“How do you afford the house?”
“My dead father’s estate pays for the upkeep.” I gritted my teeth. “You really think I’d deny you guys? Well, Heaven, you can screw yourself, but you three…” I swallowed. Azariah, Layna, and Nikkole had the decency to look away. “When you said to come out tonight…you weren’t trying to help me with Professor Sweeten at all. You just wanted…money?”
Heaven sipped her water. “Told ya’ll.”
“Know what?” I dug through my purse and found two crumpled twenties. I tossed them on the table. “There. That’s everything I have on me. Divvy it up. I’ll sell off a fucking rug or something tomorrow. You can have whatever you need.”
Azariah tossed her purse to Layna and tried to follow. “Shay, wait.”
“I gotta go,” I said. “Thanks for the invite out, but I should get back to my brother.” I eyed Heaven. “Make sure he survived our fucking last night.”
Yeah, that wasn’t a good thing to shout in a crowded restaurant. People stared, but I was too mad to be ashamed of my behavior.
None of this made any sense. I didn’t do anything wrong. Did they really think I was flaunting my money by not flaunting how fortunate I was?
Did they even know how ridiculous it felt to get my father’s fortune? It was random—like a lottery I didn’t enter. I hardly knew Dad, and what I remembered wasn’t great. He was a man who lost his temper with Momma most nights at dinner and a father who missed his child’s every recital, school function, and birthday.
And maybe they were right. Maybe I shouldn’t have cared where the money came from.
Except the ache in my heart was a loneliness that cash and investments couldn’t heal. Momma was gone. Dad had never been around. I had no real family, and my friends couldn’t understand just how deep the scars ran.
Only one person ever saw through my pretense. He’d felt the same way, tried to comfort me, and was either my last bit of family or the beginning to a scary and exciting relationship.
So why did I keep running from him? I wouldn’t blame him if he gave up on me. He asked for a chance to make something happen, moments beyond shamed nights when I needed comforted. He came to talk to me, and I hadn’t listened. I took what I needed and left.
I wouldn’t do that to him again.
Zach was either my step-brother, which made him family, or he was…
I didn’t know what else he could be, but I hoped for something amazing.
I drove home and braced myself for the relationship talk of all talks. Epic levels of mushy-stuff, heart-to-hearts, and every cliché the French ever discovered. My stomach twisted. This was the one conversation I couldn’t afford to mess up.
I parked in the garage, checked my makeup, and hurried into the house. Zach wasn’t in the gym or theater. I dropped my purse on the kitchen counter. A bottle of aspirin overturned on the island. I tucked it in the cabinet.
And froze.
Two wine glasses rested in the sink.
One smudged with the barest pink of lipstick.
My heart knotted itself into a pretty little bow of innocence and naivety.
Was I that much of an idiot?
Her voice carried from the parlor. I didn’t know what I expected to find or why I didn’t just turn around and walk out of the estate.
I rounded the corner into the parlor. Zach laughed on the couch—fully-clothed, a goddamned miracle. He spread his legs wide, and the pretty little blonde who owned the red Porsche sat on the coffee table. She smiled and patted his knee.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my heart pounded itself into a million flaking pieces.
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since I hopped into his arms, and he was already sexing up some other little tart the instant I left the house?
Her smile faded as she spied me in the doorway. She gestured to Zach.
He turned, those striking green eyes capturing me in a wide-eyed blitz of panic.
“Shay!” He swore. “I…didn’t know you were back.”
Chapter Fifteen - Zach
Son of a bitch.
What was she doing home so early?
“Shay.” I stood. “I thought you’d be out for a bit longer.”
“Imagine that.”
Shit.
She was pissed, and her anger was another vice trying to crush my head from the inside.
I called to her when she retreated from the room. “Shay, it’s not how it looks.”
She tried to be mad, but her words trembled instead. Her lip quivered. Fuck. I’d kick my own ass for hurting her.
“Save it,” she said. “I should have known better.”
“Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “It’s not like…like we were…”
Dating. Exclusive. Made for each other. Fucking perfect together.
“Shay!”
And she was gone. Storming upstairs.
Why was she back so goddamned early?
And how was I supposed to reveal who Gretchen was without fucking everything up?
I groaned. I’d paint the bulls-eye on my ass now. Shay would kick me to the curb, and I didn’t want her aiming too low.
“The little missus is jealous.” Gretchen leaned on the coffee table. It didn’t help that she was all fucking leg in the skin-tight cocktail dress she wore for the house-call. “I’m assuming you haven’t told her about me.”
“What’s to tell?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I’m always trying to drum up business.”
“Stick around. She’s loading a shot gun. You can stitch me up.”
She stood, tucking a blood-pressure cuff into her bag. “You’re lucky I like you, Zach. Please promise you’ll take care of yourself. No more working out for four hours a day.”
“Two.”
“Zach.”
“Three and a half.”
“You’re healing,” she said. “I know you refuse to believe it, but you aren’t one hundred percent healed yet. So use your brain and be glad it still works right.”
“I am.”
“No, you aren’t. If you had an episode that scared you bad enough to call me during my date.” She wagged the doggy-bag from the Italian restaurant. “Then you’re overdoing it.”
“The appeal is in two weeks.”
“All the more reason to rest. I already lost my brother in this war. I’m not going to lose his best friend too. Okay?”
“I hear you.”
“Go rest.”
Gretchen shouldered her purse and bag. “And, for Christ’s sake, go talk to Shay. Tell her what happened. She won’t judge you for getting injured overseas. She looks sweet…as long as she doesn’t rip your innards out first.”
“If she hasn’t yet…”
Only one way to find out. I escorted Gretchen to her car to delay coming clean to Shay. Even if she forgave Gretchen, she wasn’t going to be happy about my condition or the truth about my extended leave.
I knocked outside her bedroom.
No explosions. No gunshots. So far so good.
She didn’t answer, but I didn’t expect her to welcome me with open arms and legs. I knocked again and edged inside.
“So…you came home early…”
Nothing.
The room was empty. Bathwater hummed from behind the partially closed bathroom door. I watched as Shay shifted at her vanity, but I didn’t say anything. Just stood there like a damned idiot, without a single fucking idea of how to start my apology or explanation.
The bathroom door opened. Shay shrieked.
She hadn’t tied her silk bathrobe, and the pink graced her dark curves with a hypnotic beauty.
I stared. Who the fuck wouldn’t?
The softness caressed her full breasts, and the hint of her slit peeked between the short pleads of the robe. She wasn’t quick enough to hide from me. Even better, she missed the hem of the robe and revealed more. She screeched and turned to tie it. The pink silk barely kissed the bottom curve of her perfect ass.
“Zach!” She pulled the robe’s belt tight, either to shield her nudity or because it’d be a felony to knot it around my neck. “Knock first!”