Zach was glad for the company. Sort of. But mostly he kept thinking about the fact that Brooke hadn’t come back, and that this was her last week in town, and that he was an idiot.

“Why are you moping around like you lost your puppy?” Sam asked.

“I’m not.”

The guys all exchanged a careful-with-the-deluded-patient look, and he sighed.

Yeah. He was moping.

Because he’d sent away the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“You’ve got pizza, beer and us,” Eddie joked. “What else could you need?”

“Brooke.” This from Aidan, his mouth full of pizza and a knowing look in his eyes. “He wants Brooke.”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “Our Zach’s not much of a repeater.”

Zach opened his mouth, but in lieu of absolutely nothing to say in his defense, shut it again.

“If I had Brooke looking at me the way she looks at you, I’d become a repeater,” Dustin said as he reached for more pizza.

Yeah, but Zach was a moron. Brooke wouldn’t be looking at him like that again. He’d made sure of that.

“You’re only saying so because you got laid by the woman of your dreams,” Sam pointed out. “Cristina.”

“Cristina?” Zach blinked. This was news. “Since when?”

“Since last night,” Sam informed him. “Dustin fixed her car and then she slept with him.”

Not one to kiss and tell, Dustin tried to hold back his stupid grin and failed.

“Cristina’s not going to settle down,” Aidan warned Dustin. “She’s not the type.”

“She might, for the right guy,” Dustin said, pushing up his glasses. “It could happen.”

“You’re asking to be crushed,” Aidan told him. “Like a grape. Again.”

“Actually,” Zach said quietly, “you never know.”

“Then why aren’t you seeing Brooke?” Aidan asked. “With only one week in town left, that makes her the perfect woman in my eyes.”

“So why don’t you date her?” Eddie jeered.

“Maybe I will.”

Suddenly the pizza Zach had consumed sat like a lead weight in his gut. He tried to picture Brooke moving on and dating any one of these guys. His friends.

Then he had to admit it wasn’t the pizza weighing his gut down. “No.”

Aidan raised a brow. “What?”

“Nothing.” Zach tossed his pizza aside. “She can date whoever she wants.”

“Really?” Aidan said dryly. “So you wouldn’t care if I ask her out?”

Zach opened his mouth, shut it, scrubbed a hand over his eyes and sighed. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Years.”

“Yeah. And I’ve always said you should go out with whoever floats your boat, but…”

“But?”

“But if you go out with Brooke, I’ll have to hurt you.”

Dustin laughed and clamped him on the shoulder in commiseration.

Aidan just arched a brow that said, You’re in deep.

Didn’t he know it.


* * *

Later that day, the bad news came from Zach’s doctor-he wasn’t cleared to go back to work until his cast came off, which was a minimum of three weeks away.

Three more weeks without work just might kill him, not that the doctor seemed to care, and not that the chief seemed to, either, when he called to check on Zach.

“Enjoy the time off. We’ll be waiting for you.”

“I want to come in,” Zach said. “I could handle light duty-”

“No. We want you back, Zach, but sound.”

Sound. What the hell did that mean?

But as the mind-numbing boredom set in, Zach had to admit he didn’t feel so sound. He sat on his couch with the remote, but nothing on daytime TV interested him. Nothing on his bookshelf interested him. Hell, even the porn didn’t interest him. He couldn’t go surfing because of the cast and bandages. He couldn’t work.

All he could do, unfortunately, was think. Way too much thinking going on. About Brooke, about…Brooke.

It was another whole day before he remembered.

The arson fires. He’d actually come close to figuring something out…something really important. He called Aidan. “Where was I with the arson stuff?”

“Close to screwing up your career.”

“Come on. We’ve fought hundreds of fires, and out of all of those, I’m only talking about four-”

“Five.”

“-So how in the hell is that screwing up my career-”

“Five fires.”

“What?”

Aidan sighed. “Let’s get real crazy, okay? I think that the warehouse fire was arson.”

“Why?”

“Gut feeling. Too many things went wrong. And guess what Tommy told me when I mentioned it?”

“I’ll go out on a limb here and say, ‘Mind your own fucking business?’”

“Bingo.”

“Did you look around afterward?” Zach asked. “Get sight of the point of origin?”

“No, I was sitting by your side in the hospital after saving your sorry ass.”

“Damn it.”

“You’re welcome.”

After they hung up, Zach went out onto his deck and stared off into the night. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was pain, maybe it was simply that he didn’t want to face the fact that his chest hurt, and so did his heart.

Or that he missed Brooke.

Over the years, he’d slept with enough women to lose count, and that had never bothered him any, but now he wondered what it would be like to stay with the same woman instead of moving on each time? To have some familiarity? A real relationship with depth instead of just heat?

He bet there was comfort in that, which he’d never had any use for before. But now, honestly, he could use a little TLC.

Zach hadn’t taken his pain meds in two days, so showering was a bitch, but he got through it, dressed and walked out to his truck. He stopped short at the sight of Brooke getting out of her car.

She was carrying a bag from the local sandwich shop and wore an expression that said she wasn’t too sure of her welcome, an expression that changed to disbelief when she saw the keys in his hand. “What are you doing?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“I’m bringing you something more substantial than pizza or McDonald’s.” Her eyes met his. “Now you.”

“I was coming to see you.”

She let out a breath. “Okay, you have no idea how I both love and hate that. You shouldn’t be driving. How are you feeling?”

Like I missed the hell out of you. “Great.”

She arched a brow.

“Good.”

“Zach.”

“Okay, like shit. I feel like complete shit.”

With a sigh, she stepped close, and did something he hadn’t expected, given how things had gone the last time he’d seen her.

She hugged him.

For a moment, just a heartbeat, really, he stood still, shocked, because normally when he pushed someone away, they willingly went. After all, he was a master pusher when it came right down to it. And he’d all but thrown her feelings for him back in her face.

But Brooke, petite, sweet-but-steely-willed Brooke, hadn’t just held her ground with him, she was pushing back.

If that didn’t grab him by the throat.

Unable to resist, he slid his arms around her, pulling her in tight. Bending his head, he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in.

Keep it light, keep it casual…

But then she was pressing her mouth to his cheek and he was turning his head to meet her mouth, and as he deepened the kiss he knew the truth.

He didn’t want to push her away anymore. He really didn’t. So he hoped like hell someone threw him a line, because he was going down.

“You need to get back inside,” she murmured. “You’re pale.”

Pale, and apparently stupid, because he kissed her again.

Deep.

Wet.

He was in the middle of working on the long part, but she pulled back. “Careful, I’ll hurt you-”

Shaking his head, he kissed her again, then dropped his forehead to hers. “No.” Drawing a deep breath, he straightened and pulled free. “I’ll hurt you.”

“Oh.” She stared up at him, then took a step back and nodded. “Right.”

They were still just staring at each other when Aidan pulled up, followed by all the guys.

Incredible timing, as always.

“Okay,” Brooke said. “I’m going to go.”

“No, don’t.”

“No, really. It’s okay. I just wanted-” She thrust the bag of food in his hands. “Here.”

“Wait-”

“Listen, I know I wear my heart on my sleeve and feel too much, but I’m not slow. I really did hear you the other day, what you were trying to say. You don’t want me to get invested, and I get it. I’m leaving and all that, and this was never about that kind of thing. I just want you to know that I understand, and there’s no hard feelings.”

Damn, she killed him. “Brooke-”

“Don’t.” She shook her head. “Don’t go there. Not now.”

“Fine. Later, then. Just please stay until I get rid of these guys?”

She glanced at them all getting out of their cars. “Okay, but Zach? That kiss…”

He couldn’t help looking at her lips again. He could still taste her. “Yeah?”

“That didn’t feel like a hey-how-are-you kiss. Or even a one-night-stand kiss.” She moved in and whispered for his ears only. “It felt like a helluva lot more.”

Yeah. It had.

“So you might want to think about that next time you tell yourself I’m the only one going to get hurt here.”


* * *

Everyone entered Zach’s house, carrying food and news of their day. Brooke joined them because Zach had asked, but mostly because she wanted to. She wanted to be with them.

With Zach.

He sat sprawled on the couch, and if it hadn’t been for the cast, the bandages and the slight paleness of his face, she’d never have guessed that he’d nearly died.

Her heart tightened at that, but she’d always licked her wounds in private, so stressing about what could have happened, as she had been doing since the fire, would have to wait.

Sam tossed her a soda.

Dustin handed her a plate.

Aidan kicked a chair her way.