Finding Zoe (Atlantic Divide)

by Diane Saxon

  “Okay. Goddammit, Zoe, do you have to do everything your own way?” Scowling at her and evidently recovered from his nausea, he raised his voice and flicked his hand. “Get out. You’re a distraction. You’re driving me crazy, and I need to breathe.”

  She scrambled to her feet and he stood at the same time, so they almost bumped into each other in the enclosed space, and despite his irritation, he automatically put his hand out to steady her.

  Tingles shot up her arm from the touch of his warm hand, and they stared at each other. The green tinge had disappeared completely from his skin and was replaced by a healthy warming glow emphasizing his high cheekbones. Her breath caught as his midnight eyes zoomed in on her lips.

  Heat sizzled through her as she suddenly realized it wasn’t just her affected by their closeness.

  “Zoe.” His voice was barely a rough whisper as he leaned down. His mouth almost touched hers, his eyelids lowered, and his black eyes glinted as she felt the warmth of his lips skim hers. Powerless to resist, her eyelids fluttered closed.

  “Get a fucking move on, Mac.”

  They leaped apart guiltily as Flynn stepped into the trailer. She felt the burn of embarrassment rush through her. Knowing her pale skin would be glowing like a beacon, she blinked and turned her face away to look out of the doorway. She stared at the countryside, willing the heat burning through her face to subside, and considered she had just had a lucky escape.

  “Tomorrow,” she managed to say. “After school.”

  “Sure. Just make damned certain you’re not there.” She glanced back; Mac was sitting down again, his muscular jaw flexed with annoyance and his bronze skin flushed.

  The young cowboy gave her a long, considering inspection and smiled crookedly.

  “Congratulations, you seem to have brought his color back. How would you like to watch me throw him from the top of the cooling tower?”

  Mac’s hostile glare and clenched fists made her turn her head in Flynn’s direction; his evil blue eyes challenged her, and she felt retribution within her grasp.

  She couldn’t stop the smile spreading wide across her face.

  “There’s nothing I’d like better.”

  * * * *

  She wished she hadn’t come. Oh dear God, she should have gone home two hours ago. At least. It wasn’t fair on her.

  It wasn’t actually fair on the entire female population. And she was certainly suffering. For all of them. She thought she was coming along to watch him go through his worst nightmare with her as his witness, but it hadn’t quite worked out the way she had believed. So here she was, trapped by her own stupidity.

  She’d thought Mac had been going to kiss her while they were in the trailer, and she’d held her breath in anticipation, wondering whether she would feel anything at all. Now she knew. Of course she did.

  Pure, unadulterated lust flowed like lava through her veins as she watched them prep him for the stunt. The stunt the blue-eyed devil had failed to warn her about. It wasn’t a warning she’d needed, but a “hazard—highly dangerous to women’s health” sign should have been hung around the entire set with red flashing lights and a cordon area of at least three hundred feet. Even that wouldn’t have been enough.

  She pulled the neck of her T-shirt out and slyly blew cool air down the front of her chest, hoping if anyone noticed, they would think it was the heat of the day.

  Unfortunately, she knew better.

  They’d stripped him down to a pair of loose-fitting fireman coverall trousers that hung low on his hips, leaving his top half naked and showing every last muscle that rippled under his taut, smooth, bronze skin. Then, possibly just to make her squirm in her seat, as he stood shoulders back, chest out, they slicked oil all over his upper body to make it look sweaty for the camera. The cool oil made goose bumps stand out over his flesh, and his nipples hardened.

  She almost slithered out of her seat onto the ground in a hot, wet mess.

  Casually, she tucked a disheveled curl back into its unruly plait and tried to get it to stay with trembling fingers while molten heat rushed through her veins, clamoring to burn through her layers of skin and incinerate her on the spot.

  He seemed totally oblivious to the ministrations of the makeup lady. If anything, his face still had a tinge of green, but as the woman moved away and left his body glowing to perfection in the golden sunlight, he cast Zoe a quick, hot glance that made her want to leap on him.

  Amused despite herself, she envisioned launching straight at him and skidding off to land in a heap on her backside at his feet.

  In her practical mind, she thought perhaps if they used something other than oil. A small groan escaped her, but she refused to take her eyes off him. Ice cream maybe…or melted chocolate. She sucked her bottom lip in, chewed on it while she allowed her imagination to take her on a short trip. Perhaps visually it may not have the same effect, but in her mind she could almost taste him as she licked every last inch of him.

  Her gaze tracked up his gleaming chest and his hard, muscular neck. The unshaven shadow of his chin gave her the urge to lean forward and nip it. Further, she studied his sharp cheekbones, straight nose, and black hawk-like eyes staring back at her. Pure lust emanated from them, burning her to the spot, making every resolve she ever had about him disintegrate.

  Embarrassed, she leaped up from her chair and walked several feet away to his left so they no longer looked directly at each other. Puffing out small breaths, she found a deck chair and sat, hoping she could keep her desire under control. It didn’t do for it to be noticed by others, especially Mac. It would only add to his ammunition.

  As the makeup lady dusted him down with what looked like soot, emphasizing his biceps and pecs, Zoe realized there was no chance she was going to remain unnoticed. Most of the crew had been flicking sideways glances at her for the last couple of hours, despite the fact she hadn’t even spoken to Mac. Maybe it was her tongue lolling out that had attracted all the attention.

  She crossed her legs over, felt her pulse rate soar, fidgeted some more, and looked away. Who needed an imagination when a real-life sex god stood in front of her, prepped and ready, making her pant?

  She couldn’t sit still; she knew she’d made a big mistake coming along. One she needed to rectify now. Decision made, she gathered herself to stand.

  “Better put your tongue back in before his head expands any more.” Flynn lowered himself casually into the seat beside her. “Wouldn’t want him to know you still had the hots for him after all these years.” She turned her head slowly and met his eyes as ice skimmed across her flesh, chasing away the heat.

  “What do you know?”

  “You’re Zoe, the vet. He’s spoken about you.” She gave him a blank stare, a slow blink. “You have a kid he didn’t know about.” Her pulse skittered as she narrowed her eyes; she was going to kill Mac. Flynn gave a quick, wry smile. “He didn’t tell me, you just did. I overheard you in the trailer.”

  Flynn checked some of the connections on the harness, snapped them quick and hard to test them. “He didn’t look like that eleven years ago. You should be real careful. You might get hurt more than you hurt him back then.”

  She’d never hurt him; he’d ripped her heart out by marrying another woman and she’d never recovered, but it was none of the cowboy’s business.

  Flynn stood, his attention on the harness as he gave it another inspection. “Where do you want to watch from? Up there? Down here?”

  “Maybe I should go.”

  “I think it would be too obvious now, don’t you?”

  She pondered for a moment before she replied. “Here.”

  He nodded and turned to walk away.

  “And it’s nothing to do with his looks.” She couldn’t help it; she felt as though she needed to say something to defend herself. Flynn paused, turned back to consider her with his sharp, intense stare, and she continued. “It’s about the man inside. I once thought I knew him. Turned out he wasn’t a very nice p
erson. You won’t catch me making the same mistake again.”

  Flynn pointed his index finger at her. “I think you’re going to be proved wrong.” As she opened her mouth to deny it, he shook his head and continued. “Let’s wait and see.”

  She followed him in silence for a few minutes. Curiosity eventually got the better of her.

  “How high is the tower?”

  “A few hundred feet. Nearly six, I believe.”

  “Shouldn’t you know exactly how high it is?”

  “Nah, he won’t be falling all the way.”

  Mac walked ahead of them, surrounded by pampering makeup artists and light technicians as they headed toward the base of the tower. A thick coverage of trees surrounded the Ironbridge station until they were almost upon it, and then the cooling towers suddenly loomed out of the ground in front of them. She’d grown up in the area, seen them constantly, and never thought much about them. They were just there. But now the significance of their height made her heart grind to a painful halt as she craned her neck to look all the way to the top.

  “Oh my God, he has to fall from there? I’ve lived here all my life, walked along the Gorge, and I’ve never realized how enormous the towers really are. It’s a hell of a drop.”

  “Sure it is. But he’s only got to fall about sixty feet or so. We want to get the shots we need in one take. In all honesty, honey, he isn’t going to fall. He’s going to leap, or rather be pushed. It has to look authentic, and in reality, if he fell off there, likelihood is he’d smash himself up against the bricks on his way down. So, he has to kind of launch himself off the side. Backward.” He smiled crookedly as she felt the blood rush from her face, leaving her light-headed. “It is a hell of a fall, but the idea is not to hit the ground. After all, he’s the hero of the movie. He’s not supposed to die.”

  “I thought you had stuntmen to do these things.” She trotted to keep up with his long stride on the rough ground beside the towers.

  “We do, but none of them are big enough. They never look enough like him for the public to be fooled. He’s a perfectionist; he likes it to look real. Besides, he gets a kick out of doing it himself.”

  “Really? It wasn’t my impression. He was green. He didn’t look like he was getting a kick.”

  Flynn gave a short bark of laughter. Mac turned and scowled at them both.

  “He needs to concentrate right now, but wait and see him when he’s finished. You’ll be surprised.”

  It seemed interminable as she waited directly under the cooling towers in the shade of the trees; a fence line protected them from the occasional rambler, although a small gathering had paused to gape.

  Zoe almost wished she had gone up with them to see what was going on. From where she stood, she could only see their tiny figures at the top of the tower. It seemed to be taking them forever to carry out all the safety checks, but the crew at the bottom of the tower milled about with disinterest, as though it was going to be an even longer wait.

  Someone handed her a pair of binoculars, and she found herself zooming in on the big guy. Despite his earlier disposition, he seemed to be comfortable enough crouching on a platform at the top of the tower. She could see him talking to Flynn. His hands gesticulated, his face broke out in a wide smile, and her heart fell at the foot of the cooling tower.

  Cormack Blunt, movie star, was so much more beautiful in real life than he was on the big screen.

  Her throat tightened painfully. He’d only just come back into her life and he was going to die. Plunge straight to his death, right in front of her. Her pulse rate escalated, and she forgot all about lusting over his half-naked, oil-slicked, and waxed chest. Almost.

  Her mouth went dry as he positioned himself on the edge of the tower, the camera crew and stuntmen at a minimum. A helicopter hovered, another camera crew leaning out of the open doors to get the overhead shots, and she watched as Flynn pulled him in close for a moment as though he was giving him a good-bye hug; then he thrust Mac backward off the tower to plunge to a certain death.

  Unable to stop the squeal erupting from her lips, she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  A third of the way down the tower, his harness yanked him to a powerful halt, his body bounced, and then his legs kicked reassuringly and the ropes held. Her heart still hammered as she started to breathe again, and the heat in her cheeks raged.

  The surrounding crew hooted and catcalled, clapping with enthusiasm, but her bones had turned to water, and she wasn’t capable of doing anything other than staying exactly where she was and concentrating on her breathing. Eyeing the tower, she decided Flynn had let Mac drop closer to two hundred feet. Definitely. Flynn told lies.

  She watched as Flynn rappelled down the side of the tower, pausing where Mac waited, suspended, with his feet braced on the tower wall. Flynn clapped him on the back so hard she swore she could hear the slapping noise from where she stood. He seemed to carry out more safety checks before they both rappelled to the bottom of the tower together.

  From the fluidity of their moves, it was obvious that despite Mac’s terror, he knew exactly what he was doing and had total faith in his stunt coordinator and apparent right-hand man. His moves were confident and professional; his skin glowed healthy and bronze.

  As awareness flooded back in, she didn’t know whether it was best to simply slip away while his crew all hammered on his back, shouted, and whooped, or to wait and congratulate him. A wide grin spread across his face as he reveled in their admiration.

  She placed the binoculars on a table and wiped her damp hands on the legs of her jeans. Her heart still pounded, but now it was for a different reason. The huge, boastful smile of his had catapulted her back eleven years. The dizzying love she had felt for him surged to the surface, almost bringing her to her knees as the stark realization that she wasn’t impervious to him hit her dead center.

  She’d never be impervious to him. He’d been the love of her life. She’d lusted over him in films and commercials for years, thinking she was irrationally obsessed with him because of his movie-star status. It may be irrational obsession, but she was still in love with him, and it was nothing to do with him being a movie star. She could never let him know. He’d hurt her once; he could so easily do it again.

  As panic set in, she sidled away, safe in the belief no one would notice. She needed to run and hide. Get back home to prepare herself so when Mac arrived to see Ryan, she was elsewhere, and if she happened to be around, she had to ensure she could be composed and distant. She could be pleasant and cool.

  “Zoe.” Her gaze shot to his as he strode toward her, his long legs eating up the distance between them, and she knew she was in trouble. Sharp, wolfish grin in place, his triumphant eyes pinned her to the spot. His crew fell back and watched with interest.

  He never paused, merely wrapped his arms around her waist and scooped her up, leaving her legs to dangle as he slammed his lips on hers and simply took what he wanted.

  Heat raged through her as she instantly responded. Throwing her arms around his neck, she allowed his tongue to plunge into her mouth and wrangle with hers. She sensed his raw, desperate need when he hauled her in, close enough to feel his hard erection pressing against her as he squeezed her backside tight. She wrapped her legs around his waist and bit down on his bottom lip.

  Adrenaline flowed thick and powerful while her heart pounded at the unspoken promise. Mac strode away from their spectators. She grasped his hair and pulled his head in close, desperation permitting her to pour every ounce of love into her response, ravishing his mouth with her own, a frantic plea for him to love her in return.

  He planted rapid, desperate kisses over her face.

  “Baby.” He gasped as she skimmed her lips along his jawline and allowed her teeth to nip at his earlobe. “I’ve got to get inside of you right now.”

  As though a bucket of ice water had been thrown over her, she was instantly, coldly, sober. She still panted against his neck, but her body froze and her
legs unraveled themselves. She untangled her fingers from his hair, placed her hands tentatively on his wide shoulders, and pushed back to meet his smoldering, eager eyes. Jesus Christ, what must everyone think of her? How stupidly naive she was to believe it was anything but a quick lay to him.

  “Put me down. Now.” Quiet and unquestionably in command, she stared back at him. This wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was distance between them, right now.

  She watched as his hot, black eyes turned cold. He allowed her body to slide down his so she felt every ripple and muscle along the way, leaving no doubt he still wanted her. He allowed her feet to touch the ground, and then he spread his arms wide and stepped back.

  “My apologies.” He dipped his head in a small bow, his hard eyes still holding hers as he took another step back. “Don’t take it personally, just put it down to the adrenaline rush. It always affects me that way. Most women are a little more accommodating and a lot less…” He circled his hand in the air. “Reluctant.” He dropped his arms to his side and gave her a tight smile as her heart wrenched at his cruel jab.

  She brought her hand to her mouth, and his gaze flickered over her face. His eyebrows twitched down, and she found she couldn’t even speak past the uncomfortable lump in her throat. “Never let it be said I forced myself on an unwilling woman…strange, you never used to be.”

  His eyes ran the length of her body, detached and cool now. “You might want to clean up. Send me the bill.” She glanced down at herself. She was covered in his body print, dirt and oil slathered all over her pristine white shirt.

  He was already striding away when she looked up. Her heart ached; her knees trembled. She’d almost made the biggest mistake of her life and slept with movie star Cormack Blunt. It would have been easy. It would have been good. She knew with certainty she had made the right decision. So why did she feel so miserable?