No sex.
He lived by simple rules and one was that he never got involved with women who were clients or women with whom he worked. She would not know she was a subject, but he’d know and that was what counted.
Besides, there were endless reasons he had no desire to have sex with her again. If Young had told the truth and she fell in and out of bed with faceless men… He had no wish to be one of them. If Young had lied and she wasn’t into having indiscriminate sex, she was still a woman who treated sex with a casual attitude.
Zach winced.
Even he could see the gender bias in that kind of thinking.
It just rankled that she’d done one hell of a job of convincing him that she’d wanted sex with him because she had wanted him as badly as he had wanted her. As badly as he still wanted her, dammit, even now, with a witch’s brew of questions churning in his head.
The tunnel ended. And there was a break in traffic half a dozen cars up and one lane over.
Zach stood on the gas and the Porsche flew.
* * * *
He took a break at a Burger King someplace in Maryland, hit the john, grabbed a burger and a coffee, found a table and downloaded his email while he ate.
Caleb had sent the information he’d requested. Addresses and phone numbers for Jaimie. He’d also sent the photo of her that Zach had seen on his cell phone.
“So you can ID my sister more easily,” he’d written.
Zach didn’t need a photo to ID her, but Caleb wouldn’t know that.
He certainly wouldn’t know that he could ID more than her face.
A dozen images of her were sealed in his memory.
Her breasts, small and perfect, the skin like satin, the nipples the color of pink summer roses.
Her hips, curved as if designed just for his hands.
Her legs, long and lovely as she wrapped them around his hips,
Jesus.
It was a good thing he was sitting at a table. Humiliating himself at a fast food joint was definitely not on his to-do list.
Zach dumped the rest of his hamburger in its wrapper, picked up a napkin, wiped his hands and mouth.
A photo was an excellent idea. A couple of taps, and he transferred it from the email to a page of its own.
Forget all the other crap. She had a great body. So what? Lots of women had great bodies and for all he knew, he’d spent more time concentrating on how she looked from the neck down than from the neck up.
She’d been a diversion when he’d needed one. Period. End of story. Bluntly put, his memory of her tits and ass might be all he actually had. Without a picture, who knew if he could pick her out of a crowd?
Liar.
The word flashed through his head. Zach ignored it, got into the Porsche and got back on the highway.
An hour and a half later, driving the last miles of his journey, he plucked his phone from where it lay on the console next to him and brought the photo up on the screen.
Liar, indeed. Who was he kidding? He’d be able to recognize Jaimie’s face anywhere.
She was more than beautiful. There was an honesty in her smile. In her eyes. She looked as she’d looked after she’d showered. No makeup. No artifice. Nothing but a lovely woman, hair loose and streaming over her shoulders, lips parted.
His gut knotted the way it had the very first time he’d looked at her.