“Everything will be okay,” he said confidently. “Give it time, Ellie.”
She pulled off her headphones, wondering how Zane always seemed to know what she was thinking. Her insecurity must be showing, because she still felt lost. And for some odd reason, Zane seemed to sense it.
Someone must have dropped off his vehicle, because he shifted her directly from the seat of the helicopter into a black SUV.
Reflexively, she briefly flinched as he swept her into his strong arms, a knee-jerk reaction that she hadn’t been able to completely lose when anybody touched her. Her heart lurched as she relaxed and put her arms around his neck, her face so close to him that she could get drunk on his masculine scent. “I am capable of walking, you know,” she told him nervously. The feel of his powerful body cradling her in his arms felt way too good, way too safe.
He scowled down at her. “In those flimsy shoes? Not happening.”
What she was wearing was little more than slippers, but there was no snow on the runway.
She didn’t argue as he put her in the passenger seat of his SUV as some guy she didn’t know came jogging out of a hangar to take care of the helicopter. Most likely, he was an employee. Since she had spent zero time at the airfield on Colter land, she wasn’t sure.
Zane’s vehicle was running and warm, and Ellie was starting to get overheated from the layers of clothing Zane had insisted she wear because it was a cold day. She pulled the hat off her head and unwrapped the scarf around her neck, placing both items in her lap before unzipping her down jacket. They were all items Zane had brought with him to take her home.
Zane slid into the driver’s seat and quickly closed the door. “We’ll be home shortly. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she reassured him. “But I don’t really have a home anymore.”
“You have mine,” Zane growled as he put the vehicle in motion. “You don’t have to be so damn stubborn. It’s the safest place for you to be right now.”
“I’m not trying to be stubborn or morose. It’s just really disorienting to know I really have nowhere to go that’s actually mine anymore. Can’t you understand that?”
“Yes. It’s understandable. But it’s one thing you really don’t need to consider right now. You’ll get better, and then you can take on the world.”
Ellie sat back in the seat, knowing she was going to have to accept her temporary home with Zane. Obviously his family was in agreement with his plan, and had cooperated so he could get what he wanted. Although she was angry because Zane was so highhanded, she was still grateful that he cared enough to open his home to her. How many busy, rich guys would make the time for her that Zane had? Why he was taking so much time and effort for her she still didn’t understand, but she couldn’t just discard his kindness. “Thank you.”
“It’s no trouble. I have to be here for the rest of the holidays, and I have a small lab here where I can work.”
“You work here, too?”
“Yeah. Mostly personal projects, things that are going to take ongoing study and replication.”
“Like what?” she asked curiously. “Do you like what you’re doing? I know you were obsessed with changing the world with science when we were younger. Are you still?”
Zane shrugged. “Pretty much. But I was pretty naïve, even when I was in college. I didn’t realize how much crap can go along with science.”
“What?” Scientific study had always been Zane’s life. Ellie had never heard him talk about the downside.
“Irresponsible studies. Bullshit reports. Some places putting out supposed scientific studies without enough evidence and no replication. No real control groups and not big enough groups to even be accurate. So many scientific studies are badly conducted just for sensationalism or monetary gain. Just because a single test on mice or rats shows something that’s a possibility doesn’t mean it’s always true for humans, but the media will blow it up until everything is skewed to be taken as the truth.”
“But businesses want to be profitable, I suppose,” Ellie mused, touched by how seriously Zane took his profession.
“My lab is very profitable, but it can be profitable and ethical at the same time,” Zane said adamantly.
“So my being at your home won’t really make you wish you could be at your main lab because you have one set up at home?”
“Even if I didn’t, my priority is to see you recover. Nobody deserves what happened to you. And you were completely faultless. Wrong place at the wrong damn time.”
“Why are you doing all of this? I don’t understand,” she finally asked. “It’s not like we’ve seen much of each other since you graduated from high school. We really aren’t friends.”
“Because I want to,” he answered enigmatically.
“Why?” She leaned her head back against the headrest, feeling both emotionally and physically tired.
“You may not consider me your friend, but I’ve never stopped thinking of you as mine. You’ve helped me in the past. You never treated me differently in high school even though I was a weird science nerd. You helped me organize some of my high school research projects, and you were always nice to me. I never stopped being your friend just because I moved away,” he said huskily.
Ellie’s heart melted as she sensed the insecurity in his words. Zane had been a loner when he was a teen, mostly because he was more interested in science than people. But not many of the kids at school had really gotten to know him. Deep inside, Zane had been a kind, quirky, intelligent adolescent, and as he matured, he obviously hadn’t changed. Granted, he’d become a lot bossier and determined to have his way. But the heart of the young man she’d known hadn’t really altered.
“I never stopped thinking of you as a friend, either,” she admitted, knowing she had thought about him a lot more than she should have over the years. “You were always nice to me, too, even though I was overweight and not very popular in high school. It meant a lot to me.”
Actually, all of Chloe’s brothers had been nice. But since Marcus and Blake were older, they’d been graduating when she and Chloe were just starting high school. Tate had always been sweet, but the girls had always been drawn to him, and he’d practically had his own harem, even in high school. Since Chloe, Tate, and Zane were so close in age, Ellie had always wondered how Chloe’s mom could have survived being constantly pregnant for well over two years.
Tate was younger, closer in age to her and Chloe, but she’d never had more than a casual acquaintance with him. It was Zane who had caught her attention back then, probably because he was so much more approachable, so much more like her. He was almost always alone, and probably felt like he didn’t fit in. They’d struck up a friendship when she’d seen his frustration at the tediousness of organizing his research. She’d offered to help put everything in a likely order after questioning him about the different portions of his notes. Even though the material was way over her head, she had put things in a logical order, which didn’t take a genius.