She didn't want to please him...did she?
The whole situation made her insides feel like a boat heading out from dock.
Thank God, Tristan chose the moment to wake up. Pattie heard his familiar cry drift into the room from somewhere above.
She hopped from the sofa on which she'd so recently settled. This was a fantastic excuse to leave the room.
"Sounds like my call!" She knew she sounded way too delighted. "Where is he? I'll go take care of him."
"Up the stairs, second bedroom on your right," Cassie told her.
"I could probably find him just by following the sound," Pattie laughed. She couldn't help meeting Zane's gaze briefly—very briefly—on her way out of the room. The contact was long enough, however, to feel like a small punch.
Everything about him that had always annoyed her—including his recent bothersome concern—took on a whole new meaning.
He wanted to give. That was his main deal, in fact: demanding she accept his help.
Meanwhile, there was no way on earth she wanted to take.
So of course he aggravated her. But maybe he wasn't aggravating as much as she was messed up, a person who didn't know how to accept.
Pattie hurried up the stairs.
Tristan was sitting up in the bed Cassie had given him, the sheets tangled around his hips and his face a twist of wake-up woe. A red pillow mark crossed one cheek.
Something welled up inside Pattie as she looked at him. Relief. Yes, that's what it was. The kid was reaching out toward her, wanting something, needing something—who knew what, exactly. It didn't matter.
He was such a terrific taker.
Pattie sat on the bed and Tristan threw his little arms around her neck. He was sleep-warm and soft. Putting her own arms around him, she rocked a little, murmuring gently. His sobs slowly ceased.
Oh, yeah. She could deal with this, with others taking from her. This was no problem at all.
Everything would have been fine if Zane hadn't shown up in the open doorway. He must have feared she wouldn't be able to handle a whimpering Tristan on her own. He looked in on the scene with an expression of concern. To Pattie's dismay, his concern didn't ease once he saw she had the situation under control. If she wasn't imagining things, the worry in his eyes only deepened.
Why? Could he tell how confused she felt?
Pattie averted her eyes. If Tristan was a relief to deal with, Zane was the opposite—and now Pattie knew why.
Tristan wanted to take. But Zane wanted her to take.
Forcing her gaze back to Zane, Pattie plastered on a smile. She managed a wave even though her arm was still wrapped around Tristan. "'S okay here. We're all right."
Zane frowned at her a moment more. Pattie worried he was going to say something, point out she was hardly all right. But he only nodded and muttered, "Sure." Then he turned from the door.
Pattie released a deep breath. She felt like that wobbly boat again, heading into uncharted waters. While it was true she was only staying for dinner, nothing more earthshaking than that, she felt very confused and uncertain—about everything.
~~~
Cassie served hamburgers for dinner. Zane sat in his usual seat, toying with a fork while he waited for the plate of burgers to make its way around the table. Mostly he watched Pattie in her seat directly across from him. He pondered her. Wondered what the hell was going on with her.
He certainly hadn't expected her to accept an invitation to dinner—with his family.
But there she was. As he watched, the hamburger plate reached her. Smiling, she forked up a patty and put it on Tristan's plate. The child was seated next to her, as if such a reckless arrangement made sense. But Pattie turned a smile down at the kid: a sweet smile, a...warm one.
That motherly smile pressed on something in Zane's chest. Because it was so unexpected, Zane told himself. As unexpected as the rest of her reserved, almost shy, behavior tonight.
Meanwhile, the normal family conversation rattled up and down the table.
"If the Dodgers want a hope of making it to the playoffs," Brittany said, "they'll have to start hitting the ball."
Jim broke in. "But in order to do that they'd have to own some decent batters, and they traded all their sluggers for that wimp of a pitcher."
Zane waited for Pattie to chime in. He'd heard her offer a pungent opinion of the Dodgers' trade to her friend, Michael, yesterday. But now Pattie just blinked and listened to what everyone else was saying. Shy, quiet, retiring.
Had some alien taken over her body?
She looked down at Tristan again and her soft smile dimmed. "Is something wrong with your hamburger, sport?"
Tristan whined instead of answering.
"Oh," Pattie said, as if he'd explained himself clearly. "You want some ketchup on that, don't you?"
Tristan nodded eagerly. "Kessup," he agreed, as if he'd needed to be reminded of the right word.
Grinning, Pattie squirted some ketchup onto his burger. Then the two of them exchanged a look.
Zane squeezed his fork. That look hit him hard. Okay, Pattie appeared to be developing an affinity for motherhood, but why should that feel like a punch in the stomach? He'd been working with mothers and their children for the past eight months. None of those women had made Zane scratch at the wound of the further lie Maeve had told Zane, that she was just as interested in starting a family as he was. Why did Pattie?
Drawing in a deep breath, Zane dragged himself back to reality. Okay, Pattie might be softening toward Tristan, but that didn't make her a maternal woman. It certainly didn't make her a woman who'd become a mother for Zane's benefit. As if!
He tuned back in to the family conversation, which lingered on the topic of baseball. "Now, I don't know how you can complain about the Dodgers' new pitcher," Zane put in. "His ERA is fantastic."
Brittany, Jim, and Danny all stopped to stare at him. The pitcher's ERA had been fantastic, up until he'd joined the Dodgers three weeks ago. Zane waited for Pattie to point this out to him. She hated this pitcher more than anybody, and she lost few opportunities to jump down Zane's throat.
"You gotta be kidding!" Danny exclaimed.
"You haven't seen a game recently, have you?" Jim remarked.
"Get out," Brittany groaned.
But not a word from Pattie. She simply sat there and tilted her head at Zane, mildly quizzical.
With a shaft of fear, he suddenly wondered if she was afraid to engage with him. Zane went beyond confused then, right on to worried. This woman, restrained, inhibited, and shy—this wasn't Pattie. What was going on here?
Something had happened at Lonny Domino's. That's when he'd first noticed a change in Pattie. But what?
Not that he should give a damn about it, of course. Pattie's problems weren't his concern.
"Uncle Zane," Danny breathed. "Hamburgers." Holding the platter for his uncle, he looked about to expire from the effort.
"Got it." Zane quickly relieved the child of the plate. He took a burger, then glanced toward Pattie again.
She was wiping ketchup off the corner of Tristan's mouth with her napkin. Her lips curved softly.
Zane's jaw tightened. Soft...Pattie.
Her problems weren't his responsibility, but he wondered. He couldn't help wondering.
Not worrying, after all. Why would he worry about Pattie?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pattie's garage door loomed ahead in the Rav4's headlights. She was in the passenger seat because Zane had insisted on driving her car again, pointing out that Tristan was back on board.
Now he stopped the car, ordering, "Wait here. I'll get the door."
Pattie didn't bother replying that she could open the garage door, herself. Obviously, she did so on a regular basis. She was in too strange a mood, however, to want to tangle with him. Dinner at his sister's house had been...nice. Really nice. She'd felt a kind of excitement in trying to take a little.
But while driving home with Zane the pleasur
e of this excitement had twisted into something closer to dread. A weird tension filled the car. It wasn't an acrimonious tension, nor was it completely sexual—although that was definitely involved. Zane always exuded more than his fair share of male pheromones.
No, what bothered Pattie was the sense of concern she was picking up from Zane. It had been the same all through dinner. She now understood it truly was concern, personal concern.
And it was not something she was ready to accept.
He got out of the car, strode up to her manual overhead garage door and, with a graceful heave, got it open. She stayed put while he stalked back to the car, climbed into the driver's seat and swung her wide vehicle into the narrow garage with perfect confidence.
Under other circumstances she'd probably have felt annoyed he found the difficult task so easy. Tonight, his physical superiority was the least of her worries.
Zane turned off the motor and glanced toward Tristan's car seat. "Thought he was being awfully quiet back there. Tris is dead to the world."
Pattie twisted to see behind her. She sighed at the sight of Tristan with his head cocked at a painful-looking angle. "Fortunately, he doesn't weigh very much. I can carry him upstairs."
Zane paused long enough to let Pattie know he found her suggestion insulting. "I'll get him."
Doing her best to sound casual, Pattie laughed. "It's no problem, Zane. I know you have a long drive back home." She didn't want him coming upstairs, didn't want his untenable concern following her into her apartment.
But Zane gave her an unsmiling look. "I'll get him. Besides—" He paused again, and added, ominously, "There's something I want to talk to you about."
A firecracker seemed to go off in Pattie's head. Talks with Zane never went well. But it wouldn't do to reveal fear. She lifted a shoulder. "Sure, Zane. Why don't you carry Tristan on up, then?"
The sun had set shortly before, so there was still a dim light filtering into the apartment once they got upstairs and Pattie opened the door.
"Don't turn on the lights," Zane murmured, shouldering his way through the front door behind her.
"Oh, right. Don't want to wake the sleeping volcano." But the dusky light felt disturbingly intimate as Pattie led the way down the hall to Tristan's bedroom. Zane's presence behind her set prickles in her back.
In the bedroom, she stepped to one side and watched Zane carefully lower Tristan to his bed. The kid still wore his grass-stained shorts and T shirt.
Pattie bit her lower lip. "What do you think? Do we need to brush his teeth and get his pajamas on?" That would wake Tristan up for sure, but wasn't it cheating to skip those tasks?
Zane stood looking down at Tristan for a full minute before he decided, "No. Better to let him sleep."
Well, if Zane thought so, it must be all right. "I'll cover him with something, though." Pattie went to fetch a blanket from the closet and set it carefully over the sleeping little body. He was so small and soft and warm. A soft emotion swelled inside her.
And then curled into something cold and hard. The paternity test. Gasping, Pattie abruptly straightened.
"What is it?" Zane whispered.
Pattie didn't dare look at him. "Um...nothing. Crick in my back." But the thought hit her like a sledgehammer. She should have received the results of that paternity test by now. She should have been turning Tristan over to his closest blood relative, his father.
She forced herself to look at Zane and smile, wondering why the idea of turning Tristan over to Nick wasn't filling her with joyful anticipation. Instead, it made her feel leaden. In fact, she wondered desperately if the paternity test might possibly be lost...forever.
To her dismay, Zane didn't appear convinced by her smile. His weird concern lowered over his brow like a cloud.
"Let's go into the living room," he said quietly. "Where we can talk without waking Tristan up."
Still smiling, Pattie blinked several times rapidly. "Talk about what?" She no longer cared if asking made her look like a coward. She was a coward. She wanted this man out of her house—now. She wanted him away from her nervous, confused self.
Watching her curiously, Zane sucked in his lips. "I thought...we might brainstorm some new avenues to take in your investigation. Lonny Domino was clearly a dead end."
Pattie tilted her head. Was that the topic Zane actually wanted to discuss? No, she was certain he intended to unleash his poorly restrained concern. The idea of him doing that deeply frightened her.
Was that wrong? Was that sick? Was she supposed to accept whatever concern he offered...to take? Or was taking, after all, the true weakness?
She didn't want to handle any of this right now, but putting him off would only make him even more worried about her.
"Um...sure," she said. "Let's do that." Hastily, she thought up a reason to delay. "I'll make some coffee first."
She'd get a delay and some distance, Pattie thought with triumph. In the kitchen, away from Zane's disturbing presence, she could gather her sadly scattered self-possession.
With this in mind, she strode out of Tristan's bedroom and down the hall. She was opening the refrigerator to find her coffee grounds when the pull of nerves in her spine told her Zane had followed.
She almost slammed the refrigerator door. Couldn't he leave her alone? Give her some space...let her get back to herself?
"Let me help," he said.
Carefully, Pattie set the container of grounds on the kitchen counter. "Sure." She smiled as if his presence didn't bother her at all. "Why don't you get down a couple mugs?"
Zane knew where she kept them. Of course he did. He was practically her housemate, making meals for Tristan, cleaning up the aftermath, wandering through her home all day like he lived here. The intimacy of the situation seemed to grow, like a tall hedge enclosing them in together, making everything all private and warm.
He reached past her head toward the upper cabinet while she pried open the container of grounds.
With him close like that, lightly touching her, she could feel that he was tense as a bowstring.
Curious, she looked up.
He looked down. He had two mugs caught by the fingers of one hand—and a hit-in-the-head look in his eyes.
Pattie caught her breath. Oh, she thought. Oh. Her jangling nerves stepped to one side.
She'd imagined Zane was in control here, that he was going to get his own way in everything, including unloading all his unacceptable concern on her. But that wasn't the case all. Poor Zane wasn't even in control of himself.
"Here're the mugs." With exaggerated care, he set them on the counter.
Those nerves of hers trotted away completely. In their place stepped a budding sense of power. He had a weakness.
She could use that. With it, she could wriggle out of this situation. In fact, it would be very easy to do so. For example, she bet if she kissed him, he'd forget all about his 'talk.'
Of course, considering the heat building up in the little kitchen, they'd end up doing a lot more than kissing. But in Pattie's confused and panicked brain, the idea of sex was just fine. In fact, it was perfect.
Because sex was simple. Even if she'd given up the game for a while, she remembered how it worked. Sex was the satisfaction of a basic need. Sort of like...eating. In her experience, once you were done, you were done. Clean and neat.
Nothing like talking, which only seemed to entangle her further with Zane very time they did it. Sex would overpower whatever dangerous emotional stuff Zane intended to discharge on her. Once he got hot enough, he'd forget all about that. The whole situation would simplify tremendously.
Sex was the ultimate distraction.
Returning to her earlier task, Pattie dumped a scoop of grounds into the built-in filter of her coffeemaker. She closed it up and hit the "on" switch. Then she looked over at Zane.
She was a little startled by the wave of hunger that swept over her now that she was letting herself consider it, consider all of him: his hard mouth, the s
andy stubble of beard, the male height of him. But hunger was good. It was...safe.
"Zane." She put a hand on his arm.
Tense as he was, he tensed more. "Pattie." He took her hand and lifted it off his arm. His eyes darkened. "Let's go into the living room. We can talk while the coffee is brewing."
Interesting. He wanted her, but he resisted.
He started to move away.
She did not follow.
He halted in the doorway of the kitchen, then turned to frown at her.
Pattie leaned a hip against the counter. He was really resisting. Her mood lightened to the point of giddiness. This was a contest, she saw. She liked contests. She liked winning them.
And this was one where victory would be its own reward.
Relaxing, she smiled. "There are other things we could do, you know, beside talk."
Zane remained in the doorway of the kitchen. He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "That wouldn't be a good idea."
Not too long ago, she would have agreed. Through her mind flitted dim memories of finding her own desire for Zane threatening. But it was hard to worry about that now. She was in the driver's seat here, and that's where she intended to stay. If he was afraid, that meant she was at an advantage. She felt desperate for that advantage.
Slowly, Pattie walked toward him. A hot weakness filled her as she envisioned him on her bed with his clothes peeled. He'd be long lines and curved muscle. Strength.
She was fairly certain he was having similar thoughts about her by the time she reached his position.
"I think it would be an excellent idea." She looked up at him. "In fact, I think it's long overdue."
His eyes were blazing. "What are you up to, Pattie?"
Her lashes lowered. "I think you know."
He continued to glare at her. Pattie couldn't guess the exact nature of his inner battle, but she could tell—to her disbelief—that he was winning it.
Shock rippled through her. Reflexively, she backed up a step.
But that step back, to Pattie's surprise, did the trick. The tide of Zane's inner battle abruptly turned.
If I Loved You Page 15
