Page 4 of The Last Love Song
Her mouth went dry. She stood so close to him, her gaze eye level with his throat and the strong column of his neck above his crisp white collar. Despite the dimly lit room, she could see the bristle of whiskers shadowed there. Imagine the feel of his skin if she were to touch him.
Disconcerted by those thoughts, she risked a glance higher. Only to have her gaze drawn to his square jaw and full, sensual mouth. Quickly, she looked down.
Only to see his broad shoulders and lean torso tapering to narrow hips. Strong thighs.
“There.” He stood back to admire his handiwork.
Not—she reminded herself—her.
Her face flamed as she mentally finished undressing the mayor. What was wrong with her?
“Thanks,” she muttered, cursing herself for noticing Zach.
Fleeing the scene before she did something stupid—like taste the moonshine or possibly even the man—Heather rushed out of the house and away from temptation. Unfortunately, she couldn’t escape from the images now burned into her brain afterthat close encounter. Why the hell had she let her imagination run away and not the rest of her?
She had no idea what he’d been thinking to corner her like that. What did he want from her?
She sighed. Heather had taken a lot of time to sew up loose ends in town so she’d be ready to leave Heartache after Erin’s wedding. Now her sister was married and laughing in the kitchen with her new husband. Heather’s work here was done. She had a life to get on track and an illness to battle.
The sooner she left, the better. Zach Chance could remain safely in her fantasies and well out of her life.
Chapter Two
Rumor had itthat Heather Finley was leaving Heartache.
Zach just hadn’t realized she would be going at a dead sprint.
Now, three hours later, he drove around the outskirts of town in an ’87 Mercedes convertible, a relic from his dad’s heyday as a car collector. Zach had hoped the night air would blow some sense into his head, but half an hour into the drive and he still stewed over the fact that Heather Finley was moving on.
That sucked for several reasons, not the least of which was that he had his eye on her. She’d fascinated Zach back in high school. The world would be at a fever pitch around her—a pep rally, a football game or a fight in the hall—and she’d be the calm eye of the storm, her long auburn waves always falling in perfect curls along her shoulders. Her clothes were timeless and feminine when every other girl in school decided combat boots were the thing to have. Heather was never part of an in crowd, yet everyone liked her. She championed other Finleys, never showing up at school functions unless she was there to support her drum-majorette sister or her football-playing brothers.
Zach had been curious about her then, but he’d needed to move on after school to put his father’s crimes behind him—along with his own guilt at the way his sister had fallen apart afterward.
Pounding a fist on the steering wheel, Zach turned onto the interstate at the last minute, needing to pick up more speed than the roads around Heartache allowed. Sure, he had an aversion to scandal after the media circus of his father’s arrest, but that didn’t mean he led a perfect life. He just chose his moments to put the gas pedal to the floor and blow the cobwebs out of his head.
He knew Heather would be a perfect mayor for Heartache. She’d grown up there. She clearly cared about the town, what with all the hours she volunteered at the recreation department, spearheading summer volleyball leagues and importing talented coaches to conduct camps for their youth. Plus, she had business sense, evident by her successful storefront with her sister. The fact that she had a thriving sideline as a private music teacher proved how much all the local kids liked her. And of course, she juggled all of that and still looked after her widowed mother, taking Diana Finley to doctor’s appointments for the bipolar disorder that had crippled her for years, and making sure her mom stayed on her medicine.
Heather was a quiet dynamo.
Cranking up the radio louder, he tucked a finger in the knot of his necktie and loosened it a fraction of an inch, just enough to unfasten the top button of his shirt. He should have made his personal interest in Heather known earlier this year, but he’d been steamrolled by work and then—when he’d planned to see her at a rec-league soccer tournament she’d organized—he’d discovered she’d gone out of town on a buying trip for Last Chance Vintage.
The timing had been crap, as it had been since he’d moved back to Heartache. Shortly after he’d arrived, she lost her father, the town’s previous mayor. Definitely not the time tostart something with her. Then he’d gotten caught up in small-town politics when the town council had called him to fill the vacancy. He’d gotten the most write-in votes, tying with a country star, a comic-strip dog and Heather Finley herself. The council had talked him into it, slyly suggesting that Heather—a sensible woman with “a good head on her shoulders”—might be persuaded to take over the spot in the future.
So, yeah, Zach hadn’t just been interested in Heather personally when he approached her tonight. He’d also wanted to see if there was any chance in hell she’d be done with this itch to audition for a singing show in time for the next election. She’d volunteered with the town’s recreation department for years, as civic-minded as the rest of her family. Zach planned to offer his campaign skills himself if it meant quitting the job to make time for personal business he needed to follow up on. Besides, he hated the petty infighting and backstabbing of small-town politics and had little patience for it, whereas he pictured Heather smoothing over it all with one wave of her capable hand.
Too bad Ms. Good Head On Her Shoulders was committed to ditching the town she grew up in.
Frustrated about his failure with Heather, he was distracted by the time he saw a car on the side of the road. A vehicle ahead of him had moved to the passing lane to avoid the blue sedan on the shoulder that looked kind of familiar…
Heather?
Taking his foot off the gas, Zach squinted at the older-model luxury-sized Nissan on the shoulder of the road. A heart-shaped bumper sticker was prominent in the back windshield—the logo for Erin Finley’s Dress for Success program. No doubt about it, that was Heather Finley’s car on the side of the interstate.
He slammed on the brakes.
He pulled onto the shoulder a few hundred feet in front of her, and checked his rearview mirror to be sure there was no one in front of the car. Slowly, he put it in reverse.
It was past midnight. Other cars flew by them at seventy miles an hour, the headlights a blur. The sedan had been parked with no lights on, not even the hazards. He couldn’t see anyone in the vehicle. What the hell?
