Actually Love - Jessie & Zach (The Crossroads Series)

by Melanie Shawn

  A few of the staff immediately rushed to his mom’s side to make sure that everything was okay. It took some convincing, but they finally were appeased and left Zach and his mom alone again. Zach was glad that they didn’t leave until they felt comfortable to do so. It made him feel even better about the care his mom was receiving.

  “Okay.” His mom took a deep breath. “How did you sit here all this time and not say anything?!”

  “You can’t lead with that,” Zach joked.

  “Good point,” his mom conceded. Then her excitement returned full force as she asked, “Are you going to meet him? Can you get him to sign something for me? No, never mind. That’s weird. I’m way too old for that.”

  “You are not old.” Zach knew that his mom’s illness made her feel decades older than she was. Even though he knew that she’d meant that she wasn’t a star-struck teenager, he still hated that she said things like that. “I have no idea if I’ll meet him, but I’m sure Jessie can get you some swag.”

  Zach’s fans were so important to him. People he knew and friends of people he knew were always asking him for shirts or signed pics, and it never bothered him. Fans were a huge reason that anyone who had success, whether it was an actor, musician, or even a popular athlete, were in the position that they were. He didn’t know Chase personally, but even though he’d only spent part of one day with Krista, he knew there is no way she would be with a douchebag.

  “Only if it’s not too much trouble,” his mom said excitedly.

  “I don’t think it will be since I’m in a fake relationship with the sister of the girl that the song ‘Saving Me’ was written about.”

  “Shut up!” His mom kept her reaction in normal audible range, but he could tell that it was taking every ounce of self-control she possessed. Her hands covered her chest. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I spent the day with the ‘Saving Me’ girl.” Zach couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear. Not because he’d spent the day with Krista, but because this was one of the best visits he’d had with his mom in a long time.

  Sometimes he felt like he was living in his own version of Groundhog Day. His life was a lot of the same all the time. Training. Eat. Sleep. Training. Eat. Sleep.

  It got a little varied closer to fights. There were press junkets. Travel. And of course, the main event. But considering he averaged a fight every nine months, those times were few and far between. But since Jessie had come into his life, he’d had a lot more to talk to his mom about, and she loved hearing all of it. It was as if his life were one of her soap operas and she was hanging on every minute of it.

  “Wait a minute!” she exclaimed as she snapped her fingers.

  Reaching down, she grabbed her large floral bag that held what, he had no idea, but she always had it with her. Her hands furiously dug in it and she was mumbling to herself as she searched.

  After pulling out a magazine, she pushed her treasured bag to the side like it was a piece of garbage and began flipping through a copy of Hits.

  “I knew it,” she said as she pointed to a page and then slid the magazine across the table to him.

  He looked down and saw a black-and-white picture of Chase beside a river.

  “He talks about Krista in this article. You met the Krista?” Her voice sounded like she almost couldn’t believe that it could be true.

  “Yep. Krista Sloan,” Zach confirmed.

  “What’s she like? Is she sweet, funny, nice? I saw some pictures of her that were taken after the article came out and the paparazzi were following her around like sharks circling blood. She’s a nurse or something, right? There were a lot of pictures of her in scrubs going into a hospital.”

  Zach couldn’t help but find it amusing that, even though his mom knew that eighty percent of what those “entertainment” magazines printed wasn’t true, she still read them every week. Any time he asked her about it, she would say that she only got them to see the pictures, but she always knew a lot of details that she couldn’t have been deducing from a photo. He guessed those magazines were the female equivalent to guy’s Playboys. Both sexes were lying about why they had them. Men said they got the nudie mags for the articles, while women said they got the trash mags for the pictures.

  “I didn’t get to spend a ton of time around her, but I definitely wouldn’t call her sweet. Jessie’s oldest sister Haley seems like a sweetie, but Krista is…” He smiled as he tried to think of the right way to describe her. One word came to mind. “She’s a firecracker.”

  His mom nodded with an approving expression on her face, “Good. That means she’ll keep Chase on his toes.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Zach had to laugh at how his mom acted like she knew Chase and what was good for him. “Another interesting fact that came to light today, although not quite as exciting as the six-degrees-of-Chase-Malone development, was that Margie and Mabel live directly upstairs from us.”

  “What?!” His mom’s hands flew to her mouth. She seemed just as surprised as he had been.

  “Yep. I guess Frank, who was Margie’s husband, renovated the upstairs floor into its own separate living space so that Mabel could live there after her husband passed away thirty years ago. Now, they both live up there and Margie rents out the lower half,” Zach explained.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His mom looked at him like he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. “I mean they think you and Jessie are a couple. Don’t you think they’ll figure out that you’re not if they’re living above you?”

  “Why would they? It’s not like they’re going to do bed checks.”

  Jessie had had the same reaction that his mom was having when she’d learned the news. During the few minutes they’d been alone after breakfast, he’d said the same thing to her that he’d just told his mom. From the looks on both of their faces, neither of them thought his logic was solid.

  Both brows arched as his mom leaned forward. “Maybe not bed checks. But don’t you think they’ll be able to pick up on it?”

  His mom’s tone was the same one she used to get when he’d want to watch TV before doing his homework and she would say, “Wouldn’t you feel better just getting it done now?” Anna Courtland’s parenting technique had always been less about ironclad rules and more about steering him in the right direction and then not bailing him out if he made the wrong decision. If he chose to live his life “irresponsibly,” then he lived with the consequences.

  “I think it’ll be fine,” Zach assured her even though now he was feeling less and less sure of that fact himself.

  He hadn’t known Jessie that long, but she did not seem the like the kind of girl who was prone to overreactions and drama. She was smart, resourceful, and from what he’d seen, pragmatic. His mom was also smart, and she’d always been an observer of people. In fact, people-watching was one of her favorite activities. If both women thought that there could potentially be a problem, then he had to take that seriously.

  In Zach’s mind though, the only potential problem he could think about was the potential problem of him not being able to control himself around his way-too-sexy-for-his-own-good roommate. Zach was seriously unsure of how he was going to be able to keep his hands to himself and his dick in his pants.

  It would be one thing if the overwhelming attraction were a one-way street. But he knew that wasn’t the case. In fact, it wasn’t even a two-lane street. What they had was a four-lane lust freeway, and every time they were alone together, it felt like they both merged right into the desire fast lane.

  Margie and Mabel were the least of his worries. Not being able to put the brakes on before they crashed into ecstasy while going one hundred miles an hour, pedal to the passion metal floor, was. Zach knew that, as much as he wanted to get to know Jessie better, as intrigued as he was by her, he needed to exit the highway and stay on the safe city streets in the town of Keeping a Safe Distance.

  He had a fight comi
ng up. Spending more time at the gym was a good thing. For his career—and his out-of-control hormones.

  Chapter Ten

  Rolling her neck from side to side, Jessie yawned as she blinked her eyes several times to clear her vision. She still had a dozen more emails to respond to, and she was having a hard time staying awake.

  After her family had left this evening, she’d looked at her phone—for the first time all day—and saw that she had over forty missed calls. Jessie never went more than an hour without checking her phone for messages. Her job was not a Monday-through-Friday nine-to-five. She was unofficially “on call” twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Stretching her arms above her head, Jessie leaned back against her wooden kitchen chair and took in a deep breath, trying to move some blood and oxygen through her system in an attempt to wake up so she could get the rest of her work done. Her stomach growled loudly, and she looked at the time displayed on the bottom right-hand corner of her computer screen. Ten thirty. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast this morning.

  Today had gotten away from her. Between moving, her family showing up, and Margie and Mabel’s bombshell, she was exhausted. It also didn’t help that any reserve energy she might have had was currently being used up by trying to keep her overactive libido in check. She was worse than a cat in heat. All day, every time she saw Zach, thought about Zach, heard Zach’s voice or his laugh, Jessie suddenly morphed into Mae West, thinking things like, Hey there, handsome. Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

  Last night, she’d seen the evidence of his arousal tenting his sweats when they’d been in the kitchen, and then again, this morning, his gun had been drawn like he was in a showdown at noon. Both times, it had rendered her speechless. It wasn’t just the size, which was impressive, that made her body pulse with need. It was the fact that she affected him so potently that gave her a powerful thrill.

  She’d seen the women Zach had dated. They were some of the sexiest in the world. It wasn’t that Jessie had ever lacked in the self-esteem department. Jessie knew that she was attractive. She also knew that she was smart and controlling.

  Most men did not find those qualities to be turn-ons. Most men were intimidated by her. Most men pursued her until they got to know her, and then things usually ended with them calling her a heartless bitch or some form of that same sentiment.

  Maybe she was. She didn’t dream of the same things that a lot of women did. Career. That was where her focus was. Returning a phone call after two dates was not her priority. Neither was inflating some idiot’s ego after they’d slept together. A lot of guys found her behavior off-putting to say the least.

  Somehow Zach just seemed different. Zach was not just serious man-candy that she loved visually indulging in—which Jessie hated to admit since she prided herself on judging people not on their outer appearance but on their minds—but he was also the definition of alpha-male. And her body, it turned out, was all about that too, contrary to what she believed about herself until that fateful day in the basement a week and a half ago. But the pièce de résistance of Zach Courtland was that he saw her.

  Jessie was not in the habit of letting people in, but with Zach, she found herself saying more, explaining more than she did with anyone else in her life. And he didn’t just listen to her, he heard her. He even called her out on things. Like when he’d asked why she kept cutting off her sentences and pressing her lips together. She herself had only been vaguely aware that she’d been doing that.

  Her phone buzzed and she picked it up. Her heart sank a little when she saw that it was a text from her assistant.

  No. She could not do this. Since she’d sat down to work a few hours ago, she’d been looking up expectantly every time she heard a sound coming from the front of the house. In the back of her mind, she was waiting for Zach to come home. Hoping any minute he’d walk through that door. Each time that didn’t happen, she felt a twinge of disappointment. Now, when she got a text and it wasn’t from Zach, she felt more than a twinge in her chest. This behavior was totally unacceptable.

  Get a grip. She shook her head in irritation.

  Returning her focus to her work, Jessie was able to push Zach out of her mind and concentrate. Just as she pressed send on the final email, she heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening. Her heart sped up as adrenaline raced through her system.

  Well, at least she’d been able to lock that down long enough to get her work finished. Baby steps.

  Shutting her laptop, Jessie decided against her original plan of having dinner right after she finished her correspondence. Her room was her safest bet at this stage in the game—at least until she figured out how to stop her body from channeling Mae West every time Zach was around.

  She stood quickly, grabbing her laptop as she spun to exit the kitchen and came not face to face, but face to Zach’s very strong, very broad chest, stopping just a hair short of plowing into said chest.

  “Sorry,” Jessie apologized as she tried to scoot around him. His body blocked the entire doorway, making her task impossible. Against her better judgment, she looked up into Zach’s deep-green eyes. When she did, her insides did a happy dance of desire, which she tried desperately to ignore as she explained, “I was just heading upstairs.”

  “Have you had dinner?” Zach’s perfect mouth formed words, but it took a moment for Jessie’s brain to process them. He stood in front of her wearing a dark-gray beanie, a black hooded sweatshirt, loose-fitting blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. Not normally attire that Jessie would consider swoon-worthy, but it was all somehow causing a substantial swoon to bubble up inside of her.

  Zach couldn’t be further from Jessie’s ‘type.’ She was attracted to businessmen. White collar. The kind of men who owned more ties than she had shoes, and she had a lot of shoes. But there was something about Zach that worked for her. He broke all the rules of attraction she had. No, he more than broke them. He obliterated them. Zach smashed them into tiny little pieces and ground them up until they were microscopic pieces of dust invisible to the naked eye.

  After a few lust-fogged moments, she was able to form words again like a normal person. “No, I’m not hungry. I’m just going to go to bed.”

  As the words were leaving her mouth, her body betrayed her by growling so loudly she couldn’t ignore it.

  Zach’s brows lifted in question.

  Jessie was determined that she was not going to be derailed by her stomach acid. “It always does that when I’m tired.”

  Okay, granted that was possibly not the most creative or believable explanation, but she was hungry and exhausted and desperate to break free from this intimate space she shared with Zach.

  “Really? Mine does that when I’m hungry.” A small smile pulled at the corners of Zach’s lips.

  She gave him a curt nod in recognition, smiling as she waited for him to move out of the way so she could exit.

  Instead of doing that, he held up two bags from Domico’s Italian Eatery, which happened to have the best Italian takeout—or dine-in for that matter—in the city. The delicious scent of pasta, tomato sauce, and, oh boy, garlic bread drifted up into the air. Before she could stop herself, she inhaled deeply, and once again, her stomach rumbled. Loudly.

  “You need to eat,” he stated firmly.

  Jessie was waiting for her no-one-tells-me-what-I-need-to-do indignation to kick into high gear. Any time, she thought to herself. But nothing happened. Logically, she was ready to set Zach straight. Since, instead of doing that, she stood there staring at him like a mute, she guessed that she wasn’t operating logically this evening.

  Perfect. That was just what she needed when she was around Zach. It wasn’t like she had any impulses to do things that were totally inappropriate and unwise or anything that she would need logic to jump in and stop her from doing.

  “I have enough food in here to feed an army.” He finally moved out of the doorway as he crossed the small kitchen a
nd set the bags of food down on the tile countertop.

  Relief washed over Jessie as her eyes darted to the doorway. Jessie’s mind was telling her feet to move. The escape path was clear. In a few steps, she could be at the stairs, halfway to her safe zone, a.k.a. her room. Instead of listening to her mind’s instructions, her feet remained planted in the middle of the kitchen.

  “You want to grab a couple of plates and silverware?” Zach asked as he pulled the containers of food out of the large bag and set them on the counter.

  Jessie watched, mesmerized, as his hoodie pulled taut against his broad, muscular back. His movements were smooth, reminding her of a sleek, powerful panther.

  A shiver of awareness spread through her, and she felt moisture in two places on her body. One, at her core. The other place was at the corner of her mouth. When she lifted her hand, her fingers brushed against her lips, and sure enough, there was saliva there. Apparently, just watching Zach remove to-go containers was enough to make her panties wet and her mouth salivate to the point of drooling.

  If she weren’t so irritated with herself, she would give Zach a round of applause. The fact that he’d been able to reduce her to this state, without even trying, was an impressive feat. Jessie always gave credit where credit was due.

  Zach turned, his arms loaded with delicious-food-filled containers. He gave her a strange look. It took her a minute to figure out why, but then she remembered that he’d asked her to grab the plates.

  Shit. She needed to get a handle on whatever ridiculous hormonal or pheromonal response her body was having to him. After placing her computer down on the countertop, Jessie made quick work of setting the table. When she put her mind to something, she could accomplish tasks at about double the speed other people could. When she was growing up, it had always frustrated her sisters that she could finish chores—and do them right—in so much less time than they could. Well, all of her sisters except Krista. Krista could clean like the Tasmanian Devil if she was mad.