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never.

CHAPTER 5
     
     
    Annie leaned over him. Touched him. Zack, in his
semi-conscious state, could sense her closeness. The desire to feel the
delicate brush of her skin against his, or maybe a nipple caressing his arm,
overwhelmed him. Even his lips tingled in anticipation of a small kiss.
    The whisper-light stroke against his forehead might
have been a dream but he wanted to believe it was real, that she'd kissed him
there.
    Do it again .
    He felt light-headed, dazed by the heat and his own
drowsiness. But there was a definite desire on both their parts—the air
between them buzzed with it.
    The same feather-like caress brushed the hair from his
forehead. In his dreams Annie was so close he could almost taste her. She
smelled like roses...
    A small gasp near his right ear quickened his pulse. "Annie,"
he murmured, or maybe only dreamed he did. Then all previous thoughts were
swamped by a driving need to feel her lips on his. To feel—
    The slap on his cheek.
    Zack sat up with a jerk. "Hey!" he shouted. "What
the hell have I done now?" Since he never seemed to do anything right
according to Annie McCallum, he must have done something to annoy her. Maybe he
breathed in the wrong direction.
    She looked at him matter-of-factly. "There was a
bee on your face."
    He glared at her, not sure whether to believe her. It
was more likely he'd done something to deserve that slap. "A bee?"
    The soft pink lips that he'd dreamed were kissing him
only moments ago crept into a smile that made her bright blue eyes sparkle. She
was truly beautiful when she smiled like that. And she had no idea.
    "Did you think I just decided to slap you?"
she asked with a laugh. "Why would I do that?"
    He shrugged, trying to appear cool, calm and collected
when all he felt was hot, on-edge. "Who knows. I seem to have offended you
more times than I can count. It wouldn't surprise me if I offended you by the
way I slept."
    He tried to look intent on picking up their trash and
putting it in his backpack. He wasn't avoiding her, he just didn't want to look
at her right now. Not with those sweet, tempting lips. Kissable lips.
    Jeez, he needed to stop these thoughts immediately. They
were wrong. Worse than wrong—they were dangerous. He should not be
thinking about her at all. She wasn't his type.
    He cursed under his breath. Who was he kidding? Annie
was perfect. Too perfect. She was everything he wanted and desired in a woman—she
was sexy but didn't have a clue what affect she had on men. She was funny,
intelligent and she sent his pulse rate soaring to dangerous levels whenever
she was close. What more could a man want?
    But that was the problem. She was so perfect for him,
he needed to avoid her. She could tempt him to go where no woman had taken him
before—matrimony. His type of woman was the partying kind, the kind whose
breast size was inversely proportional to her brain size and who believed banks
were there to pay for her plastic surgery and shopping sprees. She would never
want to have children because it would ruin her figure and she'd never want to
live on a ranch because the cafes were too far away. His type of woman was the
kind a sensible man would never marry and that was all right by him because he
wanted to remain a bachelor. Forever.
    He'd seen it all before. The man who married the love
of his life, only to become a slave to her. His father, for example. He'd had
dreams of stardom, of making it big as a musician. He gave all that up when he
married Zack's mother. Sure, he'd loved her and would have followed her to the
end of the world, at first, but it also meant giving up the music and his
dreams. The growing family couldn't live on love and songs. His father got a
job, then another, as the family grew.
    But it wasn't enough. A dreamer and unqualified for
real work that paid enough, he needed to supplement his income with the
proceeds of the occasional burglary to support a wife and brood of hungry
children. That was the beginning of