If You Were Mine (33 page)

But, oh, how she’d wanted
to believe that it wouldn’t.

Just as badly as she’d wanted to believe in Zach.

He closed the door on his brother, walked back into the

room, picked up the shoe Cuddles had been chewing on, and

dropped it into the garbage can with a
thud
.

Al the while the puppy’s cries could be heard as his

brother put her in the car.

“I told you everything.” Her voice shook with emotion she

couldn’t contain. “I loved you enough to tel you my secrets. To

trust you with them.” And with her heart. Which was why she

had to try one more time to see if he would be honest with her

about what was hurting him. “I know something’s wrong,

something to do with today’s crash.” She clenched her hands at

her sides to keep from reaching for him, because if he pushed

her away she would shatter into a thousand pieces on his kitchen

floor. “Won’t you trust me, too?”

He went completely stil and for a moment as she stared

into his bleak eyes, she thought he might be about to tel her why

he was acting so weird.

Only, when he finaly spoke, it was just to say, “Trust me,

it’s better this way. It was only a matter of time before something

happened to her at the shop.” He paused. “Or before something

happened to me. Like today, out at the racetrack. If I hadn’t

been able to get out of the car, they would have taken her back

anyway. Better if it happens now, before she gets any more

attached to me.”

attached to me.”

She blinked at him, trying to make sense of what he was

saying. “Wait a minute. Are you actualy trying to convince me

you got rid of the puppy for her own good?”

When he nodded, she shook her head in disbelief. “That’s

crazy. Can’t you see how much she loves you? And that she

doesn’t want to be with anyone else on the off chance that you’l

crash a race car one day?”

But with every word she spoke, she could see Zach

shutting down more and more. To the point where it was like

talking to the cement wal he’d driven into today.

Only this time, it was her heart going up in flames as he shut

her out completely.

Heather had thought she’d found him; the one guy who

could prove to her that they weren’t al the same. But she’d

never know if she had or not, would she? Because he wouldn’t

talk to her.

Just like her father, Zach made al the rules and she was

expected to folow them.

This was why she’d been trying so hard to resist him, to

argue away his love...and her own.

Atlas silently moved beside her as she found her bag and

put her things into it. She walked into the bedroom to retrieve the

extra clothes she’d started to leave at Zach’s house. The bed

mocked her, told her what she hadn’t wanted to believe was

true.

It had just been sex.

Friends with benefits...only, maybe they hadn’t even been

Friends with benefits...only, maybe they hadn’t even been

friends when it came right down to it.

Zach’s eyes were dark as he watched her gather up her

things, a muscle jumping in his jaw, right beneath one of the

scratches she was so tempted to reach out and run a finger over.

Just to be close to him one more time.

“You’re leaving?”

Before tonight, Zach would never have asked her if she

was going. He simply wouldn’t have let her go, would have

puled whatever tricks out of his sleeve to convince her she was

better off staying with him.

“I’ve got a big backlog of work at the office.”

Work had piled up due to al the time she’d been spending

with Zach. It had seemed worth it at the time, the tradeoff

between love and growing her business.

Worth it, that is, until the mirage of
love
disappeared like a

puff of smoke.

“You’re that pissed off at me for giving the damn puppy

back?” At last, she could see the veneer he’d tried to put around

himself cracking. But it was too late. Especialy when he said, “It

wasn’t even my dog. I never asked for it. They just dumped it on

me.”

It.

“No, I’m not pissed off.” And she was being perfectly

honest. She was far more heartbroken than she was angry. “Just

like you said, she’l be fine.” Heather would make sure of it,

would personaly assign her best trainer to work with Megan,

would personaly assign her best trainer to work with Megan,

Summer, and Gabe so that Cuddles could forget that Zach

Sulivan ever existed.

“Then why are you leaving?”

Because she needed to save herself while there was stil a

ghost of a chance that she could recover.

Because if he could give away a puppy she’d thought he

absolutely adored without so much as flinching as it cried for him,

then she wasn’t sure she knew who he was at al.

Because she didn’t think she rated a whole heck of lot

more than the puppy had to the man standing in front of her.

Because, in the end, it turned out love wasn’t enough. Just

like she’d always known.

But since she could no longer trust him enough to say any

of that, al that came was an honest, “I’m glad you’re okay,

Zach.”

So glad, in fact, that she’d felt like her own life had been

saved out there on the race track when he’d scrambled free of

the burning car.

She was about to start crying, knew any second she’d be

faling apart.

Heather couldn’t do that here. Not in front of Zach. She

couldn’t let her guard down around him ever again.

Al those years ago, when she’d found out what her father

had done, she’d vowed to never feel that way again, to never let

anyone make her feel so terribly unloved, so unimportant. She’d

renew that vow, make sure she stuck by it in the future.

She needed to get out of there looking like she was stil in

She needed to get out of there looking like she was stil in

one piece and then, when she was far, far away from him, she’d

deal with the shattered insides beneath her skin.

When Zach had nearly died she’d finaly admitted to herself

just how much she loved him. She’d finaly confessed down

deep in her soul that she loved him more deeply, more truly than

she’d ever thought she could love a man.

Only to have him prove her cynicism about love to be right.

She hated him for that, but hated herself more for faling for

him.

“Good luck with the rest of your charmed life.”

Zach’s life had turned into a god damned train wreck.

After he put the wrong fluid in a customer’s transmission

and it burned to a crisp, his staff wouldn’t let him near any of the

cars in the garage. He did something on his computer that gave it

a virus and his executive assistant asked him, politely but firmly,

to please stay away from the rest of the computers in the office

while she got the hard drive repaired. His vocabulary shrank to a

handful of curse words when reporters covering his accident at

the race track caled to ask what he thought about the pictures of

Ryan and Smith holding Heather back from the track as his car

burned, and now the press was pissed at him, too.

On top of everything else, Gabe had ratted him out to the

entire family. As soon as Lori and Sophie learned that he’d given

entire family. As soon as Lori and Sophie learned that he’d given

the puppy back—along with a clear visual of the horror on

Heather’s face that Gabe had likely recounted to al of them in

vivid Technicolor—they began to tag-team him with messages

wanting to know what his problem was.

Lori went so far as to threaten him with bodily harm if he

continued to blow it with Heather. On her last message she’d

made it perfectly clear that she had plenty of brothers already, so

it was an easy decision for her to stick with Heather if he was

going to keep being too much of a fool to figure out how to love

her right.

“We all know how you feel about her,”
was what she’d

said in her most recent message. Loud enough that her voice was

stil ringing in his ears.
“Heather and I were getting to be

friends, but now she won’t call me back. Jerk.”

He was tempted to delete al future messages from his

siblings without listening to them, but he couldn’t. Not if they

were caling to say they’d heard from Heather.

But no one said a word about seeing her, not even Gabe,

who he figured was doing training sessions with Cuddles at Top

Dog.

It wasn’t even my goddamned dog
, was what he kept

teling himself over and over.
They shouldn’t be getting their

panties in such a twist over my giving it back to Summer.

Only, al the old lies he’d always told himself weren’t

working anymore. Not when he knew exactly why they were al

so angry with him.

Because he’d lost Heather.

Because he’d lost Heather.

Hell.
It was worse than that.

He’d convinced Heather to walk to the edge of a hundred-

story building, went out of his way to convince her she was

safe...and then he’d shoved her off.

God, that last night at his house he’d hated seeing her spark

fade, hated even more that he was the cause of it, but he

couldn’t stop, couldn’t just shut up and pul her into his arms the

way he was dying to.

Not when he’d been gripped with the need to save them

both before they went too far, too deep, into a forever that could

—or couldn’t, depending on the same bad luck and shitty fate

that had befalen his father—be out there for them.

Exactly one week after Heather had left him, Zach puled

over in front of his mother’s house. His tire jammed into the curb

with a sharp pop.

A flat.

Figured, the way his luck was going.

Just as he’d thought at the racetrack, he’d finaly used up

his share of good fortune.

His
charmed life
had officialy ended the moment Heather

walked out of his house.

He grabbed the brightly wrapped baby gift from the

passenger seat and shoved the pink and yelow baloons tied to

his mother’s mailbox out of his way as he headed for the front

door. The last thing he was in the mood for today was a baby

shower, regardless of how cute Chase and Chloe’s kid was.

If only he could see Emma without the rest of his family

around, poking at him.

If only he could forget the way Heather had looked with

Emma in her arms. So beautiful, so natural, so amazed by the

perfect little life.

When he closed his eyes at night just to lie there until the

sun came up, that was what he saw. Heather and the baby. The

wonder on her face. The joy.

The longing.

How could he have done anything but fal in love with her?

And how could he do anything now but let her go?

The front door was half-open and he plopped his gift on the

pile in the living room. Planning to see Emma, give her a kiss, and

then get the hel out of there, he had just stepped out into his

mother’s backyard when Gabe intercepted him.

“Here.” His brother shoved an overjoyed bal of fur at him.

Zach grabbed Cuddles before she fel out of his arms.

“What the hel?”

“She’s yours. We’re not taking her back.” Gabe scowled.

“You couldn’t pay us to take her back.”

The puppy was losing its mind licking Zach al over his neck

and chin. It didn’t matter how he shifted her, she just kept

showering him with her slobbery love.

“What kind of trouble could she have caused? I gave her

back to you trained.”

Megan appeared at Gabe’s side. “She wouldn’t stop

crying, Zach. No matter what we did, she wouldn’t stop.” She

crying, Zach. No matter what we did, she wouldn’t stop.” She

watched Cuddles turn herself inside out to show Zach just how

pleased she was to see him. “Now I see why. You two are

obviously a match made in heaven.”

Zach wanted to argue, wanted to tel them either they kept

the dog or he was taking it to the pound. But, damn it, he’d

missed the little fur bal al week. He’d look down at his lap,

expecting to see her there, and had hated how empty, how

sterile his living room was without her chew toys, the dog bed

empty in the corner.

And yet, even as excited as the puppy was to see him, she

kept looking around and whimpering between licks.

He knew why. She was looking for her friend, Atlas.

And for Heather.

The four of them had been such a tight unit that the puppy

couldn’t possibly understand where everyone had gone.