by Ruby Scott
The crowd parted for Zeke like the Red Sea for Moses. He had a gravity around him that immediately alerted people to his presence. Whereas Vanessa had to struggle to get through the wake that he left, he effortlessly parted the crowd as if it were butter. Vanessa briefly wondered what on earth she was getting herself into—what would a man want with a girl like her, after all?—and then decided to store that thought into the deep padlocked box in her mind that held everything else she couldn’t deal with. Vanessa was pretty sure that the box wasn’t bottomless, but she was willing to stuff as many things into it as possible before finding out.
After much pushing and shoving, and many nasty glares, Vanessa made it to the door and shoved it open into the cool night air. It had grown darker since she had come into the bar. She was surprised by how much time had passed while she had been in the bar. Maybe a good two hours, or perhaps a bit more. Vanessa had thought that it would have been long and drawn out, drinking alone, but people watching and bartender watching apparently was the answer to making the night at the bar go faster. Vanessa stowed that little tidbit of information in the part of her brain that kept useful information that would make her life easier.
Vanessa walked behind Zeke for several minutes, contemplating how to best get out of this situation. The further they got from the comfort of the bar, the more Vanessa realized that she didn’t know Zeke very well. She was hardly drunk enough to leave the bar with some stranger. Who knew, perhaps the crazily good-looking man was secretly a serial killer that no one had ever caught. What if he would—
Vanessa’s thought process screeched to a halt. Zeke had stopped in front of a car that did not belong in the dingy little parking lot of the bar. All of the other cars were in some sort of disarray, or were old enough to be called Vanessa’s parents. Not Zeke’s car. Apparently the cowboy had not been cut off from the family money, because Vanessa didn’t know any cowboys who had the ability to drive a Lamborghini. Not just any Lamborghini, either. The best one on the market. The makers had only made about four of them worldwide, and they were a commodity. The fact that this one was sitting in Vanessa’s hometown seemed like a cruel joke. She would look again and it would be a different model—hell, a different car. But even as Vanessa blinked and discreetly pinched the inside of her wrist, she knew that there was no deceit. This was the real deal.
Billionaire cowboy. Vanessa could get down with that. Said cowboy was watching her, a slow grin spreading across his face. “I take it you know what this is.”
Vanessa rattled off the specs without thinking. Rich had been a huge car fan—the faster the better—and she had picked up a great deal about him. Zeke raised an eyebrow, grin widening.
“You know your cars,” he said.
“My—“ It would be incredibly weird to bring up an ex in this type of situation, Vanessa thought, catching herself just in time before quite possibly ruining this entire ordeal. “Friend,” she continued haltingly, “was obsessed. He loved anything that could accelerate from zero to sixty in under five seconds.”
“I think I would like this friend,” Zeke said lightly, pulling a set of keys out of the pocket of his well-worn jeans. He looked nearly out of place against the majestic car, yet oddly at home as he opened the door and went around to the other side to open Vanessa’s as well.
Vanessa quickly skirted the shining black car to the passenger’s side and climbed in, settling into the seat. She glanced around the cab as she thought, oh, yes, Rich would like you. He’d probably steal you from me. That thought infuriated her, and Vanessa gritted her teeth. Why the hell wouldn’t Rich leave her alone? She had managed to avoid thinking about him all day, and now that she was with the most gorgeous man that she had ever met in her lifetime, he nagged her at the back of her mind. She liked to think that Rich was akin to a fly buzzing around her head, annoying the absolute hell out of her. She also loved to think about swatting the Rich fly into bug goo. It kept her going through her long bouts of depression.
The car started with a quiet purr, completely displacing Rich from Vanessa’s mind. She watched the dash light up and Zeke close his door. In these close quarters, she could see that he had a light dusting of stubble on his chin. While that had bothered her with nearly every other boyfriend she had been in a relationship with, on Zeke it looked as if it belonged there.
Vanessa itched to reach out and run a finger across his beautifully symmetrical jawbone, to feel the scratch of the short hairs against the pads of her fingers. She found her hand rising from her lap, and mentally slapped herself. Get a hold of yourself, she scolded.
As they pulled out of the parking lot, Zeke let the Lamborghini go. Not in the way that most people would let a car go. They let the car drive them. Rich had been that way; it had been something that had always bothered Vanessa. No, Zeke controlled his car with expert precision that let Vanessa know that he had been driving these kinds of cars for several years.
How old was he? All of these little facts that Vanessa didn’t know about Zeke were starting to get on her nerves. She had to remind herself that she would not see this man after tonight, that this was something akin to therapy and nothing more.
Not for the first time since laying eyes upon Zeke, Vanessa wished that it could be more than that. It was a simple yet naïve wish. She didn’t let it weigh her down, however, as she turned her attention back to the car and the world outside, which rushed past at ninety miles an hour. Vanessa should have cared that Zeke had consumed alcohol and that he was going twenty over the speed limit. Instead, she simply watched the lights flash by and marveled at how different this night had turned out than she had expected.
###
Zeke lived on a ranch, which was no surprise. From the feel of his hands and the way he was dressed, she had assumed as much. He didn’t take her to his ranch, though. They simply talked about it in the car on the way to the suite he had rented in some fancy five-star hotel in the city. Apparently, a farm the family had owned and given to some distant relatives had been put up for market. Zeke hadn’t wanted to see it go, as he had spent most of his time there as a child.
Instead of finishing college, he had dropped out and begun working on the ranch full time. Vanessa started to get little warning bells that went off in her mind as he spoke of being the black sheep of the family. Why was it that she always picked the ones that were outcasts and attempting to prove something to some distant relative? Did she attract them to her, as her friend Sophie said that she always managed to attract guys with horrible singing voices? Yes, perhaps that was what it was. Every girl had her curse, and Vanessa’s was getting the black sheep and the outcast of the family.
By the time they reached the hotel, Vanessa had managed to convince herself that Zeke was nothing like Rich and that it wouldn’t end up as it had before.
By the time they were on the twenty-first floor, she had managed to convince herself that she wouldn’t regret this in the morning when she woke up. She told herself that it was good that the hotel was nice and that Zeke had opened both the car door and the hotel doors for her, even going so far as to carry her purse for her as they rode the elevator up to the suite.
“What kind of wine do you prefer?” was the only thing he asked her, in that sweet southern drawl, as they rode up.
“Red,” Vanessa said shortly, and tried to keep her voice calm. Perhaps she hadn’t managed to convince herself of the benign nature of Zeke and this entire setup. At least they would have a glass of wine or two before. That might loosen her up just enough to make the entire experience enjoyable and help her forget about whatever responsibilities would plague her in a normal situation. The little things such as what his birthday is and meeting his family.
Vanessa had never been part of a relationship that moved so quickly. Even if it was just for one night, it was still considered a relationship, right? After all, she wasn’t drunk.
The suite was—unsurprisingly—spacious and bright. It was tastefully decorated in a sea green with acce
nts of red and orange complementing the entire scene. Vanessa’s own apartment was nowhere near as lavish as this. Zeke removed his hat, hanging it on a hook, and Vanessa discovered that he had heterochromia. His left eye was a startlingly bright shade of blue, like a flower petal that had been smoothed into an iris. The right was the precise color of grass with sunlight shining through the blades, a sort of illuminated green that reminded her of something close to neon.
Vanessa was so caught up in his eyes that she simply stared for several moments. Those eyes were so surreal that they shouldn’t have even been possible. Zeke’s lips pulled up at the edges and he watched Vanessa looking at his eyes for several moments.
“Are they even natural?” Vanessa finally blurted.
Zeke actually laughed. It wasn’t the type of laugh that girls usually did, those quiet, restrained titters that didn’t show any real emotion. Zeke threw his head back and laughed, flashing golden-capped molars in the back of his mouth. “You have no idea how often I get that. I had one woman convinced that I was wearing contact lenses even though I told her over and over again that they were just my eyes. She even went as far as trying to stick her finger in my eye to try and get the contact out.”
Vanessa blinked several times and then smiled as she tried to imagine a woman sticking her finger in Zeke’s eye. It wasn’t too hard to imagine, and led to other thoughts of bodily acts that included Zeke, as well as her. They were in his suite, after all…
Zeke tilted his head to the side, causing Vanessa to realize that she had simply been staring at him with an idiotic grin on her face for several heartbeats now. She quickly stopped smiling and cleared her throat, looking away. Her cheeks heated as she realized just what she had been thinking about. It only took a bit of alcohol to envision herself with such a gorgeous man, and she had consumed more than that.
“Please feel free to have a seat,” Zeke said, drawing Vanessa’s attention to him once again. She gave him a smile that was probably more painful than anything else and made her way over to the modernized and chic sitting area with three white couches and a black, low-sitting coffee table that looked polished enough to pass for glass.
Vanessa carefully placed herself on the right side of the closest sofa, setting her bag down by her feet and kicking it under the flap to hide it from view. By the time she had adequately squished herself far enough into the corner of the couch to keep a decent amount of space between herself and Zeke—if he decided to sit down beside her.
That was something Vanessa was used to, by now. Whereas anyone else would have simply sat in the middle of their cushion and not worried about it beyond that, Vanessa’s hips did not allow her to simply sit. No, she had to situate herself strategically into chairs and couches in order to avoid crowding the other person.
Zeke brought the wine glasses over, handed Vanessa one, and sat on the adjacent couch. Vanessa let out a breath of relief, not loud enough to be heard by Zeke from across the space that separated them. She allowed herself to relax into a more natural position and took a sip of her wine. It was something expensive and delicate, just the way she liked her wine.
Simply another way Zeke proved to be perfect.
Stop it, Vanessa scolded herself. There is no such thing as the perfect man. She had thought that she had found it in Rich. He hadn’t stared at other girls, hadn’t complained about anything that she did, and had seemed like a dream come true.
Too bad he had a gay lover on the side.
“So,” Zeke said, interrupting the morbid turn of her thoughts. She blinked up at him, noting his easy smile. Cowboys certainly shouldn’t have been able to have such perfectly white teeth. It shouldn’t be allowed. “What is such a beautiful girl like you doing alone in a bar on a night like this? I forgot to ask you in the car.”
Vanessa looked away, eyes skipping over the brightly colored threads interlaced in the cream fabric of the pillows that sat beside her on the couch. “I’ve recently broken up with my husband,” she said. Tonelessly, emotionally. That was how she had learned to say things over the past few months. It certainly got a lot less people giving sympathy where it was neither wanted nor appreciated when she said it as if it didn’t matter.
There was a pregnant pause that was almost painful in nature as Zeke realized just who he had brought home. “I apologize,” he said, not in the offhand way that most people did, but actually as if he cared.
“It isn’t as if it’s your fault,” Vanessa said, leaning back and shrugging offhandedly. She only wished she could get it to feel so nonchalant inside of herself as well. Then she would truly be okay. There were still days she didn’t want to get out of bed because she truly had no clue about what to do with her life anymore. She had spent so much time and energy doting on Rich, loving him with every cell in her body. What was she supposed to do now? Go out and get a job? Laughable. She’d gotten her degree in art. What useful thing could she do with that? Once the divorce money ran out, she would have to get a job, but Vanessa avoided thinking about that most days.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” Zeke asked, looking at Vanessa with those mismatched eyes over the rim of his wine glass as he tilted it up and emptied the rest of the contents into his mouth.
“He cheated,” Vanessa said simply. She looked pointedly away. “So how does a cow-herding man like you get into such a fancy hotel like this?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“My family is exceptionally wealthy,” Zeke said, sounding none too pleased about that fact. Vanessa slanted her gaze back over at him in time to catch the disgust that flashed across his face before he covered it with something more genial. “When my grandparents died in a fire, the wealth they had accumulated was spread out through all of us. Most of my siblings decided to make an easy life for themselves, spend all of their money and buy fancy cars. I started going down that path, and then I took a trip to Africa to help build an orphanage. My girlfriend at the time was obsessed with helping children of third world countries and she dragged me along with her. That’s when I found out that I didn’t have it in me to be an entitled asshole and bought a ranch.” Zeke leaned forward and set his glass down on the coffee table. Something ugly twisted through Vanessa at the word ‘girlfriend.’ She wanted to ask him how long it had been since they had broken up—if they had actually broken up at all—but she didn’t have the nerve. It was rude to ask people about their relationships unless you knew them better. Or, as Zeke had done, as a conversation started, and even then, that was seriously pushing the envelope.
How ironic it would be, to be the woman that someone was cheating on someone else with. That had never happened to her before, or at least that’s what Vanessa liked to think. A sick feeling entered the pit of Vanessa’s stomach, and she felt the alcohol all rush to her head at once, completely clouding her brain and making her feel nauseous.
She downed the rest of her wine and stood. “I’d better go,” she said, though she had no clue how the hell she was going to get home, or even where she completely was. She had lost track of all of the turns Zeke had made, and they were in a part of the city that Vanessa had never ventured to before. All she knew was that it was time to go.
Zeke stood with her, frowning. “Would you like me to drive you?” The fact that he didn’t even ask her why she wanted to leave made her want to stay all the more. Even Rich had questioned her every move, every decision she made without him. She had simply been blind to how annoying it was until she knew the truth. Vanessa shook her head, because she didn’t want to get into that beautiful car with the beautiful man, because she likely wouldn’t ever leave.
“I’ll take a cab,” she said, leaning over to reach under the couch to fish out her purse. As she did so, her brandy-clouded mind decided that it was the time to make her lose her balance. Vanessa let out a quiet curse, feeling herself topple over. She braced herself for the edge of the table, hoping that it hit her in one of her fleshier places, but what she ran into was solid male. S
he let out a gasp, words formulating on the tip of her tongue to apologize for falling directly onto him. Then, she shifted slightly, and—oh. The words died in her throat and her cheeks heated. She certainly hoped that was a knife in Zeke’s pocket and not what she thought it was.
When she glanced up at the man, up his long, lean—goddamn beautiful—body, any doubt was blown out of the water. His gaze was dark, possessive, and as heavy as a hand on her as his eyes skimmed over her body. Vanessa shivered. No man had ever looked at her like that before. Most definitely not Rich.
“Vanessa,” he said, his voice turning her name into something foreign—something beautiful. “Stay.” That one word was heavy with eloquence. He wanted her. He wanted her. “Please.”
“Oh,” Vanessa managed as she stood up, sliding the length of her body against his in the process. She told her legs to move her backwards, away, anywhere but where she was, but she couldn’t find the will to do so. She simply stood there, an inner battle raging inside of her, and the rational part of her brain was losing quickly.
So what if there was a woman? He had said ‘at the time.’ Didn’t that mean that they had since broken up? Or been engaged, her mind whispered. Shut up, she told it. To her surprise, it complied. Her mind usually loved tormenting her.
