Zane didn’t think what he’d done was any big deal. But he’d made Ellie emotionally upset, and he wasn’t even certain why she’d been weeping when he gave her the everyday stuff. He hadn’t asked why she’d cried because it made him feel sick inside that he’d been the cause of her tears. All he wanted was for Ellie to be happy, and apparently she had been making progress despite her previous tearful reaction to his gifts…until today.
Today was the day he’d realized just how obstinate Ellie could really be.
She had literally set her foot down, stomping it in refusal, when he’d brought home the new vehicle he’d acquired for her, flat-out refusing to take something he’d bought for her. She claimed it was too expensive. When he’d mentioned that she’d only had liability insurance on her missing vehicle, and that her insurance company wasn’t going to pay anything to replace her piece of junk Blue Turtle, she’d glared at him and walked away.
“It’s just a BMW. She acts like I went out and bought something really expensive. The Beemer was a reasonable choice, something solid and dependable. It’s not like I went out and blew a bunch of money on an exotic sports car,” Zane mumbled under his breath as he recreated some of the findings of one of his lead scientists at the lab, rechecking the results himself. “And it’s an SUV. It’s practical for Colorado. Plenty of people have one here.”
Granted, he wanted to see some of Ellie’s old spirit revived. But pissing her off wasn’t exactly the way he’d wanted that to happen. Nevertheless, she was angry. But regardless of how stubborn she was going to be, Zane decided she would be driving a dependable car, the one he’d purchased for her.
After finishing his work, he input his verification into the lab computer and put away his supplies, wondering how he could get Ellie to accept the inevitable. She was going to use the SUV. He wanted her using a reliable vehicle. He didn’t want her buying another piece of crap like her last car. It had been too small, too old, too unreliable, and all of those things were unacceptable to him.
He took off the disposable covering he was wearing over his clothing and then dumped his mask and gloves into the hazardous materials container he kept near the door.
Zane could admit he was disorganized, but only with anything outside of his lab. Here, he was meticulous. Here, it mattered to him. Working with potentially dangerous organisms didn’t leave room for mistakes.
He washed his hands and dried them before he stood in front of the steel doors and used his fingerprint scanner to make the double doors swoosh open. As he walked down the hallway and up the stairs that led to the house, he contemplated his options.
Let Ellie have her way and return the BMW? Nope. Not gonna happen. She needs a safe vehicle.
Convince Ellie to take it? Probably unlikely. Though, Zane admitted she’d looked pretty mulishly insistent over not accepting his gift. He realized that he liked that look on her. It was preferable to seeing her weep, but it wasn’t going to stop him from making sure she was driving dependable transportation.
Get Chloe to help him convince her? A possibility, but Chloe isn’t home yet, and she doesn’t even know Ellie is still alive.
Throw Ellie over his shoulder and toss her into the car? Yep. That idea had merit since he’d been feeling like a damn protective caveman since the minute Ellie disappeared.
Now that he’d found her, the urge to make sure Ellie was safe was almost overwhelming, a compulsive, raw instinct that he was barely managing to control.
Get it together. You’ll scare her off. Hell, I’m scaring myself.
Zane considered himself a reasonable, rational, logical guy. He made decisions based on data and realistic facts. Lately, he wasn’t reacting with his normal levelheadedness; he was giving in to emotions and compulsions he couldn’t seem to control. He’d never experienced those types of feelings before, and it confounded him that with Ellie, he sometimes couldn’t control his own words or behavior.
For some reason, Ellie had always been a woman he wanted to know better but ended up avoiding because he’d considered her off-limits in the past. However, it hadn’t stopped him from asking about her when he talked to Chloe. He’d almost blown it in the hospital, letting Ellie know that, little by little, he’d gotten to know her preferences by encouraging Chloe to talk about her best friend. Zane knew Ellie’s favorite was Asian food because Chloe had mentioned it. She’d also told him that she was sending Ellie her favorite chocolates for a birthday surprise a few years ago. Zane had asked what kind, and he still remembered exactly what company made the confections.