her college graduation ceremony. She’d been twenty, on the verge of becoming a newly minted magna cum laude with a master’s degree in comparative literature, destined to fulfill her Aberdeen destiny. At the funeral, she’d been told by an endless stream of intellectuals and potentates that she must survive—and thrive—to carry on the esteemed family name.
Afterward, when the shock wore off, Zoe had realized that she no longer wished to live a life of duty and boredom. Instead she’d abandoned the education that had meant so much to her parents, seized control of her trust fund and struck out on a series of desperately madcap jet-set adventures heretofore unknown to the stodgy, intellectual, old-money Aberdeen clan.
“Of course you’ll survive,” Kathryn soothed.
Zoe plastered on a carefree smile. “Yep. If I can live through a surfeit of yacht parties in Ibiza, ski trips to Aspen and Christmas holidays at a Thai beach resort, I can make it through one measly hangover.”
Ethan chucked her under the chin. “You’ve had it real tough, kid.”
Zoe kept up the smile. Her grief over her family had faded, or perhaps been buried under the glittering lie of her new lifestyle. Eventually the Aberdeen funds had slowed to a trickle. She’d been a spendthrift, and her “trustworthy” accountant had been overly liberal with his fees. The result was that she’d suddenly reached a point where it was either go broke or stop and take stock of her situation.
She took stock. Not a pretty sight.
Working her family connections and party-girl past, she’d landed the job at the Times, only to realize that she’d locked herself into a role she’d already been playing for too long. Fortunately she was good at it, even without the old trappings. Only Kathryn and a few close friends had an inkling that there was more to Zoe than her bright, flashy surface…and far less to her trust fund.
Today Zoe couldn’t keep up the facade. She put her head in her hands. “I ran across old family friends at the symphony benefit. We, uh, caught up over champagne.”
In fact, it had been the prospect of admitting to the couple that she’d spent the years since the elder Aberdeens’ deaths traveling, partying and running through the family money like gas through an SUV, that had sent her straight to the bubbly. She’d always lacked intestinal fortitude.
“That must have been nice.” Kathryn’s face said she knew otherwise.
“I’m certain you did well,” Ethan contributed to humor her along.
Zoe grimaced. What a disappointment she’d be to her beloved Mummy and Pop and pompous old Rags if they could see her now, employed as a second-rate gossip columnist and often flat broke because she’d pledged to make do on her meager salary to protect the remaining trust fund.
“I’m not quite the raging success they expected,” she admitted. The couple had been kind but noticeably taken aback by her chosen profession.
“Stuffy snobs,” Ethan said. “Never mind.” He dropped a hand on Zoe’s bare shoulder the way her pop used to, both encouraging and proud, while she’d bent over her textbooks as a dorky, bespectacled fifteen-year-old studying for her college entrance exams.
That version of Zoe Aberdeen was as long gone as her family.
Ethan, the incorrigible flirt, gave her a teasing brush of his fingers before moving off. “I ought to be on my way before we draw attention from the tower.”
The managing editor presided over the lesser columnists and reporters from a spacious second-floor corner glass office with a mezzanine that overlooked the newsroom. Editors like Kathryn had been granted similar but smaller offices on the exterior rim of the ground floor. Zoe’s space was at the approximate center of the room, a magnet for anyone in need of chocolate, a dirty joke or a bit of juicy gossip.
Kathryn gripped the steel edge of the cubicle wall. “What’s that you’ve got?”
Zoe looked down. Clasped to her chest was one of the many lucky charms that cluttered the desk, a folk art figurine. She must have picked it up for reassurance. “It’s that voodoo doll I bought in the Gaslamp Quarter weeks ago.”
“I remember. The day we discovered the lust potion.” Kathryn came around the partition, steering an unoccupied desk chair so she could sit knee to knee inside Zoe’s cubicle. “It’s an ugly old thing, isn’t it?”
“I kind of like her.” The pocket-size voodoo doll wasn’t as crude as some. Mayan symbols had been carved into the figure’s bulbous body.
Kathryn turned the doll over with long, deft fingers. “Solid ebony. Where do you stick the pins?”
Zoe raised her brows. “Thinking of cursing someone?”
The book editor shrugged. Her relationship with Coyote Sullivan had veered wildly between adversarial and erotic for the past month or so. But ever since her return from a recent vacation that was supposed to be solo, she’d been glowing, and not only because of the newly acquired tan.
Nope, Zoe knew a mama-got-sex glow when she saw one, even on such an uncharacteristic place as Kath’s face. Which made her wonder just how effective one small filched sample of lust potion could possibly be.
“I don’t believe this is a voodoo doll at all,” Kathryn said, handing it over. “With such massive breasts, perhaps it’s meant to be a fertility symbol?”
Zoe threw up her hands, refusing the doll. “Perish the thought.” She had a reputation to maintain, one where marriage and babies were the very last things she should desire.
“I don’t want it either.” Kathryn set the doll on the desk. “Especially after the lust potion turned out to be…” She shook her head, saying no more.
Zoe thought the purported lust potion was a fascinating topic. “Especially after the potion made you and Coyote do the horizontal rumba until you were both howling at the moon?”
“It didn’t make us. Or at least we don’t know for certain that it did.” Kathryn didn’t bother to hide a satisfied smile. “Nor were we always horizontal.”
Zoe chuckled. “So you’re saying that you made a conscious decision to engage in an affair so hot it’s capable of burning down the Times building?”
Kathryn’s eyes twinkled. “Please restrict the hyperbole to your column.”
“This isn’t for my column.” Zoe wrote about local celebrities, society debs and the forays of Hollywood bigwigs who’d drifted south to engage in San Diego’s laid-back lifestyle. In other words, fluff and flattery. “I’m thinking of doing an investigative piece.”
“On the potion?”
Zoe’s headache was subsiding, so she risked a nod. “Balam K’am-bi,” she intoned. “The lust potion of the gods.”
Kathryn chimed in. “From deep in the heart of the Yucatan…”
“Comes this elixir…”
“That brings the world’s greatest sexual experience…” Kathryn pinkened at the word sexual.
“To the person who dares to use it,” Zoe finished. Although
