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Getting this over and done with means I can concentrate on the heart of the job, and using Zoey is something that could work, but I don’t let that linger, not right now. Because she’s a little too good at reading me—perhaps not what goes on behind the Magnus Simpson mask, but the fact something’s going on, and that doesn’t help.
Back at the bookstore, I follow her inside and help her pack up the few cookies left over and the slices of cake. She doesn’t ask, I merely help. We work together in quiet companionship, and finally, when everything’s done, I take hold of her face in my hands and lift it to mine.
“Zoey, you helping me makes a world of difference. I might not seem that way, but it does. Gran’s…frail, and I had to turn down the job offer, just like I did last night. I…”
I brush her lips with mine and they’re so soft and warm and tremble a little beneath my mouth. That shiver of need from her, a need that’s loaded in ways I don’t want to fathom, shoots to my cock, yes, but it also shoots through my blood, heating me inside.
“It’s okay,” she says, her hands covering mine a moment, those big violet eyes pools I could lose myself in—Magnus Simpson could lose himself in—search mine, “I get it. She doesn’t want to leave, and I’m sorry I asked you about your friend and why you went to that bar—”
“Hey…” I smile at her. “I’d ask to, roles reversed.”
I want to kiss her. It’s a beat of need in my blood, the yearn for the pleasure she contains, the real heat of her that can coil about me, become the sweetest invasion, but I don’t. Just brush her mouth with mine, lingering once again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Zoey.”
“Goodnight.”
I wait for her to lock the door behind me, and then I set off in the direction Magnus Simpson lives. It’s not until I’ve turned the corner I call my car service to collect me.
As I settle in the leather seat of the town car, I close my eyes as we head back to Manhattan and my office. It’s early enough—for me, and I tell myself I left without kissing her because it’s part of my plan.
Make her really want more of Magnus Simpson.
But a tiny voice that won’t shut up keeps asking if Magnus Sinclair is running away.
Because like it or not, Zoey affects me, too.
“Why are you here?” I scowl at Ryder as he breezes into my home.
“I was in your hood.”
“You never come here unless you want something.” I pour a drink and throw myself on the black leather sofa in my living room. Ryder picks up the tequila bottle, sniffs it, shrugs, and does the same, adding a big splash of soda water to his.
He sits on the sofa opposite and turns the glass in his hands. “Just wondering how things are going?”
“I’m working on the girl.”
Ryder frowns. “The bookstore thorn in your side girl?”
“Yeah, I—”
I stop abruptly as heat prickles my skin.
“I was talking about the Sinclair jewels. You remember those, right, Mag? The Sinclair flagship? Our father’s weird-ass plan from the great beyond?” Ryder looks at me, like he’s studying a bug. “You like her.”
“She’s easy to like, if you like that sort of thing,” I say smoothly. “Zoey’s sweet. But stubborn.”
“You’re more sex and steel than sweet and stubborn. And…” He points at me with his glass, “you slept with her.”
My fingers tighten on my drink. “Why would you say that?”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“When did you turn into Mr. Morals? It happened. So what?”
Ryder rests his glass on his thigh and draws shapes on the arm of his sofa with a finger. “Oh, nothing. Just you know, big, bad, Mr. Power and Money Sinclair slept with someone sweet. Notice how I didn’t say fuck? I used that old euphemism, slept. Because I saw you at that dumb party with her, and—”
“Do you have a point?” I glare at my brother. “If you’re concerned about this interfering with the rat maze I’m being made to run through, don’t be. I’m able to multitask.”
