"I'm sorry, I should have done that immediately," Reed apologized.
"You certainly should have," Katherine snapped.
"Aunt Katherine, Margaret—" he smiled charmingly at each woman as he spoke her name "—may I present Miss Zoe Moon. Zoe, Katherine and Margaret Hightower."
Margaret offered a toothy smile.
Katherine nodded her head imperiously. "Which one of you is ill?" she said.
"Ill?" Zoe echoed.
"We're standing in the hall outside the emergency room, are we not? And it looks as if Reed was attending to some small…" Katherine hesitated slightly, a grand master of the fine art of social interrogation "…hurt." She glanced down at Zoe's hands, which were still clasped together in front of her. "Have you injured your hand, Miss Moon?"
Manfully, Reed stepped into the breach, putting himself in the line of fire. "No one is ill or hurt, Aunt Katherine," he said, saving Zoe from having to find an answer for the nosy old gorgon. "We were in the middle of a meeting when my secretary went into labor. Miss Moon and I drove her to the hospital, and now we're waiting until her husband arrives before we leave."
"Business meeting?" Katherine's eyes widened slightly, the better to take in Zoe's wild mass of hair, her gauzy embroidered-blouse, her long paisley skirt in shades of purple and gold, her bright-red cowboy boots. She didn't have to say a word to express her skepticism; it was there in every aristocratic line of her body.
Zoe lifted her chin and stared back blandly, stifling the urge to drop her head and shuffle her feet like a kid who'd been sent to the principal's office. What business was it of this imperious old woman how she dressed? she thought rebelliously.
"Yes, a business meeting," Reed said firmly. "Miss Moon is a client. She's the president and CEO of a very successful new cosmetics firm here in Boston. We've been discussing the possibility of expanding her business to the national level. Uh…" He glanced toward the doors of the emergency room as they whooshed open. "It looks as if the father-to-be has finally arrived. If you'll excuse us?" He put an arm behind Zoe's back, preparatory to escorting her toward the exit. "I need to have a quick word with him before we head back to the office."
"It was a pleasure to meet you both," Zoe said over her shoulder as Reed shepherded her toward safety. She heard the thump of Katherine Hightower's cane against the linoleum floor as they made their getaway.
The aforementioned quick word with the anxious father-to-be was indeed very quick, exchanged on the move, with the panting voice of his laboring wife coming in loud and clear over his cell phone. And then they were out the door, on their way to the Jaguar, which was still, miraculously, parked unmolested in the yellow zone in front of the emergency room entrance. They hurried down the concrete walk to the car at a fast but measured pace, two truant children intent on making their escape from school without calling any unwanted attention to themselves in the process. Nearly breathless with giddiness at their successful escape, Zoe all but tumbled into the front seat when Reed opened the door for her.
"President and CEO of a very successful cosmetics firm?" she said, sending him a laughing glance as he slid behind the wheel. "Wasn't that laying it on a bit thick?"
"I don't think so." Reed turned the key in the ignition. The Jag came to life with a low, throaty purr of pure power. He eased it away from the curb. "That's what you are, aren't you? President and chief executive officer of New Moon?"
Zoe snorted inelegantly. "I'm the only officer of New Moon."
"Like I said—" he shrugged "—president and CEO. It's all in how you look at it."
"Well … maybe. But I don't think Katherine Hightower will look at it in quite the same way."
"No, probably not." He slanted Zoe a brief glance from under a lifted eyebrow as the car merged into the flow of traffic on Charles Street
. "Isn't it fortunate the old harridan doesn't have anything to say about it?"
"Then you don't think her opinion will carry any weight with Moira?" "No. Why should it?"
"Well, since they're sisters and all, I just naturally assumed they'd discuss it. There is a great deal of money involved." Zoe shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. "If Moira decides to invest, that is," she added, not wanting to sound presumptuous, as if she thought a decision had already been made in her favor. She'd already made that mistake once and wasn't looking to do it again.
"Where'd you get the idea my great-grandmother and Katherine Hightower are sisters?"
"Sisters-in-law?"
Reed shook his head. "They're not related in any way at all."
"But you called her Aunt Katherine."
"Oh. That." He shrugged. "The title is strictly honorary. The Sullivans and the Hightowers have known each other for generations, and when Kate—Kate is her great-niece," he explained, his eyes on the road as he maneuvered into the left tarn lane. "When Kate and I finally announced our engagement, she announced that I was henceforth to call her Aunt Katherine. I didn't have the backbone to say I'd rather not, so now I'm stock with it."
Something inside Zoe tightened painfully. "You're engaged?"
He'd looked at her like that … kissed her like that … and he was engaged?! Zoe felt the rage boiling up. He was a pig. Pond scum. Lower than pond scum. Cazzone cafone, as Gina would say.
He glanced over at her, alerted by her sudden stillness and the tense, simmering silence that filled the air.
Her face was slightly flushed; her delicate jaw was clenched. Her long-fingered hands had curled into fists in her lap.
"Was engaged," he said, finding her unwitting show of jealousy surprisingly satisfying. "The bride-to-be ran off three days before the wedding and married someone else."
"Oh." Zoe's nascent anger deflated like a burst balloon, the tight, painful feeling in her chest dissolving before she had a chance to analyze or examine it. "Oh. I'm … I'm so sorry," she lied, trying not to show how relieved she was.
He glanced over at her again, the leashed wolf peering out of his eyes. "I'm not," he said.
* * *
Miraculously, they found an empty parking space just half a block from her building. Reed maneuvered the Jag into it just seconds ahead of a driver in a white SUV who'd seen it at the same time, commandeering the prized space without a flicker of guilt or remorse. He was out of the car and around the hood, opening Zoe's door, before she'd had a chance to unhook her seat belt. She put her hand in his when he offered it, letting him help her out of the passenger seat as if she were some delicate society debutante at a ball.
He drew her out and shoved the door closed with a careless push. Setting his hand on the small of her back, he steered her across the street toward the redbrick building that housed the Ristorante Marcella. An unnatural silence enveloped them as they made their way down the alley and around to the back of the building. A tense, tingling silence, ripe with expectation and the guilty excitement of knowing they were heading for her apartment. Her empty apartment. Zoe began to babble.
"The hand lotion should be just about ready for the next step in processing," she said as she unlocked the wrought-iron gate and led the way up the stairs. "I strain it through a stainless steel mesh sieve for extra creaminess and then let it cool and thicken before I bottle it. It has to cool slowly, at room temperature, and that takes a while. It probably won't be ready for bottling until late this afternoon. So you probably don't want to hang around here for that. But I can show you the infusion process for my various body oils and … well, uh…" She darted a quick glance over her shoulder at him and hurried her pace, putting some distance between them, like a skittish doe fleeing a buck in rut. "I've been working on a new formula for eye cream. It has to be thicker and more emollient than regular moisturizer, as well as hypoallergenic. Not that all my lotions aren't hypoallergenic, but an eye cream has to be especially gentle because the skin around most people's eyes is very sensitive and…"
He watched her hurry up the stairs ahead of him, just out of reach, her luscious hips swaying
seductively at eye level, her corkscrew curls bouncing gently against her back, her sweet, old-fashioned scent teasing his nostrils. Her chattering voice was a pleasant buzzing in his ears, betraying her nervousness with every syllable, feeding the wild, erotic fantasies that were, once again, running rampant through his brain.
He imagined her hips, bare and dimpled, between his hands as he held her still for his possession … her hair drifting down across his naked chest … her scent surrounding him as he buried his nose between her lush, naked breasts … her voice breathless, hot and pleading, whispering a lover's demands in his ear as he thrust into her. He could see himself kissing his way up her leg, from the gleaming toe ring, to the ankle bracelet, to the soft white skin of her inner thigh. He imagined himself reaching up under her bright flowing skirt and tearing off her panties … imagined taking her against the wall of the stairwell, her long legs wrapped around his waist as he pounded—
Good Lord, what was happening to him? He'd never felt the urge to take a woman up against a wall before. Never been tempted to tear her clothes off to get at bare flesh. The longer he was around Zoe Moon, the more basic and primal his fantasies became.
At the moment, it was all he could do not to reach out and drag her backward into his arms, stopping the rapid-fire flow of words with his lips, making all his most prurient fantasies come true.
"…could show you how I make my astringents," she said as they reached the door to her apartment. Her key ring clinked against the brass plate surrounding the dead bolt, loud as a shot in the dark, as she unlocked it, "Or at least I could talk you through the process, since I'm not actually going to make any more until this weekend. I use a nonalcohol base so my astringents are extremely gentle and—"
"I'm not coming in, Zoe."
She turned her head, her hand on the doorknob, the keys still dangling in the lock, and looked at him over her shoulder. "I thought you wanted to see my operation," she said, disappointment warring with relief in her voice.
"We both know that's not a good idea. Not right now."
"Why not right now?" she asked, as if she didn't know, all too well, why not right now. "You're here. I'm here. We've both scheduled the whole day for it. I've got a batch of hand lotion brewing on the stove. I'd say right now is just about perfect."
He shook his head at her. "Zoe," he said warningly, the look in his eyes hot enough to melt steel.
She knew she should just let it go. It would have been the smart thing to do. The safe thing. It was what she would have done with any other man. She was normally a very cautious woman when it came to men and relationships, men and sex. She didn't play at love or treat sex like a teasing game, never offered what she had no intention of giving. Sex was too dangerous to be taken lightly, or indulged in on a whim. It had a way of getting tangled up in a woman's mind, a way of confusing her and making her think it was something it wasn't. Rampaging hormones had probably gotten more women into situations they regretted than any other ten things combined. She'd seen it happen over and over again, and she'd determined, early on, that it wasn't going to happen to her; she wasn't going to lose her head just because some man sent her libido into overdrive. There were thousands of things more important than sex. Unfortunately, at the moment she couldn't think of a single one.
She turned around to face him, head-on, leaning back again the door with both hands behind her. "What's the matter, Reed?" There was a hint of the gypsy in her eyes, tempestuous and challenging, an instinctive response to the predatory look in his. You are the most— She could still hear the echo of that unfinished sentence in her mind. The need to know how he might have finished it drove her just a little crazy, pushing her past all caution and good sense. "Are you afraid I'll jump you now that your secretary's not here to protect you?"
It was all he could do not to reach for her, to answer that challenge then and there. To hell with the rules.
"No," he said tightly, as the wolf lunged wildly against its leash. "I'm afraid I'll jump you." He leaned forward, bracing his hands against the doorjamb on either side of her head, trapping her against her own front door. "I'm afraid that if I got you alone in your apartment, I'd forget I was there on business and do exactly what my instincts have been urging me to do since I laid eyes on you. And I'm afraid you wouldn't stop me if I did."
Zoe's eyes widened and her tongue snaked out, licking at suddenly dry lips. But she didn't back down. It wasn't in her nature. And she was—God help her—enjoying the chase. How far could she push him before he cracked and took what they both wanted?
"You're taking an awful lot for granted, aren't you?" she taunted softly. "Just because I asked you to kiss me the other day in your office doesn't mean I—"
"That kiss is the least of it, and you know it. It's the look in your eyes, right now. It's the heat that zings back and forth between us whenever we get within ten feet of each other." He leaned in just a bit closer, almost but not quite brushing his body against hers. "You feel the heat, don't you, Zoe? The fire. You feel it."
Oh, yes, she felt it, all right. She was enveloped in heat. Encompassed by it. Surrounded by it. His heat. Her heat. Their heat. It scorched her nerve endings, setting her whole body ablaze with desire. She bit back a moan.
"I know," he murmured soothingly. "It burns, doesn't it? It makes you ache inside, as if your whole body were going to burst into flames." The words were spoken a hairsbreadth away from her lips, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin. "But we have to wait to put the fire out. You don't want to wait, I know. Neither do I. But it will be better that way. There won't be any questions about why. No suspicions about motives. No second-guessing the reasons. When we finally give in to it and come together, we'll both know why."
"Why?" she breathed. The word was little more than a whimper.
"Lust," he growled, low; the wolf was breathing down her neck. "Pure, unadulterated lust. We're going to burn each other up and it's going to be glorious. But until that time comes—" with superhuman effort, he pushed away from the door frame, releasing her from the spell he'd woven with his words and his body and the hot, dangerous look in his eyes "—we aren't going to take any chances."
"Chan—" She had to lick her lips again before she could form the complete word. "Chances?"
"Until this deal is settled, we're not going to be alone together. It's too dangerous. Too tempting." He reached around behind her and opened the door. "Go inside and get my briefcase," he said gently, giving her a little nudge. "I'll wait out here."
Trancelike, she obeyed him, using the few moments it took to complete the task in a frantic effort to marshal her thoughts into some kind of coherent order. "What about New Moon?" she said as she very carefully—making sure their fingers didn't touch—handed the briefcase across the threshold. "How are you going to assess my business if you don't see it in operation?"
"Are you free tomorrow at one o'clock?"
She nodded.
"I'll bring a staffer from the office with me. We'll get this thing wrapped up, one way or the other, before the week is out. And once it's wrapped up—" his eyes burned into hers like blue lasers, making both a threat and a promise "—I'm coming back. Alone. And we're going to throw away the rule book and see just how hot it can get between us. And, Zoe…"
"Yes?" she said breathlessly when he paused.
"I'm predicting a meltdown."
* * *
10
« ^ »
Because Reed ran a tight ship, because he was thorough and fair and scrupulously honest, because he didn't want anyone to be able to say—no matter what the final outcome—that the New Moon deal hadn't been handled in exactly the same way, with exactly the same care and attention to detail, as any other deal ever considered by Sullivan Enterprises, it took more than one week to get all the loose ends tied up.
It took twelve days, to be exact.
Twelve days of watching Zoe mix formulas for body lotions and massage oils. Twelve days of compi
ling, organizing and interpreting her methods and records. Twelve days of interviewing her vendors, her suppliers, her creditors and her clients. Twelve days of intensive, extensive due diligence, and never, ever, not once, being alone with her. In short, it was twelve days of the most hellish frustration Reed had ever experienced.
And at the end of those twelve days, he had to admit that his great-grandmother had been absolutely right. New Moon was a stellar investment opportunity: an up-and-coming company, well run despite the eccentric bookkeeping system, with excellent prospects and a beautiful, brilliant and admittedly unorthodox CEO who'd discovered an unfulfilled need in the marketplace and exploited it to the best of her ability. Which, he'd belatedly come to realize, was considerable. The sex kitten not only had an attitude, she had a brain.
It was a formidable combination—the bohemian facade, the sassy in-your-face attitude, a first-class brain, and a work ethic any investor would wholeheartedly approve of, all wrapped up in a package that could make a man throb with the need to throw his head back and howl. In frustration, if nothing else.
Reed felt as if he might be reduced to doing exactly that before the interminable afternoon was over. They'd been discussing the fine points of the deal over tea in Moira's front parlor, all very civilized and businesslike, with Zoe seated on the settee beside his great-grandmother and him in the wing chair across the piecrust table, the same as before. She was wearing a loose chenille sweater in old gold that she probably thought was demure, but which made him think about how easy it would be to slip it off of her when the time came, and the long paisley skirt she'd had on when they'd rushed Mary Ellen to the hospital. This time, Zoe wore purple boots instead of the red ones that had raised Katherine Hightower's eyebrows. Her hair was drawn softly back from her face, the wild red curls loosely caught and held in a gold-velvet scrunchie, the style exposing the shiny gold rings in her ears, making him think of the one she wore on her toe … and the one he imagined she wore elsewhere.
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