If she’d had a breath left in her lungs she might have laughed. Or grabbed him down onto the table with her.

“But you’re not going to,” he said, his mouth working its way south. “You’re going to stay still, very still because of your files and my laptop.” He sat on a chair and ran his hands up her thighs again, almost getting all the way to the top this time before stopping.

She slapped her hands down to the table, desperate for something to hold on to.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Not an inch. We’re on borrowed time here and I don’t want to have to stop before you cry out my name.”

“I’m not going to”—she had to pant for breath—“cry out your name. I don’t do that.”

He didn’t argue with her, nor did he talk again for a few minutes. Instead he licked his way to her center, doling out sucking little kisses that drove her wild, but ignoring The Spot until she started to sit up.

The coffee mug next to her, the one so close to the laptop, sloshed a little. Parker’s hands tightened on her thighs, a silent warning. With great effort, she stilled.

Parker went back to his ministrations.

And then he made her cry out his name.

Twenty-two

As Zoe left for work, Parker mentioned he’d be out that night late, and though he didn’t say and she didn’t ask, she knew it was job related. And for a minute, just a minute, she’d let herself entertain the thought of them meshing their lives together. The realities of his job were fairly terrifying, but she could work with that.

What she was starting to realize was that what she couldn’t work with was being without him—a problem. A big one.

At the airport, Joe was all business for their weekly production meeting, but as soon as the room cleared out, he asked Zoe to stay.

They hadn’t had a single spare moment to talk one on one since their date. She didn’t know if he wanted to discuss that, or the offer to partner in with him on the business—which she still wasn’t sure about—but she blew out a breath and faced the music. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I ended our date abruptly.”

“No,” he said. “I wanted to thank you. My mom and sister saw me with you and they are now officially satisfied that I can get my own dates. They said I did good, finding a ten to my six.”

She laughed. “I’m no ten,” she said.

He grinned and gave a playful tug of her hair, leaning in close to say huskily against her ear, “And I’m no six. In bed, I’m an eleven. Your loss, sweet cheeks.”

She smiled. “An eleven, huh?”

“Want to change your mind about me now, don’t you?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could figure out how to let him down gently, he shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “You’ll have to forever live with the fact that you moved too slow to catch me.”

“Is that right?” she asked.

“I’ve been after my sister’s best friend, Stacey, for five years. She’s never given me the time of day—until she heard about my hot date with you. Suddenly she’s all into me.” He chortled and rubbed his hands together. “She asked me out for tonight. Good times ahead for Big Joe and Little Joe—not that Little Joe is little, if you know what I mean.”

She grimaced. “How about we not talk about Little Joe?”

“Sure, how about we talk about you making me some money today?”

“I’m not ready to talk about the business offer, either. But soon,” she promised. “I’m not being coy—”

“Zoe,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve known you for years. You don’t have a coy bone in your body. Nor have you ever rushed a decision.”

True. Until the one where she jumped into bed with Parker . . .

“Take your time,” Joe said, serious now. “I’ll be here. But for now, you’ve got a lesson and two flights scheduled. What do you say about getting outta here and bringing in some dough today?”

Parker spent the better part of the day up at Cat’s Paw, stealthily replacing batteries in his cameras. It wasn’t easy. There was a new set of guards and these guys were better than the other shift.

He’d had to park the Jeep two miles back and hike in, dodging the surveillance team when he could, waiting them out when he couldn’t.

Halfway through, twenty-five feet up in the air, stretched out on a branch to reach one of his cameras, he heard an engine coming his way. Several vehicles.

There were four, with a Land Rover in the lead, the top off.

He’d been made, he thought, and remembering what had happened the last time he’d had a run-in with one of Carver’s trucks, he froze and did his damned best to be the tree.

No. Not made. They were leaving the ranch, en masse.

He’d bet his last dollar Carver was among them.

The convoy came through the brush with the Land Rover in the lead, weaving to steer clear of the growth. They were about a hundred feet away from Parker when he heard an ominous little creak from the branch he’d balanced himself on.

And then a CRACK.

Shit. Now the convoy was at fifty feet.

And then twenty-five. There were two men in the front seat of the Land Rover, both heavily armed by the looks of them.

Another crack from his branch and Parker started to sweat. Fuck, he was too old for this shit. He couldn’t move or he’d be seen, but if the branch broke, he’d fall to the ground practically at their feet, and that was going to go over like a fart in church.

Just hold, he prayed to the damn tree. Just for another thirty seconds.

But then the convoy slowed. And stopped.

Sweat dripped into Parker’s eyes, but he didn’t dare even blink. He focused in on the men in the Land Rover and realized they were on their comms, communicating with the other vehicles.

Parker literally held his breath. Any second now he was going to fall right on top of them.

Finally they hit the gas, passing almost directly beneath him, one vehicle at a time. They were no sooner out of sight when Parker took his first deep breath—just as the branch creaked and cracked one last time and . . .

Dumped him to the ground.

It was the end of the day before Zoe decided she needed something to keep her mind off Parker, so she’d stopped at the hardware store on the way home from the airport and had purchased a new lock mechanism for her back door, which had been broken forever.

The guy in the store had sworn that even an idiot could handle the installation, but that he’d be happy to make a house call if she needed him.

Since he’d accompanied this with a brow waggle and a wink-wink elbow jab to the ribs, she’d decided she’d need a house call from him never. Yes, he had a job but he was lacking her core requirements—and that wasn’t even counting the fact that he’d been chewing tobacco and may or may not have been in possession of all of his teeth.

And of course there was the real problem—she was now using Parker as a ruler to measure all the other men up against. Which meant she was certainly setting herself up for failure.

But she didn’t care at the moment. She had other things to worry about. Such as the new lock on the back door. She worked on it for an hour before sitting back on her heels and admitting defeat.