It Takes Two: Deep in the Heart, Book 1 (17 page)

“So…talk,” she prodded, the tiniest edge of dry encouragement slipping into her voice. “You want to restate your previous offer about purchasing my land—?”

“No.” The word was decisive and quick. And she’d given him the perfect place to start. “I do not want to buy your land. In the next couple of days, I’ll no longer be working at Ritter International.”

At Annie’s surprised look, Zach nodded. He made a solemn vow at that moment to return and cut his notice short. There were only a few small deals left on his plate, nothing some junior exec couldn’t handle. The Aguillar deal was the only one Carter was interested in anyway, but Zach knew that, after what he was about to confess to Annie, he’d never have the stomach to look at Carter’s face again.

“In fact, my interest in your land is just the opposite,” he stated. “I’m more interested in helping you keep it.”

“Mr. Rayez, I don’t pretend to understand what you’re getting at. But I think it’s best that, if you’re not here on official business, then you leave my business interests out of the conversation.”

He set his jaw. “Annie, I know you’re a proud woman. I know it’s awkward for me to be here, and that you really have little or no reason to trust me.”

She appeared a little less mulish, so he continued. “I have nothing to base my theory on, but being that your land is sitting on a prime strip of acreage that some folks have their eyes on to acquire, at any cost, I believe you’re going to need all the help you can get to keep it for another generation.”

“And you’re proposing that you’re the help I need.” The suspicion was back in her voice, richly sarcastic. Zach looked at the woman who sat less than a foot away from him, proud bearing in her posture, and wondered where the words were going to come from to convince her to allow him to help her.

“I’ve got some ideas. Not suggestions, just some thoughts to start with.”

“None of this is necessary, Zach. My life is not your concern.”

She stood, and he did, too, hastily rolling his jeans down. “Annie, wait. Just hear me out.”

When she paused, he said, “There isn’t any easy way for me to say this to you. But I think a vice president at Ritter—the man who works for me—is plotting to take this land. If I’m right, there won’t be much you can do about it.”

“You sorry excuse for a buzzard. I should have known that you’d try some underhanded—”

“No, no.” He held up a hand. “Annie, listen to me. I was on my last two weeks in this position when Carter mentioned he was having trouble with this deal, and maybe if I came out here and talked to you—”

“Carter?” Fury snapped in Annie’s eyes. “Carter who?”

“Carter Haskins is my employee. We went to law school together, and I hired him to work for me at Ritter.”

“You’re a friend of Carter Haskins?” Annie’s tone was deadly. “His boss?” In her mind, she remembered the stocky man with his nasty cigar and demeaning attitude toward her, toward her home. She hadn’t let him inside, but he’d stood in the drive, coldly allowing his gaze to roam up and down her body. Mary had been in the house with Travis, thank God, and spared from contact with him. But Annie had never forgotten the look on his face when she told him to get the hell off her property before she shot him full of holes. And she would have, too; damn the consequences.

Now here was Carter Haskins’s boss, the man who paid Carter to lick his boots. Carter had suggested Zach might have better success seducing her out of her land. Annie wanted to sneer. Well, the bootlicker had hit pretty close to home, because she’d nearly fallen for this pretty boy Zach Rayez. All hot, hungry man and sexual prowess that a lonely woman like her could smell, could taste, could want—and could eventually succumb to.

And find herself taken, fast and hard. Physically, at first.

Then financially.

A sibilant hiss escaped Annie’s lips. Zach started. “Were you the best your company had to send?” she demanded.

Zach appeared surprised for only a second. “Actually, yeah,” he replied, a slow grin turning up those full, mocking lips.

“Well,” Annie said very quietly, “you failed.”

“Annie—”

She held up a warning hand. “I suppose it’s to my credit you didn’t get me in the sack.”

Zach remained silent.

“You know, you’re a very hot man, Zach Rayez. A lesser woman might have been taken in by all these hard muscles,” she whispered, stepping close to massage his arm. Running her hand along his back and up over wonderfully broad shoulders, Annie put her lips close to his chin. “I suppose even I was blinded for a time by all this manliness.” He relaxed under her caress, just the way she wanted him to. “Such a hot, hot man,” she cooed, and shoved him back with every ounce of anger and strength she possessed. With a hoarse shout, Zach sprawled into the water. “Deserves a dip in the pond,” she finished, watching him come sputtering back to the surface.

“There isn’t a man alive who can make a fool out of me, Rayez. Don’t forget it. I might have wanted to bed you, but it would have been simply for my own pleasure. You still would have gone back empty-handed, Zach Rayez, without a contract.” She smiled at him coldly. “Worn out and drained, but empty-handed even so.”

Zach pulled himself out of the pond and sat on the edge, cursing under his breath. Stubborn, proud woman! She wasn’t worth it. Let Carter take his best shots—Zach didn’t need to waste any more time here in this land that God forgot.

“Fine, damn it,” he bit out. Shoving his hair out of his face and pressing the soaked strands back onto his neck, Zach shot Annie a furious stare. “I didn’t come all the way out here for my gratification.”

“Well, obviously you did,” Annie shot back. “You say it wasn’t for business. What other reason could there possibly be? A widow should be ripe pickings, after all, and too long without the wild thing makes a woman crazy. A good, hard bout of sex should put her right. Isn’t that how men think, Zach?”

Zach snaked his arm out, grabbing Annie at the ankles. With a cry, she tumbled to the ground within arm’s reach. He jerked her into his lap, cradling her with an iron grip. “For God’s sake, Annie. I didn’t even know you were a widow. I didn’t know who you were. As a final deal, I was supposed to come do a job on the owner of the Aguillar property, and I was expecting a man. A man I could deal with on a man-to-man basis. But the interesting thing about you, Annie, is that you seem to know more about how men think than I do,” he rasped against her hair. “Let me tell you the truth. If I’d been after sex, I would have had you the first time I came to Desperado.”

“You couldn’t. My father got too ill. But he warned me about you.”

“You should have listened to the old man, then,” he growled in her ear. Ignoring her furious struggles, Zach held Annie even tighter to his chest. “Let me tell you one more thing. I don’t know what widows are good for. You seem more green than ripe to me. As for the wild thing, Annie Aguillar, if I decided to have you, it wouldn’t be the wild thing. It would be long, slow lovemaking that would make you burn from your toes to your—” he gently licked inside the curve of her ear, “—to here. I would say your name as reverently as a baby loves its mother’s breast, and you would moan my name in a whisper that begged for more loving.”

He sat her straight up in his lap, releasing her arms but fixing her with a relentless stare. “I do not have meaningless sex, Annie. As desirable as you are, it’s not in me to acquire your body without loving you first.”

Even as he said it, Zach realized his statement was fact: he was falling in love with Annie. It was only a flashing second thought that he could never touch LouAnn again, knowing this, that their engagement would have to be broken. All he could feel was waves of astonishment rolling over him that he’d done the unthinkable, the unexplainable, by allowing his heart to be caught by this woman.

Annie was as surprised as Zach seemed. Was it possible he had a conscience? “Why?” she asked.

He shook his head, almost sadly. “I’ve seen what using women like disposable cans of beer does to a man. You use ’em up, throw ’em away—but you’re not the man you think you are. And after a while, well, you’re trying to fill an emptiness that can’t be filled.”

Annie raised a brow. Zach grinned at her ruefully. “My father,” he said with a shrug.

“Oh.” A father with no ability to love and a mother who’d left him at some point. Zach had pushed her away when she’d first kissed him at the foreman’s shack, although she had known he wanted her. Had he been distancing himself from her—or was there so much pain in his past that he found it difficult to get close to anyone?

“Maybe I said too much earlier,” Annie said, placing her hand lightly on Zach’s arm. “The name of Carter Haskins has the ability to inflame me past reason.”

“You and a passel of other folks in Texas. Forget about it.”

“Zach, I heard you comforting Mary earlier.” She stopped, wondering how to be delicate without hurting his pride. “Um…you said more to her than most adults manage with a grieving child. They’re usually uncomfortable and murmur trite things. But you went deeper and shared something of yourself with her, something she could relate to. You treated her like an adult, which in so many ways she’s had to be. I thank you for that.”

Zach shrugged his shoulders, intensely disliking the serious personal turn the conversation had taken. He wished his jeans weren’t wet and sticking to him like glue, because with Annie sitting in his lap radiating warmth near his crotch, his body was starting a subtle war with his conscience. “I like your daughter,” he said, more roughly than he intended. “She’s a good kid. It’s pretty standard stuff, though. A parent leaves for whatever reason, and the kid believes he or she’s done something wrong. I just wanted Mary to know differently.”

Now if Annie would only get out of his lap, he could slink back to his truck and grab some dry things to put on. A few moments away from her would be very healthy for his—

“Mary’s father—my husband—was killed in a tractor accident.”

Zach stiffened in the act of scooting away from Annie’s warmth.

“Um, she didn’t see the accident, but she came home before I could clean up…the towels…and the blood.”

“Oh, Annie,” he whispered, pulling her close into the circle of his arms. “Oh, Annie, I’m so sorry.” He held her tightly, allowing the slight shakes he felt from her body flood into the strength of his. “Baby, baby,” he murmured, “don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

The woman wasn’t really crying tears that he could feel or see. It was more a rocking to and fro as she suffered soul-deep agony. He felt her shudders as she tried to hold back her pain. “Oh, baby,” he whispered against her hair, nestling his head against her shoulder, “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

Annie had no idea how long she sat in the protection of Zach’s hard body, wrestling with her demons. The whisper of night wind soughed through the willow branches, soothing in its near-silence. The moon shone a sliver of light onto the now quiet pond. Zach was nearly dry from his very through drenching, so he’d held her for a long time. Patiently.

Maybe she’d even dozed a little when the tempest had passed through her. But he was awake; she could tell by the alertness in his posture. Almost as if he was on guard against something.

“Zach?” she whispered, turning her head toward his. Dark eyes gleamed black in the night as he stared back at her.

She was going to murmur words of thanks for his comforting her and escape to the haven of the house when she saw something new in the instant fire in his eyes. Instinctively, Annie knew Zach had been waiting for her to awaken, waiting, wanting to kiss her. She tilted her head slightly, offering him her mouth. His lips closed reflexively around hers, almost in the instant response one would give a child. A split second later, Annie felt the hunger surge into his kiss. She sighed, welcoming Zach’s strength and hardness as he searched her mouth with his. Her lips molded submissively each time he took them. Suddenly, he was kissing her cheeks, her forehead, even her eyelids, and the moan Annie heard rising from inside her was one of sheer yearning.

For sex, for love—for Zach.

But, of course, he’d already told her they couldn’t be together without love. And that was something she respected about him, more this time than the last. A man with scruples was rarer than rain.

Still, she was sad when their kiss ended. He looked at her, searching her eyes, only an inch away from his lips. She smiled bravely. “Thank you,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “There’s nothing to thank me for, Annie.”

“There’s a lot to thank you for.”
 

“No.” His voice was brisk, and she felt him withdraw from her. “Don’t set me up as something I’m not. The truth is, I came out to sucker you. After I met you, I could not. Last year, maybe I would have. I don’t know.”

Zach stopped, giving her an assessing look. Annie realized he was being as honest with her as he possibly could be—painfully honest.

“And the reason you didn’t apply the full-court press?”

She won only a sharp look for her slight attempt to ease his discomfort.

“Laziness. I lost my
cajones
. The fat and easy way was calling me, and I didn’t have the heart to rouse myself to make another human being miserable.” He gave a sarcastic snort, shaking his head. “I’m getting married.”