Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

The silence lengthened. Then he gave her a quick smile.

“I own a company.”

“What kind of company?”

“Give me a minute, honey. These roads…”

Jaimie knew that made sense. She couldn’t fault him for concentrating on the traffic. The sleet had made the roads slippery and, as usual, Washingtonians seemed determined to pretend that the still-approaching winter weather was a novelty when it really wasn’t.

It was just strange that she still didn’t know anything about him.

Well, no.

She knew his body. All that lean, hard muscle. The six-pack abs. And his face, so beautifully masculine that Michelangelo might have sculpted it. She knew he was a lover so skilled that he could move her to tears with his tenderness or make her mindless with his caresses.

But she knew nothing else.

The truth was, she knew less about Zacharias than any man she’d ever dated.

And he wasn’t a date.

He was her lover.

A frisson of heat swept over her skin.

Her lover. She’d never used the word before, never even thought it to describe a man she’d slept with.

The word had been a topic of discussion when she and Emily and Lissa were in their mid-teens. She could still remember the three of them sitting cross-legged on the floor in Lissa’s room, hands rhythmically dipping in and out of a huge bag of potato chips.

“Cissy McDonough says her big sister has a lover,” Em had said. Munch, munch, munch. “So, what’s the difference between a lover and a boyfriend?”

Lissa, the oldest of them, who seemed to know everything about everything, had popped the tab on a can of soda.

“Sex,” she’d said.

Emily, with caution: “You can’t have sex with a boyfriend?”

Lissa, rolling her eyes: “Idiot. Of course you can.”

Jaimie, puzzled: “Then, what’s the difference?”

Lissa, on an exaggerated sigh: “Boyfriends fuck. Lovers make love.”

Jaimie and Emily had been shocked, as Lissa had undoubtedly hoped. They’d taken a couple of minutes to think that over. Then they’d both nodded.

“Sounds right,” Jaimie had finally said.

And, all these years later, it still seemed right.

She’d slept with other men. Not a lot of them and not often, but she did have a sex life. OK. She hadn’t, not for a while now. She was too busy. And she’d stopped even thinking about sex since Steven and how creepy that had all become—and she wasn’t going to think about that now, not now—but what Lissa had said remained valid.

Boyfriends fucked.

Lovers…lovers made love.

Which made Zacharias her lover.

And made it strange that she knew so little about him. He was—how to put