The Last Man on Earth Read online

  Shred it was the obvious answer.

  But someone might wonder if they saw her shred one tiny piece of notepaper. She’d dispose of it at home, she decided.

  Her mind made up, she tucked the note into her purse as well, then sat down at her desk to wait for the final minutes to tick past.

  • • •

  Zack was standing at the window, gazing out at the city lights that winked and shimmered below, when he heard the snick of a key in the lock.

  He turned around and watched as Madelyn walked into the room.

  She shut the door, then flipped the security lock. She smiled and sauntered toward him.

  He grew instantly aroused, his eyes raking over the slim curves of her body. She was dressed in a form-hugging twin set of some soft material—cashmere, he supposed—its icy blue color a perfect foil for her beautiful red-gold hair.

  He cleared his throat. “I see you received the parcel I sent.”

  She nodded. “It arrived late in the day. I almost didn’t open it.”

  “I thought of that possibility but decided to take the chance. Seems it paid off.”

  “What time did your flight get in?” She toed off her shoes.

  He noted the move, his lips bending upward into a slow smile. “Around two this afternoon.”

  He remembered the landing, how his mind had been awash with vivid thoughts of her. Thoughts strong enough to nearly drown out the roar of the hydraulic brakes, the shuddering in the cabin, the whining squeal of airplane tires as they bumped and burned against the tarmac.

  Safe on the ground, he’d been consumed by an overwhelming impatience to see Madelyn, to feel her, to be with her the way he’d wanted to be every day since he’d been gone.

  He began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “How was Dallas?” Madelyn peeled off her sweater, stretching her arms high over her head. Carelessly she tossed the expensive garment onto the back of a nearby chair.

  With appreciation, he eyed her lace-covered breasts. “Hot and dry, especially for February.” He stepped out of his shoes and loosened his belt buckle.

  She shimmied out of her slacks. “And did you settle all the problems with the ad? Everybody happy now?”

  God knew he was about to be, he realized, as he yanked down his zipper and let his pants drop to the floor. He swallowed as he saw her reach back with both hands to unfasten her bra, the movement arching her chest forward.

  “Yeah,” he answered, “with some pull from the account executive who manages Rhinebeck and a lot of arm-twisting by Tanner’s agent.”

  He sent his shirt flying, then stripped off the last of his clothing.

  “Tanner’s the track star, right? I take it he wanted more money.” She stepped out of her underwear and straightened, completely naked. She set her hands on her hips to wait for his answer.

  “Right. Money.” He reached out and caught hold of her wrist, pulling her to him. “Now, enough with the twenty questions. We’ve got more important things to discuss.”

  She glided her hands over his firm shoulders and arms, then down his chest, burying her fingers in the dark mat of hair that grew there, rubbing her thumbs across his flat male nipples. She leaned near and laved her tongue over his collarbone.

  “Such as?” she teased.

  Zack growled and lifted her into his embrace, high enough for her to wrap her arms and legs around him.

  Slowly, he walked them across the room. “Such as whether you want to be on the top or the bottom.”

  She smiled and crushed her lips to his in a ravenous, openmouthed kiss.

  “How about both?” she invited, her tone husky.

  In complete agreement, they tumbled onto the bed.

  • • •

  It was ages later before they broke apart, flushed and replete, their bodies all but humming from a near overload of sensory pleasure. Stretched out side by side across the tangled sheets of the wide king-size bed, they lay with eyes closed, hands clasped.

  Madelyn gave a luxuriant purr. “Umm, that was amazing.”

  “Amazing, huh?”

  “Definitely worth staying up late for on a Wednesday night.”

  “Well, they don’t call it hump day for nothing, you know.”

  She gasped and rolled her head toward him. “My God, Zack, you are outrageous. And incredible.”

  She started chuckling.

  “No doubt the reason you can’t resist me.”

  She shifted to lean her forearms against his chest. “Incredibly awful is what I meant,” she said.

  He gave her a light pinch on the bare flesh of her thigh.

  In retaliation, she pressed her fingernails into his side.

  He sucked in his stomach and arched away. “Hey, watch where you put those things.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or else,” he growled playfully. “That’s what.”

  “Now, now, don’t start anything you can’t finish.” She rolled away from him.

  “Who says I can’t finish? I finish everything I start.” He lunged across the bed after her.

  “Not now, you don’t,” she laughed, eluding him. “I’m hungry and I demand to be fed.”

  “Food, is it?”

  “Yes, a big thick steak and a salad, I think. Followed by a towering slice of cheesecake with cherries on top.”

  Now he was getting hungry. “I suppose I could eat.” He tucked his hands behind his head. “Call room service and order something for us.”

  She bounced out of the bed and onto her feet. “No, you call room service. I’m going to shower.”

  “Slave driver,” he complained. “All right, but then I’m coming in after you.”

  “No way. I want my dinner and it’ll end up getting cold if you join me. Remember what happened the last time we showered together?”

  He did, fondly. “I promise I won’t do anything but wash.”

  She pinned him with a knowing look. “Nuh-uh. That’s what got us in trouble last time, since I’m the one you washed. I’m locking the door behind me.”

  “You’re cruel, you know that?” he called to her retreating back.

  Grinning, he picked up the receiver to dial room service.

  He was hungrier than he’d thought and ended up ordering steaks and salad for them both, cheesecake, a pitcher of ice water, coffee for him, and tea for Madelyn.

  While she showered, he tugged on his pants, then straightened the rest of their clothes, hanging them neatly in the closet.

  Their meal arrived just a couple of minutes before Madelyn padded out of the bath, wrapped inside a large fluffy white robe. She hadn’t lied about being starved, and dug enthusiastically into her meal. Zack ate his own dinner at a more moderate pace.

  Halfway through, though, she slowed and leaned back in her chair, pushing her plate to one side.

  He pointed a fork toward her partially eaten steak. “Aren’t you going to finish that?”

  “I’m leaving room for dessert.”

  “Waste of a damned fine piece of meat, if you ask me.”

  “Would you like it?”

  “At these prices I would.” He stabbed the expensive cut of beef and transferred it to his plate.

  “I had no idea you were so frugal.” Madelyn ate a bite of her cheesecake, taking a moment to savor the taste. “You know, it just occurred to me, I really don’t know that much about you, even after all these weeks.”

  He shrugged, finishing his own steak and starting in on hers. “What’s there to know?”

  “Well, basic things, I suppose. Where you grew up, for instance.”

  “Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.”

  “What was it like, your hometown?”

  “Small. Blue-collar. Nothing special, just a town.”

  “And college? Did you at
tend one in Pennsylvania?”

  “No, I went to NYU. At least that’s where I finished up. Did a tour in the army first, right out of high school. I was stationed over in Germany. It gave me the chance to earn some money, take a few classes, and see a little of the world.”

  “Now, that’s exactly what I mean. I had no idea you’d done any of those things.”

  “And what about you, Madelyn? Which one of the Seven Sisters did you attend?”

  She paused for a long, telling moment before she confessed. “Wellesley, but we’re not discussing me.”

  He smiled and ate another slice of steak.

  “How about family? Any brothers and sisters?” she persisted.

  “One. A sister.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Is she older, younger? What’s her name?”

  “Her name is Beth and she’s four years younger.”

  “And your parents?”

  He went still. “What about them?”

  “Well, what are they like? Where do they live? What do they do?”

  “My father doesn’t do anything, not anymore. He’s dead. My mother . . . last I heard she lives somewhere in Florida.”

  “The last you heard?”

  Something icy slid into his eyes. “Yes, the last I heard. Is the interrogation over now, or was there something else you wanted to know?”

  Her spine stiffened at his tone. Hurt, she stirred her coffee in a circular motion, her eyes lowered. “No, I don’t want to know anything, not if you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Look, it’s not that, not exactly.” He sighed and set down his fork. “I don’t much like talking about my past, that’s all. It’s nothing personal.”

  She pushed her dessert away, barely touched. “Fine. I won’t ask again.”

  He picked up his glass of ice water and drank half, then set it down with a snap. “All of us didn’t grow up in a nice house in the suburbs with a loving family and lots of money. Some of us lived in a cramped, run-down hovel where you sweltered in the summer and froze in the winter ’cause the heat only worked half the time. The months your dad was sober enough to remember to pay the bill, that is.

  “You didn’t have to listen to him after he’d crawled down deep into a bottle of cheap brew,” he went on, jabbing his fork into the remaining piece of medium-rare steak on his plate.

  “Blubbering on hour after hour,” he continued, “about how he would have made it to the Show, played big-league ball if he hadn’t gotten robbed after only a year in the minors. How his coach was a narrow-minded son of a bitch who didn’t understand the pressures a family man was under. And you didn’t have to listen to him sob about how he’d given up his dream for a wife and kid he didn’t want. For a mistake he’d made one night as a teenager in the backseat of a car.”

  She reached out a hand. “Zack—”

  He ignored her and went on. “You didn’t breathe a sigh of relief every time you left for school, savoring the calm, the peace of knowing you didn’t have to listen to your parents argue and fight and scream at each other, for a few hours anyway. You didn’t have to watch your mother take off with some out-of-town insurance salesman, then have to explain to your six-year-old sister why she wouldn’t be coming back again—ever. You didn’t get the hell out of some backwater town you hated, the second you could. Swearing never to return, never to look back. Did you ever have to do any of those things, Madelyn, in your perfect little world?”

  She jerked back her head as if he’d slapped her, then pulled in a breath. Visibily, she composed herself. “No, I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean my world was perfect. And it doesn’t give you the right to criticize or condemn me.”

  A tense silence fell between them.

  “I’m sorry your childhood was so unhappy,” she offered in a stiff voice.

  “Don’t be.” He shrugged. “My sister and I did all right. It could have been worse. Our folks didn’t beat or molest us or anything like that. And somehow Dad always managed to hang on to his factory job, keep a roof over our heads, such as it was.”

  Until bitterness and alcohol had worn him into an old man long before his time, Zack thought. Put him into an early grave.

  He looked across the table at Madelyn, so fresh and pretty.

  And yes, so innocent in her way.

  What was he doing? Where had all that meanness come from? Erupting like a monster from somewhere deep inside. Why had he told her so much? Revealed parts of himself, secrets he’d never revealed to anyone else before?

  Suddenly tired, he rubbed a pair of fingers over the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I decided to take this out on you. It doesn’t usually bother me.”

  She folded her napkin and put it carefully back on the table. “I guess I pushed a button. It . . . it’s getting late. Maybe I should go.”

  “You don’t need to go. We’ve got the room for the whole night.”

  She climbed to her feet. “We’ve also got work tomorrow. It’ll be easier for me to get dressed and ready in the morning if I’m at home.”

  As she started past, he caught her by the wrist. “Stay,” he said.

  “I think it would be better if we both had some time apart. A chance to sort through our thoughts.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “No.”

  He tugged her across his lap, wrapped an immovable arm around her waist. “You’re not walking away from me, not tonight.”

  He pushed the robe off one shoulder and buried his face in the curve of her neck, possessively taking her naked breast in his hand. “I’m not done yet. Not nearly done wanting you.”

  Then his mouth was on hers, demanding a response, demanding her surrender.

  • • •

  For the space of a few endless seconds she struggled, trying not to give in to the fire already starting to burn inside her body.

  Then she yielded, meeting him, matching him touch for touch, kiss for kiss, taking him with the same raw power with which he was taking her. Anger and hurt faded beneath the force of her desire.

  He took her there, on the chair, without gentleness or mercy, forcing her to accept everything he had and more. No longer quite himself. No longer entirely rational.

  And she let him, urging him on, letting him spread her, fill her, pushing her senses high, then higher still, until she felt as if she were soaring, flying free without need of wings or a net.

  When the passion was over, when they’d both come back down to earth, hearts no longer threatening to hammer from their chests, lungs filling normally with air, he carried her to the bed and lay beside her on the sheets.

  In a move of blatant possession, he looped an arm and leg around her body as if still worried she might try to leave.

  • • •

  A brief while later, Madelyn stroked her hand down the warm, supple skin of his naked back and listened to his breathing.

  Gentle.

  Even.

  Asleep.

  She thought about their conversation, about everything he’d told her, and his demands afterward. She thought again about the way she’d given in to him and the strength of their mutual passion.

  No, whether she liked it or not, she realized, she wasn’t done yet with wanting him either.

  And it worried her–the knowledge that she might never be again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She found the movie ticket in her coat pocket the next day. It was for a show scheduled to play that evening at an older theater in Brooklyn.

  The ticket must have come from Zack. She knew of no one else who might have left her such a thing. But when had he had the time to buy it? she wondered. More important, how had he managed to slip it into her coat without her knowledge? She’d barely been out of her office all day.

  A yawn
caught her and she raised a hand to cover her gaping mouth. Today had been tough. Made tougher by the scant hours of sleep she’d gotten last night.

  Just after five this morning she’d slipped from the bed, needing to return home and change into something suitable for work.

  Zack had been awake.

  She’d sensed him watching her as she’d dressed in the sliver of light shining around the bathroom door. He’d said nothing. Neither had she. Then she’d let herself out of the room.

  At work, responsibility had set in with all the subtlety of a brick crashing through a plate glass window. One demand after another, calls and meetings and impossible deadlines piling up until she’d been about ready to scream.

  Desperate for a break around eleven, she’d escaped outside for a breath of fresh air. Or at least what passed for fresh air in the city.

  That’s when she’d found it, a stiff rectangle of paper, a one-by-four-inch featherweight intruder hiding in the pocket of her coat. For a long moment she’d considered its meaning and the man who’d left it for her. Then she’d tucked it away and returned to the office.

  The film’s previews were rolling, the theater dark, when she walked inside at half past six. The wide set of wooden double doors, with their long, thin slits of window, swung shut at her back.

  Momentarily blinded, she stood in the aisle to give her eyes a chance to adjust. A handful of people sat scattered in the hundred-seat-capacity room, making it an easy task to pick out the back of Zack’s head and his broad shoulders a few rows down.

  She moved forward and, with barely a sound, eased into the seat next to his.

  He didn’t speak right away. “I wasn’t sure you were coming,” he whispered.

  “Traffic was heavy,” she whispered back.

  He’d bought a giant tub of popcorn. He nudged it toward her, balancing it on the armrest between them. Madelyn took a handful and began to eat, one kernel at a time. The movie opened with a sweeping flourish of music, credits forming and re-forming over rugged hills of green and miles of cloudless indigo sky.

  Zack angled his head toward hers. “Your day okay?”

  “Long. Busy. The usual. How was yours?”