If I Loved You

by Kress, Alyssa

  He was an idiot.

  The clock by his beside ticked away, reminding him that time was not on his side, but Zane stayed where he was, his eyes closed. His mind drifted to a conversation he should not have had with his sister yesterday. Stupidly, he'd brought up Pattie, as if it weren't bad enough he couldn't stop thinking about her. He'd demanded Cassie tell him why she'd made such an abrupt about-face in her attitude toward Pattie. Earlier, when he'd asked her to babysit Tristan, Cassie had given him hell for letting Pattie manipulate him. She'd practically called Pattie a witch. But in the end, she'd invited Pattie over for dinner, as if the woman were her new best pal.

  Over the Sunday morning paper at her kitchen table, Cassie had been indignant. "Of course I invited Pattie for dinner. Why shouldn't I? I liked her." Cassie had peered at Zane with annoyance. "You led me to believe she was another Maeve, some baby doll user, the type you never seem to see through."

  Zane felt a strange curling inside. "That's the second time you've called Maeve a user. I never knew you thought of her that way."

  Cassie shrugged. "I didn't like to mention it while you were married—she was family then. But, yeah. That's what she was. A user." She picked up the Lifestyle section of the paper, shook it open, and added, "Pattie is nothing like that."

  Lying in his bed now, Zane wasn't sure he'd agree. Pattie had certainly used him in her bed on Saturday night.

  He squeezed his closed eyes. If he could have rationalized skipping work, he'd have done so. But he'd never let a client down yet, and Tristan needed him. Besides, Savannah's murderer was still running around.

  The last thought might have gotten him out of bed on its own, but it was a different one that made his eyes snap open and wrenched him to an instant sitting position.

  He didn't want Pattie thinking he'd been affected by her. He didn't want her to imagine he was pining for her or some such ridiculous thing.

  He swiveled his legs over the side of the bed, determined to show Pattie he was cool. Saturday night was already forgotten.

  He didn't need her to acknowledge that anything special had happened. He didn't need her to tell him it had meant as much to her as it had to him, or that she'd like to do it again. Pah! He didn't need a thing from her.

  All he needed was to get to work on time.

  ~~~

  Holding the phone to her ear, Pattie checked her watch. "I can only talk for about five minutes, Norman. I've got my nanny coming."

  "Don't you dare hang up on me again," Norman warned, with considerable inaccuracy. Savannah's grieving fan had been the one to hang up on Pattie the last time he'd called. "I know exactly what I want now."

  "A memento of Savannah's," Pattie recalled. She felt rushed. Zane was about to arrive any minute. All weekend she'd been dreading this moment, when she had to see him again. But instead of preparing herself, she was stuck on the phone with Norman.

  "That's right, a memento," Norman agreed, in his nasal voice. "And now I know exactly what. I remembered. Her locket. She used to wear it all the time. You can see it in just about every picture we have on our fan website. It was a special piece, you know. Very her."

  Pattie knew the locket he meant. Studded with diamond chips and garnets, it had been Savannah's signature piece. Probably it had contained pictures of herself inside.

  "I'm willing to buy it," Norman told Pattie, avid now. "Just name the price."

  "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure where it is." Pattie cocked half an ear toward the bedroom, where Tristan could be up to anything. The other half of her tensed against Zane's knock at her door. Little of her attention was left to focus on the problem of locating Savannah's signature locket. Fleetingly, she wondered if it could be in the bag of personal effects the hospital had given her the night Savannah'd died.

  "Any price," Norman begged.

  "I'm not trying to be coy," Pattie assured him. "I just— Oh, there's my guy—I mean, my nanny—at the door. I gotta go now." Pattie's heart slammed against the side of her chest. She had to handle this just right, had to make sure Zane didn't get inside her defenses again like he had on Saturday night.

  Briefly, it occurred to Pattie that she'd recently decided it was unhealthy never to take. But that didn't mean she had to allow the kind of vulnerability that had snapped its jaws at her while lying in Zane's arms. That had been need. Need could never be good.

  "No—!" Norman protested. "Don't go!"

  "You can have the locket," Pattie promised, perhaps rashly. Those might have been real diamonds set in it. On the other hand, she felt she owed Norman. He'd done a proper mourning for Savannah. This was something Pattie hadn't been able to achieve, her own feelings such a confused mixture of shock, anger, and guilt. Plus, she was in a rush now. She lowered her head to bring the receiver closer to its housing. "No charge. Assuming I can find it."

  Norman's pleased exclamation cut off as Pattie hung up the phone.

  She was annoyed by her own nervousness as she left her office and hurried to the front door. There was no need to be nervous. Zane didn't mean a thing to her, not a thing.

  With a bright and detached expression, she opened the door.

  Whatever she expected on the other side, it wasn't Zane checking the messages on his cell phone. He wasn't even looking at her, at least not for the five seconds it took until he'd finished.

  "Oh, hi," he said, finally glancing up. He shot her an offhand smile. "Can't do that in the car, you know. Get a ticket."

  "I know." Pattie frowned.

  Zane gestured. "You going to let me in?"

  "What? Oh, sure." Pattie stepped back from the door. She felt as if someone had knocked the floor a few feet to one side of her. Zane looked...normal. He looked utterly free of any taint of what they'd done and been to each other on Saturday night.

  It was the one attitude she hadn't expected.

  Fortunately, she was saved having to struggle for something suitably banal to say by the sound of Tristan barreling down the hall. The child threw himself into his nanny's arms.

  "Zane!" Tristan yelled.

  For Tristan, Zane's social smile brightened to a more genuine level. "How's my main man?"

  "I'm good!" Tristan spoke at top volume.

  Zane chuckled. "That's welcome news."

  The two of them had eyes only for each other. Pattie could have been in Timbuktu for all either of them cared.

  An old and familiar sensation sifted through her: her well-known bane of loneliness. They were in a world together, leaving her out.

  But that was fine. Totally fine. She didn't care. She really didn't!

  Giving her head a brisk shake, she interjected briskly, "Looks like you two are all set here. I'm going to meet a client in Torrance. Gotta run if I hope to make it there by ten. Tristan's lunch is in the fridge. Remember that the key is under the Tiki god in case you want to leave the apartment, and you have my cell phone number."

  She smiled, pleased by how casual, even dismissive, she sounded. She actually felt that way, too, casual and dismissive. None of that changed when Zane looked up and gave her a brief nod, as if he were nothing more than her employee.

  As if!

  Blinking rapidly, Pattie suppressed an unexpected surge of anger. Whoa. She wanted Zane to act like her employee. That's all he was.

  She nodded back to him, then turned to get her briefcase from her office. She had things to do, places to go.

  In the office, she snatched the briefcase from her chair, threw in her file folder, cell phone, and keys, and then zipped it all closed. She zipped so fast it made a ripping noise.

  Okay, they didn't need her. She was on the outside of their little circle. Fine. Great. Fantastic! She smiled tightly.

  She didn't need a thing from Tristan or Zane, either. Of course not. She never needed.

  ~~~

  The sound of the key in the lock of Pattie's front door was easily audible from the dining room, where Zane sat with his back to the plywood-covered window. He continued th
e activity he'd started when Tristan had gone down for his nap: folding a new version of his F-16 Fighting Falcon. Beneath his calm, however, his stomach tensed. He was about to see Pattie.

  It hadn't been easy this morning. She'd opened the door for him, he'd taken one look at her, and the maw of hunger he'd opened on Saturday night had thrown its jaws wide again.

  He'd done his best to act as if nothing had ever happened between them. It was the only way to salvage his pride.

  Now he heard her coming into the house. Zane pursed his lips and pressed hard on a fold in the wing. She'd been gone for three hours, but his libido leapt as if no time had passed at all.

  He damn all hoped he could pull off acting indifferent again.

  Pattie's steps went from a crisp clip on the parquet wood of the foyer to a softened thud as she hit the carpet in the hall. A second later she crossed the arched opening of the dining room. Apparently by accident, she glanced inside.

  Her gait slowed. She appeared to come to a reluctant decision to stop. "Uh...hey." She smiled faintly. "How'd everything go today?"

  Zane leaned back in his chair. She wavered on the threshold of the room, apparently wary. He wondered why.

  He'd done his best to make things easy on her this morning; he'd acted as if they'd never touched. Even now he wore an expression of pure I-never-saw-you-naked. But her wariness didn't relax. If he weren't mistaken, it started to morph into irritation.

  First wary and now irritated? When he was sitting here doing absolutely nothing?

  Oh. Oh.

  For the first time all day, Zane's mood brightened. Perhaps, just perhaps, she disliked seeing him unaffected.

  Testing, he maintained his role of mere nanny. "Everything went swell. Tristan went down for his nap about ten minutes ago." He paused, wanting the chance to observe her further. "So. How'd your client meeting go?"

  She appeared surprised, as if the man who'd slept with her two nights before couldn't possibly exhibit an interest in her professional life. "Um...it went fine." Her surprise dissolved as she apparently forgot she was talking to Zane. A smile slowly illuminated her face. "More than fine, actually. It went great. I fully expect another job from the happy client." She grinned.

  The pang Zane felt in his gut wasn't envy. Of course not. He didn't want a profession where he could feel euphoric from a triumphant sales meeting. That phase of his life was over. Yet he heard himself say, with perhaps too much glee, "Tristan refused to eat your tuna sandwich. I made him pasta instead."

  If he'd thought to cause Pattie her own pang of envy, he failed. Without chagrin, she laughed. "No fish for that boy. Well, can't say I didn't try to vary his diet. If the horse won't drink the water...?" She smiled.

  He'd also failed to keep her in the off-balance state where she didn't like his nonchalance. She was grinning with unrestrained good humor.

  He glared moodily back at her. Life wasn't fair. It damn all wasn't fair. He could feel himself stretch inside...wanting. While she stood there and...and...

  While she stood there and her smile slowly faded. Their gazes locked.

  The stretching sensation inside of Zane seemed to expand, slipping right out of him and across the room.

  Did it slide into Pattie? Had he been right the first time that he wasn't alone in this?

  Before he could decide, she looked down. To hide the evidence?

  Suddenly, her brows flinched. "Hey. What are you making there?"

  Zane blinked, startled by the banality of her question. He looked in the direction of her gaze. "What, you mean my F-16?" He laughed.

  "Is that what it is?"

  Zane was about to tell her to forget his silly airplane, when a better idea occurred to him. "It's just folded paper, but I call it a Fighting Falcon F-16. Here." He held it up, inviting her closer. "See for yourself."

  If she didn't come into the room, she'd look like a coward. And Zane knew Pattie couldn't stand to look like a coward.

  Sure enough, she hesitated only a moment before stepping into the room. After setting down her briefcase, she hesitated again before taking the airplane from Zane's hand to get a closer look.

  Why the hesitations? Was she afraid to come close to him?

  "Just paper, huh?" She flicked her gaze his way. "And a little professional know-how."

  Zane lifted a shoulder. Any 'know-how' he'd once had was useless to him now. His only interest here was gauging Pattie's physical reaction to him. He wanted to know if she was feeling all prickly under her skin, like he was.

  But Pattie wasn't giving up any secrets. She weighed the plane in her hand. "Now that I think about it, I saw your sister's kids playing with some of these, didn't I? You made those, too?"

  Zane smiled dismissively. "They're toys."

  "Right." Pattie swiveled the plane in her fingers. "But a rather ingenious toy, isn't it, with all these cuts and folds? As I recall, they glide like anything."

  "If I build it that way," Zane couldn't help correcting. "Some somersault, others circle, and I have a spiral."

  "Just a little know-how." Pattie chuckled. She slid a finger down the length of the fuselage. "Quite a toy."

  Oh, boy. Did she have to do that with her finger—to his airplane?

  Gritting his teeth, Zane struggled to maintain his pose of indifference. That lasted until she put the plane down and turned to leave. Then he couldn't help trying to keep her in the room. He blurted, "We need to talk about our next move."

  Her head whipped toward him. "What?"

  His face warmed as he realized how that had sounded. "In your investigation," he explained. But would it have been so bad if he'd meant something else? He was pretty sure she wasn't repulsed by him. "That is," he went on, a little irritated now, "if you're still interested in finding out who killed your sister."

  Pattie's brows drew down. "Of course I'm still interested."

  Zane moved his airplane to one side. "I was thinking— Lonny Domino distracted us from the obvious. Our best suspect is whoever owned that house in Pacific Palisades, the house Savannah lived in, but didn't own."

  Pattie sank into a chair at the table. "You're right."

  She agreed? Whoa. Not as good as sex, but still pretty nice.

  "Whoever let Savannah live in that house was paying her the most blackmail that we know of," Pattie went on, working it through. "They had the most motive to kill her."

  "And thus end the blackmail," Zane put in. "You told me the house was owned by a corporation. Do you know the name of the corporation?"

  Pattie nodded. "Oh, yes. I made the realtor who kicked us out give me the name, though he wouldn't give me a damn thing more than that. And the name turned out to be useless. Absolutely nothing came up on Google."

  Zane felt only a mild disappointment at this news. He hadn't expected it to be easy. "What was it?"

  Pattie gave him a sidelong glance. "The name was 'Blankety-Blank.' Like a bad word you don't want to say out loud. Fitting, huh?"

  Zane gave a dry laugh. "Yeah. It feeds into our theory there was no love lost between your sister and the homeowner. He was making it clear he'd have liked to call the house—or her—something worse."

  "True." Pattie sighed.

  There was nothing more to say. They both sat there, silent. It was not an easy silence, though. Into it dropped, like little weights dropped into a pond, recent memories, memories twined in the sheets of Pattie's bed.

  Zane imagined undressing her, like unwrapping a present. He imagined how her skin would feel if he put his lips to it. How hot and wet she might be.

  Ah, if only she were thinking along the same lines.

  More hopeful than expectant, he looked up and into her eyes.

  What he saw there made every muscle in his body tense.

  She lowered her lashes quickly, but Zane knew what he'd seen. Pure, unadulterated passion. She wanted him. Every bit as much as he wanted her.

  Yeah, she'd kicked him out like unwanted garbage on Saturday night, but not because
she'd had enough of him. She must have done that because—because—

  Okay, Zane wasn't sure why. He only knew it hadn't been physical rejection.

  Abruptly, Pattie stood, as if someone in another room had called her name.

  "I have work to do," she announced. "Yes. I've got to—go."

  Grabbing the briefcase she'd set on the floor, she practically ran from the room.

  Left behind, Zane gazed at his Fighting Falcon and pursed his lips. He tapped the airplane and considered the situation. She still wanted him. And he still wanted her. A resolution to this circumstance seemed self-evident.

  Yes, yes, she was determined to run. But a person could only run so far. Eventually she'd run out of road. Then she'd have to turn around and...

  He'd be there.

  Slowly, his lips curved. Matters weren't as depressing as he'd thought. This was only a matter of time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She had better things to do than think about Zane. Much better things. Pattie spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in her office, working on code, making phone calls...and then running out of things to do. She couldn't leave her office, though, where she might run into Zane.

  Not that there was any problem with running into Zane. She wasn't still attracted to him, or anything. She hadn't practically fallen into his lap during their conversation in the dining room. Nor had she noticed the heat in his eyes, evidence he actually wasn't physically indifferent to her, after all. And that heat certainly hadn't thrilled her in any way. Not in the slightest.

  The man was out of her system.

  Still, she stayed in her office all afternoon. With nothing better to do, she surfed the Internet in an attempt to discover something—anything—about Savannah's Pacific Palisades house and who might have owned it.

  But by nine p.m., with Zane safely gone, Pattie had yet to discover anything about the true homeowner. She sat at the dining room table and vaguely regarded the Mah Jong tiles spread across the tablecloth. To one side of her, Angela dithered over her discard, shooting speculative glances toward Michael, who'd decide whether or not to pick it up.

  Pattie was free to wonder if there was any way, any way at all, to find the name of a person behind a corporation. This was the only thing on her mind. The only thing! She refused to worry over Zane and what his intentions might be. She refused to fret over how she might react to him and those intentions.