His for the Taking Read online

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I have other places to be.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked up from his backpack. ‘Do you have a date or something?’

  The appropriate response to that was to fall on the floor laughing. Zoe Drake, with a date on a Sunday night? She managed to control herself. ‘I work a lot of evenings.’

  ‘Do you need to work tonight?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘That’s good. I could do with the company. Besides your friend Ralph and some toll booth workers on I-95 on my way down here, I haven’t spoken to another human being face to face for a week and a half.’ He smiled at her and his teeth were straight and white and she felt like melting.

  ‘And this fact is supposed to make me feel more reassured that you’re not a psycho?’

  ‘I’m not a psycho.’ Nick held out something wrapped in a silver foil pouch. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

  As soon as he asked the question Zoe felt her stomach grumble. She was absolutely starving. She’d worked a nine-hour shift from six this morning on not much more than a ham sandwich, and then she’d gone for a run to clear her head and then gone to the funeral parlour.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘A protein bar.’

  She made a face. ‘I’m hungry, but not hungry enough to eat that.’

  He shrugged and peeled back the wrapper. ‘You’re welcome to anything else I’ve got.’ He took a bite of the bar and, although it smelled unappetising even at this distance, her stomach rumbled again.

  ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘Dehydrated soup, some vacuum-packed stew and pasta, trail mix, a whole bunch of nuts.’

  ‘How’d you grow so big on a diet like that?’

  He laughed. ‘I left in a hurry and took what I had left over from my two weeks on Cranberry Island. I’m actually a pretty good cook on a camp stove, when I can get the right ingredients. Do you think there’s anything in your great-aunt’s kitchen?’

  ‘No. Xenia never cooked. I’ll tell you what there is, though.’ Zoe jumped up from the couch and went to a side table, where she picked up the cordless phone and a sheaf of take-out menus. ‘We have a whole world of food at our fingertips. We only have to pick a country and a style. Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Indian, Japanese, American?’

  Nick crumpled up the wrapper of his gross protein bar. ‘I haven’t had a pizza in weeks.’

  ‘Now, that’s one number Xenia doesn’t have. She never ate anything bigger than an oyster with her hands.’ Zoe began to dial. ‘Fortunately, I have the number memorised. Pepperoni?’

  ‘With mushrooms. And it’s on me, so get an extra large.’

  ‘If it’s on you, I’ll get two.’ She dialled and ordered and put down the phone, realising she was resigned to spending the night with Nick in the apartment.

  Well, if it was inevitable she might as well enjoy it.

  Just not too much.

  Nick swirled the dark red liquid around his glass thoughtfully. ‘This is good wine, huh?’

  ‘Too good to go with pizza, most likely.’ Zoe took a swig from her glass and then took the last slice of pizza from the box without asking him.

  She ate more than just about any woman he’d ever known, and she didn’t preface every bite with worries about calories or vows to go on a diet the next day. She just ate it, with appreciation.

  He’d grown up with two women, his mother and his sister, and he’d always been amused by the way they and most of the other women he knew treated food, as if it were their best friend and their worst enemy at once.

  Zoe wasn’t like that. For her, food was food, and if it tasted good, she liked it. She was like a guy that way. It was refreshing.

  He took another sip of the wine Zoe had chosen from her great-aunt’s extensive collection. It was dark and delicious, and it probably was fantastically expensive. Everything else in this apartment seemed to be. Even the chain-saw in the glass case next to the couch they sat on was a top model.

  Working on and around Mount Desert Island, Maine’s summer resort for the wealthy, Nick had met plenty of rich people. Zoe didn’t fit that stereotype, either. It wasn’t just because her clothes weren’t fashionable; she was too down-to-earth for the rich type. Right now, for example, she was curled up on the end of the couch with her sock-clad feet on the cushion, licking pepperoni oil off her fingers.

  Of course, just because her great-aunt was wealthy didn’t mean Zoe had to be. She could’ve come from the poor side of the family.

  ‘Where did your great-aunt get her money from?’ he asked. In some company, it could be a rude question, but even from his short acquaintance with Zoe he knew she’d tell him to shut up if she didn’t feel like answering. He found that refreshing, too.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Nobody does.’

  Nick raised his eyebrows. ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Well, she did, obviously, but I don’t know anybody else who did. She didn’t inherit it from a relative, because all of my ancestors were strictly middle-class. My parents used to speculate all the time. I think they were split between her inheriting it from an aristocratic lover, or her running a successful cathouse on the side.’

  ‘A mistress or a madam?’

  ‘My parents are often unnecessarily judgemental, they have very little imagination, and they have a hard time understanding life beyond their particular New Jersey suburb.’ She folded up the remainder of the pizza slice and bit it in half. ‘Personally I think it was something much more interesting.’

  For the first time, she seemed to notice he had nothing left to eat, and she held out the folded-up pizza to him, a moon-shaped bite taken out of the end. ‘Are you still hungry? Do you want any of this?’

  Nick smiled. That was another thing that was refreshing about her—once she’d stopped trying to kick him out, she treated him as if she’d known him for years. ‘No, thanks. What do you think she did?’

  ‘Mostly, anything she wanted. I don’t know how she got her money, but it must have been by some adventure or other. Xenia never stayed still for a minute.’

  He heard pride in her voice instead of sadness. Good girl. She’d done well, too, when the guy from the funeral parlour had turned up just after the pizza-delivery man. For a minute she’d looked so sad, confronted by his black suit and sombre manner, that he’d thought she was about to cry. But she’d put on a smile and handed over the designer clothes without a blink, and then she’d gone and found a bottle of this expensive wine.

  Though she acted differently, Zoe reminded Nick of his sister Kitty in some ways. After their father had left them, Kitty had cultivated the same skill of putting on a brave face. Kitty hadn’t done such a good job of it.

  Then again, Nick had already known what was going on underneath Kitty’s brave face. Somehow he felt that Zoe wouldn’t let him underneath her defences very easily.

  ‘You want to be like Xenia, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to be like myself,’ she replied, and immediately shoved the rest of the pizza in her mouth. Amused, he watched her chew. She definitely wasn’t letting him underneath her defences.

  ‘And what is yourself?’ he asked. ‘Are you fantastically rich, too?’

  She swallowed. ‘I drive a cab.’ She took a drink of wine. ‘And teach exercise classes.’

  ‘Really?’ He remembered the glimpse of her legs he’d had, and looked more closely at her arms. She was definitely fit, and she had that sureness of movement you found in people who used their muscles a lot.

  ‘Really. And what about you? Do you get paid for counting birds on islands or is it just an eccentric hobby?’

  ‘I get paid for it. I’m a park ranger.’

  She put down her wineglass. ‘A park ranger.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Specialising in conservation, I bet.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Principled,’ she muttered. ‘I knew it. Brother.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

 
‘Nothing.’ She picked up her wineglass again and drank deep. ‘A park ranger where?’

  ‘Maine. I’m mostly based in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, but I do some work on the outlying islands attached to the park, too.’

  ‘A lone bird-counting ranger.’ She polished off her wine. ‘You must have to get back to the park pretty soon, huh?’

  ‘I’ve got a week off. It isn’t high season.’

  ‘You’re planning on staying here a week?’ Her voice pitched up on the last word, probably, he thought, a result of the wine.

  ‘It depends how long it takes to find my father. I can have more time off if I want it. I’m due some annual leave.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried that the Great Outdoors might perish without you to look after it?’

  ‘Yes. But finding my father is more important.’

  ‘Great. I’m trapped inside an apartment with a park ranger for a week.’ Zoe reached for the bottle and splashed more wine into her glass.

  ‘I’m hoping my father will turn up before then.’

  ‘You’re hoping he’ll turn up tonight,’ Zoe corrected. ‘Well, I hope he does, too. What will you do if he doesn’t?’

  Nick picked up the bottle of wine. Zoe had taken the last of that, too.

  ‘I’m not going to think about that possibility,’ he said, and reached over. He took the glass of wine from her fingers, drank, and then held it back out to her.

  She didn’t take it. He looked at her face to see she was staring at him, her eyes wide, her generous mouth partly open. Her cheeks were flushed.

  For a moment he thought he’d misjudged the situation, that he’d felt too comfortable with her, and that he’d forgotten himself and done something rude.

  But she wasn’t telling him off, and she wasn’t looking annoyed. She was just…looking.

  ‘Maybe I should finish this,’ he said. ‘You look like the wine’s gone to your head.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘The wine.’

  The words were slow and spoken softly. He saw her bite her bottom lip.

  Then she closed her eyes and shook her head, as if she was deciding something with all of her will. She scooted to the edge of the couch and stood up.

  ‘I think you’re right. I think I should go to bed.’

  She moved off, and her foot snagged on the rug in front of the couch. Nick saw it before she even started to fall, and in an instant he was up off the couch and catching her in his arms.

  She was lighter than he’d expected and her body curved against his almost bonelessly. He’d been right; she’d had too much wine. She stared up into his face, obviously shocked from the fall.

  ‘Nick—’ she said, and even though she’d hardly tripped the shock must’ve been something, because her breath was coming in short pants, like that of a frightened animal. She leaned against him, being supported by him, but her hands dug almost painfully hard into his arms.

  And the wine had gone to his head, too. Nick didn’t drink much, usually, and he hadn’t slept since he’d received the letter from his father yesterday. He felt his eyes slip out of focus and he felt a wave of fatigue form in his belly and make its way up and force his mouth open in a big, air-gulping yawn.

  Zoe stiffened in his arms. She found her feet and pulled away from him.

  ‘Okay, so I’m going to sleep in the spare bedroom, because that’s where I always sleep,’ she said, pushing her hair behind her ears and sounding not drunk at all, ‘and you can have the boxroom, all right?’

  ‘Actually I think I’ll sleep in here on the couch. I’ve got a sleeping bag. I want to be close to the door in case my father comes in during the night.’ He covered his mouth as another yawn overtook him.

  ‘Suit yourself. Goodnight.’ She picked up the pizza box and the wine bottle and left the room without a backwards glance. A minute later he heard her bedroom door shut, halfway across the big apartment.

  Zoe lay in the dark, her eyes open and staring at the invisible ceiling. Her body was intensely awake.

  She could blame the wine, but it was an excuse. It was her own fault. She’d been some kind of an imbecile to let herself relax, to let herself enjoy Nick’s company, to sit so close to all that glorious, perfect, responsible maleness.

  Idiot. She’d fooled herself into thinking it was going to be all right and that she wasn’t going to fall for this guy and she could control her rampaging hormones and just share some pizza and wine. And then he’d reached for her glass, his fingers had brushed hers, he’d drunk her wine with a careless, sexy intimacy, and she’d known she was playing with fire.

  Sixty seconds later she’d been in his arms and the desire had flamed through her like pain. Her knees had gone out from beneath her, her heart had thumped, her breath had stopped, her skin had leapt into excruciating life.

  For a single dizzying, crazy moment, she’d thought maybe he was holding her because he was attracted to her, too. The possibility had made her swoon, like a silly girl.

  She’d said his name in a breath of hope. And lifted her face for him to kiss her.

  Then he’d yawned.

  Zoe turned over and put the pillow over her head. She pressed her face into the warm sheet and wished she could bury herself there for ever.

  The hell of it was, she could still feel his hands on her. He’d had one of them on her bare arm and the other on the small of her back. They burned into her, strong and deceptively safe-feeling.

  At least she’d escaped before she’d tried to kiss him and made herself an object of pity.

  At least.

  Zoe turned back over and punched her pillow, hard.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SOME PEOPLE FORGOT their problems in sleep. They woke up to blissful ignorance, and might even make it to their morning cup of coffee before they remembered what humiliating things they had done the night before.

  Zoe had never had a moment of blissful ignorance in her life. Even before she opened her eyes she had one thought in her head: I nearly threw myself at a guy who isn’t the smallest bit interested in me.

  And the thought directly following that was: I wonder if he still looks as beautiful this morning as he did last night.

  She shoved aside the blankets and climbed out of bed, pulling on her T-shirt and the ugly skirt. She had a toothbrush here at Xenia’s but that was it; leaving actual clothes always seemed like too much to ask of Xenia, as if it was an intrusion on Xenia’s independence. Now she wished she’d just left some, because Zoe hated skirts, and this one was itchy.

  As soon as she opened the bedroom door she smelled coffee. Nick was up, then. On her barefoot way down the hall she resisted going into the bathroom and looking at her hair and face. The sight of her bedhead and her bleary eyes was not going to make her feel any better about herself, and Nick certainly didn’t give a rat’s ass what she looked like.

  When she saw him leaning against the kitchen counter though, wearing jeans and a Red Sox T-shirt that hugged every inch of his perfect body, she nearly turned right back round to go and brush her teeth at least. But he spotted her first, and smiled.

  ‘Sleep well?’ he asked in that damn delectable voice and there was just enough mocking humour in it that she forgot about turning round and marched straight into the kitchen instead. The man was annoying and he could deal with her bad hair and her morning breath.

  He made a move to take down a mug for her but she beat him to it and poured herself coffee without looking at him.

  ‘A little hungover?’ he said and she could hear the smile in his voice.

  She made an elaborate act of peering around the kitchen. ‘I don’t see your father. Does this mean he didn’t come sneaking into the apartment in the middle of the night after all?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe later. I’m not in a hurry. I’ve been waiting a long time to see him again.’

  Zoe had her mug halfway to her mouth, but she slammed it down onto the counter, narrowly missing splashing coffee on her hand.

/>   ‘Yeah, but did it occur to you that I might be in a hurry? I might want to get on with my normal life instead of playing babysitter to you while you make yourself at home in my dead great-aunt’s apartment?’

  Nick took a cloth from the sink and reached over to mop up the spill. Zoe snatched the cloth from him.

  ‘Guess that answers my question,’ he said. ‘You’re definitely hungover.’

  ‘I wasn’t drunk last night.’ She scrubbed at the coffee harder than she needed to.

  ‘If it’s not a hangover, then what put the bug up your ass this morning?’

  Being so attracted to you that I can’t see straight when all you can do is comment on how rough I look. Zoe opened a cupboard, seeing only champagne glasses and yet more ice cube trays. ‘There’s no damn food in this apartment and I need breakfast.’

  ‘I see. Low blood sugar makes you cranky. I’ve got a few more protein bars and that dehydrated stew in my backpack, if you want.’

  Zoe pulled down a packet of something labelled ‘Lapsang Souchong Tea’. ‘I think I’d rather eat this,’ she said, opening the top and recoiling at the pungent odour and sight of black leaves.

  ‘What do you usually do for breakfast when you stay here?’ Nick asked.

  ‘I usually grab something from the deli down the block.’

  ‘Well, let’s do that.’

  Zoe threw the cloth in the sink and took a frustrated swallow of coffee. ‘We can’t, remember? You don’t want to leave in case your father shows up and in case I lock you out, and I don’t want to leave in case you decide to steal all my great-aunt’s antiques. We’re at an impasse and we’re both stuck here until you come to your senses and give up.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  Zoe stared. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll go to the deli and get us some breakfast. You can let me in when I come back.’

  ‘But—what if your father turns up?’

  ‘I’m sure you can keep him here for me.’

  ‘But how do you know I’ll let you back in?’