An hour ago, she’d been trying to get away from Zacharias Castelianos.
What a mistake that would have been.
He wasn’t only drop-dead gorgeous, he was fun. He was charming. He was a man any woman would want. Well, except her. She was far too busy chasing her new career to get involved with anybody. Besides, he lived in New York. She lived in Washington.
And wasn’t thinking like that ridiculous?
Why did she always have to come up with logical reasons to explain things? She was, OK, she was attracted to him. And unless she’d forgotten everything she’d ever known about men and women, he was attracted to her.
For tonight.
This wasn’t about forever. It was about attraction. Pheromones.
For goodness’ sake, James, it’s about lust.
And if she were a different kind of woman, if she could give herself a good reason to let go and just enjoy whatever the night might offer…
“Such deep thoughts.”
His voice was low and rough. Jaimie blinked, looked up. He was inches away, smiling down at her as she sat at the counter, and what she saw in his eyes left her breathless.
“No,” she said quickly, “not deep. Just—just—I was wondering if there’s any news.”
The hell she was.
Her face was an open book. She’d been thinking the same thing he was thinking. He could see it in the sweep of color high on her cheeks, in the way she suddenly and, he’d bet, unknowingly swiped the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip.
Such a full, perfect, pink bottom lip.
God, he wanted to touch her.
Just once. Just lightly.
Zach let himself reach out and stroke an errant strand of gold behind her ear.
It wasn’t enough.
He wanted to kiss her.
He wanted to strip her naked, sweep everything from the counter, lay her across it and take her again and again until she was mindless with pleasure.
At least he didn’t have to worry about the knot in his balls anymore. It had been replaced by one hell of an erection.
He took a quick step back.
“News,” he said, in the manic tones of a desperate man. “Excellent idea. I forgot all about that wind-up radio.”
He swung away, all but marched to the butcher-block table where he’d stashed the box of emergency supplies. He stood with his back to her and concentrated on cold showers, ice storms, glaciers and whatever other hard-on killers he could think of until it was safe to pluck the radio from the box, carry it across the room, set it on the counter and crank the handle.
“Here we go,” he said brightly. “We won’t get much time out of it, so—”
“…huge software glitch that has affected the grid on virtually the entire East Coast. Authorities have isolated the problem but say they cannot offer an estimate of when they’ll solve it—”
Static. More static, and the crisp intonations of the announcer gave way to…
A piano. Soft, bluesy notes. And then a raw, emotion-filled voice.
“Springsteen,” Jaimie said.