a thick, graying beard, and he usually wore tinted glasses over his dark brown eyes. He looked over the tops of them as he gazed at Zoe.
They were definitely the eyes of a fanatic—the eyes of a man who wouldn’t hesitate to use the Triple X he’d stolen if he thought it would further his cause.
He was volatile, with a very short fuse.
“I saw you first,” he pointed out.
Oh, brother, this was a complication she hadn’t anticipated. Somehow over the past few weeks, she’d managed to catch Christopher Vincent’s eye. “You’re married,” she told him, trying to sound apologetic and even regretful. “I have a personal rule about married men. I don’t touch ‘em. See, I want to get married myself, and since married men are already married …” She shrugged.
“I’ve been thinking about taking another wife.”
“Another …?”
“The federal government has no right to force us to follow its restrictive rules about marriage and family. A man of power and wealth should take as many wives as he pleases.”
Oh, yeah? “What does your wife think about that?” Zoe asked.
“All three of my wives are kept very satisfied.”
Holy Mike. If they ever got desperate, they could bust this guy for polygamy. “Wow,” she said. “Well. It’s hard enough being a second wife when the first one’s not around. I don’t think I could handle the competition.”
“Think about it.”
“I don’t need to, hon,” she said. “I’m the jealous type. I wouldn’t want to share.”
“You could have my baby.”
And that was supposed to entice her? A baby with a single eyebrow with a complete lunatic for a father? “Well, it’s tempting,” she said. “But I really want to be someone’s number-one wife.”
He gestured for her to lean closer. “We sometimes share wives in the CRO,” he said in a low voice. “You could marry someone like Jake and still have my baby.”
Ooo-kay. “Jake doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d want to, you know, share.”
“He’s very generous,” Christopher Vincent told her. He looked up, past her, and smiled. He had a smile like a wolf—lots of teeth, more vicious than happy. “Hey, buddy, we were just talking about you. Zoe here wants to marry you.”
Zoe held up her hands. “Chris. Wait. I never said that.” She turned to Jake. “He’s just teasing. He’s crazy, you know—”
It was the dead wrong thing to say.
Christopher exploded, reaching out with one hand and grabbing the front of her shirt, pulling her down so that they were nose to nose, so that she was practically lying on the table in front of him, so that her tray clattered onto the floor. “Don’t ever call me crazy!”
“Hey,” Jake said. “Whoa. Take it easy, Chris. Come on, pal, I’m sure she didn’t mean to offend you.”
Zoe felt him right behind her, his arms around her as he tried to pry the other man’s fingers from her shirt.
Vincent released her, pushing her away from him, and she would have fallen over had Jake not been there.
“Dammit, Chris,” Zoe said, refusing to let him see how badly he’d frightened her, how completely he’d freaked her out. “You ruined my shirt.” She had to hold the front against her, he’d stretched it out so badly. He’d bruised her, too, by grabbing more than just her shirt. Way to woo a new wife, baby.
Gus had come out from behind the bar, and he was hovering nearby. “Everything okay over here?”
“I don’t know,” Zoe said. “Chris, are you done grabbing me?”
Jake’s hands tightened on her in warning, but she didn’t give him time to answer. “I’ve got to go change my shirt.” Pulling free from Jake, she picked up her tray and handed it to Gus, then headed for the back room.
She sensed more than saw Jake follow her. And she wasn’t surprised, after she fished a T-shirt from her backpack, to turn around and see him standing there, door tightly shut behind him.
He looked really upset.
Zoe wasn’t sure who moved first, and it didn’t matter. As she reached for him, he lunged for her, and then, God, she was in his arms, just holding him as close as she possibly could.
“Are you all right?” He didn’t release her to ask, he just kept holding her as tightly as she was holding him. “When he grabbed you like that …”
“I’m okay,” she told him. And she was. Despite the bruises Christopher Vincent had just given her, she was more okay than she’d been in a long time. She pulled back to look at him. “Are you?”
“This isn’t going to work.” The tone of Jake’s voice matched the intensity in his eyes. They’d turned into steel—hard and cold, with a razor-sharp edge. “The plan. I’ve got to come up with something else because I’m not letting you go in there.”
“But—”
“He’s dangerous, Zoe. He’s completely unhinged. The whole organization’s seriously off balance. Getting you inside as my wife is no longer an option. I don’t want you anywhere near there. Besides, it’s just not feasible, from what I’ve found out.”
“Dammit, Jake—”
He kissed her. One moment, he was glaring at her, and the next his mouth was hard against hers, his tongue sweeping past her gasp of surprise.
Zoe felt herself sway, caught off balance for the briefest moment, before she clung to him, kissing him back with as much passion, angling her head to grant him deeper access.
He was kissing her. Jake Robinson was kissing her because he wanted to, not because he had to. Tears stung the inside of her eyelids, and for the first time she let herself acknowledge that she wanted Jake Robinson more than she’d ever wanted any man. He was her hero, her commander and in many ways her deity. She worshipped him, on every possible level.
He pushed her back so she bumped against the concrete block of the storage-room wall as still he kissed her. His hands were all over her as he pressed himself hard between her legs, pulling her thigh up along his as he strained to get closer, even closer, playing out her wildest fantasy. But when he cupped her breast far more roughly than she would have expected, she opened her eyes in surprise.
And saw Christopher Vincent standing at the half-open storage-room door, his hand on the knob as he looked in at them.
He pulled the door shut behind him, and when he did, Jake stopped kissing her. He took his hand from her breast but otherwise just stood there, eyes closed, breathing hard, forehead resting against the wall beside her.
She’d been wrong. Jake hadn’t really been kissing her. Somehow he must’ve heard the door open. Somehow he’d known that
