Loved ones can be used to put pressure on us.She couldn’t hear things like that. That was the trouble when she’d been alone. She was too vulnerable around Zale. She wasn’t so ridiculous with anyone else. She wasn’t his loved one. They’d only had six weeks together. Okay, six and a half weeks. It might have been an intense six and a half weeks, but it was still only a few weeks. Yet they were the best weeks of her life.
She was pragmatic. She might look like she didn’t have a brain in her head, but she was more than above average in intelligence. She didn’t need a man to lean on, or to think for her, or to make her happy. She didn’t fall hopelessly in love in a few short weeks, and neither did a man like him.
“Zale.” She said his name and then didn’t know what else to say. She pushed the dishes away from her. She was a woman of action. She didn’t sit in a bed, exhausted, barely able to lift her arms up. She climbed mountains, hung off cliffs, skied down steep slopes and planned tricky rescues into very dangerous gorges others would give up on.
He stalked across the room and cleared the bed and then his dishes as well, restacking them on the cart before wheeling it out of the suite. For a moment, she thought he was leaving, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or upset. She told herself her reaction was only because she wanted, once and for all, to be over him and they needed to sort things out. Only deep down, she knew there was no getting over him.
To her consternation, Zale came back into the bedroom and sank onto the bed, on his stomach, stretching his long body out so that his head was close to her belly. He caught one of the pillows and positioned it under his head.
“What did you have planned for your stay in Vegas? I know you’re here for a good week or more. Your posse is joining you after the tournament, aren’t they?” He turned his head to look up at her.
“They’ll come after, yes. We’re going to do some bouldering and then explore Red Rock trails. Do a little trad climbing. That sort of thing. We want to go to all the small coffee shops. It’s a thing we do. And then we’re taking an all-day kayaking trip on the river starting at the Hoover Dam.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It should be after being in the hotel, although I’ll admit, this has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I could get used to these sheets. Even the duvet is amazing.”
“What are you going to do before they get here? You have several days to fill before the tournament, and a couple after.” His hand moved to her thigh. He just rested his palm there, but she was acutely aware of the weight of it. The heat of it. His breath on her skin through the weave of her leggings.
“My mother lives here in Vegas with her partner, Ellen.” She made it a point to look at him, to watch his reaction. If he dared to make a snide comment, he was gone. Out of her room, out of her life. But he didn’t so much as blink, so she decided to continue. “My mom raised me alone. I never knew my father, and Mom never told me about him. We were really close, kind of an us-against-the-world mentality. She ended up with breast cancer, and I gambled in order to pay the medical bills. They were so high, and we needed a lot of money. She met Ellen at the infusion center.”
Without thinking, she dropped her hand into the thickness of his dark hair. There was so much of it. Wild with unruly waves. She’d always loved his hair. She needed the solace of touching him, of burying her fingers in all those soft, thick waves.
“Tell me, Vienna. I can feel the sadness in you. Is your mother okay?”
“Yes, she’s in remission and I’m eternally grateful for that. I won a tournament. It was a pretty big win. On the way home, someone ran me off the road. They tried to rob me.” When he started to lift his head, she held it down. “That was a long time ago. It isn’t as if you can go hunt them down now. And how silly of them to think I’d be carrying cash.”
“I’d like to hunt them down. Were you hurt?”
“Not really. Mostly scared. I wanted my mom. She had discovered love and couldn’t wait to tell me. She was dancing around the house and couldn’t see the state I was in. I was so upset I couldn’t see the state she was in. We ended up in a terrible fight. Things were said that should never have been said by either of us. Things we didn’t take back. I moved to Knightly and made a new life for myself.”
“How often do you talk to your mother?”
She was grateful that there was no judgment in his voice. She judged herself often enough.
“I call her once a week, but our conversations are very stilted. I ask her and her partner to come for the holiday dinners my friends and I put on, but they always decline.” She ducked her head. “If I’m being honest, it’s a bit of a relief. I don’t know what to say to her anymore.”
“Are you sorry for the things you said to her?”
“I’ve apologized for the things I said, and I meant every single word of the apology every time I’ve said it. It was the things she said,” Vienna corrected. “They made no sense. She was angry and she blurted out things she clearly regretted telling me. When I’ve called her on them, she’s tried to backtrack and tell me she lied, but I know she wasn’t lying.”
Zale was silent, not looking up at her, just waiting for her to make up her mind to give him the entire story. What difference did it make if she shared? If he knew? Who was he going to tell? He was a ghost, one of those men who hid in plain sight, who was there for a short period of time and then vanished as if he’d never been.
“She told me that she’d given up so much of her life to raise me and I wasn’t even her daughter. The moment she said it, she tried to take it back, but I knew it was the truth. So many things fell into place. No grandparents. No pictures. No family anywhere. When I asked her later, she refused to talk about it. After that, she didn’t want to be alone with me or talk for any length of time because she was afraid I’d bring it up. It was very clear she didn’t want me to know who my parents were. At first, I wanted to talk to her about it, but then, when I realized I was losing her, and the cost for knowing was going to be too high, I just stopped asking. I didn’t care if I ever found out. I didn’t want to chance making things worse with Mom.”
He rubbed his chin on the duvet while he considered the possibilities. “There are many child abductions that go unsolved.”
Vienna nodded. “Yes. That was a possibility, but one I discarded. I can’t see Mitzi, that’s my mother, kidnapping a baby. There was money in the early days, supporting us. Then, suddenly, it was gone. I never asked Mom where it came from, or where it went. I should have, although I doubt she would have said.”
“You’re going to see her?”
Vienna heaved a sigh. “Yes. I’m going to have dinner with them. I’m hoping Mom will thaw a bit each time I see her and don’t bring up anything about where I come from. I was going to wait until after the final round in the tournament, but I want to see her sooner.”
“Don’t you want to know?”
“Yes, but I want my relationship with my mother back more than I want to know where I originally came from. I have a friend who might be able to help me figure that out. She’s good at that sort of thing. I decided I’d ask her to help me and leave Mom out of it altogether. If I never find out, it isn’t the end of the world. I have a good life. I don’t like that I don’t have my mom or her partner in it. They should be.”
“When are you having dinner with your mother?”
“I thought tomorrow evening. Somewhere away from the Strip. Somewhere quiet.”
“Let me go with you, Vienna. She knows you won’t bring up anything to do with your past if you have me along. It will put her at ease. I can be charming. She’ll want to meet with you because she’ll wonder who I am to you.” He propped his head on his hand.
“That would make it a problem. She’ll think you’re in my life. I’ve never brought anyone to meet her.” Why didn’t she just firmly say no? Because she wanted him with her. Because spending time with him like this was wonderful even when it was heartbreaking.
“Don’t you see how perfect that is? She’ll be at ease and you can establish exactly the atmosphere with her you’re hoping for. And just for your information, I am in your life, you just refuse to acknowledge me. I can be at the restaurant already. Then show up at your table and pull up a chair if you prefer. Would that make it easier than telling her you’re bringing a friend?”
Vienna laid her head against the padded headboard, refusing to look at his face. That gorgeous, sensual face that was all angles and planes that made up perfection. It wasn’t that he was so handsome in the way most women might consider, but she looked for outdoor rugged, toughness. She wanted masculine. Even his long eyelashes couldn’t deter from that dark edge he had. Closing her eyes didn’t help because he was branded inside her mind.
“No, Zale, it won’t make it easier. Nothing about you makes anything easier and you know it.”
His fingers moved on her thigh. He drew little circles and then began to write something in long looping letters across her leg. She found it distracting. Intriguing. He’d done the same thing multiple times when they were in the tent at night in the dark and she had to guess what he was writing to her. He had cheated more than once, writing his message in a foreign language.
“I want to meet your mother and her partner.”
“I’m trying to repair my relationship with her. Meeting you and then having you disappear will only cause more problems.”
Zale continued to write letters on her leg from her knee to the very top of her thigh. Far too close to the junction of her legs. She should stop him.
“I don’t have to disappear altogether.”