“It’s not. Mitch is still in custody,” Zoe told him. She ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and it felt impossibly, sinfully good. “He’s being held at the same federal penitentiary where Christopher Vincent’s stepbrother is doing ten to twenty for armed robbery.”
Jake laughed. “Well, jeez, that’s pure genius. I mean, I knew Christopher had a stepbrother who’d been in trouble with the law, but … Whose idea was it to send Mitch to the same prison?”
“I’m a fan of doing just that little extra bit of research,” she told him modestly. “We lucked out that the stepbrother was in a federal jail and—”
“It was your idea. Good job, Lange. So you’re the genius, huh?”
“Whoa,” she said, laughing. Her eyes sparkled and danced with amusement. She was so pretty, so full of life. The longing that hit him was so strong, it took his breath away. “Don’t go overboard. Yes, it was a good idea, but—”
She stopped short, her smile fading at the look he knew was in his eyes. He couldn’t hide it, and he prayed she would think it was only part of the game they were playing.
They’d both stopped moving, and they stood on the dance floor just holding each other. She gazed at him, her beautiful lips slightly parted, and when he didn’t move, she stood on her toes and kissed him.
It was the smallest of kisses, light and delicate, a feathery brushing of her lips across his. She searched his eyes again, then stood on her toes once more. This time she kissed him a little bit harder. This time she tasted him, gently touching the curve of his lips with the very tip of her tongue. And this time he kissed her, too, just as delicately, just as softly.
Jake’s heart was pounding, and he was dizzy from wanting more. But he took his cues from her, letting her lead, refusing to push her into harder, deeper, longer kisses, no matter how badly he wanted just that.
She delicately swept her tongue into his mouth and he groaned aloud. She took him right to the point where he knew they were on the verge of crushing their mouths together and positively inhaling each other, but instead, she pulled back.
“We’re both good actors,” she whispered, “but we’re not this good. Part of this is real, Jake, whether we want to believe it or not. That’s what I was trying to say when I told you I’d make love to you. That I also want to make love to you.”
Jake didn’t know what to say.
She kissed him again, hot and sweet and long. “That’s me kissing you, no games, no pretense. We can have it both ways, you know. We can do our jobs and get naked—if you can get past everything you need to get past, if you can come to the conclusion that you’re not too old for this sort of thing.”
“Ah,” Jake said, finally finding his voice as she pulled free from his arms. “We’ve finally come to the personal stuff.”
“I bet you look good naked,” Zoe told him as she picked up her tray and headed to the bar.
Jake wanted both to laugh and cry. He’d never met anyone as completely in-your-face honest as Zoe Lange. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t shy about asking for it.
She wanted him.
And his big problem was that he wanted her, too.
Even though he knew that wanting her was wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“OH, HELL, HE’S NAKED!”
Bobby Taylor thrust his big hands in front of the video monitor. But because there was more than one camera, there was more than one screen to cover. Wes Skelly grabbed Zoe’s chair and spun her so she was facing the other direction.
She just laughed at them. “Oh, come on, you guys. Like I haven’t seen a naked man before? I grew up in a very small house with four brothers. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the male anatomy has just never been a mystery to me.”
“Yeah, but he’s an admiral,” the bigger SEAL told her. Bobby Taylor could have made a fortune playing professional football. At six feet seven inches, he weighed at least two-sixty, maybe even more. When he sat down, he took up two chairs, but very little of his bulk was fat. He was simply enormous. Yet despite that, he was one of the most graceful men Zoe had ever met. He was part Native American—part Navajo, he’d told her. He had the darkest, most serene brown eyes she’d ever seen. “He’s earned the right to towel off after his shower without an audience.”
“Besides,” Wes added, “you don’t want to be looking at him naked. He’s an old man.”
“He is not—”
“Okay,” Bobby said. “He’s got his shorts on. Although it still seems a little disrespectful for us to be staring at an admiral when he’s in his underwear.”
Zoe spun her chair to face the row of video monitors. Jake stood, displayed from three different angles, combing his hair out of his face. One of the cameras must’ve been positioned directly behind the mirror, because he gazed straight into it, his eyes a vivid blue. His arms were over his head, his biceps and triceps flexing.
“I’m sorry, Skelly,” Zoe said, tapping that screen. “But that is not an old man. I don’t know where you get off calling him that. He’s in better shape than you are.”
His stomach was rock solid and his chest was muscular, despite being badly scarred.
“Wow,” Bobby said, subdued by the sight of all those scars. “He’s seen some action, huh?”
“Two years ago he was the target of an assassination attempt,” Zoe said. God, if those scars were any indication, he’d been nearly mortally wounded. It was a miracle he was still alive. He’d miraculously escaped death many times while in Vietnam, too. Some people said he’d led a charmed life. Without a doubt, luck had always been his constant companion.
Zoe hoped that same good fortune was riding copilot with Jake right now. If Christopher Vincent even suspected Jake was there as a spy …
On the screen, Jake threw his comb on top of the dresser. He took his jeans from the closet. Too bad. He had very nice legs. As Zoe watched from three different angles, he pulled on his jeans and covered them up.
His bedroom was a former executive office for the old factory, the walls still covered with cheap, tacky paneling, ancient orange-shag carpeting on the floor, blessedly faded. The furniture was cream-colored, with gold ornamentation—directly from a low-rent motel liquidation sale. She’d have thought a group declaring themselves to be the chosen race would have a little more taste.
“Besides behind the mirror,” Zoe mused, “the other cameras are, where? Over by this window …” She pointed to the screen. “And … here near the door?”
Wes spread the floor plan of the CRO compound—the former Belle Frosty Cakes factory—out on the counter behind her and she swiveled her chair to face him.
“In Admiral Robinson’s quarters, the cameras are here, here and here.” He highlighted the locations in pink.
“Any in Jake’s bathroom?” she asked, leaning over for a closer look.
“At least one,” he told her. “Here.”
“Show me that one,” she said, turning to the video screens.
Bobby keyed a command into the computer, and the image on the far left screen changed.
The camera in the white-tiled bathroom had a clear shot of the door, the sink and the toilet. But not the tub. The tub, with the shower, was off to the side, out of camera range. Interesting.
On the other two video screens,