“Are you going to be here all weekend?”
He knew what she was asking.
“No.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I didn’t figure that—”
“I’ll be here all week.” He looked at her, then at the road. “Can you take some time off?”
“From my job? Zacharias, that’s—”
“Crazy? There’s nothing wrong with doing something crazy once in a while.”
Jaimie studied the face of this man who was a stranger, who was her lover, who she hardly knew and yet had somehow known from the beginning.
“I don’t do crazy,” she said quietly.
“You just said, what you don’t do is helpless.”
“That’s right. But crazy…” She shook her head. “If you knew anything about my family…”
Guilt twisted in his gut.
“I’m sure they’re nice people,” he said, almost wincing at the falsity of the words.
“They’re—I guess you’d say, the Wildes are larger than life. Two of my brothers were soldiers. One flew combat helicopters, one flew fighter jets. The third was some kind of government who-knows-what.”
The blade of guilt twisted harder.
“My sisters are into taking risks. One is in California. She moved there without knowing a soul. One lives in New York. She met a man who should have been all wrong for her, but he turned out to be the love of her life. My father is a general. Four stars.” She gave a forlorn little laugh. “How much bigger than life can a man get, right?”
“Honey. Listen—“
“And then there’s me. Straight-A student. President of the student council in high school. A four-year college scholarship that, believe it or not, insulted my father because he wanted it understood that I didn’t need a scholarship, that the Wildes are rich.”
“Jaimie.” Ahead, a traffic light changed from green to amber. Zach eased his foot off the gas. “What does this have to do with us spending some time together?”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain. See, I’m not like the rest of my family. I studied math and then accounting in college.”
“Sure. Well, why not? It’s a secure profession and—”
“I studied it because it deals in logic. Numbers never lie. They never say one thing and mean another. It’s the same with real estate. The numbers are always there. And I need that. I need to know what I’ll be doing an hour from now, a month from now. I’m not good at—at the Wilde thing, you know, standing on a precipice and looking down.”
Ah, God. He was a fool. He was so determined to find the best way to protect her while he found out what in hell was happening that he’d overlooked one simple fact.
How much would a woman read into an invitation like that?
Maybe a better question was, how much should she read into it?
Because there were other ways to keep watch on her.
He could go right back to what he’d been doing until last night. Watching her from his car without her being aware of it. Turn this into a regular surveillance; get some of his people down here, put them on 24/7.
Nowhere was it written that the best way to protect a subject was to move her into your bed. Goddammit, it was the worst way. The least acceptable way. You were never supposed to become emotionally involved with your subject. Never. And he never had…
Zach wrenched the wheel to the right. Horns blared behind him. He ignored them, pulled to the curb, and turned to Jaimie.
“Is that how you feel? As if you’re standing on a precipice?”