Despite all that was enjoyable about lunch, she didn’t like the attention from surrounding diners, who stared and snapped pictures with their phones.

“Did you have an ulterior motive for lunching with all of us so publicly?” Summer asked after they dropped off Tuck and Gram and were driving home.

Zach’s mouth was tight as he stared grimly at the road. “Being railroaded on felony charges and then being tried in the court of public opinion wasn’t any picnic, either.”

“That still doesn’t make it right for you to use Tuck and Gram to get even with me.”

“Maybe I just want people to see that I have a normal relationship with all of you,” Zach said.

“But you don’t. You’re blackmailing me.”

“Right.” His dark eyes glittering, he turned toward her. The sudden intimacy between them stunned her. “Well, I want people to know that you’re not afraid of me. That you never were. That you liked me, loved me even. That I was not someone who’d take a young, unwilling girl off to the woods to molest her. Is that so wrong?”

His face blurred as she forced herself to focus on the trees streaming past his window instead of him. The realization of how profoundly she’d hurt him hit her anew.

Yes, he’d hurt her, too, and yes, he’d gone on to achieve phenomenal success. But he’d never gotten over the deep injury her betrayal had inflicted-any more than she’d gotten over losing him and the baby.

Because of her, Zach had been accused of kidnapping and worse. All he’d ever tried to do was help her.

When a talent scout had been wowed by her high-school performance in Grease, her stepfather had forbidden her to go back to her theater-arts class. He’d sworn he wouldn’t pay for her to study theater arts in college, either.

So she’d run away to Zach, who’d forced her to go back and try to reason with Thurman. Only after her stepfather struck her and threatened her with more physical violence if she didn’t bend to his will had Zach driven her to Nick’s fishing cabin on the bayou in Texas. There they’d hidden out and made love. There they’d been found in each other’s arms by Thurman and his men.

She did owe Zach. More than a few weekends. And not just because of Tuck. If Zach wanted to be seen with her and gossiped about-so be it.

“You don’t have to drive me home before you go to your site,” she said softly. “I’ll go with you.”

“I thought you needed to work on your love scenes with Hugh.”

His voice hardened when he said the other man’s name, and she felt vaguely guilty. Which was ridiculous, since she wasn’t in a relationship with either man.

“I do, but I’ll study on the plane, or later, when I get to L.A.”

“Well, if you’re coming with me, I’ve got to take you home anyway. Those sandals won’t work at the construction site and neither will that tight, sexy skirt.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll need to wear a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and boots. I’ll supply you with a plastic hard hat and a safety vest with reflective tape.”

“Sounds like a dangerous place.”


* * *

Even though it was Saturday, cranes, bulldozers and jackhammers were operating full force as battalions of workers carried out all sorts of tasks, none of which made sense to Summer as she adjusted the inner straps of her hard hat. Zach seemed as happy as a kid showing off as he led her around the site, pointing at blueprints, sketches and plans with a pocket roll-up ruler, introducing her to all of his foremen and contractors. Local men, all of them, who eyed her with open speculation.

Zach was developing hundreds of acres along the bayou, creating a dock for his riverboat casino, as well as restaurants, a hotel, a small amusement park, shops, a theater, a golf course and no telling what else.

“I’ve never built anything,” she said, “so I’m impressed. Look, you don’t have to entertain me. I’ll explore on my own.”

“You be careful and don’t go too far.”

At first she stayed close to him because the ground was rough and muddy. Then she began walking toward the dock on two-by-fours that men had laid across deep holes as makeshift bridges.

She was standing on such a bridge when Nick drove up in his battered pickup, looking for Zach. The elderly shrimper wore faded jeans, a T-shirt and scuffed boots. Even though he dipped his cowboy hat ever so slightly when he saw Summer, his cold, unsmiling face told her he hadn’t forgiven her. Until Zach’s uncle had shown up, Nick had been Zach’s sole advocate.

“Didn’t expect to see the likes of you here, cher,” he said when he walked up to her. “Dangerous place for a woman.”

Nick was thinner than the last time she’d seen him, his tanned skin crisscrossed with lines, his wispy hair steel-gray. But the penetrating blue eyes that pierced her hadn’t changed much.

“And you’re a dangerous woman for any man, even Zach. I warned the boy to stay away from you, but he won’t listen,” Nick said, eyeing Zach, who stood a hundred yards to their right, deep in conversation with a contractor. “He never did have a lick of sense where you were concerned. I don’t like you settin’ your hooks in him again. By coming out here with him you’ll have the whole town talkin’ and thinkin’ you’re a couple again.”

“Tell him. He invited me for the weekend.”

Nick spat in disbelief. “Well, you tell him I stopped by and that I’ll catch up with him later. Or, if he’d prefer, he can drop by…after he gets rid of you.”

She nodded.

He turned and left.

Her mood dark and remorseful, she headed toward the dock. Because of the deep holes in the ground, she was forced to cross on the makeshift bridge again. She’d nearly reached the dock when Zach called out to her.

Maybe she turned too fast-one of the boards slipped, and she tumbled several feet into the muddy hole filled with rocks and debris. When she tried to stand, her left ankle buckled under her weight.

She looked up in alarm and saw Zach running toward her, his dark eyes grave. Leaping over the boards, he was soon towering over her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes-except for my left ankle.”

“I should never have brought you here.”

“Nonsense. I fell. It all was my fault.”

“Hang on to me, then,” he commanded, jumping down into the hole.

Half carrying her, he led her out of the pit and back to his car. As he drove away from the site, he called Gram, who recommended her doctor, a man who generously offered to meet them at the emergency room. Dr. Sands actually beat them to the E.R., and Summer, who’d once fallen off a stage in Manhattan and had waited hours in a New York E.R., was both appreciative and amazed to be treated so quickly and expertly in such a small hospital. Most of all, she was grateful to Zach for staying with her.

When a team of nurses stepped inside the treatment room and asked him to leave, Zach demanded to know what they planned to do.

“Dr. Sands wants her to disrobe for an examination, so we can make sure we don’t miss any of her injuries.”

“But it’s only my ankle that hurts,” Summer protested.

“Hopefully you’re right. But this is our protocol. We have to be sure.”

Summer reached for Zach’s hand. “Would you…”

So, he stayed beside her, gallantly turning his back when they handed her a hospital gown and she began to undress. But once, when she moaned, he turned. She saw his quick flush and heard his gasp before he averted his gaze from her body.

Her stomach fluttered. Funny that it hadn’t occurred to her to be embarrassed that he should see her almost naked. She simply wanted him beside her.

When the professionals finished checking her body and stooped to examine her ankle, she cried out in pain.

Zach was at her side, pressing her hand to his lips. “Hang in there. We’ll be home before you know it.”

Home. How sweetly the word buzzed in her heart. She squeezed his fingers and held on tight, feeling illogically reassured.

He was right. In less than an hour she was back at Zach’s house, propped up on his couch by plump pillows, surrounded by his remotes, her script and her favorite snacks.

Strangely, after the hospital, there was a new easiness between them. Gram and Tuck had stopped by to check on her, and after they departed, Zach remained attentive, never leaving her side for long. He said he wanted to be nearby in case she needed anything. She found his hovering oddly sweet and realized it would be much too easy to become dependent on such attentions.

When the sun went down, he cooked two small steaks and roasted two potatoes for their dinner while she watched from her chair at the kitchen table. They had their meal with wine and thick buttered slices of French bread out on the back veranda.

Again she marveled that a man who must be used to servants knew his way around in a kitchen. She didn’t mind in the least that he hadn’t thought to prepare more sides. The simple meal was perfect even before the three deer re-appeared to delight them.

Later, when she was back on the couch again and he’d finished the dinner dishes, he pulled up a chair beside her. Pleased that he hadn’t gone up to his room, she declared the steak delicious and thanked him for his trouble.

“I’m not much of a cook,” he said. “Eggs, steak and toast. That’s about it.”

“Don’t forget potatoes. Yours were very nice. Crispy.”

“Right. Sometimes I can stick a potato or two in the oven and sprinkle them with olive oil and salt. I have a cook in Houston, but I don’t like eating at home alone. So, mostly I eat out.”

“Me, too. Or I do take-out. Because I don’t have time to cook.”

“I imagined you in ritzy New York restaurants, dining on meals cooked by the world’s best chefs, eating with famous movie stars.”

When his expression darkened, she suspected he was thinking of Hugh.