Keep On Loving you

by Christie Ridgway

  She welcomed him home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ZAN CAME AWAKE SLOWLY, his body heavy, his mind muzzy. Sleep had often been sought and caught in fits and starts as he traveled the world, but now he knew he was swimming out of a deep, long sleep. Well-being was as present as the blankets covering his naked body.

  Turning his head, he dragged a second pillow close and buried his face there.

  It smelled like Mac. Rose petals and winter and her glowing skin.

  Memory returned, and his eyes opened, taking in the master bedroom at his grandfather’s house. The empty place in the big bed. The light coming through the windows that said it was midmorning.

  Shit.

  She’d left him without a goodbye. Buried in layers of somnolence, he’d lost his opportunity to say something about their night together.

  Thank you. You’re blow-my-mind sexy. More, please.

  He’d held her for a night, but he suspected, like a snowflake caught in his warm bare hand, she’d already slipped through his fingers.

  Shit!

  Then he heard noise come from the floor above. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling. Either raccoons had invaded, or a person was moving around up there.

  Jackknifing up, he glanced around the rooms. There were his slacks, carefully slung over a chair. His boxer briefs folded onto the seat.

  Mac.

  But there was no sign of her dress, the only thing she’d been wearing when they’d reached his room.

  Strip hide-and-seek, he thought, smiling to himself as he left the bed and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. Only that girl.

  She was wrapping knickknacks in newspaper in one of the small third-floor rooms that held a table piled with a variety of items he’d gathered from other spaces. Leaning on the jamb, he let his lazy gaze drink her in. She wore a pair of derelict jeans, sneakers and a faded navy sweatshirt with a sagging sleeve due to the rip where it attached at the shoulder.

  The slice of skin revealed there made his dick twitch.

  He’d tasted the bare flesh there...and everywhere. Roses and winter. Clean and pure and velvety and hot.

  Mac. His Mac.

  More, please.

  But he didn’t dare say it out loud, because the new Mac was also skittish and prickly and suspicious. Trust issues.

  Though she hadn’t seemed to hold anything back the night before.

  “Your eyeballs are going to dry out if you don’t blink,” she said, her voice teasing, her gaze on the porcelain bird she was enclosing in paper. Then she looked up, smiled.

  He grinned at her warm, open expression. Maybe the old Mac was back. “Sorry, just glad to find you here. I woke up and thought I’d missed you.”

  “We have a deal, don’t we? You’re paying me to help you pack.”

  “Where’d you get the clothes?” he asked, strolling into the room, needing to get closer.

  “I had one of my employees drop off a few things I keep at the office. It’s a nosy part of the world we live in. Nobody needs to know I didn’t go home last night.”

  He was near enough to smell her now, and one breath brought it all back to him. His skin rippled and he felt his dick twitch again.

  She’d been magnificent. Open and uninhibited and as demanding as he was. Natural, he thought again. Free.

  He liked to think it was because he made her feel safe. Because he made her forget her “trust issues.”

  “Mac,” he said, his voice low.

  She looked up. “Hmm?”

  “Just Mac.” He sifted his fingers through her hair, watched her smile. That was open, too. “I like to say your name.”

  “You used to tease me I had a boy’s name,” she said.

  His thumb ran along the edge of her delicate ear and he watched pink color wash over her cheeks. “I was loathsome.”

  “I loved it,” she confessed. “Any bit of attention you would give me.”

  Leaning in, he kissed her ear, then tugged on the lobe with his teeth. “What could I do to convince you to let me give you more than a bit of attention right now?”

  One hand clutched his T-shirt at his side and she pressed her forehead to his chest. “Tilda’s picking me up any minute. It’s Monday, I have houses to clean.”

  He hoped that was regret he heard in her voice.

  As if on cue, the doorbell rang below. Mac moved away, heading in the direction of downstairs. Before she reached the hallway, she paused. “By the way, I finished boxing up your ‘Keep’ pile. It took twelve cartons.”

  He groaned. “What the hell am I going to do with all that? I’ve got to get things cleared out for the home to sell, but I don’t want to drive around with those boxes in the back of my car.”

  She wrapped one hand around the doorjamb. “There’s a public storage building just outside of the village. You could rent some space.”

  “Naah. I’ll have to find some place to store them, but I’m not staying around here long enough to make it worth that—since I won’t be coming back.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he stared up at the ceiling. “You think maybe Brett might temporarily help out a friend?”

  When she didn’t respond, he aimed his gaze her way.

  She still stood in the doorway, unmoving.

  “Mac?” An icy sensation slipped down his spine. “What’s wrong?”

  A second sounding of the doorbell goosed her into moving. “Have to go!”

  He followed her fleeing form. “See you later?”

  The slam of the front door was the unsatisfactory answer. He’d wanted an affirmative. He’d wanted to nail her down to more—more of them together—before she left.

  Fine, he thought, wandering in the direction of the kitchen and coffee. He had the rest of the day to figure out how exactly to make that happen. She wasn’t going to retreat behind her thorny shell again.

  Later, going through his pants pockets reminded him he had things of his own to do. So after coffee he headed into the village of Blue Arrow Lake. Skeeter Jenks had a garage with a two-car bay off a side street from which he conducted his car cleaning business. Zan found the man inside a tiny office and he broke into a grin when the bells on the door rang out.

  “You made it!” Skeeter said, holding out both arms, then reaching forward for a handshake.

  “With a forty percent discount, why would you doubt it?” Zan asked.

  “I don’t know. Big wedding last night. Thought you might forget.”

  “Nope.” He glanced around. “Good deal you have going here, Skeeter.”

  He beamed. “It was actually my mom’s idea, since she made me clean her car every Saturday. She said I was good at it, which might be the only thing she said I was ever good at besides causing her grief.” His smile didn’t dim.

  “Cool,” Zan said.

  “Yep. Drivers can drop their cars here in town, but I also send out guys for a mobile detailing service. That’s popular in the summer. We drive to the big estates and can take care of a few cars at a time.”

  “That’s smart.”

  Skeeter shrugged. “It’s what we do around here. Find ways to make a buck off you rich dudes. No offense.”

  “None taken. I understand.”

  “You would. It’s the same kind of thing that Brett Walker does. Mac, too. She sure looked pretty last night.” Skeeter wiggled his brows.

  “Can’t disagree.”

  “Gave folks a start, I’d say, to see you two with your heads together again. Like old times.”

  Like how Zan wanted it to be in present times, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d lost an opportunity back at the house this morning. Trust issues.

  “Speaking of weddings...” Zan cleared his throat. “What do you know about Mac’s, uh, engageme
nts?”

  “Three of ’em,” Skeeter said, nodding.

  “Do you know why they ended?”

  “Not me,” Skeeter said. “Maybe if she ever asked me to clean her car, I would. People leave the most telltale things. I found a pair of extra-small panties in a guy’s car when his wife was definitely a size large. Underneath a married lady’s seat I pulled out a love note signed by her boss.”

  Had those men cheated on Mac? Who would be stupid enough to do that?

  I don’t know, genius, an inner voice answered. You left her for an on-and-off case of dysentery and ten years of itinerant travel.

  He couldn’t have stayed, damn it. Every day had made him want to wrap himself tighter in someone else’s family, someone else’s birthright, while his had been lost so long ago. It had been self-preservation against any more loss.

  Pushing that thought away, he left his car with Skeeter and walked into the village proper to collect his half-dozen doughnuts. A smattering of people were seated at the small bistro tables in the bakery and there was a short line at the counter. He occupied himself by staring at the glass display cases filled with croissants and crullers and cupcakes until it was his turn to greet the counter lady and present her with his coupon.

  She hailed the baker, who came to the counter from the back, her apron dusted with flour. “Zan! I hoped you’d stop by.”

  He smiled. “You knew I would. Doughnuts are my favorite, Mrs. Tiller.”

  Reaching for a white bag, she smiled at him. “It’s nice to know some things don’t change. I saw you talking to Mac Walker at the wedding.”

  She clearly wanted to know the way the wind blew on that front.

  He had his own intelligence to gather.

  I’ve been engaged. Three times, to three separate men.

  Trust issues.

  “It’s been great catching up with all the Walkers,” he said. “I’ve been out of touch for a long time.”

  Mrs. Tiller got a gleam in her eye. “Long enough for that girl to get engaged three times.”

  Bingo.

  “Yeah. About that.” He made a big show of opening the bag she handed to him and lifting it to his nose for an appreciative inhale. “I’m not learning too much on that score. I hope my old friend didn’t get entangled with bad guys.”

  Actually, the more he thought about it, he hoped they were permanently incarcerated for petty crimes and misdemeanors. He pictured them with missing teeth, lanky hair and aunts he couldn’t tell apart from the uncles. Growing up, they’d kept skunks as pets. Now locked up, they’d never bother Mac again.

  “Every girl loves herself at least one bad boy,” Mrs. Tiller said.

  Um...he’d been Mac’s bad boy! He had the pranks and the speeding tickets and the scars to prove it.

  But you left her, genius, that taunting inner voice piped up. Remember?

  His fist crumpled the top of the paper sack. “So they...”

  “Are perfectly nice young men who were devoted to her,” the baker said with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry on that score.”

  Shit. He didn’t like the sound of that, either, as he pictured medals on burly chests, ticker tape parades, solutions to world hunger.

  “But she never married one of them.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” She smiled. “Maybe they were intimidated by the Mac and Zan legend and didn’t try hard enough to keep her.”

  You didn’t try at all, unless postcards count.

  It shamed him to admit now, that while he’d thought of her 117 times when mailing off his missives, and while he’d commissioned that doll with her image in mind, he’d not thought about her finding someone else. Not seriously. Not until he’d seen her that night at Brett’s wedding reception had he let himself consider her growing older and even more beautiful.

  Selfish asshole that he was, he’d always held close that image of her as the girl she’d been. His girl.

  Munching on doughnuts, he wandered out of the bakery and along the village’s main street. The day was cold, but the sky was a bright, optimistic blue. Still, it felt strange to be stopped several times—just as he’d been at the wedding—and greeted like a long-missed relative.

  Unlike at the wedding, the “folding in” didn’t make him worry today. Not even when a couple of others managed to work into conversation the Mac and Zan legend.

  He started to like that they were remembered that way. That he was remembered as one half of something with her.

  After lunch at the deli, he visited almost every shop, steering clear of only the girlie places. At the drugstore, he perused the rack of postcards and on a whim bought one that showed a summer view of Blue Arrow Lake. He’d keep it for himself, he decided, as he’d be gone by that season.

  He’d be gone before spring.

  His stomach churned and he decided doughnuts and pastrami were not a good mix.

  Finally, he wandered back to Skeeter’s and picked up his car. The guy’s mom was right, he did good work. The thing was pristine inside and out. Even though it was a rental, Zan was glad he’d gone for the wash and detailing and handed over a massive tip. Then, on his way back to his grandfather’s, another whim prompted him to drive by the Maids by Mac office.

  He didn’t expect to see her there. She’d said she had houses to clean.

  But as he crawled past, he saw movement through the window. Without even thinking about it, he knifed into a parking space and headed for the door, more, please at the forefront of his mind.

  He walked into an empty space that smelled like burned coffee. The door made a sound as it closed behind him, and Mac must have heard it, because through a doorway in the rear he heard her call out.

  “Be there in just a minute! I forgot and left an inch of coffee on the burner again,” she said, in a way he knew it must be a frequent occurrence.

  He smiled, shaking his head a little. It was still hard to accept that Mac Walker had become a coffee drinker.

  She came into view, a clear but dripping carafe in her hands. Upon seeing him, her feet stuttered to a halt.

  So did his heart.

  Weird, because they hadn’t parted that many hours ago. But it came to him like a full-body slam, her sweet curves, even in something simple like jeans and a T-shirt, the shining fall of her dark hair, those dark lashes that surrounded her pale blue eyes. Suddenly he regretted not turning all the lights on in his bedroom the night before. He should have done that. Then he could have absorbed that face and those eyes as he slid inside her. He could have read all that she felt when the two of them were joined.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, moving to the coffee machine on a back table.

  He noted the Russian dolls he’d brought her sat in a line on the battered desk by her computer. His heart started beating again, even though he didn’t like that odd, wooden expression on her face.

  She didn’t look happy to see him, while she’d stopped his heart.

  Hell.

  He approached the counter separating them. “How’s your day going?” Maybe something had gone wrong and that look on her face had nothing to do with him at all.

  “Fine,” she said, glancing toward her desk. “Paperwork for hours.”

  His brows shot up. “I thought you left this morning because you needed to clean houses.”

  A flush turned her cheeks pink. “Houses, paperwork. All the same. I needed to work.”

  Or get away from me.

  But she’d smiled at him this morning, damn it, when he’d found her on the third floor. She hadn’t been this stiff automaton who couldn’t even look him in the eye. There’d not been a hint of morning-after remorse.

  Fiddling with a stack of papers on her desk now, she threw him a quick glance. “Uh, what did you do?”

  “H
ung out in the village for quite a while,” he said. “But now that I’m here, I’m hoping I can convince you to go to dinner with me tonight.”

  “I don’t think so, Zan.”

  All right, now he was certain something was off with her. Not because she refused him, but because she did it as if she had a poker up her ass and was sucking on a lemon.

  And still, she looked beautiful.

  Inhaling a deep breath, he leaned his elbows on the counter. “Do you have other plans?”

  He could see her thinking over her answer.

  “Dinner, sweetheart,” he said. “I feel like steak, okay? We’ll go to that place with all the antler chandeliers and the old boating stuff hanging on the walls.”

  Her mouth twitched and she darted another look at him. “That describes, like, fifteen places around here.”

  Her near-smile cheered him. “Then we won’t have any trouble finding it.”

  Pursing her lips, she ran a hand through her hair. He decided to change the subject before she found a way to say no. “I heard a lot about the wedding from people today.”

  She met his gaze, clearly interested in that subject. “Yeah?”

  “Verdict is, Shay was gorgeous, her husband handsome and the entire wedding party glamorous.”

  “We were kind of glamorous,” Mac said, appearing pleased.

  “I’ll say.” He kept his gaze on her face. “I heard a lot of talk about us, too.”

  Her eyes widened. “Us?”

  “Remember when you grabbed me and towed me away from the reception?”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “People noticed. Now the grapevine is buzzing about the Mac and Zan legend.” He shook his head. “It surprises me how they’re still attached to that.”

  “A good reason not to go out for dinner together,” she said quickly.

  Shit. He’d stepped right into that, hadn’t he?

  “I don’t care what people say. I care about taking you to dinner. I care about letting you know how much I enjoyed last night. How much I want more nights just like it.”

  She’d gone stiff again, her gaze trained on the stack of papers.