“That’s a slam dunk?” she asked.
At the risk of every basketball player in the country lynching him, Zach said, “Yeah. You slam-dunked that one.”
And then, because Zach couldn’t resist those wide, cobalt-blue eyes, because he’d been thinking of her night, and morning, and afternoon, and because these stolen moments were all Zach had, all he was allowed, to be with her, he hauled her up against his body, whispered, “I adore you,” and covered her lips with his.
And then they were kissing in a way nobody, in school or out of it, would ever suspect Zach and Paige kissed.
* * *
“PAIGE. ABOUT the accident.”
“You hated when I cried,” she said hoarsely. “You’d start cursing and at the same time getting all cuddly on me.”
No, sweetheart, I don’t hate it . . . well shit, maybe I do.
“PAIGE. THE DAY your father died,” Sue Ellen tried. And for the first time Paige realized the hypnotist’s voice wasn’t steady anymore.
Fear skewered into her heart. Daddy.
“Tell us about the accident.”
The accident that killed her strong, upstanding, stern dad, who rarely gave hugs but loved to give lectures.
The horrifying scene darted past her mind all of a sudden, stumbling forth in flashes. Red Camaro . . . forcing us off the road . . . herself screaming, screaming, screaming, and then . . .
A stillness.
Daddy gulping for air. Talking to her.
“There’s a false back in his bookshelf,” Paige rushed, “in his study. Behind Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The driver was driving a red Camaro. He threw us off the road. Daddy said—” She broke off, Dad’s words distressing to remember. He’d been sputtering blood. Dying beside her. Saying he loved her. He was sorry. He’d been wrong. Oh, Daddy.
“A red Camaro, you say? Whose red Camaro?”
Paige went numb, her mind stopping blank.
“Whose red Camaro, do you recognize this car?”
Her heart seemed to wilt inside her. Her stomach caved in on itself, and as a wave of nausea struck her, she brokenly, wretchedly admitted, “Zach’s.”
THE REVELATION slammed him with the force of a bazooka.
“Zach’s?” Zach dumbly repeated.
“She said Zach’s,” O’Neill stated.
Bewildered, Zach put his head in his hands, swamped with confusion, torn by the memory of her, broken, weeping, in that little hospital bed, and suddenly he was shaking to his knees with a rampant need for violence. A red Camaro. His old Camaro. “Fuck.”
He was beyond speaking, beyond pissed, beyond anything human.
Someone. Some asshole. Had used his car. To kill the judge. To nearly kill Paige.
The rage was fulminating, eating at his liver.
Zach wanted to kill.
He wanted to find this bastard, take his gun out, and ram it down his throat so hard and fast, the guy would eat each and every bullet he spewed into his mouth. He’d gotten glimpses of this man inside him— one with a death wish, one with a streak of rebelliousness, one that was his father’s son, and now he was afraid of him.
Of what he would do if he came face-to-face with this bastard who’d ruined his life, taken Paige away from him, killed her father.