From Paradise...to Pregnant!. Kandy Shepherd

He had friends on the team, of course, but there were also some big egos to deal with—and the truth was they were in competition with each other as well as the opposing teams.

      He wasn’t about to admit to that downside now. Zoe had flitted into his life again and he was very careful of what he said to people except his family and his closest friends—careful of who he let in to his private world. You never knew who would talk to the press. Or misrepresent his words on social media. Or post a compromising selfie.

      ‘Do you speak Spanish?’ she asked.

      ‘Enough to get by.’

      Mitch decided the conversation had centred too much around him. He was way more interested in her.

       ‘Me muero de hambre.’

      Zoe laughed—a low, husky laugh that hadn’t changed at all since she was a teenager. She’d grown into that sensual, adult laugh.

      ‘You’re dying of hunger. Did I get that right?’

      ‘You speak Spanish?’ He knew so little about her—wanted to know more in this accelerated getting-to-know-you situation they found themselves in.

      ‘Hablo un poco de español,’ she said, with an appropriately expressive shrug.

      ‘You speak a little Spanish,’ he translated.

      ‘And a little French, and a little Italian, and a few phrases in Indonesian that I’ve learned in the last few days.’

      ‘You’ve travelled a lot?’

      ‘So far most of my travel has been of the armchair variety. I’d like to travel a lot. I’d love to be fluent in different languages. I’ll study more some day—when I’m not so busy working.’

      Of course she would. Zoe had been so smart at school. And she’d grown up into a formidable woman. Formidable and sexy. How very different from the women he usually dated. From nowhere came the thought that Zoe Summers would be a challenge. The kind of challenge it would be pleasurable to meet.

      ‘I have no idea what work you do,’ he said.

      ‘I have my own accountancy and taxation advice company.’ She paused. ‘Yeah. I know. Boring.’

      ‘I didn’t say that,’ he said.

      She pulled a face. ‘I can see the thought bubbles wafting around your head.’ She made a series of little quote marks in the air as she sang the words in a clear contralto. ‘“Boring. Boring. Boring.”’

      He laughed. ‘Wrong. My thought bubbles are “Clever Zoe” and “Intelligent” and “Entrepreneurial”.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘They...they’re great thought bubbles.’

      ‘But don’t ask me to sing them as I’m totally tone deaf.’

      She laughed. ‘I’m grateful—both for the thought bubbles and for sparing me the singing.’

      ‘You couldn’t call it singing. There isn’t a musical bone in my body.’

      ‘Not a singer and not a poet?’ She smiled. ‘Seriously, though, my clients are anything but boring—’

      ‘And neither are you boring,’ he said.

      She flushed pink, high on her cheekbones. He would have liked to trace the path of colour with his fingers, then move down to her mouth. Her lovely mouth, with the top lip slightly narrower than the bottom lip, giving it an enticing sensuality.

      ‘That’s nice,’ she said simply.

      ‘Tell me about your clients,’ he said. ‘I’m intrigued.’

      ‘I specialise in working with creative people.’ Her face softened. ‘People like my parents, who were hopeless money-managers. Charming. Talented. My father played guitar. My mother’s instrument was her voice. But they were feckless with money.’