Not Quite Perfect (Oakland Hills Book 3) (37 page)

Liam stood up and said to Darrin, who was eating a croissant, “How about you get back to work. This isn’t Starbucks.”

Looking pleased as shit, the Men’s designer stood up. “Ah, Jennifer. She’s been stewing for a while,” he said, licking his fingers. “Talks all the time about how she hates the direction the company’s taken, the bigger sizes, the mainstream silhouettes. She misses Ellen and the old ways. She’s been interviewing for months but thought she might take down your baby sister on the way out as a little bonus. She hates your whole family.”

 
Offering April a friendly shrug, he left the room with his assistant carrying his coffee in his wake.

And then only Liam, Rita, April, and Zack remained.

Glancing first at Liam, Rita told April, “In case it isn’t obvious, I’d be happy to keep you on. If you’re willing. And if you stay in town. Although your brother might want to hire you as a business consultant instead. You seem to have a knack for numbers.”

Liam eyed Zack. “You didn’t help her with any of that?”

April punched him in the shoulder. “Of course he didn’t. Give me a break! How can you
never
take me seriously?”

“Years of practice,” Liam said.

“I did better on my SATs than you did, you booger,” April said.

“Then why can’t you use grown-up words?” Liam asked.

“What’s the fun in that?” April asked.

Zack stood up, ready to start shouting. He’d waited long enough. “April,” he said, his voice low. “Care for a walk?”

“Big morning for walks, isn’t it?” Rita said, grinning as she walked to the door.

Liam followed Rita. “Time to get back to work. Mail me the files for that presentation, will you, Ape?”

Zack didn’t wait until they were gone to capture April’s hand and bring it to his lips.

“April?” Liam asked.

Her skin smelled like dry-erase markers and sweet jasmine. Zack dropped kisses along the knuckles.

Liam cleared his throat.

“Get lost, Liam,” Zack said, looking up into April’s eyes.

* * *

Zack’s kisses sent shivers up her arm, down her spine, and into her heart, where they collected in a pool of bubbling, overflowing warmth.

The click of the door as Liam left signaled they were finally alone.

“I’m sorry I left,” he said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t follow,” she replied.

He put his arms around her. “I love you.”

Tilting her hand to cup his face, she felt the roughness of his whiskers, the heat of his cheek. “I love you, too.”

It should’ve been hard to say, but it was the easiest thing in the world.

His eyes closed. He looked as if she’d slapped him. “Thank God.”

“The job in New York didn’t work out?”

“Not without you,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

“What did you tell them?” He felt so good it was hard to listen to what he was saying. “Are you in trouble?”

“Big trouble. I was hoping you’d visit me in prison.”

She stretched up against him, fingers tunneling through his hair, and kissed the hollow of his throat. “I totally would.”

“That’s nice,” he said with a sigh, stroking her bottom. “My life would revolve around our conjugal visits.”

“How is that different from right now?”

“So true.” He tilted her chin back and kissed her.

Crazed with longing and relief, she pushed him against the wall to kiss him back. Covered with a metal grid for hanging presentation boards and clothing designs, it rattled at the impact.

“Would your brother and sister-in-law mind if we had a conjugal visit right here?” he asked, flipping her around so he was the one pinning her against the grid, caressing her breast over her sweater, sending tendrils of desire to her core.

“Virginia will scare anyone away.”
 

After a hard, probing kiss, he lifted his head and said breathlessly, “I was just kidding. My place?”

“I want to hear more about how you couldn’t live without
 
me.”

“I couldn’t live without you,” he said, licking her earlobe.

“It took me a few days to figure it out, but I finally did.” God, he knew just how to touch her. She arched her head back. “We can move to New York. I mean, I can. You already live there.”

“Not anymore. I’m here now.”

“What about your career?” she asked.

“What about it?”

“Will you resent me if you crash and burn and lose everything as your years of work go down the drain?”

He lifted his head. “You know something I don’t?”

“It’s tough out here. You might not be able to do as well here as you did back east.”

Smiling, he kissed her forehead. “I’m willing to take that chance. How about you? Can you give up the opportunities in New York? You were right. You’d make more money, have more clients.”

“Give up leaving Merry and my mom and my brothers and California weather, and everything I know and love except for you?”

He stroked her lower lip. “Yeah.”

“I can give it up.” She wiggled against him. “For you.”

They kissed for another long, dizzy minute until April started unbuttoning his shirt, having convinced herself that Virginia would protect them from interruptions. Brushing her lips across the hair below his collarbone, she inhaled the scent of him, swimming in the flood of her own emotions: gratitude, anticipation, relief, love.

“Oh, hello there!” Her mother’s voice was like the lifeguard’s whistle, commanding everyone get out of the pool. “Merry and I thought we’d come and offer our support. Are we too late?”

Reluctantly, April peered around Zack. “Yes.” But Trixie had Merry with her—who, with a green cap and a one-piece red getup, looked like a strawberry with feet.

Heart squeezing at the thought of leaving her niece just as she was about to crawl, walk, talk, and get even more interesting, April looked up at Zack. “Are you sure you want to live in California? You won’t regret it?”

“I’m sure.” He kissed her forehead. “I never meant to stay away forever.”

“What about your wife’s family? You were close to them. They’ll miss you.”

Her mother cleared her throat. “Are you sure you want to argue with him, sweetheart?”

“I’ll visit them,” Zack said, catching her by the waist and turning to face the newcomers. “Morning, Mrs. Johnson. Merry Johnson.”

Her mother grinned. “Call me Mom.”

Oh, lord
, April thought.

“April did a great job this morning,” Zack said. “You would’ve been proud.”

April felt her face get hot.

“I was already proud,” Trixie said.

God, now I’m going to cry
.

Moving between them, her mother handed Merry over to April, then let out her breath and shook her arms. “She’s going to be a bruiser like her father. Soon I won’t be able to pick her up at all.”

In spite of her strawberry outfit, Merry smelled like bananas. “You’re still recovering from surgery, you crazy lady,” April said, kissing Merry’s petal-soft cheek. “What are you doing here? And where’s the new nanny?”

“Merry and I wanted to make sure you two got things figured out,” her mother said. She rubbed her hands together, reached for Merry again. “Looks like you did, so we’ll be going now. See you at the house soon, am I right, Zack?”

April gave Merry one last kiss, pushed her into her mother’s arms, and ushered the pair around the table to the doorway. “Not that soon.”

“Remember, I can sleep through anything,” her mother said.

Biting her lip, April waved at Merry—and her mother—before shutting the door between them.

Zack caught her from behind and pulled her body against his. While his hands explored her breasts, he nibbled on her neck, licking and kissing.

There was a tap on the door. “April?” Virginia’s voice.

April covered Zack’s mouth to stop its sucking action so she could answer semi-coherently. “Yes?”

“We can skip the movie tonight,” Virginia said.

“Oh! Right!” April gasped as Zack slid a hand under her underwear and squeezed her butt cheek. “Thanks!”

“You’re welcome,” Zack whispered in her ear.

“How about next week?” Virginia asked.

“Great! Wonderful!” April said.

“I know, aren’t I?” Zack replied, moving his hand around to the front.

April swallowed a squeal. “I’ll text you!”

Sounding like she was laughing, Virginia said, “OK. Talk to you later.”

After a moment, April said to Zack, “I think if we want any privacy, we should probably get out of here.”

Zack held her chin between his thumb and forefinger, kissed her on the lips, and smiled the kind of smile that made her wobbly in all the right places. “We can go wherever you want,” he said.

“Anywhere?”

He nodded.

“I just want to be together.” She stretched up against him.

“Then we’re both very lucky,” he said, stroking her back. “Because that’s exactly where I want to be.”

Epilogue

A
LTHOUGH
THEY
’
D
INITIALLY
DECIDED
NOT
even to discuss marriage until they’d been living together for fully one year—a pact that Zack’s mother would’ve found unthinkable, had she known of it—it turned out that they lasted only four and a half months before the topic reared its veiled-and-tuxedoed head.

“Maybe we could get married on a boat,” Zack said one evening as he watched TV. They had rented a two-bedroom apartment in Oakland halfway between April’s mother’s house and the BART station. She could visit family and get to work without too much hassle, and her part-time freelance income as a textile designer at Fite and at two new companies more than covered half the rent. She knew he had the bucks to cover a nicer place all by himself, but she made him squirrel that away for their distant future. She needed to feel that this first home was just as much hers as his.

Perhaps it was a little more hers than his, actually. She’d taken over the second bedroom—with north-facing light—and converted it to an art studio. Stool loved the little patch of land they had off the back porch, chasing bumblebees he never caught around the lavender and agapanthus and howling every time a siren wailed in the distance, which in the city was fairly often.

Tonight she was lying on the couch next to Zack, her legs over his lap, taking photographs of the ceiling with her phone. She’d decided that ceilings were very poorly represented in the arts. Theirs was particularly interesting, with an antique bronze chandelier retrofitted with LED bulbs, coved corners near the bay windows, and crown moulding from a more glamorous age.

When she heard his indirect marriage proposal, she turned her head to see what he was watching on the TV that had inspired it.

She sat up in a hurry. “You’ve got to be kidding me.
Moby Dick
?”

“I’ve always loved the ocean,” he said. “And I love you, so it makes sense to put them together.”

“You’re watching a black-and-white movie about an obsessive crazy guy killing a whale, and suddenly you’re thinking long-term?”

He grinned at her.

She whacked him in the shoulder. “How do you think this makes me feel?”

“Wanted?”

She tried to look serious. Failed. “Oh, totally,” she said, laughter bubbling out of her. She’d thought he’d propose in a predictably conventional way, such as on one knee at a fancy restaurant or during a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

This was so much better. A lifetime of dick jokes was worth much, much more than any meal at a fancy restaurant.

“
Moby Dick
puts you in the mood for love, this is what I’m learning,” she said.

“My mother always swoons whenever Gregory Peck comes on the screen.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” she said, clutching her stomach. She was laughing hard now. “You’ve brought your mother into it, too.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, sinking lower into the couch. “Fine. We won’t get married on a boat.”

“We won’t?”

Shaking his head, he pointed the remote at the TV and raised the volume. The mid-century orchestra blared into the room.

Not that she’d ever doubted him—not since she’d turned and seen him in the conference room at Fite and decided he was hers forever—but hearing him plan their commitment ceremony put a smile on her face.

“I love boats,” she said, climbing into his lap and kissing his neck. She took another picture of the ceiling, getting some of his freshly buzzed scalp into the shot. The weekend before, they had visited his parents in Bakersfield; while he and his dad went to the barber, April bonded with his mother. Any cultural, religious, or style chasms between them were soon bridged by their mutual love of Zack, dogs, and living in the lovely state of California. April, it turned out, had been the answer to a prayer, even with her liberal politics, colorful language, and combat boots: she’d gotten Zack to move back home.

Zack wrapped his arms around April while Captain Ahab bellowed his frustration at the whale, the sea, the universe.

“I love you,” he said. He didn’t turn his head away from the TV, but his eyes were closed, and she felt the pulse at his throat accelerate under her lips.

“I love you, too.” She tried to imagine wearing a wedding dress like Rose’s elegant gown and failed. She tried to imagine being a whirlwind mother like Bev with her own multimillion-dollar business and couldn’t picture that either. She knew she would spend the rest of her life with Zack, but she didn’t know what it was going to look like. She’d travel her own path, find her own way, dance to her own tune.

Who said settling down was boring?

Not the way she was going to do it.

“I think a boat would be great,” she said.

Author Note

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