Chapter 13
Thirteen
As soon as the contracts were signed and a schedule of periodic payments had been agreed upon, a large number of decisions had to be made quickly. Zoe had instantly approved of the cream-colored stock cabinetry and the maple for the butcher-block countertops. However, she still had to choose hardware such as knobs, pulls, and plumbing fixtures, as well as tile, carpet, appliances, and lighting.
“This is where it helps to have a limited budget,” Alex had told Zoe. “Some of the decisions are going to make themselves when you see the prices.” They had agreed to keep to the bungalow style of the house as much as possible, with simple wainscoting, rich wood, and subtle tones with the occasional bright splash of accent color.
Justine had no interest in color palettes or browsing among tile samples, which meant that Zoe would choose the decorating and finishes. “Besides,” Justine had said to Zoe, “you’re the one who’s going to live there, so you decide how it should look.”
“What if you end up not liking it?”
“I like everything,” Justine said cheerfully. “Go for it.”
That was fine with Zoe, who liked going to builders’ supply stores and looking through hardware catalogs. And she wanted the opportunity to spend more time with Alex. No matter how much she learned about him, he remained a fascinating stranger. He was not a charmer like his brother Sam, nor did he try to be. There was something unreachable about him, an intransigent remoteness. But somehow that only made him sexier.
Although Zoe had no doubt that Alex drank too much—he certainly hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise—so far he had lived up to his reputation for being reliable. Alex arrived early whenever they had agreed to meet. He liked schedules and lists, and he used more sticky notes than anyone Zoe had ever met. She was sure he had to buy them in bulk. He put them on walls and windows, attached them to cables and flooring samples and catalogs, used them as business cards, appointment reminders, and shopping lists. When Zoe didn’t know the location of a place he had mentioned, he drew a little map and stuck it on the side of her bag. When they went to an appliance store, he stuck blue squares on all the models of refrigerators, dishwashers, and ovens that were the right dimensions for the kitchen.
“You’re wasting trees,” Zoe told him at one point. “Have you ever thought of making notes on your phone, or getting a digital tablet?”
“Post-its are faster.”
“What about writing a list on one big piece of paper?”
“I do that sometimes,” he said. “On jumbo Post-its.”
Maybe it was because he was so controlled that the discovery of a quirk was something of a relief to Zoe. She would have liked to learn more about him, to find out his weaknesses. To find out if she could possibly be one of them.
There were, however, no chinks in the armor. Alex had taken to treating her with a calculated politeness that made her wonder if the scene in the kitchen at Artist’s Point had been a dream. He asked Zoe plenty of questions about her family and her grandmother. He’d even asked about Grandpa Gus, whom she’d never met and knew next to nothing about, other than he’d been a pilot in the war and afterward had worked as an engineer at Boeing. Eventually he’d died of lung cancer long before Zoe was born.
“So he was a smoker,” Alex had said in a faintly censorious tone.
“I think everyone was back then,” Zoe replied ruefully. “Upsie told me that my grandfather’s doctor said that smoking was probably good for his nervous condition.”
Alex had taken particular interest in that. “Nervous condition?”
“PTSD. Back then they called it ‘shell shock.’ I think Grandpa Gus had it pretty bad. His plane was shot down over the Burmese jungle behind Japanese lines. He had to hide for a couple of days, alone and wounded, before he could be rescued.”
After telling Alex about her family’s past, Zoe expected him to do the same. But when she tried to find out more about him, asking about his divorce, or his brothers, or even something like why he’d become a contractor, he turned quiet and standoffish. It was maddening. The only way she knew to handle his evasiveness was to be patient and encouraging, and hope that in time he might open up to her.
Zoe had an innate compulsion to take care of people. It must have been in the Hoffman blood, because Justine had it, too. They both loved to welcome travel-weary or burned-out guests at the inn, most of whom were battling the endless variety of troubles that came along with being human. It was gratifying to be able to offer them a quiet room with a comfortable bed, and a good breakfast in the morning. Although none of that could fix anyone’s problems, it was an escape.
“Do you ever get tired of this?” Justine had asked one day, putting away clean dishes while Zoe made cookies. “All this baking and cooking and stuff.”
“No.” Zoe rolled out cookie dough into a perfectly even sheet. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I’m just trying to figure out what you like about it. You know how I feel about cooking. If it wasn’t for the microwave, I’d have starved long before you ever started working here.”
Zoe had grinned. “I’ve wondered the same thing about all your jogging and bike-riding. Exercise is the most boring thing in the world to me.”
“Being outside in nature is different every day. The weather, the scenery, the seasons… it’s always changing. Whereas with baking… I’ve seen you make cookies about a hundred times. It’s not like you get a lot of excitement.”
“I do, too. When I need excitement, I change the shape of the cookies.”
Justine had grinned.
Zoe picked out cookie cutters shaped like flowers, ladybugs, and butterflies. “I love doing this. It reminds me of the time early in my life when most of my problems could be solved by a cookie.”
“I’m still at that time in my life. I have no problems. No real problems, that is. And that’s the key to happiness—knowing how good you’ve got it while you’ve still got it.”
“I could be happier,” Zoe had said reflectively.
“How?”
“I’d like to have someone special. I’d like to know what it’s like to really fall in love.”
“No you don’t. Being single is the best. You’re independent. You can go on adventures with no one to hold you back. You can do whatever you want. Enjoy your freedom, Zo—it’s a beautiful word.”
“I do enjoy it, a lot of the time. But sometimes freedom seems like a word for not having anyone to snuggle with on Friday night.”
“You don’t have to be in love to snuggle with someone.”
“It doesn’t feel the same to snuggle with someone you don’t love.”
Justine grinned. “Are we using ‘snuggle’ as a metaphor? Because it reminds me of the obituary I read about Ann Landers, where it said one of her most popular columns ever was a poll asking if women would choose cuddling or sex. Something like three quarters of her readers said cuddling.” She made a face.
“You would choose sex,” Zoe said rather than asked.
“Of course. Cuddling is fine for about thirty seconds, but then it’s irritating.”
“Physically irritating? Emotionally irritating?”
“Every kind of irritating. And if you cuddle with a guy too often, it encourages him to think you’re having a relationship, and it gets all meaningful.”
“What’s wrong with meaningful?”
“Meaningful is a synonym for serious. And serious is the opposite of fun. And my mother told me that life should always be fun.”
Although Zoe hadn’t seen Justine’s mother, Aunt Marigold, for years, she remembered how beautiful and eccentric she had been. Marigold had raised her only child as a free spirit, just as she had been. Sometimes she had taken Justine to attend festivals with odd names, such as the Beltane Bash or the Old Earth Gather. She had made food Zoe had never heard of before, things like Covenstead Bread with honey and citron, and Groundhog Day cake, and Half Moon cauliflower. After visiting distant relatives, Justine had returned with stories of participating in drumming circles and “drawing down the moon” rituals held in the forest at midnight.
Zoe had often wondered why Marigold never visited the inn, and why she and Justine seemed virtually estranged. When she had tried to ask, Justine had flatly refused to discuss the subject.
“Most parents,” Zoe ventured, “tell their children that life shouldn’t always be fun. Are you sure that wasn’t what she said?”
“No, I’m sure it’s supposed to be fun. That’s why the inn is perfect for me—I like to meet someone new, get to know them superficially, and send them on their way. A continuous supply of short-term friendships.”
Unlike Justine, Zoe wanted permanence in her life. She had liked the stability of marriage, and the companionship, and she hoped to marry again someday. However, the next time she would have to choose very carefully. Even though the divorce with Chris had been cordial, she never wanted to go through something like that again.
As for Alex Nolan, he wasn’t the kind of man who would fit in with her plans. Zoe decided that she would focus on cultivating a friendship with him, nothing more. She knew herself well enough to be certain that she was not a short-term-affair kind of person. And she would have to take Alex at his word, when he claimed that she wouldn’t be able to handle him as a lover. “I have to have all the control,” he’d told her in that raw-velvet voice, and, “I’m not nice.” Which had been intended to warn her away, but at the same time had aroused a wild curiosity about what he’d meant.
***
Alex was relieved to begin the physical work of the remodel, starting with the teardown of the kitchen wall. He and two guys from his crew, Gavin and Isaac, prepared the area with plastic and removed fixtures and outlets. Gavin, a trade-level carpenter, and Isaac, who was in the process of getting LEED certified for green construction jobs, were both serious about their work. Alex could trust them to show up on time and get the job done as safely and efficiently as possible. Wearing goggles and dust masks, the three of them took the wall down to the studs with pry bars. They tore out chunks of plaster, occasionally reaching for a reciprocal saw to cut through stubborn nails.
The hard physical work felt good to Alex, helping him expend some of the pent-up frustration that had accumulated during the past few days with Zoe. She had qualities that annoyed the hell out of him. She was unreasonably perky early in the morning, and she always seemed to want to feed him. She read cookbooks as if they were novels, and she recounted restaurant menus in astonishing detail, seeming to expect he would find the subject as fascinating as she did. Alex had never been fond of people who looked on the bright side of life, and Zoe had made it into an art form. She neglected to lock doors. She trusted salespeople. She started a conversation with the appliance dealer by telling him exactly how much she had to spend.
Everywhere Alex went with Zoe, whether it was the hardware store or the flooring company or a sandwich shop to get a couple of cold drinks, men checked her out. Some of them tried to be discreet, but some made no attempt to hide their fascination with her jaw-dropping beauty and her grade-A rack. The fact was, Zoe was eye candy, and short of disfiguring herself there was nothing she could do about it. At the sandwich shop, a pack of four or five guys leered until Alex had moved in front of Zoe and sent them a look of imminent death. They had all backed off. He’d done the same thing at other times, in other places, silently warning them away even though he had no right. She didn’t belong to him. But he kept watch over her anyway.
It would be a full-time job to fend off the poachers. Until he’d met Zoe, Alex would have scoffed at the idea that beauty could be a problem for someone. But it would be difficult for any woman to be subjected to that kind of relentless attention. It explained the reason for Zoe’s innate shyness—the wonder was that she ever dared to go out at all.
Now that the work on the Dream Lake cottage had started, Alex wouldn’t have to see Zoe for at least a month, except in passing. It would be a relief, he thought. He would get his head clear.
The first payment was due tomorrow. Justine had offered to drop it in the mail, but Alex had asked to pick it up at the inn in the morning. He needed to take it directly to the bank. He’d laid out his own money for the initial supplies and expenses, and since the divorce there wasn’t a hell of a lot of surplus cash in the coffers.
After working late on the cottage with Gavin and Isaac, Alex went home. He was so tired from the day’s exertions that he didn’t bother scrounging for dinner. He didn’t even reach for the bottle of booze, only took a shower and went to bed.
When the alarm went off at six-thirty, Alex felt like hell. Maybe he was coming down with something. His mouth was parched, and his head ached ferociously, and the effort to lift a toothbrush felt like bench-pressing a kettlebell. After a long shower, he dressed in jeans and a tee with a flannel shirt over it, but he was still cold and shaking. Filling a plastic cup with water from the sink, he drank until a wave of nausea forced him to stop.
Sitting on the edge of the tub, he struggled to keep the water down, and wondered wretchedly what was wrong with him. Gradually he became aware of the ghost standing at the bathroom doorway.
“Personal space,” Alex reminded him. “Get out.”
The ghost didn’t move. “You didn’t have anything to drink last night.”
“So?”
“So you’re in withdrawal.”
Alex looked at him dumbly.
“Hands aren’t steady, right?” the ghost continued. “Those are the DTs.”
“I’ll be fine after I have some coffee.”
“You should probably have a shot of booze. Guy who drinks as much as you, it’s better to wean off slowly rather than go cold turkey.”
Alex was swamped with incredulous outrage. The ghost was wildly overstating the case. He drank a lot, but he knew what he could tolerate. Only drunks got the DTs, like the homeless guys in alleys or the barflies who drank the nights away. Or his father, who’d died of a heart attack while recreational diving at a tourist resort in Mexico. After a lifetime of alcohol abuse, Alan Nolan’s coronary arteries had been so blocked that, according to the doctors, he would have needed a quintuple bypass surgery had he lived.
“I don’t need to wean off anything,” Alex said.
It would have been easier to take if the ghost had been mocking or superior, or even apologetic. But the way he looked at Alex, with a sort of gravity touched with pity, was too offensive to bear.
“You might want to take the day off and rest,” the ghost said. “Because you’re not going to get much work done.”
Glaring at him, Alex lurched to his feet. Unfortunately the motion was too much for his outraged digestive system, and he was forced to lean over the toilet, retching.
After a long time he made it to his feet again, rinsed his mouth and splashed his face with cold water. Looking into the mirror, he saw a pale, haggard complexion and puffy eyes. He recoiled in horror, having seen his father in this shape about a thousand times while growing up.
Gripping the sides of the sink, he forced himself to raise his head and stare in the mirror again.
This wasn’t who he wanted to be. But it was what he’d become, what he’d made of himself.
Had there been any tears in him, he would have wept.
“Alex,” came the quiet voice from the doorway. “You’re not afraid of work. You’re used to tearing things down. Rebuilding.”
Even as sick as Alex was, the metaphor didn’t escape him. “Houses aren’t people.”
“Everyone’s got something that needs fixing.” The ghost paused. “In your case, it happens to be your liver.”
Alex struggled to strip off his shirts, having sweated through both of them. “Please,” he managed to say. “If there is any mercy in you… don’t talk.”
The ghost obliged, retreating.
By the time Alex had gotten dressed again, the shaking had subsided, but the clammy hot-and-cold feeling kept crawling over him. His nerves were strung tight. The difficulty in finding the work boots he wanted, the same ones he’d worn the previous day, sent him into a full-blown fury. As soon as he laid his hands on the boots, he threw one of them at the wall so hard that it ruined the paint and left a dent in the Sheetrock.
“Alex.” The ghost reappeared. “You’re acting crazy.”
He hurled the other boot, which shot through the ghost’s midsection and left another dent in the wall.
“Feel better now?” the ghost asked.
Ignoring him, Alex retrieved the boots and jammed them on. He tried to think above the violent pounding of his head. He had to get the check from Justine and take it to the bank.
“Don’t go to Artist’s Point,” he heard the ghost say urgently. “Please. You’re in no shape. You don’t want anyone to see you like this.”
“By ‘anyone’ you mean Zoe,” Alex said.
“Yes. You’ll upset her.”
Alex gritted his teeth. “I don’t give a damn.” Grabbing his car keys, wallet, and heavy black sunglasses, he went to his truck and pulled it out of the garage. As soon as he drove onto the main road, the sunlight seemed to split his skull open with the precision of surgical instruments. He groaned and swerved, looking for a place to pull over in case he needed to puke.
“You’re driving like you’re in a video game,” the ghost said.
“What do you care?” Alex snapped.
“I care because I don’t want you to kill anyone. Including yourself.”
By the time they had arrived at Artist’s Point, Alex had sweated through another T-shirt, and he was trembling with what felt like fever chills.
“For pity’s sake,” the ghost said, “don’t go through the front entrance. You’ll scare the guests.”
Much as Alex would have loved to defy him, the ghost had a point. Surly and exhausted from the effort of driving, he pulled around to the back of the inn and parked near the kitchen entrance. The smell of food drifted outside, causing the hot sting of nausea in his throat. As his sunglasses slipped down his nose on a fresh bloom of sweat, Alex ripped them off and flung them across the gravel with a curse.
“Get control of yourself,” he heard the ghost say tersely.
“Fuck off.”
A retractable screen door covered the kitchen’s back entrance. Through the fine solar mesh, Alex saw that Zoe was alone in the kitchen, making breakfast. Pots simmered on the stove, and something was baking in the oven. The smell of browning butter and cheese nearly made Alex recoil.
He tapped on the doorjamb, and Zoe looked up from a cutting board piled high with hulled strawberries. She was dressed in a short pink skirt and flat sandals, and a white ruffly top, and an apron tied at the waist. Her legs were toned and gleaming, calf muscles neatly rounded. The blond curls had been drawn up to the top of her head, a few escaping to dangle against her cheeks and neck.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile. “Come in. How are you?”
Alex avoided her gaze as he entered the kitchen. “I’ve been better.”
“Would you like some—”
“I’m here for the check,” he said curtly.
“Okay.” Although this was certainly not the first time he’d ever been brusque with her, Zoe gave him a questioning glance.
“The first payment’s due,” Alex said.
“Yes, I remember. Justine handles the office work, so she’ll write the check for you. I’m not sure which account to write it from.”
“Fine. Where is she?”
“She just went out for an errand. She’ll be back in five or ten minutes. The big coffee machine is broken, so she’s picking up some carafes of breakfast blend from a local place.” A timer went off, and Zoe went to take a dish out of the oven. “If you want to wait for her,” she said over her shoulder, “I’ll pour some coffee and you can—”
“I don’t want to wait.” He needed the check. He needed to leave. The heat and light of the kitchen were killing him, and yet he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering like one of those plastic windup skulls from a joke shop. “She knew the check was due today. I texted her.”
Zoe set the casserole dish on a pair of trivets. Her smile had vanished, and her voice was even softer than usual as she replied. “I don’t think she knew you would be here this early.”
“When the hell else would I come? I’m going to be working on the cottage all day.” The anger rushed through him in stronger and stronger waves, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
“What if I run it out to you after breakfast? I’ll drive out to the cottage, and—”
“I don’t want to be interrupted at work.”
“Justine will be here soon.” Zoe went to pour some coffee into a white porcelain cup. “You… don’t seem well.”
“Bad sleep.” Alex went to the counter and tugged at the roll of paper towels. The roll spun out. He let out a few foul curses as a stream of paper toweling shot from the dispenser.
“It’s all right.” Zoe came to him instantly. “I’ll fix it. Go sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” He took a paper towel and blotted his sweating face, while Zoe deftly rerolled the long white cylinder. Although he tried to keep his mouth shut, words tumbled out, the syllables shredded like they’d been pulled across razor blades. He was jittery and furious, wanting to throw something, kick something. “Is this how you two run a business? Agree to something, and then no follow-through? We’re going to rewrite the payment schedule. My time may not be important to you, but I have to count on things being done when they’re supposed to be done. I’ve got to get to work. My guys are probably already there.”
“I’m sorry.” Zoe set a cup of coffee on the counter beside him. “Your time is important to me. Next time I’ll make certain the check is waiting for you first thing in the morning.”
Alex hated the way she talked to him, as if she were humoring a lunatic or soothing a barking dog. But it worked anyway. He felt the anger drain so abruptly that he was dizzy. And he was so tired that he could barely stay on his feet. Jesus. There was something really wrong with him.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he managed to say.
“Have this first.” Zoe nudged the cup toward him.
Alex looked down at the coffee. She had put cream in it. He always drank his coffee black. But he found himself reaching for the cup, taking it with both hands. To his stunned mortification, the cup shook violently, liquid sloshing over the edge.
Zoe was staring at him. He wanted to swear at her, turn away, but her gaze held his and wouldn’t let go. Those round blue eyes saw too much, things he had spent a lifetime concealing. She couldn’t help but see how close he was to crumbling. But there was no judgment in her expression. Only kindness. Compassion.
He had a sudden urge to drop to his knees and rest his head against her in exhausted supplication. Somehow he kept standing, swaying on stiff legs.
Carefully Zoe laid her hands over his, so they were both holding the cup. Even though her hands were half the size of his, her grip was surprisingly firm, subduing the shaking. “Here,” she whispered.
The cup lifted to his mouth. Her hands kept his steady. He took a swallow. The liquid was hot and smooth, soothing his sandpaper throat, melting through the chill of his insides. It was slightly sweet, and the touch of cream had softened the bitterness, and it was so unexpectedly good that he found himself desperately gulping the rest. His veins hummed with a gratitude that bordered on worship.
Zoe’s hands eased from his. “More?”
He nodded with a hoarse, wordless murmur.
She made another cup, stirring cream and sugar into it, while sunlight broke through the shuttered window and embossed her hair with bright ribbons. It occurred to him that she was making breakfast for a crowd of paying guests. There were still things cooking on the stove, in the oven. And not only had he interrupted her work, he had stood there and ranted about his own schedule like it was so much more important than hers.
“You’re busy,” he muttered in the prelude to an apology. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Everything’s fine.” Her voice was gentle. She set the cup of coffee at the table, and pulled a chair back. Clearly she intended for him to sit for this one.
He cast a wary glance around the kitchen, wondering what the ghost would make of this, but thankfully he was nowhere to be seen. Alex went to the table and sat. He drank the coffee slowly, able to do it on his own as long as he was careful.
Zoe worked at the counter. The clink of utensils, the sounds of pots and plates being deftly wielded, was oddly relaxing. He could sit here and no one was going to bother him. Closing his eyes, he let himself sink into the feeling of temporary peace. Of sanctuary.
“Another?” he heard her ask.
He nodded.
“First try some of this.” She set a plate of food in front of him. As she leaned closer, he could smell her skin, fresh and sweet, like she had been steeped in sugared tea.
“I don’t think I can—”
“Just try.” She put flatware on the table and went back to the stove.
The fork was as heavy as a lead mallet. Alex looked at the plate. It contained a neat portion of something with layers of bread, the top lightly puffy and golden-brown. “What is it?”
“A breakfast strata.”
As Alex took a cautious bite, he discovered that the whole of it was infused with a mild custardy lightness. It was like a quiche but infinitely more delicate, the texture perfect for delivering the ripe hint of tomato and mild cheese. The flavor of basil came through last, hitting his tongue with a clean, pungent note.
“Do you like it?” he heard Zoe ask. He couldn’t even reply. Hunger had come raging, and he had given over entirely to the single-minded act of eating.
Zoe brought a glass of cold water. When the plate was empty, Alex set down his fork, and drank the water, and silently evaluated his physical condition. The change was nothing short of miraculous. His headache was fading, and the tremors were gone. He was sated with taste and warmth… it was like being drunk on food.
“What was in that?” he asked, his voice distant as if he were speaking from a dream.
Zoe had replenished his coffee cup. She leaned her hip against the table as she faced him. Her cheeks were satiny from the heat of the stove. “French bread I made myself. Heirloom tomatoes I bought at the farmer’s market. The cheese was made on Lopez Island, and the eggs were laid this morning from wyandotte hens. The basil was grown in the herb garden out back. Would you like another helping?”
Alex could have eaten an entire pan of it. But he shook his head, deciding it was better not to push his luck. “I should leave some for your guests.”
“There’s more than enough.”
“I’m fine.” After taking a swallow of coffee, he looked intently at her. “I wouldn’t have thought—” He broke off, not able to describe what had just happened to him.
Zoe seemed to understand. A faint smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Sometimes,” she said, “my cooking has a kind of… effect… on people.”
The back of his neck prickled, not unpleasantly. “What kind of effect?”
“I don’t let myself think about it too much. I don’t want to ruin it. But sometimes it seems to make people feel better in a sort of… magical way.” Her smile turned rueful at the edges. “I’m sure you don’t believe in things like that.”
“I’m surprisingly open-minded,” Alex said, conscious of the ghost wandering back into the kitchen.
“Well, look at you.” The ghost sounded relieved. “You’re not going to keel over and die.”
Zoe’s attention was diverted as her cat meowed at the back door, its furry bulk visible through the screen. As soon as she let Byron inside, he sat and looked at her, flicking his tail impatiently.
“Poor little fluff-monster,” Zoe cooed, putting a spoonful of something in a dish, setting it on the floor.
The cat gobbled up the treat ferociously, looking like the kind of pet that would eat its owner.
“Isn’t it against the health code to let him in here?” Alex asked.
“Byron’s not allowed near the dining or food-prep areas. And he only visits the kitchen for a few minutes a day. Most of the time he sleeps on the porch or in the back cottage.” She came to collect Alex’s plate. The front of the apron gaped to reveal just enough lush cleavage to make him light-headed. He dragged his gaze up to Zoe’s face.
“You get grumpy,” she said gently, “after you’ve had too much to drink.”
“No,” Alex said, “I get grumpy when I’ve stopped.”
She looked at him closely. “You mean for good?”
Alex gave her an abbreviated nod. There were countless reasons for him to quit, but the one that mattered most was that he didn’t want to need anything that much. He’d been caught off guard by the realization of how dependent he’d become on booze. It had been easy to delude himself into thinking it wasn’t a problem because he wasn’t disheveled and homeless, had never been arrested. He was still functional. But after what had happened that morning, he couldn’t deny that he had a problem.
It was one thing to be a heavy drinker. It was another to become a full-blown alcoholic.
Zoe went to take his dishes to the sink. “From what I’ve heard,” she said over her shoulder, “it’s not an easy habit to break.”
“I’m about to find out.” Alex stood from the table. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning for the check.”
“Come early,” Zoe said without hesitation. “I’m making oatmeal.”
Their gazes met across the room.
“I don’t like oatmeal,” Alex said.
“You’ll like mine.”
Alex couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away. She was so soft-looking, so radiant, and he let himself think, just for a moment, about the way she would feel under him. The magnitude of his attraction to her was nearly overwhelming. He wanted things from her that he’d never wanted from anyone, things beyond sex, and none of it was possible. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff, fighting not to fall while the wind pushed at his back.
As Zoe returned his stare, rampant color washed over her face, contrasting with the brilliant pale gold of her hair. “What is your favorite food?” she asked, as if the question were profoundly intimate.
“I don’t have a favorite food.”
“Everyone has a favorite.”
“I don’t.”
“There must be some—” A timer interrupted her. “Seven-thirty,” she said. “I have to pour coffee for the first guests. Don’t go, I’ll be right back.”
When Zoe returned, however, Alex was gone. A sticky note had been applied to the backsplash above the sink, with a word written in black ink:
THANKS
Zoe took the note in her hand, drawing her thumb over the surface. A sweet, terrible ache filled her chest.
Sometimes, she thought, you could rescue a person from trouble. But some kinds of trouble, a person had to rescue himself from.
All she could do for Alex was hope.