He wasn’t nearly as indifferent as he’d said.
Nor was she.
“Move aside,” he muttered.
Hurt, she lashed out. “No—this is my grandmother’s house. I won’t allow you to use her to get at me. So—leave.”
“Like hell!”
When she stood her ground, his hands closed over her forearms. But as he tried to edge her aside, she stomped down on his foot with her heel.
Cursing, he tightened his grip and crushed her against his muscular length.
Despite the unwanted shiver of excitement his touch caused, her tone was mild. “Would you please let me go?”
A dozen warring emotions played across his dark face as she struggled to free herself.
“I don’t think I will.”
Locking her slim, wriggling body to his made their embrace even more alarmingly intimate.
“You’re trembling,” he said. “Why? Are you acting now? Or do you feel what I….” He broke off with a look of self-contempt.
“Damn you for this,” he muttered. “You’re not the only one who can’t forget.”
Even if she hadn’t felt his powerful arousal against her pelvis, his blazing eyes betrayed his potent male need. Then his gaze hardened with determination, and she watched breathlessly as he lowered his mouth to hers.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he whispered fiercely, bending her backward, molding her even more tightly to the hard contours of his body. “God help me, I know what you are, what you did.”
“You did things, too….” He’d hurt her terribly. Yet she wanted him, ached for him.
“I can’t stop myself,” he muttered. “But then I never could where you were concerned.”
No sooner did his warm mouth close over hers than she turned to flame. If he’d flung her onto the chaise longue and followed her down, she would have forgotten the hurt that had turned her heart to stone for fifteen years. She would have ripped his jeans apart at the waist, sliding her hands inside.
She wanted to touch him, kiss him everywhere, wind her legs and arms around him and surrender completely—even though she knew his need was based on the desire to punish while hers was due to temporary insanity.
On a sigh, her arms circled his tanned neck, and she clung, welding herself to his lean frame in a way that told him all that she felt. She was a woman now, a woman whose needs had been too long denied. When he shuddered violently, she gasped his name.
“Zach … I’m sorry,” she murmured as warm tears leaked from her eyes and trickled down her cheek. She feathered gentle fingertips through his thick, inky hair. “I wronged you, and I’m so sorry. For years I’ve wanted to make it up to you.” She hesitated. “But … You hurt me, too.”
For fifteen years, she’d been dead in the arms of every other man who’d held her.
She hadn’t felt this alive since she’d last been in Zach’s embrace.
His hand closed over her breast, stroking a nipple until it hardened. The other hand had moved down to cup her hip.
Next he undid the buttons of her blouse so that it parted for his exploration. For one glorious moment she was her younger self and wildly in love with him again. Back then she had trusted him completely. She’d given him everything of herself. With a sigh, she leaned into him as he stroked her, and her response sent him over some edge.
He rasped in a breath. Then, in the next shuddering instant, he ended their kiss, tearing his lips free, leaving her desolate, abandoned.
Loosening his grip, he let her go and staggered free of her as if he’d been burned. He raked a large, shaking hand through his hair and swore violently, staring anywhere but at her.
“Damn you,” he muttered, inhaling deeply. “I see why you do so well on Broadway. You’re like a tigress in heat. Is that why Hugh Jones took up with you so fast?”
Summer was about to confess she felt nothing when Hugh kissed her—nothing—but Zach spoke first.
“Brilliant performance,” he said. “You deserve an Oscar.”
“So do you,” she whispered in breathless agony as she dried her cheeks with the back of her hand. She couldn’t let him know that for a few magical seconds she’d actually cared.
“I’d better go before I do something incredibly stupid,” he said.
“Like what?” she murmured, feeling dazed from his mesmerizing kiss and savage embrace.
“Like take you back to my house to do whatever the hell I want to do with you … for as long as I want.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t look at me like that! I know what you are. Damn you for making me want the impossible,” he muttered.
She clenched her fists, not any happier than he was to realize that she wanted the impossible, too.
He didn’t like her. With good reason. Their past was too painful to revisit. What burned inside her, and in him, was lust—visceral and destructive.
Gram opened the front door. Her violet, silver-lashed eyes wide, she peered out at them with excessive interest, causing Summer, whose blouse was still unbuttoned, to blush with shame even as she quickly pulled the edges back together. The last thing she wanted to do was get Gram’s hopes up about a romantic reunion with Zach.
“Oh, my go-o-o-d-ness.” Gram worked hard to hide her pleasure at the sight of Zach’s blazing eyes and her granddaughter’s scarlet face and state of dishabille. “I’m so sorry.” In a softer voice directed toward Summer, she said, “And I thought you told me you wanted nothing more to do with him.” There was that sly note of satisfaction in her tone again.
“I don’t,” Summer cried, but the door had already closed behind her triumphant grandmother. “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming over?” she called after Gram. Then Summer turned and said to Zach, “Why did I even ask, when I specifically ordered her not to mention you?”
Zach’s eyes went flat and cold. “As far as I’m concerned, this never happened. But—if you see me again—you’d better run. You and I have more unfinished business than I realized. Don’t give me any more reasons to come after you and finish what you started.”
Suspecting he must want revenge, she swallowed. “Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise, a warning. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from me.”
As if to emphasize his words, he strode over to her. Reaching up his hand, he ran a calloused fingertip along her damp cheek, causing her to shiver involuntarily.
“I want you in my bed. I want you to pay for what you did. In every way that I demand.”
Startled, because the image he painted—of lying under him on a soft bed—aroused her to such a shocking degree, she jumped back. Out of his sensually lethal reach, her voice was firm. “I won’t be seeing you again.”
“Good. Tell your grandmother I’ll call her after you leave town.”
His gorgeous mouth curled. Looking every bit as furious and ashamed as Summer was beginning to feel, Zach turned on his heel and strode down the gravel drive, leaving her to wonder how she could have stood there like a besotted idiot and let him touch her again after sharing such an embarrassing kiss.
“None of this happened,” Summer whispered consolingly to herself when she finally heard the roar of his car. Too aware