The sharp knock at her door had her jumping.
“Zoë, are you in there?”
Zoë recognized Sierra’s voice immediately, but she’d barely turned around when Dr. Sierra Gibbs, her arms full of packages, breezed into the room. A month ago, Zoë mused, her boss would have asked permission before entering her office. But a lot of things had changed about Sierra since she’d met Ryder Kane, her new fiancé.
Before Ryder, Sierra and she had been mirror images of each other—once you subtracted the fact that Sierra was a tall blonde and Zoë was a short brunette. They’d both worn glasses, and they’d both worn their hair pulled back into a ponytail or a braid. They’d even worn the same kind of loose-fitting skirts and sweaters. During the time they’d worked together, she’d not only come to admire Sierra’s work but she’d begun to look on her as a friend.
So she’d been happy to see how Sierra had blossomed since she’d met Ryder Kane. Her boss was currently dressed in a well-tailored suit in a shade Zoë would call pomegranate and high-heeled slingbacks that Zoë immediately envied. Sierra’s hair fell in loose waves to her shoulders, and Zoë couldn’t help admiring the style as her boss turned to glance at her.
It was only then that she saw that Sierra had pulled champagne, two glasses and a bag of imported chocolates out of the packages she’d been carrying.
“Sit down. We’re celebrating,” Sierra said.
“Celebrating what?”
Sierra paused in the midst of uncorking the champagne to stare at Zoë. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. What are we celebrating?” The way Sierra was looking at her made Zoë suddenly feel as if she’d been smeared on a slide.
“Merely the fact that your dissertation committee met this morning. Dr. Holloway just stopped by my office with the good news. Your proposed study has been approved. You’re officially on the fast track to your degree. Did you forget that they were meeting?”
“Yes, I—” Zoë ran a hand through her hair. She’d completely forgotten. No doubt, that had been the reason for her mother’s call, to make sure that her daughter hadn’t fallen off the “fast track” again. “That’s…wonderful.”
Sierra’s eyes narrowed as she handed Zoë a glass brimming with champagne. “You look like you need this, and not just for celebration purposes.”
How could she have forgotten? Zoë wondered as she took a good gulp of the champagne and moved behind her desk to sit down. But she knew the answer. It was because she hadn’t thought of anything but Jed Calhoun since that damn kiss that hadn’t been a kiss at all.
Sierra tore open the bag of candy. “You’d better have some chocolate, too. Ryder gave me these, but on an occasion like this, I’m willing to share.”
Zoë bit into a creamy chocolate truffle and tried to gather her thoughts. Sierra was going to grill her. She had that look on her face that she always got when she was interviewing one of the volunteers in their study. In a research situation, what Sierra went after, she usually got.
Sierra sat down and sipped champagne before she said, “Okay, spill it. What’s wrong?”
Zoë stalled by taking another sip of champagne.
Sierra smiled at her. “I’m going to sit here until you tell me. Confession is good for the soul. That’s what my sisters always tell me.”
Sierra was the youngest of a trio of sisters. Natalie, the oldest, was a cop, and Rory, the middle sister, was a freelance writer who’d been published in several major magazines. All three sisters had recently become engaged.
“Of course, I could try the same technique my sisters always use on me,” Sierra said.
Zoë’s eyes narrowed. “Does it involve torture?”
Sierra’s eyes twinkled. “They haven’t tortured me since I was little. Lately, they just tell me what they think is bothering me, and then launch right into lecture and advice mode.”
Zoë began to relax. She and Sierra had never discussed Jed Calhoun. She’d never even mentioned his name. There was no way that she could know. “Go ahead. Give it a shot. Tell me what’s bothering me.”
“You’re attracted to Jed Calhoun, and you’re wondering if you should act on the attraction.”
Zoë barely kept her mouth from dropping open. “How did you know?”
“Sweetie, the temperature in the room goes up by at least ten degrees whenever the two of you are together. Not to mention that the sparks shooting between you are so intense that the hairs on my arms stand up.”
Zoë badly wanted to pace, but Sierra was now sitting in her pacing space. She was stuck behind her desk just as if she were in an interrogation room. After three beats of silence, she said, “I want him, but I don’t want to want him.”
Sierra smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly how I felt about Ryder the first time I met him. I didn’t know him then. I just knew how he made me feel, and I’d never felt that way before.”
“Yes, that’s it.” Zoë gestured with her glass, then took another sip. “He has no right to make me feel this way.”
“Men. They’re all the same.” Sierra topped off their glasses.
“He invades my personal space.”
“Isn’t that just like a man?”
“And he has no right to look the way he does,” Zoë added.
“Absolutely not. He’s as handsome as sin.”
“Exactly.” Even as she said the word, Zoë found herself picturing Jed in her mind—that long, lean body; the rangy, loose-limbed walk. The man never seemed to hurry. His hair was caught somewhere between sandy brown and blond, and he wore it long enough to pull back into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. In the short time that she’d known him, he’d never worn anything but cutoff shorts or jeans and a T-shirt that molded each and every subtly defined muscle. Just thinking about him had the heat pooling in her center. “And his smile. I really hate it when he smiles at me.”
“I hear you,” Sierra said, then took another sip of her champagne.
“It’s as if he knows things about me that he has no right to know.”
“Unforgivable,” Sierra said.
Zoë leaned forward. “You know there’s more to him than meets the eye. On the surface, he seems so laid-back like some kind of California surfer who’s living for the next perfect wave. But underneath, there’s something else, a kind of power. It’s hard to explain…” It was the same hint of power that she’d imagined in Lucifer, she realized. And she was attracted to that as much as she was to the easy, mocking charm. “If Jed Calhoun gets in your path, you won’t get past him.”
“Yes.” Sierra nodded. “I noticed that, too.”
Zoë took another sip of champagne. Maybe it was helping to talk about it. “He didn’t even kiss me,” Zoë said.
Sierra paused as she was reaching for the champagne bottle. “When didn’t he kiss you?”
“The other night at the Blue Pepper when we were celebrating your engagement to Ryder. He invited me to dance and the next thing I knew we were behind one of those potted palms on the patio. He started to kiss me. And…” Zoë’s voice trailed off as images flooded her mind, and her body began to heat. She could recall those minutes when she’d been in Jed’s arms so clearly. Each sensation had been