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Perhaps she should invite Zach over for dinner or something? Sure, the dinner at Faith’s had been awkward too but she hadn’t had any time to prepare for that. No time to steel herself against his charms. But with enough notice, surely she could do it? To be safe, she could even invite Eli as well. After all, it would be nice to see him too. She couldn’t even remember the last time Eli had been to Lansing.
That could do it. Maybe even round up a few other friends. Have the sort of big-raucous, shooting-the-breeze-and-ragging-on-each-other dinner she and Joey used to host. That was one of the things she’d missed since the divorce. Most of their friends had chosen Joey. She couldn’t entirely blame them. Most of them were townies, and well, technically she was a townie too, but her dad had always worked for the Harpers.
Which put the Santellis, in the eyes of most of Cloud Bay’s residents, firmly in the music-people camp. Rich people, in other words. Which wasn’t even remotely true. Even though Sal had made a very nice living doing what he did here at the studio, her family had nothing like the sort of wealth the Harpers had. But still, their friends had reverted back to being Joey’s friends. Since she had Faith and Ivy, she hadn’t thought about it much at first, too focused on surviving the divorce and trying to sort out the messy tangle of feelings she had about it to notice what was happening. But as she had emerged from the divorce-crazy, she’d realized there were quite a few people she hadn’t heard from in a while. So, yeah, maybe dinner with Zach and Eli could be fun. She could ask Ivy and Matt as well.
Have a dinner party like a freaking adult.
Show her hormones who was boss.
She coiled the last of the cables into a neat roll and tucked it back into its place. Then turned back to see if there was anything else she’d missed in the studio. Her gaze hit the stool where Zach had been sitting all day and stuck there, as though glued. The memory of his voice, low and crooning, hit her all over again, and a rush of heated want snaked down her spine and spread through her body. Her hands curled into fists as she tried to will the feeling away. But it did no good. Zach was back in her head.
And she knew, deep in her gut, that it was going to take more than a damn dinner party to exorcise him.
The alternative—at least the only one that spring to mind right now as she stood there hungry for him—was to seize the bull by the horns so to speak.
The thought made her break out in a cold sweat, which at least cleared the fog of lust. Seizing the bull by the horns meant asking Zach to sleep with her, pure and simple. The nuclear approach. Burn off the awkwardness with some good old-fashioned sex. Though, if memory served her, sex with Zach had been anything than old fashioned.
No, don’t think about that. Thinking about sex with Zach would only make things worse. Not that she was sure that anything could actually make the situation worse. They might grow more comfortable with each other over time, but, if she was honest with herself, she couldn’t see this inconvenient lust going away any time soon. After all, it seemed to have stuck around for over ten years now. So she was either going to be horny the entire time Zach was on the island, or eventually lose her head and proposition him. If it was going to happen anyway, what was the point in waiting?
They were working together, yes, but Zach wasn’t the kind to kiss and tell. This didn’t have to have anything to do with that.
All that waiting could achieve was them wasting time that could be better spent working on achieving some mutual satisfaction, as well as—hopefully—improving their ability to focus in the studio. After all, Zach was only going to be here for a few months at most. Then he’d be gone again. Just like last time. Just like every time. She wasn’t dumb enough to let herself fall in love with the man. She knew too much about how he was built for that. So a few months fling could be exactly what the doctor ordered. Kill the weird and burn out this stupid crush once and for all. So that when he left, she would be cured and able to get on with the rest of her life.
The only question was whether she could actually do it. March on over to Zach’s guesthouse and talk him into bed. Her hands clenched tighter, fingernails digging into her palm as she contemplated the thought.
“What the hell?” she muttered and turned to leave the studio before she lost her nerve.
Chapter Eight
Zach was standing at the fridge, trying to decide if he had something he could turn into dinner or whether he would be throwing himself on Faith’s or Eli’s mercy again, when someone knocked on his door, rattling the screen.
What the hell? He wasn’t expecting anybody. Barely anyone knew where he was, for a start. But maybe it was Faith or Mina or even Eli, come to see him. Or, in Eli’s case, come to make Zach come up with dinner for a change.
But when he got to the door, the person facing him on the other side of the screen was Leah. Wearing the same clothes she’d had on at the studio, with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and those damn silver hoops that had been drawing his attention to the sweet curve of her neck all day dancing at her ears.
She held up a six-pack of longnecks. “I thought our first day deserved some sort of celebration. I went with beer. Hope that’s okay with you?”
“Sure,” he said. He opened the door and stepped out. It was too nice a day to sit inside when they could hang out on the porch. Besides, after the way he’d kept finding himself watching Leah all day at the studio, tracking her moves like a teenage boy following the head cheerleader around like a puppy, outside might just be wiser than inside. It had been weird between them. So some extra space couldn’t hurt. He lowered himself onto the top step, deliberately sticking close to the stair rail so that there was plenty of space for them both.
Leah sat beside him, not as far away as he would have liked, and handed him a longneck. “Bottom’s up.” She took a long swallow, and he found himself focusing way too hard on her mouth.
And on how close she was to him on the stairs.
He stood abruptly. Walked back down to the grass, then turned back to face her. She was watching him with an odd expression. As though she was trying to make up her mind about something.
“So, that was not the greatest first day ever,” she said eventually.
“Can’t argue with that,” he said, glad he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. “But it was the first day. We’ll find our rhythm.”
Leah took another swig of beer and then pushed to her feet too, came down the stairs, stopping on the bottom one. Which put her eyes almost level with his.
He’d forgotten there were tiny golden flecks among the green. Kind of made you want to lean in and look closer. An impulse he wasn’t giving into.
Those eyes narrowed slightly, her expression turning serious. “I’m not so sure.”
He tensed. “What does that mean?”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t think the problem is that we’re not used to working together.”
