Bronwyn Jameson - Zane: The Wild One

Zane O’Sullivan. In the flesh.

“Helluva place to park your car,” he drawled, his tone as dry as the summer road.

That smoke-and-whisky voice had always unsettled Julia—made her pulse beat a little quicker, her breath come a little shallower—but it usually didn’t render her incapable of speech…but then, usually she only encountered it on the distant end of a phone line. In fact, this was the first time Kree’s footloose brother had ever spoken to her face-to-face.

Back in high school she had found his shining good looks and tarnished bad attitude so contradictory, so intimidating, that she had literally fled from any chance encounter. More than a decade later, and some things hadn’t changed. Up close, Zane O’Sullivan still unnerved her—although now that she had regained her equilibrium, she noticed that some things had changed after all.

Defined by a close-fitting white T-shirt, his chest was definitely broader, deeper, stronger. His hair was the same sun-tinged blend of honey and gold, still worn longer than regulation, still finger-combed back from his broad forehead. His face looked leaner, his cheekbones more sharply chiselled, and a network of well-etched lines radiated beyond his aviator shades.

Those squint lines deepened as if he had narrowed his gaze. “You okay? You look a bit stunned.”

He straightened to open her door, and she quickly looked away, but not quickly enough to avoid an eyeful of denim-encased male groin. Suddenly she felt more than stunned. She felt breathless, dizzy. The heat, she reasoned, as she hastily slapped her own sunglasses into place.

As if they could dim such glaring good looks. A hundred pair and she would still be mesmerized. A picture formed in her giddy head—her, pulling on pair after pair of sunglasses, one on top of the other, in a vain attempt to dilute his male beauty—and she laughed out loud. The laughter evaporated when she realized how loony her behavior must seem to a bystander.

She turned in her seat to find the only spectator frowning down at her. One hand rested on the door frame; his long fingers drummed an impatient beat. He looked as though he wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Good grief, she hadn’t said a word in the several minutes since he’d arrived, hadn’t answered his concerned question.

“I’m fine.” She swung her head from side to side. “See? No visible signs of head injury.”

He didn’t look convinced. In fact, as she slid out from behind the wheel, he looked downright bemused. Best to get the towing sorted out before he decided she truly was crazy and made good his escape.

“I’m not sure how much damage I’ve done. See this tire? I expect it’s ruined, and I hit the ditch pretty hard so I could have broken the steering and who knows what underneath. Oh, and it boiled. Do you think the radiator’s damaged?”

“Could be.” He didn’t even glance at the car. “You sure you didn’t bump your head on the steering wheel?”

“I might have a touch of the sun or delayed shock or something, but otherwise I’m in excellent shape.”

He continued to study her, so fixedly that she wondered if some football-size bump had appeared on her head. But then she felt a tingling heat in the pit of her stomach and she knew he wasn’t looking at bumps on her head.

He was checking out the bumps on her body.

She should have left the slip on. No—she shouldn’t have let Kree hustle her into wearing this dress in the first place. On Kree it looked benign, but then Kree was a good three inches shorter than Julia’s five-seven. And Kree didn’t have hips…or much else in the way of bumps.

“On your way to a party?”

“Yes. At my sister’s,” she replied with forced brightness. “You remember Claire Heaslip? Well, Chantal leased her grandfather’s block last year.”

Too much information. Too much thoughtless information. As if he would have forgotten Claire Heaslip. Even if the rumors weren’t altogether true.

“Do you usually go in bare feet?” he asked evenly, obviously choosing to ignore her comment.

“Hardly.”

Her laughter mixed amusement with discomfort—discomfort caused by both the Claire Heaslip gaffe and her heated response to his gaze on her legs, on skin laid bare by the dress’s abbreviated hemline.

“Chantal would have a stroke if I turned up barefoot. I took them off because I was contemplating walking.” She retreated to the far side of the car and retrieved the shoes from the passenger seat, grimacing as she slipped them on. “These are not your ideal walking shoes.”

No kidding, his silence seemed to say. To a man dressed functionally in jeans, T-shirt and boots, her cocktail ensemble probably looked way over the top. Which it suddenly felt. While she silently bemoaned her lack of judgement in trusting Kree’s fashion advice, Zane went into work mode, studying the lay of the car, fetching the truck. Before he hooked it up, he glanced her way. “You want me to drop you at your sister’s before I start here?”

“No. Chantal said she would send someone.”

Not just anyone, but Dan the Dentist, handpicked as suitable husband material. She pictured him in a sober suit and tie, brown hair neatly parted and combed into place, and she imagined the evening ahead, as flat and colourless as that image.

She looked at Zane O’Sullivan and one word came to mind. Technicolor. Before she could think of all the reasons why she shouldn’t, she took a deep breath and spoke quickly. “I’ve changed my mind. Could I hitch a ride back to town with you? Would you mind?”

He gave her a look, which, between those shades and the straight set of his mouth, she found impossible to read. “Doesn’t matter if I mind or not. I’m not leaving you out here.”

Ten minutes later Zane cursed his sense of chivalry. Enjoying the thought of what she could or could not possibly be wearing under that silky wisp of a dress was one thing. Thinking about taking it off her was another altogether. She was Principal Goodwin’s daughter, Mayor Goodwin’s daughter, for Pete’s sake. Definitely not the kind of woman you imagined naked.

Not in the way he was contemplating. With those fey hazel eyes warm with wanting, all that dark glossy hair cloaking his pillow, and those generous curves covered only in smooth pale skin…and him.

Hoo, man.

Zane shook the heat from his vision, then attempted to apply all his attention to the road. But how could he concentrate with the hint of her perfume—something as softly fragrant as a spring dawn—drifting in and out of his senses? Not to mention how she kept peeping looks at him from behind her dark glasses. Another five minutes of this and he would likely break out in a sweat. Or do something dumb, like invite her for a drink. Or something truly moronic like skipping the drink and taking her straight to his room.

He almost snorted out loud. Julia Goodwin’s expensive finery decorating the floor of his cheap hotel room? Keep dreaming, bud!

“I’m sorry I dragged you out,” she said eventually in her softly voiced, carefully phrased way. “No doubt there are places you would rather be on a Friday night.”

She had that right, but the one uppermost in his mind—his room, his bed—he kept to himself. “Yeah, but I doubt the Lion’ll run dry before I get back.”

“You were having a drink?”

“I was about to. Bill had already had several when he got your sister’s message.”

“So that’s why you’re here.” He felt her studying him, more openly this time. “Thank you.”

Zane shrugged. “It’s my job.”

“No, it’s Bill’s job. I know you help him out whenever you’re in town….”

Her voice trailed off, inviting him to answer her unasked question about what brought him to town. Why not? Talking to her was safer than fantasising about her. “I’ve got a week or so to kill, so I thought I’d give Bill a break and see how Kree’s doing.”

“She didn’t mention you were coming.”

“Last-minute decision.”

“Oh. Have you seen her yet?”

“I only got in this afternoon and figured she’d be busy. Besides, I’m never at my best in a hair shop.”

“Don’t let Kree catch you referring to her salon as a hair shop,” she said with a smile, which froze almost instantly. “Although I wish you had gone in, because now you’ve missed her. She’s gone away for the weekend with Tagg. Her boyfriend. He lives over in Cliffton.”

“Then I’ll see her when she gets back. How is she?”

“She’s Kree.” The smile returned. “Busy, full-on, happy.”

“You mean, manic?”

Her smile grew to a soft appreciative chuckle, and Zane found himself turning to catch the laughter on her face. It transformed her from pretty to stunning, and he found himself staring—again—and wondering how he never noticed that before, back when he lived in Plenty.

Probably because he’d never been close enough to see her laughing. Hell, he remembered times when she had crossed the street to avoid him, and if she ever had looked his way, it was with the kind of curious, wide-eyed fascination usually reserved for viewing aliens. Which pretty much summed up how this town had always made him feel.

Right now he felt her watching him with a different kind of fascination. She had gone very still, the laughter fading from her lips. Her focus seemed to shift to his mouth. His lips tingled with heat. Uh-uh, no way. She was the dinner-and-dating-and-home-to-meet-Daddy type, not the straight-into-bed type. And absolutely not the front-seat-of-the-truck type.

He dragged his eyes back to the road and his mind back from the gutter, pressed a touch harder on the accelerator and searched for a diversionary topic of conversation.

“You’re all dressed up to party.” He waved a hand in the general direction of her itty-bitty dress. “So why did you decide to go home, instead?”

“I didn’t really want to go in the first place.” She shifted her shoulders uneasily. “Do you think running my car off the road is a good enough excuse to cancel? I mean, it’s not as if I crashed, or hurt myself….”

“Why do you need an excuse? If you didn’t want to go, you should’ve said no.”

“Chantal doesn’t recognize the word.”

“Maybe she needs to hear it more often.”

A small frown puckered her brow, and Zane wondered how right he’d got that. Then he told himself it wasn’t his problem. That wasn’t why he had asked her about the party. He was making small talk, that was all. He absolutely did not want to know if, for example, she was letting down some suit-and-tie type by not turning up.

“Back when you were hooking up to the car, I rang Chantal to say I’d decided to go home. She didn’t sound happy. I suspect she might send someone to fetch me.”

“If you weren’t at home, that someone wouldn’t be able to fetch you.”

“Not home?” Her softly incredulous laugh brought his gaze back to her mouth, made him think of intimacies he had no business with. “In case it escaped your attention, there are not a lot of hidey-holes open on a Friday night in Plenty.”

“There’s the Lion. You could come down for a drink, shoot some pool,” Zane suggested casually, not because he expected her to accept. Not because he wanted her to accept. For a long moment she stared at him, surprised, but obviously considering his invitation. He felt his body quicken. Then she shook her head and looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll have to pass this time.”

This time. As if he was in the habit of asking her every other day. But as he downshifted to cross the railway line, he shrugged and cut her a look. “Your loss.”