If You Were Mine (12 page)

She shot him a suspicious glance. “You played me.” She

looked at Cuddles’s innocent face and then his less innocent one.

“You were practicing before tonight, weren’t you?”

“We wanted to impress you.” Which was true. “Stil,

you’ve got to admit it was pretty close there for a while.”

She sighed and said, “I know a great Indian place with a

patio that alows dogs.”

They settled into their seats with the dogs contentedly

chewing on the plastic bones she’d brought for them. Heather

took a sip of her cold beer and couldn’t repress a sigh of

pleasure. She and Zach hadn’t talked much as they’d walked the

three blocks from her business to the restaurant, apart from her

trying to convince him that Cuddles could manage the trip on her

little paws, while he made one excuse after another for why he

“needed” to carry her.

She’d never seen anyone get attached to a dog so fast, and

frankly, she was worried about how he was going to deal with

giving the puppy back to his brother. She’d actualy taken a few

minutes that afternoon to scan her list of Yorkie breeders to see

if any of them had a new litter coming soon, but she was very

much afraid Cuddles was irreplaceable.

The mischievous but loving puppy fit perfectly with the

mischievous but loving man who was holding her in his arms.

Loving?

Ugh. She took another gulp from her glass, while sternly

reminding herself that even though this was practicaly a script of

her vision of a perfect night out, it wasn’t a date. And she had no

business thinking of Zach as
loving...
not even if he was currently

looking at her with more affection than desire.

His eyes darkened as she stared into them and she

amended that thought to
slightly more
.

amended that thought to
slightly more
.

Just as the waiter came to their table, Zach’s phone went

off. “Sorry, it’s my brother.” He gestured to the menu. “Go nuts

with the meal. I trust you.” He stood up to take the cal away

from the other diners.

Even after she’d ordered, the buzz was stil going through

her from his last casualy tossed-off words.
I trust you.

What would it be like to be able to say that to someone

without pause, to give her trust to someone she’d met less than a

week ago?

She tried not to stare at Zach where he was standing on the

sidewalk talking with his brother, but when he laughed and his

gorgeous face lit up, she realized she wasn’t the only one who

couldn’t take her eyes off him. Every other woman on the patio

was staring, too.

Amazingly, he didn’t seem to notice or care that he was the

center of attention. Instead of soaking up the public’s adoration

like the vain man she’d once thought he was, he was utterly

focused on what his brother was saying.

“Is everything okay?” she asked when he’d sat back down.

“Chase’s wife, Chloe, is a couple of days past her due

date. I left him a message earlier to make sure everything was

okay. She’s fine, but antsy.”

Yet again she was amazed by how close he was to his

family, especialy given his outwardly footloose-and-fancy-free

personality. Amazingly, the fact that he clearly wasn’t looking for

a wife of his own didn’t stop him from appreciating
—
and

worrying about
—
his siblings’ wives.

worrying about
—
his siblings’ wives.

She couldn’t put the puzzle of Zach Sulivan together...and

it only added to her worries where he was concerned. If only he

were black and white, then she would know exactly where to

shelve him in her head, rather than having the very real concern

that he was creeping into her heart by bits and pieces every time

they were together.

“How many nephews and nieces do you have?”

His excited smile made her go warm al over. “This wil be

the first.”

A man who loved puppies
and
babies was hard to resist.

Almost impossible, actualy.

But she needed to keep doing just that, darn it....

“Do they know if they’re having a boy or a girl?”

“If they do, they haven’t told any of us.” He grinned at her.

“We’ve actualy got a betting pool going.”

“Your family is betting over the sex of your brother’s

child?”

He refiled her glass as he said, “It was my mother’s idea.”

She laughed out loud at that, the feel of that spontaneous

joy bubbling up from her chest surprising her the same way it

always did when she was with Zach.

“She realy does sound like a remarkable woman. Stunning,

raised eight kids, and now has her first grandchild on the way.”

She shook her head. “A gambler, too, from the sounds of it.”

She thought about the gorgeous man in the black and white

photo who looked so much like Zach. “I’m assuming your father

encourages al the Sulivan family madness?”

encourages al the Sulivan family madness?”

The laughter left his eyes. “He died when I was seven. Just

a couple of weeks before my eighth birthday.”

She gripped the stem of her glass tighter. He hadn’t said

anything during breakfast at his house when they’d been looking

at the black and white photo.

“I’m sorry, I just assumed
—
” She tried to clamp her mouth

shut, but stil the words, “That must have been so hard on you,”

slipped out. He’d said before how much like his father he was,

that he got his love of cars from him. A young boy who clearly

worshipped his father had to have been devastated by his death.

He shrugged, but she could almost see the weight on his

shoulders as she forced the movement. “We puled together, al

looked out for each other.”

She did some quick math from the picture she’d seen, and

realized he’d been right there in the middle as the fifth child out of

eight, not the oldest, not the youngest. She knew how easy it

was to get lost in a family, even when you were the only child.

Had that happened to Zach?

“How did it happen?”

“He had an aneurysm at the office. We found out he was

dead when we got home from school. He was only forty-eight.”

He lifted his eyes to hers and what she saw in them tore at her

heart. “It wil be twenty-three years next week.”

She had to reach for Zach’s hand. Even though it had been

more than two decades since his father’s death, she could see

that it stil hurt him. Deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Every time they’d been together, he’d tried to touch her.

But now that she was the one who’d reached for him, he puled

away and reached for his beer, gulping it down before putting the

empty glass back on the table.

“Shit happens,” he said. “Sucks, but what can you do?”

It wasn’t hard to guess that the flippancy came from trying

to cover how bad he felt. And realy, who was she to question

people’s coping mechanisms? After al, when she found out that

her beloved father was a two-faced bastard, she’d turned into a

seventeen-year-old cutter.

Stil, she felt there was more Zach wasn’t saying and was

absolutely certain that his father’s death had affected him on

some deeper level than he would be sharing with her over Indian

food tonight. And no matter how much she tried to remind

herself that it was dangerous to let him get too close, his

unexpected vulnerability struck right at the heart of her.

After the waiter delivered steaming platters of
naan
bread,

Tandoori chicken, and curry, he looked up at her and said,

“Your parents are stil together. What else should I know about

you?”

Most men barely listened when a woman talked about

herself. Trust Zach to remember every freaking word, no matter

how casualy tossed off it had been during an impromptu training

session in the park.

She broke off a piece of the flat bread and took a bite of it,

even though it suddenly tasted like sawdust. When she’d washed

even though it suddenly tasted like sawdust. When she’d washed

it down with a sip of beer, she said, “There’s not much else to

tel.”

But he wasn’t that easily daunted. “Where did you grow

up?”

“Washington D.C.” She stared down at a plate ful of food

she no longer had the desire to eat.

“You’re a long way from home,” he commented.

Yes, she was. On purpose. She’d wanted to get as far

away from her parents as possible. “I like the West Coast.”

He raised an eyebrow at her curt words and she realized

she wasn’t playing it nearly cool enough as he said, “Any

siblings?”

“No.”

Atlas looked up at the tone of her voice, and moved to put

his head on her lap as if to comfort her.

“What did they do to you, Heather?”

She sighed, knowing that if Zach had been that persistent

about getting her to have dinner with him, there was no way he

was going to leave this one alone without getting her to eventualy

tel him what he wanted to know.

And maybe it would help him understand her reluctance to

date him if he knew more.

“Everyone loves my father,” she told him. “It’s what always

made him such a good salesperson, that people can’t help but be

charmed by him.”

“Seling what?”

“Used to be chemicals. Now it’s cel phone towers al over

“Used to be chemicals. Now it’s cel phone towers al over

the country.”

“How much time did he spend on the road when you lived

at home?”

“About half the year.”

“That’s got to be hard on a kid.”

She liked how he made it sound like they were talking

about someone else. “My mother worked overtime to keep us

busy when he was gone so we wouldn’t have time to think about

being lonely or missing him. And it was always a big celebration

when he returned. He got me great presents from the road to

make up for being gone.” Presents she’d wanted to smash into a

zilion little pieces when she’d found out the truth.

“Did it work?”

She met Zach’s gaze. “No.” She reached down to stroke

Atlas’s head as if to steel herself for what was coming next. “But

it was worse when I found out he’d been cheating on my mother

for years. For their whole marriage, actualy.”

Zach cursed. “That sucks.”

“You want to know what was even worse than that?” She

couldn’t wait for him to reply, not when the words were

suddenly tripping over each other to get out of her mouth. “She

knew about it.” Heather pushed her plate away. “Al those years,

even now, she knows he’s cheating on her, but she stays with

him anyway.”

She’d never told a man this before, hadn’t even come close

to letting one in enough to speak about family secrets. If

someone had told her a week ago she’d be spiling her guts to

someone had told her a week ago she’d be spiling her guts to

the cocky man who owned the auto shop, she never would have

believed it.

“Why do you think she stays?”

It was the question she’d asked herself a thousand times

over the years. “He always makes sure to tel her how much he

loves her. Even though we al know it’s a big fat lie.”

* * *

wasn’t 2,500 miles away, he’d be hunting him down to pound

him into a wal.

No wonder Heather wouldn’t take a chance on being with

him even in the short term, if al she knew were “charming” men

who lied through their teeth to her and her mother. It kiled him

to think of her as a young girl stuck in the middle of al that.

Seeing the virtualy untouched food on their table, the

waiter came over with a worried expression. “Does everything

taste okay?”

Zach watched Heather pin on a false smile. “It’s great,

thanks.” She slid her fork into a chunk of chicken, but she didn’t

put it in her mouth, just pushed it around on her plate, her mind

clearly elsewhere.

Thinking about what a dick her father is,
he guessed
.

And why her mother doesn’t have a backbone.

He’d hugged his sisters’ tears away a hundred times over

He’d hugged his sisters’ tears away a hundred times over

the years, had listened to Summer pour out her feelings about a

boy she liked in second grade who liked to pul her pigtails. But

he’d never been tempted to comfort a woman who wasn’t part

of his family.

Zach knew it was dangerous to feel this way about

Heather. She was breaking al the rules, ones that had never

been in danger of cracking apart before.

But how could he possibly leave her like this, with shadows