“We wanted to impress you.” Which was true. “Still, you’ve got to admit it was pretty close there for a while.”

She sighed and said, “I know a great Indian place with a patio that allows dogs.”

Chapter Ten

They settled into their seats with the dogs contentedly chewing on the plastic bones she’d brought for them. Heather took a sip of her cold beer and couldn’t repress a sigh of pleasure. She and Zach hadn’t talked much as they’d walked the three blocks from her business to the restaurant, apart from her trying to convince him that Cuddles could manage the trip on her little paws, while he made one excuse after another for why he “needed” to carry her.

She’d never seen anyone get attached to a dog so fast, and frankly, she was worried about how he was going to deal with giving the puppy back to his brother. She’d actually taken a few minutes that afternoon to scan her list of Yorkie breeders to see if any of them had a new litter coming soon, but she was very much afraid Cuddles was irreplaceable.

The mischievous but loving puppy fit perfectly with the mischievous but loving man who was holding her in his arms.

Loving?

Ugh. She took another gulp from her glass, while sternly reminding herself that even though this was practically a script of her vision of a perfect night out, it wasn’t a date. And she had no business thinking of Zach as loving...not even if he was currently looking at her with more affection than desire.

His eyes darkened as she stared into them and she amended that thought to slightly more.

Just as the waiter came to their table, Zach’s phone went off. “Sorry, it’s my brother.” He gestured to the menu. “Go nuts with the meal. I trust you.” He stood up to take the call away from the other diners.

Even after she’d ordered, the buzz was still going through her from his last casually tossed-off words. I trust you.

What would it be like to be able to say that to someone without pause, to give her trust to someone she’d met less than a week ago?

She tried not to stare at Zach where he was standing on the sidewalk talking with his brother, but when he laughed and his gorgeous face lit up, she realized she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t take her eyes off him. Every other woman on the patio was staring, too.

Amazingly, he didn’t seem to notice or care that he was the center of attention. Instead of soaking up the public’s adoration like the vain man she’d once thought he was, he was utterly focused on what his brother was saying.

“Is everything okay?” she asked when he’d sat back down.

“Chase’s wife, Chloe, is a couple of days past her due date. I left him a message earlier to make sure everything was okay. She’s fine, but antsy.”

Yet again she was amazed by how close he was to his family, especially given his outwardly footloose-and-fancy-free personality. Amazingly, the fact that he clearly wasn’t looking for a wife of his own didn’t stop him from appreciating—and worrying about—his siblings’ wives.

She couldn’t put the puzzle of Zach Sullivan together...and it only added to her worries where he was concerned. If only he were black and white, then she would know exactly where to shelve him in her head, rather than having the very real concern that he was creeping into her heart by bits and pieces every time they were together.

“How many nephews and nieces do you have?”

His excited smile made her go warm all over. “This will be the first.”

A man who loved puppies and babies was hard to resist. Almost impossible, actually.

But she needed to keep doing just that, darn it....

“Do they know if they’re having a boy or a girl?”

“If they do, they haven’t told any of us.” He grinned at her. “We’ve actually got a betting pool going.”

“Your family is betting over the sex of your brother’s child?”

He refilled her glass as he said, “It was my mother’s idea.”

She laughed out loud at that, the feel of that spontaneous joy bubbling up from her chest surprising her the same way it always did when she was with Zach.

“She really does sound like a remarkable woman. Stunning, raised eight kids, and now has her first grandchild on the way.” She shook her head. “A gambler, too, from the sounds of it.” She thought about the gorgeous man in the black and white photo who looked so much like Zach. “I’m assuming your father encourages all the Sullivan family madness?”

The laughter left his eyes. “He died when I was seven. Just a couple of weeks before my eighth birthday.”

She gripped the stem of her glass tighter. He hadn’t said anything during breakfast at his house when they’d been looking at the black and white photo.

“I’m sorry, I just assumed—” She tried to clamp her mouth shut, but still the words, “That must have been so hard on you,” slipped out. He’d said before how much like his father he was, that he got his love of cars from him. A young boy who clearly worshipped his father had to have been devastated by his death.

He shrugged, but she could almost see the weight on his shoulders as she forced the movement. “We pulled together, all looked out for each other.”

She did some quick math from the picture she’d seen, and realized he’d been right there in the middle as the fifth child out of eight, not the oldest, not the youngest. She knew how easy it was to get lost in a family, even when you were the only child.

Had that happened to Zach?

“How did it happen?”

“He had an aneurysm at the office. We found out he was dead when we got home from school. He was only forty-eight.” He lifted his eyes to hers and what she saw in them tore at her heart. “It will be twenty-three years next week.”

She had to reach for Zach’s hand. Even though it had been more than two decades since his father’s death, she could see that it still hurt him. Deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Every time they’d been together, he’d tried to touch her. But now that she was the one who’d reached for him, he pulled away and reached for his beer, gulping it down before putting the empty glass back on the table.

“Shit happens,” he said. “Sucks, but what can you do?”

It wasn’t hard to guess that the flippancy came from trying to cover how bad he felt. And really, who was she to question people’s coping mechanisms? After all, when she found out that her beloved father was a two-faced bastard, she’d turned into a seventeen-year-old cutter.