Free Loving the Chase (Heart of the Storm #1) by Sharla Lovelace

jeans and sandals. Good potential.
    For about thirty seconds. When he pulled next to them, she got out, and his stomach threatened to come up in his throat.
    “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.
    “Wait, that looks like—” Hannah began, leaning forward over the center console.
    “Is that Maddi?” Simon asked.
    Zach’s skin started to tingle from the rush of anger that spread through his veins. Or that’s what he told himself it was. He ran his hands over his face and back through his hair before looking back at her. She was looking right back at him, her dark hair blowing around her face, arms crossed over her chest and eyes as dark as the angry clouds up ahead.

    Maddi dug her nails into her arms as Zach opened his door and got out to face her. She held her chin up, trying to look braver than she felt. Hoping he hadn’t noticed her nearly fall out of the van. She was trying too hard to look cool and confident, which she was anything but. Her heart was on some sort of race from hell, and she knew she needed to take some breaths and calm down if she was going to pull this off. There was no table between them this time, no bosses to bluff. Nothing but air and history between her and the one man she’d ever let break her.
    And she was voluntarily riding into the one thing she feared the most.
    “Why are you here?” he said, his voice low.
    “Because my boss couldn’t be,” she said through her teeth, releasing the death grip she had on her own arms to move hair out of her face. “And she wants this.”
    “Oh, I can see that,” Zach said. “She misses the meeting, misses the ride-along, but she’s all about it.”
    “It is what it is, Zach,” Maddi said. “I didn’t ask for this, either, but it’s my job. Are you going to have a problem with it?”
    Zach’s eyes bored into hers so hard she had to resist the urge to reach for the car door. For anything to hold her steady. Finally he took a deep breath and stared off toward the dark clouds in the distance.
    “I can do it if you can,” he said.
    “Good. Let’s get on with it, then,” she said with more bravado than she felt. She crooked a finger at a man who appeared from the back of the van.
    The way his gaze drilled into her when she met it again forced her to look away. There was something—old, and painfully familiar there. He’d done that in the meeting as well, and it made her thoughts go all dizzy. She couldn’t afford dizzy. Remember the stairs , she reminded herself, and relaxed as the ice returned to her veins.
    “This is Rudy, my cameraman,” she said, as the two men shook hands.
    “Simon and Hannah are in the truck,” Zach said, for which Maddi wanted to jump up and down. She was so grateful for something to do that didn’t include trading uncomfortable moments with Zach. And he looked like all the wind had been knocked out of him. Good. He needed to be knocked somewhere, all right. “You remember them?” he added.
    “Of course,” she said, giving him a look. She moved past him and leaned in the window slowly, smiling at them as well as to herself. Maybe the airheads had something on this positioning idea after all. “Hey, long time no see!”

    Zach glared at the band of darkness up ahead while they did the niceties. He just wanted to get back on the road and somehow make this normal. He needed normal, and the electricity in the air was beginning to make him itchy.
    He knocked on Hannah’s window while Maddi laughed with Simon about how short his hair was now. Her raised eyebrow as the window lowered made him blow out a breath.
    “Interesting secret you kept,” she said without moving her lips.
    “It wasn’t supposed to be her,” Zach said. “And I just found out she worked there yesterday.”
    His heart warmed toward his sister when she looked Maddi’s way as if she were looking at a rotten tomato. She’d loved Maddi like a sister once upon a time, had been one of her best friends. And felt nearly as bereft