by Julie Cohen
The scent of fresh coffee greeted Nick as soon as he stepped into the hallway; he followed it to the kitchen where Zoe sat at the table with two mugs in front of her. ‘There isn’t any milk,’ she said. ‘Xenia doesn’t take it.’ She frowned slightly. ‘Didn’t.’
‘That’s fine, I like it black.’ Nick took the chair across from Zoe, and a sip of coffee. He leaned back with the mug warming his hand.
She’d taken off her leather jacket, revealing a black T-shirt that allowed him for the first time to see her shape. She was well built, with full breasts and a flat stomach and toned arms.
Nick’s appreciation of this woman climbed a couple of points up the scale. She wasn’t pretty—not like the women he was attracted to. Nick liked the small, feminine type, and Zoe wasn’t delicate or overtly feminine: her jaw was too square, her mouth too wide, her nose too definite, her hands short-nailed and competent. But she was better-looking than he’d thought when he’d first seen her in the corridor. Especially when she was talking. Her mouth and eyes were mobile and interesting, and her movements were fluid. And her smile was bright and sudden.
She wasn’t smiling now, though. She had her brows drawn down and her jaw was set. Her eyes were focused somewhere in the middle of the table.
‘What’s the matter?’
She glanced up at his face. ‘Oh, only the obvious. I’ve got a funeral to arrange and there’s this random guy barging into the apartment looking for his father.’
She was annoyed. Nick didn’t mind that; he’d rather she was annoyed at him than sad about her great-aunt.
‘Oh, that’s all right. For a minute I thought you might be mad at me.’ He took a leisurely sip of his coffee and watched her frown deepen. ‘So, Zoe, what do you think? Did your great-aunt ever mention my father? Do you think he might be staying here still?’
Her blue eyes glinted at him. ‘You really have a one-track mind, did you know that?’
‘When I was ten years old, my dad went for a hunting trip one weekend and never came back,’ he told her. ‘My mother thought there had been an accident. She was frantic. I remember me and my sister going to school and trying to pretend that everything was all right, while my mother was at home, waiting. Two days after my father was supposed to be home, she got a phone call. I remember I was watching Bugs Bunny on TV when the phone rang.’
Zoe was still frowning, but her mouth had softened. ‘What was it?’
‘My mother thought it was the police calling to say my father was dead. I have never seen her so terrified, not before or since.’
Just retelling the story, Nick could feel the fierce protective instinct that had made him, at ten years old, turn off his cartoons and go to his mother and take her hand. His teeth had gritted against each other, his small body had drawn itself to its full height.
It was the moment he had become a man.
‘Nick?’ Zoe had put her coffee down and was leaning forward on the table. Nick realised he must have stopped speaking, caught up in memory.
‘It was my dad on the phone. I could recognise his voice through the receiver, so I knew it was him. I couldn’t hear what he said, though. When my mother put the phone down she told me that my father hadn’t been hurt hunting, he was fine, but he’d gone away and we wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. About a month later she packed up his stuff and put it in the attic.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything from him at all until this letter?’
‘I think my mom got envelopes with money in them occasionally, but not often, and not much. And she’d never show me the return address. She burned the envelopes before I could get my hands on them. I think she knew I’d go off to find him.’
‘Looks like she was right.’
‘My mother is usually right. I was too young then. The envelopes stopped when I was sixteen.’
‘Were you afraid he was dead?’
‘If he were dead he would have an excuse.’
He felt a pain in his hands and looked down at them to see them fisted, his knuckles white and the fingers red.
He swallowed and, after he had concentrated on his hands, they relaxed. He heard the kitchen clock ticking to the same artificial rhythm as the clock in the corridor outside. And, for a few seconds, he heard nothing else.
Zoe cleared her throat loudly. ‘Well.’ She pushed her chair back with a noisy scrape. ‘It’s been great talking about this, Nick, and thank you for sharing, but I’ve got to get home and do stuff, and I’m sure you’re eager to comb the entire city for your missing father. Are you done with your coffee?’ She held out her hand for his mug.
Nick didn’t move. He flexed his hands and looked at the palms. On each of them there were four red crescents where his short nails had dug into the skin.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m staying here.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU’RE WHAT?’
Zoe stared at Nick. He was tall and dark and handsome as ever with the added bonus of being principled, wounded, and passionate.
No, no, no. He ticked all her ‘perfect man’ boxes exactly. She could not have somebody like this around. She needed to get rid of him.
He rubbed his palms against his thighs. ‘I’m staying here. Do you know for sure my father isn’t living here?’
‘Did you see any sign of him?’
‘Nothing definite, but that doesn’t mean anything. Do you know for a fact that your great-aunt didn’t have anybody staying with her?’
‘She never did when I stayed here.’
‘And when was the last time you stayed here?’
‘I stayed a night about five weeks ago.’ She’d done a double shift and taught a late class and she’d been too tired to go all the way across town to her own apartment. She’d called Xenia and Xenia had left keys with the concierge, Ralph. Xenia had been in bed by the time Zoe had dragged her weary carcass into the apartment. Zoe hadn’t woken her up.
She would have if she’d known it was one of the few times they had left.
‘The letter I got from my father was dated eight days ago,’ Nick said. ‘April twenty-third.’
‘You waited eight days before you camped outside Xenia’s door? You’re not as obsessed as I thought.’
‘I only got it yesterday when I got home. I was on an island off the coast of Maine monitoring bird populations when it arrived.’
His voice was maddeningly calm. Zoe considered bending over and trying to pick him up and toss him out the front door. He had about eighty pounds on her. The best scenario was he didn’t struggle and she only slipped the one disc in her back. The worst scenario was they ended up wrestling on the kitchen floor and she turned into a big wobbling Jell-O of lust while he laughed at her.
Instead, she pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘Uh-huh. So you’re trying to say he could’ve moved in since I was last here. Fair enough. But your dad isn’t here, and Xenia is dead. So you might as well follow up some other lead.’
‘I don’t have any other leads. As far as I’m concerned, he might have gone out an hour ago to get some milk and a paper. I’m waiting for him.’
Once again he folded his arms on his chest. Then he settled himself back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him as if he were never going to move.
‘But I’ve got stuff to do,’ Zoe said. ‘I need to go home.’
‘So go home. That’s fine.’
‘I can’t go home and leave you here alone!’
‘You think I’ll get lonely? That’s very kind of you. But I spend a lot of time alone, you don’t have to worry about me.’
Zoe banged her hand against her thigh. ‘No! I mean, I can’t leave you alone in Xenia’s apartment. I don’t know you.’
‘You trusted me enough to let me in.’
‘Yeah, but that was—’
What had that been? From the looks of the immovable Nick and his big old easygoing smile, it had been a pretty colossal mistake.
‘I can’t lea
ve you here,’ she repeated.
‘So stay. That’s fine with me, too.’
‘But—’ Agh! Didn’t this guy listen to reason? ‘I need to get Xenia’s clothes to the funeral parlour.’
Nick raised his eyebrows. ‘Zoe, tell me if I’m being rude here—’
‘You are,’ she interrupted, but he continued straight on.
‘But your great-aunt Xenia owned an enormous apartment in one of the most expensive areas of New York. I’m betting her funeral isn’t going to be a low-budget affair.’
Zoe remembered the instructions she’d read this afternoon, written by her great-aunt in her funeral plan: the mid-Manhattan church to reserve, the private hotel ballroom to book, the request for vintage champagne and single-malt whiskey at the wake. ‘What difference does that make?’
Without needing to leave his chair, Nick reached over and took the kitchen phone off its hook on the wall. He held it out to her. ‘The difference is the funeral parlour is going to be paid a lot. They’ll send someone over to pick up the clothes.’
She shook her head. ‘Nick, I don’t want to stay here. I don’t live here. All my clothes are in the Bronx. Why don’t you just—?’
‘Zoe, I’m not going. I’m sorry that it’s inconvenient for you, but this is my one chance.’
She grabbed the phone from his hand. ‘Fine. I’ll call the police.’
‘Funny,’ he said softly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you needed someone else to fight your battles for you.’
It was as if he’d poked a crafty finger just exactly in the right place. Zoe winced.
‘The only thing that matters to me is finding my father,’ Nick said. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes. I really am sorry if it makes your life difficult. But it’s made my life difficult for the past sixteen years. I can’t leave without some answers.’
He held her eyes steady with his own. He looked big and immovable and very serious.
The doorbell rang.
Nick and Zoe’s gazes flickered in the direction of the door, and then met again.
‘Are you expecting anybody?’ he asked quietly.
‘I have no idea.’
He rose to his feet. Without a word, they fell into step across the kitchen and down the corridor to the front door. Nick was slightly ahead and he reached his hand out to the doorknob.
‘No,’ Zoe said, and he stopped. ‘It’s my great-aunt’s apartment,’ she explained to his enquiring look. For a moment she didn’t think he was going to back down, but then he nodded and stepped back.
Zoe reached her hand towards the doorknob and realised she was holding her breath.
Up until this moment, she hadn’t really believed that Nick’s father was hanging around Xenia’s apartment. Sure, there was plenty she didn’t know about her great-aunt’s life—most everything, actually—and anything was possible with Xenia, but it hadn’t seemed quite right. Xenia had been so independent, so in love with her own way, so much like Zoe, in fact, that Zoe couldn’t picture her sharing her space with anybody.
But Nick was standing as if he were expecting an explosion. Every fibre of his body was tense; she could feel it even with the couple of feet of air between them. She heard his breathing coming in shallow, quick bursts. She had the feeling that if she edged a little closer to him, she would be able to hear his heart beating.
He wanted his father to turn up so badly that she couldn’t help wanting it, too.
‘Will you know him?’ she asked softly.
‘I don’t know.’
She looked at his face. There were lines around his eyes and mouth: tension and hope and, she thought, fear.
Zoe turned her attention to the door, twisted the knob, and stared at the man standing outside.
Geez, he’s short for Nick’s dad, she thought, and then she saw it was Ralph, the concierge.
He looked almost as surprised to see her as she was to see him. Zoe found her voice first.
‘Hey, Ralph, how’s it going?’
‘Zoe.’ He swallowed, most definitely at a loss for words, which was unusual because normally he was a nosy son of a gun. ‘I didn’t see you come up.’
‘You were out back, I think, when I came in. I didn’t bother you because I had my own set of keys.’ And because she hadn’t felt like exchanging sympathetic after-death chat with him, or anybody. She’d hovered outside the front door of the building until she’d seen him turning his back on the desk to fill his ever-present coffee mug, and then she’d dashed through the door and run to the elevators as quickly as she could.
‘Oh. Well I was just checking—there was this guy who said he was looking for Ms Drake—’
Nick stepped behind her, into Ralph’s line of sight. Zoe felt his warmth on her back and breathed his scent suddenly surrounding her, as intimate as a hug.
‘I found her,’ he said.
Ralph looked taken aback. ‘Oh—I, er, thought you meant—’
‘He did,’ Zoe said. ‘But since my great-aunt has died he decided I would do just as well.’
Ralph’s eyes narrowed, looking between them. Although Zoe had known Ralph for years, she felt all at once as if he were suspecting her of planning to rob Xenia’s home. ‘And you’re both all right? Can I help you with anything?’
‘Fine,’ Zoe said firmly. ‘Thank you, Ralph.’
She began to close the door, but his hand shot out and stopped her. ‘It’s just that his backpack is still in the hallway, so I wondered—’he lowered his voice, and spoke close to Zoe’s face ‘—if you had invited him in yourself.’
Zoe didn’t know what he was being protective of—her welfare, or Xenia’s belongings. Either way, habit and instinct chose her next words for her.
‘I only do what I want to do, Ralph. And I’m doing fine. Thanks so much for your concern, though.’
Behind her, Nick spoke. ‘And thanks for reminding me about my pack.’ He brushed past her into the hallway.
For a split second the length of his hard, warm body was pressed against hers and Zoe’s awareness filled with a huge, hopeless longing. She was barely able to understand how her stomach was twisting, her nipples hardening, her legs weakening, before he had swept the big backpack up without any effort and had brushed past her again, back into the apartment.
This time he pressed even closer against her, because the pack took up extra room. Her hip brushed his groin and the back of his arm touched the side of her right breast.
Zoe’s lips parted, her body throbbed, and she nearly moaned with the pleasure from that contact, unintentional and unavoidable as it was. For a stunning moment she knew that if he really touched her, naked skin on naked skin, touched her with desire in his hands, it would be beyond anything she had ever felt before.
And then she shut her mouth as she realised what had just happened.
Uh, der, Zoe! Stupid girl! Nick had just left her apartment and she’d been too busy dealing with hormones to shut the door behind him.
She’d had backup, too. Ralph was still in the hallway, looking suspicious. If she’d really wanted to get rid of Nick, she would have asked him for help, and damn her independence.
But she hadn’t.
‘See ya, Ralph,’ she said, and shut the door.
Nick had already gone down the hall and into the living room. When she got there he was sitting on the couch checking over his backpack. It was a very big backpack, cared-for but well worn.
‘So do you travel with your life on your back or what?’ she asked. She considered sitting in an armchair safely across the room from his sexy body, but Zoe had never been one to go for the safe option. Her actions just now proved it. She dropped onto the couch beside him.
‘Just like a turtle,’ he agreed. He unzipped the top and pulled out a charcoal-grey sweater, and then he pulled off his weatherproof jacket.
He was wearing a white T-shirt that clung to his wide shoulders and his muscular chest. His arms were well developed and tanned. Zoe’s mouth went dry and she swallowed.
‘I didn’t know how long I’d be away for, so I thought it was best to be prepared.’ Nick didn’t seem to notice that she was making googly eyes at his chest.
‘You’d make a good Boy Scout,’ she said, not really paying attention to what she was saying because he was rolling up his jacket and putting it in his backpack and the movement made the sinews and muscles of his arms flex in all sorts of wonderful ways.
‘I was a great Boy Scout,’ Nick said. ‘Made Eagle Scout. How about you—were you ever a Girl Scout?’
Zoe glanced down to see her nipples were hard and highly visible underneath her own t-shirt. She forced her eyes away from his chest before her lust became far too obvious.
‘I’m not a joiner. My mother forced me to go to one Brownie meeting with my older sister Jade and I deliberately poured milk down the jumper of the head Brownie person.’
Nick laughed and his laugh was just as appealing as his chest, warm and deep. Zoe curled herself into a corner of the couch, wrapping her arms around her legs to keep herself in control. ‘So what else do you have in that backpack? A tent? Cooking stove?’
‘Yes,’ said Nick, and she risked a glance to his face to see if he was serious. He was.
‘What were you going to do? Camp out in Central Park?’
‘It occurred to me.’
Zoe snorted. ‘Well, that’s fine, then. You don’t need to stay here. You can go camp out in the park and I’ll just open the window and call you if your dad shows up.’
‘Nope,’ Nick said serenely. ‘Staying here. Why are you so hot to get rid of me, anyway?’
‘I don’t know you from Adam and as far as I can tell that backpack is full of knives so you can cut me into little pieces and then steal all my great-aunt’s valuables.’
Good thing she was such a good liar, because there was no way she was going to tell him the real reason she didn’t want him to stay—that she was afraid if she spent much more time with him she’d get to like him.
Then again, that could be a pretty good way of getting him to leave. He’d think she was the biggest freak in the universe, which, come to think of it, could be true.
‘Well, I tried to point out earlier that I might be dangerous, and you told me to shut up.’ He opened a different compartment of his backpack and began to rummage inside it.
