Skinny Bitch in Love (11 page)

Immediately, he texted back
Good
.

Chapter 7

Once again, in my chef’s jacket and white skinny jeans, I rang Zach’s doorbell at exactly seven o’clock. And once again, the sight of him when he opened the door had me speechless. The combination of his tanned face; those intense blue eyes; strong, straight nose; the high cheekbones, that damned cleft, and his thick, silky dark hair that looked like he’d just run a hand through it was male perfection. Throw in the dark gray T-shirt, jeans, and the adorable beagle at his knee, and, yeah, he had his truce. With conditions.

“I wasn’t sure you’d agree to a second go,” he said, shutting the door behind me. I followed him back into the kitchen where ingredients, pans, and utensils for the portobello mushroom burger were set up on the counter.

“Your assistant does everything for you?” I asked.

“Everything I don’t need to do myself, yeah.”

“Must be nice,” I said, getting busy with onions and garlic.

“It is.”

Entitled rich jerk.

“Can I help?” he asked. “I do help, even when I don’t have to,” he added, shooting me a smile.

I shot him back an I’ll-be-the-judge-of-that look and put him on slicing onions and the avocado. When he slid them into the sauté pan that was crackling with oil, his shoulder and hip brushed lightly against mine. I didn’t move, and neither did he.

“Stir gently, right?” he asked, glancing at the recipe.

“Right.”

As I was making a thick paste of avocado and garlic as a condiment, I was aware of him cleaning up around me. Aware of him, period.

Forget the explanation,
I told myself, slathering the warm brioche buns—which I’d made myself a few hours ago—with the avocado paste. It doesn’t matter. You can’t go there with him.

Especially since anything he said the other day was canceled out by the way he’d dismissed me.

“So I’d really like to explain about the other night,” he said.

I turned to face him. “Zach, no need, okay? You’ve clearly got a girlfriend. I clearly am a vegan. Two good reasons why there shouldn’t be a second kiss. So let me just audition the best not-meat burger you will ever eat, and we’ll exist in harmony on Montana and 14th.”

He poured us glasses of one of my favorite organic white wines. He’d clearly done a bit of homework. “To harmony.”

I took the glass and clinked his.

“But I’d still like to explain. Tabitha—the woman you met Monday night. She’s actually an ex-girlfriend. We were dating for a few months, and it wasn’t working out, so I ended it, but she took it hard.” He sipped the wine. “She’s been kind of . . . fragile about it, so I didn’t just want to show her the door or make her feel like I’m already seeing someone new. I’m sorry for how I handled things. So the kiss stands.”

“Except you said ‘an’ ex. Which makes me think there are lots of women in your life.”

“Can I get nothing past you?” he asked with his slickest smile yet.

“Just be straight with me. You’ve got a few girlfriends, I assume.”

“I date,” he said. “If I meet someone who makes me want to commit, I’ll commit.”

I went back to the brioche buns. I was not getting involved with this guy. He was probably sleeping with half the models and wannabe actresses in Santa Monica.
Cook and leave, Clem.

“I made you something.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a covered dish, then got a bag of tortilla chips from the cabinet. “My homemade guacamole. When I was a kid, I ate guacamole like it was chocolate.”

“Me, too. I made my own guac when I was five. It sounds
crazy, but I knew even that young I wanted to be a chef.” While my sister was having her dolls interrogate each other as a sign of her future profession, I was in the kitchen with my dad, kneading pasta dough, learning about herbs, soaking beans.

“You’re lucky you figured that out so young. I never really knew what I wanted to be.”

“Rich?”

He laughed. “Maybe, actually. My grandparents started with nothing and were self-made. They took acres of land in the middle of nowhere, started with maybe ten heads of cattle, some pigs. They turned the Silver Creek Ranch into a major operation. How they did it, what it took—that’s what interested me. Not necessarily the getting rich part, but how you go from nothing to something.”

I realized I was staring at him and turned around to top the burgers with the buns. He walked over to me, a guacamole-laden chip in his hand, which he held up to my mouth. He kept his eyes on me as I parted my lips for the chip.

Damn. It was delicious.

Ruin this,
I sent to him telepathically.
There’s no way I’m falling for you. I can’t fall for you.

He would definitely ruin it. He had both times we’d gotten together. In my apartment when
Baby
called in the first place. And here, last time, when she shook her ass up the stairs.
Where are you when I need you, Tabitha? Barge in now. Save me
.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I think I want you to kiss me again. Everywhere.

“It’s really good. Really, really good, Zach.”

He smiled and touched his finger to my lip. “Crumb.” As he was about to kiss me, my phone started ringing. No. Not ringing—chiming.

“Oh, shit,” I said, lunging for my bag on the windowsill.

“What?”

Six months ago, I’d been at a club with Sara and Ty and had ignored my ringing phone, especially when I saw it was just Elizabeth, who’d been calling the past few days to make sure I’d bought renter’s insurance like I said I would. I’d thought she was just calling to nag. So I hadn’t answered. And my father had been lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life from a cancer-related complication. She’d had to leave Santa Monica without me and race up to Coastal General. I hadn’t called back till the morning.

I never wanted to feel that bad again. Never wanted to make Elizabeth feel that alone again. And so when she insisted on setting up a special ringtone to indicate an emergency, I let her.

If my phone was playing that chime, it was Elizabeth calling with bad news about my dad.

I grabbed my phone. “Elizabeth, what’s wrong?” I tried to hear what she was saying, but she was crying. “Just tell me where you are, and I’ll come right now.”

“I’m at Coastal General,” she said. “Oh God, I drove up to Mom and Dad’s to help set up for the party, and we were just in the living room having tea and cake and laughing about
something one of the inept interns did, and then Dad just slumped over. Clem, just get here as soon as you can.”

My heart stopped. “Elizabeth, tell me now. Is he
okay
?”

I heard her suck in a breath. “They don’t know.”

I closed my eyes. “Okay, I’m coming. I’m leaving right now.” I shoved the phone in my bag and turned to Zach, who was staring at me. “It’s my dad. I have to go. Oh my God. My dad’s back in the hospital. I have to go.”

“I’ll drive you,” he said, shutting off the burner and taking my hand and heading toward the door.

“He’s at Coastal General in Grovesburg. That’s three hours from here.”

He nodded. “So we’ll take the car instead of the Harley.”

I stared at him. “You’re going to drive me
three
hours to the hospital?”

“Yeah, I am. So get moving.”

Half numb and half scared I followed him, barely remembering to buckle the seat belt in the soft leather seat of his black Mercedes. I stared out the window and didn’t say a word until we got to Route 5 and set on a long stretch of the trip.

“Please let him be okay,” I said, my eyes closed.

He put his hand on my shoulder for a moment. “Clementine, if it helps, my father had a massive heart attack last year. When I got the call, no one knew if he’d make it. But he pulled through. He’s fine now. You can’t focus on the what-ifs.”

“But he has cancer. He’s so weak. He can’t withstand whatever happened—last time, some infection almost killed him.”

“You can’t think worst-case for these three hours, Clem, or it’ll tear you apart. Right now, tell me about Dad. Tell me what makes him strong.”

“He is strong. If it wasn’t for the fucking cancer eating away at his organs, he’d be in the fields at the farm with his dogs beside him, checking on the crops or harvesting or giving an elementary school class a field-trip tour. He loves kids.”

“He sounds like a great person.”

“He is,” I said, my stomach churning. I turned to look out the window, and Zach seemed to sense that I needed some quiet time and privacy. He put on some bluesy jazz. I listened to the music and focused on the passing scenery.

Just after ten thirty Zach pulled up to the hospital’s emergency room and told me to go, that he’d find me. I took his hand, said a fast “Thank you,” and then ran.

Pneumonia. My dad would be fine. For now, anyway. The thousand-pound weights lifted off each shoulder as my mom said he might have to stay for a few days but would be all right. I kissed my dad’s cheek, hugged my mother, who sat down at his bedside, then I quietly left the room to see if Zach had come up yet.

Down the hall, Elizabeth was waiting for the elevator for a Starbucks herbal tea run when the doors pinged open. Zach stepped out; Elizabeth went in. I’d make the introductions later.

“Any word?” he asked.

“He’s going to be all right—for now.”

He squeezed my hand. “Glad to hear that.”

“My sister went on a tea run to Starbucks. My mom’s expecting the docs back with my father’s test results in the next half hour or so. Looks like a waiting area over there,” I said, gesturing across the hall.

Zach sat beside me in the otherwise empty waiting room. He didn’t touch the stack of magazines scattered on the table. He didn’t pull out his iPhone and check his messages. He just sat there, next to me. “Zach, thanks for being here. For bringing me. I couldn’t even think straight when my sister first called me. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Except maybe to admit I might have been a
little
wrong about you,” I said.

He smiled and slung an arm around my shoulder. “Oh, wait, you do owe me that mushroom burger. Someone clearly doesn’t want me to ever try it, though.”

I laughed—and I didn’t think I was capable. “Who knows what’ll happen the next time I attempt to audition it for you?”

He smiled and took my hand, holding it between us on the armrest of his chair.

At midnight, Zach and I were in the bar of the Mayfair Hotel, which was right across the street from the hospital.
When he’d heard that my dad would need to stay the weekend, Zach had booked three hotel rooms for my mother, sister, and me through Sunday—and paid for them in advance, which we were stunned to discover when we’d checked in.

“You two must be serious,” my mother had said with a prompting smile at the registration desk.

“He’s sort of a client, actually. Maybe the tiniest bit more. We’ll see. He’s dating all of L.A.”

“Well, all I know is that he’s incredibly generous. He drove you here and he took care of your family’s hotel arrangements with your dad in the hospital?”

“He seems like a nice guy, but don’t have expectations,” Elizabeth said as she’d pocketed her room key.

“He eats meat anyway,” I mumbled.

“So do I. And we get along fine.”

“Yeah, but I have to get along with you.”

Elizabeth yanked the ends of my hair, then she and Mom headed to the elevator, both looking as exhausted as I’m sure I did. I went to find Zach; he was waiting for me at a little round table by the window in the hotel bar. He looked so damned gorgeous under the low lights, a half-moon in the high window above his head. We had a glass of wine and made small talk, mostly, about hospitals, about this part of California, about how you just never knew what life would throw at you.

“So now I owe you even more,” I said. His generosity had almost knocked me on my ass. There was a lot more to Zach
Jeffries than I ever expected. Which, to be honest, made me a little nervous. It meant I couldn’t pigeonhole him. Couldn’t know what to expect.

“Nope, not a thing.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for such a nice guy, Jeffries.”