“I didn’t want to freak you out.” Brandy undid their belts and met his gaze with a smack that made his insides leap. “I lied.”
Ohhhhh fuuuuuuuuck. “I’m freaking out now.”
“In quite a different way.” A hand touched his jaw and steered his face around. “Out. We’ll talk more over pie.”
Zach cracked his door open and wondered if he’d spill out and become a puddle on the asphalt. “I’ve never done this.”
“Gone on a date?”
Somehow he was standing, albeit with a wobble. “No. Well, maybe not? I mean, there were lots of guys at bars, and sometimes there was dinner but” —he bambied after Brandy, who held out a hand for him— “there was never really any talking.”
He bypassed the offered hand and curled up against Brandy instead. Warmth suffused every cell on his left side, and then his right as Brandy wrapped an arm around him.
The parking lot was quiet. Something close to the Southern Lights played in the sky overhead. Brandon’s suit was soft to nestle against. He curved his other arm around Zach and pressed his lips to his temple. The fedora slipped off and flunked to their feet. Zach didn’t care.
Something like a sigh was rolling through his entire body.
This . . . this . . . “This feels strange.”
“Strange?” The word trickled down his cheek.
“I’ve . . .” He was whispering now. “I’ve never been so comfortable? And also like my heart might try to highjack your chest cavity.”
“Ah, Zachary. Who says it hasn’t already?”
Zach drew back a step to look at him more carefully. Brandy’s eyes met his only briefly before whipping over his shoulder and narrowing.
Zach turned, following his gaze to a familiar form stumbling out of the pub. Jack Willoughby. He saw Zach, and his face brightened. “You. I went to your house but you weren’t there. I was coming to try again.”
Something like a growl sounded behind him, and Zach fleetingly wondered if he’d sounded like that himself, at Ask Austen Studios.
His voice hardened. “Coming for what?”
Jack’s gaze flickered from him to Brandy and back again. “Can we talk? Alone?”
Zach didn’t move. “You’ve nothing to say to me that can’t be said right here.”
Jack’s gaze narrowed; he looked toward his motorbike and the darkened coastline. “I wanted to apologise. For the Austen ball.”
“Finding out that you’re a cheating bastard? Please” —he had a flash of Brandy stepping before him, protecting him— “you did me a favour.”
“It’s not really like that,” Jack said. “She’s cheating on me too. We just . . . stick together because her family and my family are close.”
Tension and anger sparked and grew inside Zach; Brandy closed the half foot gap behind him.
Jack’s gaze shifted between them. “I really, truly like you.”
Zach let out a hollow laugh. “Not only do you have a girlfriend—”
“Had. I broke it off. For you—”
“—you got another woman pregnant.”
Jack stumbled closer. “I spoke to Isabella. She doesn’t want me involved. Knows some guy who’ll help her out or something. See? We can work this all out.”
The man was out of his mind.
Jack’s voice dipped to desperate. “I hadn’t met you when I had that fling with Isabella. I swear, I’d never cheat on you. You’re different.”
“I don’t care.”
“Zach. Zach . . . Zach, please.”
Zach shuddered at his name on Jack’s lips.
“You’re the real deal. God, didn’t you see how jealous I get?” Jack jerked a finger at Brandy, and Zach fumbled behind him, clasping a protective palm on Brandy’s thigh. “He was always around. You always talked about him. I hated the feeling, but it means you’re something special.”
Zach laughed humourlessly, rubbing Brandon’s thigh. “I am something special. Just not your something special. His.”
He turned to meet Brandy’s gaze. “And he’s mine?”
Brandy clasped his hand and hauled him against his chest, lips falling to his and landing with a zap of heat and current. Zach tightened his arms around Brandy’s neck and tried to press closer, closer, until Brandy rocked back on his shiny shoes with the force, laughing. Brandy kissed him like feathers and clawed feet, soft brushes of his lips and nips of his teeth. The tilt of his face toward the sky, the warm sound curling between them; a secret now allowed to be shared.
In the background—far in the background—came a few choice curses, and the sound of an engine roaring into the night.
Brandy scooped up the fedora and pushed it onto Zach’s head, kissing him again.
“Ah, my favourite lovebirds,” Jenny said, barging toward the pub with a crate of beers on her shoulder.
Zach dropped his forehead to Brandy’s chest and groaned. “She saw it too?”
“She and John are under the assumption we’re engaged.”
“What?” He spun toward Jenny, who’d was transferring the crate to John at the door.
Brandy’s arms came around his stomach. A kiss grazed his neck. “Even then, I was already completely smitten. I was quietly comforted by the idea.”
