and cautiously turned around. Reginald crouched over the car door, checking for scratches. Zan packed his tools up and looked over at her. “Your date’s a big loser, sweetheart,” he said. “Get in. I’ll take you home.”
Reginald nodded, as if his worst suspicions had been confirmed. “Just as I thought. Classic case of sexual addiction. How sad.”
Abby looked at Reginald’s beady, avid eyes. He licked his lips. They gleamed, red and moist, between his mustache and beard.
She looked at Zan, waiting patiently beside his van, his face calm and watchful. His long hair blew across his face in the breeze. He opened the passenger side and beckoned her in, inclining his head.
The gesture was so graceful and courtly. As if she were a queen, being handed into her carriage.
Reginald tsk-tsked. “You’ll never overcome your shadowed past if you continue to yield to your darker impulses,” he admonished.
Zan’s lips twitched. Abby hurried to the van and clambered in.
Chapter
5
Abby crossed, uncrossed, recrossed her legs. Clasped her hands, unclasped them, wrapped her arms across her chest, sat on them.
“Put your seat belt on, please.”
Zan’s voice was gentle, but she jerked three inches up off the seat.
He gave her a cautious, sideways peek. “What are you so uptight about? Is it your shadowed past? Our disgusting and sordid liaison?”
“Don’t start,” she warned. “Don’t tease me. I’m too wound up.”
“Look, if you feel the urge to yield to your darker impulses, give me fair warning so I can pull over in time, OK?”
“Very funny,” she snapped. She wrestled with the seat belt. “That pompous creep. Do you know what he called me?” She swiveled to face him. “A nexus of chaos and negativity!”
Zan made a low choking sound. “Come again?”
“He thinks it was my fault that he locked his keys in his car! He thinks I literally jinxed him! Rat-faced, butthead bastard!”
“Wow. That’s, ah, awful,” Zan said. “So rude. Just horrible.”
“Don’t make fun of me, if you value your life,” she warned him.
“God, no,” he said hastily. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Just because my love life is a blasted wasteland doesn’t mean that I’m a curse to everyone I get near.” She tried to control the quaver in her voice. She didn’t want to look the part of a weepy, crazy girl whose life was one chaotic, unpredictable disaster after another.
She didn’t recognize the street they were driving on, which gave her a fresh jolt of adrenaline. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” he said calmly.
“I don’t know this way home!” Her voice vibrated with tension.
“I’m taking the scenic route. Lookout Drive, and we can look at the bay. The moon might even be peeking through the clouds. You can tell me about your monster date. Get it all off your chest.” He gave her an inscrutable glance. “After all, it’s not every day a person gets accused of being a nexus of chaos and negativity.”
Her giggle was so waterlogged, it was more of a gurgle.
“I mean, that’s not just an insult,” he continued. “That’s a mega-galactic insult. You should have told me back at the restaurant. I would have pounded that rat-faced butthead for you before we left.”
“Thanks, but once was enough. I don’t really approve of indiscriminate butthead pounding. Unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Neither do I,” he agreed. “In last night’s case, it was.”
“Oh, come on. Once you made Edgar stop groping me, you could have passed on the nose bashing, and the wrist twisting, and the—”
“Nope. He bonked your head. How is your head, by the way?”
“Ah, it’s just fine, thanks,” she said. “But he—”
“He’s lucky I didn’t break his neck.”
His flat, uncompromising tone took her aback. “You don’t know me, Zan,” she said warily. “What do you care if my head gets bonked?”
“I just do.” He turned into the viewpoint as the moon sailed into a cloud window, flooding a patch of ocean with light. He parked the van. “I think an insult on that scale calls for a burger and a beer.”
“I just had artichoke bruschetta, grilled eggplant, and black truffle ravioli. I don’t actually need any more calories for about a week or so.”
Zan pondered that. “Wow,” he said. “Sounds fancy.”
“It was,” she said fondly. “It was marvelous. The only worthwhile thing about the evening. I adore that restaurant. Do you like Italian?”
“Well…I like SpaghettiOs,” he offered. “That’s Italian, right?”
He had to be yanking her chain. “Uh…you’re joking, right?”
“I just pour a can of cream of mushroom soup on top of just about anything, stick it into the oven, and I’m good to go.”
She studied his solemn expression. “You are joking, right?”
“Dead serious. Speaking of food, I had a ham sandwich and a pickle about twelve hours ago.”
“Twelve hours! You must be starving!”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Would you accompany me to a burger joint? Maria’s Bar and Grill is good, if you don’t mind going back down to the boardwalk. I’ll buy you a Coke, or something innocuous like that.”
Abby stared out at the ocean. Long-term personal goals, she told herself. She’d wasted enough time on dead-end relationships.
But he’d been so gallant, to rescue her from Reginald. To say nothing of saving her sorry butt the night before, from Edgar. The least she could do was have a Coke with the man. What was the harm?
Unless it made her start pining after something she just couldn’t have. She turned to Zan and opened her mouth to tell him to take her straight home, but his smile flashed in the shadows before the words could form. So gentle. So seductive. So incredibly attractive.
“Just a Coke, sweetheart,” he said. “Who’s gonna know?”
Back off. Take it easy. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
The litany repeated in Zan’s head as they pulled into the parking lot, but his frantic self-censorship was choking off all conversation,
