Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

“He’s here, then?”

Zach looked at her. “Yeah. He’s here.”

She had a way of sucking her bottom lip between her teeth and narrowing her eyes as she thought things over. He liked watching her do it. She had a soft-looking mouth and her eyes were an interesting shade of blue, the irises pale and ringed in black.

All in all, she had a great face. It went with the long, lovely body…

Dammit, he thought, and headed for the stairs. Her voice stopped him.

“Tell your employer—”

“I don’t work for him. I told you that.”

“Oh.”

At first, he didn’t get it. That “oh,” the way she said it. And, when he looked back at her, the rosy blush that swept over her face.

Then he did.

She thought he was gay.

It was hard not to laugh. He covered it by trotting up the rest of the stairs.

“Wait! I didn’t finish­! Tell Mr. Castelianos that his six o’clock appointment is here.”

“You can tell him yourself.”

“You mean you’ll bring him with you?”

“Yes,” he said. “And you can explain what you’re doing here to him.”

Enough was enough. He’d give her a towel. A couple of towels. Tell her who he was. Just as a matter of curiosity, find out why she thought she was his six o’clock appointment, call her a cab and then, goodbye and good luck.

He started for the linen closet, then changed his mind. She was wet and cold. Not even a big bath sheet would do the job as well as a terrycloth robe. He snatched his from his dressing room, hesitated when he saw his reflection in the mirrored walls. Unshaven. Shirtless. Barefoot.

Damn.

He grabbed a white T-shirt from a stack on one of the shelves and pulled it over his head, looked at himself again, rubbed his hand over his bristly jaw.

Too bad.

The shirt would be his sole concession to civility. She wasn’t company and he w

asn’t going to pretend that she was.

Robe over his arm, he headed for the living room again.

Would she be waiting? Or would she have bolted?

He hoped she was still there. He wanted to see her reaction to finding out that he was the man she’d come to see, plus he wanted to know the reason.

He couldn’t come up with a thing.

He lived a very private life. His time with The Agency had taught him the importance of keeping a low profile, and he’d maintained that same low profile when he’d gone out on his own. Still, a couple of the cases he’d handled had made ripples. Shadow had been mentioned. So had he.

Was she a reporter, out for a story? Some in the media had tried to get to him and failed. Was she some kind of groupie? Crazy as it seemed, he’d run into his fair share of them. A woman would come up to him and say, “Are you Zach Castelianos?” in a way that made his name sound like foreplay.

He knew what they wanted.