by Inara Scott
“You sure you’re still up for it now that you’ve met them?”
“Are you kidding? I mean, it remains a terrible plan. Your mother could probably think circles around me—you’re nuts if you think I’m going to trick her into anything. But I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do than hang out with them all weekend.”
Oddly enough, that was entirely true. Even though she barely knew them, in just one evening, the GPGs had made her feel more like a part of a family than she had for years. Shirley had fussed over her, Clara had given her terrible advice about men, and Minnie had asked her thoughtful questions about her work. The hardest one of the group to crack would clearly be Leticia, but even she had nodded approvingly by the end of the evening when Zoe made a decent bid over a hand of cards.
A few minutes later, he handed her a steaming mug of coffee. “I feel a little guilty. Like I tricked you into this.”
She took a grateful sip before she responded. “Don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t like you made me sign an oath in blood or anything. I could have backed out if I wanted. Besides, you aren’t getting off the hook for your part of the bargain.” She waggled the fingers of her left hand, which were free, though her wrist was still encased in plaster. “I’m two-handed now. Any chance I get a ride today on that Southcycle of yours?”
Connor shook his head. “That does not count as two-handed. How are you supposed to hold the handlebar? I think we should wait until the cast is off.”
“What?” She’d had a feeling he might say that, but she still manufactured a healthy sense of outrage. “Seriously? But that will be weeks! Connor, I think I can manage to hold on while you drive.”
“Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve only had the bike a few days now. I’d like to get a little more experience riding it before I put your life at risk.”
She coughed behind her hand. “Chicken.”
“Oh, totally,” he agreed. “That bike accelerates like nothing you’ve ever known. I might very well pop an accidental wheelie and leave you by the side of the road.”
“I feel like the chance of that happening is pretty slim.”
If Connor rode the motorcycle the way he drove—cautiously, deliberately, carefully—she had nothing to worry about.
“How about this,” he said. “Instead of the motorcycle, we go for a drive up to the Marin Headlands. No motorcycles, but we can talk sports the whole time.”
“Fine. But at some point I’m getting on that bike. With or without you.”
…
Connor watched as Zoe slid into the passenger seat, back in her work clothes from the night before. The short wrist cast didn’t slow her down too much, though it did occasionally get in her way when she wanted to do something that required two hands. She mostly just kept her left hand tucked up close to her waist. He figured after another day or two she’d forget she had it on completely, if she was anything like the kids he’d known.
They’d decided to go to her apartment first so she could change before they headed to the Headlands, a beautiful recreation area on the hilly peninsula across from the Golden Gate Bridge.
She crossed her feet at the ankles, exposing the high heels that she’d worn just about every time he’d ever seen her.
The high heels he now would associate with the hottest sex he’d ever had.
He’d known Zoe was as independent as they came, determined not to show weakness or let anyone try to control her life. But of course he hadn’t known she was just as fierce in the bedroom, holding nothing back, telling him exactly what she liked and how she felt.
When she came, he felt it all the way down to his toes.
Already, there was a part of him wondering how long it would be before he screwed it up and did something stupid that he would regret later. She’d promised not to take this seriously, but underneath her bluster, Zoe’s vulnerability was just as obvious as her strength. She deserved someone trustworthy. Someone who would treat her like a queen.
He wasn’t that guy.
Which didn’t make it easier, but least it made their path forward clear. This was a short-term fling, nothing more.
“I don’t mean to pry,” she said as they settled into the drive. “But I wonder if there’s anything more I should know about your mom? Some reason she’s so secretive?”
He stared at the road, unsure for a moment how to answer, or what exactly he should say.
“You don’t have to tell me anything private,” she said hastily. “Really.”
“No, it’s okay. It has to do with my dad, actually.”
“I’ve never heard you talk about him.”
“No, it’s an old story but it’s probably best you hear it, so you understand my mother a little better.” He adjusted his seat belt, wishing he didn’t hate talking about his father so much. Even twenty years later, recounting the story could still make him sick to his stomach. But since he’d managed to get Zoe tangled up in his somewhat complicated relationship with his mother, he figured he should tell her the whole thing.
“My parents didn’t actually meet until my mom was fairly established in her career, teaching physics at Iowa State. My dad was working at a private lab. He was a bit of a ladies’ man—an athlete and a scientist, good-looking and outgoing. He basically swept my mother off her feet. She was pretty studious, and she knew she’d have to work harder than everyone else to make it in her field, so she’d basically resigned herself to not having a family. He teased her and made her laugh. I don’t think anyone had ever done that before.”
He thought about the father he hadn’t seen for years. Tall and handsome, always charming someone with his ready smile. He’d taught Connor to play basketball at an early age but never had the patience to coach him, growing frustrated when his son didn’t seem particularly gifted at the game. It had been wrenching every time he walked off the court and saw his father shake his head with disappointment.
“My mother didn’t get pregnant with me until she was forty, five years after they married, and I don’t think my dad was happy about it. He wasn’t really interested in being a father. He liked parties and traveling, things my mother never really loved. I’m honestly not sure why he got married in the first place. The only thing I can imagine is that he knew my mother had a great job and made decent money, and she loved him enough to support him.”
“That’s awful.”
“That’s just the start,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “They muddled their way through, as some couples do. I remember them fighting a lot. Dad always seemed restless, looking for excuses to go on business trips. Then when I was ten, my mom discovered that he was having an affair with his lab assistant.”
“Your poor mother!” Zoe covered her mouth in horror. “How did she find out?”
“The usual sorts of things started happening. He started coming home late, then his business trips went from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. She decided to surprise him at the airport one night and saw the two of them together. Holding hands and kissing, that sort of thing. They didn’t see her, so she came home and logged on to his computer and started going through his emails. That’s when she realized that he’d not only been having an affair, he’d also been downloading a bunch of her research files. According to the emails he’d exchanged with his lab assistant, they were almost ready to pass it off in their lab as his.”
Zoe sucked in a breath. “What did she do?”
“Well, she kicked him out, of course, reset all the passwords on her accounts, changed the locks and made sure he couldn’t get access to any more of her work. Luckily, the files he hadn’t yet grabbed were essential, so he probably wouldn’t have done too much damage if she’d stopped him there. But then someone let him into the house and he was able to get access to the missing files from her home computer. He stole the data he needed, sent it to his lab, and then headed for Mexico for a long vacation with his assistant. By the time they came back, he was a millionaire and my mother was barely hanging onto
her job.”
“Someone let him in?” Zoe gave him a long look from the other side of the car.
I just need to get a few things from the bedroom, Connor, some pictures and clothes. I miss you like crazy, son. I need a picture to put on my desk.
The sound of the door to the office locking. The realization that he’d made a mistake.
The sick feeling in his stomach when he’d had to tell his mother what he’d done.
“Yeah, he used every trick in the book. By the time I admitted to my mother what I’d done, it was too late.”
“She couldn’t have blamed you,” Zoe said. “You were ten. He was your father.”
It hadn’t mattered if she’d blamed him. He’d had to listen to her cry. He’d known when she started locking her office and looking over her shoulder when they pulled out of the garage as if someone might sneak in after them. How she’d changed.
“She walked away from all her research because she wasn’t sure what he had and what he didn’t. She started over, hired all new people, and life sort of went on. But she was never really the same after that. She put our whole house on lockdown, broke up the information she shared with people at work, even created her own biometric security system so no one could get into her files.”
“That sounds like a terrible way for a kid to grow up.”
“She was trying to protect me as much as herself,” he said. “She didn’t want him to have a chance to use me again.”
“But that couldn’t help but make it seem like it was your fault,” Zoe pointed out. “Which, of course, it wasn’t.”
He shook his head. “She tried her best to make sure I didn’t feel that way.”
“Did it work?”
He didn’t answer that question. Her hand found its way to his thigh, and she gave him a soft squeeze.
“You understand why she’s like this now?” he asked.
“I do. And I understand why you don’t want to let her down.”
Connor grunted, the sick feeling rising in his chest. “I would like to keep her from burning her house down or electrocuting herself. Whether it was my fault or not, I do owe her that much.”
As if sensing that he would not be dissuaded from this position, Zoe just gave his leg another squeeze. “I’m sure she appreciates what you’re trying to do, even if she does treat her house like Fort Knox.”
He executed a careful lane change. “Anyway, that’s the story. And now that we’ve got that out of the way, maybe we can focus on this gorgeous drive instead?” A deep blue sky was dotted with high clouds, while the sun beamed down a welcome warmth to the chilly November day. “The Headlands aren’t far from my mother’s house. We can take a hike and then I can drop you off.”
“You play basketball with the guys today?” she asked.
He nodded, deliberately erasing the discussion of his father from his mind as he pulled in front of her apartment building. “We play at two.”
“Sounds good. I’ll change and come right back down.”
He watched her run in front of the car, graceful as a gazelle on her four-inch heels. With a groan, he brought his head to bang on the steering wheel as she disappeared into the building.
This was not what he had planned. None of it. Not the attraction, not the best sex of his life, not the way she made him want to talk about emotional bullshit best left undisturbed.
We’re just sleeping together. We’re not dating. We’re not in a relationship.
He repeated her words like a mantra. After a couple of weeks, they’d be over this crazy attraction and could go their separate ways without any hurt feelings. Zoe would learn everything she needed to compete for the Aims work. He’d find out everything he could about what his mother was doing.
Before you knew it, they’d be done with secrets and back to being friends.
It could work. It had to work.
Chapter Seventeen
The problem with spending time with a human iceberg, Zoe reflected, was that the more you saw of their hidden underside, the more you liked them. And the more dangerous they became.
They pulled up to Leticia’s house just before one, after walking around the Marin Headlands for a couple of hours in the sunshine. Though Marin and Sausalito could be foggy even when the San Francisco Peninsula was not, today they were equally beautiful, yielding gorgeous views of rolling green hillsides and the cool red sweep of the Golden Gate.
Connor clearly didn’t want to talk more about his father, and Zoe could understand why. She found talking about her own parents could consume more energy than running a marathon, without any reward at the end. But just the piece that he had shared explained so much—from the way Leticia protected her secrets to the way Connor wanted to protect her.
“You have plans tonight?” Connor asked as he parked in Leticia’s driveway.
His question caught her off guard. She’d half expected him to come up with some reason they shouldn’t be together again. To try to slow the whole thing down, or stop it completely.
Not that there was a whole thing, because there wasn’t. She’d promised. This was just sex.
“I think maybe some work event? Wait, let me check.” Digging her phone from her purse, she scrolled to her calendar. “Yep. There’s a schmooze-fest downtown.”
He trailed his hand along her inner thigh, traveling slowly toward the top. “You should skip it.”
She sucked in a breath. There was a lot to be said for just sex. “Should I?” she managed to say.
He continued his deliberate journey, stopping at the juncture of her thighs. There, he traced a delicate pattern. “You should.”
“They’ll expect me to be there.”
“They’ll get over it.”
She sighed with pleasure. “I could be convinced.”
He leaned over to whisper a wicked promise into her ear.
It didn’t take much convincing. “I’m there,” she squeaked out, even as her bones began to melt into the seat.
“Good.” He removed his hand and unbuckled his seat belt.
She drew her brows together in pain as she watched him open the car door. “That was cruel,” she called.
“Consider it a promise.”
With a soft groan, she unbuckled her own belt and followed him to the front door. Leticia opened it before they could even identify themselves, and Zoe had the sudden realization that there was probably a camera on the driveway. Thank goodness she hadn’t begged Connor to finish what he’d started.
“Don’t worry,” Connor said to his mother, “I’m not staying. Just dropping off Zoe.”
“Don’t you want to come in for a minute first?” Leticia looked back and forth between them with a slightly raised brow.
“I’d love to, but I’ve got to get back for a basketball game.” Connor turned his blue-gray gaze on Zoe, sparking warmth when she felt it land briefly on her lips. “You okay getting back on your own?” he asked.
She nodded. “Totally.”
He shifted from one foot to the other, looking at her lips, then away, and then back again.
Leticia glanced back and forth between them. “You two need a minute?” she asked.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Connor said to Zoe, ignoring his mother.
Zoe casually adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “Sounds good.”
After he left, Leticia ushered her into the house as the door swung shut. “Sorry to rush you, but the alarm is awfully loud.”
“Why is it on a timer?” Zoe asked.
“I try to automate as much as possible,” Leticia said. “This way I don’t have to worry about someone leaving the door open or forgetting to lock it behind them. It also sets off an alarm if I’m ever incapacitated at the door. Of course, I can always override it, but I prefer not to.”
Zoe grimaced. “That’s serious stuff. Do you worry about your safety? Have there been break-ins in this area?”
She figured she would try to stay quiet about what she knew of Connor’s
father, while encouraging Leticia to talk about her past. With any luck, she might then give a little hint about what she was working on now. As spying went, it wasn’t particularly clever, but it was a start.
“Oh no, it’s generally quite safe. But I say you can’t be too careful. Not with the kind of work I do.”
Before Zoe could follow up on that statement, they’d entered the kitchen, where the other three ladies were seated at the table. Clara was shuffling a deck of cards.
“Nice to see you, Zoe.” Minnie peered at her over a thick pair of reading glasses. “How was your drive?”
“Connor dropped her off,” Leticia said to the table.
Zoe couldn’t help but notice that Minnie and Clara exchanged a look over the top of Minnie’s glasses at Leticia’s statement about Connor.
“You should tell Connor that instead of going until four tonight we’re going to wrap up at three,” Clara said. She patted her hair. “I’ve got a date, so I’m saving my strength.”
“Oh, that’s no problem, I’m getting back on my own,” Zoe said. “It will actually be good to have a little more time for work this afternoon. With my wrist like this, everything seems to take longer.” She sat at the empty seat at the table and put her purse on the ground next to her.
“How did you injure it?” Shirley asked. She had a white chiffon scarf over her hair, which looked freshly done, with tight white curls all over her head.
“Um…” Zoe cleared her throat, feeling the rush of embarrassment that had prevented her from telling the guys at work the truth. “Scooter accident.”
“My goodness,” Shirley held her hand over her heart. “How awful. You know Minnie has a scooter.”
“You do?” Zoe raised her brows. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get on one again, to be honest.”
“Mine has three wheels,” Minnie pointed out. “Not like those ones you see downtown.”
“Maybe that’s what I need.”
Leticia was studying her with an uncomfortably assessing gaze. “You must have been the friend Connor mentioned had just injured herself last weekend. You were together when it happened?”
