Yeah, but Zach was a moron. Brooke wouldn’t be looking at him like that again. He’d made sure of that.

“You’re only saying so because you got laid by the woman of your dreams,” Sam pointed out. “Cristina.”

“Cristina?” Zach blinked. This was news. “Since when?”

“Since last night,” Sam informed him. “Dustin fixed her car and then she slept with him.”

Not one to kiss and tell, Dustin tried to hold back his stupid grin and failed.

“Cristina’s not going to settle down,” Aidan warned Dustin. “She’s not the type.”

“She might, for the right guy,” Dustin said, pushing up his glasses. “It could happen.”

“You’re asking to be crushed,” Aidan told him. “Like a grape. Again.”

“Actually,” Zach said quietly, “you never know.”

“Then why aren’t you seeing Brooke?” Aidan asked. “With only one week in town left, that makes her the perfect woman in my eyes.”

“So why don’t you date her?” Eddie jeered.

“Maybe I will.”

Suddenly the pizza Zach had consumed sat like a lead weight in his gut. He tried to picture Brooke moving on and dating any one of these guys. His friends.

Then he had to admit it wasn’t the pizza weighing his gut down. “No.”

Aidan raised a brow. “What?”

“Nothing.” Zach tossed his pizza aside. “She can date whoever she wants.”

“Really?” Aidan said dryly. “So you wouldn’t care if I ask her out?”

Zach opened his mouth, shut it, scrubbed a hand over his eyes and sighed. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Years.”

“Yeah. And I’ve always said you should go out with whoever floats your boat, but…”

“But?”

“But if you go out with Brooke, I’ll have to hurt you.”

Dustin laughed and clamped him on the shoulder in commiseration.

Aidan just arched a brow that said, You’re in deep.

Didn’t he know it.

LATER THAT DAY, the bad news came from Zach’s doctor—he wasn’t cleared to go back to work until his cast came off, which was a minimum of three weeks away.

Three more weeks without work just might kill him, not that the doctor seemed to care, and not that the chief seemed to, either, when he called to check on Zach.

“Enjoy the time off. We’ll be waiting for you.”

“I want to come in,” Zach said. “I could handle light duty—”

“No. We want you back, Zach, but sound.”

Sound. What the hell did that mean?

But as the mind-numbing boredom set in, Zach had to admit he didn’t feel so sound. He sat on his couch with the remote, but nothing on daytime TV interested him. Nothing on his bookshelf interested him. Hell, even the porn didn’t interest him. He couldn’t go surfing because of the cast and bandages. He couldn’t work.