Hot Prospect

He’d learned one thing over the years. Just because someone asked you a question didn’t mean you had to answer it. He didn’t.

“So you’re not going to tell me?”

“Nope,” he returned.

“Not even a hint?”

“Look, Zoë, this isn’t a game,” he said sharply. “It isn’t a mission, it isn’t a date, it isn’t Twenty Questions, and I’m not going to tell you anything, so you might as well stop asking.”

Okay, so he was being a little meaner than he ought to. He frowned, trying to decide whether he should be nicer, because, after all, he still needed that damn ticket. But then he hazarded a glance her way and caught the look on her face. What the…?

Her feelings weren’t hurt. In fact, she looked…turnedon. Oh, no.

Curiosity sparkled in her pretty green eyes, and her expressive features were rapt with interest as she leaned his way. Big mistake. His close-mouthed approach had created a monster.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

He could see the wheels turning, and the hint of color that tinged her cheeks. She started to answer, changed her mind, got even rosier and finally said, “I’m finding all this quite fascinating.”

What was she talking about? Him? The hunt for Toni, which she wasn’t even in on? “What exactly do you find fascinating?”

“Well, this trip. Yesterday I thought I would be bumming around, same old, same old, and today, here I am, on a trip into the unknown.” She was positively beaming over there. “I’m stoked. How about you?”

“Not so much.”

“Oh, come on. It will be great. Relaxing, you know.”

Jake angled his chin to the side window. “Relaxing? Around you? I don’t think so,” he said under his breath.

But Zoë was moving on. Carefully she declared, “Jake, yesterday… I just feel it’s only right to tell you. Yesterday, I felt some sort of heightened connection between us. I think you felt it, too.” When he didn’t respond, she prompted, “Yes?”

“No.”

“Yes, you did.”

He shouldn’t have looked over at her, but it was too late now. She was smiling. You could say whatever you wanted, but there was no denying that Zoë had a spectacular smile, all bright and shiny, with just a hint of mischief. It mixed innocence and heat in a way he’d never really experienced, like she was the girl next door who would open that door and invite you in to play Strip Twister.

Yeah, Jake, great image. He needed to keep a wide berth between Zoë and any game where you ended up naked.

He glanced back at her. She was still smiling that saucy Strip-Twister smile. The girl was a menace.

And now she was on about some kind of connection between the two of them. What did she mean by that? The parlor trick of pulling his name out of thin air? Or the physical thing, where he kept drooling on her and she kept sniffing around him?

Jake figured the better part of valor was denial. “I did not feel any connection,” he contended.

“Pooh.”

“I’ve never met anyone who used the word ‘pooh’.”

Ignoring that comment, she hitched her legs up on the seat, which was tough to do inside the seat belt, but she seemed to be a very limber girl. Bad thought, Jake. Don’t go there.

“So, Jake, tell me. Did you always know you wanted to be a policeman? Do you have to go to school for that?”

If he told her about his family and his training and all that boring stuff, at least it would keep her quiet and his mind busy the rest of the way to the airport. Talking about three generations of Calhouns in the Chicago Police Department was miles away from Strip Twister.

It wasn’t until he parked his car in the lot at O’Hare that he realized how quickly the time had passed and how much he’d talked about himself. Who needed bright lights and rubber hoses? Zoë had just worked more out of him than most trained interviewers got out of suspects, especially closemouthed suspects like him, and she didn’t even appear to be trying that hard. It was not a comforting thought.

“Which airline?” he asked, as they toted their bags and navigated their way to the terminal.

“None.”

“None?” He held the elevator door for her. “What do you mean, none?”

“It’s a bus,” she said helpfully. “We leave from the bus terminal. It’s in the instructions. There’s supposed to be a red line on the floor and it goes right to the bus terminal.”

“There was nothing about a bus in the instructions you gave me,” he retorted. “Where the hell are we headed, anyway? Where can you get by bus?”

“Wisconsin.”

“Wisconsin?” But that’s where he was supposed to be right now, with his brothers, at the lake cabin. “Why can’t we just drive ourselves?”

“It’s all part of the program,” she said patiently. “You’re supposed to become a part of the group, plus you make a commitment for the whole deal. Like, once you get on that bus, there’s no going back.”

Just when he thought things were as bad as they could get, Zoë kept proving him wrong. “I was hoping for someplace a little more interesting, as long as I had to…”

Be on this idiotic tour. He didn’t say that. But his visions of golf courses and scuba diving vanished. This sounded more like summer camp. They’d probably be tying knots and weaving flyswatters out of newspaper.

The rest of the way to the bus terminal, up escalators and down and around long corridors, she kept telling him not to be so grumpy and he kept wanting details she wasn’t providing, while they both held their voices down so as not to attract too much attention from the people around them.

“Snap out of it, Jake. You’re lucky you have me.”

He wasn’t feeling lucky. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” he demanded. “Like the fact that this program you keep referring to is for recovering substance abusers or a bunch of mopes avoiding jail time by picking up litter in Wisconsin?”

“I told you, it’s for newlyweds.” Zoë rolled her eyes. “Quit being a cop for a minute, will you?”

“I’m not being a cop. You’re being evasive,” he contended. “You held back the bus info and the little detail that we were going to Wisconsin.”

“You didn’t tell me that our mode of transportation or the specific location made a difference to you,” she said logically. “You were very adamant that you wanted to go on the Explorer’s Journey and how or where didn’t matter.”

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