Not Since You (7 page)

              She shrugged. "If you said you loved me as much as you did, then why else would you have married her so fast?"

              "Good point." He let his shoulders slump. It felt good to let the secret out after all these years. It was something he and Sarah worked hard to cover up; thank God Samantha was all Sarah and no Mike at all. "Samantha doesn't know. And she's not going to."

"You've never told her?" Carrie turned her silver eyes to his; they were wide, incredulous.

"Why? All it would do is cause her pain. She doesn't need to know she's the product of rape. As far as she's concerned, I'm her dad, I knocked up her mom and that's that." He fixed her with his best
pack-leader
stare, the one he used with dogs and people who were about to go against him. Not that Carrie would go against him, but he wasn't about to chance it. Not about this. "And she's
not
going to find out the truth."

Carrie stared back, but after a moment, she dropped her gaze.
Submissive.
For now, he realized. "Okay," she said.

"I'm serious, Carrie. This is important. I know my Samantha; it would kill her to know what happened to Sarah. It was bad enough she was only eleven when her mother died. She doesn't need to know the only reason she's here is because of a bad prom date, a lapse in judgment and an asshole."

"Okay." Carrie lifted her eyes to his face again. "I'm sorry, Zack. It must have been so hard for you both, Sarah's getting sick and dying. Can I ask…what happened?"

He kicked at the ground with his toe. "Ovarian cancer."

Carrie hissed. "I'm so sorry."

"Me, too." He looked out across the ocean. Sailboats scudded over the dark blue water, their white sails reflecting pink in the setting sunlight. A few surfers caught the last few waves of the day farther up the beach. Flocks of seagulls settled on the sand for the night, moving only slightly when people jogged by. He took a deep breath. "Sarah loved being on the beach. When she got too weak to walk, she'd ask me to carry her here. I'd wrap her in a quilt and she'd sit on a folding reclining chair, just watching the water. She said it was funny how it changed all the time, yet never changed." He swallowed the lump in his throat. "She was so brave about dying. I was the one who fell apart when we learned she only had a short time left. It was hard."

"You must have loved her very much, Zack."

He turned his gaze to Carrie. Her hair, caught by the ocean breeze, blew in thin gold strands across her cheeks. He pushed them away with his fingertip, tucking them behind her ears, and he mused on how her looks had barely changed. How he'd dreamed of her. The curve of her small nose, her pink, kissable, pouty mouth, the long line of her neck… He still wanted to kiss the place where it met her collarbone. She'd always liked that—his mouth on her neck, his hand on the swell of one of her breasts, one hand on her hip. She'd always arched up into him when he nipped her there. It had been her secret hot button, and only he'd known about it.

"Damn it, Carrie," he said. "I never loved Sarah, not like I loved you. Always you. That's why I fell apart. Because even as she died, I could never love my wife the way I loved you. I felt horrible. I felt guilty. Especially when I asked myself if I was happy she was dying, because maybe—maybe then I'd have my chance with you."

              "That's a horrible thing to say." Carrie gasped and pulled away from his warmth, leaving herself feeling cold.

              "It's a horrible way to feel." He nodded. "I wanted to love her the way I loved you. But I didn't. I
couldn't
."

She didn't want to believe it of him, but his eyes held the truth of his words. "Oh, Zack," she whispered, her heart clenching. "You didn't love her at all?"

              He tilted his head and a lock of his thick, dark hair fell over his forehead, ruffled by the breeze. He shook his head, falling back onto the sand with his forearm over his eyes. He was wiping away tears, she realized.

              "Sarah and I were friends," he said. "Get me right, we had a physical relationship too, because we were married and…well, we tried. But it was more like scratching an itch or fulfilling a need, but not a desire. After a while, we only did it because we wanted more children. A sibling for Samantha. Of course, we
didn't
have any children. When we went to a fertility specialist, Sarah's cancer was discovered. So we stopped having sex. We didn't discuss it or plan it that way, it just—happened. And neither of us missed it.

'The weird thing is, we probably got along better than most married couples we knew. We had respect for each other. We loved each other, nothing romantic, just…comfortable. Like family, but not by blood. I don't know. Like cousins, or something." He peered at her from under his arm. "Sarah always felt bad. She missed you, you know. That's why she saved your articles. She was proud of you."

A pain stabbed through Carrie's gut. She'd been such a witch. Maybe if she'd been older, she would have…no, she wouldn't have called Sarah. It took Nana's dying for her to come home. It took Nana's stupid dog for her to talk to Zack. She felt tears start forming in her own eyes.
Sarah…

"But she never wanted to tell you what had happened. I tried to get her to, but it was hard for her to talk about it, even to me. She was ashamed.

              "Anyhow, she knew—she always knew—how I felt about you. That's what made her dying even more awful. Because Sarah was a great person. She would've made any man a super wife, and she deserved a man who loved her, the way…I love you. Instead, she got me. It just wasn't fair."

              "You're right," Carrie said, softly. She put her hand on his arm. "It wasn't fair that she died so young. But you can't blame yourself for
anything
, Zack. You
did
love her. You saved her. You gave her respectability, understanding, a nice home, and you were a father to her child. The three of you were a family, and it sounds like—even though you weren't the traditional type of mother, father, child family—it was a nice one. How could she ever begrudge you?" How could
anyone
begrudge him?

              Damn Zack. Always the hero, no matter what. Years of anger slid away, leaving raw emotion beneath, emotions she was afraid to look at too closely.

Zack was silent. A tear made its way out from under his arm, down his cheek, falling to create a dark spot on the white sand. Carrie reached out to stroke the tear's track from his cheek with the side of her thumb, and when he reached up to pull her down beside him, she didn't resist. She draped her arm around him, resting on his shoulder. His chest hitched a sob; she touched his face, making soothing, shushing noises and stroking her fingers over his cheek.

Zack couldn't stop the tears, so he let himself cry—for Sarah, for Samantha and for all the times he'd imagined Carrie's face while making love to the woman he'd married. He cried for Carrie, too, missing the years they should have been together and the children they could have had. He felt like the biggest wimp in the world, because cops don't cry. Mahoneys, especially. But for once, it felt like the weight of the world was off his shoulders and he didn't have to worry anymore, about anyone but himself. And his
Carrie-da
held him and told him it was all right—and it was. It felt right and good.

              Finally, the waterworks ended. He was able to get control of himself again, and he lifted his head. When their eyes met and he saw the same sparkle in her gaze that had been there when they were kids, he knew he had to kiss her, feeling as if he was in love for the first time, all over again. The only time, he realized. "
Carrie-da
?"

"Zack." She licked her lips and then pressed her mouth to his.

Oh. Dear. God in Heaven.
How he'd missed her. There was something about this woman—her taste, her touch—that made him feel powerful, whole, and very, very horny. He pressed the back of her head with his hand and rolled her onto her back, taking her mouth with his, plundering it with his tongue. She responded, lifting her body to his, pressing against him, hooking a leg over his calf. His body reacted, tightened with need, like he was eighteen again. Blinded by desire and aching with heat. Desire. Lust.
Love.

He pulled his mouth away from hers. "
Carrie-da
…" he whispered, unable to get more than a small breath of air out. “Let me take you home. I want you so much. I've missed you. I need you."

She hesitated, but only for a moment. "No," she said. "I don't think it's a good idea."

What?
"Why?" Didn't she know how she affected him? He pressed against her and was gratified that though she said "no," she didn't pull away, and even arched upwards into his erection. He groaned and closed his eyes. "Carrie-da—"

"You can't expect a one-minute explanation to fix eighteen years' worth of pain and humiliation, Zack." She played with the hair at the back of his neck. "I'm not the girl you used to know."

She was right, though it didn't make his erection any less painful or his lust less insistent. "I'm not the boy you knew, either, Carrie. I've buried one woman and am father to another."

"Exactly." She slid her hands down his shoulders and his back to rest them on his hips. "We can't just pick up where we left off. I'm sorry, but I just can't allow myself to fall back—back into bed with you. Even for old time's sake."

"But
Carrie-da
—"

She shook her head, resolute. "We'd better get going. The sun's going down. The mosquitoes are starting to swarm. I just waved one the size of a Cessna off your neck." She reached up and kissed his cheek, then rolled out from under him. "Let's go get something to eat. I'm starved."

Starved? She has no idea what it's like to be hungry.
But Zack pushed himself to his feet like the gentleman he knew he was, and led her off the beach.

*****

"Clam cakes and
chowda
. I've missed them." Carrie rustled in the bag of clam cakes and pulled one out. "Remember the summer we worked at Aunt Mary's Chowder Hut? I thought I'd never get the smell of grease out of my hair."

"You always smelled pretty good, if I remember correctly." Zack grinned; his eyes never left her mouth.
Oh, Zack. I wish we could kiss again,
she thought as she took a bite of the crispy fried batter and licked her lips. But it was too soon. For her, anyway. He'd been Sarah's husband, for crying out loud. She felt weird. Would Sarah approve? Or would she think that Carrie was too much of a bitch now? Her own words came back to haunt her
. I mean, if my boyfriend decided to go stop a guy from harassing a girl—a girl who was a friend of his, mind you—I'd be more head over heels in love with him than ever.

But I ran away and didn't talk to either of them, even when they tried to explain.

And I thought Tiffany was a shallow bi-otch. Ha. Look who was talking. The
original
shallow bi-otch.

She grimaced, her stomach suddenly sour with disgust for her own behavior. "I shouldn't eat anymore. I can feel my arteries blocking already."

He helped her to her feet, pulling her close, rubbing his chin over the top of her head. "Of course, I think you could've smelled like low tide and I wouldn't have noticed. And you smell pretty good right now, so whatever you smelled like in the past is moot," he said.

"You're so full of shit, Zack." She laughed.

"Zack Shit. That's me." He put his arm around her. She wanted nothing more than to lean into him and rest her head against his chest, to put her own arm around his waist, maybe stick the tips of her fingers into the waistband at his back like she used to. But no…she couldn't. It wouldn't be right. So she slipped out of his embrace and shoved her hands into her pockets. "I'm getting cold. And I've got more stuff to do at the house. I should get home."

"Okay." He kept his hands to himself after that, walking behind her to the truck and touching her only to help her climb into the tall cab. On the way back to his house so she could pick up the van, he didn't stray onto her side of the vehicle. Not even a little. He kept his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road. He was being Gentleman Zack, and it cost him as he fought with himself. He wanted to kiss her, but he wanted to give her space. She could see it in every tense motion he made.

             
Dammit
, she thought.
I can still read him like a book.
She'd hoped the way she'd read him at his house had been wrong, when she'd seen
I Love You
on his face. It was as if he'd said the words aloud.
But no.
Even after all these years, Zack's feelings were transparent to her.
Crap.

It didn't make this any easier.

"Zack?" Carrie said in a soft voice. "I—I wish…listen. You've had a lot of time to come to terms with…I mean, you've lived your life and I've lived mine and even though…" She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "Even though I still—have feelings for you, that doesn't mean it's all full steam ahead. I—I have a lot of things to think about, and I still plan to return to Texas. So I don't think it's a great idea to get…well…you know what I mean. Besides, Sarah was my best friend and I just feel strange, knowing you were her husband instead—instead of mine."