by Jill Shalvis
“When the two of you were talking, you were leaning into each other,” Darcy said. “Full eye contact. We both know what that means.”
Well, damn. Maybe she was a little bit wrong. Just this one time. “That maybe we both forgot our glasses and had to lean in just to see each other?”
“Liar, liar,” Darcy said. “You have twenty-twenty vision and eyes in the back of your head. Also,” she went on, lifting a finger like she was cross-examining Zoe on the stand, “he touched you. And when he did, you”—she poked that finger in Zoe’s direction now, like there was any doubt who she was talking about—“smiled a dreamy smile.”
Zoe choked on a laugh. “Please. I do not have a dreamy smile.”
“You so have a dreamy smile. And that smile was saying to Parker, ‘Oh yes, take me right now.’”
“You’ve hit your head again, right?” Zoe asked, reaching out to touch her sister’s forehead as if checking for a fever.
Darcy grinned and smacked her hand away. “Fine, if you’re going to be in denial, then you should know, Kel asked me to get you to go out with him.”
Zoe blinked. “When did you have occasion to see the sheriff?”
“Worried?”
“Should I be?” Zoe countered, but hell yes she was worried. It hadn’t been all that long ago when Darcy had been trouble-seeking, and she’d often found it. Kel was a patient man, and a very good man, and also extremely good looking, but—“Wait. Kel asked you to ask me out?”
“Took you long enough,” Darcy said. “Ran into him at physical therapy, where he was sparring with AJ. And let me just say watching two really sexy, really hot guys go at it in the ring in the name of sport . . . Pretty damn sexy even if I think boxing is crazy.”
“Focus, Darcy.”
“Right,” Darcy said, giving herself a visible shake. “Well, he heard that you were seeking blind dates, so—”
“Oh my God,” Zoe said, and closed her eyes. “This is so embarrassing.”
“And he wanted to know, if I set you up with him if it’d qualify for a blind date since you two know each other and all,” Darcy went on. “And I said yep.”
“You did not,” Zoe said.
“I did. And he said Monday was his next free night, so . . .”
Zoe stared at Darcy. “I’m not going out with Kel.”
“What’s tripping you up, the fact that he’s really good looking, or that he’s also a great guy?” Darcy asked. “Or maybe it’s that you do have a thing for Parker, after all.”
Zoe took the fifth and held her silence. This didn’t fool her sister.
“Aw,” Darcy said. “It’s door number two. You like him, you really like him.” She said this in an annoying singsong voice. “You want to kiss him. You—” Suddenly she broke off and her mouth fell open. “Wait. Holy cow. You already kissed him?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“It’s true, you totally already kissed him,” Darcy said in an accusatory voice. “You kissed him and didn’t tell me?”
Zoe yanked down the sun visor and stared at herself in the small mirror there. “You can absolutely not tell that by just looking at me.”
“Was it good?” Darcy dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Are you sleeping with him?”
“No!” But she wanted to be . . . Oh God, how she wanted those knowing hands on her. “Now you’ve gotta go away. I’m not making my snooping, meddling, eavesdropping sister any food right now.” But then, because she loved Darcy every bit as much as she was driven to madness by her, Zoe softened. “But I’ll make you breakfast this weekend. Bring AJ.”
AJ was the man who’d helped bring Darcy back from the brink, and at just the mention of his name Darcy got a dreamy look on her face.
It made Zoe still for a beat and then yank down the mirror again. God. It was true! She had the same dopey expression on her face that her sister did. She immediately swiped it off, because she wasn’t falling for Parker in the same way Darcy had fallen for AJ.
She absolutely refused to fall at all. “I mean it,” she said. “Get out of my car. I’m going to be late for a lesson.” She gave Darcy the shoo hands.
Darcy just looked at her, no longer being silly or pesty. “Just promise me one thing.”
“At this point I’d promise you all the food in my fridge to stop talking and get out of my car.”
“Promise me that if he’s a good fit you won’t chase him away or dump him because he was breathing wrong or wanted to take a pole-dancing class,” Darcy said.
This was a not-so-subtle reference to the time last year when Zoe had gone on a two-guy dating spree. The first one, Evan, had wanted her to take pole-dancing classes. Not with him but for him.
She’d declined.
The second guy, Mike, she’d seen a few times before calling things off. “He was a mouth breather, and a very loud one.”
“You got scared,” Darcy said.
No. Well, maybe. But while Mike had been nice and kind and even gainfully employed as a ranch manager, he hadn’t been the right one for her—with or without the loud breathing.
“Zoe,” Darcy said. “I’m not leaving this car until you promise.”
Zoe crossed her fingers. “I promise.”
“Good. Now uncross your fingers and say it again.”
Dammit. Zoe uncrossed her fingers. “I won’t chase Parker away or dump him because he’s breathing wrong.” Nope, in her heart she knew it wouldn’t come to that. Because he’d be walking out the door far before she was ready for him to do so.
Twelve
After Zoe had left for work, Parker got into the shower to wash off his run and several hours of slinging horse shit.
Oreo trotted into the bathroom behind him. The big dog liked to stick his head into the shower and slurp at the water. At first this had been disconcerting to say the least, but Oreo had turned out to be good company.
Still, Parker’s thoughts didn’t drift far from Zoe.
She wasn’t a woman to trust easily, if at all. And up until today he’d have said no way did she trust him, not even a little.
But something had changed between them now that they’d shared. And then there was the way she looked at him, like maybe she was torn between wanting to run and wanting to kiss him again.
He could admit to being torn between the same two things.
There was chemistry, more than he’d expected. More than he’d felt in a very long time. But his leave was by no means a vacation, and now that Sharon had made him, his ass was on the line.
His job had been hard on more than one relationship, including the tenuous one with his family. His parents had never approved of his career, pretty much leaving him out of the loop of their world. He had Amory and that was about it. He didn’t think about it much, but when he did, he consoled himself with the knowledge that he didn’t have room for more, anyway. He was gone for long stretches at a time, sometimes without much warning, and he couldn’t always tell people where he was.
What woman would deal with that in a man?
No woman he’d ever met. No one wanted to be in a relationship where she had to give such blind trust.
Especially not Zoe.
He knew that much all too well now that she’d told him about Kyle the Asshole. He dunked his head under the hot water, letting it beat down on his sore muscles. When the water turned cold, he got out, dressed, and went to the kitchen table with his laptop. There he studied the images he’d taken with his camera from twelve thousand feet.
Putting his trust in the system wasn’t easy, but he’d promised to lay low. In his mind, laying low equaled not being seen.
He had no intention of being seen. The area wouldn’t be easy to watch in person. So he wouldn’t do it in person. He’d set up motion detector cameras and rely on the feed. Because trusting the system was one thing. Letting Carver get away scot-free was another.
That wasn’t going to happen. He’d seen some interesting things in the air with Zoe, o
ne of them being a ranch that had piqued his interest. He went shopping for what he needed and made the three-hour drive up to Rocky Falls. It took longer to find Cat’s Paw. He was going off the pics he’d taken, matched up to his GPS, and found the ranch he’d wanted to take a better look at.
He didn’t get close, not wanting to be made. Instead, he left the car in the woods and went in on foot, avoiding the roads and clearings, managing to outmaneuver the few guards he caught sight of at the fence lining the ranch.
For a long time he just watched and realized there were only two goons. Though they were armed to the teeth, they were bored and spent a lot of time talking to each other instead of paying attention to their surroundings.
This left Parker free to stealthily place his equipment without getting caught. Which wasn’t easy, as it involved a lot of tree climbing, and his ribs hurt like a bitch.
On the way home he made a stop at the county recorder’s office to see who owned the land, but they were closed. He consoled himself with the knowledge that with the cameras in place, he could now watch what was going on at Cat’s Paw.
He was supposed to meet Wyatt and Emily for dinner, but he went back to Zoe’s place first to shower and change. It was six o’clock on the dot when he pulled into Zoe’s driveway and parked next to a car he knew wasn’t hers.
A guy got out at the same time as him.
Joe, from the airport.
He’d nearly forgotten her date with the guy. He’d told himself it was absolutely none of his business what she did with her free time. None at all.
He almost believed it, too.
Joe wore jeans and a polo shirt with the airport’s logo on a pec. His sole concession to the night’s date appeared to be that he’d tucked the work shirt partially in.
Joe nodded to Parker and they both headed up the walk. Joe stopped on the porch.
Parker didn’t. Look at that, he thought with a grim smile. There was a benefit to not being The Date, after all. Resisting flashing Joe a smug smile, Parker let himself into the house and found Zoe in the kitchen eating French toast. It smelled so damn good that for a minute he completely forgot what he’d come in here to tell her and just inhaled the cinnamony, buttery scent of the room.
Zoe smelled good, too, like syrup, and she looked pretty fucking sexy in a white tank top and . . . well, he had no idea what else because Oreo was in her lap.
The chair appeared to be straining.
She fed Oreo a bite of French toast and met Parker’s gaze. “Don’t judge me,” she said.
“Are you kidding? I’m about ready to steal that plate from you. It smells amazing.”
“It’s my secret ingredient.”
He dropped his duffel bag on a chair. Playfully, he moved in behind her, scooped her hair away, and pressed his face to the nape of her neck to smell her. “Is the secret ingredient you?”
“No,” she said, elbowing him with a laugh. But goose bumps broke out on her skin and she shivered. He actually thought maybe she moaned, too, but that might have been him. Unable to help himself, he took another big sniff of her.
“Cinnamon,” he said with a hungry sigh.
“Told you I could cook.” Her voice sounded a little shaky as she dragged a piece on her plate through a river of syrup and stuffed it into her mouth. “It’s just baking that keeps defying me. But no worries.”
He grinned. “Because you’ve got this.”
“Well, yeah.” She smiled.
He stared at the gorgeous, resilient, tough-as-nails woman and felt a mixture of pride, hunger, lust, and, most surprisingly of all, affection.
“So what’s that stuff?” she asked curiously, pointing to his opened duffel bag on the chair. Inside was the one extra camera he hadn’t placed up at Cat’s Paw.
“It’s for surveillance.”
“Like . . . a nanny cam?” she asked.
“Sort of. Except it’s not a continuous feed. It doesn’t roll until it detects motion. You can watch the feed from an app. I drove up to Cat’s Paw and put some in play today.”
“And you have a leftover camera.”
“It’s a spare. In case one malfunctions.”
“Huh.” She ran a finger over it. “Think I could borrow it?”
He stared at her as all sorts of really erotic thoughts vied for first place in his head. He wondered if they were on the same page.
“I’ve always wanted to put one here in the house to see what Oreo does all day long,” she said.
Nope, he thought, laughing at himself. Not on the same page. Not in the same book. “He sleeps on the couch,” Parker said. “He snores. He occasionally farts and wakes himself up. He trolls the kitchen in case the elves have brought him food and then he goes back to the couch. That’s about it, but sure, have at it.” He pulled the camera from the bag and set it on the table. “You’ll need to load the app on your computer.” He rattled it off, expecting her to say never mind, it was too complicated, but she didn’t look intimidated in the least.
In fact, other than when she was attempting to bake, Zoe never looked intimidated at all. And damn if that wasn’t attractive as hell.
She went back to her French toast, taking another bite before moaning.
And Parker went hard. “Damn, woman.” He looked to the pan on the stovetop hopefully—yes, there was a God, because there were two more pieces in there. “Can I—”
The doorbell rang.
Oreo barked and farted.
Zoe rolled her eyes and pushed the dog off her lap. “Wonder who’s here?”
“Oh yeah,” Parker said. “It’s your date.”
She blinked and then her mouth opened in an Oh! of surprise.
Parker stared at her for a beat and then tipped his head back and laughed. He’d been feeling pissy about the date with Joe, and she’d not even remembered. “You really forgot?”
She put her hands on her hips and appeared to fight for words, which gave him a moment to take in the rest of her. Her hair was piled up on her head, but much of it had escaped, brushing her bare shoulders. She was wearing sweat bottoms that were way too big for her, but that was okay because they’d slid dangerously low on her hips, leaving a strip of her stomach bare.
She had a belly ring piercing, a twinkling pale blue crystal. He wanted to put his mouth to it. A little surprised at the force of the urge, he took a step back and shoved his hands into his pockets on the off chance they decided to act without his brain’s permission and toss her down on the table so he could pillage.
“Shit,” she said. “I really did forget.” She blew out a breath and looked down at herself. “I’ve got to change. And also pretend I didn’t just stuff my face.”
Parker grinned.
Zoe pointed at him. “Shut it. And let him in?” she asked, heading to the stairs. “Tell him I’ll be just a minute.”
Parker eyed her hair. And the syrup drop on her left breast. “Maybe you should take two minutes. Or you know . . . more.”
She made a sound of great exasperation and left. She raced up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door.
A beat later it whipped back open. “Hey!” she yelled down. “Why didn’t a brick fall out of my fireplace?”
Parker, halfway to the front door, stopped and eyed the fireplace. A brick hadn’t fallen out because he’d fixed it with one trip to the local hardware store for a mortar patch. But Ms. Prickly I’ve-Got-It wouldn’t want to hear that. “A brick totally just fell out,” he said.
There was a pause, and then she was at the top of the stairs, staring down at him. “You just lied to me.”
“It was a white lie,” he said. “And everyone knows white lies don’t really count.”
She blinked and then pointed at him. “Stop fixing my life!”
He laughed. “This house is not your life.”