ZANE - THE WILD ONE Read online

  "What if I can't have one, Kree? What if I never do?"

  Her voice sounded as empty as she felt, but there must have been something in her eyes, a trace of pain or the hint of a plea, because Kree sank down onto the arm of her chair.

  "Oh, honey, there's no need to think like that, not when you've never even tried."

  "By the time I do try, my ovaries will be all shriveled up."

  "Probably." But there was compassion in her smile, and in her spontaneous hug. "But, hey, why do you need a baby? You have me to look after, and God knows I can be pretty immature."

  Julia couldn't help but smile.

  "And if you think not having a baby's tragic, imagine if you had had one with Paul Petulant. What if the kid was just like daddy? Can you picture a two-year-old version of your ex-husband? The tantrums?" Kree gave a melodramatic shudder. "Honestly, Jules, you did not want that man's child!"

  She squeezed a little tighter before letting go and springing to her feet. Sitting still was not in Kree's nature. Nor was dwelling on an issue.

  "Enough of the sappy stuff—I feel like a drink. You gonna join me?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Come on," she cajoled. "Let's mix up something exotic, and then we can discuss your sex life."

  Julia rolled her eyes.

  "Oh, that's right. You don't have a sex life, a small matter which will need remedying if you're ever going to have that baby you yearn for."

  "I'm not about to go out and pick someone up just to get pregnant, if that's what you're implying. You know that's not what I want."

  "Yeah, I know. All I'm saying is how do you expect to find this prince you so desperately want to marry and make babies with, when you spend half your life sitting around here? You need to get out more, have some fun, kiss a few frogs."

  "I've been meeting plenty of frogs." I just haven't been kissing any of them.

  "Yes, well, your sister does seem to know her fair share."

  With the mood successfully lightened, Kree leaned down and tweaked Julia's ponytail. "If you won't try a new cocktail, how about trying a new color?"

  Julia started to shake her head.

  "Oh, come on, Jules, this is exactly what you need. I could do you tomorrow after work. A decent cut, some red highlights—you'd be a new woman by nightfall."

  It wasn't the first time Kree had begged to be let loose on Julia's hair, but it was the first time Julia had been tempted. A new woman by nightfall. She liked the sound of that.

  Sensing capitulation, Kree danced around the chair, talking colors and styles. All excited animation, she dragged her fingers through her own hair, and the spikes stood up like the Opera House sails. Julia shook her head firmly. What was she thinking?

  "I'm sorry, Kree, but I like my hair the way it is."

  Kree studied her for a long, silent moment, her blue gaze uncharacteristically somber. "Yes, but do you like your life the way it is?"

  "I don't know," Julia admitted honestly.

  "Then I'll keep that appointment free."

  * * *

  Kree's question hammered at Julia that night and right through the next day at work. There were aspects of her life she treasured. Her home, for one, and her close relationship with her family. Her many friendships, her standing in the community.

  But if she were truly content, she wouldn't have lain awake half the night mulling over other aspects of her life. She wouldn't be accepting blind dates in the hope of finding another husband. She wouldn't feel this yawning hollowness whenever she thought of her future without said husband and family. And she definitely wouldn't be dwelling on the fantasy of being a new woman by nightfall. The last time she'd started thinking that way, she'd ended up with her navel pierced.

  And was that a bad thing? Did she want to wear the label of Good Girl forever? Or did she want the stimulating buzz that came from shocking the unshockable?

  If only she could find answers as easily as she found questions. By the time the store closed and she started dragging her feet home, Julia was no closer to those answers. As she neared Bill's garage, her feet picked up their pace in time with her pulse, and it took a huge effort of willpower to prevent her gaze from raking the drive-through or peering into the yawning entrance to the workshop.

  She could have saved herself the effort.

  He wasn't in the garage; he was in the street outside, talking to the driver of a flashy red car. Her surprise at finding him there brought her to a dead stop in the middle of the footpath.

  Time seemed to hit that same brick wall as she took in his casual posture, one hand splayed on the roof, the other tapping a beat on the driver's door. As usual, his hair picked up the glow of the sun and threw it back tenfold, As usual, her gaze caught on the hard outline of his arms, bared by a sleeveless black shirt. As usual, he looked so arresting, so vital, so male, that it took several of those long, slow-motion moments before anything else registered.

  The anything else brought real time back with a sickening crash. The driver he seemed so cozy with was a woman … a woman who looked as fast and flashy as her car. A woman such as that wouldn't have compromised on the tattoo. She wouldn't hesitate about walking into a bar and buying a man a drink, especially a man who looked like Zane O'Sullivan.

  Something fired deep in Julia's stomach, something she didn't wait to analyze but which cried New woman by nightfall as she turned on her heel, then kept up the chant all the way back to the main shopping center.

  When she walked into Hair Today and selected a chair, Kree's eyes boggled. "Tell me I'm hallucinating."

  "You are not to come anywhere near me with scissors," Julia replied sternly. "And if you insist on red, fine, but only highlights. If you make it as red as Alice Pratt's, then you will need to find another place to live."

  * * *

  Kree did insist on red, and Julia was glad. She studied her reflection in her bathroom mirror for about the twentieth time and shook her head in that deliberate measured way of hair product models. She was getting quite good at it, she decided as her blunt-cut layers swung in a wide arc before settling on her shoulders.

  And she laughed out loud, at first because she couldn't help herself—the delight just uncoiled like an overwound spring set loose—and then in recollection of Kree revealing the color. Paprika.

  Julia had flown out of the chair, her eyes wide with horror. "That sounds like orange."

  "No," Kree said as she eased her back down. "That sounds like hot."

  Did she look hot? Julia narrowed her eyes to inspect her image more objectively. The woman staring back at her didn't look like Julia Goodwin. She looked like … Julia tried a pout. Oh, my, she thought with a wild fluttering of excitement in the pit of her stomach. She could almost pass for one of those models. She could pass for a woman who drove a red sports car.

  "And what are you going to do about it?" Kree had asked when she saw the fascinated look on her friend's face. Then she'd nudged her with a friendly elbow. "You gonna take your new look frog-hunting?"

  They'd laughed uproariously over that. Then Kree tried to talk her into going night-clubbing in Cliffton with her and Tagg. Julia refused, although she didn't share her reason. Her stomach jittered again, then settled.

  Now all she had to do was decide what one wore to a place like the Lion. She started by taking a deep breath and doing something she had never done in her life, something ill-mannered and borderline illicit. She opened the vanity drawer where Kree kept her considerable stash of cosmetics and toiletries, and helped herself.

  * * *

  Zane glared at his king-size bourbon as if it were the cause of his king-size case of moodiness. He knew it wasn't the drink's fault, but that didn't stop him staring it down. Nor was it the fault of his neighbor at the bar, although that hadn't stopped him shredding the bloke when he tried to pass the time of day. Shoulders hunched, he glared past his drink and noticed the bartender veer wider as he passed, eyeing him much the same way as he would a savage dog.
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  Wise man, Zane thought with a mental snarl.

  He was out of sorts because he didn't want to be here, not here in this bar, and especially not here in Plenty. No matter how much time passed, the town never changed, nor did his response. He'd driven past the old grain silos at the edge of town and he was eleven years old again … or thirteen, or fifteen. It didn't matter which. He was an intruder, an object of suspicion and unwanted charity, stuck in a place where he could never belong.

  He looked around the Lion again, then shook his head with disgust. Who the hell was he looking for, anyhow? The only person he wanted to see walk through the door would be home in her doll's cottage doing needlework or arranging flowers or entertaining men who drove Volvos. Forget that he'd deliberately baited her about coming down here. That wasn't going to happen.

  He could just go around and pound on her pretty blue door and demand some answers to all the questions chasing their tails around his brain. Questions about why she'd bought a house on the poor side of town, why she couldn't afford to dog-proof the fence, and why she had that piercing. Questions about what other anomalies lay behind her Good Girl image.

  Except that wasn't going to happen, either.

  Not when the only thing likely to improve his mood wasn't answers to questions he had no right asking but sex, hot and uncomplicated sex. Maybe he would stand a chance if he stopped snarling at every female who looked his way—and there had been a few since trade hotted up in the last hour.

  Maybe later. Maybe if he could force this drink down.

  The perfume reached him first, a scent so strong it rode roughshod over the thick smoke-and-beer aroma of the bar. He recognized the perfume and placed its owner instantly. Big hair, medium sports coupe, small carburetor problem.

  "Well, hi there, you."

  She insinuated herself between his stool and the next, so close that her scantily clad flesh pressed against his arm and his thigh. His whole body recoiled.

  "Aren't you going to say hello?" she cooed.

  At the garage this afternoon he'd played along in the name of customer relations, but now he was on his own time. He didn't have to play nice. He figured a curt "No" would get the message across, but she laughed and wriggled even closer.

  "You were so helpful with my little car trouble today. Can I buy you a drink?"

  Couldn't she see the full glass in his hand? Maybe all that gunk she wore on her eyes impaired her vision.

  "I'm not thirsty."

  Five red-tipped fingers tiptoed across his shoulder, and he swore his skin crawled. "Maybe you'd rather dance? This is a hot band."

  "I don't dance," he growled through his teeth.

  "Hey, Prudence, you trying to chase away my customers?" the barman called from down the bar.

  Prudence. Zane shook his head at the irony of her name. Didn't that just beat everything? But at least she stomped off, after letting him know with a few choice words what he was missing. He didn't figure he would lose any sleep over it.

  Obviously he'd been wrong about what he needed to improve his mood. He could sit there all night and drink bourbon until it seeped out his ears, and he still wouldn't be interested in what Prudence offered. And before he started thinking about what kind of woman he did want that hot, uncomplicated sex with, he would drag his miserable hide out of there.

  He downed his drink in one swallow and flattened his hands on the bar as the liquor kicked home hard. When his vision cleared, he was looking straight into the mirror over the bar. Which was when he saw Julia come through the door.

  Three things registered simultaneously. She was wearing a black dress. She had done something with her hair. He wasn't going anywhere.

  Her head turned slowly, as if she were scanning the packed room, searching for someone. The instant she saw him, he knew that someone was him. His whole body quickened with the knowledge as she started toward him, zigzagging through the crowd with a single-minded look on her face. She disappeared entirely behind a huge block of a guy in a red plaid shirt, and tension grabbed hold of his throat. When she reappeared, laughing at something the big guy had said, he relaxed. Marginally.

  She looked up then, straight into the mirror, and when she saw him watching, she smiled. That smile slugged him right in the chest. He might have smiled right back—should have smiled right back—but with every muscle in his body feeling as tight as a machine-wound locknut, that was impossible. He watched her walk the last ten feet and stop beside him.

  "About time," he said shortly.

  She blinked, her smile fading, but she kept her eyes focused on his. In the mirror. "What are you drinking?"

  "Bourbon."

  "And?"

  "More bourbon."

  She edged into the narrow gap between the stools and leaned forward to look across the bar. While she tried to catch the barman's eye, Zane took the opportunity to look at her, to try to discern why his body reacted so extravagantly to the sight of her.

  He noticed that her black dress was actually a skirt and top. Compared with this place's usual skimpy dress, it was pretty tame. Nothing for a man's libido to get in a lather over. His eyes noted how her skirt skimmed her hips—a neat fit, not too tight—before flaring to a modest mid-calf length. Of course his libido discerned the faint line of high-cut underwear where it skimmed her hips and immediately started lathering.

  Disgusted with his response, he forced his gaze upward to her sleeveless shirt. Seeing as it had little flowers all over, it was probably called something prissy, like a blouse. There was nothing sexy about a blouse. Then she leaned a little further across the bar, and the hem rode up enough to bare a thin sliver of smooth skin.

  Maybe he'd been too long out west, too long only seeing skin as sun-wizened as the harsh Pilbara landscape, but the sight of her soft, milk-pale skin took him way past lathering. He practically howled.

  He looked up and found her watching him. She knew exactly what he had been examining—he saw the knowledge in her eyes, in the tinge of color along the side of her slender neck, in the slightly stiff smile she offered. "The barman doesn't seem to want to come down this end."

  "That's because I scared him away."

  The last three-quarters of his sentence was drowned out when the band started up again, louder than ever, after a break. Julia shrugged and leaned closer. "I didn't catch that."

  She pulled back, but not all the way, obviously waiting for him to repeat himself. Into her ear. His mouth went dry thinking about it. Slowly, he leaned toward her, and she bent, giving him open access to her ear and her neck. Her soft, smooth, dawn-scented neck. He swallowed, lifted a hand and pushed back the thick fall of her hair, tucking it behind her ear. It was his only excuse for touching its rich texture, and it felt as silky as it looked.

  Only then did he remember why she'd allowed him so near. "The barman—I scared him away."

  She nodded, and they both eased back. But he knew in that instant that she was registering the same things, remembering the same details. The way their arms had touched, skin to skin, heat to heat. How her skirt had brushed against his thighs, how the filmy material clung as she'd eased away.

  A faint flush tinged her exposed ear as she searched out the barman again. Without her contact, Zane felt deprived. He didn't want a drink. He wanted her close, those thighs against his, his hands in her hair, his mouth against her neck.

  He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back against him. Her eyes rounded in surprise and for a second he was sidetracked by their amazing blend of green and gray and rich warm brown. Then he lifted a handful of hair from her neck, wrapped it 'round his fingers and leaned in close.

  Knowing it wasn't an honest way to get close to her, knowing it had nothing to do with moving to the rhythm and everything to do with body contact, didn't stop him.

  "Forget the drink," he growled. "Let's dance."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  «^»

  Julia loved to dance.

  At home, in p
rivate, she often shook her groove thang to something upbeat from Kree's CD collection. Sometimes, if she knew Mrs. H. was out, she would turn up the volume until the pastel walls of Honeysuckle Cottage vibrated with the bass beat.

  Or perhaps they simply quaked with horror. She was pretty certain Ben Plummer's musical taste hadn't stretched to hip-hop.

  So when Zane had growled, "Let's dance," she'd raised no objections … not that he'd given her any option.

  As he pulled her toward the dance floor in the adjoining room, her heart raced. She could have blamed the exertion of keeping up with his long strides, but she didn't.

  Her heart raced with excitement, with eagerness and exhilaration. Oh, she wanted to dance, all right. She wanted to wiggle her hips and shimmy her butt. She wanted to snake her arms in those slinky moves Kree had taught her one margarita-imbued girls-night-in. She wanted to swing her head until her sexy new hair caught fire in the strobing lights.

  She wanted to dance until she'd forgotten all about women in red cars, all about kissing frogs, and especially all about Paul and babies and empty hollow places that might never be filled.

  The band launched into a raunchy rock anthem as Zane pulled her onto the packed floor. The pounding beat kept time with her pulse, reverberated through her blood and coaxed her body into motion. She swung her head, felt her hair soar in a wide floating arc, and she laughed out loud with delight.

  Laughed and gyrated and snaked her arms. Through a heavy veil of tumbled hair she saw Zane watching her, the look on his face almost as bemused as when he'd discovered her piercing. Bemused and empowering. This was exactly what she needed. She laughed again, and he closed the gap between them, leaning close when she stopped jumping around. He lifted her hair as he had done in the bar.

  When his fingers grazed the side of her neck, Julia shivered, not with cold but with sudden heat.

  The music, the press of the crowd, her own heightened state of self-awareness, all receded into some other dimension as her senses filled with his nearness, his scent, the pressure of those callous-tipped fingers as they slid around her nape, holding her still. The dip of his head as he leaned into her ear.