Just the Thing Read online

  She parked in her driveway and sat for a moment. The small bungalow she called home felt empty now that it was just her residing there. Aunt Piper had bought the place years ago, a sound investment that had more than doubled in value, thanks to her aunt’s keen sense of renovation. All in all, Zoe didn’t pay much to live in a great area, close to restaurants and shopping. But she’d been sharing the space with Aubrey when her vagabond sister had been home. Aubrey’s last creative foray outside the States had gone well, and she’d taken some amazing photographs. Her trip had, for the most part, been uneventful. Until a vacation in the freezing mountain passes back at home, in Washington, had given her a few bumps…

  God, a few.

  Zoe stared at the house, now all hers.

  For a second, she thought about calling her friend Cleo, needing a shoulder to cry on. But she’d put the nonstop tears to rest two months ago, determined to grow. Aubrey was dead. There was no taking that back. No way to replay the event to a different outcome. Time to look to the future and learn to live without her twin—the other half of herself.

  She sighed, annoyed at sinking back into that familiar bog of despair. She’d always been levelheaded, leaving the raging artistic temperament to her twin. But lately, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop herself from seeing her sister in everything around her. From pink shoelaces to an oddly turned phrase to a vibrant orange poppy. Everything spoke to her of Aubrey.

  “Get a grip, Zoe. Buck up, lame-o. And quit being so dramatic.”

  Words to live by.

  After locking the car behind her, she let herself into the lovely space she called home and dropped her workout bag by the entrance. She secured the door before settling down for a leftover salad, water, and mindless television. But this time, instead of dwelling on her sister, she saw Gavin Donnigan in her mind’s eye.

  He really flexed his ass at me. Why that continued to amuse her she couldn’t say, but she had to hand it to the guy. He sure knew how to command attention.

  Between him, his hunky blond brother, and Mac, the gym’s drool-worthy owner, Jameson’s Gym had turned into the hot spot for eye candy in Green Lake. Hell, make that the whole of Seattle. All the ladies at the gym, her office, the grocery store talked about it. She wasn’t immune either. Zoe used the gym to work out, but seeing so much muscle didn’t hurt.

  She’d been on board for the first self-defense class the gym had offered, free of charge, back in late February. It had been well done, and she’d been impressed that Gavin and Landon, two ex-Marines, had never talked down to the women taking the class. They had treated everyone with respect and seemed serious about helping everyone learn to protect themselves.

  The demand had been fierce for a follow-up session. Much as she hated to admit it, Mr. Guns of Steel had a gift for teaching the unteachable. He’d actually gotten through to the hardheads in the room, herself included.

  Despite not wanting to give him the wrong idea—because she had no room in her life for charming men with nice glutes and sexy smiles—she’d signed up for the second round of classes.

  Part of her knew she should steer clear of the roaming Romeo. But another part liked the way he made her feel—wanted, attractive, womanly.

  She finished her salad and water while she watched reruns of an old show she’d seen a dozen times before. Cracking her jaw on a yawn, she forced herself to turn off the boob tube and went to bed grungy from her sweaty workout. In the morning she’d start on her weekly chores and launder the sheets.

  With any luck, she wouldn’t dream of Gavin tonight, as she’d been doing following her daily workouts. Lately, he figured prominently in her fantasies of shirtless men pumping iron. Go figure.

  She woke the next morning refreshed, unable to remember what she’d dreamed about, and okay with that. After cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and taking care of the bills, Zoe stepped outside to do some weeding, appreciating the warming late-April temperatures.

  The phone rang.

  She picked it up while she did a survey of the back garden. “Hello?”

  “Zoe, it’s Piper. How are you?”

  Zoe perked up. “Great, Aunt Piper. Just getting ready to clear out the flower beds.”

  “Nice. Want some company?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll weed for tea and sweets. Cookies, cinnamon rolls, something good. Not that crappy vegan stuff you buy. I want real sugar and butter.”

  “It’s not vegan.” Zoe rolled her eyes. “It’s organic, and I—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I want the good stuff.”

  Zoe stifled a laugh. “Your stash of processed sugar and trans fats will be here waiting on you.”

  “Great. See you soon.”

  Hard to believe Piper and Zoe’s mother, Nola, were twins. Physically alike, yet different. Aubrey took after their mother, while Zoe and Piper shared many similarities.

  One of those was a love of planting. Zoe had a green thumb. Aubrey seemed to kill plants just by glancing in their direction. A sad smile creased Zoe’s face, but the memory didn’t hurt this time. It was a wistful wish for what had been.

  Piper arrived to find Zoe bent over the back row of lavender.

  “Couldn’t wait for me, could you?” her aunt griped.

  Zoe straightened and placed a hand on her hip. “Seriously? This from the woman who once replanted all my daylilies because I’d dared sleep past six on a Saturday?”

  “Try seven thirty, missy.” Piper gave a mock glare. “You know I don’t have time to waste.”

  True. The woman Zoe aspired to be ran the shoe purchasing line for several upscale retailers downtown. Talk about busy. Between flying to Italy and New York, Piper had little time to garden in her own space.

  “Now, what do we have here?”

  After showing her aunt the troubled area in the back, Zoe left to bring out the tray she’d prepared. She dragged a towel off the warm plate. “Ta-da. Freshly baked cinnamon rolls, courtesy of Pillsbury. Some hot Earl Grey tea, with honey and a dash of milk, and some processed fake meat sausages for protein—I think. Just in time to clog your arteries before heart health month starts at work, am I right?”

  Piper beamed. Long, black hair with one fashionably thin streak of white, worn up in her traditional French braid, and a clear, rosy complexion made the woman look a decade younger.

  After taking a big bite of a sweet roll, Piper shook a finger at her. “It’s a wonder your mother tolerates that smart mouth for long.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Zoe grinned, then sobered, recalling her last conversation with her mother. “She’s on me big time lately. With Aubrey…gone…Mom is desperate to have me settled and partnered up. Man or woman doesn’t matter so long as I’m thinking about getting married and having a family.”

  “That’s my sister. Open to any sexuality, race, or religion…as long as you say ‘I do’ at the end.” Piper chuckled.

  Zoe groaned. “She just wants to make sure I’m ‘not alone.’” She ended with air quotes, tired of her mother’s constant prodding.

  Piper shook her head in sympathy. “I feel for you, sweetie. Nola always has been more of a maternal figure. She would have had a whole brood of kids if she hadn’t suffered complications after you two fought to come out.”

  “I keep telling her she should thank me,” Zoe teased, focusing on the positive. “Kids are expensive.”

  “Exactly. Why do you think I choose to remain single and rich?”

  “Because you’re a woman of loose morals who’d rather bang her way through Seattle than commit to a loving man or woman?”

  Piper nodded. “That’s verbatim what your mother said to me last month. Good recall, Zoe. You even got her inflections down pat.”

  “Thanks. I aim to please.” She watched Piper scarf down bad carbs like a pothead downing Doritos. “So I’m taking that self-defens
e class at the gym.”

  Totally not what she’d planned to talk about with her aunt, but God knew she couldn’t mention Gavin to her mother without Nola shoving her into a wedding gown.

  “Oh?” Piper perked up, her blue eyes sparkling. “So was Hunky Marine trying to show you how to ‘manhandle’ the enemy again? Did you take my advice and volunteer to be his victim?”

  Zoe fought a grin. “Yes and no. Gavin’s good at teaching. He’s got quick reflexes.” She couldn’t help a smile, remembering how he’d ducked out of the way of her bag. “He’s also funny. He named his muscles.”

  “His what?”

  “His huge biceps or, as he likes to brag, his Guns of Steel.”

  Piper laughed. “I like this guy.”

  “So after he introduced me to his biceps, he flexed his butt at me. Some kind of primitive way of showing off, I think.”

  “Like a baboon, hmm?”

  The image that conjured made Zoe choke on her tea.

  “Now I’m seeing a red, puffy ass shaking at you.”

  Zoe had just managed to swallow, when tea once more went down the wrong pipe.

  Piper gave her a sly grin. “Interesting you’re mentioning Gavin again.”

  “Again?” she rasped.

  “Yep. You don’t remember all that bitching you did about some arrogant Marine at the gym who thinks he’s God’s gift to women? A few weeks ago, a few months ago. Hmm, the last time I was here? You do a lot of ranting about this guy. But you seem to have changed your tune.” Piper smirked and ate a second sweet roll. “Sounds like you’re going soft on me. Maybe up for a relationship after all?”

  Piper was teasing, Zoe knew, but she took the words to heart. “No. Not me. I’m focused on my career. Don’t worry.”

  Her aunt didn’t smile back. “But I do worry. Just because I chose not to marry doesn’t mean marriage is wrong. Holding hands with a man won’t turn you into your mother. We both know you go right anytime your mother goes left. But just because marriage agreed with her doesn’t mean it’s wrong for you. Heck, it might yet agree with me if I ever meet the right guy.”

  “Really?” Zoe hadn’t expected to ever hear that.

  Piper sighed. “Aubrey’s passing has affected us all. It made me look more closely at my life and what I want out of it. I’m at that point where my career is amazing. I travel, I have family I love, girls—a girl—I think of as my own.” Crap. Piper’s eyes were shiny. She cleared her throat. “Dating is nice and all, but a man to call mine sounds good about now. Something more permanent than Tom for breakfast and Nick for lunch.”

  “No one for dinner?” Zoe tried to make sense of her aunt’s turnaround.

  “Not lately. I’m on a diet.” Piper gave a half laugh. “I’m kidding, obviously, but we’ve all taken a good, hard look at life since losing Aubrey. My life isn’t perfect, kiddo, not by a long shot. But I’ve accepted the choices I’ve made. You’re at the point in your life where marriage and babies make sense.”

  “Really? You’re talking to me about marriage?”

  “Okay, maybe nothing so conventional as marriage. But how about dating a guy for more than a few months? Maybe finding someone to spend time with on your days off? There’s more to life than teaching medical software to doctors and nurses, honey.”

  Zoe didn’t know how to take her aunt’s new stance on relationships. For so long, Piper had been her hero. A woman not afraid to defy convention, to be all about career at the accepted cost of family. And she’d succeeded.

  Now to hear her talking about men and connections and home and hearth? “Are you sure you don’t need someone to help you with your multiple personalities?”

  “Make fun. But I’m not the one panting after my self-defense teacher.”

  “I am not.”

  “Are too.” Piper raised a brow.

  “So he’s good-looking.” Zoe shrugged, needing to be at least a little bit honest. “Nothing wrong with me liking the scenery while I work out.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. He’s a good teacher. I like the gym. It de-stresses me.” She thought about Gavin and found herself smiling. “He’s annoying. But he makes me laugh.”

  “That’s magic right there.” Piper nodded. “Why not see what a date might do? Aubrey used to tell me you needed to get out more.”

  “She nagged me about it too.” Incessantly.

  “Well, she knew you best. Maybe you ought to think about it.”

  “Fine. Okay.” Anything to stop this conversation. Piper believed in handling grief head-on. She talked about Aubrey as if mention of the girl didn’t still tear a huge hole in Zoe’s heart. Treating the loss in a healthy, verbal way. So Zoe did the same, to prove she was dealing with losing her twin—her best friend, confidante, and the only person who could consistently win an argument against her.

  Zoe gradually changed the topic to the English lavender, lupines, and overgrown daylilies in the far corner of her small backyard. Fortunately, Piper latched on to talk of gardening. She didn’t have outdoor space in her condo by the water and was eager to dirty her manicured hands.

  Doing her best to appear relaxed and not tense at thoughts of her sister or Gavin, Zoe laughed and joked about anything and everything, ignoring her aunt’s sly suggestion that she too join Jameson’s Gym. That had disaster written all over it. Especially because Zoe had decided to wear those same pink yoga pants to work out on Monday, just to poke the sleeping bear and see what he’d do and say.

  Guns of Steel? More like Buns of Steel, she thought, remembering his finer-than-fine flexing, and chuckled despite herself.

  Chapter 2

  Monday evening, Gavin did his rounds, working with the gym-goers eager to get buff. He’d nicely but firmly put Michelle off. Again. The woman was a blond barracuda who thought their one night of raunchy sex months ago entitled her to having him at her beck and call. Yeah, that had been a mistake, and he’d known it the moment he’d let her talk him into going out for “dessert.”

  But he’d been drinking back then. He blamed the booze as much as he blamed his need to lose himself in something pleasurable. Damn, but Michelle knew how to use her tongue in the most inventive ways. Still not enough to tempt him back into her evil clutches. Especially not with Pink Yoga Pants working up a sweat on the elliptical.

  He casually made his way over, aware Zoe didn’t chat with the people near her. She only talked to an older woman about gardening, and then only during her cooldowns. He’d eavesdropped a time or two, puzzled at what she found so fascinating about dirt. But Loretta wasn’t here, and Zoe currently moved with purpose.

  Like a demon, when she jumped on a machine, she went full throttle until she’d sweated out a good gallon. She had her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and it swayed as she ran. He stopped next to her, answering a question for one of his clients about the new kettlebells Mac had ordered.

  “Yeah, they’ll be in Friday, Jim. No, none of them are pink.” Gavin chuckled, then turned to Zoe, only to see her watching him, her gaze intense. “What?” She looked like she either wanted to run him over, punch him, or—dare he hope—kiss him.

  “I’m just waiting for one of your incredibly fascinating comments about pink pants, small biceps, or fine form.” She didn’t sound too winded, yet she’d been on the machine for a good ten minutes at least. She was in phenomenal shape—those yoga pants didn’t lie.

  He frowned. “Hey now, your biceps are just fine. Nothing small about them.” He didn’t recall ever criticizing her shape.

  “I meant yours,” she said drily.

  “You really are mean.”

  She scowled. “I am not.”

  “You are. That’s why I like you.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.” Her lips curled into a smirk, and his heart raced.

  “Yet true.” Before
a nearby musclehead could jump on the machine that opened up next to her, Gavin stepped in front of him, blocking the way. “Sorry, man. I’m training her.” He turned around, searching for a free machine. “There you go. That one just opened up.” He pointed out a machine in front of them before facing Zoe again.

  The guy gave him an odd look and shrugged. “Well, I’m not gonna kiss you, but I get it. Poor bastard.” He chuckled and walked away, no harm no foul.

  Before Gavin could ask what the guy was talking about, Zoe cut in, “Training me? Liar.” She slowed her machine, apparently done with her workout.

  Gavin put on a hurt look. “But I am training you. To smile. Slowly but surely, I’m working on that last nerve. The same one I’m constantly rubbing the wrong way on everyone else, according to my siblings. They, like you, have no appreciation for my sense of humor.” He bent over to touch his toes, luring her with his flexibility. When he straightened, he noticed the strange look she gave him.

  Zoe glanced at him a moment more before grinning. Man, she had one sexy mouth. “Oh, I don’t know. I appreciate humor as much as the next gal.”

  “Yeah?” He stared in awe. Her bright eyes were so…blue.

  “How about this?” She added a husky laugh that shot sparks through his chest and radiated all over his body.

  “You have a great laugh. You should do it more often.”

  “Oh, I will.” She chuckled some more. “Thanks, Gavin. You really made my night.” Then she shocked the hell out of him when after getting off her machine, she leaned close to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Th-thanks.” God willing, he would manage not to pop an erection in his thin athletic shorts in front of her and everyone else at the gym. “Not that I don’t deserve that, but what made you kiss me? Uncontrollable lust? Finally owning up to your feelings? Realizing you’re in love with my charming self?”

  She looked on the verge of exploding with mirth. “You sure you want to know?”