals. You just eat a bite or two as you can.”
“Yeah, that happened a lot when I was in the Army.”
“I thought they gave you guys three square meals a day.” She was relaxing. He would talk to her about anything she wanted for as long as she wanted if it meant her smiles were focused on him.
“A lot of times they did, at boot camp in particular, and during regular training afterward. But later...once I was a Green Beret, sitting down to enjoy cooked food was a luxury. For most of our missions, MREs were the order of the day.”
“Meals Ready to Eat,” she said. “We did a study on their nutritional value when I was in med school. Nutritionally, they’re excellent.”
“Did you taste one?”
He wanted to lean across and kiss the scrunched-up face she made. “Yes, and they were god-awful. I suppose the nutrition doesn’t count if you can’t keep them down.”
“Believe me, in most cases we didn’t mind.” On some missions they would’ve given anything to have MREs available.
She studied him but didn’t press for details. Zac appreciated it. It hadn’t take long after Linear became successful for the guys and him to realize that some women—and hell, guys like Frank—were soldier groupies. Zac’s and all the team’s Special Forces background was listed on the company website. Some people wanted to hear about the violence and danger they’d lived through. Hell, some women wanted it in their bed.
Zac had a few stories he would tell, pretty tame ones overall, mostly just to satisfy the curiosity of whoever was asking. The rest he would take to his grave.
The most popular question he got from men and women who knew he had been a Green Beret: Had he ever killed anyone?
Zac’s answer: yes. Then a change of subject.
He’d killed. Multiple times in multiple ways. And it had cost him a piece of his soul every time. It had cost all the guys a great deal to serve their country, in ways they hadn’t even understood sometimes until they’d returned home. But that was the sort of thing you didn’t talk about with civilians.
Annie raised her glass of beer. “To the times we couldn’t sit down for a meal because people were depending on us to do other things, and do them right, even when they were hard.”
It was as if she’d dug into his mind and pulled out what he’d wanted to say. He lifted his glass and clinked it against hers. “And to those still suffering.”
He thought of Dorian and how the man continued to wake up screaming—when he could get any sleep at all—from things that had happened to him in Afghanistan. And he thought of the poor rape victims Annie had helped and treated.
An ER physician was similar to a Special Forces soldier in a lot of ways. But today she deserved time off from that. They both did.
Today Annie was just a smoking hot woman he was on a date with. And he planned to enjoy her.
She must have recognized the predatory look behind his smile because she put the last bite of her burger down. “What?”
“Nothing. Just glad to be here with you. But next time I’m going to take you out to a restaurant where we don’t need to shout to hear each other.”
“Next time?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. There will very definitely be a next time.”
The band was picking up in volume, and people were starting to dance. The waitress came back and took their plates away and brought Annie another beer, but Zac switched to soda.
Annie’s eyebrow raised as she gestured to his glass with her chin. “Afraid to let your guard down?”
It was time to tell her. Past time. “I don’t really drink anymore. One beer, that’s it. No exceptions.”
She nodded. “As a physician, I completely applaud that. Although the benefits of a single glass of red wine have been proven to—”
He cut her off. “It’s been my rule for six years. Since that night with you in the hotel, Annie. Since I woke up the next morning, after hitting my head on the corner of the desk when I passed out, and realized there was an entire night of my life missing.”
“Zac...” The tension was back in her face, in her voice, but he had to press on.
“But I knew, even without remembering, I had done something horrible. I promised myself I would never be that out of control again. A few weeks ago, when I went to The Mayor’s Inn looking for you after the flood in your house, I found the mayor, and she laid into me.”
Her lips pinched together. “She shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, she should’ve, and way before last month too.”
“I don’t know what she told you, but—”
He reached over and placed his hand over her wringing ones on the table. “She didn’t have to. I stepped into that hallway and remembered. What I did, said. It was unforgivable.”
She shook her head. “You were drunk. Becky and Micah had just died.”
“You’re too kind for your own good, Annie Nichols Griffin.”
Her hands tensed even more under his. “Is that why you’re out with me? Why you’ve done all those nice things over the last month?”
He didn’t even care how she’d figured it out. “There’s nothing I could tinker with, fix, paint, or build that is ever going to change that night. I wouldn’t insult either of us by even trying in that way. But I want to make your life easier. You take care of a lot of people—”
“That’s my job.”
“—but you rarely, if ever, let someone take care of you. I’d like to be that person. And it has not
hing to do with pity or guilt. It has everything to do with the fact that you’re an amazing, beautiful woman, whether you’re in your short skirt and red boots—about to blow my damn mind, by the way—or your scrubs. Both are beautiful, sexy.”
“Zac...”
“The now me getting a chance to know the now you. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“Okay.” She paused then slowly broke into a smile. “Cyclone.”
He couldn’t hold back his groan. “Oh, hell no. I cannot believe that has gotten back to you.” It was becoming too loud to talk, so Zac stood and sat back down on her side of the booth, sliding her over with his legs.
He was crowding her space and didn’t care one damn bit. She seemed a little surprised but didn’t move away.
“I still feel like everyone is watching us,” she whispered after looking around and taking a sip of her beer.
They were drawing more attention than other people here. “Everybody is looking at the hot girl. The guys are wondering if they have any sort of chance with her.”
“Admittedly, I look a little better than I normally do at the hospital. But I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a hot girl.”
Zac put his elbow on the table and leaned on it, facing her, blocking her from the view of the rest of the bar. He grinned. “I love how you say that. As if they’re dirty words or something.”
“No. There’s nothing wrong with being attractive. I just—” She shrugged.
“You just what?”
She gestured toward herself. “This is not who I really am.”
He reached over and poked her on the nose. “Feels pretty real to me. Unless you used your huge brain to build a life-sized robot you’re controlling from home.” He slid an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. “I like this look: red boots, skirt, and mussed hair. But you know what? I like the look of Dr. Griffin in her scrubs just as much.”
She turned to face him, hair falling over her shoulder. “I don’t think—”
He closed the few inches between their faces and kissed her. Just for the briefest of seconds. And he promised himself this was the last of the brief touches. Their next kiss would be neither brief nor innocent. “How about no thinking tonight? Just feeling.” He slid toward the edge of the booth, catching her hand. “And dancing.”
