A Taste Of Temptation

A TASTE OF TEMPTATION

Carrie Alexander

MILLS & BOON

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To Coco and Jamie

Goddesses of the Lust Potion

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

1

WHILE THE NEWSROOM BUZZED, clattered and even swirled around her, Zoe Aberdeen sat at her desk with her head in her hands. Her chin was three inches above the oversize calendar blotter she used as backup to her BlackBerry and spiral-bound notebook. If she didn’t pull herself together, she’d drool on December ninth, where she’d written Caballero y Salsa @ La Casa in red marker. With two exclamation points.

“Need some hair of the dog?” asked a sympathetic British voice from behind her.

Zoe didn’t swivel. Even shaking her head was too daunting to attempt. Her pickled brain would slosh around in her skull like the jar of dills that had sat at the back of her fridge for two years, ever since she’d settled in San Diego.

“Mmmph.” She sucked her lower lip. “Got champagne?”

“There’s no sense checking the kitchen. We only have hazelnut creamer and Red Bull.” The rasp of Ethan Ramsey rubbing his jaw magnified to sandpaper on wood in Zoe’s ears. “I can try to get a mimosa from Zanzibar.”

“Good luck,” Zoe mumbled. The local bar and grill delivered, but not alcohol and not so early in the day.

“Drinking on the job will get you fired,” said another familiar voice. A concerned Kathryn Walters peeked over the edge of one of the cork-lined partitions that enclosed the colorfully decorated cubicle. At five eleven, she didn’t have to stand on her toes to do it.

Zoe squinted to lessen the riotous glare of her dance club invitations, glitter-encrusted fairy wand and pink straw cowboy hat. “Never mind that drinking is my job.”

She exaggerated. A major component of her work as a gossip columnist for the San Diego Times was to attend every club opening, charity ball and yacht launching that floated down the pipe. Despite her reputation as the Times columnist most likely to dance on tabletops, she tried to be mindful of overimbibing at the affairs she attended in a professional capacity. Even when she was off the clock and out with her friends, her high spirits didn’t come from alcohol. Not completely.

The past night had been something else altogether….

“Where were you last night?” Kathryn asked.

“A very select holiday benefit for the symphony. They decorated with gold-leaf branches and twinkle lights and served the most expensive, delicious champagne I’ve ever tasted. But the evening was so dull, I—” Zoe stopped and swallowed the sour taste in her mouth. After she’d made notes about the chichi guest list and the dazzling decor, she’d had nothing left to do at the zero-exclamation-point-worthy soiree. Other than fend off questions from a pair of transplanted Bostonians who had known Zoe’s family when they were prominent, accomplished and alive.

She pried her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “I overindulged.”

“Clearly.” Kathryn’s voice was crisp.

“I can get you a headache remedy,” Ethan said as he stepped into the cubicle. He was the Times’ top crime reporter, a raffish Englishman who hadn’t lost his taste for Inspector Dalgliesh and MI-5 despite an intense working knowledge of the somewhat less urbane San Diego legal and penal systems.

“Thanks, but I already popped a couple of pills.” Zoe wagged a finger toward the variety of cure-alls she kept at hand in a brandy snifter on her desk. M&M’s and breath mints mixed with one-dose packets of ibuprofen and NoDoz.

Kathryn sent a look toward Ethan. “What kind of pills?”

Zoe’s eyeballs rolled. Luckily they kept to their sockets. “Strictly over-the-counter, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Kathryn’s reputation was as arrow-straight as Zoe’s was loosey-goosey. That is, until the buttoned-up book editor had reviewed an erotic thriller, fiddled with a counterfeit lust potion and gained the attention—to say the least—of Coyote Sullivan, a former coworker so overtly and indecently sexy that he could unsnap women’s bras with merely a look.

Zoe’s smile made her head wobble. Coyote was almost worth wearing a bra for. Lucky Kathryn.

“Steady on, Zoe,” Ethan said. “Keep your profile low for the next few hours. Barbie—” Barbara Bitterman, their managing editor “—is on the warpath, looking for chinks in the staff’s armor.”

“If you can hold out, we’ll treat you to lunch,” offered Kathryn. “Food will help.”

“Lunch seems a lifetime away.” Zoe took a deep breath. With an effort, she shifted her head, balancing it very carefully until the room stopped whirling.

“But I will survive,” she added, wincing inside at the retro familiarity of the phrase. She’d been to too many discos and experienced too much loss for one lifetime. Barbara Bitterman was only a mosquito of annoyance in the dark, tangled jungle of Zoe’s psyche.

Nine years ago, Zoe’s parents and older brother had been killed in a car accident on the way to 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 they treated their belief in the lust potion as a joke, a folly, Kath had confessed that the effect on her had been too real to discount.

Zoe intended to find out why.

A while back, she, Kathryn and Ethan had been wandering the Gaslamp district during their lunch break, noshing and joshing, when they’d found a funky tourist trap called Jag’s on one of the side streets. They had heard rumors about a sleazy little man selling a knockoff lust potion to the tourists while dealing the genuine, very pricey concoction to a select upper-crust clientele. The shopkeeper had given them a spiel about the origins of Balam K’am-bi, promising hot sex, multiple orgasms, yada yada, which none of them had believed. Then.

A police cruiser had been pulling up to the shop as the trio was leaving. Later Zoe had discovered that a vial of Balam K’am-bi had been planted in her bag. Surmising that Jag had done so to remove the evidence from his possession, Ethan had volunteered to bring the lust potion to the cops for analysis. The official police response had been underwhelming.

The incident might have ended there if Kathryn hadn’t later admitted to retaining a small sample of the potion for her own experimentation. An explosive, completely out-of-character experimentation, judging by the bits and pieces Zoe had gleaned about Kathryn’s hot-cha-cha relationship with Coyote Sullivan.

Even so, Zoe remained doubtful. She’d sensed an attraction between Kathryn and Coyote long before the venture to Jag’s. Their affair was not unexpected.

Kath’s loss of inhibition could also be explained. The power of suggestion and all that.

But something was going on. Jag wouldn’t have slipped the potion into Zoe’s bag if the vial had contained a harmless liquid. Considering the heightening of physical sensation some users had reported, she suspected the potion contained an illegal extract. Perhaps one that produced a tingling warmth similar to those provided by certain intimate sexual lotions currently on the market.

“I wish I’d thought to keep my own sample of the lust potion,” Zoe mused. “You wouldn’t happen to have any left over?”

Kathryn shrugged. “Sorry.”

Zoe eyed her. “You used every drop?”

“I had a very small amount.”

“And it’s all gone?”

Kathryn mumbled under her breath, not letting Zoe pin her down.

Too modest to give details, Zoe wondered, or the opposite? She took a not-so-wild guess. “So that’s why you’re never around lately. Still keeping extra busy with Coyote, hmm?”

“Oh, well, you know how we were competing for the Crest of the Wave award,” Kathryn said, intentionally misunderstanding.

Excuses. She’d won the prestigious editors’ prize weeks ago, although the announcement had been eclipsed by the furor caused when Coyote broke the story of a pro football steroids scandal. Threats and pressure from all sides had resulted in his tendering his resignation to the newspaper.

Zoe pressed. “You are still together?”

“Not for publication.” Kath grinned. “But, yes.”

Before Zoe could ask more, her friend stood and made a quick adjustment of her skirt. Kathryn was clad in the usual dark business suit, though Zoe had caught a glimpse of a lacy bra when the loose neckline of Kathryn’s shell had gaped. Bronze-colored tendrils had escaped from the book editor’s hair clip. Her lips and cheeks were bright pink against the glowy tan.

All very suspicious.

I’ve got to find out what was in that bottle. Zoe was rarely so determined, but the humiliation of running into the Aberdeens’ family friends had convinced her to improve her situation in life. While the job at the Times had been a much-needed stopgap, it wasn’t too late to become a person of whom her family would have been proud.

Put in that light, staking her chances on a bogus lust potion didn’t seem to be the smartest move.

“‘Lust potion of the gods,’” she quoted. “Gimme a break.”

Kathryn delayed her departure. “Have you tried a Web search?”

“Of course. I found a few unsubstantiated reports of the potion’s effects and some references to the Mayan dialect. As we already knew, Balam K’am-bi roughly translates to sex of the jaguar.”

“Wild animal sex,” Kathryn said faintly, her eyes distant.

“Hot jungle lovin’,” Zoe teased.

Kathryn blinked. “You should ask Ethan. He’s the one with all the police connections.”

The women exchanged knowing smiles. Ethan’s connection to one police detective in particular—an attractive female named Nicole Arroyo—had become obvious despite his attempts at discretion. They’d even begun to speculate that the confirmed bachelor might have finally met his match.

“I tried,” Zoe said. “He claimed that Detective Arroyo had sent our sample to the crime lab but there were no results yet. I don’t suppose the case is considered urgent enough to warrant a rush job.”

“Keep me informed. I’d like to hear what that report says.” Kathryn returned the extra chair to the neighboring cubicle. “See you at lunch.” She strode away, clearly making an effort to appear as businesslike as ever but not quite able to restrain the sassy swing of her hips.

Zoe fingered the native doll. There was no doubt about it. Kathryn Walters was a changed woman.

Due to the lust potion?

Although titillated by the idea, Zoe’s primary interest wasn’t the personal benefits of the supposed aphrodisiac. This time, she preferred to be taken seriously.

If she could get the real story on the lust potion, she might gain a little respect at the newspaper, proving to Barbie the Editrix she could write about more than champagne fountains and oysters on the half shell. Or she might submit a feature article to a national magazine. She could do background research in Mexico, interview scientists, track down unlikely couples such as Kathryn and Coyote, maybe even turn the story into a book. Even gain interest from Hollywood.

Granted, none of that was likely to win her a Pulitzer, but at least she’d have some proof that she hadn’t completely wasted her potential.

But where to begin?

“Go to the source,” Zoe told herself.

Fortunately the ibuprofen had kicked in. She leaned down and picked up the leather Hermès carryall she’d dropped under her desk and started shoveling necessary items inside. The BlackBerry, her trusty notebook, a spare pair of sneakers in case she had to walk farther than heels allowed. She checked the contents of her wallet. A coupon for a facial, plus two dollars and change. Damn. Last time she’d gone to the cash machine, the printout of her balance had been so alarming she’d survived on tuna, crackers and olives ever since.

Plus hors d’oeuvres and champagne. No wonder she was feeling dizzy.

Ignoring her queasy stomach, Zoe counted out enough coins to buy a bag of potato chips from the vending machine. Her paycheck wasn’t due for a few days. After work, she’d hit Zanzibar’s happy-hour buffet for free Buffalo wings and jalapeño poppers.

In the meantime, making headway on her goal would give her mood a better boost than protein.

As funding a trip to the Yucatan wasn’t in the credit cards, she had only two immediate options. One was to acquire a copy of the crime-lab analysis of the lust potion. Luckily she had a great contact in that system—a nerdy neighbor across the hall in her apartment building. They didn’t exactly get along, but if necessary, she’d use her feminine wiles to beguile him into helping her out. The other immediate option was to return to Jag’s tourist trap and get the story from the lizard’s mouth, so to speak.

Zoe being Zoe, she chose to do both ASAP.

2

DONOVAN SHANE TENDED TO become overly absorbed by his work. He’d managed to ignore the annoying buzz of the intercom system, but he was forced out of his fog when Guillermo Reyes opened the door to the toxicology lab and cleared his throat.

“Dr. Shane, Mandy Rae says to tell you there’s a woman here to see you,” the intern announced in a tone of awe, as if he’d never seen such a creature. The kid was a senior in high school; he should have had girls crawling out of his locker.

Donovan squinted as he pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose. He’d been examining the peaks on the liquid chromatograph done on a sample from a murder case. “Whoever she is, she doesn’t have an appointment.”

“She’s…” At a loss for words, Guillermo gave an exceptionally gusty exhale. His sinuses tended to whistle when he got overexcited. “Damn, boss, you gotta see her.”

Boss. Donovan had never been a boss before. After earning his undergraduate degree, he’d been rejected by the police academy because of a preexisting condition—the heart murmur he’d had since childhood—and had taken a part-time lab technician’s job instead while advancing toward his Ph.D. Twelve years later, he was still working in the same facility, now as a toxicologist specializing in the typing and analysis of blood and other fluids. He told himself that he was satisfied to be left alone in the lab, quietly doing his job analyzing the minutiae of crime while others ran about like over-adrenalized superheroes, shooting at perps and risking their lives.

“Is she a kook?” he asked.

“I dunno. Maybe.” The intern gripped the doorknob. “She claims she knows you. Says she won’t leave until you see her.”

Shoulders hunched, Donovan returned to his study of the graph on the computer screen. He wasn’t keen to leave his work and make the trip to the reception desk in the lobby, where all visitors must check in before gaining admittance. He couldn’t imagine who this one-of-a-kind female might be.

Sadly he didn’t know many women. There was Mandy Rae, the pretty receptionist who tolerated him and the rest of the lab rats with unconcealed distaste. Lucilla, the facility’s cleaning lady, who griped at him for filling his wastebaskets and using all the paper towels. A small handful of female police officers, whom he spoke to mainly on the phone when they were anxious for urgent results of the evidence they’d couriered over. He supposed he had to include Dr. Victoria Eubanks, the comely optometrist he’d dated for five months until she’d told him, in the middle of his second eye exam that year, that she’d decided to go back to the ex-husband who’d cheated on her with his secretary.

Lastly, but never leastly, there was Zoe Aberdeen.

His neighbor.

His sworn nemesis.

His greatest fantasy.

Zoe? Could it be? Donovan’s head shot up so fast he lost his balance in the ensuing blood rush. Zoe. Of course. A wayward elbow knocked into a hydrometer jar that had been shifted from its appointed position. Zoe Aberdeen was exactly the type of woman who could make a goofus like Guillermo misplace his brain.

Donovan moved the jar back into place. Not to mention a goofus like himself.

“You didn’t answer Mandy Rae’s summons,” Guillermo explained, “so she sent me to tell you.” The intern was almost blithering as he peered out at the hallway, apparently expecting an invasion. “She said for you to come see because she’s not allowed to send unscheduled visitors to the lab with all the new protocols and—oh, jeezus, boss, here she is.”