“I want a bottle of your best brandy and two glasses,” Jed said.
“Let me see what we have available.”
“Whatever you have will do.” But Jed realized that he’d been put on hold.
He shifted his gaze back to Zoë. If he remained Ethan Blair, then he could insist that she remain here for the night. He could sleep on the pullout sofa and drive her home in the morning where Ryder would have two men watching her.
Still pacing, he turned that scenario over in his mind.
Just then, the voice on the other end of the line rattled off the names of three brandies. Jed chose one and listened while the man repeated it and confirmed the room number.
As he hung up the phone, Zoë rose from the settee. For a moment neither of them said a thing. In spite of his resolve, Jed wanted nothing more than to go to her and finish the kiss he’d started earlier.
“Is your arm all right?” she said.
Jed very nearly smiled. Not who are you or who were those men and why did they want to kill us. Instead, she was still concerned about his arm. Sooner or later, he was going to figure out why she could always surprise him.
“You handled yourself very well back there,” he said.
“So did you. I imagine you do this a lot, don’t you?”
His brows shot up. “You mean get shot?”
“No, I mean escape from goons like that. You knew what you were doing. You reminded one of my friends at the Blue Pepper of James Bond, and I think she might have been right.”
“James Bond would never have gotten you in a scrape like that. You saved both of our lives. All in all, I’d say you’d make a pretty good Bond girl.”
ZOË FELT THE HEAT rise in her cheeks. If the edge of the sofa hadn’t been pressing into the backs of her legs, she would have retreated a step. For the past five minutes while he’d been on the phone, she’d been staring out the window so that she wouldn’t sit there gawking at him.
When he’d been cleaning his wound in the bathroom, he’d unbuttoned his shirt and torn the sleeve off, and the moment he’d stepped back into the living area of the suite, she’d caught herself staring at the exposed skin. And fantasizing. The strength of her desire to run her hands over that skin had shocked her.
Now he was standing only a few feet away, and she was staring again. At his throat. She didn’t just want to touch. She wanted to taste him, too.
“So you have a black belt in karate,” he said.
She moistened her lips and dragged her mind back to what she wanted to say. “I’ve never before tried any of the moves outside of class. And I wasn’t sure if I’d get the chance to use any of them. I…” she twisted her hands together. “It was that man and his dog who saved us. We were lucky.”
He reached out and stroked a lock of her hair with his fingers. “I was lucky.”
Zoë couldn’t feel her knees anymore. Every time he touched her, she melted. Jed Calhoun had been the only man who’d ever affected her that way. Now Ethan could do that to her, too. Was there a whole slew of other men out there who could make her feel this way? The thought made her shiver.
“You’re cold,” Jed said.
“Yes…no.” Before she could babble further, there was a knock at the door.
Jed glanced at his watch. “That was quick.” For a moment he looked as if he was as reluctant to walk away as she was for him do that. Then he turned and moved to the door of the suite.
Zoë drew in a deep breath, but she wasn’t sure whether what she was feeling was relief or disappointment. While he checked the peephole then handled the waiter, she tried to gather her thoughts. But she couldn’t seem to think straight as long as he was in the same room with her.
When he came back, he was carrying a small first aid kit and two snifters of brandy. He pressed one of them into her hands. “Take a sip,” he ordered. “I think we both need it.”
Zoë was only too willing to take a taste. She was sure she needed something, and for now, she welcomed the warmth that spread through her. She had to get a grip.
He took a seat on the other side of the coffee table. She watched as he opened the first aid kit and removed the towel from his arm. The mark that the bullet had left was angry looking, but it had stopped bleeding. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him as he swabbed the wound with antiseptic and pressed a gauze pad against it. Hunger built inside of her again.
When he fumbled with the tape, she set down her glass and moved around the table to sit next to him on the sofa. “Let me help.”
Taking the tape from him, she pressed it against the gauze and then smoothed it over his upper arm. His skin was warm beneath her fingers, and she felt the hardness of the muscles beneath. This close, she could smell him. The scent of the soap he’d used to clean the wound mixed with the pungent odor of the antiseptic and something else that she suspected was unique to him, yet somehow familiar. The hunger that had been building inside of her spiked.