Joe was behind the front desk. “You sell our baby?” he called out.
“Did my best,” she said. “I think they’ll be calling you. Have you seen Parker?”
Joe gestured toward the hallway. Zoe headed that way, taking a quick side trip toward the restrooms, when suddenly she was stopped and pushed up against the wall. In the next beat, a mouth covered hers.
Parker. She’d have recognized his kiss blindfolded but her heart still leapt into her throat at the feel of his bigger, harder body pressing hers into the wall, holding her there for his kiss.
Not that she wanted to escape. It felt so good, so heart-stoppingly good that she struggled to free her hands just so that she could get them on him.
Instead, he growled—growled!—and grabbed her hands, pinning them on either side of her head as he kissed her deeper.
And then deeper still, so that escaping was just about the furthest thing from her mind. As for the closest thing on her mind? Finding a place to break her promise to herself and get them both naked as soon as possible.
Parker couldn’t believe it when he’d seen Tripp Carver coming through the front door of the airport. He’d had a single heartbeat to realize that the guy was about to see him and Zoe—who was coming toward him with a smile on her face—and he reacted.
He pushed Zoe up against the wall and kissed her, hiding both of their faces.
He had no idea why Carver was here right now, but he could guess. He was heading out, never to be seen again. And if that was true, the very last thing Parker wanted was to get caught spying on the Butcher with Zoe anywhere near him.
She could kick his ass later, but for right now this was about getting out of here without her being seen.
When he heard Carver pass by them and head down the hallway toward the private lounge, Parker broke off the kiss but left his mouth against hers. “Zoe.”
She blinked slowly, dazed. “Yeah?”
“I need you to go to Joe’s office, lock the door, and stay there until I come for you.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ll explain later, move now.” And when she just stared at him, he added a quiet but hopefully urgent “Please, Zoe.” Having no choice but to believe that she trusted him enough to do as he asked, he took off after Carver.
Twenty-five
Parker’s urgency had Zoe moving instinctually to Joe’s office, which was right off the hallway and only ten feet away. She shut the door and hit the lock and then stood there for a second, trying to gather her wits.
Didn’t happen.
When several minutes passed—okay, maybe thirty seconds—and Parker didn’t come for her, she was driven by a need to make sure he was okay. She cracked open the door and peeked down the hallway. It took a ninety-degree turn so she couldn’t see around the corner. She closed herself back in the office and once again locked the door just as her phone buzzed in her pocket. She whipped it out. “Parker, where the hell are you—”
“It’s Darcy,” her sister said. “You didn’t look at the ID screen?”
“No, I—” Zoe swiped a hand down her face and let out a low laugh. “Sorry. Parker just told me to stay and I got all discombobulated.”
“No man tells me to stay and lives through it,” Darcy said. A beat went by. “He give you a reason?”
“No,” Zoe said. “One minute he was kissing me and the next he got all weird and told me to stay, threw out a ‘please,’ and he took off.”
“You should definitely stay,” Darcy said.
“But you just said that if a man told you to stay, he wouldn’t live through it.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “But you have sharp instincts. Remember that time we were in Budapest and I was hungry and you wouldn’t let me eat because you had a weird feeling?”
“Because what you wanted to eat was some bad-looking fish.”
“It looked fine to me and everyone else in the market,” Darcy said. “Remember I asked around?”