Uninhibited. Candace Schuler

do, in your own way. I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. It’s just that I’m afraid you’re a bit, oh…staid, shall we say?…for someone like Zoe.”

      “Staid?” he murmured, vaguely insulted by the word.

      “Dignified. Proper,” Moira clarified with a fond smile. “You’re a credit to the Sullivan name, Reed. I’ve always thought so, ever since you were a baby.”

      “Well, thank you. I think,” he said, wondering why he suddenly felt like a priggish, self-satisfied boor. His great-grandmother had just complimented him, hadn’t she? “Now, if you don’t mind.” Reed rapped a knuckle against the papers on the table. “Could we get back to the subject at hand?”

      “Certainly.” Moira folded her hands on top of the table, like an eager little girl at lessons. “What’s the next step?”

      Reed sighed. “Do you really mean to pursue this, Gran? No matter what I say?”

      Moira nodded. “I do.”

      “And if I refuse to have anything to do with it?”

      “I’ll be disappointed, of course. But I’m sure I can find someone else to handle the paperwork for me.”

      “Not at Sullivan Enterprises, you won’t,” he warned her, his financier’s scowl firmly in place. “Not if I advise against it. And, be assured, I will.”

      But Moira Sullivan wasn’t easily intimated, especially not by her own great-grandson. “Well, then, I’ll just have to go outside the family business, won’t I?” She tilted her head, giving him a considering look from under her lashes. “I’ve heard young Andrew Hightower is making quite a name for himself in financial circles these days.”

      Andrew Hightower was Reed’s ex-fiancée’s youngest brother. A nice enough kid, but… It galled Reed to realize that the mere mention of the Hightower name struck a sore spot he hadn’t known he had. “You wouldn’t.”

      “Yes,” Moira said. “I most definitely would. I intend to arrange for Zoe Moon to have the funds she needs to expand her business. I’d like for you to help me find the best way to do that, so that everyone’s interests are properly looked after. But if you can’t or won’t, well…” she lifted her shoulders in an eloquent little shrug “…I’ll find someone who will, be it Andrew Hightower, or someone else entirely. Or maybe I’ll just give her the money outright,” she said consideringly. “It might be simpler all around that way.”

      Reed knew when he was beaten. “All right, Gran. You win. I’ll see what I can do about getting Miss Moon her financing.”

      IT WAS NEARLY NINE-THIRTY that night before Zoe heard her next-door neighbor banging around outside in the hallway. Zoe put down the glass of pink grapefruit juice she’d just poured for herself and rushed toward the front door, nearly bursting with the need to vent.

      A petite, slender young woman with a short, sleek cap of dark hair and even darker eyes looked up and smiled as Zoe all but exploded into their mutual hallway. “Ciao, Zoe. How’s it goin’?”

      “Gina! I thought you’d never get home. Where on earth have you been this late?”

      “Same place I’ve been every Wednesday night for the past couple of months. That new client with the arthritis, remember? I told you about him.” She set the edge of her massage table on the floor and let go of the handle, tilting it toward Zoe. “Hold on to this for a minute while I get the rest of my stuff. I left it at the bottom of the stairs.”

      “You aren’t going to believe what happened today,” Zoe hollered at her friend’s retreating back. “I had tea with Moira Sullivan. Remember, the woman I told you about? The one I met at The Body Beautiful on Monday?”

      “The one who’s going to lend you the money for New Moon, right?” Gina said as she came back up the steps with her equipment bag slung over one shoulder and a bulging sack of groceries in her arms.

      Zoe leaned the massage table against the wall and reached for the grocery sack, freeing Gina so she could unlock her front door. “Well, she was going to lend me the money.” Zoe’s lush mouth screwed up in a grimace. “But I think we can kiss that idea goodbye.”

      “Oh, no.” Gina turned in the open doorway, automatically reaching out to offer comfort. “She turned you down, after all? I’m so sorry.” She squeezed Zoe’s arm, her sympathy swift and sincere. “I know how much you were counting on this.”

      “Oh, she didn’t turn me down.” Zoe moved past her friend into a small studio apartment that was the exact duplicate of her own floor plan, except in reverse, and dropped the grocery sack on the kitchen counter. “He did.”

      “He who?”

      “Mr. Stuffed Shirt Reed Sullivan IV, that’s who.”

      “Her husband?”

      “Her great-grandson.”

      “What does he have to say about it?”

      “Plenty, apparently.” Zoe leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms, waiting while Gina deposited her equipment bag on the sofa bed and retreated back into the narrow hall to retrieve her massage table. “And none of it good,” she said, when the other woman came back into the room and deftly slid the folded table into its accustomed place behind the sofa.

      “Tell me what happened while I put my groceries away,” Gina said, moving toward the kitchen area without bothering to close the front door.

      Directly across the hall, Zoe’s door stood wide open, too. Theirs were the only two apartments above the family-owned Italian restaurant on the first floor. The bottom of the stairway was protected by a tall iron security gate that blocked any unauthorized access to the second floor apartments.

      “Out.” Gina flapped a hand at Zoe, waving her away as she began to help unload the groceries. “It’s too crowded in here with two of us.”

      Zoe moved to one of the two stools on the other side of the counter and plopped down with a dejected sigh. “Things were really going great at first,” she said morosely, watching Gina as she moved around the tiny kitchen. “Moira Sullivan is a wonderful old lady. Very charming and elegant, but really sweet and down-to-earth, too. Not snobbish or stuck-up in the least. She was interested in everything I’d brought her and was talking about what I could do when I had the money, not if. And asking how much and did I think it was enough. And then he walked in.”

      “He being the stuffed shirt?”

      “Yes. And right from the first…from almost the second he walked in and saw me sitting there next to his great-grandmother…I could tell he didn’t like me.”

      Gina turned to face her, a package of spaghetti in one hand, eyes rounded in disbelief, her lips parted in astonishment. “He didn’t like you?”

      “Nope.”

      “But, Zoe, men always like you. They can’t help it. It’s—” she extended her free hand, palm up, moving it in an expressive gesture that encompassed the half of Zoe’s body that was visible above the counter “—hormonal.”

      “He didn’t.”

      “Well. My goodness,” Gina murmured, momentarily at a loss for words. She opened a cupboard and put the package of spaghetti away, then turned around with a thoughtful expression on her face, her hand still on the cupboard door. “Is he gay?”

      “Definitely not,” Zoe said, shivering a bit as she remembered the way he’d looked at her, and the spark, or whatever it was, that had sizzled between them. She’d had a good long time to think about it, sitting alone in her apartment, fuming, as she waited for Gina to get home so she could discuss it with her. The conclusions she’d drawn left her almost as angry as she’d been when she’d stomped away from him that afternoon. Almost. “I’m pretty sure he’s got the hots for me.”

      “The