Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

The sidewalk was crowded; people always walked fast in New York, but the drizzle was speeding things up.

Zacharias Castelianos’s condo was six long blocks away. She had ten minutes to reach it without being late.

Not just impossible.

Futile.

Maybe the rain would change her luck.

Her sister Emily had a brand-new job. A wonderful job. Hadn’t Em said she’d gotten it after some Good Samaritan had come to her rescue in a driving rainstorm?

If it had worked for Emily, it might work for her.

Except, this wasn’t a driving rainstorm, it was just an annoying drizzle. And from what she could see, there wasn’t a Good Samaritan around, only masses of grim, fast-moving New Yorkers.

Just keep going, the voice said, and Jaimie did. Faster and faster, and that was not easy in stilettos.

Her foot landed in a puddle.

“Shit,” she said which did not ameliorate the problem, but it sure as hell made her feel better.

She glanced at her watch.

Fast walking became running. Running became a wobbly gallop.

OK. She was definitely going to be late, but maybe not too late. Maybe the Onassis lookalike actually expected her. Maybe he really was eager to sign a deal.

Maybe she’d return to D.C. tonight and learn that Steven had, poof, vanished in a puff of smoke.

The little voice snorted with laughter.

And maybe pigs can fly, it said, and Jaimie, who had never believed in voices in anyone’s head much less her own, had the awful feeling that what she was hearing was the last gasp of that ephemeral thing called logic.

CHAPTER THREE

Zach had a garage a few blocks from his condo. He left the Porsche there, tried for a taxi but gave up after a couple of minutes.

There weren’t many available cabs and the few he saw drove straight past him.

Man, he really must look disreputable.

Not a problem. Traffic was heavy anyway. Walking would be quicker. As for how he looked…this was Manhattan. Taxis might not stop for him, but pedestrians wouldn’t give him a second glance, not even on this high-priced turf.

He did get a couple of stares when he reached his street and headed for the royal blue canopy over the entrance to his building, and he could see the doorman stiffen when he spotted him through the closed glass doors, but Carlos recognized him at the last second, smiled and swung the door wide open.

“Good evening, Mr. Castelianos. How are you, sir?”

Zach had to give him credit. It had been a quick recovery.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, walking briskly into the welcome coolness of the lobby.

The concierge greeted him just as politely. No questions, no comments. That was another good thing about living in a building like this. If you wanted attention, you got it. If you wanted to be off the radar, you were.

The doors to his private elevator slid open. Zach stepped inside and inserted his keycard into the slot. The car rose swiftly and silently to the fiftieth floor, where the doors swished open, directly onto the double-height foyer of his penthouse.

He stood still for a moment, taking in the sweep of rosewood flooring, the flowing glass walls of the enormous living room that stretched ahead, and the rise of the rosewoo

d and brushed-steel staircase toward the sunlight that poured through a huge skylight on the second level. The place smelled faintly of lemon oil, a sure sign that his housekeeper had been in earlier.