A Taste Of Temptation

скачать книгу бесплатно


Briefly Nicole threaded her fingers over her face. “What has Ethan told you?”

“He’s been absolutely discreet. But I can read by your expression how you feel about him.”

“My, uh—” Nicole swallowed, staring down at her lowered hands. “Any feelings I might have for Ethan bear no connection to the lust potion.”

Zoe didn’t believe her for a second. But she did believe that Nicole and Ethan’s relationship had developed beyond the gotta-have-you-naked stage. Kathryn and Coyote were on the same path.

“Hmm.” Zoe tapped a fingernail on the edge of the desk. “There’s an interesting question for my article. Does the lust potion elicit feelings of romantic love or is it strictly about sex?” She straightened, holding her pen poised above the notepad. “What’s your opinion, Detective?”

Nicole glanced at the squad room. Despite the knowledge that glinted in her dark eyes, she shook her head with unalterable vehemence. “No comment.”

“ZOE,” DONOVAN SAID WITH a moan. Sleep had eluded him after he’d settled into bed for the night. Now the sounds of his pesky neighbor’s arrival home had permanently chased away his chance at the usual solid eight hours.

He stared up at the ceiling. The residual irritation about her disruption was no match for the redheaded fantasies that had danced in his head since their encounter in his lab. If he got the chance to do it over again, he’d sworn to himself that he’d kiss her. He’d sweep her into his arms and kiss her as though it were the last frame of a movie. Only with no fade to the credits.

It was time to find out where kissing Zoe led.

He listened intently, having become fairly proficient at discerning the various levels and origins of her misadventures. There was the low-level annoyance of her typical evening at home—loud music or TV, ringing phones, pizza delivery, running in the stairwell, the shrieking laughter of friends stopping by. There were her parties—one long blast of noise pollution, frequently culminating in music and dancing in the street. Sometimes damage to the building, the landscaping, or even his car.

But worst of all were the quieter times, when she’d brought a man home. From the balcony that adjoined both apartments, Donovan had seen the flicker of candlelight through her curtains. Through their shared walls he’d heard the low music—when he was weak, he imagined Zoe doing a striptease. That was followed by the long silences—surely the wet, smacking sounds were also his imagination—then the masculine groans, the feminine sighs, the thumps of a headboard knocking against the wall.

Those were the nights that Donovan slept with a pillow over his head. Or didn’t sleep at all. A couple of times, when she’d been seeing a long-haired marine biologist who yelped like a seal at the crucial moment, he’d even taken to going for bike rides along the Embarcadero at three in the morning.

He rose up on his elbows, straining to discern the sounds from the hallway outside his front door. A normal person didn’t make that much noise unless they were moving in, but this was Zoe, the traveling circus.

And she was speaking to someone. Did she have a new lover?

Unbearable. Donovan gritted his teeth against the jealousy.

He had to know. He vaulted out of bed, so hell-bent he disregarded his robe and slippers and crossed the living room in nothing but a pair of cotton pajama bottoms.

Zoe’s soprano rang out clearly when he pressed his ear to the front door. “I know you love me,” she said in a kissy-kissy voice, turning her keys in the lock. “But don’t be so eager. Let me get inside.”

Donovan butted his head against the door, then winced at the resulting thud. Crap. If she’d heard, she’d know he was spying.

He put his eye to the peephole. Zoe had heard. She was standing in her doorway, holding the half-open door tight against herself while staring toward Donovan’s apartment. “Shhh.” She made a motion to her companion, who’d apparently entered the apartment before her. “It’s Mr. Cranky. We have to be quiet.”

Then she didn’t move or speak. Only watched his door.

Mr. Cranky stopped breathing. He pulled his eye away from the peephole. He lifted his left foot and widened his stance so she wouldn’t see a shadow through the narrow crack at the bottom of the door.

Mr. Cranky was acting like a child, not a grown man. If he wanted to talk to Zoe, he should damn well open the door and—

Bing-bong.

He didn’t wait a decent interval, only threw open the door before she rang again. “Good evening, Zoe.” He glanced at his wrist. Bare. His watch was laid out on the bureau, with his wallet and keys. “Or morning, as the case may be.”

Her open mouth snapped shut. She swallowed and said only a thin “Hello, Shane,” while staring at his naked chest.

His nipples beaded. He resisted the urge to flex, wishing that he’d taken up sunbathing like Zoe, except that everyone knew sun wasn’t good for your skin. Especially as a redhead, Zoe should—

Her chin poked out. “You’re spying on me?”

“You woke me up, arriving with so much clatter.”

“That’s Santa, isn’t it?”

“The reindeer, I think.”

Zoe waved her hand. “So I dropped the dog dish. It’s not even midnight.”

“It’s past one o’clock.” Donovan checked his wrist again. Habit. “A dog dish?” he asked, distracted.

“I’m taking care of Falcon for the Valentines.”

“They have a falcon?” he said in disbelief. At the same moment he realized that the scratching and whimpering behind Zoe’s door was the Valentines’ pet, not an eager suitor. Her men tended to thump and yodel like Tarzan.

“Falcon is a dog. A Maltese. I didn’t want him staying alone, so I brought his stuff upstairs.”

“But he’s been alone the entire evening.” Zoe hadn’t come home after work. Not that he’d been paying attention, even though he’d skipped going out for beer with the usual gang of lab rats so he could get home early. In case she happened to be around.

“Shows what you know. I stopped by this afternoon after my appointment at the police station and picked up Falcon. He’s been riding shotgun all evening—and loving it.”

The police station. A qualm niggled deep inside Donovan. “I could have let him outside, if I’d known the Valentines weren’t home.”

Zoe looked at him accusingly. “You’d have known if you’d come to my barbecue last Sunday. That was when Sara got the call that her dad had a heart attack.”

Sara and Hailey Valentine were the mother-daughter pair who rented one of the ground-floor apartments. Nice people, even though the mother was always trying to fix him up with her divorced girlfriends, and the girl’s teenage friends couldn’t speak for giggling.

Donovan flushed. “About that. I—I was working.”

He’d declined the backyard barbecue invitation because he’d felt embarrassed about the previous incident with the police. He’d imagined that Zoe would needle him for once again spoiling her party. Hiding out from his neighbors had been curmudgeonly, but he had too many memories of being the boy left out of the fun to put himself in similar situations even now.

Though Zoe wasn’t one to nurse a grudge, she couldn’t resist the chance to tease him. “Working on a Sunday, hmm? I suppose you were busy conducting chemistry experiments in the bathroom.”

“I know how to make a stink bomb.”

“Is that a threat?” Zoe laughed. “I bet you were the kind of boy who got only educational toys for Christmas.”

She was right again, even if the only chemistry experiment he wanted to conduct these days included Zoe as the active ingredient. “How is Sara’s dad?”

“Doing well after an emergency angioplasty. I talked to both her and Hailey a couple of hours ago. They’ll be driving home from Palm Springs tomorrow. I want to do the neighborly thing and make them a casserole so they can have a hot meal when they get in. I just have to find a recipe. And some groceries.”

Donovan was impressed by Zoe’s thoughtfulness. Maybe she wasn’t as flighty as she seemed. He briefly tried to imagine what kind of casserole she would concoct before deciding he’d rather not know. The cooking smells that came from her kitchen were unusual, but at least they were infrequent. At her backyard barbecues, she grilled anything that didn’t move. Her standing pizza order was pineapple-jalapeño.

Sweet and hot and unconventional, that was Zoe Aberdeen. His complete opposite.

“Speaking of nourishment…” She leaned toward his door. “Do you have any food in your house?”

“Of course.”

“My fridge is bare.” She looked up at him, blinking hopefully. “And that sound you hear isn’t the distant rumble of thunder,” she added when he continued to hesitate. She pointed to her abdomen.

He looked down at the strip of flat stomach visible between her tank and the hip-bone-level waistband of her skirt. She was growling. “Not the dog either?”

“Connie doesn’t growl. He’s a sweetie pie.”

“I’ve heard him barking when I take out my bike.” Donovan widened the door. “I can warm up some leftover Chinese if you want to come—”

“Love to!” Zoe darted back across the hall to collect the dog. Nestled in her arms, Falcon was small, white, decked out in a pink rhinestone collar—poor little guy—and twitching his whiskers at Donovan. She nudged the dog higher with her arm. “Go ahead, give him a pat. Make friends.”

“I’m not an animal person.” Donovan extended his hand.

“How come? Allergic?”

The dog’s tongue flicked out, tickling Donovan’s fingers. “No, I just never had a pet. They’re a lot of fuss and bother, aren’t they?” Full of germs, he was thinking, but he found himself scratching behind Connie’s ears.

“Sure they are, but the unconditional love is worth it. I wish I could keep a pet, but at this point it’s a challenge taking care of myself.” Zoe snuggled with the little Maltese, her gaze slanting at Donovan. “But you seem like the responsible type. Want me to take you to the animal shelter and help you pick out a pooch?”

He withdrew. “I’ll think about it.”

Zoe spoke to the dog. “He says he’ll think about it.” She put Connie down, and the animal trotted over to sniff Donovan’s feet. “Do you ever do anything without thinking about it first?”

He wriggled his toes. “I suppose not.”

“Like grabbing a girl and kissing her?”

“What?” She’d startled him again. Had she been reading his mind? “Who? You?”

Her arms windmilled. “Anyone. Me, if you must.”

His arms were leaden. He couldn’t lift them. “That wouldn’t be an impulse. I’ve thought about it too much.”

“Logic rears its nitpicking head.” Not at all put off by his confession, Zoe glanced around. His living room was furnished in a midcentury modern style of low couches and drum lampshades. He supposed all those rerun episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Leave It to Beaver that his mother used to watch in the afternoons had had an unconscious influence on him when he’d gone to the furniture store.