Author: Bella Andre

As Chase sat down on the edge of the bed beside his wife and brushed her hair back from her face, Heather was amazed by the incredible intimacy—and unconditional joy—between the two of them.

She should have left, knew she didn’t have any right to be a part of this family for even a few more seconds, but when the baby gave a sweet little yawn in Zach’s arms, the yearning was too strong for Heather to leave just yet. “Could I hold her?”

Chloe smiled. “Of course.”

Handling the baby with surprising ease, Zach slid the warm, blanket-wrapped bundle into Heather’s arms.

The little girl opened her eyes and blinked up at Heather with perfect innocence.

“Oh my,” she said, “aren’t you pretty?”

“You’re in big trouble with this one,” Zach told his brother.

“I know,” Chase replied. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The baby immediately turned her head at the sound of her father’s voice and even though Heather wanted to nuzzle Emma’s cheek and keep breathing in her fresh baby smell, she forced herself to move across the room to give her back to Chase and Chloe.

“Congratulations,” she said again, tears close enough again that she knew she had to get out of there. Not just from their bedroom, but out of the house, away from the rest of the Sullivans and everything she’d told herself she never wanted, but so desperately did.

“I need to get back to the dogs. Zach, you should stay. I’ll watch Cuddles as long as you need me to.”

She practically broke into a run as she fled the bedroom. She thought she heard his siblings, maybe even his mother, say her name as she made a beeline for the front door, but apart from blurting out something unintelligible about needing to get back to the dogs, she didn’t stop to acknowledge them.

She couldn’t let Lori tell her how great Zach was again.

She couldn’t let Sophie look at her so sweetly and say they were all really hoping for a normal sister-in-law.

She couldn’t let herself fall deeper into the quicksand that she should have been smart enough to keep out of in the first place.

Zach had driven them here in one of the dozen cars he seemed to have in his underground garage, but a walk would do her good, would help her clear her head and figure out what the heck was wrong with her.

Only, she already knew she could walk all day and all night for the next year and never be able to erase the picture of Zach with the baby in his arms.

Heather loved kids enough that, despite not wanting to do it the traditional way, she had always planned to have children of her own. Not only because she wouldn’t dare risk trusting a man enough to pledge a lifetime to him, but also because she couldn’t possibly risk her children’s hearts either, the way her mother had risked hers.

But as soon as she’d seen Zach and the baby, when she’d witnessed the complete adoration, the pure, unconditional love in his eyes...she’d stupidly wanted that dream family. With him.

Because she’d fallen in l—

No.

God, no.

Horrified by what she’d almost admitted to herself, she was startled by Zach’s strong hands on her waist, pulling her against him out on the sidewalk. Of course, her body had to betray her by instinctively curling into his heat.

She felt his mouth in her hair, and then his kiss on the top of her head before he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this.” Knowing she needed to be strong, that she should have faced him head-on rather than running, she forced herself to turn around and look him in the eye. “This thing we’re doing—” She sucked in a shaky breath to get it out. “—it’s a mistake.”

How she wished she’d never laid eyes on the man who had turned her world completely upside down. But that was a lie, too, because she couldn’t imagine not having had these past two weeks with him.

Still, that didn’t change the fact that she needed to get out while there was still a chance of retaining one small sliver of an unbroken heart.

“I thought I could do this, but seeing you with the baby and the dogs and your family—it’s too much. I let myself get in too deep. I shouldn’t have been in there today with all of you.”

“They all wanted you there, Heather. And I needed you with me.” He slid the pads of his thumbs across her cheeks to wipe her tears away. “Seeing you with the baby—” He paused, his gaze intense and filled with emotion. “You’re going to be such a beautiful mother, Heather. So damn beautiful.”

The reverence in his words made her tears fall faster, made it even more imperative that she say, “I’m sorry. I can’t see you anymore.”

“Why?” he demanded fiercely.

Because I can’t keep pretending I’m not falling more in love with you with every breath you take, with every caress from your strong hands, with every sweet word from your lips.

Instead of saying any of those things, she forced herself to shrug. “It was fun, but—”

“Fun?” It was more growl than word. Any trace of the teasing man he often was completely disappeared as they faced each other down on an early-morning San Francisco sidewalk. “We both know it’s been a hell of a lot more than fun.”

She couldn’t let him say anything more. Not when Zach Sullivan was hands-down the most charming, charismatic man on the planet, to the point where he actually made her father look like a rank beginner by comparison.

And not after she’d just watched a fantasy flash before her eyes of him holding their baby one day.

Desperate to try to save what was left of her heart, frantic to try to keep her soul from being utterly destroyed along with it, she said, “That’s why we should stop seeing each other—before either of us gets any deeper.”

“Too late.” His eyes flashed with surprise and he stared at her in the same stunned disbelief that she’d just experienced moments before. “Holy hell, I think I’m already in love with you.”

Her entire body tingled at his words, especially the several square inches just beneath her breastbone.

She’d never seen Zach look less than steady on his feet. Or maybe he just looked that way because she was spinning so fast from having heard the one four-letter word she’d been certain Zach Sullivan would never, ever say.

His emotional confession knocked the breath right out of her. Joy at his words of love warred with disgust at herself for wanting to hear him say them again, to insist that they would remain true no matter what she said or did to try and push him away.

“We agreed,” she said just above a whisper, her throat raw, the words hoarse. “Just sex. No emotions. No falling in love.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

It was crazy, but the more horrified Heather was by his being in love with her, the more Zach realized his feelings weren’t going anywhere. She hadn’t tricked him into this. His falling for her had happened all on its own, despite the fact that love wasn’t supposed to be in his plans.

His chest clenched tight at the thought of leaving both Heather and the kids he couldn’t imagine not having with her now, behind too soon. But even though he knew he should be letting her go find some guy who could really give her forever, it turned out he was just as much of a selfish bastard as he’d always been.

Which was why even thoughts of how crushed his mother had been by his father’s sudden death couldn’t stop him from saying, “I changed my mind.”

He slid his hand into her hair the same way he always did when they were making love. Because that’s what it had always been, right from the start.

Not just sex, but love.

“You changed my mind.”

“No,” she protested in her beautiful, stubborn way. He wouldn’t want her any other way, even as she said, “You can’t change your mind about love when you don’t even believe in it, remember?”

“I never said I didn’t believe in love,” he clarified. “I just said I wasn’t looking for it. But I didn’t know you were coming into my life. I couldn’t have known.” He looked into eyes that were so beautiful, whether lit with laughter or hazy with passion. “I meant it when I said you were mine. From the first moment I set eyes on you, I knew it. You knew it, too, Heather. That the first time we met, the first time we touched, the first time we kissed, I was yours.”

She didn’t try to deny it this time, simply said, “I wasn’t looking for this. I don’t want this.”

Didn’t she see how strong she was? Strong enough to make better decisions than her mother ever could have? For the millionth time he wanted to tear her father apart for the way he’d hurt his beautiful daughter. She’d been innocent, pure like Emma once...until her father had destroyed her faith.

“I love you, Heather.”

Love for her had been there, inside of him, all along. Seeing Heather surrounded by his family, and then with Emma, and knowing how perfectly she fit in with everyone else he loved, had just made his feelings for her all the more undeniable.

Her beautiful face was full of so much emotion as she looked up at him, that his throat clogged just looking at her.

“How do you always do this to me?” she whispered.

Hope lit in him, warring with the dark knowledge that making her profess her love to him wasn’t fair. Not when he’d go and die on her too soon, just like his father had.

Shoving the darkness away as he had a thousand times before, he whispered back, “What do I do, Heather?”

Finally, she reached for him, putting her hand over his heart the same way she had their first night together. “You make me feel so much.”

She wasn’t running anymore, and that should have been good enough. But it wasn’t. He wanted to hear her say she loved him, too.

“How much?”

“Everything.”

Nothing could have stopped him from kissing her then, and as his mouth covered hers he realized he didn’t need her to say the words after all.

Because the love she felt for him was right there in her kiss.

* * *

The trip back to Zach’s house was a blur. Heather’s phone kept buzzing with reminders of meetings she needed to attend and voice mails from her assistant. Zach’s siblings texted and called to get the dirt on why the two of them had left his brother’s house so abruptly. Without even discussing it, it was clear that work, family—all of the usual things that made up their days—would have to wait.

Only the dogs couldn’t possibly be ignored, not when they needed to be fed again and taken on a walk to the park to run off some energy. Throughout, while Heather told Kate to cancel everything for the rest of the day, and she threw Atlas’s rope and watched Cuddles tackle it with her entire body, the only thing Heather could focus on was the way Zach never let go of her hand for one second.

And the fact that he loved her.

Love was a word that hadn’t meant anything to her since she was seventeen. She’d been certain it could never impact her again, not after so many years of hearing her father throw it around like sparkly confetti.

But when Zach said it, she’d felt the resonance of those four letters down so deep in her soul that her entire world shifted on its axis.

She’d tried for so long to pretend love didn’t matter.

It did.

She’d tried for so long to keep that part of her cold. Untouchable.

Zach had touched her, warmed her.

She’d embraced being alone.

Only to find a man without whose smiles, off-color jokes, and sensual whispers as she was coming apart in his arms, she’d be lost.

By the time they got back to the house and Atlas plopped down on his doggy bed with Cuddles lying across him the way she loved best, Heather felt like her insides were a volcano on the verge of exploding.