by Inara Scott
“Just one more taste, I think.” He handed her the fifth glass. “This one is a little heavier, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s from a small craft distillery in Sonoma County, not unlike the one owned by your friend Aims. They do a wheat whiskey that I like when I want something lighter. It’s got nice vanilla and floral notes.”
Zoe shook her head. “Don’t they revoke your man card if you say ‘floral notes’?”
“If they’re insecure about their masculinity, perhaps.”
“Oh, touché!” Zoe laughed as she picked up the glass.
One on one, Connor was completely different than he was in a group. In their group, he tended to fade into the background, never seeming quite comfortable in his own skin. With her, he was funny and lighthearted. He definitely knew more than any person should about whiskey, but he was a good teacher, focusing on the important parts and talking her through what she might need to hold her own in a conversation with another whiskey drinker.
She took a sniff first, then took a sip and let the flavor coat her tongue. She had to admit that it was fun to see how different each of the spirits was. She had never had much of a taste for whiskey, preferring her alcohol disguised in a fancy cocktail—or better yet, a wineglass—but something about drinking it this way was different. Like she was some kind of connoisseur who knew what the hell she was talking about.
“I like this one,” she said with surprise.
“Better than the Canadian?” he asked. She handed the glass over so he could take a sip as well. They’d shared all the glasses, and something of the intimacy of that made the experience of drinking even more enjoyable. Like she could imagine the flavors as he tasted them.
It also gave her an excuse to look at his mouth.
She nodded. “Definitely.”
He smiled. “Good. I’m going to figure out your flavor profile, Zoe, and then I’ll know exactly what else you might like.”
Lord, was it the whiskey or did that sound vaguely dirty? She was almost distracted enough by the thought to forget about the bridge.
“I like the sound of that. But how about you stop stalling and tell me exactly what I’ve gotten myself in for,” she said.
“Okay.” He sighed. “The truth is I have no idea what my mother and her friends will think about you playing with them, but I’m really hoping you’ll figure out a way to get into their game. I know you’re busy, but I’m hoping you’ll be able to spend some quality time with them. Maybe even become their friend.”
“This doesn’t sound like it’s really about playing bridge.”
“It’s not.” He pressed his fingers to his brows. “What I really need is for you to figure out what the hell my mom is doing in her garage.”
Chapter Ten
Zoe’s mouth fell open. “Are you crazy?”
Possibly. About her. But that was neither here nor there. “I realize it sounds a little nuts, but I’d like to think it’s more inspired desperation than flat-out insanity.”
“That is not confidence inspiring.”
He picked up one of the samples she hadn’t liked—a rye whiskey that he hadn’t really expected her to enjoy, but that was good for contrast—and finished it in a single swallow. He didn’t use whiskey to get drunk. But tonight seemed to call for a little extra inspiration.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d brought her here. He’d always liked having somewhere to go that wasn’t associated with Livend Capital and its world of fancy cars and exclusive clubs. The other guys didn’t share his discomfort. Nate had been born into money; Mason was easygoing enough to blend into any environment. But for Connor, keeping up appearances was exhausting. After a while, he’d found keeping his Temptation life and his Livend life separate somehow helped him feel more at ease in both.
Zoe was part of the other Connor. The Livend Capital one. And he shouldn’t have mixed them. He knew that.
But with Zoe, logic and rules never seemed to apply.
“My mom is great, she really is,” he said, forcing his attention back to their conversation. “The hard thing is that sometimes her unusual side gets the better of her brilliant side. She’s retired now, so you might think she’d lay off a little, but it actually has just made it worse. She does all sorts of work in her garage and won’t tell me what she’s doing. I think her latest project could be her most dangerous yet.”
“Dangerous?” Zoe lifted a brow. She pointed to her injured arm. “Dangerous like break a wrist dangerous?”
He shook his head. “Dangerous like high-voltage electricity dangerous. Dangerous like kill yourself dangerous. We’re talking cold fusion, Zoe.”
“Wait, seriously? You think she’s building some kind of nuclear reactor? In her garage?”
He nodded, waiting for her to laugh. Or walk out. Or walk out while laughing.
She did neither. Instead, she studied his face, apparently trying to determine whether or not to believe him. “Why do you think she wouldn’t tell you about it?”
He gave a short laugh. “She just won’t. It’s a long story, but basically, she’s got some monumental trust issues.”
“Even with her son?”
He sighed. “Especially with her son. Makes it very difficult to keep an eye out for her.”
Her expression softened, and she reached out a hand to cover his. “I’m sorry. You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”
He glanced down at her hand, which she did not seem inclined to move, then back into her face. “I realize it’s not really fair of me to ask you this, but I’m at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ideas. Her friends would never tell me what she’s working on, and I can’t seem to shake the image of her electrocuting herself.”
She closed her eyes and then gave a tiny shake to her head. “Okay, give me five seconds on cold fusion. All I remember is that it’s a potential source of clean energy that could change the world, but no one’s sure if it’s real.”
“Oh, it’s real, just no one has figured out how to make it actually deliver more energy than it takes to create the reaction. The basic concept is that you push two lighter elements together. When they fuse, you get one heavy element and energy. There are big projects going on at universities like MIT to develop ways to do it practically, but there are also independent scientists working on a type of cold fusion called low-energy nuclear reactions. Some of them in their garages.”
“But it’s dangerous? Could it explode?”
“I don’t really know what she’s doing, which is exactly why I need some help. Most likely, the only danger to her is from a jolt of super-high-voltage electricity or a high-pressure flammable gas explosion.”
“Can you talk to her about it?”
“Leticia does what she wants,” he said. “She’s been like this a long time. She’s not going to change now.”
“And you think she’s going to trust me? A stranger?”
“Crazier things have happened.” He tried to sound calm, like he wasn’t picturing his mother playing with fifty thousand volts of electricity. “You know science and engineering. You’d be able to tell if she dropped some information about what she’s experimenting with. Maybe she’ll mention something about the materials she’s using or how close she is to going operational.”
She squeezed his hand. “You really are desperate.”
He focused on that hand and the feeling of her skin against his. Any absurd notion that he could drink whiskey with her and it wouldn’t stir up every fantasy he’d ever had was now gone. Instead, he was apparently going to sit here all night hard as a rock, trying not to stare at the curve of her mouth and the swell of her breasts. “It might not work at all. They could laugh you off completely. But I don’t think they will. They’ll like you, Zoe. They can’t help but like you.”
His gaze flickered from her face to their hands. The color rose in her cheeks as she pulled away. “So basically, you want me to spy on your mom for you.”
“I probably wouldn’t put it that wa
y, but…yes.”
And yes, in case it wasn’t already 100 percent clear, he was just as crazy as his mother.
This evening proved it.
“And how exactly am I going to meet them? Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know you?”
He shook his head. “There’s no way we could carry that off. No, I just figured we’d be totally up front about that part of it.”
“Won’t she suspect that I’m a plant?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But I think there are two things that work in our favor: one, she’s pretty sure she’s smarter than everyone else, so even if she does suspect something, I don’t think it will be a deal breaker for her. She’ll be on her guard, but she’s that way with everyone.”
She looked doubtful. “And two?”
“She can’t resist the chance to mentor a young woman, particularly one connected to the sciences. None of them can. They’re going to bring you under their collective wing so fast it will make your head spin—especially if you tell them about the Aims thing. They’ll eat that up. They know how hard it is to be successful in a field dominated by men.”
Zoe drew back. “When you say it that way, it makes me feel dirty.”
“Look, my mother’s a groundbreaking researcher in her field. So are her friends. You have a chance to get to know them and maybe even help keep them safe. All I’m asking you to do is let me know if you hear anything that might help me figure out what she’s working on. Maybe send out a few probes and see what comes back. What’s dirty about that?”
She squinted at him. “It just is, and you know it. Honestly, this feels like a bad idea, Connor.”
Of course it was. It was a horrible idea. But it was hard to believe that when he was sitting across the table from Zoe, drinking whiskey and remembering the feeling of her hand on his.
“I’ve thought through the alternatives.”
“And?”
“There aren’t any alternatives. She won’t talk to me.”
“Could you find out…some other way?” she asked delicately.
He grabbed a glass that held a tiny amount of liquor and swirled it around slowly. “If you mean what I think you mean, no, I can’t break into her house.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “Wait till you see it, and then ask me again.”
“Here’s an alternative—how about you treat your mother like an adult and trust her not to do something stupid. Is that an option?”
He was saved from responding by the arrival of the bartender.
“You two ready for the next flight?” Josh asked.
Connor looked at Zoe, who gave a nod. Thank goodness. He’d half expected her to pull out of their deal then and there. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that there was something messy about the arrangement, but her suggestion that he just let his mother do what she wanted was simply not possible. Not with her history. Not with the type of power she might be playing with.
How could he walk away? What if something happened? How could he ever forgive himself if she got hurt?
She’d been through enough.
Resolutely, he turned back to step one of the only plan he’d come up with: convincing Zoe to help him.
He ordered three new whiskeys he thought Zoe would like and two that she probably wouldn’t, but that would at least give her the experience to talk from later. He also asked Josh for his favorite whiskey cocktail, because it was looking like he was going to need something more to fortify himself for this conversation than a few sips of alcohol. Once Josh left, he glanced back at Zoe, who was now nibbling on her lip and looking worried.
“I promised you I’d do whatever you needed,” she said. “But I’m not going to lie. If your mother straight up asks if you sent me to try to gather information about her, I’m going to say yes.”
He winced. “I wouldn’t want you to violate your ethics, but is there any chance you could soft-pedal it a little? Maybe say something like, ‘He wanted me to play bridge with you, Leticia.’ That’s honest, right? I do want you to play bridge with her.”
Zoe looked unconvinced. “By the way,” he continued, trying a new angle to convince her, “you might be able to help her legally, as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you she’s patented her inventions in the past. Well, her suspicious side also extends to lawyers. She did her last patent with an old friend of the family, but that friend passed away a few years ago. I don’t know what she’ll do now. Probably something stupid, like try to write the patent herself.”
“I could not take a client I’d met under false pretenses,” Zoe said darkly.
“Then you could refer her to someone else,” he said. “Someone trustworthy.”
Josh returned with their next flight of samples and Connor’s Manhattan. He set down the cocktail, then the card and the board that held the small glasses. “Take your time with number four and five,” he said to Zoe with a smile. “Connor ordered the good stuff for you.”
She raised a brow in Connor’s direction. “What does that mean?”
“I got a couple of single-malt Scotch whiskies for you to try,” he said. “They aren’t exactly easy sipping, but you can’t be a serious whiskey drinker without trying some. Number five also happens to have a very high alcohol content.”
She picked up glass number five with a defiant look. “I know I’m supposed to go in order. But somehow, I find myself needing a stiff drink.”
Connor held his breath while she sniffed the glass, wrinkled her nose, and then took a healthy swallow. To his surprise, she didn’t cough or shake her head or do any of a number of things most people did when encountering the peaty, mossy taste of a fine scotch. Instead, she closed her eyes, gave the tiniest shake of her shoulders, and then opened her eyes again. When she met his gaze, she was resolute.
“No lying. That’s my rule. And I want to learn to play basketball. And by God, you better teach me everything you know about Southcycle.”
He had the feeling that Zoe had just resolved herself to making a deal with the devil—and he was the devil.
Connor raised his glass and clinked it against hers. “To impossible tasks.”
“To impossible tasks,” she repeated, then drank down the rest of the shot. She set her glass on the table with a soft thud and met his gaze with a look of determination. “To us.”
Chapter Eleven
Zoe went home with a spinning head and a feeling of relief that she’d managed to escape without doing anything phenomenally stupid. What he’d asked her to do was clearly manipulative. But how could you blame him? He was obviously worried about his mother, and how could you not love that, just a little? Zoe would have to meet the famous Leticia Ashton before she could reach her own conclusion. If the woman was anything like her son, she was brilliant, independent, and just stubborn enough to hide something life-changing in her garage.
On Tuesday afternoon, Connor texted her with a suggestion they get dinner at a restaurant not far from Temptation to continue their conversation about sports, and Zoe agreed. Luke’s warning about Connor periodically reappeared in her brain, and she knew he was right. She simply could not get involved with Connor.
The other part of what Luke had said—the part about her propensity for dating jerks—wasn’t so easy to digest. She’d known she had a bad track record when it came to dating, but it hadn’t occurred to her someone else might have noticed. Now she found herself looking back at her past dates, Chad included, and what Luke might have seen that she hadn’t. After all, it wasn’t like she picked shitty guys on purpose.
She’d always assumed she just had bad luck. Or, possibly, that it wasn’t luck. That it was cosmic payback for her earlier mistakes.
But that was neither here nor there, because Connor might not be the best dating material—she did know a little something about his history with women, and it wasn’t good—but he was the furthest thing from a jerk.
Besides, they weren’t dating. They weren�
��t going to date.
She had to leave work early to get her permanent cast put on, which was a relief, because she wasn’t being nearly as productive as she needed to be. When she got home, she was able to take her first worry-free shower in days, because they’d given her a waterproof cast. The shower was glorious, and she stayed in far longer than she should have, allowing herself a few minutes of pure fantasy while soaping up. She briefly pictured Connor’s hands on her body instead of her own, then forced herself out of the shower because while was pretty sure the professional rules didn’t prohibit fantasizing, it was better to be safe than sorry.
They met at a popular Italian place with a mix of families and couples, singles picking up takeout and groups sitting at large tables with plates heaping with food. Like Temptation, it wasn’t fancy—just real people and real food. Zoe found her feet frozen at the threshold of the restaurant as she breathed in the familiar scents—garlic and basil, sweet sausage and fresh bread.
“This okay with you?” Connor asked.
“Of course,” she said. There was no way to explain that she avoided Italian restaurants because of that smell. The last thing she wanted to do was think about her own kitchen growing up and how far she was from it now.
Resolutely, she pushed aside the bad memories. She knew how to forget, right? She’d been practicing for a long time.
Although Connor clearly didn’t like talking about himself, she managed to get him to tell her a few stories about his basketball days at MIT, and then about the days when they’d first started hitting gold with Livend Capital. This felt like a huge accomplishment but only made her want to dig deeper. The more time she spent with him, the more Zoe had the feeling that she only knew a small part of the real Connor. Like an iceberg, with the vast majority lying below the surface, Connor’s deeper self was so effortlessly hidden, any scrap she got about him felt like a victory.
They had just finished ordering their food when an older woman, who had been on her way out of the restaurant, stopped by their table. “Zoe, is that you?” She squinted through thick glasses at Zoe, cocking her head as she stared.
