by Lori Wilde
One instant he was facing her with a crooked little smile more teasing than menacing. The next he pounced.
Before she could scream or escape, he grabbed her thighs and heaved her over his shoulder.
“No.”
Suddenly, she was staring at his back, the blood rushing to her head, and her arms flailed at air. She was bottom up, her shoes dropping off as she tried to squirm free. Zack was giving anyone who cared to look a splendid view of a caveman hauling his hapless female off to his lair.
He carried her up the two steps to the trailer, let the screen door swing out and bang the aluminum siding, then slammed it shut.
“There,” he said, plunking her down in her stocking feet. “Now behave.”
She was breathless, indignant, and speechless. How could he? What would he…
He was getting something out of a drawer behind his cluttered desk. She glanced at the door and weighed her chance of making an escape against another humiliating ride over his shoulder as he put a first aid box on the desk.
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he said, coming around to her side of the desk.
“You manhandled me. That’s sexual harassment.”
“It’s not harassment,” he countered, talking in a voice that reminded her of a kindergarten teacher. “And it’s certainly not sexual.”
“Why not?” It was the dumbest question of the day, but it popped out by accident.
“Because if I wanted to make a sexual move, you’d recognize it.”
“Oh, yeah?” she dared. “What would that look like?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She gulped. He was going to kiss her. All she had to do was give him permission. Slowly, she nodded.
“Is that a yes?” He quirked an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Could you repeat that? I want to make absolutely sure I have your consent.”
Did she? “Y-yes.”
He moved so quickly she only had time to blink and open her mouth in a round O. He put his hands on either side of her neck and none too gently ran them through her hair as a single gasp welled from her throat.
His sunbaked face was hot against hers, and his lips seared as they covered hers.
Oh my sweet tea, she thought, frantically wondering why his kisses were so different from other men’s, why she wanted him to kiss her harder and longer even when his tongue started to tango with hers.
He was too good at this. His hands, hotter even than his lips, slid under her shirt and up her back to release the hooks on her bra.
She knew he was going too far too fast and should be stopped, but she leaned toward him when his hands found her breasts.
He caressed slowly, cupping them and holding their weight while his thumbs made lazy circles without touching the hardening tips.
“This, sweetheart, is sexual,” he said in a soft, seductive voice.
He teased her nipples with his thumbs, all the while silencing her with a bombardment of little kisses on the corners of her mouth, her chin, and her tender, swollen lips.
“Now let’s get that splinter out,” he said, abruptly releasing her.
“What?”
Dazed, she’d forgotten the splinter, but it would be impossible to forget the way he’d kissed her. They didn’t even like each other. Or did they? She was so confused, she hardly noticed when he pushed aside a stack of papers and boosted her onto his desk.
She sat, legs dangling, trying to decide whether to be mad, scared, embarrassed, or terribly pleased.
“I’ll clean it off with peroxide, sterilize the needle with rubbing alcohol…”
“You have a needle in a construction office?”
“In the first aid kit. Carpenters get a lot of splinters. I’ll have yours out before you know it.”
“I’ll know.”
Dread was rearing its ugly head, almost making her forget the shivers of excitement his kisses had sent coursing through her.
Almost.
“I’d rather go home,” she insisted, bunching both hands into fists.
“Hey, Zack, do you want—” A burly man she’d seen before stuck his head in the doorway.
“I’ll be out in a couple of minutes,” Zack said. “Doing a little first aid.”
“Sure, first aid. No rush,” the workman said, retreating.
“You have to get back to work,” Megan said.
“I’m the boss, remember? Let’s do this.”
He pried open her fingers, but not as easily as he’d slung her over his shoulder.
“There it is.”
He swabbed her palm clean with a cotton ball saturated with rubbing alcohol and picked up the needle.
“I can’t do this.” She wasn’t faking her panic.
“You don’t have to do anything but relax.”
He held her hand on his palm, preventing her from making a fist.
“This will only be a pinprick. You can’t be that sensitive to pain.”
“I’m not.” This was true. “It’s not the pain.”
“You have a needle phobia? Just don’t look.”
“No. I have a splinter phobia. I know it’s there whether I look or not.”
“Hand me one of those gauze pads in the first aid box, would you? It’s right behind you.”
She turned to oblige, but he held on to her right hand. Before she could find it, a sharp prick made her wince.
“There.”
“There what?” She pulled on her hand, and this time he released it.
“Your splinter. Do you want it as a souvenir?”
“It’s out?”
“Came out clean as could be with these.”
He held up a pair of tweezers.
“But you had a needle.”
“A little sleight of hand. I didn’t need it. Here, slap on a bandage if you like. I have to get back to work.”
He leaned forward, kissed the tip of her nose, and left.
She stared at her palm. The splinter really was gone.
And she’d forgotten to say thanks.
8
Megan was awake at five o’clock worrying about the show, so she went to the studio early. It was Home Stop day, and she couldn’t be more depressed if they were shooting at a mortuary.
The cutesy shopping tour had absolutely nothing to do with her concept for the show, and it irked her that Ed had been right about the powers that be loving the idea.
They were so enthusiastic; the Bulgarian chef was in a snit, and the dog man’s nose was out of joint.
The only one as glum as Megan was Julie, but the intern was suffering from the throes of unrequited love over a guy in her apartment building.
She walked around in a haze of misery. Even when she was mildly cheerful, she dressed like the mother of all vampires. Lately she’d been downright scary.
Megan was checking a couple of things in her dressing room—where the higher-ups had not bothered to install a phone line—when Julie brought bad news.
“Zack can’t do the show today,” she said in what was becoming a habitually tragic tone. “He’s sick.”
“He isn’t coming?”
“That’s what someone named Gus said. I told him to hold until I found you.”
Megan sprinted toward the phone in her office.
“This is Megan Danbury. Who is this, please?”
“Gus Graham, ma’am. Zack said to—”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Uh, he’s at home sick. Can’t do your TV show today.”
“He can’t not do it.” Like it would do any good to rant and rave at one of his employees. “Never mind, I’m going to his house to see for myself.”
“Nothing to see,” the man quickly said. “He’s just under the weather.”
“Thanks for calling.”
She hung up and checked her watch. Plenty of time to get to Livonia and convince Zack he wasn’t too sick to honor his contract.
She found
Brad, the less-than-efficient but more loquacious intern, and dispatched him to Ed. She didn’t have time to take any flak from her producer.
“Tell him I’ll meet him at Home Stop. Bailey is trying to bail on us, but unless he has the bubonic plague, we’ll both meet Ed and the crew at the store for the taping.”
“Bailey has the bubonic plague,” Brad said with his mouth full of jelly doughnut, “and you’ll meet him at the show.”
She gave it to him once more, and the message seemed to penetrate. Better to risk a garbled message than try to explain to Ed in person. He was going to blow a gasket if the show was sabotaged by the golden boy’s defection.
By the time she got to Livonia, her heart was pounding almost as loudly as her fists on the door of Zack’s duplex. She was going to see for herself just how sick he was, then kill him.
He had to be home; a company truck was in the driveway. She rang the bell and pounded on the door. Maybe he was unconscious, in a coma, too sick to come to the door.
She tried the knob and was surprised when the door opened inward.
“Zack, where are you?”
“In here.”
She followed a hoarse, feeble voice to the bedroom.
He was in bed, all right, with a green cotton blanket pulled up to his chin. He did look a little flushed under the deep bronze of his tan. He lifted his head a couple of inches off the pillow, then sank back.
“A man called and said you were sick.”
“Gus, my foreman,” he explained weakly.
“Why did he call for you?”
“I had to call the site to say I wasn’t coming.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
She remembered the splinter and tried to sound sympathetic, but dang, she dreaded trying to do a shopping show alone.
When it tanked—and it most likely would—she was the one who’d look bad even though she’d hated the idea from the beginning.
“Achy, queasy, coughing. My head hurts.” He gave a little hack.
“This show is your bright idea. Take it out in the field, you said. Are you sure you can’t take a couple of aspirin and get through it?”
She didn’t try to hide her skepticism. He looked pretty good to her, unfortunately.
“I’m not a well man,” he said crabbily.
“I’ll take your temperature.”
“No thermometer.”
Still suspicious, she remembered what had happened in the trailer. She wasn’t getting close enough to feel his forehead.
“I’ll get you something to settle your stomach.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Oh, no trouble.” No trouble at all compared to whipping together a show that excluded him while everyone from the cameraman to the store manager waited. “Something to drink will help your cough, too.”
Or maybe he’d already been drinking. Was he hungover? She sniffed delicately and rejected the possibility.
“I’ll see what you have in the kitchen.”
“Maybe a little warm milk, not too hot.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
She zapped a cup of skim milk in the microwave. A person had to be sick to drink something that yucky, but she was still suspicious. This debilitating illness was a little too convenient for him.
Carefully carrying the hot cup, she stepped into the bedroom.
He’d pulled the covers up an inch too far. She saw the ridged sole of his work boot.
“You’re busted.”
“What?” He lifted his head.
“You’re a despicable fraud. I can’t believe you’d sink this low.”
He could have his warm milk—sans cup. She threw the contents at the mound under the covers.
“Yikes!” He bounded out of bed before most of the hot liquid could soak through to the strategic location she’d targeted. “Why did you do that?”
“Why are you in bed in your boots? You lied to me. You were probably standing right next to your flunky when he called. What did you do, race home when he told you I was coming here?” She glared at his jeans, belt, and Tiger baseball T-shirt.
“Who made you bedroom monitor?”
“I can’t believe you lied after you agreed to do the show. You signed a contract,” she said, sinking her hands on her hips.
“What is the point of having me stroll up and down the aisles of the Home Stop? You don’t need me to toss stuff into a cart.”
“I don’t want you to toss anything anywhere, but thanks to your brilliant suggestion, I’m stuck with you. And you have to do it.”
“Have to?”
He raised one eyebrow, deepening the crease line on his forehead. She was much too mad to be intimidated by his dark scowl and smoldering gray eyes.
He moved toward her and, okay, she was leery of all those muscles, but she was more angry than anything else.
“You made your own deal. You agreed to be on my show twelve times.”
“This isn’t one of those times.”
“Did you wake up intending to chicken out, or did you get scared when you thought of all those ferocious fans of yours mobbing you in a hardware store?”
“I’m over my stage fright, and you don’t need a so-called expert. Anyone with half a brain can do the stuff on your show.”
“Apparently, you can’t. Hiding in bed when you’re supposed to honor your commitment is a schoolboy trick.”
“Well, what happens next? Do I stand in a corner or do you whack me with a ruler?”
“Go ahead, joke. If you don’t come with me now, Ed will look incompetent; the show will be a total dud—not that it won’t be anyway—and I’d rather date a boa constrictor than pretend to be involved with a cowardly lion.”
“Are you through?” He stepped so close she could see milk stains on his T-shirt.
“I guess so.”
“Then let’s go shopping.”
He turned abruptly and stripped off his shirt.
“Pick out a shirt for me.”
“What?”
“It’s your show. Get one out of the middle drawer.” He pointed at a heavy oak dresser.
Opening his drawer felt like an invasion of his privacy, but she grabbed the first thing she saw, a jet black T-shirt that looked new.
“Formal wear,” he said, grabbing it and pulling it on. “Let’s go before I doubt my sanity.”
He drove his truck faster than she wanted to follow, and she didn’t really believe he’d make an appearance at the Home Stop until she spotted his truck already parked near the back of the large lot.
She couldn’t shake a panicky feeling. This was going to be her worst show ever.
“I get to have lunch with a TV star.” Sue Bailey slid into the booth at Olivia’s Garden Cafe and grinned at her son.
“Don’t tell me you wasted your time watching TV.” Zack sheepishly returned her smile. “Nice suit. Is it new?”
“It was a couple of years ago.” She flicked an imaginary speck off the shoulder of her heather-gray suit. “You’re just like your brother. If I bring up a sensitive subject, you mention my clothes.”
Zack smiled for real. His mother was one of those women who looked good in anything, even when the mood struck her to play games with her hair color. Today, he noted with satisfaction, it was light brown, worn short with straight bangs.
“Imagine, twins alike,” he teased. “Maybe Cole has watched me operate so long, he mimics my fine qualities.”
“I got a kick out of the women trying to rip your shirt off,” she said, not one to be distracted.
“Give me a break, Mom. I’m trying to forget the whole fiasco.”
“I did like the shows in the studio better.”
“How did you happen to watch daytime programs?”
“Cole tells me when you’re going to be on so I can record them. Are you going to do more?”
“A few, maybe,” he reluctantly admitted.
“Aren’t they fun?”
“No, not
really.”
About as much fun as having his butt tattooed, but his mother didn’t know about the panther head on his left cheek.
“If you don’t enjoy it, why do it?”
There was a question he had to evade. If his mother even suspected Marsh was using her job to maneuver him into marriage, she’d be horrified.
“I promised a girl I would,” he said.
“Ah.”
He hated that “ah,” maybe because it always meant she’d caught him at something. “Nothing serious,” he quickly assured her. “Cole is the marrying man in this family.”
“Thank heavens. But you know I want grandchildren before I’m too old to enjoy them.”
“You have a long way to go before then. Just don’t use them as models for the baby ads when you do get some.”
Zack had hated posing for the company catalog even more than Cole when they were young. Maybe that was why he loathed the television camera.
“Would you like to order?” a young brunette waitress asked.
“We’re waiting for another person,” his mother said.
“Cole’s coming? He was busy at the site when I left.”
“No, not Cole. Your grandfather heard I was meeting you—”
“You told him?”
“Well, he almost always has lunch with his old cronies. How would I know he’d ask to join us? It’s a little weird, actually, but… Oh, here he is.”
She slid over to make room for her father.
“Hi, Gramps.” Might as well start off by annoying him, Zack thought, pretty sure Marsh’s presence didn’t bode well.
The old man knew his daughter was in the dark about his demands and wanted to keep it that way, the one thing all the men in the family agreed on. So why was he here?
He didn’t even gripe about being called Gramps. Bad sign.
They ordered.
That in itself was an experience, since his grandfather was on a strict heart diet but never seemed to have a clue which entrees were really bad for him. Zack kept out of it as his mother nixed one item after another.
Marsh finally ordered a double bacon cheeseburger. Sue canceled it and requested the baked fish for him.
Zack wondered which meal the waitress would deliver.
“So, you’re a TV star now,” his grandfather said with something he probably thought was jovial goodwill.
