"Something going on there, Jill?"
"No." I shake my head, turn my back on him, and climb the steps of the porch. "He"s just a friend. The lights look nice."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I like the plain white. I think I"ll do white rather than multicolored on my house too."
"I"m not talking about the f.u.c.king lights, princess."
I chuckle and turn back around to face my brother. He"s tall and tattooed and the best lawyer this city has ever seen.
He"s also always been my protector, in every way, and I"d do anything for him.
"Zack is my friend, Ty. Where"s Lo?"
"She"s working. Have you eaten?"
"Yeah, I had dinner with Max Hull."
Ty ushers me inside and leads me past Lauren"s closed office door to the family room off the kitchen. There"s a fire in the gas fireplace.
"I didn"t know Max was in town."
I explain to Ty about Max running into my car yesterday-was it just yesterday?-and how we came to have dinner tonight.
"Why didn"t you call me?"
"It was nothing. Barely a dent. If I hadn"t traded the car in today, I would have just had you knock the dent out. No biggie."
He nods and hands me a gla.s.s of white wine, then sits with me and braces one ankle on the opposite knee. "What"s on your mind, Jill?"
"Do all men hurt women?" I blurt, then swiftly cover my mouth with my hand, mortified that the words escaped. "Forget that."
"Oh, h.e.l.l no, I"m not forgetting that." He sits on the edge of the couch and sets his wine aside, watching me carefully. "What"s going on?"
"Seriously, I don"t know where that came from." G.o.d, I"m so embarra.s.sed. I rub my hands up and down my denim-covered thighs nervously. "Of course not all men hurt women. You"d never hurt Lo."
"I think it"s time we talked, Jilly." Ty sits back again, but every muscle is tight and I can see it"s taking every ounce of patience he possesses to not shake me until I spill the beans.
"About?"
"What happened in LA. Why you moved home so quickly. Why in the name of G.o.d you"d ask me if all men hurt women." He stares at me with sad eyes. "Talk to me, princess."
I glance toward Lo"s office uncertainly.
"She"s in the zone. She won"t be out for a while. I promise."
I take a deep breath and scrub my hands over my face and then decide f.u.c.k it. I need to talk.
"Dad hurt Mom, Ty, you know that."
He winces. "I"m sorry, Jill . . ."
"Stop that right now. It wasn"t your fault. You and I both know this, and you need to stop with the guilt. It p.i.s.ses me off." He glares at me but I continue. "He was a son of a b.i.t.c.h. He just had no respect at all for women. Not at all." I stand and pace the length of the family room. Now that the floodgates have opened, there"s no reeling it in. "So, one would think, as an intelligent woman, I would be more careful about who I chose to marry."
"Are you telling me that Todd laid his hands on you?" Ty asks deceptively calmly.
"No." I wave him off. "I would have been out the door the second he raised his fist. No, Todd liked to f.u.c.k other women behind my back." I smirk and turn to look at my brother, who now has his mouth dropped in surprise. "I caught him red-handed. In my bed."
"Oh my G.o.d, Jill . . ."
"And of course," I interrupt, "it was all my fault. I couldn"t get pregnant, so I only wanted to have s.e.x when I was ovulating. I was moody from the drugs. I was a s.h.i.tty wife."
Ty sputters and shoves to his feet, but I smirk. "No, he"s probably right. But I"m not going to pretend that when I heard right before the Fourth of July that the new wife-the one he"d been banging in my bed-was pregnant that it didn"t hurt me. "Cause it f.u.c.king ripped my heart out."
Before I can say more, Ty"s phone rings. He checks the caller ID, then mutes the sound and sets the phone aside. "That"s Mom."
"Yeah, that"s exactly what I need. More s.h.i.t from my past brought up tonight."
"She"s not calling you."
"She will. Eventually."
"She"d like to talk to you."
"It will be a cold day in h.e.l.l before I"ll sit down and have a nice chat with that woman. She allowed both of us to be terrorized and abused for years. It was her job to keep us safe. I don"t respect her as a mother or as a woman." My chest is heaving now with anger and indignation. "And, you know, maybe it was a good thing that I couldn"t get pregnant. I come from that. What kind of a mother could I possibly be? Todd reminded me of that as I stormed out of the house and told him to go f.u.c.k himself."
"I"d like to set this aside for now, because I"m going to find Todd and kill him with my bare hands." Ty clears his throat and swallows hard. "Why today? What happened?"
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, pulling my mind back to the reason I"m here.
"What is it about me that makes men think it"s okay to walk all over me?"
"Did Zack . . ."
"Zack either likes to play mind games, or he doesn"t know what the f.u.c.k he wants, but either way, I"m not interested in dealing with it."
Ty sighs and rubs his hands over his face.
"You"re in love with him."
"h.e.l.l no. He"s a hot piece of a.s.s, Ty. He"s never let me get close enough to him to see if he"s someone I could fall in love with."
"My guess would be that you haven"t let him get close either, Jill."
I stop pacing and turn to stare at my brother and think back on the past few months.
"I"ve seen you. You brush him off, laugh at him, or just avoid him altogether."
I shrug and look down at the floor. "So maybe neither of us knows what in the h.e.l.l we"re doing."
"You"ve both had a rough year."
I nod and cringe. "It doesn"t matter anyway. It"ll never work with Zack. He just hit a nerve tonight, and I needed to vent."
"Do I have to kick his a.s.s?" Ty asks with a hopeful grin.
"He"s taller than you and outweighs you by a good twenty-five pounds."
"I don"t give a s.h.i.t."
My spine tingles at the edge in his voice, but I laugh and shake my head. "No."
"d.a.m.n."
"Hey, Jill. I didn"t know you were here," Lauren says as she comes into the room. She sits next to Ty, kisses his cheek, and grins over at me. "What are you up to?"
"Just thought I"d come over and raid your fridge, watch some TV. Basically be a freeloader for the night."
Ty winks at me as Lo laughs.
"Good idea. Let"s see if we have ice cream." Lo takes my hand in hers and leads me into the kitchen.
This is what I needed. A night with my family, where I don"t have to guard my feelings and my heart.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, but I have a feeling it"s Zack, so I ignore it and settle in to enjoy two of my favorite people in the world.
CHAPTER.
Five.
I always take Friday afternoons off, usually because I inevitably have to show houses on the weekends, so taking a few extra hours on a Friday afternoon for just me is important. So far, I don"t even have any properties to show this weekend either. Though bad for business, it"s not uncommon to be slow in the winter in Montana.
No one wants to move during a blizzard.
Looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home, I bundle up in my winter gear and carry a red plastic tote full of Christmas lights outside and set them on the porch, then trudge through the now-crunchy snow to the shed at the side of the house to dig out a ladder.
I could hire someone to come do this for me. I"m sure there"s a high school kid around who could use an extra fifty bucks, but I like decorating and taking care of my little home. I"m thankful that Cara offered it to me when she moved in with Josh last summer. I"ll eventually buy my own place, but in the meantime, this is home.
I take a deep breath in and out, and watch my breath float through the crisp December air as I lean the ladder against the eaves of the house, ensuring that it"s planted solidly in the snow and won"t slip.
Coming home was the best thing I ever did, even knowing that I"d run into Zack King on a regular basis. His brother is marrying my best friend, and we hang out as a gang often. At first I dreaded facing him after spending one amazing night with him over the Fourth of July weekend, and for good reason.
The man rocked my world and then cut out before I woke up. To say it was a hit to my ego is an understatement. Being in his company over the past months has been difficult. The man oozes raw sensuality, and keeping my hands off his tight, firm a.s.s is a test of my self-control. He"s always been perfectly polite, and before our fight the other night in the restaurant parking lot, we"ve never spoken of it.
And then I find out that he didn"t mean for it to be a one-night fling? Is this not something he could have mentioned months ago?
Men.
I grab a strand of multicolored lights-I changed my mind about the color, again-and climb the ladder carefully. Because my arms are so short, I have to climb up and down repeatedly, repositioning the heavy metal ladder every few feet.
After the third climb, I pause at the top, already winded. Geez, I should buy a treadmill or something. If climbing up and down a ladder three times has me winded, I"m out of shape. I secure the lights to the gutter and then lean on the top rung and stare at a shoe on my roof. How did that shoe get up there? Cara just had this roof rebuilt, after a tree fell through it in a summer storm.
Must have been kids playing around.
I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, but can"t pull my gloves off and maintain my balance, so I ignore it and chew my lip as I stare at that wet, black shoe.
Zack has called or texted at least once every day this week. He probably wants to apologize for yelling at me, or come up with some lame excuse for not coming in with me that night, and frankly, I don"t want to hear it.
Rejection doesn"t taste good twice.
But, G.o.d, it felt divine to have his lips pressed to mine, his tongue exploring my mouth, and those large, strong hands braced on my hips, pulling me into him. Zack King can kiss.
And I mean kiss.
But he"s stellar at the rest of it too. The touching. The whispering. What that man can do with his mouth should be illegal.
And it just might be.
"What in the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l are you doing up there?"
I gasp and clench my hands around the ladder, knowing exactly who is standing below me, as if I conjured him from my thoughts.
How did I not hear him approach?
"You scared me!"
"If you"d answer your d.a.m.n phone once in a while, I wouldn"t have startled you." I look down into deep brown eyes that have dark circles under them. His hair is stuffed under that beanie and his hands are braced on my ladder.
He"s scowling.
"What are you doing?" he asks again.
"I"m curing cancer, Zack." I roll my eyes and secure another plastic clip to the gutter. "What does it look like?"
"You shouldn"t be on a ladder in this weather."