by Dawn Atkins
“Amazing! I never would have had the courage to do that. If I’d never met Ryder, I would have stayed in nerd mode forever.” Sierra passed Zoë another chocolate. “Did it work?”
“Yes.” Zoë twisted the paper off the chocolate, but she didn’t taste it. “I picked out the boy I wanted to have sex with, and I didn’t have to ask twice.”
“You actually asked him?”
Zoë nodded. “It seemed the most efficient way. I’d watched other girls flirt, but I figured it might take a while to get the knack. Of course, I was a little surprised when he said yes. Bradley was incredibly good-looking and there were always girls around him. Lots of girls. That should have warned me.”
Sierra poured more champagne. “What happened?”
Setting the chocolate aside, Zoë took a long swallow from her glass. She’d never told anyone the whole story, not even her therapist. “For a while everything was wonderful. The sex was great, so great that I suppose I fell a little in love with him. Then the semester ended, and he said he’d had a good time.” Zoë glanced away for a moment and folded her hands in front of her. “He told me that he’d recommended me to a couple of his fraternity brothers and gave me their phone numbers.”
“Did you call them?” Sierra asked carefully.
“Not right away.” Zoë could feel heat rise in her face as she met Sierra’s eyes again. “But I…missed the sex. And I wanted very much to be modern and cool. I thought that I’d been naive to think that Bradley and I would be a couple for very long. I went out with several of his fraternity brothers before I learned that I wasn’t the first girl Bradley had passed along to them. It was something he did all the time. He even had a rating system for sex.” She smiled without humor. “I’d gotten one of the highest ratings.”
Sierra shrugged. “Well, I say good for you.”
“You’re not shocked?”
“I’m impressed by your gutsiness and disgusted with Bradley and his friends.”
Zoë leaned forward a little. “Everyone in the frat house knew what I was like in bed. He’d described in detail things that we’d done together. I assumed the two young men I dated afterward had added to the data.”
Sierra took her hand and squeezed it hard. “You were young and naive, and they were all pigs!”
Zoë felt a little band of pain around her heart ease. “Yes, they were. The next year when I came back to school, I had completely reverted to a nerd, and I buried myself in my studies.”
Sierra studied her for a moment. “I can understand that. What’s a bit harder to figure out is why you’re still hiding from men and sex.”
Zoë opened her mouth and then shut it. Sierra was right. That’s exactly what she was doing, what she’d been doing for years.
“I did the same thing for a very long time. Until I met Ryder.”
“Jed Calhoun is not Ryder.”
“I’m betting he’s not Bradley the jerk either.”
“I don’t know anything about Jed.”
“He’s Ryder’s friend. They went to college together. You can tell a lot about a man from the kind of friends he makes and keeps. Plus, it wasn’t too long ago that your research skills saved my life. If you want to know about Jed, I’ll bet you could find out a lot.”
“I don’t know…”
Sierra squeezed the hand she’d been holding. “Now I’m going to give you some advice my sisters and I got from my father. Sometimes in life, you just have to take a risk.”
2
ZOË SLAMMED DOWN on the brakes of her silver Miata and glared over the steering wheel at the water of the Chesapeake Bay. The directions Sierra had given her to Ryder Kane’s houseboat had seemed simple enough, so why couldn’t she find it?
The sun was glinting playfully off of the water, mocking her. Two days had passed since she and Sierra had talked and gotten a little buzzed on champagne, and she’d reached a decision about Jed Calhoun. She was going to give in to her wild side and have sex with him. But just one time. She had to do something to ease the yearning inside of her. It hadn’t faded one little bit during the past two days. She just hadn’t expected to have to act on her decision today.
The opportunity had presented itself when Sierra had called her two hours ago and asked her to bring the latest research notes out to Ryder Kane’s houseboat and told her that Jed would be there.
Zoë pressed a hand to her stomach. If she’d had more notice, she might not be this nervous. And she might not be lost. This was the second time she’d taken a wrong turn and the second time the road had dead-ended at the water.
Was she subconsciously getting lost because she was having second thoughts?
No. Zoë gripped the steering wheel hard. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, and she didn’t have unrealistic expectations about sex or men. She hadn’t made her decision in a fit of passion or rebellion or even while she was still affected by the champagne.
And she wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses. She’d run a check on Jed Calhoun, and he wasn’t married. Her boss at the CIA had been, and she’d learned her lesson about steering clear of married men like Hadley Richards. If she’d just been a bit more worldly, she would have known that having business lunches with him and delivering reports to his hotel at night might give the appearance of their having an affair.
That was the reason Hadley Richards had given her when he’d asked for her resignation. Zoë felt the swift pang of regret that she always felt when she thought of having to leave her job at the CIA. She’d really liked the work, and up until she’d handed in her final report on Lucifer, Mr. Richards had been so enthusiastic about the jobs she’d done for him.
Even now, she wondered if she could have handled the situation differently. Of course, in private, Hadley Richards had apologized profusely. After all she’d only done what he’d asked her to do. He’d blamed the urgency for the work she’d been doing on Lucifer for his lapse in judgment. But he’d been firm about his request for her resignation.
Zoë dragged her thoughts back to her current problem. She was not that naive young woman anymore. And she’d discovered quite a bit about Jed Calhoun. He was rich, or at least his family was. His grandmother had founded a very successful cosmetics company which was still family owned, and it was currently being run by his parents and his sister. Jed hadn’t gone into the family business. Instead, he’d elected to work for his government.
She hadn’t been able to completely satisfy her curiosity about that aspect of his life because most of his files were classified. The one thing that had caught her attention was that he often used disguises, and that made her think of Lucifer again. Probably all CIA agents were skillful at using disguises.
She’d decided that it was good news that he worked for the government. He was probably in between jobs and he’d be gone before long. She’d also decided that since the chemistry between them was so strong—especially for her—it was highly likely that when they did make love, she could get him out of her system once and for all. Like a flash fire, what she was feeling would burn itself out and be gone.
She was banking on that, and there were plenty of narratives in the data she’d been collecting for Sierra that supported this theory. One round of hot, sweaty sex and she’d be free. One round and she could cross the man right out of her notebook. She could have her well-ordered life back.
She’d made a calm, well thought out, rational decision to have sex with Jed Calhoun, and she was not having second thoughts. Of course, if she’d had more time, she could have made the transition from nerd to sexpot a bit more fashionably. Instead, she’d barely had time after Sierra’s call to change into a pair of new jeans and a tank top. The sexy underwear she’d intended to buy was still on her to-do list. The plain white cotton briefs in her bureau drawer were simply not appropriate, so she’d elected not to wear them.
Zoë drew in a deep breath and let it out. She was as ready as she could be to have sex with Jed Calhoun, so why then was she sitting here staring at the Ches
apeake instead of propositioning Jed on Ryder Kane’s houseboat?
Closing her eyes, Zoë rested her head against the steering wheel. Because she was afraid. What if he said no? What if he didn’t feel the same way that she did? He’d pulled away from that kiss, hadn’t he? When he’d walked away from her at the Blue Pepper, she’d had to lean against that wall for three full minutes before the feeling had come back into her legs.
Interesting is what he’d called that kiss. Devastating is what she’d called it. Zoë raised her head from the steering wheel and opened her eyes. Bottom line—she was afraid of what she’d always been afraid of—that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, live up to someone else’s expectations.
Zoë lifted her chin. Well, Jed Calhoun might reject her. She was just going to have to risk it.
For the third time, she picked up the set of directions Sierra had dictated over the phone and studied them. She was going to find that houseboat. Wasn’t the third time supposed to be the charm? And then one way or another, she was going to find a way to handle the Jed problem once and for all.
Shifting the car into reverse, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a dark SUV move through the crossroad twenty yards behind her. She might not have given it a second glance if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d seen it before—once on the main highway, and another time on the maze of roads that all seemed to inevitably dead-end at the water. So she wasn’t the only one challenged by the dead-end roads in the area. Feeling somewhat cheered, she backed up, turned the car around and sped up the road.
THE BREEZE off the Chesapeake was cool and steady. Though it wasn’t strong enough to move the hammock he was lying in, it still offered a pleasant contrast to the hot sun that managed to make its way through the leaves overhead. September was still hot in the D.C. area. But Jed Calhoun was growing tired of the lazy days of summer—tired of being trapped in limbo. And he was especially tired of being a “dead” man.
Two weeks of living on his friend Ryder’s houseboat had allowed him to finish recovering from the injuries he’d sustained on his last mission, a contract job for the CIA that he’d very nearly not returned from.
Even now, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t died six months ago in that alley in Bogotá. He’d suffered first a gunshot wound to the shoulder and then the leg. His last conscious thought as he’d faced the CIA agent who’d just shot him in the leg was that he was a goner.
Instead, he’d awakened in a small private hospital where the medical care had been surprisingly good. There was only one small problem. He’d discovered that Jed Calhoun was officially listed as dead, terminated by the agent who’d shot him in the leg. The real kicker was that the orders to take him out had come from the director of the CIA because he, Jed Calhoun, had killed Frank Medici, a career operative with the CIA who’d penetrated a large drug cartel in Colombia.
It was a lie. But he’d been in a bar with Frank and delivered a message to him moments before a bomb had destroyed the entire building.
During the past two weeks, Ryder had called in a few favors from his contacts at CIA headquarters and learned that Jed’s motive for killing Frank Medici had been money. Supposedly someone in the Vidal drug cartel had learned of Frank’s true identity and hired Jed to take him out. Right now there was a million in American dollars in an offshore account in Jed’s name.
The frame was neat and conclusive. He’d been in that bar. He could have planted that bomb. And the money trail led to him. As long as Jed Calhoun remained “dead,” the case was closed. And until Ryder and he could prove that Jed hadn’t killed Frank Medici, he couldn’t rise from the dead.
He was trapped in limbo all right. The one thing he did know was who’d shot him and left him in that alley. Agent Bailey Montgomery, who was currently one of the best data analysts at the CIA. They’d sent a desk jockey to terminate him. That part grated a little, but it had been clever of them to send a woman. It had made him less suspicious when she’d suggested an alley for their meeting. He’d slipped up there, but so had she. He was still alive.
But it wasn’t just his own frustration that was grating on him. He also had a feeling deep in his gut that his time was running out. A week ago he’d helped Ryder out with a case involving Ryder’s fiancé, Sierra Gibbs, and he’d had to appear briefly at a major D.C. party. A lot of the capital’s movers and shakers had been there, including Bailey Montgomery. She might have spotted him. A nagging little hunch told him that she had, and if she had, he had no doubt she’d come after him.
What he needed was just a little something to go on. All it would take was a thread that he could pull on until the whole fabric unraveled. Since Ryder had finished the case involving Sierra, his friend had been working 24/7 to come up with something, but so far Ryder had been drawing blanks.
A short burst of laughter—Sierra’s and Ryder’s—carried clearly to him despite that the hammock was a good three hundred yards from the houseboat and blocked from view by some trees. Jed’s frustration increased.
In the short time that Dr. Sierra Gibbs and Ryder Kane had been together, Jed had found himself envying Ryder. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to have a serious relationship with a woman. Doing freelance contract work for various government agencies was not conducive to having a stable love life.
Which was another reason why he was determined to get his life back. Restlessly, Jed shifted again in the hammock.
Another burst of laughter floated to him on the breeze. He missed that sharing of jokes, the after-sex conversations—and hell, he might as well be honest. He missed the sex, too. No doubt that was why he found himself spinning erotic fantasies about Sierra’s mousy little research assistant, Zoë McNamara.
From the time that he’d first laid eyes on her, he hadn’t been able to shake her loose from his mind. At first he’d found that curious because she wasn’t his type. Usually he was drawn to tall, leggy blondes.
Zoë McNamara was the total opposite of that. In terms of appearance, the most he could give her was cute. She was short, barely an inch or so above five feet tall, she had glossy, dark brown hair that she wore pulled back in a ponytail or a braid. He’d never seen her legs because she usually hid them under long skirts. She hid her eyes, too, behind oversize black-framed glasses. Maybe that was why so many of his dreams were fueled by the challenge of getting her out of those ugly clothes and out from behind those nerdy specs.
She was a prickly little thing, too—didn’t like her personal space invaded. Naturally, it had amused him to invade it at every opportunity. But each time he got close to her, he had an urge to get closer still.
A couple of nights ago at Ryder and Sierra’s engagement party, he’d asked her to dance. And he’d kissed her. Or at least that had been his intention when he’d drawn her behind that cluster of potted palms on the patio of the Blue Pepper.
But he hadn’t kissed her, not fully, not the way he wanted to kiss her. Something had made him step away at the last moment. That wasn’t like him. Jed frowned as he thought about it. The last woman who’d made him hesitate like that was Molly Jo Beckworth in third grade. Jed smiled at the memory. Molly Jo had been tall, blond and beautiful, and on his second attempt to kiss her he hadn’t been hesitant at all.
But Zoë McNamara wasn’t his first love—or any kind of love at all. She was a woman who had attracted him on first sight. Sometimes the chemistry worked that way. In Zoë’s case, the magnetic pull between them had increased each and every time he was anywhere near her. He should have ignored it. Ignored her. He had no business making a move on a woman, any woman, until he got his life back. But he couldn’t seem to resist her. Kissing her had probably been inevitable. And it had shaken him to the core.
In his mind, Jed let himself drift back to the moment. She’d certainly been willing. The moment he’d brushed his mouth over hers, her lips had parted in a welcoming invitation. When she’d risen on her toes to close the distance between them, he’d taken his first sample of
her taste.
Oh, she’d been so much sweeter than he’d expected. Even sweeter than the sugar cookies he used to swipe from his mom as fast as she could make them. He’d barely absorbed her flavor when her breath had shuddered out, and the sound of her surrender had nearly sliced right through his control. Then, in the next instant, her hands had gripped his T-shirt and she’d demanded, “More.”
It was that sudden irrefutable proof of the bright passion that lay beneath the surface of Zoë McNamara, struggling to be free, that nearly shattered him.
Oh, how he’d wanted to forget where they were and touch her. He’d wanted her out of that oversize man’s shirt and that skirt. He’d wanted to strip away the practical underwear he knew was underneath.
The desire to use his hands on her, to let his fingers and palms explore her skin, molding every inch of her, had become a knife-sharp ache.
An image had filled his mind of taking her right where they stood. The music was loud enough, the palms thick enough to conceal them. He’d pictured it so clearly in his mind—her legs wrapped around him, her back pressed against the brick wall as he took that first hot, wet slide into her. It would have been wild, reckless, and wonderful. He was skilled enough and she’d been ready.
He still wasn’t sure what had given him the strength to pull back. He suspected that it had something to do with his carefully honed survival instinct, and he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that explanation.
What he was sure of was that when he’d learned she was coming today to deliver some research to Sierra, he’d stuffed a couple of condoms in his shorts pocket. In case he got lucky? Or in case this time he wouldn’t be able to control himself? Either way, that one small action of making sure they would have protection clearly revealed just how much of a pull the woman had on him.