Nicole Edwards - Zane

“I don’t think we’ll be able to stop him.”

“You have to. Call Travis. Tell him not to bring him over here,” V rambled. “I’ll... I’ll meet Zane at his house.”

She might be able to handle that much. Seeing him was going to be hard enough, but she definitely wouldn’t be able to see him at her house.

“Today?” V barely heard Zoey’s question, her head still reeling from the memories flooding her.

V wasn’t sure when a good time to see Zane was, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to put it off much longer. Especially not if he was out of the hospital.

“You have to go see him today, V. I won’t be able to convince him otherwise.”

“Fine,” V huffed. “I’ll go see him in a couple of hours.”

V could hear Zoey’s muffled voice as she plainly told Kaleb what they were talking about.

V held her cell phone to her ear with one hand and her face in the other, her elbows propped on her knees as she sat on her couch. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten to this point in her life, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to dig out of the despair that had plagued her ever since that horrific day. The overwhelming sense of responsibility for what happened was almost debilitating in its intensity. All because of that jackass Jake and his big fucking mouth.

V had grown accustomed to being flirted with, she’d even gotten used to the assumptions that most men made because of whom her mother was, but it would appear Zane hadn’t been able to brush off the nasty comments the way V had. Instead, he’d confronted Jake in front of a large group of people. That was the day Jake made the threat, one no one paid much attention to because of his penchant for unsubstantiated threats.

Jake Sanders had grown up with most of them, although he was several years older than V and Zoey. Since he was held back a couple of years in school, they’d actually attended high school at the same time. He hadn’t been well liked back then, and his reputation hadn’t improved significantly over the years either. He was one of those men who liked to stir up trouble, spouting bullshit whenever anyone was close enough to listen. Most people had learned to tune him out, or flat out ignore him, which was what they had done the day he’d threatened Zane.

She remembered the day they’d been at Anderson Croft’s mother’s house, trying to clean out the house after the woman spent years hoarding everything she could get her hands on. That particular day had started out like many others; everyone talking, laughing and actually enjoying what they had set out to accomplish. That was until Jake’s unruly mouth got out of control like it tended to do.

Jake seemingly set his sights on her, and V tried to be as polite as she could be, ignoring his snide comments and even avoiding him for a good part of the day. At one point, he began saying nasty things about V’s mother, long after V had refused his numerous advances.

Although the things Jake said about her mother, then about her, had broken her heart, she’d learned long ago not to let the stones shatter the tough exterior she’d carefully erected.

It had taken her a long time to be able to stand up tall and ignore what others said about her mother, some of them true, others made up over the years through various versions of one story or another. Living in a small town like Coyote Ridge didn’t make it easy to avoid the various rumors and lies, but V had somehow managed to ignore them.

Mostly.

“V?”

Zoey’s voice broke through her thoughts, and she stood up, shaking off the despair that threatened to consume her all over again.

Taking a deep breath, she answered as strongly as she could, “I’m here.”

“There’s one more thing you need to know.”

Shit.

V wasn’t sure she could handle any more grim news, and Zoey’s tone didn’t sound like she was about to tell her that she won the lottery or something equally as exciting.

It seemed as though bad news was all she was getting these days, and it was certainly having an impact on her mood. How was she supposed to fake the happy-go-lucky girl when everything seemed to be crumbling around her?

“What?” she finally asked when she felt she could handle whatever Zoey was going to throw at her.

“Braydon told Zane about Jake harassing you.” Zoey didn’t sound happy, not that V expected her to.

“Dammit.” V knew she shouldn’t have said anything to Zoey.

“I’m sorry, V. I told Kaleb because I thought someone needed to know. This is serious. Look what he did to Zane.”

V didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t like she told Zoey not to say anything, although, looking back on it now, she should have.

“You need to be careful, V. About Jake. He’s crazy.”

The man was crazy all right. And homicidal. What he had done to Zane wasn’t just a warning. He and his friends had beaten Zane so badly, V was certain if she hadn’t been there to alert her neighbors, they probably would have killed him.

“And Zane’s changed,” Zoey continued. “He’s not the same man he was before. His brothers are keeping an eye on him.”

V sighed.

She had purposely stayed away from Zane for the last couple of months, choosing to find out how he was doing by asking Zoey or Beau. Zane’s reputation was more of a fighter than a lover, unlike most of his brothers. He had a short fuse to begin with and a protective streak a mile wide. V hadn’t wanted to provoke the first, and she didn’t deserve the second, so she had avoided him at all costs.

Zane wasn’t a man to mess with. He didn’t have the laidback country boy attitude that Kaleb and Sawyer did, and he wasn’t the fun loving, attention grabbers like the twins, Braydon and Brendon either. Zane Walker was edgy. He was hard, and what made it worse, he was infused with a passion so fierce, those he cared about risked the chance at getting burned from time to time

“I’ll go talk to him.” V could do that much.

With a quick goodbye, she hung up the phone and dropped it onto the couch cushion as she paced back and forth continuously.

Why did Zane have to be so damn stubborn?

Why did she have to care about him so much?

It wasn’t like the past couple of months had been easy on her. She’d stayed away out of necessity, not because she wanted to. There were times it had been so damned difficult to ignore Zane’s phone calls and texts, but she had managed for the most part.

On occasion, she would break down and answer, but that was usually after she’d spent hours thinking about him. Since the day he woke up, V refused to go back to the hospital to see him, mostly because she feared she wouldn’t be able to walk away. V refused to get too attached to a man who would eventually slip right through her fingers. She wasn’t interested in forever, and Zane wasn’t the forever kind of guy.

Before the assault, they had shared a few memorable moments together. Most of them resulted in the two of them being naked, or close to it. Not that V was complaining. Considering she hadn’t had sex with anyone other than Zane in the last two years, she welcomed those memories. Especially now, after three months of celibacy, when she wondered if she ever would have sex again.

V wasn’t naive enough to believe she could keep Zane at arm’s length, no matter how much her heart begged her to. Now that he was out of the hospital, she was going to have to see him. She just hadn’t expected to have to see him so soon.

Moving toward her bedroom, V checked the front door one more time to make sure it was locked. She did that frequently these days. Almost to the point that she was beginning to wonder whether she had OCD. She knew her nerves were primarily the reason for her sudden paranoia, but she still worried.

Once in her bedroom, V shut and locked her bedroom door as well before moving to the closet. She needed to shower before she went to see Zane. With a full day’s worth of dirt and grime caked on her skin, she clearly needed some time to freshen up. Not to mention, maybe an hour or two to steel her resolve.

She was going to see Zane today.

If she wasn’t happy about that, then why did her stomach churn with anticipation?

♀♂

Two hours later, V was standing on Zane’s front porch. For at least five minutes – maybe more, she wasn’t sure – she had been pacing back and forth, trying to convince herself to knock on the door.

She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

When the door slowly opened, V stopped mid step and stared at the man standing casually in the doorway. Her eyes traced every graceful line of his lean, magnificent body as he braced his hands on the top of the doorjamb and leaned into it, his smoke blue eyes fixated on her. The movements made every muscle in his upper body stand out in stark relief.

Oh, damn.

Without a word, V let her eyes trail slowly down his thick, ropy biceps, over those sexy as hell back muscles that flared at his sides – lats, she was pretty sure that’s what they were called – over his pecs, his washboard abs, and that enticing, perfectly sculpted “V” that disappeared into the waistband of jeans that had seen better days. Her eyes even wandered down to see his beautiful feet were bare.

“Were you planning to stay out here all night?”

Yes. Yes, she was.

As though his words were liquid and she’d been dying of thirst, V’s body soaked up every nuance of every syllable; the raspy, low rumble settling some of her tension.

Or, quite possibly, making her aware in other ways.

“I thought about it.”

Zane chuckled, then pinned her with that wicked come-hither grin, followed by a subtle, knowing wink and V inadvertently felt a shift in the air around them. How did he do that? How did he make everything better with just a tilt of his enticing lips?

“Come in.” Raspy and suggestive, his voice soothed her and gave her the courage to accept his offer.

It wasn’t like she had much of a choice. If she didn’t go inside, she would never be able to have a conversation with him because V was barely able to ignore the ardent memory of what they did, right there against the wall, just a few short months ago. That night had been perfect. The first night V agreed to go back to his house, and they hadn’t even made it through the front door before Zane had shoved her against the wall as they devoured one another. Right there, out in the open, Zane had rocked her world.

Putting one foot in front of the other, V managed to get past him and through the front door as his uniquely masculine scent assaulted her senses and nearly had her stumbling in her four inch heels.

V distracted herself by admiring his house and all of the warmth that radiated from it. It was only her second time to be inside, although Zane had been to hers plenty of times during their brief affair a few months before. And just like the last time, V was impressed by the sheer masculinity of her surroundings.

Cowboy? Yes, that was one word that would describe Zane. From the bull rope hanging on the wall to the black and white framed images that told the story of Zane’s infamous, albeit short, bull riding career. He was also one of the only Walker brothers who owned a horse. Travis actually owned several, but Zane had only one. She wondered how the horse was faring after not seeing Zane for so long. The thought brought a familiar sadness to her heart.

There wasn’t a single interior wall in the entire floor plan, only the four that constructed the outer structure of the house and a couple of cedar wrapped beams that supported the vaulted ceilings. Distressed hickory hardwood planked the floor while the walls were a relaxing shade of brown, like sandstone. She presumed that it was Zane’s rustic take on an open, airy loft space. V liked it more than she was willing to admit. There was something about the space that made her feel at home.

Standing just inside the door, V’s gaze instinctively strayed to the bedroom space in the far left corner. A huge, four post, king sized bed made out of intricately formed thick wooden limbs stood beside a wide armoire made of the same distressed wood. The area wasn’t overly large, but V figured it didn’t need to be. Most of what Zane probably did was on the bed anyway.

That particular thought had heat sizzling down low.

The bathroom wasn’t separated by a wall, but rather an opaque pane of glass which offered some privacy and V had some vivid fantasies of what it would be like to have Zane in that monstrous shower. The last time she was here, they had never made it that far. Hell, they hadn’t even made it to the bed. The couch had been sufficient... As well as the front porch and the kitchen counter.