Author: Bella Andre

Big time.

* * *

Photographers were out in droves to catch the pro race car drivers who’d come out in support of the San Francisco food bank. Zach figured he only had to put up with their flashbulbs until they caught wind of Smith in the stands.

Barry Jones made a crack about getting a run on him in turn two, but Zach didn’t have a comeback for him. Not when he was too busy staring up at the bleachers to make sure his brothers didn’t try anything with Heather.

He trusted her, of course. It was Smith and Ryan he was going to kill if he saw even one picture come out with their hands anywhere on her.

Zach slammed his helmet on and pushed through the other drivers to get into his car. He’d worked with this crew enough to skip the pre-race speech. He hadn’t wanted to do this damn race, but he was a man of his word and had to make good on it.

The race started and he drove like a man possessed. Not just to win, but because he wanted to get the race done, then take Heather back to bed, where it was just the two of them. Where nothing mattered but her laughter, her sweet little sounds of pleasure.

The sound of metal against metal came first, a split second before it slammed through his body.

Damn it, he thought as the car started spinning, he’d known his luck was going to run out one day, but he hadn’t thought it’d be this soon. Or that it would end like this. He’d always figured on having an aneurism like his father, had believed every headache was one step closer to the inevitable.

Zach’s brain and body went into the autopilot that any racer worth his shit immediately shot to in a crash. His hands worked the wheel. His feet worked the brakes and clutch. But as the colors all around him spun together, and his brain and body followed the do-or-die instructions his crew were yelling at him through his earpiece, his heart remained with Heather.

A dozen quick flashes of beauty, of pleasure, swelled behind his breastbone, pushing even deeper, all the way into his soul.

Heather with scratches on her knees, her shirt ripped, dirt smudged across her cheek as she clutched Cuddles to her chest and glared at him.

The feel of her soft curves beneath him as he rolled them out of the way of the skateboarder, and then her fingers slipping into his as they stared up at the blue sky together.

Her mouth warm beneath his at the ballpark as he stole that first kiss, the desperation that had flared to life between them and only grown hotter every time they touched.

Running after her on the sidewalk to tell her he loved her, and loving her even more for the way she’d yelled at him, for how hard she’d tried to insist their love wasn’t real.

And then, later, the taste of her tears on his lips as she’d cried in his arms, the dogs there with them, all of them comforting her.

People had always joked that nothing could touch Zach and his charmed life, but as the wall finally won the battle he was waging to control the car and the heat of the engine’s flames burned through metal and leather, he knew better.

He’d always known better.

After all, his father had died young, and everyone always said that Zach was exactly like Jack Sullivan.

Jack Sullivan’s life had been perfect. He’d had a beautiful wife he loved and eight great kids. He’d been the definition of charmed.

But he’d still died.

And left them all behind.

* * *

Heather blindly pushed through the people on the bleachers to get to Zach. She was at the entry gate to the race track when Ryan’s arms came around her.

“You can’t go out there.”

She fought Ryan’s hold with every ounce of strength she had, but Smith was there, too, and the brothers’ muscles were like steel clamped around her.

“Let go of me!” she screamed at the two superstars while a dozen photographers spun back and forth to film the crash and her and Smith and Ryan.

But his brothers just held her tighter as she watched flames engulf Zach’s car.

He was supposed to be indestructible...and hers forever.

She’d known he wasn’t, that nobody was bulletproof. But it had been easier to lull herself into a false sense of security than to have to face the utter loss of control that came from sitting helpless in the stands while he raced a car at dizzying speeds.

She could still feel the imprint of his lips on hers, from the kiss he’d left her with. She’d stopped praying a long time ago, had substituted hard work and focus and reality for those prayers.

Now, her lips wouldn’t stop moving, wouldn’t stop repeating, “Please, God. Please.”

The smoke from the fire extinguishers grew thick and dark around the car as the emergency crew attacked the flames. Her tears mixed in with the smoke and the dust from the track as cars skidded to a stop one by one. The other drivers got out to watch the scene unfold, horror on their faces as they yanked off their helmets.

Suddenly, she saw boots. Legs. And then a man throwing himself to the ground, rolling out of the way of the flames.

Shock made Smith and Ryan’s hands loosen just enough for her to slip free, to hurdle the gate. The roar of the crowd mixed with the pounding of her heart in her ears as she sprinted toward Zach. His crew had dragged him away from the car, had all backed away themselves as the flames only grew taller, brighter.

The explosion rocked the ground, but even though she stumbled, she got right back up on her feet.

Zach pushed up from his knees to pull off his helmet. She crashed into him at the exact second his eyes met hers, and she pressed her mouth to his face again and again. “Lori said you were indestructible. I didn’t believe her. Now I do. Thank God nothing ever touches you.”

His eyes flashed with darkness before he pulled her so tightly to him that it almost hurt.

“I love you so much,” she told him in their last private moment before the track doctors, the other drivers, and the rest of the Sullivans descended. Heather didn’t want to let go of Zach’s hand, didn’t want to lose that connection, but she knew he’d be all hers later.

Believing he’d been spared from the car crash and fire so that they could have their forever, when his fingers started to slip free of hers, she let him go.

Chapter Thirty

After the emergency crew checked Zach out and he’d convinced his brothers and sisters that he was okay, Heather had known without being told that all he wanted was to get away from the race track. She’d thought she would be the one to drive home, but when he’d headed for the wheel she’d realized it was probably best that he dealt with driving a car sooner, rather than later.

There were so many things she wanted to say to him, so many things she wanted to tell him—how much she loved him and how she wasn’t sure about these races, but would try to be open to them in the future if they were really important to him—but just as she buckled into the passenger seat and they headed off toward the city, his mother called.

Mary Sullivan’s distress over the accident was palpable. And yet, Heather admired the calm that lay at the foundation of her love for her son. If Zach had seemed a bit short, even a little irritated with the mother Heather knew he loved, she figured it was one of a dozen natural responses to the crash. There had been so many people hovering around him wanting reassurance that he was okay. He had to be exhausted.

But even though she hadn’t been the one fighting like hell to right the car, and then to escape it, Heather still couldn’t find her own calm. It would take time to stop seeing the man she loved go up in flames every time she closed her eyes. And until that day came, she wanted to live every single minute with him to the fullest. She was done holding back a part of her heart from him, done waiting for that other shoe to drop.

Today she’d learned just how precious life—and love—truly was.

Standing in his kitchen cooking dinner, the knife almost sliced through the tip of Heather’s finger instead of the bell pepper as another image of Zach spinning out on the track zinged through her head. Just as she put the knife down, Zach walked out of the bedroom. His hair was wet from the shower, his perfect face scratched up and down the right side.

Thank God he was alive.

Despite her lingering distress over his crash, she couldn’t help smiling at him. The truth was that she’d always grinned like a fool whenever he was around. Only, Zach didn’t smile back.

It was the first time he’d ever not smiled back.

“Gabe’s coming over.”

She was surprised to hear he was up for a visit from one of his siblings when she could see how beat he was. “Is he going to bring over the rest of Cuddles’s things?”

“No.” The word shot like a bullet from his lips. “He’s coming to take her back.”

Even as he said it, Cuddles was rubbing against his calves trying to get his attention. But he wasn’t scooping her up into his arms.

Instead, he was ignoring the puppy completely. He wasn’t even looking at her.

“I don’t understand,” she said, and she didn’t, couldn’t possibly believe that he was serious. “You just told them you were keeping her.”

He shrugged, the shrug of a man who didn’t seem to care what he’d said to a seven-year-old girl...or what other promises he might have made along the way to anyone else.

“She’s better off with them. The dog needs a kid around to play with.”

The dog?

The way he said it was different than when he called Cuddles and Atlas mutts or fur balls. He was affectionate, teasing when he said those things. But this was just plain dismissive.

The paramedics had said he didn’t have a concussion. Had they been wrong?

“Zach.” She started to move toward him, but the remote expression on his face stopped her in her tracks. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He sat down on the couch and grabbed the remote, flipping on the TV. The sound of another car race immediately started up. Bile rose in her throat at the sight of the cars racing in circles around the track.

She wanted to scream at him, wanted to throw something at his big, thick head. Her feet unstuck from the kitchen floor and she yanked the controls off the coffee table to jam her thumb over the red Off button.

“I can’t watch that right now.” The TV screen went back to black. “How can you? Don’t you remember you almost died out there today?”

Before he could answer, Cuddles walked over with one of Zach’s leather shoes. The puppy plopped down in front of him and started chewing it, her big brown eyes trained on him as if she were waiting for a command to do otherwise.

“Aren’t you going to stop her?”

Zach barely glanced down at the puppy. “No. Summer will figure out how to get her to stop making mistakes.”

“She’s a puppy. She’s going to make mistakes.” But wasn’t the truth that some mistakes were so big that they couldn’t be undone? Like trusting someone to actually love you right. “She trusts you, Zach. Gabe and Megan and Summer are just strangers to her. You’re her family.”

And hers, too, or so she’d thought. Finally, she’d had the family she’d never thought could be hers. A future filled with laughter. And love. So much love it had made her head spin.

Now, though, it was spinning for reasons that had nothing to do with love.

Please, she thought, the word running around and around in her head just the way it had hours earlier. Only this time she wasn’t begging God, she was silently pleading with a flesh-and-blood man. Please don’t do this.

His face was like granite. “She’ll be fine.”

Every one of Heather’s instincts told her to run. To flee. To get out and protect whatever was left of her heart while she still could. But something was obviously wrong.

Very wrong.

Zach hadn’t cracked a smile, hadn’t given her one of those smug looks she always wanted to kiss right off his face.

And, she realized with a dark hit of pain in the pit of her stomach, he hadn’t so much as touched her since they’d left the track.