than helping out a friend. That was all it could ever be where he was concerned.
He had too many secrets and shadows haunting him for it to be anything else.
Zac focused on the snowplow driving by, clearing the parking lot from the fresh three inches they’d just gotten.
You had to love March in Alaska.
“Well?” Lance asked, drawing Zac back to their present conversation. “You gonna tell me her name or what?”
Zac shook his head. “There is no name because there is no mystery woman.”
His friend’s gaze narrowed as he zeroed in on Zac’s face. “Nope. Not buying it, dude. Something’s up with you, and it’s not just because you haven’t been playing the field lately.”
“Why are you so concerned about my private life anyway, man?” Zac shrugged and gave his friend an irritated glance. “Mind your own business.”
“Don’t even try to change the subject.” Lance grinned. “I’m right, aren’t I? You are hung up on someone. I knew it! You’ve been acting differently since that holiday party. Been hanging around the apartment more...keeping to yourself.”
Despite knowing this would benefit his ruse about Carmen, Zac winced internally. It rankled. Zac liked his privacy. The scandal following his father’s affair had been splashed all over the tabloids, and having the spotlight glaring on him had been uncomfortable, to say the least.
It didn’t help that he’d acted out back in the day too. He’d only been sixteen when the news had broken about his father’s infidelity and he hadn’t handled it well. In fact, he’d crashed the new sports car his parents had bought him and injured the girl he’d been dating at the time, who’d been his unlucky passenger. She’d made a full recovery, but Zac still lived with the guilt of his recklessness.
One more reason he’d left his parents and all their money behind. The wealth had corrupted his dad. Who was to say it wouldn’t do the same to Zac?
Needing to get out of his own head and away from the pain of his past, he tried to change the subject again. “You and Priya ready for the wedding?”
Thankfully, this time Lance took the bait. “I guess... She’s in charge of all that. I just show up when she tells me.” He tossed his empty water bottle into the recycling bin nearby. “Like this fancy conference thing we’re going to next weekend. If she gets this new job it’ll mean a move to California. Not sure I’m ready to leave Alaska behind, but I guess sand and surf wouldn’t be a horrible change. Plus, we could always come back to Anchorage to visit.”
Zac nodded, not ready to reveal that he and Carmen would be at the conference too, and Carmen would be competing for the same position.
“Well, I don’t know what you got going on behind the scenes, but I’m telling you, dude, one of these days you’re going to find someone who’ll knock those player socks right off you,” Lance said, standing. “You’ll end up in wedded bliss just like the rest of us. See you later.”
Sooner than you think, buddy.
Standing too, Zac checked his watch. “I should get back to the rig. Help Susan check inventory.”
“I’ll walk with you.” Lance followed him out of the cafeteria. “Break’s over.”
They rode the elevator to the first floor and headed down the hall toward the ER.
“No man is an island, remember?” Lance said, apparently not about to let the matter drop.
“Maybe I am.”
Zac knew he sounded defensive—but, damn. Soon Lance and Priya and everyone else at that stupid conference would be all up in his business, so sue him if he wanted to fly below the radar just a little bit longer.
“Islands suit me. Some tropical place with fruity drinks and beaches for miles. I like that kind of island.”
They rounded the corner into the controlled chaos of the emergency room, where people were rushing around and the air was filled with the sound of babies crying and clacking gurneys. The scent of antiseptic and lemon floor wax mingled around him like a comforting blanket.
Across the way, Zac spotted Carmen talking to Wendy Smith at the nurses’ station and stopped short.
Lance glanced between Zac and Carmen and then clapped him on the shoulder and chuckled. “Sounds a whole lot like Trinidad to me, dude.”
Zac barely noticed his friend walk away, his attention focused on the gorgeous midwife with the warm green-gold eyes and even warmer heart. He’d agreed to help Carmen and he would. He’d go to her conference and play her besotted fiancé and keep his promise—because that was what he did. He wasn’t his father. He was trustworthy, moral, strong. He’d play her perfect date, wine and dine her to within an inch of her life, fool her potential bosses, and help her get the job.
He’d keep his emotions and his past out of it.
And maybe, if he told himself that enough times, he’d start to believe it.
“UNITS RESPOND TO motor vehicle accident on Arctic Boulevard at West Fifty-Eighth Avenue. Thirty-seven-year-old female, eight months pregnant, complaining of chest pain. Over.”
“Copy. FA14 responding,” Zac said from behind the wheel. “Two minutes out.”
He steered through the congested midday traffic toward the accident scene with lights blazing and sirens blaring, glad for something else to focus on besides Carmen. His weekend with her was only two days away now, and the closer the conference got the more worried he was that he’d made a horrible mistake.
What the hell had he been thinking, saying he’d pretend to be her fiancé in the last place in the world he ever wanted to set foot in again?
Besides the looming threat of being in his father’s world again, there was also the fact that the connection between him and Carmen had never gone away after their one night together. It wasn’t even a conscious thing, really—more an underlying thread of awareness that pulled a bit tighter each time he was around her. In truth, it was why he hadn’t dated anyone since they’d slept together. Much as he hated to admit it, since their fling he hadn’t wanted anyone but her.
Which scared him more than just about anything else.
Because if he did get serious with her, what was to say it wouldn’t end in betrayal, just like his father had betrayed his mother? Sure, his mother had found a way to forgive his father and work things out between them, but Zac couldn’t expect the same from Carmen if he screwed up. Or when he screwed up, since the odds weren’t in his favor given his genetics.
“What’s got your drawers in a twist?” said Susan, his EMT partner, from the back of the rig as she readied their medical packs for the scene. “You’ve got that look again.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror, scowling. “What look?”
“That brooding, pained one.” Susan snorted. “Either that or you’re constipated.”
“Funny. Not.”
Zac sighed and shook his head, pulling in behind one of four squad cars at the accident scene and jamming the transmission into park. He was unbuckling his seat belt as he opened the door.
“I’m fine. Why are you so nosy?”
“Not any of my business,” Susan said, climbing out at the back and handing him his pack. “Just figured you’d be a lot more cheerful since you have the whole upcoming weekend off. Lord knows I would be. I’d love to have three whole days to get away somewhere.”
They weaved