Some Kind of Wonderful Read online

  He was no stranger to sexual attraction, on the contrary, it formed the basis for every relationship he’d ever had, but nothing came close to the desire he felt for this woman.

  He half expected to see flames licking around his ankles.

  In the circumstances his response was beyond inappropriate.

  He tried to work out what had happened to send her almost sprinting out of the store. It was true that shopping bored the hell out of him and he felt like running whenever he had to buy groceries, but he assumed it had to be more than that. She’d been so desperate to escape, she’d slammed right into him.

  He tried to let her go, but his hands refused to cooperate with his brain. Instead he tightened his grip and stroked his thumbs soothingly over her bare arms. “What happened?”

  She gave a soft gasp of dismay as she registered who was holding her and immediately stepped back.

  “Sorry about that. Didn’t see you.”

  He was about to demand the reason for her rapid exit when Mel appeared from the front of the store, her mouth gleaming with a coat of freshly applied lipstick.

  Whenever he appeared, so did the makeup.

  On one occasion he’d seen her crouched behind the counter, using her phone as a mirror as she’d checked her reflection.

  Her barely concealed infatuation didn’t bother Zach, who believed a person’s feelings were their own. He’d done nothing to encourage her and as far as he was concerned his responsibility ended there. He’d been careful never to give Mel a single reason to think it was worth her while depleting the world’s makeup stores in his honor. If she wanted to go to the trouble, that was her choice.

  And today she’d definitely made that choice.

  “Well, that was quite the reunion.” She was giggling and fluttering lashes weighed down by a thick layer of mascara. Watching the effort Mel took made him glad he wasn’t a woman. As far as he could see, the number of hours spent applying and then removing makeup could amount to a whole year over the course of a lifetime.

  He knew he was looking at the reason Brittany had run. Gossip was Mel’s favorite hobby and judging from the expression on her face, he’d been the subject.

  He had no interest in whether his actions pleased or displeased others, but he knew it would bother Brittany.

  Without looking at him, she bent to rescue cans, shampoo and toothpaste from the bag she’d dropped, an endeavor hampered by the fact she only had use of one hand.

  He stooped to help her, brushed against her and saw her scoot away.

  “I can manage.”

  He saw Mel’s eyes narrow as she registered the tension and put her own spin on it.

  “I’ll help,” she cooed and stooped, too, an elaborately choreographed maneuver that gave him an eyeful of carefully constructed cleavage contained by a froth of black lace as unsubtle as the red lipstick.

  Zach, who was as shallow as the next guy, wondered why all that voluptuous flesh on display failed to distract him from Brittany.

  She was wearing her usual trademark cutoffs and a bright top that showed the contrasting strap of her sports bra. Her outfit displayed limbs that were toned, strong and golden.

  He wondered if she was wearing a thong under those shorts and then decided he was better off not knowing. He dragged his eyes from the taut curve of her butt to her hair, which fell in a thick braid between her shoulder blades.

  The color on her cheeks was natural and there was no gloss on her lips, yet of the two women there was no doubt in his mind who was the sexier.

  He clenched his jaw, wondering why Brittany’s soft, bare lips should be so much more kissable than Mel’s glossy pout.

  Ten years and a whole lot of bad feeling lay between them, but still all he wanted to do was shove her back against the wall and bury himself in her.

  Tension made his voice rough. “How are you getting home?”

  She straightened, clutching the bag awkwardly with her good arm. “I’m walking.”

  “That bag won’t survive. I’ll give you a ride.”

  Mel clearly had her own ideas about that. “No need to go out of your way, Zach. I’ll give her another bag. All part of the service. You just wait right there, Brittany.” She vanished to do whatever she had to do to keep the two of them apart and Zach looked down at Brittany and raised his eyebrows in question.

  “It’s your call. Do you want to go another round with her?”

  “Is that a serious question?” She spoke between her teeth and he almost smiled because he suspected he was the lesser of two evils, which was a refreshing change for a man who usually found himself the greater of the two.

  “I should probably warn you that at least ten locals currently have eyes on us, including Rita Fisher. She spreads gossip like butter on dinner rolls. You climb into my car and you know what they’ll be saying.”

  “I don’t care if the whole damn island is lining up for front-row seats for whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing,” she said. “Get me out of here.”

  They made it to the SUV he’d left unlocked and there was still no sign of Mel.

  Brittany shot in so fast she almost scratched the paintwork and he gave a faint smile as he strolled around the car and slid into the driver’s seat.

  “So it’s not just spiders. Never thought you’d be afraid of Mel.”

  “I’m not afraid, but I don’t want to kill her on my first day home. I’ll alienate the islanders.”

  He’d lived that way his whole life and she must have been thinking the same thing because she sent him a glance and sighed.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “It’s been a hard morning, that’s all. I’m a little tired of people sympathizing with me.”

  “They’re all sorry about your wrist.”

  “It has nothing to do with my wrist.” She muttered the words under her breath but he caught them anyway and wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him that his presence would cause her a problem.

  “They’ve said something to you?”

  “No.” She answered a little too quickly and he wondered for the millionth time in his life why people couldn’t just attend to their own business and leave others alone.

  I don’t care what anyone thinks. I want you to be the first, Zach. Do anything. All of it.

  The memory came from nowhere and messed with his concentration.

  He gave himself a mental shake, trying to delete the image of her naked. He wished he hadn’t broken into her cottage when he’d heard her scream. He should have called the emergency services and gotten the hell out of there. Then he wouldn’t have seen her wet and gleaming from the shower.

  “What are you waiting for? Drive, or I’ll push you out and drive myself.” She spoke through her teeth and he snapped back into the present and glanced at her face.

  “I’ll drive, but you need to smile or we’ll have the law on us.”

  “Why would the law care whether I’m smiling?”

  “Because the good people of Puffin Island will want to be reassured that you came with me of your own free will and that I didn’t kidnap you with the intention of taking you back to my lair so that I can do bad things to you.” The engine roared to life. “Again.”

  “Again?”

  “They’ve never forgiven me for corrupting you the first time around.”

  Her gaze held his for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary and he knew she was remembering exactly what he’d done to her in the dark of her bedroom that first night.

  He remembered it, too. Every stroke. Every gasp. The softness of her. The addictive combination of eager and innocent. The breathless exploration of untouched flesh. She’d given and he’d taken. All of it. Everything she’d offered, without hesitation or conscience. Back then he’d seen life as black-and-white, good and bad. She’d said yes and he’d seen no reason to hold back.

  It was only with the benefit of maturity he’d begun to see the world in
shades of gray.

  Almost incinerated by a rush of sexual heat, he shifted in his seat.

  He might have thought he was the only one suffering if it hadn’t been for the slight change in her breathing.

  Their eyes held and they shared a look that said a thousand times more than words.

  Then she turned away and fixed her eyes on the road.

  “There was no corruption, just choice. Mine. Let’s go.”

  He drove away from the busy hub of the harbor and took the forest road that wound upwards through the center of the island. In places the road narrowed to the width of one car and in the winter it was usually impassable except by snowmobile.

  It was one of Zach’s favorite places. Over a thousand acres of rolling mixed forest, interspersed with rustic trails peppered by roots and rocks, hidden ponds and streams gushing full with silvery water. Here pine, spruce, fir and white cedar grew together along with bunchberry and lowbush blueberry. Summer tourists rarely ventured into the interior of the island unless they were the adventurous type, preferring instead to spend their time on the beaches near the harbor or sailing in the sparkling waters of Penobscot Bay. As far as Zach was concerned, they were missing the best part of the island, but as the peace of the forest was part of the reason he loved it, he wasn’t about to broadcast its charms.

  He took the bridge over Heron Pond and then steered left down the unmarked track that led down to Shell Bay. A squirrel bounded across the road in front of him and he stepped sharply on the breaks.

  He heard the hiss of indrawn breath and turned to look at Brittany.

  “You’re in pain? You taking anything for it?”

  “I don’t like swallowing drugs. I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You’re the color of an oyster.”

  “You’re comparing me to smelly shellfish? You always did know how to compliment a girl.” She watched as the squirrel darted up a tree. “You’ll put a spider outside and do an emergency stop for an animal, but I bet if that had been one of the islanders, you would have run right over them.”

  “Depends on the islander. There are a few I’ll slow down for. So what happened to your wrist? You were demonstrating weapons? Accident with a newly discovered Greek ax?”

  “Nothing so glamorous. I wasn’t looking where I was putting my feet and fell down a hole I’d been excavating a few minutes earlier.”

  One of the things he’d always liked about her was her ability to laugh at herself.

  “Anything interesting in the hole?”

  “A few things. Cretan arrowheads. Ceramic fragments.”

  “But your expertise is weapons?”

  She frowned slightly, as if surprised that he knew that. “Bronze Age weapons. Aegean Bronze Age, although I dabbled in Celtic for a while.” She settled her wrist carefully on her lap. “Most of the weapons that dominated Europe until the Middle Ages—swords, battle-axes, shields—originated in Crete. The place is an archaeologist’s paradise.”

  “Which explains why you were there, but not how you managed to hitch a ride in a billionaire’s jet.”

  “He’s a friend.”

  He wanted to ask how much of a friend, and then reminded himself that he’d given up the right to care when he’d walked out on her. “You’re planning on going back?”

  “No. The project is wrapping up. They’ve run out of funding and my research post has ended so I need to plan what to do next.”

  That had always been one of the fundamental differences between them. She’d been planning for the future while he’d been trying to survive the moment.

  “So you’re staying for the rest of the summer?” He kept his eyes forward and his tone casual.

  “As long I’m not going to be grilled by the islanders every time I take a trip into town. What is wrong with them? It was years ago. Why would something that happened years ago be a problem?”

  Because I behaved like a total bastard and you should be punching me.

  It puzzled him that she didn’t have more to say about the past. Clearly the islanders were puzzled, too.

  “They’re protective. They’re probably thinking it’s awkward for you. We were married.”

  She laughed. “Seriously? You call that married?”

  He kept his speed steady. “It was legal.”

  “So was the divorce. Ten days barely counts. If our marriage was a consumer purchase, we would have been entitled to a refund, no questions asked. And anyway, I was the one who proposed to you, remember?”

  He remembered all of it.

  He gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened. “Didn’t make it less legal.”

  “But you weren’t engaged, in any sense of the word. Tell me, Zach—” she turned to look at him “—did you feel married?”

  Yeah, he’d felt married. That was the problem. He’d felt horribly, irrevocably married and the panic had almost choked him. He, who had rarely spent an entire night with a woman, had found himself facing a lifetime of nights.

  He’d lain awake in the dark, suffocating under the smothering weight of her expectations, wondering how the hell to undo what he’d done. Of all the bad situations in which he’d found himself, that had been one of the most terrifying.

  “I knew I was married.”

  She looked at him for a long moment and then shrugged. “Well, either way, it’s water under the bridge.”

  “I guess so.” He tried not to think about the previous winter when the river up near Heron Pond had swollen and burst its banks, taking the bridge with it. The damage had been serious. If the same thing happened in their relationship, they’d be in trouble.

  “Why would we be bothered by something that happened so long ago? I don’t get it. It’s like asking if I still think about a meal that poisoned me at college. Move on, people. I have and I know you have.”

  So he’d been no worse than an episode of food poisoning?

  He looked at her hands, bare of rings and jewelry. “You didn’t marry again?”

  “No. You?”

  “No. Once was enough.” He realized how that sounded and cursed under his breath. “I meant because I wasn’t good at it. I hurt you.”

  “Briefly. Didn’t hurt much more than my wrist and at least I didn’t have to put my heart in a plaster cast.” She suppressed a yawn. “So you’re staying up at Camp Puffin?”

  She was behaving as if he was a casual school friend she hadn’t seen in a while. As if he hadn’t been her first lover. As if they’d never lain naked in her bed, exploring every inch of each other’s bodies while thunder crashed above the cottage. The one thing there had never been a shortage of in his life was sex, but he still remembered every single thing he’d done with Brittany.

  Ego aside, he wouldn’t have thought she would have forgotten it, either.

  Or maybe her sex life had been so active since then she could no longer remember that first time.

  He wondered whether it was the rich Greek who had wiped her memory of their time together.

  He tried to push that thought out of his head. “I’ve been living in the old beach cabin at Hawker’s Point.”

  “Seagull’s Nest?”

  “Yeah. It’s been exposed to a bit too much wind and weather. When it rains there’s as much water inside as out. I’ve been fixing that.”

  “You always were good with your hands.” She spoke without thinking and then caught his eye and gave a faint smile. “That wasn’t what I meant, but that, too. And you don’t need to look at me like that. We’re not teenagers, Zach. We can both agree the sex was good. It’s just a shame we didn’t leave it at that. Tell me about Philip. I heard about his arthritis. That must be tough on him. He’s used to being so active and I know how much he loves Camp Puffin and the kids. It’s been his life. How is he doing?” She moved the conversation forward smoothly, but nothing, not even her cool tone, could dampen the sizzle of awareness that heated the atmosphere in the car.

  “The place is getting to be t
oo much for him. Winters are the worst. He’s trying to cut back, but he’s not good at it and there isn’t anyone to take over.” And that was something else that bothered him. He felt something he’d never felt before.

  A sense of obligation.

  The word made him shift in his seat, but nothing so simple could ease a discomfort that had its origins deep inside him. Never in his life had he ever felt he owed anyone anything. Until Philip.

  He’d never known his father and had never been interested in finding a substitute, but of all the authority figures he’d met in his time, Philip had come closest to fulfilling that role.

  It was Philip who had taught him to fly. Philip who had ignored the dire predictions of the social workers and everyone else who had ever come in contact with Zachary Flynn, and taken him in.

  Without Philip Law, he wouldn’t have the life he had now. It was very possible that he wouldn’t have a life at all. Instead he could have died in a gutter, another sad story that people read and felt bad about for one minute before returning to their own comfortable, insulated lives.

  “You’re helping him out? You’re going to stay awhile?” There was nothing in her voice that suggested she cared either way.

  “I help when he needs me.” He didn’t elaborate on the detail of that help. “And I’ll stay as long as it feels right. I guess that’s a decision that’s going to bother some people.”

  Judging from her lack of reaction, Brittany wasn’t one of those people.

  “You don’t care what they think. You never did.” She sat up straighter as they left the cover of the forest and drove down the track that led to Shell Bay. “Emily tells me you were the one who flew her and Lizzy to the hospital when no one else would. Why did you do that?”

  “Because no one else would.”

  There was a long, drawn-out silence and then she stirred. “I appreciate you helping my friend. Will you do me one more favor? Next time you shop in Harbor Stores, make it clear you and I were over a long time ago. I can’t face having a one-on-one with Mel every time I go in to buy a bunch of bananas.”