He sat on the edge of her bed while she stood in front of the mirror over the dresser and brushed out her hair.
"Don"t," he said, when she started to pull it back. Their eyes met in the gla.s.s. "I love the way your hair looks when it"s loose, hanging down your back."
She smiled and put down her hairbrush; he wondered how come he"d said that or even thought it. He liked a woman to have long hair, but the particular way she wore it had never mattered to him before.
"It"ll probably get wild," she said. "It always does, when the weather"s wet."
He rose to his feet, walked up behind her and put his arms around her. She covered his hands with hers and leaned back against him.
"I like you wild." He felt her heartbeat quicken. His arms tightened around her. "I love you wild," he whispered, moving his hips against her backside.
She gave a hum of pleasure.
"That"s good," she whispered. "Because you bring out a wildness in me."
He bent his head, nuzzled her damp hair aside and nipped the nape of her neck.
"Do I?"
She nodded. "Normally, I"m-I"m not wild at all."
Zach raised his head and looked at her reflection.
"No?"
She shook her head. "I"m a practical person. You know. Logical. Cautious." She laughed. "What else would a CPA be? I"m an accountant. Walking away from accounting and taking a job in real estate was probably the wildest thing I"d ever done until that night."
"What night?" Zach said with deliberate innocence.
She smiled. "You know what night."
"Yeah. I do." He turned her in his arms and locked his hands at the base of her spine; she put her palms against his chest. "But I want to hear you say it. You were the very picture of propriety until...?"
"The picture of propriety." She laughed. Leaned back in his arms and looked up at him. "Why do I get the feeling you wouldn"t know the first thing about propriety?"
"I would. I do. Believe it or not, I clean up really well." He captured her mouth with his in a soft, sweet kiss. "And you"re trying to change the subject. You were a good girl until-"
"Until that night in your place. I"d never done anything like that before."
"Spent the night without electricity?"
She laughed, tapped him lightly on the shoulder with her fist.
"It was the first time I"d ever-I"d ever been with a man I"d just met. You know. I"d never had s.e.x with a stranger."
He"d already figured that out by himself, but hearing her say it was better.
Why should the admission make him feel so d.a.m.n good?
"The first time," he said, trying to sound casual.
"Uh huh."
He wanted to tell her it would be the last time, too, but he stopped himself before he said it. n.o.body could predict the future. This was now. It was-it was terrific. But who knew what either of them would feel a month from today?
So, instead of saying something foolish, he smiled and said, "Well then, we"re even."
Jaimie rolled her eyes.
"Puh-leeze," she said. "You"re a guy. You expect me to believe you"ve led a sheltered life?"
"Absolutely." He grinned. "I"d never had s.e.x with a Realtor before."
That won him another tap on the shoulder. And a soft laugh. She was happy. He was the reason. It made him feel at least ten feet tall.
His grin faded and he dropped another light kiss on her lips.
"You want the truth?"
She nodded.
"I"d never had a night like that in my life," he said softly. "You were...you were everything I"d ever dreamed. And then I woke up and you were gone and, for a couple of seconds, I thought that maybe I really had dreamed it all."
Her smile dimmed. "I shouldn"t have run away."
"Hey." He put his hand under her chin. "We settled this last night, remember? If you were wrong to take off, I was equally wrong not to have gone after you." And not to have checked out Young"s story. If only he could tell her that. "It"s all water under the proverbial bridge, honey. For both of us. Right?"
She swallowed hard. Her gaze dropped from his. She took a deep breath and when she looked up again, her eyes were bright with emotion. "I don"t want any more untruths between us, Zacharias. I left the way I did because-because...It was what you said. I didn"t know how to deal with my feelings. With wanting to stay right where I was, in your arms, in your bed."
G.o.d, she was killing him. Her talk about untruths-such a nice, old-fashioned word-only made him think about his untruths and, h.e.l.l, that wasn"t even what they were. They were outright lies.
She believed he"d come here to find her.
The truth was that he"d come here because Caleb had asked him to. He was Caleb"s spy.
Except, it wasn"t that simple.
In the world he"d been part of most of his life, there were no grays. There was only black and white. In the real world, there wasn"t even only one gray. Fifty shades? h.e.l.l, there were ten thousand shades of gray.
Of course, he"d come because Caleb had asked him to do it, but there were other truths involved. The first was that if Jaimie needed protection, he was the only man he"d trust to protect her.
Which led directly to the deeper truth. To the one truth.
He"d had to see her again. And for that, he"d needed an excuse because between his stupid pride-thinking the night had been special only to wake to an empty bed and a note that pretty much said it hadn"t-and then that call from Young, and how come he"d bought that bucket of c.r.a.p without checking it out? He was an investigator, wasn"t he?
His pride again.
Amazing, how something so pathetic could get in the way of reason.
What it came down to was that he"d always wanted to go after her. He"d just had to find a way to make it happen without feeling like a fool, and Caleb had handed him exactly the excuse he needed to be with her again, talk with her, laugh with her, make love with her, share simple moments like this one.
And he didn"t want to dwell on that too long or too hard because as it was, those simple realizations already scared the h.e.l.l out of him.
Jaimie said she"d make breakfast.
"Or lunch," she said with a laugh, "or supper, or whatever meal it is we"re up to."
Zach checked his watch. "If we were Brits," he said, "we"d be heading off to Claridge"s for tea. But we"re not, and it"s four o"clock, so we"re too late for lunch and too early for dinner. We"ll either have to starve to death or go to this little place I know."
"You know Washington?"
"Yeah. A little."
"Because?"
"Because..." No need to lie about that, he thought as he helped her on with a jacket then put on his. "I lived here for a while."
"Really?"
"Really." They stepped out of her apartment, Zach checking the hall, the shadows, the stairs. All clear. "I worked here," he said, as they made their way out the front door, down the steps and to the Prius.
"A Prius." She looked at him and smiled. "Somehow, I wouldn"t have imagined you driving something so-so conservative."
He laughed as he shut the pa.s.senger door, went around to the driver"s side and got behind the wheel.
"It"s a rental."
"Don"t tell me." Jaimie looked at him. "You really drive a Ferrari."
"Very good." He smiled. "I did, until last year. I gave it up for a Porsche. A Carrera."
"See? I knew you were a fast-car guy."
"Guilty as charged."
They drove in silence for a couple of minutes. Then, she looked at him again.
"So, what do you do?"
"What do I do?"
"What kind of work? Something that goes with Porsches and Ferraris and a home in the sky, I"ll bet."
Zach checked for traffic, then changed lanes. It gave him a couple of seconds to think. What was he going to tell her?
The silence lengthened. Then he gave her a quick smile.
"I own a company."
"What kind of company?"
"Give me a minute, honey. These roads..."
Jaimie knew that made sense. She couldn"t fault him for concentrating on the traffic. The sleet had made the roads slippery and, as usual, Washingtonians seemed determined to pretend that the still-approaching winter weather was a novelty when it really wasn"t.
It was just strange that she still didn"t know anything about him.
Well, no.
She knew his body. All that lean, hard muscle. The six-pack abs. And his face, so beautifully masculine that Michelangelo might have sculpted it. She knew he was a lover so skilled that he could move her to tears with his tenderness or make her mindless with his caresses.
But she knew nothing else.
The truth was, she knew less about Zacharias than any man she"d ever dated.
And he wasn"t a date.
He was her lover.
A frisson of heat swept over her skin.
Her lover. She"d never used the word before, never even thought it to describe a man she"d slept with.
The word had been a topic of discussion when she and Emily and Lissa were in their mid-teens. She could still remember the three of them sitting cross-legged on the floor in Lissa"s room, hands rhythmically dipping in and out of a huge bag of potato chips.
"Cissy McDonough says her big sister has a lover," Em had said. Munch, munch, munch. "So, what"s the difference between a lover and a boyfriend?"
Lissa, the oldest of them, who seemed to know everything about everything, had popped the tab on a can of soda.
"s.e.x," she"d said.
Emily, with caution: "You can"t have s.e.x with a boyfriend?"
Lissa, rolling her eyes: "Idiot. Of course you can."
Jaimie, puzzled: "Then, what"s the difference?"
Lissa, on an exaggerated sigh: "Boyfriends f.u.c.k. Lovers make love."
Jaimie and Emily had been shocked, as Lissa had undoubtedly hoped. They"d taken a couple of minutes to think that over. Then they"d both nodded.
"Sounds right," Jaimie had finally said.
And, all these years later, it still seemed right.
She"d slept with other men. Not a lot of them and not often, but she did have a s.e.x life. OK. She hadn"t, not for a while now. She was too busy. And she"d stopped even thinking about s.e.x since Steven and how creepy that had all become-and she wasn"t going to think about that now, not now-but what Lissa had said remained valid.