Playing for Love at Deep Haven (3 page)

Chapter 3

His arms went
slack and the black bag fell to the floor of the trunk while the duffel bag
slipped from his shoulder and the paper bag clanked precariously. He bent his
elbow at the last minute to keep the duffel strap from
clotheslining
the paper bag. Violet’s eyes cut to his arms, to the taut, corded, tattooed
muscles that bulged as he held the bag off the ground. As he stepped closer to
search her face in the dim light, she could almost feel his breath on her skin.

“Violet,” he
said softly, his voice suddenly different now, as she reconciled it with her
memories. It was deeper and raspier than she remembered, like he’d smoked for
years or yelled a lot. “Like the flower.”

“Violet-like-the-flower,”
she repeated in a whisper, staring up at him, looking for the Zach Aubrey she
used to know in this muscular, tattooed, pierced, shaggy-haired rocker. It
seemed impossible to reconcile the two completely different people. Yale Zach
had been skinny and pale—an awkward and brooding teenager.

She stepped
closer to him and with a sigh of relief, she saw the resemblance. His hair,
some of which was held back in a ponytail, was still the dark chestnut color
she remembered.

And his eyes. She
was close enough to see that his eyes were the same stormy, intense gray.

There you are
, her heart whispered.

Her pulse
fluttered wildly as she found that small brown mole under his left eye and she
licked her lips nervously.

His eyes lingered
on her lips for a second before they swept slowly down her body, pausing at her
breasts and exhaling in an audibly shaky breath before dipping lower. As though
catching himself in an impropriety that was totally incongruous with the Zach who
stood before her, his gaze darted back up to her eyes after lingering on her
hips, and his cheeks flushed.

“Violet,” he
repeated, in an uneven, breathy voice. He didn’t smile at her; he just stared
in that searing, searching way she remembered. He’d looked at her that way many
times, sitting at the desk across from her in his dorm room, his intense eyes
stricken and unsure before he’d force himself to look away.

His face
gradually softened, and he gave her an unexpected grin, equal parts wonder and
surprise. She sensed he was trying to figure out what to say or do next, and
she was at just as much of a loss. Zach Aubrey was standing before her after
all these years. Zach Aubrey, whom she’d thought about at least once a day
since their fraught farewell nine years ago at Yale. Damn her heart for throbbing
and her lungs for burning and her fingers for trembling like she was nineteen
again.

He rubbed his
bottom lip with his thumb, and the simple, familiar action made her eyes widen
as he stared at her in amazement. His lips, still gorgeous, she noted, finally
tilted up into a full-blown smile, which grew more confident—and cocky, which
was new.

“My God, Violet.
Violet Smith. How are you? What are you doing here? Damn.”

Violet laughed lightly—no
doubt the result of shock—stepping back from him as he reached back into the
trunk for the long black nylon bag he’d dropped. A keyboard, she figured distractedly.

He turned to
face her, and she was aware of how big he was, how much more filled out since
their college days. Big. Broad. Full-grown. And scorching hot.

“I didn’t
recognize you at all, Zach. Not at all. Not . . . at all.”

“What’s it been?
Ten years?”

“Nine.”
Almost to the day.

“You seemed sort
of familiar to me, but you look really different . . . and Greenwich . . .”

“Yeah,” she
said. “I live there now.”

“Greenwich, huh?
Strange choice for Miss Hippie Bohemian chick who was going to be the next poet
laureate and lived on a literary diet of Jack Kerouac.”

She wondered if
her face reflected the shock she felt at his detailed description of the girl
she used to be. “You remember me.”

He stared at her
intently. “I remember
everything
.”

Oh.
She exhaled raggedly, her tingling body
swaying involuntarily toward him. She caught herself and forced her spine to
straighten, tilting her chin up in defiance. It was embarrassing that Zach—who’d
rejected her, after all—rated this big a reaction deep inside her body. She’d
be damned if she gave him the satisfaction of seeing how much his words
affected her.

“That’s too
bad,” she said coolly.

His eyes flashed
for a moment with something intense and
undefinable
,
but he didn’t acknowledge her comment. He glanced at her chest before turning
quickly and heading to the house again. “Listen, let me get this stuff inside. I’ll
get the power on, and then come back and help you with your stuff.”

My stuff?
What
the—what? Stay here? With Zach Aubrey?

“I can’t stay here
with you, Zach,” she called after him, cracking her knuckles against her palm.

“Why not?” he tossed
over his shoulder, placing the bags inside the open front door on the floor of
the dark foyer. “We’re definitely not strangers.”

She was pretty
sure she heard a slight emphasis on the word
definitely
. It made the hairs on her arm stand up as a wave of
something delicious but unwanted flushed her skin. He came back out and stood beside
the hood of his car, and although she couldn’t see his expression clearly in
the dark, she felt his eyes on her.

“Are you
married?” he asked quietly.

She felt herself
wince, then looked down at the ground to hide it. “No.”

He exhaled.
Audibly.

“Then what’s the
problem?”

“If I was
married, it would be a problem?”

He shrugged,
standing beside her, next to the open trunk. “I could understand a husband not
wanting his wife to share a house with some dude from college that she once . .
.” His eyes held hers as his voice drifted off, and she could feel the heat in
them. She looked away from him, her mind flooded with memories she’d spent
almost a decade trying to suppress.

“That was a long
time ago,” Violet said, reaching into her back pocket for her phone to see if
she had a signal yet. This unexpected reunion was way too emotional and
intense. She didn’t even want to think about Zach Aubrey, let alone chat with
him, let alone share a house with him. Besides, it felt like she was being
disloyal to
Shep’s
memory to even be standing here talking
to him. She needed to find out if there was a hotel in town and beg them for a
room.

His expression
cooled as though he’d read her mind. “You still with that guy?”

“Which g—”

“
Shep
Smalley.”

He remembered
Shep’s
name?
After all these years?
Shep’s
face flitted through her mind, and she had to
swallow the lump in her throat. She clamped her eyes shut and turned toward her
car.

“No.”

She felt his
hands on her shoulders, and her first instinct was to pull away—no, to
run
away from Zach Aubrey and all the painful
memories and confusing feelings that were rushing back to her. But she didn’t
pull away. She let his hands settle on her shoulders, her breath catching as his
fingers gently curled, grasping lightly at the fabric of her hot pink cardigan
sweater.

“Hey, Violet-like-the-flower,”
he said softly in a voice that sounded so much like the old Zach, unexpected
tears pricked her eyes. “It’s nighttime. It’s dark out. Stay here tonight, and
if you still feel
weirded
out in the morning, I’ll
find a hotel.”

She turned
slowly to face him, keeping her face as neutral as possible, and he withdrew
his hands from her shoulders. With the open trunk still affording a soft light,
her eyes fell to the shadow of dark scruff at his
jawline
and it irritated her that she found it so sexy. To distract herself, she raised
her gaze to his lips. Big mistake. They were as full as she remembered them,
quirked up in a coaxing smile. Frantically she raised her eyes to his nose,
then eyebrows, grimacing as she finally found something she didn’t like: the
silver stud in his nostril and two thin silver hoops over his left eye.

He stepped back,
smile fading as he put his hands on his hips defensively. That’s when she
noticed he had rings on two or three of his fingers, as the metal caught the
moonlight, pulling her eyes to his waist. Catching herself, she quickly moved her
gaze up to his broad chest, checking out the faded T-shirt that read “METALLICA
GUNS N’ ROSES,” a garish skull with roses decorating the letters. More memories
rushed back but her lips tilted up this time.

“Still listening
to the same loud, obnoxious music, I see.”

“Aw, Vile,” he
said, sweeping his eyes up and down the shadows of her body, exploring hers as
she had his, “this shirt is vintage.”

“Don’t call me
that.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t.” She
didn’t want to be Vile to his Z. She didn’t want to be anything to him. She
wasn’t
anything to him. He’d made sure
of that. “You were capable of more. You were capable of something beautiful.”

Write me something beautiful.

She heard her
own voice in her head, dreamy and besotted, whispering the words from so long
ago. Her pulse fluttered uncomfortably in her neck as she suddenly felt the
imprint of his lips pressed against it. She wondered if he remembered too,
because he flinched before quickly recovering to smirk at her.

“How’s Joni
Mitchell working out for you?”

 
“I still love her.”

He snorted, then
looked away, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip, like he sometimes did when
he was thinking. Or maybe remembering. She couldn’t recall the exact reason why
he did it—but it was distracting as hell. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess she’s
okay.”

Violet didn’t add
that despite her love for Joni Mitchell, she hadn’t been able to listen to her
for nine years. Even now, when “The Circle Game” came on the radio, she changed
the station before old, unwanted feelings could swirl into her consciousness
and hijack her uncomplicated life.

Zach shifted his
weight, crossing his arms over his chest, staring at her with narrowed eyes. If
she didn’t know him, he’d look casual. But she did, so he looked brooding. “So,
what’s it going to be? You staying?”

He was right. It
was dark and getting late, and it’s not like he was a stranger. In fact, for
one brilliant, intense, way-too-short time in her life, he’d been the person who
mattered most, the person she’d fallen in
lov
—

No. No, Violet. Don’t go there. Back it up.

She rephrased
her thoughts: he’d been her friend. A very good friend, even … until she’d said
the wrong thing. Until that one, crazy October weekend that never should have
happened. They shouldn’t have ended up stranded on a mostly empty campus, in an
almost empty sophomore dorm together. The trees in New Haven shouldn’t have
been on fire in breathtaking reds and oranges and yellows that made them forget
reality and feel invincible. The days shouldn’t have been so warm and perfect,
with bright blue skies and nothing to do but write songs and bask in their
newfound, unarticulated feelings. And the nights shouldn’t have been so packed
with lust, so achingly full of beautiful murmurs that had, ultimately, meant
nothing. It had all been a fluke, a mistake, an anomaly. It had left her heart
broken in half.

“I don’t think
it’s a good idea,” she said, walking to her car.

When she snuck a
glance at him, he was running his thumb over his bottom lip again, then bit it
before calling out to her, a slight edge in his tone. “Time was, Vile, you
could make a bad idea work for you.”

His words made more
forgotten memories surface—of his hand in hers as they ran, barefoot and drunk,
over the plush grass of the Old Campus green. It made her feel light-headed for
a second, and she reached up to rub her forehead. She needed to get away from
him.

“Like I said
before, long time ago,” she called over her shoulder.

She opened her car
door, sitting down and feeling around for her glasses on the center console.
She put them on and reached out to shut the door, but her fingers touched denim
instead. Zach was suddenly standing beside her, blocking her from the door
handle. She jerked her fingers away from his jeans like she’d touched fire. His
body took up the entire space between her and her door, and she was eye level
with his abdomen, which she had a feeling was as hard and muscular as his arms.
She put her hands firmly on the steering wheel just in case they decided to
find out, and tilted her chin up to look at him.

With her glasses
on, she could finally see subtle nuances like how his gray eyes were harder now
than they’d been then, harder and more intense, more unsettled, if that was
possible. But also cooler, like he could laugh if he wanted to, even if nothing
was funny. She focused on the little brown mole under his eye and found herself
wishing desperately—for the first time in years—that things had gone
differently between them, then hating herself for such foolishness.