Not Another Bad Date

Chapter 6

Zach had wanted out of his marriage. An hour before Devon t-boned that garbage truck, he’d handed her divorce papers. After ten years, there’d been no love left. Just a civil, if not always peaceful, coexistence that had no longer been enough. At least not for him.

The difference between them had been that Devon had wanted to go on living that way forever. She’d loved living the life of an NFL quarterback’s wife, even a retired quarterback, far more than she’d loved him. She’d loved the cachet that it gave her, especially in the small Texas town. For a long time, he hadn’t minded living in a sham marriage. If he was honest, he’d admit to himself that it had worked for him. He’d lived in Denver. Devon in Texas. He’d lived his life. She’d lived hers. She hadn’t really cared what he did as long as it didn’t hit the news and embarrass her in front of her Junior League friends. He hadn’t cared what she did as long as it didn’t affect Tiffany.

By the time he’d filed for divorce, he hadn’t loved his wife. He hadn’t even liked her much, and he’d wanted out before that growing dislike turned to something stronger. She’d been the mother of his only child, and the last thing he’d ever wanted was a court battle, but that’s exactly what she’d promised that morning he’d handed her the papers.

“You can’t do this to me, Zach. I won’t let you,” she’d vowed, just before she’d slammed the door and sped away to one of her meetings. As he’d watched her go, he hadn’t been surprised by her response. He’d known the day he’d contacted his lawyer that he was in for a shitstorm.

Zach closed the lid on the barbecue and looked up. Through the smoke he watched Adele swirl the wine in her glass. He couldn’t say that he knew her, but he was pretty sure that she wasn’t the type of woman who wouldn’t care what the hell her man did as long as it didn’t hit the news.

Adele glanced up and again he felt like he was back at UT, staring at her from across a classroom. Like there was something about her that he wanted to know better. Something that drew his gaze and attention. Something more than the heavy pull of desire. Back then he’d wondered what her hair would feel like tangled up in his fingers. Tonight he wondered how long it would take him to make those eyes of hers turn a deeper blue. A smile curved his lips as he remembered a night when he’d kissed a little fairy she had tattooed on the right side of her belly just above her panties.

As if she read his thoughts, her cheeks turned pink, and she turned and moved toward the table a few feet away.

“I’m sure you’ll be interested to know that the governor will be attending the benefit,” Genevieve said, interrupting Zach’s thoughts, which he figured needed to be interrupted before he got too carried away and embarrassed himself.

“Really? Huh.” Zach had met a lot of governors and a few presidents, too. He’d been to the Playboy mansion and partied with a lot of famous people. Some he’d liked. Others had been pompous tools. If Genevieve knew him at all, she’d know he wasn’t easily impressed. Especially by stuck-up society women who married old men for their money, then cheated behind the suckers’ backs.

Genevieve had invited herself to the party, and he wasn’t fooled by offers of help. Not that she was trying to fool him. He’d been around women like Genevieve all of his career and most of his life. Women who offered up their bodies, and while he’d sometimes taken what they’d wanted to give, he’d never screwed around with married women nor women he didn’t even like. He wasn’t desperate enough to start now.

“I’ll go check on the girls,” Cindy Ann volunteered, and took off toward the pool house.

“Thanks,” Zach said, and watched her go. Cindy Ann Baker was a perpetual volunteer mother, a former gymnast, and a woman who had it bad for Joe Brunner. Once Cindy Ann had seen Joe’s truck parked out front and noticed Genevieve, she’d quickly volunteered to “stay and help out, too.” Only Joe was so oblivious during football season, that he wouldn’t recognize an attractive woman if she tackled him. And while Cindy Ann wasn’t Zach’s sort of woman, she was cute and perky and athletic.

The barbecue sizzled and sent smoke into Zach’s face as he flipped a few more burgers. He waved the smoke away with one hand and glanced over at his defensive coach standing at the end of the table, chatting it up with Adele. The spatula paused in midflip, and a burger fell on its side on the grill. Maybe he’d been wrong about Joe. He watched Adele smile at his friend, then Joe leaned in and said something that turned her smile into soft, sexy laughter. Adele shook her head and patted Joe on the upper arm. Zach wondered if she’d be so friendly if she knew Joe had been married and divorced twice. If she’d be so touchy-feely?

Zach had invited the defensive coach over to help him out with the barbecue, not hit on women.

A frown pulled Zach’s brows together, and he righted the burger on the grill. Joe was a good guy and a great buddy who had a bad habit of dating and marrying the wrong kind of women. He needed someone who was as much into sports as Joe was. Someone like Cindy Ann. Not a woman like Adele, who could not care less. At least she hadn’t cared fourteen years ago.

Adele was beautiful, with a wonderland of a body, and Zach really couldn’t blame Joe for chatting her up. And really, why should he care who talked to Adele? He shouldn’t, and he didn’t.

Across the lawns, the door to the guesthouse opened, and twelve hungry thirteen-year-olds headed his way. Their hair was dried, and they all seemed subdued, whether from exhaustion or hunger, Zach wasn’t sure but was very grateful. They each grabbed a plate and loaded up on pasta salad, chips, hamburgers, and hot dogs.

“Did you burn mine black?” Tiffany asked as she moved next to the grill.

“You know it.” Zach speared the darkest hot dog on the grill and shoved it in a bun. Once the girls were all seated at tables beneath the heaters, he loaded Joe up with a double burger, Cindy Ann with a hot dog, and Genevieve just took pasta salad. “What’s your pleasure, Adele?” he asked. “Hot dog or hamburger?”

She looked up from the seat she’d taken a few feet away. “Neither thanks. I ate a huge lunch.” She stood and pointed to the side of the house. “Can I get to the driveway through that gate?”

“If I unlock it. Why?”

“I left my cell phone in the car and I have to call my sister and tell her we won’t be able to visit her until after six.”

Zach shoved a black hot dog in a bun and closed the lid to the grill. “Use the phone in my office. It’s closer.” He took a big bite and chewed. “It’s through the room with the big TV,” he continued, and pointed to a set of big glass doors. “Down the hall. Last door on the left.” As he watched her walk toward the house, his gaze moved from the top of her head, down her curly hair, to the angel wings and heart on the nicely rounded ass of her sweatpants.

Just before she disappeared inside, he lifted his gaze to the small of her back. He’d touched a lot of women there. It meant nothing. Just being a polite gentleman like his momma had taught him. But earlier, when he’d touched Adele, his thoughts had been anything but polite.

He took another bite of his hot dog and washed it down with Lone Star. Like Tiffany, he liked his dogs crispy on the outside, but unlike his daughter, he didn’t like ketchup. With his beer in one hand and hot dog in the other, he took a seat next to Joe and the two bullshitted about their Super Bowl picks. Joe was a die-hard Cowboys fan, but Zach liked the look of New England’s offensive line.

“I don’t care if they have Owens,” Zach argued. “You can’t build a team around one player.” He polished off his hot dog. “Especially a pain-in-the-butt whiner.” Most wide receivers complained about not enough ball time, but Owens took it to the media.

“You’re going to have a lot of free time on your hands once football season is over,” Genevieve said as she sat across from Zach and raised her wine to her lips. She looked at him over the brim of the glass, and her lids lowered a fraction. “What will you do?”

Zach recognized the invitation. He’d seen it a thousand times in the eyes of a thousand different women. If it had been anyone but Genevieve Brooks-Marshall staring back at him, he might have given it some thought.

“I’ll figure something out.” He stood and moved to a garbage can behind the grill. He tossed his empty beer bottle and walked into the house. He moved past the leather couches, chairs, and seventy-two-inch high-definition television and into the bathroom. Most of the house was exactly the way Devon had left it, except for the HDTV. Zach wasn’t the kind of guy who had to have the biggest rig or fastest car, but he did like a big TV. With over 2 million pixels, sometimes bigger really was better, he thought as he zipped up his pants.

As he opened the bathroom door and shut off the light, he heard soft laughter from down the hall. He followed it past the weight and sauna room and stopped in the doorway of his office. He shoved one shoulder into the frame and crossed his arms over his chest. Adele sat on one edge of his big desk, talking on the phone. “I didn’t leave him a prank call on his answering machine,” she said, as she looked down at the cord she twisted around one finger. “What a total loser. I called to tell him about what happened today with you and the baby, but at the last minute I decided he didn’t deserve to know. Maybe I should have just hung up, but I didn’t. I told him he should go fuck himself, and you’re right. It felt great.”

Adele had a potty mouth on her. Zach lowered his gaze to her lips. Not that he held that against a beautiful woman.

“Let him.” She made a scoffing sound and shook her head. “What judge is going to care? Compared to a man leaving his pregnant wife for his twentysomething dental assistant, a few messages are nothing.” She glanced up, and her gaze met Zach’s. Her hand stilled, and she stood “Listen, Sheri, I’ve gotta go, but we’ll come by on the way home. I know Kendra wants to tell you about her day.” She pulled her finger from the twisted cord. “I’ll see ya in a while,” she said, then hung up the phone.

“I thought you might’ve gotten lost.” He pushed away from the door and walked into the room.

“No.” She shook her head and brushed her hair from her face.

“How’s your sister?”

“Better.” She sucked in a tired breath and let it out slowly. “After Sheri has her baby, and everything is okay with them, I’m going home to my real life and sleep for about a year.”

“Where’s home?”

She dropped her hands to her sides and looked up at him. “Idaho.”

“Idaho?” He thought Tiffany had said Iowa. “Is that where you disappeared to when you left UT?”

Adele stared up into Zach’s handsome face, past his strong chin and firm mouth and into his eyes the color of warm coffee. She was tired and didn’t want to talk about the past. Especially with the man responsible for so much pain. “I didn’t disappear.” She pulled her gaze from his and moved to a built-in bookcase. “I went to stay with my grandmother in Boise. I liked it and never left.” She picked out an oversized Sport’s Illustrated NFL Football’s All-Time Greatest Quarterbacks and pulled it from the shelf. “Are you in here?” she asked, and looked over her shoulder.

“Somewhere.”

She cracked the cover and turned her attention to the glossy pages. “You don’t know where?”

“Page thirty-two.”

She chuckled and flipped through the book. The slick paper was cool to the touch, and she thumbed through until she came to a page filled with the image of Zach in a blue-and-orange jersey with the number twelve on the front and on the big padded shoulders. A pair of tight white pants fit him like a second skin, and a white towel was tucked into his waistband and hung over his laces like a loincloth. Zach’s intense brown eyes stared out from within the face mask of his blue helmet, and his lips were flattened against his teeth. His left hip turned downfield, his right arm extended behind him, the photographer snapped the picture just before he snapped the ball forward.

“You ranked number eleven,” she said, then read out loud, “Zemaitis played the game in his head. He had the ability to see each play before it happened. He played strong and smart ball and could kill with perfect spirals and long bombs.” She turned the page to another photograph of him, standing behind the center, knees bent, head turned to one side as he called the play and waited for the snap. She read the caption to the side of the photo. “‘Girls always wanted to know what it was like to have Zach’s hands all over my butt.’—Dave Gorlinski.” She looked up at him. “Who’s Dave Gorlinski?”

“Center at UT.” He grabbed the book and tried to take it from her.

She didn’t let go and read another caption. “‘Zach Zamaitis had the most skilled hands of anyone who’s ever lined up underneath me.’—Chuck Quincy.” Adele bit her top lip to keep from laughing. “Who’s Chuck?”

“Center for the Dolphins my first three seasons.” This time he succeeded in taking the book from her. “Try not to laugh too hard,” he said, and tossed it on his desk.

“Well, it does sound kinky.”

“Honey, that’s nothin’.” He tilted his head to one side and smiled. “I could tell you stories if you’re interested in kinky.”

“No. That’s okay.” She turned her attention to the big glass case filled with everything from trophies to signed footballs and a pair of cleats. On just about every inch of the walls hung his old football jerseys encased in Plexiglas as well as plaques and photographs of Zach at various stages in his career, starting as a kid wearing shoulder pads that looked too big for his body and ending with his retirement.

“Impressive.”

He shrugged. “Devon decorated this room a year or two before she died, and I’ve just left it. It’s too crowded, but what else am I going to do with all this stuff?”

“I think you should leave it.” Adele turned to face him. “It looks good, and you should be proud of yourself. And…I’m sure since Devon…you know.” She dropped her gaze to the Moose Drool Beer on his wide chest. Think of something nice to say about Devon. “I’m sure you miss her, and it must be a comfort to come in here and see something she decorated herself. Even if it is a bit crowded.” Well, that wasn’t exactly nice, but it wasn’t exactly rude.

He chuckled without humor, and she looked up into his face. “I didn’t mean to imply that she decorated it herself. She had someone do it. Devon never did anything herself.” He lifted a hand and brushed a few strands of hair from her cheek. “I don’t want to talk about Devon.” The tips of his fingers touched her cheek as his eyes searched her face. “I want to talk about you.”

A hot little tingle spread down the side of Adele’s neck and across her chest. It tightened her breasts and messed with her breathing. “There’s nothing to say.” She tried to laugh, but it sounded nervous even to her own ears.

“I doubt that.”

“Really.” She moved past him and headed for the door before the hot little tingle burned its way through her entire body. “I’m very boring.”

A few feet from the entrance, his hand on her arm stopped her. “Don’t pretend you’re not the least bit curious.”

“About?”

“What it would be like if I kissed you again. We’re older. Have more experience.” She refused to turn around, and he slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder. “Would it be as good as it was fourteen years ago?”

If it had been so good, why had he left her for Devon? She closed her eyes. They both knew the answer to that, but the fact that Devon had been pregnant hadn’t made it any less painful. Not for her. It didn’t hurt any longer, but there was absolutely no way she would ever get involved with him again. “No. I’m not curious. I never look back.”

As if she hadn’t spoken, he pushed her hair to one side. “Would you drive me insane like you used to?” He lowered his face, and his breath warmed the side of her neck. “And honey, you drove me out of my mind.” He slid one big hand around her side to her flat stomach and pulled her back against his hard chest. “I was the first man to make love to you. I haven’t forgotten that.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“You haven’t forgotten, either.” His lips brushed her heated skin, and those hot little tingles she’d worried about spread warmth all over her body. It had been a long time since she’d felt the secure arms of a man. A long time since she’d felt the hot rush from a man’s touch flow through her and the delicious pull of lust tugging at all the right places. “I might not have thought about it in a while,” he continued, “but I haven’t forgotten that night we drove to the La Quinta off I-35. Not the best place, but not exactly a dump. I didn’t have much money back then.”

She hadn’t minded.

“We had sex at least five times.”

Seven if a person counted the next morning. She took short uneven breaths in the top of her lungs as he kissed the side of her throat. The scent of his skin filled her head, and it would have been so easy just to sink back into him. To close her eyes and just feel his big chest and arms around her. “I don’t remember,” she lied, because telling the truth would make things so much harder.

He slid his palm up the front of her hooded jacket, and her uneven breath got caught in her throat. His hand lightly skimmed across the top of her chest to her shoulder. Slowly he turned her and looked into her eyes. He smiled as his hands slipped to the side of her head, and he plowed his fingers into her hair. He tilted her face up, and her lips parted. “Liar,” he said just above a whisper, then he lowered his face and kissed her. A light teasing brush of his firm lips. A wet smear across her mouth, and she stood perfectly still.

“This is much more fun if you participate,” he whispered.

She stood still while every nerve ending in her body screamed at her to grab him by the ears and participate the hell out of him. To let him make her feel good, to mold herself against him and use him to satisfy her hunger and need like a succubus, but she knew better. Nothing good would ever come out of kissing Zach. Sometimes the price of satisfaction was too high.

She wrapped her hands around his wrists and took a step back. “I can’t do this,” she said. “This can’t happen again.”

His hands dropped to his sides, and he took a deep breath. He looked down at her through narrowed lids. “It’s going to happen, Adele. If not now, another time.”

He looked so sure, her mouth got suddenly dry and she shook her head. “No, Zach. Not with you. Not ever.” She couldn’t breathe around him and walked out of the office like demons were nipping at her heels.

The next few minutes were a blur of restless nerves and raw emotion. Adele pleaded a splitting headache, which wasn’t a huge stretch from the truth, and Cindy Ann volunteered to drop Kendra off at home after the party. As she drove from the gated community, she called Sherilyn and told her sister that she and Kendra would be in later that evening.

Once she was home, shut safely inside Sherilyn’s condo, she took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Zach was wrong. Nothing was going to happen between them. Ever.

She moved through the entry to the kitchen and set her purse on the granite counter. Before Sherilyn had gotten ill, she’d been in the process of painting the mostly beige kitchen a cheery yellow. As a result, the kitchen walls were painted halfway down.

Adele took the extra house key out of a bowl in the cupboard and tied it to the string of her sweatpants. Like everything else about the sisters, Adele’s tastes were the total opposite. She preferred white walls and colorful furnishings while Sherilyn preferred color on the walls and subdued furnishings.

She grabbed a scrunchie off the counter and pulled her thick hair into a ponytail as she walked back out of the house and locked the door behind her. She’d jogged earlier, but she didn’t know what else to do with the restless energy humming through her veins. Her head really was starting to ache, and she didn’t want to think about Zach.

She stepped from the porch and took off at a familiar, even pace. The steady beat of her heart and the routine rhythm of her feet were usually a comfort, but today it was as if her past was riding her heels. She couldn’t outrun it, and it caught up to her at the corner of Crockett and Third. Her feet slowed at the bus stop near the corner and she took a seat on the hard bench advertising Tina’s Taco-rama. An old truck with a red bone hound in the back drove past, stirring up the leaves on the road and rattling the cool air with its busted tailpipe.

Would you drive me insane like you used to? he’d said as he’d lowered his face to the side of her neck. And honey, you drove me out of my mind.

She’d driven them both insane. Him because she hadn’t jumped in bed with him, like every other girl on the UT campus, the first time he kissed her. Her because she’d wanted to wait until she’d been sure she loved him, and he loved her, too. She’d waited a whole month. A short time that had felt like forever. Looking back, she couldn’t say that he’d pressured her to have sex. Not unless she counted the way he’d kissed her. So hot and intense he’d left her breathless. And not unless she counted the way he’d touched her. Slow and unhurried, a light teasing stroke to her stomach and breasts, he’d driven her crazy until all she could think about was feeling his hands on her. She’d wanted to feel her hands on him, too.

She’d had boyfriends in the past. Some with whom she’d thought she might be falling in love. Things had gotten fairly hot with some of them, but she’d never been sure they were it for her. The one. Her soul mate.

Looking back, the thought of saving herself for a soul mate seemed like an immature romantic fantasy. An embarrassing ideal that she blamed on too many fairy tales as a child, but back then she’d thought Zach was all those things and more. The man meant for her, and she recalled perfectly the moment she’d slammed headfirst in love with him. Up until that moment, she’d tried to take it slow. Tried to put the brakes on her runaway feelings, but the day he’d shown up at her dorm room with an illustrated book of flower fairies in his big hands, there was no slowing the beat of her heart or stopping her headlong fall.

The book hadn’t been expensive, but it had been perfect. Six months before she’d met Zach, she’d had the fairy queen, Titania, sitting on a rose petal, tattooed low on her abdomen, her wild blond hair strategically covering parts of her nude body.

Adele hadn’t believed in fairies for a long time, but she’d still loved the art and Scottish folklore of the Seelie Court. She had wonderful memories of her grandfather sending her out to the garden with a net to hunt the fairies he’d assured her lived amongst the roses and buttercups.

“I saw this, and it reminded me of the story you told me about your grandfather,” he’d said as he handed her the book.

She’d only mentioned it in passing, and he’d laughed at her and told her he thought she was cute. Looking at the gift in her hands had shocked her so much she’d blurted, “You went into a bookstore?” Silence fell between them, and she glanced up.

Some of the pleasure drained from his face, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah. Go figure. I can read and play ball.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” But she sort of had meant it. As long as she could tell herself that Zach was a stereotypical jock, the more she felt they were on equal ground. She was the brains to his brawn, but Zach wasn’t dumb. Far from it. “What I really meant was, did you make a trip to a bookstore just to buy this for me?”

He looked down at her for several moments, judging whether to believe her or not before his hands fell to his sides, and he shrugged. “I thought you’d like a book more than anything else.”

“But you didn’t have to get me anything.” She felt her heart swell a little in her chest. He’d bought her a book on fairies, not because he liked them but because she did.

“Look at this one,” he said, and pulled the book from her hands. He turned to a picture of a fairy sitting on a crescent moon, her blond curly hair blowing about her head and nude body. “This one reminded me of you.”

Adele glanced down at the page, then back up into Zach’s brown eyes. Her swelling heart ached, and she felt as if she were being slammed up against something bigger than she. Bigger than her ability to stop it. She wrapped her arms around his neck and fell into that something bigger. “I love it. Thank you.” She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of his skin. I love you.

He tossed the book on the small desk in her dorm and turned his face into her hair. “You’re welcome.” He ran his hands up and down her spine and she lifted her mouth to his. She poured everything she felt into the hot, hungry kiss. Her heart. Her soul. The love pounding through her veins.

He groaned against her lips as he slid his hands down her back to her behind and pressed his erection into her. “You make me so hard,” he said, just above her mouth. “I want you.”

She knew the feeling and pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it on her twin bed. She reached for him, but his hand on her bare stomach stopped her. His gaze lowered from hers, down her chin and throat to her breasts cupped in a sheer white nylon bra. Her nipples made hard points in the center of each cup. He stared for so long she raised her palms to cover herself, but he grabbed ahold of her wrists. He looked at her as if he’d never seen a naked girl before, but she was certain he’d seen more than his fair share of breasts.

“Zach. You’re making me self-conscious.”

“Why?” He glanced up into her face, then back down again.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

He chuckled, low in his throat. “I’m thinking that you’re a beautiful girl, and I’m a lucky guy. I’m thinking that after all this time, I’m really looking at you.” A sexy smile curved the corner of his mouth. “At least that’s the cleaned-up version of what I’m thinking.” Then he kissed her, working his way down her throat until his hot wet mouth covered her nipple through the sheer nylon. His hands moved to the hooks at her back, and the bra fell to the floor. He whispered something unintelligible as he sucked her naked flesh.

They’d never gone that far before, and this time he’d been the one to stop it. He hadn’t wanted her first time to be in a dorm room with thin walls or in a house filled with football players. The next day, he rented a room at the La Quinta and made it so good, she’d fallen even harder. He’d been the one with all the experience, and he’d taught her what to do and where to touch him. He’d taught her what good sex felt like. Later, she would learn that sometimes there was a difference between hot sex and making love. Zach had given her both. She would learn that hot sex without strings could be very satisfying, but that the best heart-pumping, mind-numbing, rock-you-like-a-hurricane sex, involved both.

She would also learn that if something burned too hot, it burned out too fast. But even if it hadn’t been for Devon, Adele doubted her relationship with Zach would have lasted past graduation. It had all been too much. He’d been too much. Sooner or later he would have broken her heart.

With Zach, it had been sooner rather than later. Her one true love, the guy who she’d thought was it for her, left her after two months. The night he’d told her that Devon was ten weeks pregnant, Adele had been devastated beyond words. He’d ripped her heart from her chest and made a mess of her life. She’d loved him with every aching cell of her body, and getting over him had taken her years.

It’s going to happen, Adele, he’d said earlier. If not now, another time.

Adele stood and turned back toward Sherilyn’s condo. She was only in Texas for a few months, but even if she lost her mind and moved back for good, the last thing she was ever going to do was get involved with Zach Zemaitis.