Hot Prospect

“Hi,” he offered with a smile, trying his best to work around his annoyance level. “Bad day, huh?”

“I’m new,” she blurted out, waving her hands helplessly. “The computer isn’t working, the other agent had to run off to find someone to fix the computers, and there’s a whole cruise ship full of Beanie Baby collectors stranded in Puerta Vallarta with possible dysentery.” Fear colored her face as she stared up at him. “You won’t tell anybody, will you? I mean, if they do have dysentery, it may not be the fault of Red Sails or the cruise. It could be a coincidence.”

“Uh-huh.”

She started to sniffle, her voice rising, tears brimming in her eyes. “I unplugged the phone. I had to. I don’t know what to tell them. It’s not my fault! I wasn’t even here when their cruise was arranged.”

“I’m sure they’ll understand.” He leaned in closer, nabbing and handing her a tissue from the box on her desk. He tried to think of something nice to say. “Look on the bright side—if they’re stranded together, at least they have something to talk about.”

“Well, there is that.” She stared at him. “Did you need something? Not a cruise, I hope.”

“I’m actually not sure what it is. Something called the Explorer’s Journey?”

Dabbing at her eyes, she blinked three or four times, as if that would help jump-start her brain. She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Afraid even the slightest impatience would knock her over the edge into a collapse, he tried to ooze nonthreatening, nice-guy vibes. He was usually pretty good at that. “I know someone who booked this Explorer’s Journey from this agency. Is there somewhere you can look for information about it?”

“The computers are down,” she said in a quavery tone.

He crooked his thumb at the filing cabinets lining the wall behind her. “How about your files?”

She scrunched up her face, staring vacantly at him.

“They look alphabetical. Maybe the cabinet that says E-F-G on it,” Jake suggested. “E for Explorers?”

“Oh.” She stumbled back there and pulled open the top drawer. “Hmm…these are mostly European tours. What did you say it was again?”

“Explorer’s Journey.”

“Is that Europe?” she asked, giving him a hopeful glance.

“I don’t know.”

She sighed again. “I don’t see anything.” After poking through those files for a few more minutes, she continued on to the second drawer, fumbled through a few more folders, let her shoulders sag in defeat, turned back, saw the look on Jake’s face, and—just at the point where he was ready to leap over the desk and start looking himself—reluctantly returned to her halfhearted search. “Nope. I don’t see anything…oh, wait. What did you say it was? Explorer’s Journey. Here it is.”

Jake held his breath. Although she seemed astonished to have located it, she actually had a file folder in her hands. The label pasted to the front really did identify it as Explorer’s Journey. She slid it onto her desk and opened it up, carefully, slowly flipping the pages over one at a time.

“Is there a brochure or anything in there? Any information?”

“No. Just the registration pages. They look really full. It must be popular.” She continued to turn pages at the speed of mud. Slow mud. “There’s one a month, I guess. Here’s March… April…”

Could she be any slower, even if she really, really tried? “I need July,” he reminded her, holding himself back from snatching the file away from her. “It’s supposed to leave tomorrow.”

“Here it is. July.” Peering down at it, she smoothed the page with one hand, blocking his view, neatly detaching a piece of pink memo paper clipped to the corner and setting it aside. “Oh, that’s too bad. All the spaces are filled.”

“Can’t you add me as an extra?” How hard could it be? He could see, even upside down, that there were names on all the lines, neatly divided into two columns. A quick count told him there were forty people scheduled to be on this trip. So what difference would it make if they went to forty-one?

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.” She turned the page around, pointing to the instructions scrawled across the top. Someone had written No Extras! No Waiting List! in big, bold letters.

Jake ignored that little problem for the moment, glancing down the list now that he had a chance to see it right side up, scanning for possibilities. One Antoinette, a Tonya, a Tori, and two names that just used T as a first initial. Plus there was one listed under the last name Antonini. The woman he was looking for could be any of them. Or none, if she had a pile of aliases.

“So you see I can’t add you,” she continued. “It’s very clear that I’m not allowed to do that even if I did know how to register you for this trip, which I don’t, because the computers are down and I can’t even look up what it costs or anything.”

She painstakingly reattached the pink memo and its paper clip and then moved to close the folder, but Jake laid a hand on top of hers. “Isn’t there any other way you can let me in on this tour? Anybody else I could contact? Any other source of info? Anything?”

“Not that I would know about…” Looking even more unhappy and put-upon, she glanced back at the beeping fax machine and blinking phone. “Here.” She shoved the folder at him. “You look.”

He flipped through it again, noting no contact name, no info, no help. But then he saw the pink memo attached to the June sheet, and his eyes caught the word “cancel.” Holding up the sheet of pink paper, he read aloud, “‘Zoë Kidd tried to cancel 6/12. Told her no cancel/no refund but would pass on her name if anyone wanted to buy her spot.’” He raised an eyebrow. “What about this? Can I buy her spot?”

“Oh. Well. I don’t know. I guess you can try,” she said with a shrug. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Then she wandered back to the fax machine as Jake considered this stroke of luck.

The tour was full, but Zoë Kidd wanted to cancel and had a space available to give. For the first time since he’d heard his father’s unlikely tale, Jake Calhoun began to smile.

Zoë Kidd. She wanted to cancel. He wanted her spot.

Sounded like a match made in heaven.

2

ZOË BREATHED in the scent of sandalwood from her meditation candles. Lovely. Soothing. Cleansing.

Sitting there on her new purple yoga mat, she maneuvered her legs into the full lotus position, balancing her elbows on her knees and curling her index fingers and thumbs into the proper O’s.

She had a terrible impulse to sneeze, and she decided she probably shouldn’t have lit all eleven candles at the same time. The waves of sandalwood were really kind of overpowering. But eleven was her lucky number. And now that she had gotten herself twisted like a pretzel into the full lotus, she really didn’t want to extract herself just to blow out a few candles.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. Lovely. Soothing. Cleansing. Breathe the sandalwood, she ordered herself. And don’t think. Whatever you do, don’t think.

Yeah, right. Don’t think about the fact that today was supposed to have been her wedding day and tomorrow was supposed to have been the day that she and that snake Wylie left for their honeymoon on the Explorer’s Journey.

He was the one who’d wanted to get married, damn it. She was perfectly happy to live together. Or not even, just to coexist peacefully in their separate apartments. But no. He’d insisted they had to be married. And she’d said, But we’re not ready for that. We have issues. And he’d said, But, hon, I want to be a real couple, like regular people. I want to build a real life together. Which made her heart melt a little, just like he knew it would. If we have issues, Wylie had told her, so sincere, we can work through them.

Which should’ve been a hint right there that Wylie was off his rocker at that particular moment, because he was so not the work-through-your-issues type. But then, like the dim bulb she was, she had been thrilled to hear him finally admit that, yes, there were things that he needed to improve—because this was sure as heck the first time he’d ever said that, seeing as how he was convinced he was perfect. So she’d said, quite sternly, actually, Yes, Wylie, I will marry you, but only if we go on the Explorer’s Journey for our honeymoon because I just saw it on Oprah. Newlyweds only, all about communication, harmony, trust, blah, blah, blah, all the things we have trouble with. It’ll be the perfect way to work through some things, right there, right then. And we can begin our married life as full and equal partners, communicating, harmonizing, trusting.

Had there been a funny light of terror in his eyes when he’d agreed? Or was that just hindsight?

“Did you ever have any intention of doing the Explorer’s Journey with me?” she asked out loud. “And if not, why the hell couldn’t you say so before I paid for the damn thing?”

Well, there she was, with her eyes wide-open, not calm or relaxed or cleansed at all. And her right ankle was starting to kill her where it was mashed between her other leg and her lap, not to mention the fact that the backs of both thighs were plastered to her mat.

“Ow…” She wrenched herself out of her lotus position, peeling the sticky mat away from her skin. She was positively dripping with sweat in this hateful apartment. It was so humid, without a hint of a breeze. And all those candles were making it worse. “I shouldn’t be wearing shorts. But it’s too hot for long pants! And I could’ve afforded air-conditioning if I hadn’t paid for that stupid Explorer’s Journey. They can just stuff their no-cancellation policy.”

Well, she wasn’t feeling particularly meditative, was she? Maybe a few rounds with her tarot cards would help her get in touch with her higher power and stop all the angsting already.

Refastening one reddish-brown braid back over the top of her head, she slicked the moisture off her forehead with the back of one hand, swearing again, louder this time. Stupid, stupid Wylie for being too chicken to be part of a real couple. Stupid, stupid Zoë for ever thinking he was worth it in the first place. She’d ignored her cards on that one, when they kept throwing her the Prince of Hearts every time she asked about Wylie. Everyone knew the Prince of Hearts meant an Inconstant Suitor. Which described Wylie exactly.

“How can you respect a man who doesn’t know his own mind?” she groused. “I should’ve believed the cards.”

Zoë picked herself up off the ground and started rooting around on her bookshelves for her pack of Enchanted Tarot Cards. They had beautiful pictures and she really did find them soothing as long as they kept that nasty Inconstant Suitor card to themselves. The deck was on the bottom shelf, and she was bent over, reaching for the last card, which had slipped to the very back of the shelf, when she heard the clomp of footsteps coming up the stairs to her apartment. She paused. Maybe a new student, she thought. Which would be a very good thing, because she needed the extra money now that she’d spent every last dime she had on the nonrefundable Explorer’s Journey.

She raised her head, planning to call out to whoever it was to just come on in, but she lifted up too quickly, cracking her head squarely on the next shelf.

“Yeow!” she cried, stumbling back, scattering a waterfall of tarot cards like something out of Alice in Wonderland. There was only one card left in her hand.

She rubbed the back of her head, almost slipping as she stepped on one of the slick cards on the floor. She groaned. It had to be bad karma to drop all your tarot cards. “I guess I’d better pick ’em up.” She slid the one card she still had into the back pocket of her shorts and bent down to get the deck back together before the potential student walked in and saw the mess. But when she bent over, she started to feel really dizzy. “I must’ve bumped it harder than I thought,” she whispered, stretching her fingers to her toes, letting her head hang down to the floor while she recovered her equilibrium. It was at that point she heard the door open behind her.

“Come—” she began, but she only got the one syllable out.

“Stop, police!” a very male voice announced. “Don’t move!”

“What? Stay where I am?” Bent over with her backside in the air? Frozen to the spot, she stared at him through her legs. Good God, he had a gun! Kinda cute, but scary, with both his arms outstretched and that creepy gun pointed mostly at the floor. But he wasn’t wearing a uniform. Man. Gun. “Are you really a cop? Show me your badge!” she screamed.

He immediately pulled out a shield and flashed it at her. Okay, good. So he really was a cop.

“Were you shouting at someone?” he asked in a calmer voice, relaxing his stance a little as he surveyed the empty room.

“No. Myself, maybe,” she offered. “I hit my head and then I dropped my cards and…do I have to stay like this? All the blood is running to my head. I was already dizzy and now I feel like I’m going to faint.”

He backed off, putting the gun away, thank goodness, shutting her front door quietly. “No, no, get up. Please. Whatever. Sorry.”

“Whew.” Slowly, carefully, Zoë straightened, lifting a hand to her head. Yes, she was still a little light-headed, but not too bad. Meanwhile, his gaze was positively glued to her bottom. It was probably not his fault, she allowed, considering how brief her shorts were, especially when she’d been bent over like that. What was the poor thing supposed to look at?

But how humiliating. The only cute guy who’d been in her apartment for weeks, and he barged in while she was woozy, sweaty, upside down and had half her butt exposed. She ventured a glance his way. He didn’t look too upset by the short-shorts problem. In fact, he looked positively…intrigued. Zoë swallowed. Yep, he was still looking at her.

After tugging the edge of her shorts down, she pushed a few tendrils of hair back into her braids, blew on her face and hoped she wasn’t too flushed. Oh, forget it. She looked hideous. There was no point in trying to spruce herself up at this point. The light she’d seen in his eyes must be her imagination. No man in the world sent out vibes of interest to a woman who looked like this.

Careful to avoid all the spilled cards, she edged around so that at least her front side was facing him. And then she gave him a real once-over. Okay, twice. He knew she was looking. She knew he knew. And she didn’t care. Because the view was that good.

Light brown hair, cut short. Good, clean jawline. Blue eyes. Very blue. There was a sort of speculative, suspicious look in those eyes she found oddly attractive. That and his mouth. He had these quirky lips, kind of narrow and clever, fuller on the bottom. She liked the look of those lips. A lot.

He was tall, maybe six foot one or two, with broad shoulders, and a real presence. Nothing she could put her finger on but… Alive. Vital. Rooted. Right here. Right now. He looked like the kind of guy you would run to when a tornado just blew your house away and you didn’t have a thing left in the world and you didn’t care because you had him.

Zoë’s eyes met his. Good Lord, he was cute. In a very traditional, button-down, authority-figure way, of course, which was not her type at all. So incredibly and completely not her type. He’d pulled a gun on her, for goodness’ sake!

Now if he would only stop sending her those sizzling glances. They made her want to run to him and tackle him. Which was probably a very bad thing. She vowed to do a better job of being immune to whatever he was sending out.

She lifted her chin. “Why in the world did you come barreling in like that? Pointing that thing at me!”

“I heard thumps and a scream. The door was open, there was a definite haze in here, and it smelled like marijuana.” He looked kind of grouchy as he scanned the room again. “How many candles are you burning? And why?”

“I don’t think how many candles I’m burning is any of your business. And it’s sandalwood, not marijuana. Jeez Louise, what kind of cop are you?”

“I thought there might be a burglary in progress, or maybe some kind of drug party gone bad,” he explained curtly. “That does not smell like sandalwood. You’re not burning the candles to cover the pot smell, are you? Is anyone else here? Is there a back door?”

“No, no, and no. I’m alone. The candles are supposed to be good for meditation. I don’t have a back door.” She took a sniff. Good grief. He was right. It didn’t smell like sandalwood. No wonder she wasn’t getting any calmer. “I’m going to have to have a talk with the lady at the New Age store downstairs. She swore these were sandalwood.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, it’s true.” She tried to plant her hands on her hips and look menacing, but her hand hit the smooth, hard edge of the tarot card poking out of her back pocket. Hmm…one card in her pocket. If one fell out or otherwise distanced itself from the pack, that was supposed to be significant. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced down.

“That’s odd,” she murmured. It was a swirling pink card with two pretty swans outlined by a heart, with two tiny kissing cupids at the top. The two of hearts.

The True Love card.

Her heart did a little flip, but she ignored it. Instead she glared at the card in her hand. Talk about adding insult to injury. Even her tarot cards were mocking her.

So where was this True Love supposed to pop up? Between her and…

“Hello?” the cute cop interrupted. “If you’re done playing cards, I need to talk to you.”

Him? She gulped. Those beautiful blue eyes were staring at her, burning more steadily than all eleven candles. Her heart started to thump, beating to the most bizarre rhythm. True love. True love. True love. She felt all tingly, and her face was flushed with heat. What was wrong with her?

It was probably just the effect of too many aromatic candles, infecting her brain. Or maybe she’d hit her head harder than she realized. There was no romantic glow here at all. Just smoke and humidity.

She fanned herself with the two of hearts, using her other hand to pluck the neckline of her damp leotard away from her skin. Anything to generate some air. Cool down, chill out, she told herself. But she didn’t feel remotely cool or chilly.

Especially when his gaze seemed to catch and hold there on her chest. His eyes widened. She swallowed, surreptitiously casting a quick look down to see what he was staring at. Overheated Zoë. Wet leotard. Breasts that might as well have been bare in that thin, moist top, her nipples peaking against the slippery, wet fabric.

Uh-oh. She dropped the True Love card like a shot, kicking it out of the way as she quickly wrapped her arms over her front and turned away.

She was not, as it happened, all that shy about her body. She was used to leading her dance class in a skimpy leotard all the time. But this felt different. It felt like…dancing naked in front of a complete stranger. Even worse, it felt like dancing naked, totally on purpose and with one seductive reason, in front of your lover.

She couldn’t handle it. Pulling her top out in front, hoping she looked nonchalant, she unstuck it and flapped it harder, trying to dry herself off. But when she hazarded a glance back around at him, his gaze met hers, blazing like a beacon, and it was like, Pow! Kazam! Major meltdown happening here!

What the…?

Sometimes she had feelings about people, or even a little intuition, but nothing as overwhelming and hot as this. She didn’t just get an aura from him. No, this was like a laser beam, searing her all the way to the soul. I know him, she thought, shocked at the very idea. I know him!

He blinked, looking just as surprised as she was. Jake. One minute she had no idea who he was, and the next his name was right there in her brain, clear as day. His name was Jake. How did she know that?

Zoë took a step backward. This couldn’t be happening. One tarot card did not a lover make. And yet there was some kind of cosmic attraction going on here, and they both knew it.

She wasn’t used to this instant-electricity thing. She wasn’t used to looking at a guy for five minutes, thinking about laser beams and naked dancing, and totally wanting to jump him.

She was coming undone.

“Oh, dear! Well, I, uh…” She put a hand to her forehead, attempting to find something else in the room that needed her attention. But there wasn’t anything there. “The candles…it’s so hot in here. Maybe it’s the candles.”

Behind her, he cleared his throat. “You really should blow those out,” he said stiffly. “They’re a fire hazard.”

As she moved to blow out the nearest two, she stopped, glancing at him over her shoulder, her gaze skittering away again. She tried to make a joke, anything to puncture this bizarre mood. “So tell me, did you come here to bust me for excess candle burning?”

“No, actually, I came because…” He stopped. Sounding even more unsettled than she felt, he continued, “I’m looking for Zoë Kidd. Is that you?”

“Yes. But I didn’t…” She was planning on saying she didn’t have any reason to need a police officer when it hit her.

If there was a cop looking for her, there could only be one reason. Her shoulders slumped. Wylie. He’d probably run up a few too many parking tickets again. The very thought of Wylie was like a pitcher of cold water poured over her head.

Wylie equaled bad taste in men. Wylie equaled terrible judgment. Wylie equaled defeat.

After quickly dousing the remaining candles, Zoë went back to pick up the rest of her tarot cards, trying hard to ignore Mr. Cute Cop. She made a point of retrieving the two of hearts and jamming it back into the middle of the pack before she stacked the whole deck neatly on the bookshelf. “If this is about Wylie, I broke up with him almost a month ago. Any trouble he’s in is his problem, not mine. So if he said I would bail him—”

“No, it has nothing to do with him. I need you.”

Yeah, well, I need you, too, Jake. I dumped my boyfriend. I’m lonely. I’m bored. And you are one good-looking man.

Looking over at him, trying to make herself behave, she still felt that incredible heat. She still felt like stripping naked and leaping into his arms. She licked her bottom lip. I need you for a few good rolls on my sticky mat…

“What did you say?”

“Me? Nothing. Not a thing.” What, could he hear her thoughts now? His name suddenly popped into her head as if it always been there and now he could mind-read? This was getting spooky. She stuck a stray tendril of her hair back into the braids wrapped over the top of her head. “And what did you need with me?”

“Okay. Right. Let’s just…cut to the chase.”

He clenched his jaw, and she thought, Wow, that is one nice jaw. Do you think he would care if I touched it? before she regained the use of her brain and paid attention to his words again. Concentrate, Zoë. Concentrate. Why was it so incredibly hot in this room?

“You booked a place on the Explorer’s Journey, right?”

Zoë blinked. “You’re here because of the Explorer’s Journey?”

“The travel agency said the roster is full,” he explained. “I want to buy your spot.”

“You want to…?” He didn’t seem like the type. At all. But then she got the picture. Talk about your pitcher of cold water.

Zoë was not a stupid woman. She saw the handwriting on the wall. Mr. Cute Cop obviously had a Mrs. Cute Cop stashed at home, and the two of them wanted to go on the Explorer’s Journey. Newlyweds only, after all. Newlyweds who wanted to work on their communication skills, both in and out of bed. Given Mr. Cute Cop’s rather terse communication skills, as well as the heat emanating from his hard body, she could see why Mrs. Cute Cop would feel the need to take him on that particular trip.

“So you’ll sell me your ticket?” he asked.

“Sure,” she declared, trying to work up some enthusiasm.

Shaking her head, she rose from the floor, crossing to the desk where she’d stuck the travel packet. How silly was she? She’d gone from entertaining the mad notion that he was her karmic one-and-only True Love to figuring out he was someone else’s new husband, all in three seconds. So much for her psychic visions. She knew his name. How come she didn’t get the married part?