Chapter 21
Wrong Answer
Emma heard the soft click of the cottage door just after nine.
She’d been curled on the couch for the past hour, a book open but unread in her lap, moonlight spilling through the uncurtained windows in silver bands across the floor. She hadn’t turned a single page. Her eyes stared at the same paragraph, unseeing, her mind replaying the afternoon.
The grounds worker. The empty path. Zach’s reticence.
The door closed behind Zach with a muted click. He prowled through the great room like a shadow. Quiet. Controlled. Every step placed with intention. He didn’t look at her.
Emma’s chest tightened; she knew his body language now. Had learned it faster than she wanted to admit. Tight shoulders indicated he’d found something off. Measured steps meant he was thinking three moves ahead. And avoiding eye contact? That meant he wasn’t planning to tell her about it.
Emma shut her book with a soft snap. “Did you find him?”
Zach paused at the kitchen counter, his back to her. For a moment she thought he might actually answer. Then his shoulders shifted—a minuscule adjustment that revealed he was choosing his words.
“We’re still looking into it.”
The evasion landed like a stone in water.
Emma set the book aside and pushed to her feet.
“Looking into what, exactly?” She kept her voice neutral. Curious, not confrontational. The same tone she’d use in an interview when someone started dancing around a gap in their résumé.
Zach opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. He still didn’t turn to face her. “The security breach. Could be someone on staff. Could be external.”
“Could be someone I hired.”
He turned. Those winter blue eyes locked on her, and the weight of his assessment pressed down on her from across the room. Calculating. Measuring threat levels, even with her.
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it’s what you’re thinking.” Emma stepped forward, closing some of the distance between them. “I didn’t recognize the worker on the path—so no, not someone I hired.” Her voice stayed level, deliberate. “I told you, as promised.”
Another step.
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten I am the one who received the threat. I’m the one it’s aimed at.”
She stopped a few feet from him, ticking points off on her fingers. Facts. Evidence. The same competence she brought to every hiring decision, every performance review.
“I know the staff better than anyone because I hired most of them. I know their backgrounds, their references, their tells when they’re lying in interviews.” Her chin lifted. “So, if you found something, I need to know what it is.”
Zach set down the bottle with deliberate care. “You’re safer if you aren’t involved.”
The dismissal was soft. Absolute.
Wrong answer. Heat flared sharp and immediate in Emma’s chest.
“Safer?” The word came out clipped. “I’m already involved, Zach. Someone left a threatening note on my door. That’s not a spectator sport.”
“Which is why—”
“No,” she cut him off. The flicker of surprise that crossed his face was briefly satisfying. “You don’t get to decide what I’m allowed to know. Not about this resort. Not about threats that target me directly.”
Zach’s jaw tightened. “Yes, I do.”
Emma actually rocked back a half-step, his words landing like a blow.
For a second, she stared at him in disbelief. The man she’d teased over coffee. Who didn’t object to the way she rearranged his carefully ordered space. Who today left his updated schedule on the counter because she worried when he disappeared.
This man looked at her like she was nothing but a variable to control.
“Excuse me?” Her voice dropped, quiet and dangerous. “What did you just say?”
“My job is to protect this resort and everyone in it.” His tone didn’t rise, but something deeper shifted beneath it. Tectonic plates grinding. “That means I decide what information gets shared and when. It means I assess threats before they become problems. It means—”
“It means you treat me like a guest who wandered into the wrong building.”
Emma stepped closer again, anger overriding the self-preservation instinct that told her not to challenge a man who could doubtless kill her sixty different ways.
“I’m not a guest here, Zach. This is my resort, too. My staff. My hiring decisions. My career. My life.” Her voice sharpened. “I have a right to know!”
“It’s also my responsibility to keep you alive.”
“I didn’t ask you to!”
The words hung between them, sharp and raw.
Zach moved, but not toward her. He braced both hands on the counter, head bowed. The tension in him was visible now, running through his shoulders, down his spine.
Not hidden, not composed. Strained.
Emma took a breath, steadied herself.
“You think I can’t handle knowing?” She pressed. “You think I’ll panic? Fall apart? Need protection from reality?”
He turned slowly. “I think you can’t handle a trained attacker.”
The words landed colder than anything he’d said so far.
She lifted her chin. “How will ignorance of the threat protect me from him?”
“Emma—”
“You want me to accept you shutting me out? Making decisions on my behalf?” she asked, stepping into his space. “That you get to renege on our deal?” Her gaze held his. “Then tell me how keeping me in the dark makes me safer.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Not anger. Something more complicated, more dangerous.
He moved toward her with that predator’s grace she’d noticed the first day they met. Controlled. Purposeful. He stopped close enough that she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact.
“You want a demonstration?” His voice was toneless. Weighted. Warning bells rang in the back of her mind.
Emma didn’t back down. “Yes.”
Zach’s hand moved—not fast, not aggressive, just precise. His fingers closed around her wrist. Firm. Inescapable.
“What happens,” he said quietly, “if someone grabs you like this?”
Her pulse jumped under his fingers. She knew he felt it.
“I—”
He spun her, moving her arm behind her back in one smooth motion, measured and careful but undeniable. Her body flush against his chest, breath catching as she lost her balance. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t break his hold.
“Your center’s gone,” he said near her ear. “You’re off balance. You can’t generate force. You have no leverage.”
His voice was calm. Instructional. That made it worse.
“If I were an attacker, you’d be—”
Emma dropped. She shifted her weight hard, letting gravity take her instead of fighting it. Zach’s grip loosened for a fraction of a second. She twisted, used his own hold against him—and broke free. For one beautiful moment, she was clear. Moving. Winning.
Then Zach moved. Emma’s brain couldn’t process the speed. One second she was pivoting. The next—her back hit the wall.
Zach was there. Everywhere. His arms braced on either side of her head. Her wrists pinned above her. His body blocked every option. No space. No leverage. No escape.
He wasn’t composed now. Not fully.
His chest rose and fell against hers, breath uneven. His eyes, molten silver-blue, focused on her. No longer detached.
“That,” he growled, “is what real training looks like. That’s what we’re up against.”
Emma’s heart hammered. From adrenaline. From anger. From the electric current running beneath her skin everywhere he wasn’t quite touching her.
“You don’t trust me,” she said. The accusation came out quieter than intended. More vulnerable. Honest.
Zach’s expression shifted. For a moment the ice cracked, and something raw underneath showed through.
“I trust you more than I should,” he said, the words tight, like they cost him something. “But this isn’t about trust, Emma. It’s about capability. Training. Experience you can’t improvise under pressure.”
“Then give me the information I need,” she said, holding his gaze, refusing to back down, “and let me make my own decisions about risk.”
Her voice steadied.
“Stop protecting me from the truth and start trusting me to handle it. I can’t just blindly turn my life, my autonomy, over to you.”
His jaw flexed. Tension vibrated through him, a war waged behind his eyes. Duty versus something else. Something newer. More dangerous.
“You’re impossible,” he bit out.
“You’re infuriating.”
Neither of them moved. She couldn’t; Zach still had her pinned to the wall by his body weight, his hands manacling her wrists above her head.
The anger was still there, crackling between them, but it was morphing into something else. Something that made her skin too tight and her breath come too fast.
Emma became acutely aware of everything.
The heat of his body.
The pressure of his hands.
That he hadn’t released her.
That he didn’t seem to want to.
Decision sparked before logic caught up.
She surged forward, the only way she could.
She kissed him.