Stepping back, he looked deep into her eyes. Apparently he saw something he liked because he smiled. “I’d suggest rule number two be that you try to keep your hands—and mouth—off me,” he said. “But as it turns out, I like both of those things very much.”
It was official. She really was going to have to kill Wyatt for asking to let Parker stay in her home. And then Darcy just on principle. And then Parker himself.
Slowly.
Sure she’d go to prison for it, and she looked horrible in orange, but she felt it would be worth it. Especially when, with a soft laugh, he vanished into his room.
Nine
Zoe was still a little mad at herself when her alarm went off two hours after she’d finally crawled into bed. She stared up at the ceiling wondering what had possessed her to stay up until three in the morning on a workday.
Idiocy, that’s what.
And okay, maybe a little misguided lust.
Misguided, because hot as Mr. Mysterious was, she wasn’t going there, not with him—no matter how much she might secretly want to.
She blamed the vodka for that. Surely it had been the over-imbibing that had made him seem sexier than he really was, not to mention made that kiss seem like the very best kiss of her entire life.
Stupid vodka. Why couldn’t the alcohol have made her forget the taste of Parker, the heat he’d generated, the way his hard body had fit against her softer one?
Instead, it was making her replay the entire scene every two seconds.
Don’t think about it now, she ordered herself. Yeah, right. She’d have better luck attempting not to draw air into her lungs. Racing around her room to gather clothes, she headed to the bathroom, this time pausing outside the door to listen carefully before she barged in. The other shower had been fixed, so he’d probably be using that one. She still knocked twice to make certain before entering, rushing through her morning routine, forgoing makeup and hairstyling to be on time.
So she was doubly mad when she finally arrived at the airport only to find that her morning flight lesson had been cancelled.
Now she looked like crap and she had nothing to do for three hours.
Parker had tried to go to bed, but after that kiss with Zoe he was way too keyed up to sleep and gave up after an hour. Instead he changed into running clothes and hit the streets.
Running cleared his mind. Not that he’d been up to running since nearly being killed by Carver, but he thought today felt like a good day to get back to it.
A few minutes in he was doubting that thanks to the fact that each step jarred his ribs and made him want to go crying to his mama.
The sun wouldn’t rise for another hour. The air was high-altitude dry and a perfect-for-running fifty degrees. Probably later it would be a scorcher, but for now he had the cool predawn air and the world to himself, it seemed. The only sounds came from a high wind rustling the pines that were gently swaying like hundred-foot-tall ghosts and the sound of his feet hitting the pavement.
When he came to a bridge he stopped in the middle and pretended to look down at the river beneath moving slow and meanderingly. Breathing hard, hurting like hell, he gulped for breath. After a few minutes, still not ready to continue, he pulled his phone from his running shorts pocket. Accessing his camera, he focused it on the last of the moon seemingly sinking into the water with the blue glow gliding over the rocky riverbed.
He sent the pic to Amory, thumbing in a quick miss you. When he got a ping that told him the message had been sent, he shoved the phone back into his pocket and forced himself to keep going.
As Sharon had pointed out, he needed to get back to lean, mean fighting shape for the job. He’d worked his ass off to climb the ranks. He wasn’t going to let anyone think he wasn’t able to get back to it. And if a small part of him realized that in pushing himself so hard to become something important, to make something of himself, he’d instead become a workaholic like the workaholic parents he resented, he ignored it.