Mari had told him in the crudest of terms where he could stuff his threats, but Zinnia was on the job . . . and maybe not as tough as her sister. “I don’t have that much cash on me right now,” she told Alan, keeping her voice low and level. “I’ll get you the money as soon as I can.”
“But I want it now,” he insisted, that ugly smile still on his face.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maybe I’ll call Kohl to take care of it.”
Something flickered in Alan’s eyes, but he didn’t move. “Kohl’s a loose cannon, that’s true, but if you run to big brother, he could end up in worse shape than me, don’t you think? I hear the cops have a special set of heavy-duty handcuffs set aside for the next time he gets in a brawl.”
And wouldn’t Kohl locked behind bars once again serve only to remind people just how unhinged the Flaky Fridays could be? The barista slid Alan’s paper cup onto the counter in front of Zin, and she shoved it in his direction, setting a plastic top beside it. “I’ve got this,” she told him, digging in her jeans for the cash she was carrying. She put the cost of the drink in the till, then handed everything else she had over to the man. “There’s twenty bucks, counting the beverage. You’ll wait for the rest.”
Alan pocketed the money and picked up his drink, though didn’t immediately move off. “But Zin . . . baby . . .” he started, his voice cajoling. Then he jolted forward as a hand clapped him on the back, sending hot coffee sloshing over his fingers. He yelped, cursed, then reeled around to face . . .
Zin gaped. “John Henry.”
“Hey, Zin,” he said easily, then directed his attention to Alan. “Sorry, man, about that boisterous greeting. I thought you were someone I liked.” He handed over a napkin, then stuffed a roll of bills in the breast pocket of Alan’s shirt.
The bully frowned down at his chest while wiping at the dripping coffee. “What’s this?”
“The eighty dollars I owe Zin.”
She protested. “You—”
“—know how I am, Zin. Get an idea in my head and can’t give it up.”
Zin didn’t know anything about him except that he was somehow managing to draw Alan away from her. In a manner she could only describe as smoothly masterful, he had the other man ushered out the bakery door within thirty seconds, without another veiled threat or annoying suggestion.
And without a debt to hold over Zin’s head any longer.
There was a short line at the counter by the time her Good Samaritan turned around. Without complaint, he took his place at the back, shuffling forward as she waited on each successive customer until once again they were face-to-f ace.
“Um . . . uh . . .” Her voice drifted off, and her cheeks flared again with heat as the whole unpleasant exchange with Alan replayed in her head. How much of it had this man overheard? Obviously that Alan thought she owed him money. That her brother was not a favorite of law enforcement.
That she was one of the Flaky Fridays?
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“‘Good morning’ will work. And you could get me a medium coffee. Decaf.” He smiled. “Or better yet, you could make a mistake and give me one that’s fully caffeine-loaded so that I feel virtuous, but in actuality am getting the real substance I crave.”
She found herself smiling too. “Would that make me your enabler?”
“My goddess.”
It was suddenly easy to laugh. “I’m a flower, remember?”
“I did.” His voice lowered. “All night long.”
Zin stilled, her smile sliding off her face. She’d been thinking of him, too, ever since dropping him off at the resort the night before. It was entirely unwelcome, she’d decided in the wee hours, the little fixation she had on him, and she’d been determined to dismiss it. She had items on her agenda, work to do, a reputation to live down, and that left no room for a handsome man with dark eyes who could send a sexy shiver through her with just five simple words.
I did. All night long.
She gripped the edge of the countertop instead of fisting his shirt in one hand and yanking him toward her for the kiss she’d been wondering about for approximately fourteen hours and fifteen minutes. She didn’t want to be thinking about kissing some man she’d just met—it seemed an especially flaky thing to have in the forefront of one’s mind. It was hard to know whether he thought it was flaky, though clearly he knew what was in her head, because his gaze was focused on her lips. They tingled.
“We don’t want to do this,” she murmured.
One of his dark eyebrows winged up, and that dimple showed itself again. His BlackBerry rang, and as he reached for his front pocket, he leaned close. “Sweet Zin,” he whispered, “speak for yourself.”
John
Henry decided he wasn’t surprised to find Zin Friday on the terrace at the Valley Ridge Resort, pouring wine during the complimentary nightcap tasting late that evening. After waving good-bye to his sister and her sorority friends—they were returning to San Francisco—he’d decided on a stroll around the grounds. Catching sight of Zin’s distinctive fairy curls, he’d instantly changed course. Fate had been putting her in his way, and he didn’t see a reason to duck the encounter.
She seemed even less surprised to be facing him again so soon. “Hello, Mr. Henry,” she said.
“It’s John Henry,” he replied. “The whole thing’s my first name.”
She blinked those otherworldly baby blues of hers. “Oh.”
From his back pocket, he withdrew the envelope that had been waiting for him at the front desk. It contained four twenty-dollar bills. He waggled it. “You could have asked for me instead of leaving it with the receptionist.”
Her gaze skittered away to focus on the cabernet in front of her. “Had to get to work.”
“I see that.” He wondered how many uniforms hung in the woman’s closet. Tonight it was the black pants and manly black shoes, but this time they were topped by a white blouse decorated with a chestful of ruffles. A black band held her hair away from her pretty face. “When you claimed a busy schedule, it wasn’t just an excuse to let me down easy.”
She glanced up, then returned to studying the label on a wine bottle as if it were a calculus textbook. “No.”
It was almost an admission that she liked him, or that she at least felt a little of the same pull that he did, and he was stupidly pleased by the small concession. He ran his hand over his hair, only to discover he was still holding the envelope, and felt stupid all over again. Frowning, he shoved it back in his pocket. John Henry had never been stupid in his life. “You didn’t need to return the money.”
“Of course I needed to return the money.” A line dug between her eyebrows. “I hope you didn’t think—”
“I hope
you
didn’t think I’d hold it over you like that ass in the bakery.” Just the thought of the leering SOB made John Henry see red.
“You’re nothing like Alan,” Zin assured him.
Their eyes met, and now all he saw was blue. He fell into it, like a lead-bearing fishing line dropping into the Mediterranean . . . or maybe it was more like a sky diver leaping from a plane into a free fall. There was a moment of helpless weightlessness, seconds of stunned panic, and then he jerked down his gaze, at the last second saving himself by changing his focus to the soft surface of her lips.
Still, his blood surged toward his cock, but this was something he understood. Lust was easy to comprehend. Simple to slake. “Go out with me, Zin,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t have time.”
That same story, he thought, impatient with it, though he’d delivered it himself on any number of occasions to any number of women. “Listen—” His BlackBerry’s ring intruded once again.
Without thinking, he fished it out of his pocket and strode off to answer the call, for the first time noticing the scattering of tables on the terrace and the people sitting at them while enjoying wine and snacks. “What?” he barked into the phone, moving even farther away from the small crowd.
“Your so-called vacation doesn’t sound as if it’s relaxed you any,” his best friend said. “And if I recall correctly, that’s what your personal physician ordered.”
“I didn’t think doctors made house calls anymore,” John Henry said to Mark Richards, meddling M.D.
“Dude, this is a
phone
call,” Mark replied, “and if you don’t know the difference, you need a vacation from your vacation.”
Maybe that would be best, John Henry thought. He was getting fixated on a woman, and that couldn’t be good. “Tahiti might be nice.”
Mark laughed. “I’ll eat my stethoscope if you can remove yourself more than a hundred miles from River Pharmaceuticals.”
“I—”
“Ellen called and ratted you out. She said you couldn’t keep still or even keep your hands off your BlackBerry for a mere three hours of wine tasting.”
“It was three hours with the Sigma Woo Hoos! It might as well have been three years. I needed to check in with the office a couple of times just to make sure I remembered how to start a sentence with something other than ‘I took a magazine quiz’ or ‘Can you believe he flirted with my cousin.’”
“I feel for you, John Henry, but honest to God, you need to focus your attention on something other than what’s going on at the company.”
He leaned on the stone balustrade surrounding the terrace and looked out over the quiet golf course. “I was on the links every day last week,” he mumbled.
“Ellen told me about that too. Those foursomes were made up of your dad’s old buddies, directors from the board, competitors you might want to get into bed with someday.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to snuggle with some old guy in plaid pants and white shoes.” His gaze swung around to Zin, who was smiling prettily at just such a one as she poured straw-colored liquid into a glass. “These are all Dad’s juggling balls, and I’m just trying to keep them in the air like he did.”
“Which is why he died at fifty-five, John Henry. And it’s why you almost bought the farm, too, in August.”
He closed his eyes. He knew it had been damn close, and truth to tell, he’d scared the hell out of himself with that dance with death. But he couldn’t seem to figure out how to retrain his mind. Nothing distracted him from thoughts of this project, that report, those new plans. “I’m working on it,” he told Mark.
“Jesus, John Henry, that’s the whole point. You’re not supposed to be working. You’re supposed to be—”
“Getting drunk and getting laid,” he finished for his friend.
“Is that so difficult? Figure out your priorities, man!”
John Henry didn’t know how to respond, so he ended the call and stood where he was, gazing on the eighteenth hole as the terrace tables emptied. When he heard the crickets chirping instead of people’s conversations, he turned around.
In his line of sight, under the golden glow of a hanging light, stood Zin Friday, folding the cloth that had covered the table where she’d been pouring. The remaining glasses were being wheeled away in a cart piloted by a busboy. They were alone, John Henry realized as he walked toward her. Stilling, she looked up.
His feet halted. She’d unbuttoned that white blouse she wore to a modest, midchest level, and it was the first time he’d seen the smooth, velvety skin of her throat. It got him moving forward again, wanting to see it from closer up, and then he realized that because of his height and her smaller stature he could detect a hint of cleavage from his new perspective.
Blood surged southward again, stiffening his cock, and he didn’t feel the least bit guilty for getting off on this slight glimpse of her breasts. It felt good, it felt alive, it felt pretty damn amazing that though he had no real idea if she was a slight A cup or a more flashy C, it didn’t matter.
Once again, Zin was turning him on.
He saw her swallow as he came to a stop in front of her. The narrow, bare table stood between them. “I don’t have any wine left to offer,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Her hands gathered the folds of the tablecloth to her chest, as if for protection. He frowned. “Are you afraid of me, Zin?”
“No . . . Yes. No.”
He tried interpreting that as the busboy returned and deftly turned the table, released the folding legs, then walked it back inside the resort. The door shut behind the young man, and the light over Zin’s head winked out. The two of them were left alone on the terrace again, with only the flickering candles on the small tables alleviating the darkness.
It felt thick as syrup as he stepped through it, stepping up to Zin to slide his hand beneath her hair and around her neck. She jolted, emitting a small, surprised sound from the back of her throat. Her hold on the tablecloth didn’t ease up.
He didn’t ease up either. Instead he moved in, moved closer, his head bending so he could brush his mouth against her temple and breathe in the fragrant scent of her hair.
Sweet.
The skin of her cheek was warm beneath his lips.
Soft
.