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“Jeez.” Gina folded the grocery sack and bent down to put it under the sink. “That sounds a little extreme, even for the repressed type. They usually content themselves with blaming you for arousing their libido, and let it go at that.” She reached for the bright red teakettle on the stove, then hesitated, head tilted as she considered her friend. “Wine or espresso? I’ve got some plain biscotti that would go with either.”
“Espresso,” Zoe said. “Wine would only make me get all weepy and maudlin.”
Gina nodded and turned on the faucet, her gaze lowered as she watched the kettle fill. “What on earth made him think you were some kind of con artist?”
Zoe shrugged. “Beats me.”
Gina lifted her gaze from the kettle to Zoe’s face.
“Honest, I have no idea why he would think that.”
“You want to look me in the eyes when you say that?”
Zoe sighed, knowing she was caught. “Okay. So maybe I, um…influenced his opinion in that regard. A little.”
Gina set the kettle on the stove and turned the heat on. “Influenced?” she murmured encouragingly.
“Well, he made me so darn mad. Staring at me as if he were imagining me naked one minute, and then looking down his nose at me the next, all superior and disapproving, as if it were my fault he was having lewd fantasies in his great-grandmother’s parlor. But I swear, Gina, I didn’t do one thing—not one darned thing—to encourage him. Not at first, anyway,” she admitted, making a clean breast of it. Gina would know if she lied, anyway, just by looking at her. “It was only after he made me so mad that I, well…” She shrugged. “You know how I get sometimes when I lose my temper.”
“I know, sweetie, and it’s not your fault this time. Some men are just pigs,” Gina said sympathetically. “You aren’t responsible for what goes on in their tiny little minds.” She reached across the kitchen counter and patted Zoe’s hand. “So, tell me what you did to make him think you were after his dear old granny’s fortune.”
“Well, Moira had told him she wanted to lend me the money for New Moon, and he was looking at me like he thought I was going to steal the silver on my way out or something, so I sort of—” she shrugged, her lips turning up in a little shamefaced grin “—lived down to his expectations, you might say. You know how I get sometimes, putting my mouth in gear before I’ve engaged my brain.”
Gina nodded sagely. “And what did he do then?”
“He clamped his hand around my arm and hustled me out of there so fast you’d have thought the house was on fire. And then he called me a con artist and said New Moon was a fly-by-night cosmetic company and accused me of trying to bilk—bilk!—his great-grandmother out of a fortune.”
“Cazzone cafone.”
“Yeah, well, he was kind of a jerk, but…” She shrugged again, and the shamefaced look was back. “I guess I can’t really blame him completely.”
“Zoe! He acted like a pig.”
“Oh, I blame him for the pig part,” she assured her friend, “but not what came after. I mean, at the end there, I did act like all I was interested in was the money. And you can’t really blame a guy for trying to protect his sweet old granny from being taken to the cleaners.”
“I can,” Gina said loyally.
Zoe smile at her. “I appreciate that. I really do. But I’ve got to face facts. I lost my temper and blew it, big time. There’s no way Moira Sullivan’s going to be investing in New Moon. Not if her great-grandson has anything to say about it. And it’s my own darn fault.”
“You’ll find another investor. There’s bound to be someone out there who has the vision to see what a great investment New Mo—” Gina cocked her head, listening. “Is that your phone?”
ZOE WAS BACK in her friend’s apartment less than ten minutes later. “You’ll never guess who that was.”
Gina didn’t look up from the tiny cups she was filling with thick, black espresso from the coffee press. “Who?”
“Mr. Stuffed Shirt himself.”
Gina put the coffee press down. “And?” she said carefully, her eyes on Zoe’s face.
“And he apologized for what he said this afternoon.” A big grin turned up the corners of Zoe’s mouth. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation and renewed hope. “He wants to meet with me as soon as possible to discuss investing in New Moon.”
4
“WHICH ONE’S THE STUFFED shirt?”
Zoe brushed the blowing tendrils of her hair out of her eyes with one hand, scanning the rugby field as they approached the sidelines. “There,” she said, unerringly zeroing in on him among all the identically clad men. “The tall one with the dark hair in the second row of that huddle.” She pointed at him with the straw sticking out of the top of her iced latte. “On the red team with the number five on his shirt.”
“Scrum,” Gina corrected, standing on tiptoe to get a better look. “It’s a scrum, not a huddle.” She sank back onto her sneakered heels as the men lowered themselves into an interlocking mass of humanity and started to move like some kind of giant multiheaded crab as they scrambled for possession of the football. “You didn’t tell me he was gorgeous.”
“Is he?” Zoe shrugged and poked her straw into the bottom of her drink cup. “I didn’t notice.”
“And when did you start losing your eyesight, Ms. Moon?”
“Well, I didn’t,” Zoe said defensively. It wasn’t exactly a lie; last Wednesday she’d been more concerned with the look in his eyes than his looks. Not that she hadn’t noticed those, too, but… “I had other things on my mind, if you’ll recall.”
Gina snorted inelegantly. “Don’t waste that big-eyed innocent look on me,” she advised dryly. “I haven’t got enough testosterone for it to work.”
“Fine.” Zoe jabbed her straw into the ice at the bottom of her cup again. “Think whatever you want.”
“He’s really got you rattled, doesn’t he?”
“Well, of course he does. He’s only holding the future of New Moon in his hands.”
But it was more than that.
Her cheeks were flushed and warm, despite the cool September breeze blowing across the field from the Charles River. Her palms were damp. Her nerve endings tingled, making her feel jittery and on edge, almost expectant, like a child sitting in front of the fireplace on Christmas Eve waiting for something wondrous to happen. And it had absolutely nothing to do with what he could mean to the future of New Moon.
Zoe sighed.
She wasn’t usually stupid about men. She was, in fact, never stupid about men. She’d learned early that a woman who let herself get all excited and moony-eyed over a handsome face or a charming manner invariably ended up paying for her gullibility in heartache and broken dreams. Her mother, who’d been married and divorced as many times as any Hollywood movie star, had taught by unwitting example what not to do in relationships with men, and Zoe had taken the lessons to heart. She knew, all too well, that to let herself start weaving silly little romantic fantasies about Reed Sullivan was stupid in the extreme.
Oh, sure, he’d apologized for what he’d said out there on the sidewalk in front of his great-grandmother’s house, but that didn’t negate his attitude while they were inside. As Gina had so wisely remarked, his attitude and actions identified him as “one of those,” meaning the kind of man who based his opinions of women on how they looked.
It wasn’t that Zoe minded being thought of as attractive, or having men think she was sexy or beautiful. Or even having them say so. That would have been stupid, because she was all of those things. And she liked being those things. Most of the time. No, what she objected to were men who thought what was on the outside was the sum total of what was on the inside. Or men who thought her spectacular physical attributes constituted a deliberate come-on, and got bent out of shape when she failed to deliver on what they thought she had promised, simply by being.
Not that Reed Sullivan actually fit either of those profiles, precisely. But he’d disapproved of her at first sight, on the basis of her looks alone, and that was enough to condemn him in her eyes.
Or should have been.
It was just the tiniest bit distressing that she couldn’t seem to work up the proper contempt for his sexist attitude, not with him running up and down the field in those little red shorts and the bright color block jersey with the word Bulldogs emblazoned across his broad chest.
Which meant, Zoe realized, totally amazed at herself, that she obviously had a few sexist attitudes of her own to address.
“What are you standing there looking so pensive about?” Gina asked, breaking into her reverie.
Zoe shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, her eyes still focused on the playing field.
Gina followed the direction of her gaze. “He’s got great thighs, doesn’t he?”
“Mmm,” Zoe murmured, absently reaching up to tuck a blowing tendril of hair behind her ear. “Great thighs.” They were long, tanned and heavily muscled, the rock-hard thighs of a dedicated athlete. It was amazing what that expensive navy-blue suit had kept hidden.
“And a really cute little ass,” Gina said. “World class, I’d say.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely world—” Zoe broke off guiltily. Her hand stilled at the back of her head, and she cut her friend a quick, sideways glance.
Gina smirked. “Gotcha.”
“I was talking about that blond Adonis.” Zoe gave a final pat to her hair and lowered her hand. “The one with the shoulders and the stubby little ponytail.”
Gina’s derisive jeer was good-natured. “Sure you were.”
“I was. I—”
“Heads up!” somebody yelled.
Both women ducked as the football came sailing over their heads into the crowd where they stood. By the time they’d straightened up and turned backed to the field to see what had happened, men from both teams were rapidly converging in front of the nearest set of goalposts.
“What’s happening?” Zoe tried to stay out of the way as players who’d been standing on the sidelines rushed onto the field to join their teammates. “Is it a fight?” she asked, and then realized that no one was swinging fists. Instead, the men formed a loose circle and began to chant.
“Is the game over?”
“Yes, the game’s over.” Gina laughed. “But that’s not what this is about. It’s a Zulu dance.”
“A what?”
Gina waved at the action on the field. “Watch.”
“Watch what? Oh, my goodness. Is he taking his clothes off? He’s taking his clothes off!”
The blond Adonis Zoe claimed to have been admiring was stripping down, egged on by the rhythmic chanting of both teams. Shirt, shorts, jockstrap, everything but his cleated shoes and heavy white athletic socks came off in turn. Each garment was grabbed by a teammate as the Adonis discarded it, and flung up over the crossbar on the goalposts. And then, as naked as a newborn baby except for his footwear, the player began climbing up after his clothes. The crowd cheered and clapped, taking up the players’ chant.
“Is that some bizarre kind of penalty?” Zoe asked, her eyes on the bare white bottom of the naked rugby player as he wriggled up the goalpost.
“No, it’s not a penalty. It means he scored his first try.”
“Try?”
“Like a touchdown in the NFL,” Gina explained. “The team gets five points when the ball is kicked or carried over the try line and touched down.”
“And for that the poor man is publicly humiliated?”
“The Zulu dance is a time-honored tradition. Every player does it after he scores his first try.”
“Every player?” Zoe’s glance darted over the men in the field. Over one man in particular. “Every time he makes a touchdown?”
“Try, not touchdown,” Gina corrected. “And only the first time he does it.” She followed the direction of Zoe’s gaze and grinned knowingly. “I’m afraid you missed your chance there,” she said. “Judging by the way he played today, the stuffed shirt isn’t new at the game. He probably scored his first try years ago. You’re going to have to figure out some other way to see him naked.”
“I have no desire to see Reed Sullivan naked,” Zoe said, but it was a lie.
And they both knew it.
Any healthy, red-blooded, heterosexual woman in the world would have paid good money to see this Reed Sullivan naked, whatever they might have thought of the stuffed shirt. This Reed Sullivan was all-male: tousled and grass-stained and sweaty, his big hands clapping in time to the deep-throated masculine chant, his head thrown back, laughing, triumphant, as he watched his teammate struggle to climb out onto the crossbar and retrieve his clothes. Blood trickled down the right side of Reed’s face, evidence that the cut bisecting his eyebrow had come open. One of the shoulder seams of his rugby jersey had been torn and the sleeve was hanging down, exposing his arm from the rounded bulge of his shoulder to the swell of his heavily muscled biceps.
That tailored blue suit, Zoe found herself thinking again, had covered up a lot, including a good deal of his…uh, personality. This Reed Sullivan wasn’t poised and polished. He certainly wasn’t repressed. He didn’t even look quite civilized. He looked basic and elemental and male, like a man who’d know how to appreciate a beautiful woman. Or any woman at all, for that matter. A man who’d know exactly what to do with one if he ever got his hands on her.
He turned his head just then, catching her staring at him, staring back, registering no surprise at seeing her there even though they weren’t scheduled to meet again until Monday morning at his office in the Sullivan Building. Even with half the width of the field between them Zoe could see the change in his eyes—the laughter fading, the heat slowly building, the blatant, unabashed, purely masculine speculation in his gaze. It was a scorching, searching look, akin to the one he’d given her when she’d handed him his tea in his great-grandmother’s parlor, only more so. And this time she had no trouble reading it.
What was she doing here?
Was she available?
Would she let him take her?
When?
Zoe couldn’t look away. She didn’t even want to. She’d never been the focus of that much heat before, the center of that much concentrated sexual intensity. It was as if the world had suddenly narrowed down to only two. Him and her. Man and woman. Everything else faded into insignificance. She forgot all about the laughing, cheering crowd. Gina. New Moon. His disapproval of her. His perfunctory, albeit charming, apology over the phone. Her own doubts and misgivings about what she might be getting herself into. She forgot everything except the look in his eyes and the thrilling, exhilarating, frightening sense of anticipation and excitement it generated in her.
Then the men turned, seemingly en masse, and headed for the sidelines. He was coming right toward her, that heat still in his eyes, his eyes still on her face, purpose in every step.
Hail the conquering hero, she thought inanely, fighting the urge to shrink back behind Gina like some trembling Victorian virgin.
What had happened to the stuffed shirt?
She could handle the stuffed shirt with one hand tied behind her back.
She couldn’t handle this man with a whip and a chair.
Zoe managed to look away, finally—to the ground first, and then, panicked, at Gina. But Gina wasn’t any help. She was staring at Reed, too. Or at least in Reed’s direction.
“Who’s the yummy Italian stallion with him?” she asked.
Zoe ducked her head, her lashes protectively lowered, sucking air and melted ice from the bottom of her cup as if getting the last drop of creamy iced coffee was the most important thing in the world at the moment. “Him who?”
Gina rolled her eyes. “The stuffed shirt. Who’s the guy with him?”
“How should I know?” Zoe mumbled, without looking.
“Well, he seems to know you,” Gina said. “He just waved.”
Zoe darted a quick glance from under her lashes without lifting her head. “That’s Moira Sullivan’s butler. Eddie something.”
“The stuffed shirt plays rugby with his great-grandmother’s butler?” Gina’s expressive eyebrows lifted like twin arches. “How democratic of him. I guess maybe he’s not quite so stuff— Hi, there, fellas. Great game.” raspberry lips pursed Reed automatically checked his stride to avoid running into the brunette who suddenly stood in his way. “Thanks,” he murmured absently, his gaze still riveted on the object of his rampaging…affections.
Apparently oblivious to his presence, she was standing half-hidden behind her pint-size friend, her lids lowered, her lusious raspberry lips pursed around the straw protruding from the plastic lid of a paper cup. No one looking at her would believe she’d just been staring at him as if they were gazing at each other across the width of a rumpled bed rather than a rugby field. He almost didn’t believe it himself except there was something just a bit too studied and deliberate about the way she stood there, not looking at him. Something that told him she was as aware of him as he was of her. Something that made him think…hope…wish…that if he reached out and wrapped his arms around her, she’d melt against him in total surrender and beg him to take her. Repeatedly.
“I’m Gina,” the brunette said. “You must be Reed.”
“Uh…yeah.” Reed tore his gaze away from Zoe’s averted face, gathering himself together with a Herculean effort. The rugby field was no place to indulge in ridiculous sexual fantasies. “Yes, I’m Reed.” Belatedly, remembering his manners, he extended his hand to her. “Reed Sullivan,” he said politely, somehow managing to sound as calm and unaffected as if they were standing in his penthouse office. As if his blood wasn’t roaring through his veins like an out of control locomotive on a downhill grade. As if he weren’t still fighting the insane urge to toss the luscious Miss Moon over his shoulder and keep right on walking—preferably straight to the king-size bed in the master bedroom of his Back Bay town house. “And you’re Gina…” he did a quick scan of his memory banks “…Molinari, isn’t it?”
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