Two Hot!. Cara Summers

slipped up there, but so had she. He was still alive.

      But it wasn’t just his own frustration that was grating on him. He also had a feeling deep in his gut that his time was running out. A week ago he’d helped Ryder out with a case involving Ryder’s fiancé, Sierra Gibbs, and he’d had to appear briefly at a major D.C. party. A lot of the capital’s movers and shakers had been there, including Bailey Montgomery. She might have spotted him. A nagging little hunch told him that she had, and if she had, he had no doubt she’d come after him.

      What he needed was just a little something to go on. All it would take was a thread that he could pull on until the whole fabric unraveled. Since Ryder had finished the case involving Sierra, his friend had been working 24/7 to come up with something, but so far Ryder had been drawing blanks.

      A short burst of laughter—Sierra’s and Ryder’s—carried clearly to him despite that the hammock was a good three hundred yards from the houseboat and blocked from view by some trees. Jed’s frustration increased.

      In the short time that Dr. Sierra Gibbs and Ryder Kane had been together, Jed had found himself envying Ryder. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to have a serious relationship with a woman. Doing freelance contract work for various government agencies was not conducive to having a stable love life.

      Which was another reason why he was determined to get his life back. Restlessly, Jed shifted again in the hammock.

      Another burst of laughter floated to him on the breeze. He missed that sharing of jokes, the after-sex conversations—and hell, he might as well be honest. He missed the sex, too. No doubt that was why he found himself spinning erotic fantasies about Sierra’s mousy little research assistant, Zoë McNamara.

      From the time that he’d first laid eyes on her, he hadn’t been able to shake her loose from his mind. At first he’d found that curious because she wasn’t his type. Usually he was drawn to tall, leggy blondes.

      Zoë McNamara was the total opposite of that. In terms of appearance, the most he could give her was cute. She was short, barely an inch or so above five feet tall, she had glossy, dark brown hair that she wore pulled back in a ponytail or a braid. He’d never seen her legs because she usually hid them under long skirts. She hid her eyes, too, behind oversize black-framed glasses. Maybe that was why so many of his dreams were fueled by the challenge of getting her out of those ugly clothes and out from behind those nerdy specs.

      She was a prickly little thing, too—didn’t like her personal space invaded. Naturally, it had amused him to invade it at every opportunity. But each time he got close to her, he had an urge to get closer still.

      A couple of nights ago at Ryder and Sierra’s engagement party, he’d asked her to dance. And he’d kissed her. Or at least that had been his intention when he’d drawn her behind that cluster of potted palms on the patio of the Blue Pepper.

      But he hadn’t kissed her, not fully, not the way he wanted to kiss her. Something had made him step away at the last moment. That wasn’t like him. Jed frowned as he thought about it. The last woman who’d made him hesitate like that was Molly Jo Beckworth in third grade. Jed smiled at the memory. Molly Jo had been tall, blond and beautiful, and on his second attempt to kiss her he hadn’t been hesitant at all.

      But Zoë McNamara wasn’t his first love—or any kind of love at all. She was a woman who had attracted him on first sight. Sometimes the chemistry worked that way. In Zoë’s case, the magnetic pull between them had increased each and every time he was anywhere near her. He should have ignored it. Ignored her. He had no business making a move on a woman, any woman, until he got his life back. But he couldn’t seem to resist her. Kissing her had probably been inevitable. And it had shaken him to the core.

      In his mind, Jed let himself drift back to the moment. She’d certainly been willing. The moment he’d brushed his mouth over hers, her lips had parted in a welcoming invitation. When she’d risen on her toes to close the distance between them, he’d taken his first sample of her taste.

      Oh, she’d been so much sweeter than he’d expected. Even sweeter than the sugar cookies he used to swipe from his mom as fast as she could make them. He’d barely absorbed her flavor when her breath had shuddered out, and the sound of her surrender had nearly sliced right through his control. Then, in the next instant, her hands had gripped his T-shirt and she’d demanded, “More.”

      It was that sudden irrefutable proof of the bright passion that lay beneath the surface of Zoë McNamara, struggling to be free, that nearly shattered him.

      Oh, how he’d wanted to forget where they were and touch her. He’d wanted her out of that oversize man’s shirt and that skirt. He’d wanted to strip away the practical underwear he knew was underneath.

      The desire to use his hands on her, to let his fingers and palms explore her skin, molding every inch of her, had become a knife-sharp ache.

      An image had filled his mind of taking her right where they stood. The music was loud enough, the palms thick enough to conceal them. He’d pictured it so clearly in his mind—her legs wrapped around him, her back pressed against the brick wall as he took that first hot, wet slide into her. It would have been wild, reckless, and wonderful. He was skilled enough and she’d been ready.

      He still wasn’t sure what had given him the strength to pull back. He suspected that it had something to do with his carefully honed survival instinct, and he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that explanation.

      What he was sure of was that when he’d learned she was coming today to deliver some research to Sierra, he’d stuffed a couple of condoms in his shorts pocket. In case he got lucky? Or in case this time he wouldn’t be able to control himself? Either way, that one small action of making sure they would have protection clearly revealed just how much of a pull the woman had on him.

      In the days since that kiss, he’d done some research on her. She was the daughter of two very highly acclaimed professors, and from what he’d gathered, she’d been a sort of joint project of theirs, a highly intelligent child that they’d pushed and prodded, supervising every aspect of her education. Each of them had published articles about her.

      He thought of his own happily married parents and his kid sister, and all the fun they’d had growing up. He suspected that in comparison, Zoë had had a very lonely childhood as well as a highly pressured one.

      Her academic credentials were certainly impressive, and Sierra raved about her work. It was the two months she’d spent as a data analyst at the CIA that had surprised him. She’d resigned shortly before he’d been “terminated,” and her short tenure there had given him his first clue that the real Zoë McNamara might be a sharp right turn from the academic nerd she so carefully projected to the people around her.

      The kiss they’d shared certainly provided evidence of that. Maybe it was the contrast that fascinated him so.

      With a sigh, Jed shifted again in the hammock. He shouldn’t be thinking of Zoë McNamara. He shouldn’t be thinking of the fact that she’d be here in a short time. Or of the fact that he had condoms in his pocket. Nevertheless, his lips curved in a grin. In the past few days, he’d created some very interesting fantasies about Sierra’s little assistant, some of them in this very hammock. Sex in a hammock called for invention and ingenuity, but it was invariably worth it.

      A muffled crash came from the houseboat. Lifting his baseball cap, Jed flicked a glance in that direction. Speaking of sex…

      Jed sighed again. He really had to get on with his life. He was growing tired of feeling like a third wheel now that his host and old friend had forged a solid relationship with Sierra Gibbs. She was spending more and more time on the houseboat, and he tried to give them privacy. In deference to his presence, they retired pretty frequently to Ryder’s cabin, but it was clear he was restricting their freedom of sexual expression.

      He had to do something and soon. It wasn’t just boredom or restlessness motivating him. It was also that slim possibility that Bailey Montgomery, his would-be assassin, had spotted him at that party.

      And