Holding Her Close (Bits and Bytes, Book 0) (Bits & Bytes) (2 page)

His smile was back
and something playful danced behind his eyes. He took a step closer, his toes nudging hers when they rested on the edge of her sandals. “Maybe, maybe not, but the walls are down now.”

“
Holy hell.” She spun away, raking her fingers through her hair. She hated that he could twist a word or a phrase just right to get a reaction out of her. And at the same time adored the talent that could evoke those feelings. “Really? You had to insult me for that?”

This time he was the one to step in front of her.
“It was next on the list. Either that or Scott. I had to pick.”

Scott. The reason this conversation had to at least end on a neutral note. He’d always been a good sport about her and Zach not speaking, but she knew it was a strain on him, and there was no reason to make it worse. Not ever, but especially not now.

Still, Zach hadn’t apologized. So even if it was a ruse to get a response out of her, he meant it. She grabbed her hurt and fury, trying to use them to smother the thrum of her pulse caused by being so close to him. This was anger, it wasn’t attraction. “This is exactly why I avoid you.”

He tilted his head, bringing his face closer.
“I thought you weren’t doing that.”

“
Yeah. I am. Happy?” Stupid hormones, making her want to close the gap between them. Taunting her with memories of when things were good between them. The heat, the taste of his kisses. Stupid imagination. “I’m avoiding you because it’s really rare I’m in the mood to be poked and prodded at until I snap. Go figure.”

“
But you expected it.”

Yeah, she had. What did he want from her?
“And you’ve proven me right. Fantastic all around.”

“
I wish I hadn’t.” The emotion was gone from his face.

“
I bet.” She pursed her lips.

His eyes softened.
“I don’t have a problem with you being right, I was just hoping we could have a normal conversation for once.”

She didn’t know what to say. He was all over the board, leaving her head spinning
, and none of it was erasing her desire to rise on her toes and kiss him.

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her neck went stiff.
She wasn’t going to sink into this. He was a master of manipulation, and she had learned a long time ago she didn’t need that in her life.

His thumb brushed her cheek.
“It was cruel. I’m sorry.”

“
Did you just admit to being wrong?” It took the last of her restraint to keep the joke in her question and the waver out of it.

He gave a short laugh.
“Don’t get used to it.”

She couldn’t help her smile
, but she still wouldn’t sink into his touch. “Familiarity isn’t always a bad thing.”

“
Touché.” His eyes flicked back and forth over hers.

A couple more inches.
A tilt of her head and she’d be leaning on his hand. A shift in another direction and they’d be kissing. She just had to step in and rest her palms on his chest. She licked her lips.

His smile grew and he leaned closer.

She stepped back, breaking all contact and putting several inches between them. She let out a tiny exhale. “Thanks for the company, and for making sure my sister stays off the streets. I'm sorry to bolt, but I have errands to run.”

His smile wilted.
“No problem.”

Good, he was disappointed.
Served him right. His footsteps slapped the tile in rhythm with hers as she crossed the foyer. She turned to face him as they reached the door. “Maybe I'll see you around.” As she spoke she realized she meant it.

She spun
toward the door and found herself face to face with a FedEx delivery guy. She jumped in surprise. Her hand flew to her hammering heart and she choked on a nervous laugh.

The man glanced up from his clipboard.
“Zachary William Johnson?”

“
Johnston,” Zach corrected him. “That's me.”

The man handed him a
n envelope. “Have a nice day, sir.”

Zach took the
letter, jaw clenched.

“
Thank you.” The FedEx man turned away before he finished speaking.

“
Wow, you executives really don’t ever stop working, do you?” Rae teased.

He blinked and shook his head. His voice was soft, eyes never leaving the envelope as he
turned it over and over in his hands. “Something like that. I’m sorry, I need to make a call.”

“
Yeah.” She didn't think he heard her. She had no idea what was in the letter, or if he even knew, but whatever it was had drowned out any remaining traces of the bizarre reunion.

She shuffled back to the driveway. Jordan’s car was gone, leaving hers alone on the pristine concrete. Her eyes narrowed when she yanked the door open.

Her laptop case winked back at her from the driver’s seat, a post-it note on top with Chloe’s familiar scrawl on it.

If you’re reading this, you survived. Was it as horrible as you thought it would be?

What the — ? What was her sister up to now?

Zach leaned against the counter next to the sink, palms resting on the granite behind him, fingers drumming on the lip. All things considered, he’d rather be wading through awkward conversation with Rae than facing his company’s mortality. Their company, Cord wasn’t even a decade old. Even younger than the faded grudge the two of them clung to.

At least she'd lost the blue dye job, and swapped out her wardrobe. Of course, it had been years, it made sense she would have. And he couldn't complain about the thin white top with the turquoise bra underneath.

“You’re not listening, are you?” Scott’s question cut through the drifting fantasy.

Zach pushed the image away and focused on his best friend and business partner. Even if he hadn’t heard everything Scott had said, he’d be able to guess. The conversation hadn’t changed much since they’d lost Cord in
the hostile takeover nine months ago.

Scott nodded at something behind Zach
“Was she as good in bed as she was attractive?”

Was she? Fantasy sideswiped Zach’s thoughts and slid in to take their place. Rae’s teasing laughter growing heavy as he backed her against a wall, peeling off
her thin top, making her gasp. He pushed the images away again. Where the hell had that come from? And that wasn’t what Scott was talking about. “Who?”

Scott raised an eyebrow.
“Whoever you liked enough to let spend the night.” He nodded at the sink again. “Extra mug?”

Right, that. Zach shook his head, as much to
force the tantalizing images out as to answer Scott. “No one spent the night.”

“
Fine, don’t tell me. Whatever has you distracted must have been the best fucking wet dream in history. You liked her enough to make her coffee this morning.” Scott turned back to the letter in front of him. “This changes everything, you know.”

The rapid change of subject didn’t faze Zach.
They were talking about the letter again. He exhaled slowly. “The only thing that’s changed is it’s in writing now.” It was a formal copy of the offer Digital Media — the company who had “acquired” Cord — was making to buy Zach and Scott out of their old company shares. “That doesn’t make getting out of it any easier. In fact, it makes it that much more real.”

Scott pushed off the barstool
, and paced the length of the kitchen. “So what do we do?”

The specifics had varied over the past few months, but the meaning of the conversation never changed. Scott refused to accept that they didn’t have any options, and got pissed when Zach had the nerve to point
it out.

Zach was sick of it. He hated the entire thing as much as anyone
— they had built Cord together — but he had also accepted reality months ago. “I was thinking of bumming around Europe for a couple of years. Sell the house, put the Porsche in storage, and buy a stack of traveler’s checks and a one-way-ticket.

“
This isn’t a joke.” Scott’s snarl echoed off stone and stainless steel.

Zach knew what was coming next. Or at least, he had a list to pick from and he’d narrowed it down to the most like
ly option. This would probably be the negotiation argument. Couldn’t they just stay on long enough to launch their current game? DM would have to let them stay if they did a great job. They just had to prove they could play nice with their new owner. Like trained dogs on a leash.

Scott stopped and turned to face him, dark eyes narrowed.

Or maybe it would be the “Can we just pretend we never saw this?” argument. That one was always amusing.

“
Is this what you wanted?” Scott asked.

Zach choked on a canned response. That was new.
“Excuse me?”

Scott shoved his hands in his pockets.
“This isn’t just our lifeblood, it’s our dream. It’s being ripped away, and you’ve barely batted an eye. Do you have any idea how sick I am of hearing ‘there’s nothing we can do’ over and over again?”

In most situations Zach would temper his answer. Business meetings, he’d filter his thoughts. Dinner with colleagues, he’d tone down his response. Scott was the one person he never had to watch his words with, and the fury racing through him was grateful for it.

He crossed his arms. “Probably as sick as I am of hearing you deny this is an issue. It was a fucking hostile takeover. We’re lucky we have any say in anything after this long.”

The veins in Scott’s neck bulged.
“Maybe that’s what you were hoping for. Maybe that’s why you opened us up to it in the first place.”

Every word dug deeper, and Zach’s anger rose in response.
“You really think I planned this?”

Scott’s brow rose.
“I was thinking you let it happen, but maybe you did plan it. You’re the one who begged me to let Kelly invest.”

“
Really? You're going to rehash five years ago?” If she hadn't, they wouldn't have anything now to make them worth buying out. Her money had kept them solvent. Zach’s fingers twitched over the pack of smokes in his shirt pocket, but he held his posture. He swallowed a few breaths of air to try and sate the craving.

“
We would have found a way.” A growl cut through Scott’s response.

This was bullshit, and the accusations hurt like hell.
“I'm not going to play the 'what-if' game. We're here now, not there. Besides, the only reason you didn't want it then was —” Zach stopped himself before he could add ‘because she didn’t love you’. There were some lines he wasn’t willing to cross, even in an all-out exchange of insults.

Scott's scowl slipped, but anger still ran through his retort.
“I didn't want it then because it was blood money. It was bribery. It was her way of getting back into your life. She didn't earn it, just like she hasn't earned a penny since. I would rather have failed than owe her anything.”

Zach exhaled through clenched teeth.
“Funny, that's not what you said back then. Besides, can you fathom not being here right now? I'm not talking about today, I'm talking about the rest of it. You would have walked away from your dream just to spite a potential investor? And it took you five years to figure that out?”

“It wouldn't have been spite.”

Zach knew that wasn't true.
“You would have taken money from anyone else. Do you remember how desperate we were?”

“
I didn't take it from Dad. I said yes because you wanted it.”

“
Nuh-uh.” Zach shook his head, gaze locked on Scott. They both knew the company had been Scott's idea. His dream. “Don't shift the blame to me. How was I supposed to know?”

“
Fine.” Scott threw his hands up before he started pacing again. “No one did anything wrong. This is all just an unhappy coincidence.”

“
I didn't say that. Kelly did this. Yeah, okay. I can admit getting involved with her was a mistake, but how was I supposed to know?” Zach struggled to bring his anger under control.

“
At least you learned your lesson before it was too late.” Sarcasm hung heavy in Scott’s sneer. “Oh wait, no you didn’t. Maybe it’s a good thing we lost everything. Otherwise you might have signed over controlling interest to whomever you had over this morning that you’re not willing to talk about.”

Zach’s fury raced back full
-force. His raised voice bounced back at him. “Fuck you. Really? First of all, Kelly wasn’t just some random one-night fling. Mistake or not, I thought I loved her. I thought she loved me. Second, I already told you, I didn’t have anyone over last night. The mug is Rae’s.”

Scott’s eyes grew wide, but his shoulders didn’t relax.
“Rae, as in, no one better put the two of you in a room together? She was your one night stand?”

That could be interesting; stripping off
her turquoise bra, running his hands over those incredible curves. Zach pushed the uninvited images aside. What was wrong with him? “No. I didn’t sleep with Rae and no one spent the night. She was looking for Chloe and wanted to leave a message with me.”

The tension faded from Scott’s frame and his shoulders slumped. At least that was one thing about Scott. He had a short fuse, but it tended to burn out as quickly as it ignited.
“Does that mean you two are on speaking terms again?”

“
Yes. I guess. I don’t know.” It wasn’t even ten am and Zach already felt drained. Rae had always been a volatile subject. When they had broken up in high school, she and Scott stayed friends. It was obvious the entire thing stressed Scott, and Zach didn’t believe in making friends take sides, so he’d tried to keep his distance from Rae as much as possible.

This was new though
, and as much as Zach had more important things to worry about, like how to get Scott to recognize this buy-out offer wasn’t going away, Rae still danced in his head. The banter, her tongue running over her lips when she was nervous, the heat of her body next to his. He pushed the thoughts away. That wasn’t helping.

“
Anyway.” Scott raked his fingers through his hair, the brown spikes bouncing back into place the moment he dropped his hand. “Wanna go get breakfast?”

“
Good call.” Zach pushed away from the counter. They’d bullshit, maybe the waitress would be cute. Short, curvy. Wait, that wasn’t right, he liked his women tall. Unless they looked like Rae. Damn she was sexy.

He needed to stop that. Why couldn’t he get her out of his head?
Especially after less than an hour of talking to her.

He needed to move on. Flush her out of his system. He only knew two ways to do that, and since never seeing her again probably wasn’t an option, he’d have to go with the second. He just needed a taste to sate the curiosity. To prove to his psyche she was just another woman. That was how it always worked when someone wormed their way into his thoughts and wouldn’t leave.

The question was, what did she need to hear to convince her of the same thing? She had to be at least a little interested. Even though she’d pulled away from the kiss at the last second, he’d have bet money she was considering leaning into it instead.

Seduction didn’t seem like the best option. She’d always been more of a straightforward person. The thought
was foreign, but tempting. Maybe he’d just have to be upfront with her. Mostly.

Scott was still talking as they made their way to the garage
entrance. “You haven’t even tried to think of another option, have you?”

Of course he had. Never speak to her again, or sleep with her. No, that wasn’t what he meant. He was talking about the buy
-out again. Reality seeped back into Zach’s thoughts, bringing irritation with it. Hadn’t they moved past this point in the conversation? “I’ve considered selling everything I own and moving to New Zealand.”

Scott’s wordless roar bounced off the surrounding walls.
“That’s it, I’m done. I’m not hungry after all.”

Zach glared at him.
“Fine, call me when reality permeates your thick skull.”

“
Don’t hold your breath.” Scott slammed the door behind him, and the house shook. Moments later, the roar of a gunned engine cut through the air.

Zach plucked his smokes from his pocket and headed for the back deck. Not only did he not have a solution, but he didn’t even know where to start. He and Scott didn’t always see eye to eye, but they’d always been able to compromise before. This time though, they’d lost it all
. The money wouldn’t make up for the blood, sweat, and love they’d poured into Cord, and his best friend was slipping away from him in a haze of delusion and denial.

He paused in the middle of the kitchen, feet sticking to the floor as the weight of frustration hit him full force.
“FUUUUUUCK!” he screamed to the empty room.