She imagined kissing those lips, right now, as he lay on the grass beside her. Would he wake up? Would he kiss her back? She felt like Sleeping Beauty in reverse. Zack was certainly a beauty all right—but this was no fairy tale and she was no Princess Charming. More likely he'd wake up and run a mile.
But since she could never have him on a more intimate basis, surely a little kiss would be all right. Just a little peck on those yummy lips, to taste them. The opportunity would soon pass if she didn't grab it. All she wanted to do was touch his mouth with her own before she lost her nerve.
She leaned forward, her face inches from his, and closed her eyes. It was now or never.
CHAPTER 5
Annie leaned over him. Touched him. Zack, in his semi-conscious state, could sense her closeness. The desire to feel the delicate brush of her skin against his, or maybe a nipple caressing his arm, overwhelmed him. Even his lips tingled in anticipation of a small kiss.
The whisper-light stroke against his forehead might have been a dream but he wanted to believe it was real, that she'd kissed him there.
Do it again.
He felt light-headed, dazed by the heat and his own drowsiness. But there was a definite desire on both their parts—the air between them buzzed with it.
The same feather-like caress brushed the hair from his forehead. In his dreams Annie was so close he could almost taste her. She smelled like roses...
A small gasp near his right ear quickened his pulse. "Annie," he murmured, or maybe only dreamed he did. Then all previous thoughts were swamped by a driving need to feel her lips on his. To feel—
The slap on his cheek.
Zack sat up with a jerk. "Hey!" he shouted. "What the hell have I done now?" Since he never seemed to do anything right according to Annie McCallum, he must have done something to annoy her. Maybe he breathed in the wrong direction.
She looked at him matter-of-factly. "There was a bee on your face."
He glared at her, not sure whether to believe her. It was more likely he'd done something to deserve that slap. "A bee?"
The soft pink lips that he'd dreamed were kissing him only moments ago crept into a smile that made her bright blue eyes sparkle. She was truly beautiful when she smiled like that. And she had no idea.
"Did you think I just decided to slap you?" she asked with a laugh. "Why would I do that?"
He shrugged, trying to appear cool, calm and collected when all he felt was hot, on-edge. "Who knows. I seem to have offended you more times than I can count. It wouldn't surprise me if I offended you by the way I slept."
He tried to look intent on picking up their trash and putting it in his backpack. He wasn't avoiding her, he just didn't want to look at her right now. Not with those sweet, tempting lips. Kissable lips.
Jeez, he needed to stop these thoughts immediately. They were wrong. Worse than wrong—they were dangerous. He should not be thinking about her at all. She wasn't his type.
He cursed under his breath. Who was he kidding? Annie was perfect. Too perfect. She was everything he wanted and desired in a woman—she was sexy but didn't have a clue what affect she had on men. She was funny, intelligent and she sent his pulse rate soaring to dangerous levels whenever she was close. What more could a man want?
But that was the problem. She was so perfect for him, he needed to avoid her. She could tempt him to go where no woman had taken him before—matrimony. His type of woman was the partying kind, the kind whose breast size was inversely proportional to her brain size and who believed banks were there to pay for her plastic surgery and shopping sprees. She would never want to have children because it would ruin her figure and she'd never want to live on a ranch because the cafes were too far away. His type of woman was the kind a sensible man would never marry and that was all right by him because he wanted to remain a bachelor. Forever.
He'd seen it all before. The man who married the love of his life, only to become a slave to her. His father, for example. He'd had dreams of stardom, of making it big as a musician. He gave all that up when he married Zack's mother. Sure, he'd loved her and would have followed her to the end of the world, at first, but it also meant giving up the music and his dreams. The growing family couldn't live on love and songs. His father got a job, then another, as the family grew.
But it wasn't enough. A dreamer and unqualified for real work that paid enough, he needed to supplement his income with the proceeds of the occasional burglary to support a wife and brood of hungry children. That was the beginning of the end. He went from city to city dodging the law, dragging his family with him. Zack's parents' great love ended in bitter divorce because of the financial and legal pressures.
His father's creativity, sapped by the time he was forty, went undiscovered until after his death. Too late.
So much for dreams. So much for love.
Zack would not make the same mistake.
No, he couldn't let Annie know what she did to him or he'd be trapped. In his experience, women latched on when they knew he was interested, hoping to drag him to the altar. He supposed he was a good catch on paper, but so far, he'd managed to extricate himself from any delicate situations with his bachelorhood in tact.
So far.
But Annie was different to those other women. Already he wanted her. If she knew, she'd use her entire arsenal to get him—and her weaponry was more powerful than any other woman's because she wasn't aware of her allure.
Yep, she was so perfect, she was downright dangerous.
***
Zack took her home and later that night he took Annie to a bar where shmoozers shmoozed and gossip columnists listened in. Following in his wake, she peered into the darkness and the motionless haze of smoke which lent the place an aura of gothic moodiness. It was probably exactly the atmosphere the trendy LA bar was trying to achieve.
"What do you want to drink?" Zack asked, easing himself onto a barstool.
She shrugged. "Whatever you're having."
He ordered two beers.
"Can I have mine in a glass, please?" she said to the barman.
"No," countered Zack. "You'll drink from the bottle." He grabbed his around the neck and swallowed half in one gulp. She did the same but with considerably less success. She finished with a splutter, spitting some of the beer across the polished surface of the bar.
"Keep trying," he said. "Do you like it?"
"Not bad." She shrugged one shoulder. "But I've had beer plenty of times before."
He nodded but said nothing.
Damn, he knew she was lying. Not a good sign.
She glanced around at the other patrons, trying to appear as if she did this sort of thing all the time. Several scantily-clad starlets sat in prominent spots in the middle of the room and a few sophisticated drinkers hunkered down in dark corners doing deals or whatever it was they did in bars.