“Try?” His lips quirked as one arm stretched out along the back of the couch, ignoring her observation on the other man. “I rarely try to do anything, Zoey.”

Well now, wasn’t he extremely confident?

“Think it’s a sure thing, do you?” Clasping her hands lightly in her lap, she didn’t balk at holding his gaze.

Her heart was racing double time now. And when his gaze flicked to the vein at her neck, she knew he was aware of the excitement flooding her.

“I’m quite certain it’s a consideration on your part.” His voice lowered, becoming a dark, brooding sound that stroked over her senses and had the oddest sensation attacking the girl parts that had rarely roused in the past year.

“A consideration?” she mused, adopting a thoughtful expression. “For a man I’ve not yet been properly introduced to? One I’ve only heard is prone to get his agents shot at? One who asked my sister out after that totally romantic dance with me where you never said a word or kissed me good-bye? A glancing thought is as far as I would go, perhaps.”

He shifted closer. “I’m going to kiss you before you leave here tonight, Zoey Mackay. Then you can decide if you’re just considering me or not.”

It would be more than a consideration and she knew it.

“That would be rather rude, don’t you think?” she forced herself to point out. “We’re still at a first-name basis. I rarely allow such liberties so soon.”

His gaze went to her lips again while the hand resting on the back cushion moved to tug at several curls that escaped her braid.

“Chatham. Bromleah. Doogan. The Third.” He came closer with each word until his lips were poised over hers, so close.

Zoey felt hers part. Her breathing became short, ragged, but his wasn’t exactly calm either.

“Can I kiss you now, Zoey?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for permission.

His lips covered hers, took them, demanded her response and swept her into a storm she had never expected. A storm that crashed through her senses, pushed away barriers, and in a single moment, she feared, branded a hunger inside her she would never be rid of.

A hunger she wanted only to become more immersed in.

Wrapping her arms around his neck Zoey moaned into his kiss, swept away with such riotous pleasure that any thought of resisting him didn’t have a chance. He was heat and overwhelming pleasure. Seductive energy and dark forcefulness and she was loving every minute of it. Loving it so much that even as he eased back on the couch and came over her, one hand gripping her hip, his knee easing between her thighs, she only moaned with the rising sensations.

She’d never wanted a man like this. She’d never known such a hard rush of pure lust as she did now. That complete “do-him-now” feeling that tore through her senses and left no room for even a whisper of resistance.

“Zoey!” Eli’s panicked voice was a splash of reality washing over her. “Dammit. Dammit. I knew not to leave you with him! Where is your self-control?”

Doogan’s head lifted and Zoey’s turned, her gaze finally focusing on Eli’s outraged expression.

“Eli, you’re definitely fired,” Doogan growled, lifting away from her.

“I think I better go.” Scooting back from him, she grabbed her jacket, jumped from the couch, and all but ran to the door. “I’ll wait for you outside, Eli. Hurry or I’m leaving without you.”

She would too. As soon as she dragged her senses back and managed to make the world level out around her again. Or perhaps she was the one who needed to level out.

Oh, God, what was she doing? Especially with that man. The one man she couldn’t have no matter how much she might want him. He was dangerous. Far too dangerous to her self-preservation. And she couldn’t forget it. Lovers became too intimate. They wanted to spend the night and all that crap. And she didn’t need the boss’s boss of a federal agency realizing that the woman he was sleeping with was having nightmares of killing a man no one had seen since the nightmares began.

Sleeping with Chatham Doogan would be disastrous. And she couldn’t ever let herself forget that.

THREE

Two Weeks Later

There were times in a man’s life that a woman had the power to simply steal his breath. Times when the past and the present converged, and he found himself staring at a future he could have had, if he’d been smart enough to take the right turn rather than the left.

Or so he’d been told.

He’d suspected the truth of it six years ago when he’d been unable to deny himself a dance with Zoey Mackay. Just that small amount of time when he could hold her against him, feel her warmth, sense the innocence he saw in her eyes and ache with regret.

He’d never actually believed it though until two weeks ago when he’d held Zoey against him and felt a hunger burning through him like he’d never experienced before. She had stolen his breath then, and tonight, she stole it again and for a second he wondered if he’d ever get it back.

It was an interesting reaction.

Every bone and muscle in his body tightened and all the blood pushing through his veins stilled for a single moment in time. And for one precious second, he felt the convergence of what had been¸ what was, and what could have been, all in a single instant with all the anger, regret, and grief that came with it.

That loss of breath occurred the moment he saw her striding through the crowd, a smile on her face, her heavily lashed eyes bright and so filled with excitement. All those lush, lovely curls she possessed were once again tamed in a thick, heavy braid, leather cord binding it from her nape to where it ended just between her shoulder blades. There was no hint of the hand-tempting spirals that normally surrounded her head and fell to below her shoulders in wild abandon.

The curls might have been tamed, but the woman wasn’t. As though binding her hair had caused some detour in the abandon that filled them, all that electric energy filled the woman instead.

Enough energy to singe a man’s soul if he wasn’t careful.

She strode to the graded track as Eli pushed a stripped-down dirt bike through a break in the stacked bales of hay surrounding it at the starting line. Another rider eased his bike alongside it, motor gunning, the young male riding it shooting Zoey a smug grin.

Nearing Eli, Zoey pulled the full-face helmet she carried over her head, securing the strap under her chin as the bystanders gathered in the clearing moved as close to the bales of hay as possible to watch the coming race.

The air of expectation and pulsing excitement that hadn’t been there before Zoey’s arrival was definitely there now. All eyes were on her, watching as she straddled the powerful little bike and brought it rumbling to life.

“She’s gonna beat him one of these days.” A young woman spoke behind Doogan. “Maybe not tonight, though. Not until she finds someone with a little less fear to work on her bike.”

“That Grant boy’s gonna keep her from winning,” a man remarked in reply. “He’s too scared of the Mackays to ensure she has enough power . . .”

“Billy says her bike is off balance. Eli won’t balance it. He’s tried to tell her . . .” the woman remarked, her voice knowing and a bit irate.

The couple moved past him, eager to get to the edge of the barrier to watch the race, their conversation drifting away.

Doogan crossed his arms over his chest, remaining where he was, frowning as he listened to Zoey’s bike revving, heard the distinctive sound, subtle though it was, that indicated a lack of necessary power, just as the couple had observed.

Narrowing his gaze on the stripped-down motorbike Zoey straddled, he could see where it would be off balance as well. And Elijah Grant had been working on that cycle? The young man knew motors and vehicles like most men knew a woman’s body. Eli was much better with motors than what Doogan could hear in the sound of the bike Zoey was getting ready to race.