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  Hugh was the last person she’d expected at an event like this. The guy who had interviewed her for the programming course was fixed in her mind as a tutor and not someone she could network with. There was a boundary—even if he was young and good-looking with a dash of geekiness thrown in.

  She wondered what he thought of her being here.

  Once the event was over, they naturally gravitated towards one another and got talking. Their seven minutes at the dating table was spent in surprise, after Tyler had reluctantly vacated his seat and then walked away without so much as acknowledging her friend.

  She caught sight of Tyler, brooding over in the corner. Though surrounded by a couple of women, he was watching her. She knew his facial expressions well enough by now to know that he was plain bored.

  She waved a hand at him, motioning for him to come over. Hugh turned to see who she was waving to.

  Tyler simply nodded at her then slowly made his excuses to the women and made his way over.

  “Look who I met here.” Enthusiasm poured from her voice.

  “Who?” Tyler seemed uninterested, almost cold even. Zoe saw the two guys give each other careful, considered looks.

  “Hugh, Tyler. This is my tutor.” She raised her hand, palm out, at Hugh.

  “Your tutor?” Tyler seemed to almost choke on the words.

  “Nice to meet you.” Hugh offered his hand.

  “Likewise.” Tyler took it.

  “What’re the chances of that happening?” Zoe cried eagerly.

  “Probably zero if my friend had let me off the hook,” Hugh explained sheepishly. “She thinks it’s an ideal way to meet people.”

  “You think you’re going to meet a girl here?” Tyler asked. Zoe gave him the evil eye.

  “Not really.”

  The way Tyler said it made Zoe think that this was something they both agreed on.

  Zoe nudged Tyler gently when Hugh looked away. What was the matter with him?

  “I don’t suppose I should ask what you’re doing at something like this?” Hugh asked with a smile on his face.

  “I thought it might make for an interesting night out,” confessed Zoe.

  “It has been that,” Hugh concurred. “Are you all set for Monday?” he asked, referring to the course. “I know it’s all been so sudden.”

  Tyler stepped in. “Yeah, how about that? How come you left it so late?”

  Hugh looked askance at Tyler, almost as if he were trying to weigh up Tyler’s relationship to Zoe. “Administrative error, I believe. Her application had been accidentally marked as rejected. There were two applicants with the same surname. We wanted to interview Zoe from the start.”

  Tyler shut up.

  “That was lucky, then,” said Zoe, in surprise. This was the first she’d heard of an administrative glitch.

  “But you’re in now and that’s the important thing. I’ll see you on Monday, Zoe.” He seemed nice, friendly and she was kind of glad she’d met him more than once. She was already a bit apprehensive about being in a mainly male class. She could handle the gender imbalance; it was the little to zero programming experience that made her nervous.

  Hugh nodded at Tyler and left.

  “He looks kind of different outside of the college,” Zoe said, a dreamy look on her face.

  “He looks like a nerd to me. Hard to shake that look.” The music went up a notch and wiped out his words. Tyler nudged closer to her. “Do you want another drink?”

  She shook her head. She’d done an earlier shift at work today, to make up for leaving early for the dating event and she knew if they stayed she’d end up playing a third party to the other girls, who, even as she and Tyler stood talking, she could see were busy eyeing him up.

  Surprisingly, Tyler seemed as eager to leave as she was, and when they walked out into the velvet blue night, she gripped his arm, holding on to it as she would have done to a friend. Maybe the drink and the excitement of the night had tempered her mood.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked him, dipping her chin into the warm scarf that hugged her neck.

  “Not really.” His reply surprised her. She’d thought he’d be loving it, getting so much attention from most of the female population at the venue.

  “I thought this would be your thing. Your kind of venue, your kind of women. Didn’t you get any numbers?” she asked, knowing full well that he had.

  “You’re not supposed to swap numbers. Its all meant to be done on scorecards.”

  “I bet you did,” she insisted.

  He ignored her again. “Did I score high? Was I a five?”

  Although she’d give him a five—because a five was what someone like Tyler would get, she hadn’t scored him. She’d given everyone a three—which was plain, vanilla boring and said absolutely nothing about the man or the event.

  “What did you give him?”

  “Who?”

  “Your tutor.”

  “I didn’t score him.” It felt odd to give him a score at a speed dating event of all places. She didn’t want to make things uncomfortable for herself. He was young enough, maybe in his early thirties—and he seemed nice enough. But she wasn’t looking for any relationship drama yet. She had too many other things to deal with.

  “I thought he’d be older.”

  “He says he graduated around ten years ago. I think he looks good for his age, don’t you?”

  “So now you have a crush on him?”

  Zoe looked at him. What did he mean by that?

  Tyler hailed down a cab and they both got in.

  She’d gotten the impression that Tyler didn’t like Hugh too much. A fact she found unfair because he hardly knew the guy. Knowing his feelings of animosity toward her tutor, she played up to her feelings for Hugh. “Why not?”

  “He’s your tutor!”

  “This isn’t high school, Tyler. We’re both adults.”

  “What? You’re seriously considering going on a date with this guy?”

  “I thought that was the whole point.” She really had him now.

  “I thought the whole point of this was to have a little fun in the evening, isn’t that what you said, Zoe?”

  “And I did have fun, didn’t you?”

  He stared out of the window and they traveled in silence for the short ride back. When they got out of the cab and walked the few steps to their apartment she could see he was still a little miffed.

  He didn’t go in immediately, as she expected him to. “I did have fun, sort of,” he admitted, gazing at her intensely. His eyes glittered in the dark of the night and she wondered whether he was he annoyed with her for dragging him home so early.

  “But you would have had more fun if you’d stayed longer.” Was that it? She felt her voice hitch with emotion, and struggled to say what she felt. “I’m sorry I got in the way of your booty calls.”

  His face crumbled at her words and he took a step closer to her. The lantern above their door gave out enough light that she could read his expression clearly. His finger traced across a layer of her hair. “Why do you always talk about my booty calls?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Because you never fail to remind me of them. And because I could see the way they all flocked to you today. You must have a queue of women lining up for you.” She stepped backwards, surprised at the intensity of her anger—surprised that she felt so much emotion at all and she wasn’t even sure why.

  Tyler said nothing, but let his hand drop.

  “Can we just get inside?” She finally managed, knowing that the misplaced attraction she was starting to feel for him, was wrong. She couldn’t go around crushing on yet another guy she couldn’t have.

  Chapter 22

  Margaux sat with a pinched expression on her face. She’d been watching and waiting for a while now. Her irritation increased as soon as she clamped eyes on Zoe.

  Who the hell was this?

  Tyler had hidden her well.

  All this time she’d been muttering unkind
words about Bailey and the other clients. When all along, there was someone else who had Tyler’s attention.

  The only reason she’d had a word with Chrissie was to get him to stop seeing that hussy. She had to make sure he’d stop seeing all the others. All of them.

  But this woman—this was news to her.

  The way they got out of the cab, so snug, so close, with their arms linked together, she knew there was much more going on.

  He’d never let on.

  He’d always told her he had no one special. And the way he’d looked at her she’d gotten the feeling that maybe she could be his special one, some day.

  She should have done this sooner—this morning the desire to see him had been overwhelming.

  She’d needed to see him until it hurt. Finding his address from her contacts hadn’t been the hard part.

  She could do this all day long and keep tabs on his every move.

  It would be almost as if he hadn’t abandoned her. She could see him, and she would. Even if it meant watching him from her car, parked across the road.

  It was heady stuff, being able to watch him without him having a clue.

  She’d missed hearing his voice. Missed seeing his face.

  This way, she could still have a piece of him.

  She’d fought the urge to call him after Chrissie had told her she’d fired him and that his services were no longer needed.

  As it was he didn’t answer any of her calls anyway, but he would, in time.

  He would see, when he finally came to his senses. They’d been together all this time and he couldn’t just end it. How could he do that to her? Someone like Bailey wasn’t worth losing sleep over.

  But now it looked as if someone else was in the way—someone he’d kept hidden from her—someone who lived with him. And that made her madder than hell.

  It was late. Where had they been? Margaux strained her neck and peered out, trying to see more. The girl was dressed like a tart. That dress was way too short—and those knee-high boots!

  Perhaps she was an escort too?

  Margaux’s heart raced as light from the lamp illuminated enough for her to see his beautiful face. It had been torture to be away from him. She’d needed to punish him. She couldn’t share him with anyone else.

  But what was this? He and the girl seemed to be having some sort of exchange. Margaux craned her neck further toward the car window, wishing she could hear their conversation.

  He looked angry. She knew, she could read his moods so well. And the girl looked…infatuated. She could tell just by the way the hussy stared up at him. Then Tyler lifted his hand and stroked her hair. Margaux felt the muscles in the back of her neck tighten. As if she had a screw in the back of her neck and someone had tightened it with a ratchet, twisting it tighter and tighter.

  That damned little slut.

  He would have to see that there was no one who would love him more than she did.

  He would thank her when he understood how right she was.

  He was hers, hers, and only hers. It would take time for him to see that.

  But she had all the time in the world.

  Chapter 23

  Zoe walked into the room that had belonged to Ethan. He’d taken all his belongings yesterday, but after getting home so late last night, she’d slept in the living room.

  Now, as she looked around the empty room, she felt Ethan’s presence everywhere. His scent, his personality, the very idea that he’d lived in this room meant his indelible prints were all over the place.

  How was she supposed to forget Ethan when she was surrounded by memories of him everywhere?

  She walked around slowly, remembering the times in the past when she’d had reason to come in here a few times. More often it was to drag Becca out since the girl always found a reason to sneak her way in on the pretext of asking him something. There had been a time earlier on when Becca almost lived with them. She’d only go home late in the evenings.

  Zoe sat on the bed reminiscing about times gone by.

  She’d met Billy at a Kings of Leon concert a few years ago. A mutual interest in the same type of music had gotten them together. She tried to remember the moment she fell out of love with Billy and into lust with Ethan—when she’d started to think of him along the lines she never should have crossed. They were blurred, the boundaries. She’d never actually really loved Billy and she knew this now, because when they had split, she’d felt a momentary sadness, like the kind of sadness at the end of a sad film, forgotten as the credits rolled. Not a searing, depressing, excruciating sadness that haunted her for weeks.

  And there had never been a particular moment when she’d started to think of Ethan. It had just happened. And she never knew when that exact moment had been.

  Yet she felt stupid for carrying on like this. At twenty-four, it was way too late to be having schoolgirl crushes. Only—it felt like more than that. More intense. More.

  She didn’t want to think about how Tyler saw her. He knew about her feelings for Ethan; his prying questions, the way he had watched her when Ethan had been over, he knew. She prayed he would never let on to Ethan. That day the three of them sat around the kitchen table, there were a few times she got the horrid feeling that Tyler was about to spill all.

  And it had been so one-sided. With Nadine’s presence always around Ethan, she knew it was futile, her longing for him. She’d gone traveling to shake off her misplaced longing for him. The wrongness of it all so loud in her head it might as well have been a warning bell. And she’d gone to the speed-dating event to take her mind off his engagement.

  It was wrong, so very wrong. And it made her miserable, to want someone who was not hers to have. Like an addiction she fought hard to quash, the harder she tried to forget him, the more her brain craved him.

  Now he was gone. Not only physically gone, but a part of someone else’s life forever. Any fool could see these two were meant to be together. Even she could.

  But in trying to get over Ethan, she now found herself fixating those same feelings on someone more dangerous, even more unobtainable. Not that Ethan had ever been hers to obtain. Or ever would be.

  She slipped down onto the floor, her back against the wall and her legs bent at the knees. She needed a moment alone before she got up to the task of erasing Ethan from this room that was now hers to inhabit.

  What she wouldn’t give to hear one of Billy’s silly jokes. She missed him. Not in a romantic way. But just his easygoing friendship. This heavy, brooding, intense nothingness going on inside her head was killing her slowly. It had started to become an obsession. And she hated that she felt this way.

  “Hey, Zoe? You in there?” He spoke first then knocked, which was a crazy order, she thought.

  “Yeah.” Her voice sounded faint, barely a whisper.

  “You’re moving in?” Tyler peeked his head around the corner of the half-open door. His smiling face changed the minute he looked at her. It was too late: her mask had slipped and she couldn’t turn her lips upwards into a smile.

  “Mind if I come in?” He seemed to hesitate.

  She threw up her hands as if in a free for all, but her heart felt heavy. He stood looking down at her.

  “What’s wrong?” His voice was soft.

  “Nothing. Just getting ready to clean up and move my things in.” She stared at the floor, knowing it needed a good vacuuming and wondered about confessing to her lie. There was no date. Hugh had been just friendly. There had been nothing more to it.

  “Need a hand?”

  “Nope, thanks. I’ve got it under control. I’m washing everything and I’ll wipe down the surfaces. Give it a good clean.”

  “I don’t think it’s been used much. Ethan’s hardly been here.”

  She changed the subject. “I want to get the cleaning done today and then spend all of Sunday getting ready for my Monday.”

  “Course starts already, huh?” He whistled. Then finally sat down beside her, just close enough s
o that their arms touched. The heaviness of their late night conversation was forgotten in the day, as they both assumed an air of lightness and normality.

  “I’m feeling nervous. No programming experience, not many females to band around with.”

  “You? Nervous?”

  She nudged him playfully. “I’m actually part human. I have feelings too.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said. It went quiet then—they were skirting around with small talk, neither wanting to be the first to talk about last night.

  “Have you decided about your dad’s offer?” He’d told her about his meeting with his father a few days ago.

  He let out a sigh. “I’ve accepted Bailey’s offer. I start on Monday.”

  “Bailey’s offer? Why? That sounds like more of a short-term thing.”

  “It’s the lesser of the two evils.”

  “You think your dad offering you a position in his business is evil?” She wished she’d had that kind of support from her mom. And it would have been nice to have her dad around, but he took off when she was eight. He was nice, and funny, judging from the fragments of memories she had of him. But since then, he’d never showed up in her life again and her mother had chosen a couple of idiots to replace him over the years, all of whom Zoe didn’t like much.

  “He’s a bit of a control freak. I don’t know if I can put up with that level of control as well as my brothers seem to.”

  “It’s nice of him to want to look out for you.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  She didn’t understand what his beef was. “I don’t think accepting a job from a woman, a client, no less, that you slept with is a good step forward.”

  Tyler turned and the look he gave her was undecipherable. It wasn’t that he looked angry. In fact, he looked quite down.

  Zoe made an attempt at losing the gloominess. “Do you know what I think?” This wasn’t going to be a lousy weekend. The speed-dating event had fallen flat and both of them seemed subdued this morning. She wanted to shake that feeling of doom right out of her hair. With a new course on Monday, she decided that things weren’t going to be so bad after all.