Not Quite Perfect (Oakland Hills Book 3) (32 page)

“Okay,” she said. “But not for the night. I need to sleep.” She could’ve used her mom down the hall as an excuse, but they both knew Trixie Johnson was an earthy, sex-positive, and grandmother-oriented woman.

“Deal,” he said.

And so he drove over to make her dinner. As soon as he stepped foot in the house, her mother announced she was out to the movies, grabbed her jacket, and was gone. And two hours later, April watched Zack’s long, deft fingers dry the last dish. She loved the look of his dark hair against his fair skin, the strong bones of his wrists, the flex of his forearm muscles. He had a deliberate grace to his movements, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Never hurried—well, never in a bad way. Confident but careful.

Through a vulnerable haze of longing, she watched him pour her a second glass of chardonnay. The grilled vegetables had been good, especially with the Spanish cheeses he’d brought over from a gourmet shop in San Francisco. His skills were apparently limitless.

“I like a man who cooks for me,” she said, too tired to edit what she said. “It’s very sexy.”

It was just after nine, and the city lights of the Bay Area outside the window below them flickered in the night.

He hooked an arm around her waist and brushed his lips along her cheek. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

She closed her eyes and felt his breath on her temple. “Thanks.” She tilted her head, hoping he’d kiss her neck. “So are you.”

He smiled against her skin and did as she hoped, kissing his way across her jaw to the thrumming pulse under her ear. “I hope tonight made up for last night.”

“You don’t have to be perfect, you know.”

He tensed a little before putting his other arm around her. “I like to try anyway.” He found her mouth and teased her lips with his tongue, and the playfulness turned demanding. Deepening the kiss, he pressed her against the counter, wedging his body between her legs.

Her exhaustion melted away. Clasping the back of his head, she sucked his tongue into her mouth and hooked her legs around his hips. With a groan, he lifted her higher, clearing the counter with an urgent sweep of his hand.

This was good. This was easy. She knew how to do this.

Then why was her heart beating so fast? If he weren’t holding her up to the counter, she would’ve fainted to the floor.

She cared. She cared in that deep, sticky, helpless way.

Oh, God.

She held him and closed her eyes and waited for the panic to subside. At that same moment, however, he lifted her T-shirt and began kissing the swell of her breast above her bra, and she opened her eyes and saw her five-year-old self’s white handprint on red burlap hung on the wall behind him, right next to the framed photograph of Liam and Mark dressed as bottles of ketchup and mustard for Halloween.

“Not here,” April said, catching his face between her hands.

He looked up at her. “I don’t want to drive all the way back to San Francisco again.”

“My room,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

Was that why she was so nervous? Because she’d known she was going to invite him to stay? This was her home, home of the real April. Nobody had ever shared her bed here before. She nodded.

“Thank God.” Licking his lips, he glanced down at her chest before helping her off the counter. “I don’t know what it is you do to me, but it’s a lot. More than a lot. It’s unbelievable.”

“Believe it, baby.” She smirked, trying to lighten the mood, but her knees wobbled as her feet hit the floor.

His dark eyes caught hers as he ran a hand up her cheek and clasped her face. “I’m serious, April. You have no idea what you’re doing to me. I’ve been obsessed with you ever since…” He stared for a long moment before turning abruptly, clasping her arm to draw her out of the kitchen. “Upstairs?”

She held back. “Ever since what?”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Ever since I met you.”

Her heart skipped a beat, tripping over itself as it broke into a run.

“You almost called security,” she said.

“Even then I knew you were dangerous.” He caught her hand.

She led him up to her room with its pink-and-black decorating scheme from her high school years, wishing she’d done a little revamping when she’d moved back in last November. Her easel was balanced on top of an antique steamer trunk near the window, a box of pastels overturned beneath it, and an uneven stack of sketches spilled out of a plastic basket.

She also hadn’t put away her laundry that morning; it was clean and folded, but piled at the foot of the bed. She jogged ahead and moved it aside, then picked up the old romance paperback from her pillow, plucking out the lime-green panties she’d been using as a bookmark before she shoved it onto an overflowing shelf near her suitcase. She hadn’t put that away in the closet, thinking it was a good reminder that she was only passing through.

The bed was small, but at least the sheets were clean. She felt an odd twinge of discomfort. Nerves again. The real April was on full display.

Zack came close and stood behind her. He slid his hands up her arms and played with her hair, stroked her neck, moved back down her body. While he kissed her throat, he moved his hand under her shirt to pull down the cup of her bra. Teasing her nipple between his fingers, he lifted her shirt over her head and pulled her hard against him, his hips grinding into her bottom.

Her body didn’t respond with its usual charge, as if some of the wires weren’t connected properly. She looked out the window at Liam and Bev’s house and found her thoughts drifting to Merry’s new nanny, Bev’s return to Fite full-time, her own failures.

“Are you all right?” Softening his touch, he moved around until they were face-to-face. He kissed her lightly on the lips, smiling. “April?”

Her mom was worried about him getting hurt. That was cute.

“You’re leaving soon,” she said.

His smile fell. He kept his hands on her shoulders, but moved back a few inches. “Yes,” he said.

Her heart pounded in her ears. “Any chance you’ll stick around?”

Chapter 28

A
PRIL
’
S
STOMACH
TIED
ITSELF
IN
knots as she waited for him to reply.

Finally he said, “I’ve signed a contract. With that friend of Mark’s.” His thumb drew a circle in the hollow of her collarbone. “It’s a software start-up in New Jersey.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“This doesn’t have to be the end,” he said, “just because I’m leaving.”

She squirmed out of his arms and went over to the window. He’d repeated it twice now; he was really going.

“April?”

“What did you have in mind?” she asked. “For this not ending?” She tried to keep her voice calm.

“Will you turn around and look at me? I feel like you’re angry.”

Was she? She stared down at Bev’s new minivan in the driveway next door. She’d been angry at Bev for hiring a nanny so suddenly without consulting her about the choice. She was just the flaky aunt, but she and Merry had a special bond. Bev and Liam should’ve introduced her to the woman and asked her what she thought before plowing ahead with the deal, just as a courtesy.

But angry at Zack? What had he ever done that she could be angry with? He’d supported her at work, helped her with her family, pleasured her in bed—and the entire time he’d been clear about his ambitions to grow his business back in New York, where he lived, and where he had always stated would return before the first week in June.

He’d done nothing wrong except be wonderful and temporary. Temporarily wonderful. Wonderfully temporary.

She turned. She’d had a lot of arguments with guys over the years where her temper fueled her jets, told her what to say, but that was no help now. The secret deep inside her chest was too small and new to blaze forward with demands, ideas, exclamations.

She didn’t want him to go. Desperately. What could she say?

Crossing her arms to cover herself, she licked her dry lips. “If you don’t want to end it, what did you have in mind?”

He paused. “Come with me.” Eyes blazing, he strode over to her. “There are dozens and dozens of garment companies that need graphic designers. You’ve got a portfolio now. You can charge a higher hourly wage—you’re not charging nearly enough, by the way—and work more hours.”

Her mind went numb. Following him to New York had never occurred to her, not even once.

Well, she’d never claimed to be the genius in the family.
 

“New York would be great for you,” he continued. “You’d love it. The more I think about it, the better it sounds. Not for me—and it would be, I’m not denying that—but for you. The opportunities are unmatched anywhere in the country or even the world.”

“Hold it.” Chest squeezing, she walked away from him to retrieve her shirt from the floor, where it had fallen next to the hamper filled with her sketches. She saw the top page, a drawing of a lemon tree in black cross-hatching, and remembered the afternoon the summer before when she’d drawn it. Had it only been a year ago she’d been alone, ignorant of Zack’s existence, happily immune?

Her mom didn’t think she was the long-term type, and maybe she hadn’t been. Until now. Zack had changed everything. She’d tasted something and now she wanted more—but not at any price. She wasn’t going to give up the best part of her life—her mom, her brothers, her new sisters-in-law, and, of course, Merry—for a career. Not his and not hers.

He hadn’t even considered staying. He talked about his contract with a client he’d never met as a holy unbreakable bond.

She’d been so stupid.

She pulled the shirt over her head and turned to face him. “I’m not going to leave my family.”

“It wouldn’t be forever. Have you ever lived away from home? It might be good for you.”

Her shoulders stiffened. “Oh, would it?”

“I’m speaking from experience. Putting a little distance between you and your parents—or parent and brothers—can really help you find yourself.”

“Except it isn’t me I’d be finding, is it?” She heard the rising edginess in her own voice. Maybe she was going to fly off the handle after all. “I’d be giving up everything that’s really important to me so that you can get that juicy tech contract you’ve always wanted.”

“I live in New York. My job here was only six months long, and part-time at that. You always knew that.”

“I live in Oakland,” she said. “I don’t care about your job. I do care about my family. You always knew that.”

They stared at each other. Her bedroom felt small, suffocating. The lamp on the desk sent his face into shadows that made him look unfamiliar—a sinister, unlovable relation of the nice guy she’d fallen in love with.

Love. Maybe it was all an illusion. Just a trick of the light.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “So,” he said, and nothing else.

She was hurt and afraid, and neither feeling was tolerable. “I can’t believe you assumed I’d give up everything and follow you to New York.”

“I can’t believe you won’t even—” He moved to the door. “Never mind. It was just an idea. I figured you’re probably done with Fite soon, and the baby has a full-time nanny, so it seemed perfectly logical to suggest other career options to you.”

She filled in his sentence for him.
He can’t believe you thought he might put yourself ahead of his career.

“I don’t believe in putting a job ahead of the important things in life,” she said.

“And your life is more important than mine?”

“It’s not less important,” she said.

“It wasn’t just the—but I understand. I get the message.” He strode to the door, rubbing his mouth with his hand. “You don’t want to come. No big deal. We never made each other any promises, did we?”

Without another word, he was gone.

She stood near the bed and stared at the empty spot where she’d last seen his back, not believing he’d walked away in the middle of their conversation.

I understand. No big deal. No promises.

That was
it
? She wasn’t going to move to New York, so he was going to bail like a drunken sea captain in a hurricane?

Just like that?

She ran to the bedroom doorway and heard his footsteps on the stairs and then the slam of the front door. Moving over to the window, she shoved the curtains aside just in time to see him climb into his ride-share Mini and back out of the driveway.

She turned away from the window, her breath tight in her chest.
 

No big deal
.

She kicked the hamper over. Sketches poured out like gold doubloons out of a pirate’s treasure chest.

They’d finally had a real conversation, acknowledged the elephant in the room, and he’d picked up his toys and gone home at the first sign of trouble.

She kicked the hamper again before sitting on the bed.

He’d left her.

Easily.

* * *

She didn’t know how long she cried, but it was too long. When the need for a tissue was too great to put it off another sniffle, she climbed to her feet and staggered to the bathroom.

In the mirror over the sink, she saw her face, splotchy and tear-streaked, and was disgusted with herself. She ran cold water into the basin and submerged her face. The sobbing stopped—impossible if you couldn’t inhale for another go—and she willed herself to calm down. The cold water helped. Eventually, she lifted her head and dried her face on an old bath towel she’d had since she was a kid. Ladybugs with lasers—it was some gender-bending attempt by the towel manufacturer in a more daring decade, and she’d adored it.

Standing in the bathroom with her damp T-shirt sticking to her chest, she held out the towel to study it, seeing the edges of the primary design, only about five inches square, and the drop of the repeating pattern across the terry cloth.

Cute ladybugs, but she could do better. She never got to draw, really draw, at Fite. The existing fashion lines were too conservative and adult—stripes and dots, abstract shapes in block colors. Imagine what she could’ve done with Fite Baby, if they’d begun development on that while she was there.