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Focus, she ordered. Just like you told the crew.
The newbie at her elbow glanced at her sideways. “You okay, chef?”
“I will be,” she promised him grimly.
~
Zane was having a bad Monday.
This, he decided, was a fitting follow-up to his shit weekend—not to mention every crappy minute he’d suffered through since waking alone on his yacht. If Rebecca had tried to put a whammy on him, she couldn’t have done a better job.
The trip to Montreal had begun as merely uncomfortable. Missy had been a smidgen too curious about why Trey didn’t want to see his aunt.
“I know so little about you,” she’d wheedled on the Bad Boys jet. “I’m not some on-the-make groupie. You can trust me with your personal life.”
Except he couldn’t. He liked lots of things about Missy, but trust wasn’t in the mix—not on his own behalf and certainly not on Trey’s. Maybe she’d have kept the gory details about their childhood to herself. Maybe she’d have let them slip the next time she wanted to seem in the know in an interview. Zane couldn’t predict what she’d do and didn’t care. He didn’t want to share his past with her.
Few realizations could have clued him in more clearly to the lack of substance in their relationship.
Because he’d agreed to join her for the weekend, he tried to be a decent companion. He squired Missy around to her parties, listened to her chatter about her dramas, and only made a single call to check on Trey and his upcoming opening night.
Missy knew something was up anyway. They had sex once, the night they arrived in the hotel. Missy wasn’t a stranger. Zane had expected going to bed with her would be a step up from his recent one-night stands. Instead, it had been worse, not just soulless but dishonest. Sleeping with Missy had felt like misleading her.
She must have noticed his heart wasn’t in it, because she didn’t press for more. Zane’s relief was premature. Missy saved her big confrontation for the return flight.
Why was he so withholding? Couldn’t he see she cared about him? Didn’t he feel anything for her?
“You have more real emotion in your voice when you talk to Trey,” she accused. “I deserve to be more than a convenience.”
Zane choked back an urge to declare that it wasn’t her, it was him. He said other soothing things, no doubt just as annoying, basically admitting that she was right. She did deserve better than he was offering her.
“I understand,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t waste any more time with me.”
This wasn’t the response she’d been looking for. They were the only passengers in the private jet’s cabin. Missy gaped at him from the leather seat opposite his, her mile-long legs crossed and her high-heeled shoe jiggling. Her perfect nails worried the label on the designer water she was drinking.
“There’s someone else,” she said.
This was one straw too many for Zane. “Saying there’s someone else suggests we have the sort of relationship where I could cheat on you.”
He said this gently, not betraying his temper. Maybe he should have lost it. Missy gasped as if he’d struck her.
“I’m not giving up,” she said, graceful hand to her graceful throat. “I believe we have something even if you don’t.”
“You’re kidding yourself, honey. You and I were never more than a bit of fun.”
He said this gently too, but it sank in deeper. Missy tossed her head and glared out the window. He hoped he’d gotten his point across. Missy did have a habit of believing what suited her.
They touched down around six thirty that evening. Zane handed Missy off to Owens to drive in the limo to the hotel where she was staying. Not as experienced as some TBBC employees, Owens jaw dropped at the sight of his glamorous passenger. Zane concluded his presence wouldn’t be missed. He took a cab instead, thereby avoiding last-ditch debates about what he and Missy had. The taxi dropped him at the home of a friend, a lawyer he’d met at Harvard. Fortunately, Evan was free to see him. Unfortunately, he didn’t think they had grounds for a restraining order against Trey’s aunt, or that such an action would necessarily stay out of the media.
“You and Trey are public figures,” Evan warned. “When you go to court, people wonder why.”
Zane had a bit more sympathy for Missy as he left. He wanted to deny what he’d been told in plain English. To top off that disappointment, between calling another cab and going home to change, he was late to Trey and Rebecca’s big event. When he pulled up on Charles Street in his old Mercedes, groups of guests were coming out. He threw the convertible’s keys to a valet, but doubted the minutes he saved would help. From what he saw, the Lounge’s maiden voyage was over.
He went in anyway. A last few tables in the back were in the process of getting up. Trey stood among them, seeming at ease with what was being said. The guests were in a good mood, so Zane guessed the evening hadn’t been a disaster. Trey laughed, the sound carrying. He looked good in his dark gray suit with the white shirt collar unbuttoned. His hair was tied back so you couldn’t tell it was shoulder length. His sexy stubble showed off the planes of his cheek and jaw.
All grown up, Zane thought, remembering him in more casual getups. Affection expanded in him so fiercely the sensation was uncomfortable. He knew he was walking a slippery slope with Rebecca but couldn’t seem to drag his feet off it. She felt like the antidote to every forgettable woman he’d slept with, like proof he could connect to one with a deeper part of him than his cock. Wasn’t there a way to hold onto Trey and have a shot with her? And how would he know if he never tried?
He didn’t call out to Trey, whose back was to him. Doing nothing to draw attention to himself, he slipped down the hall to the kitchen.
“Where’s Rebecca?” he inquired of a busboy.
Because he’d asked like he had a right to know, the young man pointed to a door marked “Staff Only.”
Inside was a combined break room and overflow storage. Metal shelves stacked with dry goods lined the walls. Zane spied a small coffee station, a large round table, and the door to the staff toilet. In the middle of the floor, on the tweedy brown carpet, he found Rebecca.
She lay on her back with her knees bent up. Her left forearm shielded her eyes. Her right was flung out flat, as if the ground beneath her were unsteady. She wore her precious chef’s whites, the front now dirty from her labors. Zane’s restless emotions settled even as his heart beat harder. God, he was glad to see her.
“Is there a reason you’re lying on the floor?” he asked.
Rebecca twitched but didn’t rise. “My back is trying to seize up. It’s a stress thing. I took a couple ibuprofens. It’ll stop in a minute.”
Weirdly amused, Zane crossed the room to drop down next to her. Rebecca shifted her forearm to look at him. The look in her narrowed eyes was not friendly. “Why aren’t you with your girlfriend?”
“My girlfriend?”
“The one you took clubbing in Paris. The one you thought it was perfectly okay to bring to my opening. The swimsuit model.”
The last description he understood. His mind took a moment to sort out the rest. “Mystique was here? I didn’t bring her. I just arrived myself. Anyway, we weren’t in Paris. It was Montreal.”
“Whatever.” Rebecca hid her eyes again. “At least you didn’t tell her you slept with me.”
This seemed as much a complaint as a statement of gratitude. The smile Zane was fighting grew stronger. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m stupid,” she retorted, her sumptuous lips pressed thin. “I know I have no right to be angry.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Zane said, to which she responded with a snort. “She isn’t. She’s a woman I’ve dated on and off for a couple years. This weekend decided me to switch her to ‘off’ for good.”
“If she showed up here, you need to convey your decision more clearly.”
Sensing a grudging reduction in her annoyance, Zane coaxed Rebecca’s arm away from her face. Her hand fit nicely between his. Turning her head without lifting it, she looked at him with her big gray eyes. The vulnerability he saw there touched him. Funnily enough, so did her prickliness.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said softly, “even though we only slept together once. Deliberately shoving her in your face would be childish—especially on your big night.”
“It wouldn’t be my business if you did.”
He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “You could make it your business in two seconds.”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me.” He slid his arm beneath her back, helping her to sit up without straining her muscles. “How did tonight go?”
“Oh,” she said, “we had a couple bumps. The guy who replaced me at my old job showed up with an important food critic. Half a dozen lobster plates went out raw and—evidently—my big tough expediter falls apart over fights with his roommate.”
