by Whitley Cox
A clunk, a sputter and finally a loud squeal and then nothing.
Her car had died.
In the middle of the snowstorm of the century, at night, in front of the man of her dreams, her lemon of a car just died.
Now all she had to wait for was the earth to open up and swallow her whole.
“Ah, crap,” he murmured, wandering over to the hood. “Pop it up. Let’s take a look.”
She did as she was told.
He bent over the engine. “You’re leaking oil. Might be a blown head gasket or something. I’m not going to be able to fix this, at least not tonight in this mess. You’re going to need to get home and then wait to call a tow truck in the morning.”
A tow truck?
She could barely afford the gas she needed to get to and from work, let alone a tow truck.
He slammed the hood. “I’ll give you a ride home. Hop in. How far do you live?”
Chewing on her bottom lip, she lifted her gaze to his slowly. “Greenwood,” she said sheepishly, waiting for his eyebrows to fly clear off his head.
Which they did. “Greenwood! What the heck are you doing at a gym all the way in Rainier Vista?”
Because of you.
“I work nearby,” she lied.
His eyebrows dropped down to their normal place. “Oh, okay. What do you do?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
Why didn’t she tell him that she was a first-year associate? Yes, she was a lawyer, but she was a mere peon. A minion. A subordinate to the overlord partners, who gave her every shit case they could. Should she elaborate?
“Oh cool. A couple buddies of mine are lawyers. Impressive. Big corner office kind of thing? Lots of first-year associates to do your grunt work?” He chuckled and shook his head.
She avoided his gaze. “Something like that.”
A shiver raced through her as another strong gust of wind plastered her wet hair to her face and neck, but the look he was giving her warmed her from the inside out. He was impressed with her. Thought she was this high-powered attorney at probably some top-tier Seattle law firm. Only half of that was true.
It was top-tier, one of the top law firms in the city, only she was the complete opposite to high-powered. She had no power. Could she have a negative charge of power in this case? Because if she could—she did. She was the electron of the lawyer world.
He pursed his lips. “You’re freezing. Let’s get going. Grab your bag and whatever else you need and hop in. I’ve got heated seats. I’ll crank ’em to the max, warm you up in no time.” He didn’t wait for her to answer or agree. Rather he simply opened up the back of her car, grabbed her gym bag and headed to his truck. “Come on, Rory, shake a leg. I still haven’t eaten dinner. I’m starving.”
Rory.
She hadn’t been called that nickname in years.
Pinching her wrist three or four times to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, she grabbed her work bag, her scarf, winter boots and knit cap, locked her car and trudged over to Zak’s enormous truck. He’d started it up again, and the manly purr of it made her nipples peak. She wasn’t wearing a bra, because why? She was supposed to just be heading home, and she was all bundled up. Now she really wished she’d worn one. The weight of her breasts was evident as her arousal from Zak’s attention and sheer proximity continued to grow.
“You need help up?” he asked, appearing behind her again as she stared at the closed door to the passenger side. “It is a bit of a climb, and you’re a bitty thing.” He paused. “I didn’t mean that as an insult. I just meant you’re on the shorter side. My daughter struggles to get in too.”
Daughter?
Without waiting for her to reply, because she was in utter shock at the revelation that he had a child, he opened the door and grabbed all her stuff, stowing it behind her seat. Then he offered her his hand and helped her climb up into the big, powerful truck. “There you go. Buckle up. The roads haven’t been plowed, so it might be a bumpy ride.”
Was he taking her all the way to Greenwood?
Where did he live?
He was in his seat and putting the truck in gear moments later. “Might take us a while to get you to Greenwood. That’s in the complete opposite direction as me.”
He pulled out onto the road, where, sure enough, it didn’t look like a plow had been by once. He paused at a red light. There were very few vehicles on the road, but those that were on the road were struggling.
He shook his head. “We live in the Pacific Northwest. We get snow. People really need to be more responsible and buy the proper tires for their vehicles. Especially when they have children in their cars.”
Children. Right.
She didn’t have proper tires on her car. They were practically bald. She had the same summer tires she’d bought the car with and hadn’t come up with money to buy new ones. She knew she was running them on borrowed time, but the bank didn’t really care about any of that. They just wanted her student loan payment on time, to hell if she died in a fiery car wreck on the side of the road because she couldn’t afford decent tires.
“Probably a good thing you didn’t drive anyway,” he stated, rumbling through the intersection after the light turned green. “Those definitely didn’t look like winter tires.”
She shook her head. “They’re not.”
“Should get some.”
He reached forward and fiddled with the dash, turning on the radio. The news erupted into the sudden awkward silence. “Multi-car pile-up on the 99. People are encouraged not to go out unless absolutely necessary. I-5 is backed up after an empty Greyhound bus slid into the median, halting traffic in both directions.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “It’s pretty, but snow is fucking deadly.”
“It is.” The ball of worry in her stomach twisted like a fist trying to bury itself into her ribcage. Would he decide she lived too far away and pull over, drop her off on the side of the road and wish her all the best in her journey home?
His lips flattened, and he pulled over as best he could, turning to face her. “I only live like ten minutes away. I’m not trying to be some creepy weirdo, but I would honestly prefer to just head home. I have a house with lots of spare bedrooms. You’re welcome to one. I can drive you home in the morning once the plows come through, but I’d really rather not be stuck on the road for the next several hours, because that’s what it’s going to take to get you home and then get myself home. With both highways closed, I’ll be forced to do back roads, and we know those are the last to get plowed.”
Spend the night in Zak’s house?
She reached over and pinched her wrist again.
His kissable lips twisted. “So? What do you say? I’m not the world’s best cook, but I don’t burn anything anymore. The house is clean, warm.”
Yes, please!
But she tempered her enthusiasm because she didn’t want him to think she was some obsessed stalker freak. She lifted one shoulder. “Sure, thank you. I mean if it’s not too much trouble.”
He grinned, threw the truck back into gear and pulled out onto the road once again. “Not too much trouble at all. I’ll be sure to have you home for Christmas, I promise.”
She shrugged again. “Home, away, doesn’t really matter. I have no plans for Christmas.”
He nearly drove off the road. “No plans for Christmas?”
“Nope. None. My parents are back east.”
“Any siblings?”
A red-hot poker of grief stabbed her heart at the mention of siblings.
“My brother, uh … he’s no longer with us.”
“I’m sorry.”
She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”
At the mention of her dead brother, the atmosphere in the truck shifted, and she didn’t like it. A weird fog hung between them now, a distance and disconnect that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Anyway, um, all my family is on the other side of the country, and besides, even if they were closer, I’m too busy wit
h work to go home or take any time off.” Can’t afford it either.
Zak’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as he took a tight corner. “What were you going to do then? Spend Christmas with friends?”
She snorted and glanced out the window at the falling flakes. “What friends?”
What friends indeed? She hadn’t had any time to make friends since she started work. All her law school friends had moved to various law firms across the country, and her co-workers were just as slammed with work as she was. They muttered hellos and goodbyes in the break room, but they were too deep in first-year associate zombie mode to socialize.
She worked eighty- to ninety-hour weeks and spent any free time she had at the gym gawking at Zak or poring over files at home. She was determined to make junior partner by the time she was thirty-five, so that only left her with five years to prove herself to her firm. She needed to eat, breathe and sleep the law if she had any hope of getting ahead, paying off her student loan debts and taking care of her parents.
“You don’t have any friends?” His tone wasn’t so much accusatory or judgmental as it was simply full of surprise.
She bit her lip. “Not really.”
“There isn’t anybody in the entire city who was willing to welcome you into their home on Christmas?”
Way to drive that dagger deeper there, buddy.
“Nope,” she finally said, hoping her own tone came off as carefree and unbothered, even though deep down it pained her immensely that she had no one. No village, no sisterhood. Nothing like what she’d had back in law school. Friends she could turn to, rely on, and who she knew always had her back. She shrugged. “I planned to work.”
He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “That won’t do. I can’t have that. Nobody deserves to be alone on Christmas. You’ll spend it with me.”
What!
“I mean me and my friends. I don’t have my kids this Christmas.” His mouth tightened as if that was a sore subject. “I’m having friends over for turkey dinner. You’ll come too.”
Her brain hurt.
Kids. As in plural.
“You have kids?” she asked, needing more information and not caring how she got it or how she sounded.
“Two. Aidan is ten. Tia is eight.”
Two kids. Ten and eight. How old did that make him?
“Are you married?”
“Not anymore.” Bitterness laced his tone.
“I don’t have the greatest track record with relationships either,” she muttered.
He gave her the side-eye, his mouth flattening into a thin line. “No?”
She shook her head, hoping he’d leave it at that.
Thankfully, he did.
“She’s got them this year,” he went on. “She and Craig are taking them to Disneyland. It was supposed to be my year, but Craig surprised them with tickets. Told the kids before they asked me, so how could I be the dick and say no?”
“I’m sorry.”
He rolled his eyes, then turned back to face the road. “Thanks. And sorry, I didn’t mean to lay that on you. I’m just still pretty pissed off about the whole thing.”
“I can imagine.”
She was still trying to come to terms with the fact that he was a father.
Did that turn her off?
The more she thought about it, the more it most certainly did not. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea that he was a dad. A sexy single dad. She could just imagine he was probably a super hands-on father too. He just seemed that way.
Maybe she was completely wrong, because she knew absolutely nothing about the man, but she didn’t get the deadbeat dad vibe from him. She didn’t even get the joint-custody, limited-visitation dad vibe from him. And she knew that vibe well. She worked in family law and saw a lot of parents—mothers and fathers—use their children as bargaining chips and try to weasel out of responsibilities.
“Almost there,” he said, turning down another road into another subdivision. A rather fancy subdivision.
“What do you do for work?” she asked. These houses were nice. Not mansion-size, but nice. Big and beautiful, with manicured yards (when they weren’t covered in snow), matching address plates on all the homes, and those fancy ornate street lamps instead of the customary city-issued ones like everywhere else. You needed money to live here.
He turned to face her. “I thought you knew.”
She shook her head. “How would I know?”
“I own the gym. I own all the Club Z Fitness facilities around town.”
Her jaw dropped as they pulled into the driveway of probably the most beautiful house on the block. “Shut the front door.”
3
Zak snorted as he pulled into his two-car garage. “No, you shut the front door. You seriously had no clue that I was the owner?”
“Nope. Didn’t even know you worked there.”
He turned off the truck. “Well, on the days I don’t have my kids, I work long hours, then work out in the evenings, which is when you’re there, I guess. Do the boss-man stuff during the day. Bounce around to all the locations too. But that one is closest to home, so it’s where I work out. When I have the kids, I work out wherever I can when they’re in school or in my home gym.” He opened his door and slammed it, wandering around to her side to help grab her stuff. She was cute, that was for sure. He’d noticed her a few times at the gym. She seemed really shy, kept to herself. But over the last six months, he had noticed that she’d increased her free weights, and her form on her squats and lunges had improved.
You’ve more than just noticed her. You’ve been watching her.
Had he?
Then why didn’t he know her name?
He grabbed her stuff from the back and led her around the front of the truck toward the door leading to the house. “Kick your shoes off here,” he said, doing the same. “Don’t want to track snow in. We’ll hang our coats up over the heater too. They’ll be dry in no time.”
She followed suit. “Makes sense,” she murmured. “Thanks again for offering to put me up. I’m sure I could have found a cab home eventually.”
He made a dismissive face and continued on through the door into the house. The heat was on, as were the lights. Ah, modern technology at its finest. “Nonsense. You’d be waiting for hours for a cab. Cost you a bloody fortune to get home. I have this huge, empty house. I’d be a prick not to offer you a room.”
My room …
Fuck, where did that thought come from?
They made their way into the kitchen. His oven was already preheated, so he just had to pull his meat and veg from the fridge and toss it in.
As he grabbed the casserole dish from the fridge, he was halted by the Christmas picture Tia had drawn him. It was stuck beneath a magnet of Santa Claus holding a San Camanez Island beer. She’d worked so hard on that picture. Sat at the kitchen table for nearly two hours with her head down and colored pencils all spread out. She was quite the little artist too.
“Did one of your kids draw that?” Aurora asked behind him.
He smiled, and his heart tightened in his chest at the thought of his kids, at the thought of spending Christmas without them.
“Yeah, Tia. She loves art.” He turned to face her. “Both kids do. They get that from their mother, because I can barely scribble a stick man.”
Her bright smile warmed him. “I’m sure they inherited a bunch of other amazing qualities from you.”
His own smile was small and tight. But he liked that she was interested in his life, in his kids. As he went about unwrapping the casserole dish, he began to speak. “Two weeks ago, Tia and Aiden helped me set up and decorate the Christmas tree in the living room.”
She craned her body around to look into the living room from where she was now perched on the bar stool. “I can sort of see it,” she said. “I’ll go take a peek in a minute.”
He nodded, appreciating her interest. “Then Tia made red and green paper cha
ins that nearly stretch clear around the earth, not just from the kitchen to the living room.”
Aurora’s laughter filled the kitchen, making the ache in his chest just a touch lighter.
“We also made a popcorn garland for the tree, and I brought out some of their old ornaments that they made and decorated when they were in preschool.”
“My mom still has some of mine that I made when I was in preschool. She offered to send them out to me, but I didn’t put up a tree, so there wasn’t any point.”
Zak didn’t have a lot in the way of decorations—most of those had gone with Loni—but he wanted to make his house festive for his kids. Wanted to make it feel like a normal family Christmas.
He opened up the oven door and slid the casserole dish onto the rack. “A fundraiser at their school for Aiden’s band had him peddling real cedar bough wreaths.”
“Is that what that smell is?” she asked. He could hear her inhale deeply behind him, then exhale and hum softly. “I thought it was just a very fragrant Christmas tree.”
He turned to face her. “It’s both. I ended up just cutting Aiden a check. Now I have about five of the things around the house and on every door. House smells like the deep woods.”
She shrugged. “I like it. And besides, you did it for your kid. That’s what matters, right?”
Holy fuck, she got it.
He nodded vigorously. “Yeah. It’s all for my kids.”
Everything I do, everything I am, is for them.
And he was supposed to have them this year. He was supposed to be with them.
Fucking Craig.
This was going to be his first Christmas away from them since they were born. It just didn’t feel right. It didn’t make sense for him not to be with them on Christmas morning.
“This must be tough, being away from them for the holiday,” she said quietly.
His chin trembled, and he sniffed, unable to do anything but nod out of fear that if he spoke, he might crumple to the ground and let the devastation take over. He turned away from her. He didn’t want her to see him so vulnerable, so weak. Because his kids were his biggest weakness. His Achilles heel. But they were also where he found the greatest amount of strength. Where he found his peace and his purpose.
