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The Other Woman
“Hellothere,handsome.”Zane’s head jerked up at the familiar voice from his office doorway. Shawna.
It had been over a year since he’d had the misfortune to bump into Shawna again. He was afraid that his friends were right and he’d had a type, and Shawna had been it. She still had the big Dallas blonde hair and was showing off her long, tanned legs in a skirt that barely covered her ass, as usual. He had enjoyed that at one time, but now that he had Maggie’s effortless beauty to compare her to, he couldn’t understand what had attracted him to her. He noticed her dark roots starting to show at her crown and a hint of orange on her skin with the over-the-top spray tan.
As he took her in, he couldn’t believe he’d ever found her attractive or worth his time. They’d only gone out a few times, but he had thought he was never going to get rid of her. She kept popping up in the most unlikely places and trying to hang all over him for months after he had told her they needed to go their separate ways. He had been afraid he was going to have to bring stalking charges against her at one point, but then she had finally disappeared. Until now.
“What are you doing here, Shawna?” Zane answered, the hostility in his voice barely masked. She must have been the woman who Carol had told him about. This wasn’t good at all.
She strutted toward him and rested a hip on the edge of his desk. “Now is that any way to greet an old friend, Dr. Savage?” She tsked and added, “A very good, old friend?”
Zane glared. “I don’t have time for this bullshit, Shawna. Say what you want and get out.”
Shawna trained her glossy, over pumped lips into a pout pushing herself up off the desk and moving to the other side, facing Zane. “Now, Zane, baby, don’t be that way. We were good together. You remember.”
She had just leaned over to try to run a hand through his hair when Zane heard another familiar voice. “Zane? I hope we’re not disturbing you, but we were here shopping and...”
His head shot toward the door where the beguiling voice was coming from and saw Maggie and Dani standing in the doorway. Maggie’s face fell as she took in the scene before her - Zane’s face in the cleavage of a tall, blonde Barbie. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she turned and ran back down the hall.
Zane jumped up so fast Shawna barely kept herself from sprawling on the floor. “Maggie!” he called desperately, “Wait!”
“What the actual fuck, Zane Savage?” Dani demanded, stopping his progress toward Maggie with a hand thrown out to his chest.
He rubbed his hands hard down his face and growled in frustration. “It’s not what it looks like, Dani. C’mon! You know me. You know I don’t cheat. Ever.”
Dani continued to stare daggers at him until he roared in aggravation. “Dani! It’s fucking Shawna! Remember her? My stalker? She just showed up less than five minutes ago.”
His friend took a closer look at the woman now standing next to the desk with a scowl on her face. It was that crazy bitch. “What the fuck do you want? Jesus, can you not take a fucking hint? He told you months ago to get lost, you fucking skank!” Dani took a menacing step toward the other woman but Zane took her arm stopping her from a physical confrontation. She turned to Zane, taking her phone out instead, ready to do something to defend him from the woman that had caused so much drama in his life not long ago. “Do I need to call 911 or can I just take her out myself?”
“I was just trying to find out what she wanted when you came in,” Zane said in exasperation. “Not now, Dani, please! I just need to go find Maggie! I’ll deal with Shawna later.”
Dani’s posture relaxed a bit, but she continued to glare at Shawna. “Don’t worry. She’s probably just in the car. I drove from Gladewater so it’s not like she can disappear.”
Zane’s eyes remained wild, and she placed a hand on his shoulder focusing his gaze to her face like she had done with many a panicked family member in the hospital ICU over the years. “Let me go talk to her first. She’s probably furious and hurt right now. I’ll explain it to her.” She nodded derisively at Shawna. “Just get rid of that trash while I’m gone.”
Zane nodded and finally felt like he could take a full breath. He hadn’t realized how much the air had thinned in the last few minutes. He rounded on Shawna as Dani left out the front door and grabbed her by the arm.
“Hey, take it easy,” she whined as he yanked her toward the back door of the office suite.
He gave her a shove onto the sidewalk. “That woman is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time,” Zane growled at her. “And you had better not have fucked this up for me, Shawna.”
Shawna pulled herself up straight and tried to reclaim some dignity. “She didn’t look like much,” she sneered. “Have your standards gotten that low?” She tried to slide up against him again. “That little country mouse can’t handle you, honey. I can take anything you can dish out. Remember how good we were together?”
Zane had never wanted to hit a woman before, but it took all of his control not to smack this one hard. “She’s worth a hundred of you!” Zane said furiously. “You’re not even good enough to talk about her. Now get the fuck out of here and don’t ever bother me again or I will call the police on you.”
Shawna scowled at him for several long beats but then finally turned and started down the sidewalk. Zane’s chest heaved with anxiety, and he rubbed it like that could dissipate the pain he suddenly felt. He returned to his office praying Dani could convince Maggie to let him explain.
Maggie paced next to Pearl, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest trying to hold herself together. All her longstanding doubts and fears swirled throughout her head. She knew he’d been too good to be true. She shouldn’t have let herself even hope that Zane could have been different; that he actually thought she was something special. She should have known when Dani told her about the type of women he dated that she could never measure up to that. She was so stupid to let herself believe that this attractive, accomplished man could be seriously interested in her. It was really her fault for letting herself hope. What red-blooded man could pass up a stunning blonde like that; especially when offered right up in front of him? She was just a little, brown bird from a tiny town. Nothing special. So stupid!
She was torn from her self-castigation by two strong hands gripping her shoulders and a pair of intense green eyes staring at her. “Maggie! Listen to me.”
Maggie drug her focus to Dani’s face. “I just want to go home. Can we just go?”
She was dismayed when Dani shook her head. “No. You need to go talk to Zane.” Maggie started shaking her head vociferously, but Dani persisted. “Listen! It’s not what you think. It’s not what I thought at first either.”
“Oh, I think it was pretty clear.” Maggie gave a strained laugh. “It’s just like you said. He has a type and I’m obviously not it!”
Dani gave her shoulders a little shake in frustration. “I know what it looked like, but it wasn’t. That woman was a crazy bitch he dated exactly twice before she started stalking him. I remember her. He was really angry and shook up about it at the time. I promise you; nothing is going on with her except maybe getting a restraining order against her. Please talk to Zane.”
