Another Man's Children

He stood with his back to her at the white-tiled counter bisecting the high-beamed room. Beyond the counter, the small family room was occupied by an old pot-bellied stove, a round oak dining table, a high chair and a playpen. The side with the modern electric range was bright with hanging copper pots, yellow curtains and Jason’s artwork papering the fridge.

All she really noticed when Zach turned was that he had the nerve to look insulted.

“I am his friend.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

His eyebrow hitched. “Do you want to explain that?”

“If you were a friend,” she told him, more than ready to comply, “you’d be more concerned with how difficult things are for Sam right now than with how his preoccupation is affecting business. You’d be trying to make things easier. Not take away all he has left.” She understood corporate concerns. She also understood that things happened to people and that temporary adjustments had to be made for their circumstances. Even Andy, who often acted as if compassion were spelled with four letters, grasped that concept. Mostly, she understood that a friend did what he could to help. Not hurt. “You might not care about anything but planes and profits, but Tina was everything to my brother.”

Something dangerous washed over Zach’s carved features as he took a step closer to where she’d stopped near the middle of the polished pine floor. He took two more, forcing her to either tip her head back to see his face or retreat.

Every instinct in her body screamed for her to back up. Years of having to claw to stay in place allowed her to hold her ground.

“How do you know what I care about?” His voice was deceptively calm, dangerously so. “How could you possibly have any idea how I feel about anything? We’ve never even talked to each other before.”

The line of his jaw was as sharp as a blade, the cut of his mouth blatantly sensual. She was aware of the heat and tension radiating from his body, the fresh air in his clothes, and the scent of something spicy and decidedly male clinging to his skin. Mostly, she was conscious of the bold male confidence that had allowed him to step uninvited into her space.

Everything about him seemed to taunt, unnerve or disturb her, but she was too concerned about his heartless attitude toward her brother to worry about how easily he overrode the air of calm control she managed to present to the rest of the world.

Her voice low in deference to the child sleeping three doors down the hall, she purposefully ignored the trip-hammer beat of her pulse. “I don’t need to have talked to you before to know what…or who…you care about. I believe you just made it obvious.”

“The only thing obvious is that one of us has no idea what’s going on here.”

“And that would be you.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

In response, Lauren felt her stomach knot. She couldn’t believe she was challenging this stranger. He was ex-military, a jet jockey—a test pilot, she reminded herself, thinking his old occupation spoke volumes about the sort of man he was. He had actually strapped himself into what amounted to an untried, controlled explosion and blasted himself through the atmosphere at speeds that broke barriers she couldn’t begin to fathom. A man like that would have to be utterly confident, disciplined, fearless.

Totally insane, too, in her admittedly unadventurous estimation.

He would also have to believe that he would always come out on top.

That thought threatened to have her add a couple of inches to the charged space separating them. Confrontation wasn’t her style at all. If anything, she was known among the people who worked under her for her coolness under fire, her fairness, her tact. But she didn’t get a chance to wonder at how swiftly this man had stripped her sense of diplomacy. She didn’t have the opportunity to see if he would attempt to defend himself, either—not that she could imagine any possible, plausible reason for him being such a jerk. The soft knock on the front door had her spinning on her heel to answer it.

Zach was right behind her, his footfall unhurried, deliberate. The hair on her neck prickled with the feel of his eyes boring into the back of her head.

She had no idea how badly she was shaking until she reached for the hammered iron latch—and felt Zach’s hand close over her fingers.

The hard wall of his chest brushed her shoulder. With his broad palm covering the back of her hand, his heat searing a path up her arm, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he could feel her trembling.

“I have my reasons for grounding your brother,” he growled, his breath fluttering the fine hair at the top of her head. “And you don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.”

Moving her hand, he reached for the latch himself.

“I’ll wait for your brother outside.”

She had taken a step back the moment he’d let her go. As she took another, desperate for the distance, her glance darted up and caught on the silvery and striated scar that covered the entire side of his neck.

The disfiguring injury hadn’t been noticeable to her at all when he’d faced her. From the side, it was impossible to miss. The pale, slick-looking skin ran from under his jaw to below the buttoned collar of his shirt and behind the length of his thick dark hair.

The thought that only chemicals or fire could cause scarring so severe had her wincing when he pulled open the door. Catching her expression, his own went as cool as the air that rushed inside before he sidestepped the startled woman backing up so he could pass.

The muffled “Hi” he offered the lady sounded impossibly civil.

“Hi, yourself,” the waiflike woman replied to his retreating back. Pushing off the hood of her beautifully woven turquoise cape, she watched him take the stairs from the log-railed porch in two strides and jog through the rain to the black truck parked by her pea-green Volkswagen bus.

The nerves in Lauren’s stomach were quivering as she forced her attention from the man who still had her caller staring after him.

“Ms. Adams?”

The woman turned with an inquisitive smile. Her long straight hair was parted in the middle, six inches of gray at the roots and dishwater-blond at the ends. A peace symbol, which Lauren assumed to be an antique, hung around her neck.

“It’s Shenandoah. Like the river,” she explained, her smile fading to skepticism as she eyed Lauren’s suit and heels.

The unexpected had just collided with the unforeseen. Taking a stabilizing breath, Lauren smiled politely and asked her to come in.

From behind the wheel of his truck, Zach watched Sam’s sister give him a cautious glance before she ushered the aging flower child inside. She looked as wary of him as Tina had of the bear he and Sam had found foraging in her garden last summer. Sam’s wife had never much cared for the local wildlife.

It was as obvious as the rain beating on his windshield that Sam’s sister felt pretty much the same about him.

They were even. He wasn’t crazy about her, either.

Blowing a breath, he dragged his hand over his face and sank back in the seat. He couldn’t believe how frustrated he felt. Or how he’d just acted with Sam’s little sister. The frustration he could deal with. Lauren Edwards was another matter entirely. With a schedule that was falling further behind by the hour and more worried than he was used to being about the partner he couldn’t count on for much of anything right now, he had no patience at all for her judgmental attitude.

Or her presence.

He knew Sam’s family wanted him to move back to Seattle. His mother had mentioned it a half a dozen times while she’d been there. Sam had said his mom had even asked if he wanted her to pack some of his things and take them back with her. His sister, Sam had also told him, had offered to find him a place in the city if he didn’t feel like looking himself.

Zach knew Sam understood his family’s concerns about him. But Sam had also confided that he had no idea what he wanted to do, and that the last thing he did want right now was to have to make a major decision. Any decision for that matter. Just getting out of bed in the morning was hard enough.

Zach was infinitely familiar with the numb, almost paralyzed state the mind slipped into to protect itself from feeling too much. He also knew that his friend would have to deal with his family and the changes that were taking place in his life whether he liked the idea or not.

Sam’s sister’s insistence to the contrary, he truly was trying to help her brother. In the meantime, he was having to deal with the ripple effects of Tina’s death himself. That loss affected nearly everything he’d managed to build over the past five years.

With the grim determination that had always served him well, he reminded himself that change was inevitable—and that the Fates hadn’t broken him yet.

It did seem, though, that they wanted to give it another shot. It was entirely possible that his friend could move for the sake of his children. If he did, Zach would lose his business partner.

More disturbing than that, he would lose the closest thing he had here to family.

The thoughts did nothing to ease the tension crawling through him. He needed to move, to pace, but he had no desire to get out of the truck and get drenched. Instead, he worked at a knot in his shoulder and checked the rearview mirror for signs of Sam.

Seeing nothing but the silver drizzle that turned the forest of spruce, hemlock and pine a hazy shade of blue, he glanced toward the rambling log cabin with its wraparound porch and winter-bare window boxes.

There was something more bothering him. Something about Sam’s little sister that added a different sort of frustration to those he was already dealing with.