Zane: The Wild One. BRONWYN JAMESON
the same time, and I don’t mind having him.”
In fact, she loved having Joshua stay, loved indulging him with the simple things he missed out on, such as homemade swings and sandpits, and playing with a dog. Staying here was good for him. It wasn’t farming out.
Feeling unduly aggrieved, she put her whole shoulder behind the next throw, then watched Mac disappear around the side of the house in frantic pursuit.
“Where is he getting out? Your fences look good.”
“Around the front. It’s simply not high enough.”
With one of those noncommittal grunts peculiar to men, he ambled over to the side fence, studied it this way and that, then started pacing the distance between fence and house.
“It’s three point six meters each side,” she said, way too snappily. “And I know that by fencing it off I can enclose the backyard to keep him in. I’m saving to do it.”
“What about the dog’s owner? Shouldn’t he be the one saving?”
“I don’t think that’s any concern of yours.”
“You’re right.” He gave her a hard, sidelong look. “And it shouldn’t be any concern of yours, either.”
“It’s my fence and my house, so that makes it my concern.”
End of debate. End of yard tour. End of short nerve-racking interlude with Zane O’Sullivan.
She whistled to Mac, then started for the front yard.
“Hang on a second.”
He put out his arm, presumably to prevent her passing, and she walked right into it, waist height. For the life of her, she couldn’t back away. She couldn’t move. All she could think was His arm, hard against my body.
The thought caused her mouth to turn dry. Or perhaps that was because he was standing so close and making no attempt to increase the distance. Her senses were flooded with his proximity, with the absolute stillness of their bodies. It seemed as if neither of them had taken a breath in a very long while.
Then, just when she thought she might explode from the pressure, the expectancy, the not knowing what would come next or what she wanted to come next, he moved his arm…not abruptly, but in a long, slow, brushing caress across her abdomen.
She knew the instant he detected the belly button ring. She could tell by the jerk of his head, by his swift intake of breath, by the sudden tension that stiffened his whole body.
And by the look of astonishment on his face.
In another place and time that look might have been comical, but not here and now. For he still stood way too close—so close she could feel the heat emanating from his big body, and where he had touched her, oh, there was more than heat.
There was fire.
She closed her eyes, imagined his broad, long-fingered hand spread across the bare skin of her belly, swore she could feel the touch of his thumb as it circled the delicate piece of jewelry, as it slid slowly lower. A responsive flush seemed to light her skin from the inside out.
“You have a piercing?”
Julia blinked her way out of the sensual heat haze and felt his gaze skim in a quicksilver motion from her face to her belly. She swallowed, moistened her arid mouth, although she hadn’t a clue what to say other than a simple, “Yes.”
Should she explain how she’d felt the day after she’d signed her divorce papers? Could she explain the surge of restlessness, of recklessness, of unreality? How she had decided that was the day to do something un-Julia-like, something to mark the start of her new life. Something like getting a tattoo.
Except once she walked through the door of Skin Pix, the old Julia wouldn’t stay silent. She didn’t want the statement of a multihued butterfly stamped into her skin. She wanted something a little less obvious.
And so she had walked out the door with a silver ring in her navel.
Of course the new Julia wasn’t any different to the old one. She could never bring herself to wear clothes that bared her midriff and showed off the adornment, just as she could never explain to anyone else why she’d had it done, or why she kept wearing the unseen ring.
“It’s just something I did on a whim.” She shrugged self-consciously. “I had better get moving. Make yourself at home—Kree shouldn’t be long.”
“I’m not here to see Kree.”
He was still standing too close, still blocking her path, still making her feel incredibly hot and bothered. Seeking relief, she looked down…just as he slid a hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Oh, dear Lord, she should not be looking there.
“I brought your car.”
Her gaze sped guiltily back to where a set of car keys now dangled from his fingers. That was what she should have been noticing in the front of his jeans, instead of other, um, things.
“I guess that means I owe you two drinks,” she said.
His pause was infinitesimal, just long enough for Julia to notice how the levity in her tone had done nothing to ease the heavily charged atmosphere. Then, in a slow, measured tone, he said, “I thought we agreed that wasn’t a good idea.”
“You said it wasn’t a good idea.”
“You had a man waiting at your gate.”
“I didn’t invite him.” Her gaze held his without wavering—an amazing feat, considering the anticipatory quiver running from her toes to the tips of her ears. “And when he rang today and asked me out to dinner, I declined.”
“So?”
Julia moistened her mouth, felt the lick of his gaze follow the movement. “So what if I want to buy you those drinks?”
“You know where to find me.”
“The Lion?”
“Back bar.” One corner of his mouth quirked. “But we both know Julia Goodwin wouldn’t be seen dead in a dive like that.”
And before she could even think of a reply, let alone voice it, he pressed the car keys into her hand and sauntered off.
Three
Julia wished she had been the one to deliver the clever exit line and saunter off. She wished he had been the one left standing nonplussed in her garden. Except that scenario wasn’t ever likely to happen, seeing as it completely contravened nature. Mitch had snaffled all the family genes for saber-sharp one-liners, and Chantal had garnered most of the clever DNA.
Besides, walking away would have been impolite, and Julia was always polite.
That didn’t stop her wishing…or trying to devise the perfect comeback. By the time she finished walking Mac, she had declared the latter an impossibility. How could she come up with anything sassy enough to top his reaction to her piercing?
She pictured him standing in the dappled garden light, those silvery eyes dazed, his expression dumbfounded, and her body almost buzzed with the unfamiliar blend of power and pleasure. Because nice, polite Julia Goodwin had shocked—nay, stunned—the baddest boy ever to swagger through the corridors of Plenty High. It was an intoxicating notion, and it made her feel strong in the most female of ways.
Strong enough to walk into the Lion, to sit down beside him, to order those drinks? Probably not. But that didn’t stop her enjoying the fantasy. Not even the sight of Mrs. Hertzig, patiently waiting to ambush the next passerby, could dampen the moment.
“Hello, dear. Been out walking the dog, I see.”
Julia’s fantasy dissolved as her elderly neighbour leaned over her front fence, eager to natter.
“We’ve been all the way out to Maisie’s and back,” Julia