ZANE - THE WILD ONE

by Bronwyn Jameson

  "Then let me clear your vision. Julia doesn't bring men home. She doesn't do one-night stands. She's looking for a husband, for heaven's sake, not a good time in the sack! "

  "Then the Lion's a damn fool place to be looking."

  "She went to the Lion? Oh, man." Kree closed her eyes for a moment before muttering, "She actually took me up on that frog-hunting business."

  "Frog-hunting?"

  "It's a private joke."

  All kinds of misgivings knotted Zane's gut, and he knew they wouldn't leave him alone until he found out what was going on here. Dipping down to Kree's height, he took hold of her upper arms and looked right into her eyes.

  "Why did she go to the Lion?"

  "Temporary insanity?"

  Zane tightened his grip.

  "I was only half joking." She blew out a ragged sigh. "I guess she was feeling … I don't know … like she needed validation as a woman."

  "That makes about as much sense as the frog business. What's going on, Kree?"

  "Shouldn't you be asking Julia?"

  "I'm asking you."

  "Look, she just found out that her ex is having a baby, so she's feeling a bit vulnerable, okay?"

  Her ex. The man she'd been married to. Despite a growing chorus of don't-go-there's, he had to ask. "She still loves him?"

  "Hardly."

  Intense relief silenced his misgivings and encouraged him to pursue the next thought. If she didn't love this guy… "Why is the baby such an issue?"

  "I'm going to regret this." Kree rolled her eyes. "Who am I kidding? I regret this already, but you're not going to let up on me, are you?"

  "No."

  "That's what I thought." She took an audible breath, and Zane eased his grip, then ran his hands down her arms soothingly, encouraging her to continue. "She did love Paul at one time. She loved him enough to want a baby with him—to want it more than anything—but he sweet-talked her into waiting, even though it damn near broke her heart. And now, before the ink's dry on the marriage license, he's got his new wife pregnant. How do you imagine that made Julia feel?"

  Zane didn't want to even start imagining how Julia felt. Safer to concentrate on how he felt. Which was like the dumbest kind of sap for thinking she wanted him, when anyone with a healthy dose of testosterone would have done. He'd actually thought she'd want him hanging around in the morning, bringing her breakfast in bed, for Pete's sake!

  Hadn't he learned anything from Claire Heaslip?

  Keeping the cold edge of bitterness from his voice proved pretty much impossible. "She should be feeling lucky she didn't have that baby, or right now she'd be coping with junior on her own."

  "Don't go comparing Julia with our mother," Kree said gently. "She's custom made for the role. Her child wouldn't grow up like we did."

  That went without saying, but every kid deserved a crack at two parents—given that they weren't total screw-ups like his and Kree's. "Yeah, well, there isn't any child, so how about we drop it?"

  His sister's eyes narrowed suddenly. "You were careful, right?"

  Zane rocked back on his heels. He couldn't believe what she was asking, couldn't believe she had the hide to question him on birth control. Couldn't believe that he was reliving—vividly—that one unguarded minute in the predawn hours… Less than a minute before he came fully awake, before sanity prevailed.

  He felt heat in his cheekbones, heard it in his voice. "That's none of your business."

  "You're right. I'm sorry, Zane."

  "Yeah, you and me both."

  He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but it was too late to take them back. Understanding already softened Kree's expression. "Oh, Zane. What have you gone and done?"

  What had he gone and done? Self-disgust made him answer more harshly than he intended. "I got myself laid, okay? Something I haven't done often enough lately."

  Kree's eyes widened in shock. Tough. She had started this, so she could hear him out.

  "What did you expect to hear? That we fell—"

  "That's enough, Zane."

  Kree spoke right over the top of him; her eyes looked right past him. An uneasy sensation tickled the back of his neck. Hell.

  Julia was already backing away. She wanted to keep on retreating all the way to her bedroom, where she could quietly lie down and die. But he turned, their eyes met, and pride held her firm, made her lift her chin and forced some kind of smile to her lips.

  "Sorry if I interrupted," she said as she pushed the screen door open and came out onto the veranda. Focusing on Kree made it marginally easier to fake a breezy attitude. "I heard voices when I woke and wondered who was here. I thought you were going straight from Tagg's to work."

  "Yeah, well, we had a disagreement, and I decided he could get his own breakfast." Kree shrugged casually. Her relationships always traveled rocky ground. She always bounced back. "Speaking of which, I'm starved. Anyone care to join me for breakfast?"

  Her concerned gaze met Julia's and asked the question she hadn't voiced. Are you okay? Julia hoped her smile looked more natural than it felt. "I'd love a cup of tea."

  "Zane?"

  "Another time. I've got work to do."

  "At seven on a Saturday?"

  "That's right."

  Julia chanced a glance in his direction and connected with a flat, cold expression she felt to her marrow. Rubbing her hands up and down her arms didn't help. She turned on her heel and would have walked back inside if he hadn't stopped her with a lightning-fast hand on her arm.

  Lightning-fast. With unerring precision, her gaze slid to the tattoo exposed by his unbuttoned shirt, and she recalled the frisson of foreboding she'd felt the first time she'd seen it. She should have heeded that warning. Zap, and he's gone.

  "Can I have a word?"

  "Would that word be goodbye?" she asked with a cynical half smile.

  Something stirred in the tricky depths of his eyes before they flicked past her, presumably to Kree. "Beat it, short stuff."

  Kree muttered something unintelligible, at least to Julia. She was too busy marshalling her defenses. She closed her eyes, heard the door smack shut behind Kree, felt nothing but the fraught atmosphere that closed around her, dragging the air from her lungs. And when she took a necessary breath, it was filled with memories.

  Because he stood too close, shirt unbuttoned, skin bare. Oh, this was too unfair!

  On the brink of hearing his so-long-it's-been-fun monologue, all she could think about was leaning into his chest. Wrapping her arms around his waist. She wrapped them around herself instead.

  "Are you cold?"

  "No." Then, hating her own dishonesty, she amended the answer. "Perhaps a little."

  "You want to move into the sun?"

  "Why not?"

  At the far end of the veranda, where the early morning sun burst through the foliage in fragmented pools of light, she lifted her face. Felt the gentle warmth touch her eyelids and waited for it to seep into her flesh. It didn't. All she felt was the confusing intensity of his gaze, the weight of the lengthening silence, and she couldn't stand it any longer. "What is it you wanted to say?"

  "Why did you go to the Lion last night?"

  She pushed her hands into the pockets of her robe. Feigned a careless shrug. "I felt like going out."

  "Cut the crap, Julia. You've never been in that bar in your life."

  He employed the same blunt tone she'd overheard from the hallway, and it reminded her of his words. As if they'd ever stopped whirring through her brain. I got myself laid, okay? Something I haven't done often enough lately.

  A humorless smile twisted her lips. "Perhaps I was looking for the same thing as you were."

  "Kree said you're looking for a husband. That's hardly the same thing. Marriage isn't top of my priority list."

  Julia felt herself flush. "I'm not asking you to marry me. That's not what I wanted from you."

  "What did you want? That baby you're so keen on?"

  Julia
pressed a hand to her temple. "I can't believe she told you that."

  "Don't blame Kree. I pressured her, so she told me you were bent out of shape about your ex's baby."

  Comprehension finally dawned. "And you think I deliberately set out to pick you up, that I slept with you because I wanted to get pregnant?"

  "Yes, I do think you deliberately set out to pick me up. What I'm trying to establish is why."

  "Obviously because I'm so bent out of shape!"

  He blew out an exasperated breath before turning away to stare into the middle distance. And, God help her, she felt herself drifting closer, lifting a hand toward the stiff column of his back, forming the words to tell him … to tell him what? That she'd slept with him because she couldn't resist? That she'd experienced something unprecedented, something huge and wonderful? That she'd woken this morning thinking her world had changed?

  He turned abruptly, fixed her with a hard, silvery glare, and her hand fell ineffectually back to her side.

  "Why me, Julia? Do I look like the kind of man who likes being used? Do girls like you get a kick out of suckering us lower life forms?"

  Beyond the sharp bite of his voice, deeper than the angry color that traced his high cheekbones all the way to the corners of his eyes, she felt his hurt. Knew she had to reach out to him, to explain how it had really been.

  "I didn't use you, Zane," she said evenly. "I went to the Lion because I wanted you."

  "Because you wanted sex with me."

  She lifted one shoulder in an uncomfortable half shrug. How could she explain that it was more than that?

  He didn't give her a chance. He fired one last bitter salvo—"Then I guess we both got what we wanted"—before he turned and strode away.

  * * *

  She didn't intend to leave it at that, but he needed time to cool down, and she needed time to assemble her tumultuous thoughts. Her morning shift at Gracey's seemed endless, and Bill's shop was closed when Julia got there. The teenage pump attendant hadn't seen Zane. "But I only started at eleven. Bill's out back having lunch. He might've seen him."

  Julia picked her way up the path beside the garage and knocked on the door of the residence. Waited a few seconds, then knocked more loudly.

  "Hold your horses. I hear you. No need to put—" Bill stopped complaining when he swung the door open and saw her on the stoop. "Julia."

  "I'm sorry to disturb you. Grant said I'd find you here."

  Bill waved her apology aside. "You got car trouble?"

  "No. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something else. If you don't mind?"

  "I don't mind someone to talk to besides myself. Come on in." He stepped aside and waved her past. "You want coffee? A cold drink?"

  "No, I'm fine, thank you." Julia followed him into a tiny living room crammed with mismatched furniture.

  "Have a seat."

  Bill scooped an armful of newspapers and magazines from an ancient two-seater, and Julia sat. She shifted away from a protruding spring before sinking lopsidedly into the sofa's depths.

  "So, what did you want to talk about?" Bill lowered his lanky frame into an armchair.

  "I'm looking for Zane, actually. I don't suppose you know where I'd find him?"

  Bill checked the wall clock. "At the rate he drives, you'd find him 'round about two hundred thirty miles down the road."

  "He's gone?"

  "That he is. Called in on his way out of town, just so I'd know."

  "That was sudden."

  Bill humphed his agreement. "That's Zane. Sudden."

  Oh, yes, Julia silently agreed. Suddenly there, turning her world upside down. Suddenly gone, without setting it right. Not that he hadn't warned her. Twice he'd told her he was leaving. She simply hadn't allowed the reality to sink in.

  "My own fault, I suppose, for teaching him everything I know. Turned him into a damn fine grease monkey—almost as good as me," Bill ruminated. "Stands to reason there's always someone wanting to give him a job."

  "Is that why he left? For work?"

  "Some mate had him lined up to fill in when he took leave. That's how he came to have a week to fill here."

  "Oh." And with that one soft sound Julia's hopes dissolved. He hadn't left suddenly because of an emergency, he'd left according to plans made before he arrived in town. He must have known that he was leaving today, yet he hadn't bothered to say goodbye.

  "Can't say I won't miss his help around here."

  "Perhaps you should offer him a job," she suggested dryly.

  "Don't you think I haven't tried? Boy won't even consider it. Town's got too many bad memories."

  "Because of the trouble he got into?"

  "Which particular trouble?" Bill shook his head. "If you mean the vandalism thing, he got over that real quick when he started working here. Paid off the damage and never looked back. But as for that business with … what was her name? Heaslip girl, family built that pink pile of bricks up on the hill…"

  "Claire."

  Bill scratched his chest as he considered the name. "Claire, you reckon? A real piece of work, that one."

  According to rumor, she had played Zane against a law student from one of the town's upwardly mobile families, and Zane had lost. In a notorious altercation outside that pink pile of bricks, he'd allegedly punched out the college boy and Claire's councilor father, although the story had likely been embellished in the retelling.

  Aware that Bill was watching her oddly, that questions were starting to form on his mobile face, she boosted herself out of the butt-consuming sofa. "I'd best be going. Thanks for your time."

  "Wish I could have been more help," Bill said as he escorted her to the door.

  "Well, you could hardly produce him out of your hip pocket." She lifted a hand in farewell and hurried off down the path.

  Her pace didn't slow until she had fetched Mac from the yard and covered the three miles to the riverside reserve in record time. Then she forced herself to sit, to take a few deep breaths, to evaluate the intense disappointment churning through her.

  It was irrational to feel let down. She had invited him into her home and into her bed knowing he was leaving; she shouldn't have expected anything more. Now he was gone from town, gone from her life, and there was no place for disappointment. Or regret. He had been an amazing interlude, an unforgettable experience, and she should be feeling … grateful.

  Yes, grateful.

  Because when he focused all that hard-edged sexuality on her, when he looked at her as if she were the sun at the center of his universe, when he loved her with such single-minded purpose, he had made her feel things she'd never felt before. Such as pure unadulterated feminine power.

  She lifted her head and refused to go any further down the list of things he'd made her feel. Strong was enough, especially when she'd been weak for so long.

  All her life trying to please others. Her parents, Paul, Chantal. Bending to their wills, their wants, because it was easier than standing up for herself. Well, last night she had gone after what she wanted, and if she could do it once, then why not again? Only next time she would choose something less ephemeral than a one-night stand, something with more purpose and more future.

  After her divorce she'd dreamed of starting her own business—a cottage industry of some kind, or a nursery. Perhaps even a garden design or landscaping business. But it had remained a dream because she'd never had the strength of character to do anything about it.

  Why not now? Why not at least attempt to turn the dream into reality?

  It would take some planning, some time, and, yes, a little strength of character, but it might also prove more achievable than her only other post-divorce goal. Because after last night, after Zane O'Sullivan, she had a very strong feeling that all Chantal's potential husbands would seem even more like frogs.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  «^»

  Julia kicked off her shoes and slumped against the front door she had just closed at her back.
Despite its solid support, it took an effort to hold herself upright, to stop herself sliding into a heap on the floor. Once down there, she might never find the strength to haul herself back up again—that was how weighty and enervated she felt. The first she could blame on Chantal's Easter Sunday feast, the second had become her regular condition, but she was learning to live with it.

  For the past seven weeks she had felt tired all the time. Too tired to do much about those dreams she'd gotten all fired up about the day Zane left town. Oh, she had tried, but between fitful sleeping and a punishing work schedule, she had managed to exhaust her body, her mind and her enthusiasm.

  The work schedule she could justify. Extra shifts, especially at weekends, meant a fatter paycheque. Already the savings account for her prospective business had doubled. And she didn't mind working long hours, more days. Since Kree had suddenly decided to leave her business in the capable hands of her assistant so she could trek through Southeast Asia, the house seemed too quiet, too empty.

  Plus work, and/or weariness from work, provided the perfect excuse whenever Chantal rang to arrange a date with her latest Marry Julia prospect. She hadn't yet found the energy to tell Chantal to back off. Drifting with the tide seemed so much easier than swimming against it.

  On one disastrous occasion her sister had caught her at a particularly weak moment. A lonely moment. She shouldn't have agreed to the date with Tim; she shouldn't have fallen asleep on the drive home; and she definitely shouldn't have let him kiss her. In that first disoriented moment of wakening, her lips had felt bereft. She had felt bereft. Except it wasn't any man's lips she craved. She had been spoiled, inexorably, by one February night.

  Her whole life might have been inescapably changed by one miraculous moment during that hot summer night.

  She pressed a hand to her belly and failed to suppress the spontaneous surge of elation. Premature, she warned herself. Don't go presuming. Stress had always played havoc with her cycle. Plus there'd been no nausea, no dizziness, nothing but the constant tiredness and an intuitive whisper of certainty.

  Or was it merely optimism?

  Tomorrow she would drive over to Cliffton and buy a test kit. Tomorrow night she would know. Until then, she refused to allow herself to consider the implications.