Elena complied.
"I was working covering security at a show tonight." Zoe's company, now officially named All-Hours Security Specialists, was up and running and doing extremely well for a fledgling business. "Since when do you keep tabs on me?" Zoe joined her mother on the couch and settled in beside her.
"I just worry about you."
Zoe leaned her head on her mom's shoulders as if she were a little girl again. "And I love that you care." She curled her legs beneath her, allowing exhaustion to take over. "But you know I work long hours and you know not to worry. So why wait up for me now?"
She stroked Zoe's hair with gentle hands. "Because your heart is hurting. That's what I'm so concerned about."
Zoe shook her head, her denial automatic. But she knew she was lying. She'd been home from Boston for two weeks and she hadn't been able to forget anything about Ryan and their time together. She remembered what his lips felt like kissing hers and how his very presence reached her on a deep, intimate level.
"Baah. You miss him." Her mother had always been able to read her well.
She could no longer lie to herself, nor did she want to. "Of course I do, but that doesn't make us right for each other." She bit down on the inside of her cheek, but her words were even more painful.
"What does this right for each other mean?" her mother asked, all the while running her hand over her daughter's hair with soothing strokes. "Do you love him?"
Zoe forced a nod. "But that doesn't change that we live miles apart or that our backgrounds are completely opposite."
"So? Does he eat with his hands or does he use a fork?"
Zoe laughed. "Too many forks, actually. Mom- "
"Does he respect your feelings and who you are as an individual?"
Zoe nodded, knowing her mother would feel her reply even if she couldn't put it to words.
"Has he tried to change you?" Elena pushed on.
"No," she whispered, her words making a mockery and a lie of everything she feared.
"I see," her mother said. "You are right to distrust him and think things won't work. Ryan Baldwin is an awful, awful man."
"Mom!" Zoe said, laughing once more. Her mother knew just how to twist a point in order to make her own, and she'd just cornered Zoe with her own words.
And Elena wasn't finished yet. "On top of everything, you're willing to trust him with our Samantha." She paused on purpose. "And yet you refuse to trust him with your own heart. Why not, my beautiful daughter?"
Zoe sighed and closed her eyes. How could she explain her deepest fears? "Ryan may act one way now, he may promise all the right things and say he loves all my 'unique' qualities. He may even believe all these things, but eventually we'd clash on issues. Important issues."
Her mother waved her hand dismissively. "All married couples argue. After all, common wisdom says opposites attract, no?"
"Opposites divorce, too," Zoe reminded her.
"Baah. You're grasping at reasons to run away from him because you're scared."
"Of?" Zoe asked, affronted her mother would think such a thing.
"Of love." Her mother's voice dropped, her sadness and disappointment obvious. "Didn't your father and I set a good example?" she asked.
Zoe swallowed hard, reaching for Elena's hand and holding on tight. "Of course you and Dad set the best example, but you're both so…so…intense."
There was that word again, Zoe thought. Intense. Extreme. She on one end of the spectrum, Ryan on the other, only their passion uniting them.
"You inherited the same qualities. Much more so than Ari," Elena mused.
Far from being reassuring, her mother's words cemented the fear in Zoe's heart. But there was no time like the present to confront it.
"It's that intensity that frightens me," she admitted. "When I was younger, I thought if I put all those feelings into my career, I could handle it. I realize now the Secret Service and all my training with the Bureau was a way for me to try and control the intense part of myself."
"The Greek part of you? We're hot-blooded people. We fight strongly and we love strongly. It's not something to fear but to embrace." Her mother smoothed Zoe's hair with her hand again.
Zoe nodded, understanding her mother's words in a soul-deep way she couldn't have before. Not when she was young and searching for adventure, and not when she'd first met Ryan. Only after. "I feel that kind of intense emotion with Ryan in a way I never did for another man," she admitted to her mother.
"I understand. It was the same for me and your papa."
Zoe sat up. She glanced over at the wedding photograph of her parents on the mantel and smiled. "You married young. I'm already thirty."
"Way past time to settle down."
"Way past time to get set in my ways," Zoe countered. "What do I know about sharing my life?"
Another wave of her mother's kimono-sheathed arm followed. "You'll learn together. Zoe, Zoe, even when we joked about you being afraid to commit to anyone or anything, I never thought I raised you to be a coward."
"Well then surprise, surprise." Because Zoe was a coward.
She was damn scared of discovering she couldn't have it all, that she couldn't be herself and keep Ryan happy, too. She was afraid of having to answer to him and failing, afraid of disappointing him.
Elena pinned Zoe with her contemplative gaze. "So you're afraid even to try. You're unwilling to compromise so that you and Ryan can be together."
Ryan had accused her of something very similar, Zoe recalled.
Her mother made a tsk-tsking sound that Zoe knew signaled her disappointment in her. "And is Ryan a coward, too? He must be since he let you leave without fighting for you. Another one unwilling to change or compromise."
Zoe rose from the couch, her anger flowing on Ryan's behalf. "I'm willing to admit my flaws, but don't paint Ryan with the same brush."
"What is this brush?" Elena asked, confused by the English expression.
"I mean don't just assume that Ryan is like me. He's come a long way since the first time he set foot in our backyard."
Her mother leaned forward, her chin in her hands. "Really? How so?" she asked as if she doubted Zoe's claim.
Zoe tossed her hands in the air. "After all Sam and I told you about our trip to Boston, I can't believe you need to ask. He understands Sam. He will raise her to be independent without crushing her spirit. He's mellowed and he looks for reasons before just applying ridiculous rules or codes of behavior."
"So what makes you think he's incapable of doing the same for you?" Elena asked, her mother's words doing the near impossible, silencing Zoe, and also forcing her to think.
Ryan had changed since they'd met. He'd found a balance between his Boston upbringing and Sam's cherished independence.
He'd told Zoe he loved her and was willing to wait for her.
And he'd gotten nothing back in return, she realized. Not a single, solitary thing. Not words of love, not promises of tomorrow or even a future. Nothing.
"Zoe?" Her mother's voice interrupted her thoughts. "You're quiet."
"I'm thinking."
"About?"
"What an idiot I've been."
"How so?" her mother asked.
Zoe sighed. "Ryan's a good man. A decent man." A sexy man who loved her and accepted her, stubborn flaws and all.
And she'd walked away.
Her pulse raced. Nausea threatened as reality struck, hard and unyielding. She'd been so stubborn, so unwilling to believe in love, or in Ryan. Or even in herself. She placed a trembling hand over her churning stomach. Why hadn't his word been enough?
Hadn't he proven himself since he met her? He'd loosened up and learned to accept things new and different. Like the Costases and their pet pig, she thought wryly. And he'd promised her that he'd never make her change. Yet she'd still felt the need to run.
Why?
Fear had motivated her, just like Ryan had said.