Author: Bella Andre

She did some quick math from the picture she’d seen, and realized he’d been right there in the middle as the fifth child out of eight, not the oldest, not the youngest. She knew how easy it was to get lost in a family, even when you were the only child.

Had that happened to Zach?

“How did it happen?”

“He had an aneurysm at the office. We found out he was dead when we got home from school. He was only forty-eight.” He lifted his eyes to hers and what she saw in them tore at her heart. “It will be twenty-three years next week.”

She had to reach for Zach’s hand. Even though it had been more than two decades since his father’s death, she could see that it still hurt him. Deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Every time they’d been together, he’d tried to touch her. But now that she was the one who’d reached for him, he pulled away and reached for his beer, gulping it down before putting the empty glass back on the table.

“Shit happens,” he said. “Sucks, but what can you do?”

It wasn’t hard to guess that the flippancy came from trying to cover how bad he felt. And really, who was she to question people’s coping mechanisms? After all, when she found out that her beloved father was a two-faced bastard, she’d turned into a seventeen-year-old cutter.

Still, she felt there was more Zach wasn’t saying and was absolutely certain that his father’s death had affected him on some deeper level than he would be sharing with her over Indian food tonight. And no matter how much she tried to remind herself that it was dangerous to let him get too close, his unexpected vulnerability struck right at the heart of her.

After the waiter delivered steaming platters of naan bread, Tandoori chicken, and curry, he looked up at her and said, “Your parents are still together. What else should I know about you?”

Most men barely listened when a woman talked about herself. Trust Zach to remember every freaking word, no matter how casually tossed off it had been during an impromptu training session in the park.

She broke off a piece of the flat bread and took a bite of it, even though it suddenly tasted like sawdust. When she’d washed it down with a sip of beer, she said, “There’s not much else to tell.”

But he wasn’t that easily daunted. “Where did you grow up?”

“Washington D.C.” She stared down at a plate full of food she no longer had the desire to eat.

“You’re a long way from home,” he commented.

Yes, she was. On purpose. She’d wanted to get as far away from her parents as possible. “I like the West Coast.”

He raised an eyebrow at her curt words and she realized she wasn’t playing it nearly cool enough as he said, “Any siblings?”

“No.”

Atlas looked up at the tone of her voice, and moved to put his head on her lap as if to comfort her.

“What did they do to you, Heather?”

She sighed, knowing that if Zach had been that persistent about getting her to have dinner with him, there was no way he was going to leave this one alone without getting her to eventually tell him what he wanted to know.

And maybe it would help him understand her reluctance to date him if he knew more.

“Everyone loves my father,” she told him. “It’s what always made him such a good salesperson, that people can’t help but be charmed by him.”

“Selling what?”

“Used to be chemicals. Now it’s cell phone towers all over the country.”

“How much time did he spend on the road when you lived at home?”

“About half the year.”

“That’s got to be hard on a kid.”

She liked how he made it sound like they were talking about someone else. “My mother worked overtime to keep us busy when he was gone so we wouldn’t have time to think about being lonely or missing him. And it was always a big celebration when he returned. He got me great presents from the road to make up for being gone.” Presents she’d wanted to smash into a zillion little pieces when she’d found out the truth.

“Did it work?”

She met Zach’s gaze. “No.” She reached down to stroke Atlas’s head as if to steel herself for what was coming next. “But it was worse when I found out he’d been cheating on my mother for years. For their whole marriage, actually.”

Zach cursed. “That sucks.”

“You want to know what was even worse than that?” She couldn’t wait for him to reply, not when the words were suddenly tripping over each other to get out of her mouth. “She knew about it.” Heather pushed her plate away. “All those years, even now, she knows he’s cheating on her, but she stays with him anyway.”

She’d never told a man this before, hadn’t even come close to letting one in enough to speak about family secrets. If someone had told her a week ago she’d be spilling her guts to the cocky man who owned the auto shop, she never would have believed it.

“Why do you think she stays?”

It was the question she’d asked herself a thousand times over the years. “He always makes sure to tell her how much he loves her. Even though we all know it’s a big fat lie.”

* * *

Zach Sullivan was pissed off. Beyond angry. If her father wasn’t 2,500 miles away, he’d be hunting him down to pound him into a wall.

No wonder Heather wouldn’t take a chance on being with him even in the short term, if all she knew were “charming” men who lied through their teeth to her and her mother. It killed him to think of her as a young girl stuck in the middle of all that.

Seeing the virtually untouched food on their table, the waiter came over with a worried expression. “Does everything taste okay?”

Zach watched Heather pin on a false smile. “It’s great, thanks.” She slid her fork into a chunk of chicken, but she didn’t put it in her mouth, just pushed it around on her plate, her mind clearly elsewhere.

Thinking about what a dick her father is, he guessed. And why her mother doesn’t have a backbone.

He’d hugged his sisters’ tears away a hundred times over the years, had listened to Summer pour out her feelings about a boy she liked in second grade who liked to pull her pigtails. But he’d never been tempted to comfort a woman who wasn’t part of his family.

Zach knew it was dangerous to feel this way about Heather. She was breaking all the rules, ones that had never been in danger of cracking apart before.

But how could he possibly leave her like this, with shadows in her eyes?

The thing was, he knew Heather didn’t want his shoulder to cry on, that it would only wound her pride. Fortunately, he’d sat through one of Summer’s “shows” only a few weeks earlier, and all the bad seven-year-old jokes were still firmly lodged in his brain.

Although he’d never felt less like making a joke, he also knew he’d never needed to make one more. “What do you call frozen dog poo?”

Heather’s eyebrow rose as she looked up from her mutilated chicken chunk. “What did you just say?”

“A poopsicle.”

Her eyes widened as she realized he was telling her a joke.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just make that horrible joke.”

“What happened when the dog went to the flea circus?”

“Please, don’t make me guess.”

“He stole the show!”

She groaned and put her hands over her ears. “Someone, anyone, please make it stop.”

“What do you say to a dog before he eats?”

Relief swept through him when she played along by scrunching her eyes shut and whispering, “Bone appetit.”

For the rest of their dinner they each worked to see who could tell the worst joke while they polished off every last bit of the Indian dishes. Zach was pretty sure he won by a landslide, but even if he hadn’t, he’d memorize the contents of every bad joke book in the world if it meant putting a smile on Heather’s face.

He hadn’t just broken the rules tonight, he’d smashed them to smithereens. But for a couple of hours, he decided he didn’t care.

Besides, there was a big difference between laughing with Heather and falling in love with her. He’d wanted to sleep with her from the start. It was no hardship to add laughter—and comfort—to the mix.

Love still didn’t have to play into the equation.

Hell, after what he’d just found out about her father, it was no wonder she wasn’t looking for forever. Yet again, the two of them were well matched.

When the dishes were cleared away and the waiter mentioned dessert, she put her hands over her stomach and said, “I wish I could.” She reached for her wallet, but Zach had already handed the waiter plenty of cash.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said, a soft smile on her beautiful face. “I had fun.” She looked faintly surprised as she added, “A lot of fun.”

So had he. More fun than he could ever remember having with a woman.

Whether she’d liked it or not, they’d just had their first date.

And it had been a good one.

As if she’d just realized that, she tensed. “I’ve got to get a really early start tomorrow. David will take good care of you and Cuddles on Thursday and Friday. I’ll check my schedule to see if Monday evening will work for me to check on your progress.”

Even though they’d just spent the past few hours together, Zach wasn’t ready for her to go yet. Plus, with the way the spicy food had made her lips a little redder, a little plumper than they usually were, all he could think about was kissing her. He stood and reached for her hand to help her up from her seat. She looked at it for a moment before putting her hand in his.

Before he could make his move, Heather made hers, her mouth soft on his cheek, she whispered, “Good night, Zach,” a warm breath against his ear before she patted Cuddles on the head and walked away with Atlas following beside her.

With any other woman he would have assumed she was teasing him, taunting him by coming close, but not nearly close enough, purposefully testing his patience as some sort of sensual dance.

But from Heather, that kiss on the cheek had been something completely different. Not a tease, but the beginning of trust that he could pretty easily guess she rarely, if ever, gave a man.

By the time he’d picked up Cuddles and headed up the street to his car in Heather’s parking lot, she was long gone. Which was just as well, because he had an important phone call he needed to make. One he didn’t want her to hear.

Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he dialed his brother Ryan, who would be pitching for the Hawks on Saturday during Bark in the Park.

“Hey, Ry, I need you to do something for me.”

Unlike Heather’s father, Zach had never cheated on a woman. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to play a few games if necessary. Because he sure as hell wasn’t willing to wait until the following Monday for the chance get on Heather’s calendar again...or to have their first real kiss.

Chapter Eleven

Friday evening, Heather walked up to the will-call window at the baseball stadium with Atlas on his leash. He was sticking extra close to her side because of the crowds of men.

“Hi, I got a call from the office that they’ve upgraded my ticket.”

She gave the man behind the glass her name and he whistled when he pulled out her ticket. “This is one of the best seats in the stadium.”

She grinned at him as she thanked him for the ticket and headed into the stadium. It had been a really nice surprise when she’d found out she was being upgraded to a better seat as a thank you for her help with the fundraising event. She didn’t get out to the ballpark much, but she never missed the one day each season when dogs and their owners were invited to enjoy the afternoon together.