Free Leaving at Noon by Jess Dee Page A

a
while since I smiled at you at all.”
    Zoey could do nothing but nod. There hadn’t
been a whole lot of warm smile exchanges going on between them.
    With a sigh, Theo bent down and picked up
her hat and sunnies. They’d fallen in the sand, and she hadn’t even
noticed. He plopped the hat on her head and handed over the
glasses.
    She let them dangle from her hand. “It’s
been even longer since you treated me to a Scorcher.”
    Theo smiled again, this time a
self-deprecating grin that only flashed half of his gorgeous
dimple. “I was going for a Slow-burn.” Two down from the Scorcher
and pretty self-explanatory. “Lost my way the second my lips
touched yours.”

Chapter Five
     
    Zoey shoved her sunnies on and slipped her
hand into his, linking their fingers together. Then she turned and
began to walk again, their joined hands ensuring Theo walked beside
her. Not that he’d have walked anywhere else. His sole purpose in
coming to Noosa was to sort their shit out.
    The kiss was a good starting point, although
it shot him from frustrated and floundering to fully aroused and
fucking horny in four seconds flat.
    “ I miss us,” she said on a
whisper.
    He sighed. “Me too.”
    “ What happened? What went
wrong?”
    “ Fucked if I know.”
Helplessness clawed at him, like it had for weeks. “One minute we
were good. The next we weren’t.”
    “ It changed that quickly?
In a minute?”
    “ No.” He’d have noticed
such an abrupt transformation. “It crept up slow. Didn’t even
notice things were getting bad until they were bad.” Theo pressed
his lips together. They still tingled from the kiss. The taste of
Zoey’s breath lingered on his tongue—hot, sweet and purely
feminine.
    But even a Scorcher—Zoey liked to name his
kisses—wasn’t enough to distract him from his apprehension. “Zo,
the suspense is killing me.”
    She looked at him in confusion.
    “ The phone
call?”
    “ Oh yeah. I wanted to tell
you about work.”
    Okay, he wasn’t expecting that. “So, it’s
not about us?” His relief was palpable.
    “ No. This one’s about
me.”
    “ Tell me.”
    “ It seems silly now, after
that kiss. Unimportant even.”
    Theo lowered his glasses and looked at her.
“It was important enough that you tried to phone me.”
    “ I wanted to discuss the
clinic with you. Tell you how successful it’s becoming. After only
three months being open, it’s grown so big, we have to move. We
need bigger rooms and extra staff to treat all the new patients
who’ve joined the practice.”
    “ That’s awesome, babe.”
Pride flared in his chest. He’d had no doubt the clinic would be a
success, but from the sounds of things, it had outdone all of
Zoey’s expectations.
    “ That’s not all. Steve and
Katie are so happy with the growth, they’ve raised my
salary.”
    Zoey worked set hours and was paid a
percentage of each of her consultation fees. The extra time she put
in was at her own expense. Theo had no doubt the raise was well
earned. “Did you just hear all of this from Katie and Steve?” he
asked.
    “ No.” Zoey stared ahead,
giving him a strong sense she was avoiding his gaze. “Both the
decision to move and to raise my pay was made almost a month
ago.”
    “ What the fuck?” His
fingers untangled from hers so fast her hand dropped to her side,
thumping against her thigh. He stopped walking. “Jesus, Zoey. A
month?”
    And there it was, the chasm that existed
between them, opening up on the beach. Whatever closeness they’d
rediscovered through their kiss was sucked into the abyss.
    Anger swamped him. “You’ve known about it
all this time, and you chose to tell me today?”
    Zoey, a step ahead, turned to glare at him.
“When would you have liked me to tell you?”
    “ When you found out would
have been good.”
    “ You mean four weeks ago,
when we weren’t talking? Or maybe I should have spoken up a week
later, or two weeks later—when we still weren’t talking. I didn’t
say