Haunted by Ella Ardent Page B

deserve.”
    Zach blamed himself for Luke’s death?
    “But you’re wrong,” she said hastily. “You have to be.” She put her hand on Zach’s arm, but he pulled away. The rejection stung as little else could have done.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “I do, because you have to be talking about Luke.”
    Zach’s gaze leapt to hers and Caitlyn took a deep breath.
    “And I’m the one who killed him.”
    “That’s a lie,” Zach said with rare heat. Caitlyn stared at him, knowing she’d never seen him angry like this, never seen him lose his temper. There was no doubt that he was convinced of his own words. “I killed Luke. He was my best friend, and he’d had my back a hundred times, but we fought.”
    “That doesn’t mean…”
    “I knew he’d been drinking,” Zach interrupted savagely, his eyes blazing. “I knew he’d do some dumb-ass thing, but I told him to go. I let him drive away, even though he was furious. I might as well have driven that car into the concrete pillion myself.”
    “But…”
    “You can’t fix this, Caitlyn. You can’t make it better. I have to live with what I said and did for the rest of my life.”
    “But…”
    “We’re not going to talk about it,” he said with the force of command that should have thrilled her.
    But Zach put as much distance between them as possible. He rapped on the roof and commanded the driver to take them back to the house.
    Then he plucked the book out of her hands and read it himself, as if she wasn’t even there.
    As if he was thinking of another submissive who would take her place.
    The vibrator hummed against her puss, probably because he’d forgotten about it, and Caitlyn wondered if he’d come to her that night at all.
    What had he and Luke said to each other that last time that Zach felt so guilty?
    * * *
    It was an endless day, as far as Zach was concerned.
    He wanted to pack up and leave the island right away, but that was out of the question. He couldn’t find Rex and he didn’t want to be with Caitlyn.
    Well, he did want to be with Caitlyn, but he knew he didn’t deserve it.
    He prowled through the whole house, discovering its every corner, but guessed there were parts of it that he didn’t even know existed. He tried the door to Caitlyn’s room again, but found it still locked, and told himself that it was better that way.
    His desire for Caitlyn was at the root of everything, after all. He should learn to let her go. He’d had his one night, and it should have satisfied him.
    Except it hadn’t.
    In fact, a taste had only made him more hungry. He gave the remote control for the vibrator to Hunt, whose face lit with delight at the possibilities. There was no gym he could find—although he knew there had to be one hidden in the house somewhere—so he worked out in his room with obsessive determination.
    It proved to be impossible to take the edge off his desire.
    Let alone to eliminate his guilt.
    The house made a hundred bizarre noises throughout the day, as if it really was haunted. He heard banging and fading footsteps. He was sure someone ran through the attic and heard scratching on the other side of the walls of his room, a sound that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
    He didn’t go down to dinner, because he didn’t want to be tempted by Caitlyn.
    Instead he had a tray in his room, took a long hot bath, and then climbed into bed to read some more erotica. He dozed off when it was dark outside the windows.
    And then, to his dismay, he dreamed of the night he most wanted to forget.
    * * *
    “Hey, Zach, come buy me a drink.” Luke swaggered into the bar where Zach and his co-workers grabbed a drink on Thursday nights. He looked completely out of place in the swish bar, dressed in his jeans and leather jacket while everyone else was wearing suits. A few had loosened their ties, but it was early enough that they still had their jackets on.
    Zach would leave before things got too relaxed. One drink, that was