“Why not?” She was frowning as she asked but curiosity flickered in her eyes.
“Because you’re too uptight and at the same time a powder keg of unsatisfied desire.” He reached out and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. To his delight, she tipped her head and pushed into the caress. Spying a softening of her resistance, he drove his point home. “I can help you with both.”
Her eyes glowed with a dreamy light but her voice had a crisp edge as she asked, “So this is a simple offer of sex?”
“Not just sex. Great sex. Let me be the bridge between your past and future.”
“My Mr. Right Now?” she murmured dryly.
He smirked. “Your Mr. Anytime You Want—Any Way You Want.”
Hell, if she gave him the green light, he’d carry her to the cot in the back room and screw her brains out, probably breaking things in the process.
She spent a long time scrutinizing his expression. “Can I still work for your sister’s campaign?”
Her shift in topic caught him off guard. “Ah—”
“You don’t trust me.” When he didn’t immediately deny it, she shook her head. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to distract me with sex or if you’re just horny and looking to hook up.” She surveyed him for several long seconds. “Or maybe it’s both. Did you seriously think I’d be so overwhelmed with lust for you that I’d toss aside things that are important to me?”
Ryan made sure not a trace of irony showed in his smirk. “It’s happened before.”
“No doubt.” To her credit, she didn’t seem all that outraged. With noticeable force she expelled the breath from her lungs. This seemed to bolster her already robust resolve. “I think it’s great, the lengths you’re willing to go for your sister, but I’m not sure she’d appreciate what you’re trying to do here.”
She made it sound like he was making a huge sacrifice.
“Do you think I only came here because I was worried for Susannah?” In truth, as excuses went, using concern for his sister’s campaign to confront Zoe was as transparent as it got. “I’m interested in you. I have been since the moment we bumped into each other. Way before anyone was suspicious enough to wonder why you’d volunteered. Does it bother me that you withheld the truth? Yes. Do I trust you? No. But that isn’t enough to keep me away.”
Her eyes widened, but whether at his forthright admission or his intensity, Ryan couldn’t tell. He saw doubt flash across her features and wanted badly to demonstrate once again the powerful attraction between them.
“Tell me you don’t feel the sexual energy between us,” he continued. “That we’d be tearing each other’s clothes off and rolling around on the floor if we’d met under different circumstances.”
She glanced down at the pine boards and frowned. “Look—”
“Be honest,” he interrupted.
“Okay,” she grumbled. “There’s an attraction.”
With her admission, something unraveled in his chest. Ryan recognized that, given his trust issues, he’d picked the absolute wrong woman to chase after, but at the moment it didn’t matter as much as it should.
“But if I ran around sleeping with all the handsome single men in Charleston,” Zoe continued, “my reputation would be worse than it is right now.”
“Why do you care about your reputation?”
Her brown eyes took on a haunted look. “It’s all I have left.”
“You can say that even after what Tristan did to you during the divorce?” He’d just tipped his hand about how much he knew about her private life, but she didn’t seem at all surprised.
“Now I see why it’s your sister and not you who went into politics.” She turned aside and walked to the parking lot door. “Thank you for visiting. I hope you have a lovely rest of the evening.”
Keeping her expression not just polite but sugar-sweet, she opened the door and the cool Charleston night air flooded the space, bringing with it the echo of distant church bells.
He moved toward her. She obviously expected him to do the gentlemanly thing and allow himself to be shown out without further protest, but what moved through Ryan whenever he was near her had no roots in Southern manners. Instead, as he drew even with her, he caught her wrist in a gentle but firm grip. Before she knew what he intended, he lifted her hand and deposited a sizzling kiss in her palm.
“Ryan,” she murmured, but whether in protest or surrender he couldn’t tell. She curved her fingers against his skin and sent a soft sigh winging into the night.
Her gaze lifted to his and the air around them contracted, encasing them in a bubble where no one else existed. Ryan wasn’t sure how long they remained lost in each other before the sound of a car alarm several streets over brought them back to reality.
Reluctantly, Ryan let go of her hand. The instant he set her free, she set her fingers to her lips and tore her eyes from his.