A Taste Of Temptation

Donovan shoved up his cuffs as he made for the door. He was betting the “she” wasn’t Mandy Rae, who turned up her nose at the pungent and occasionally gruesome smells wafting from the lab.

Sure enough, Zoe Aberdeen in all her glory sashayed up the staircase and through the hallway, as tricked out as a Mardi Gras celebrant. Most women would be overwhelmed by that particular combination of curly red hair, orange tank top and flared denim miniskirt, all of it topped off by bangles, chains and jewels swinging off every appendage.

But Zoe Aberdeen wasn’t most women.

Mandy Rae raced to catch up, waving a visitors’ badge. “Dr. Shane! I’m sorry. I got her to sign in, but she slipped past the door while I was making up the badge.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I know her.”

“What a lot of fuss.” Zoe planted her heels and put her hands on her hips. “What’s going on back here, Shane? State secrets?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Donovan resettled his wire-frame glasses. You always had to squint and blink when Zoe arrived. “I’m afraid you can’t stay. The labs are off-limits to most civilians.”

Zoe took the laminated badge from Mandy Rae and clamped it to her spaghetti strap. “Civilians?” A gay laugh. “Do I appear civilized to you, Shane? How disappointing.” An incorrigible flirt, she looked at Guillermo with a moue of her full, glossy lips. There had to be a beauty product that made them look that way. No normal lips were quite so wet and plump and kissable. “I promise you, sweetcakes, I’m as wild as they come.”

She pointed a long red fingernail at Donovan. “And he should know. Remind me, Shane. How many times have you called the cops on me?”

He cleared his throat. “Twice.”

“Only twice? I thought it was at least a half dozen.” She lowered her sunglasses to the end of her nose and slinked toward him with the hippy, shoulder-rolling saunter that was often featured—nude—in his dreams. Mandy Rae watched, fascinated. “Have you been lying to me, Shane, honey, all those times you said I’d better shut down the party because you’d called the cops?”

He held his spot. “I said I would call the cops.”

“And twice you did.”

“My walls were shaking.”

She sent him an unapologetic grin as she brushed by him on her way into the lab. Waving off Mandy Rae, Donovan followed on Zoe’s heels, intending to stay nearby so she didn’t touch any of the sensitive evidence that he kept scrupulously labeled and filed.

He stood so close he could smell her. She was sweet, but not from perfume. Zoe’s scent carried the sweetness of sugar—jelly beans, cherry licorice sticks, birthday cakes, fluffy pink cotton candy. All the forbidden treats he hadn’t been allowed as a sickly child.

Looking around the room and his adjoining office with airy interest, she removed her sunglasses and hooked them in the neckline of the skimpy top. He kept pace, practically peering over her shoulder, his hands itching to grab hold and keep her still. He didn’t quite dare. Zoe was too light and fluttery. He was too clumsy. A butterfly net would do a better job of containing her.

Suddenly she stopped and whirled to face him. “So this is the big secret?” Her head tilted. Her eyes were bright. “Looks like every other lab I’ve seen. In another life, I was a geek, too.”

“You were not.” Not in a million years.

She abandoned the claim with a lift of her bare shoulders, regarding his dumbstruck face with a small, teasing smile. She moved an inch closer and stroked a finger downward from the knot of his tie. He’d tucked the ends in between his shirt buttons, so there wasn’t far to go.

Her polished nail lifted the edge of his shirt placket. She peered inside at the protected tie. Her narrow nose wrinkled. “You’re so prissy, Shane. Like an old maid.”

She always called him Shane. He liked that, though he couldn’t pinpoint why.

Old maid was less flattering. He felt himself becoming huffy and defensive, the way he often did around Zoe. She was far too unpredictable for his personal comfort zone. And he worried he’d give away some clue about how often he fantasized about her. “Precision is crucial to a scientist.”

Her frank stare ran over him. “I thought you’d be in a lab coat. I always picture you in a lab coat. Which is kind of funny since I’ve never seen you in one.” Her smile was wide and inexplicably charming. She knew it, too. Knew it and used it, in concert with a wide-eyed blink that was quite versatile. Innocent-sexy or devilish-sexy or sassy-sexy. But always sexy.

He’d never noticed that her eyes were the color of maple syrup, flecked with gold leaf. Always before, she’d been coming or going, shouting down the stairwell or waving at him from their shared backyard, where she liked to sunbathe topless. She wasn’t shy about turning over onto her back, either. He might not have known the color of her eyes, but he was well acquainted with her breasts. They were the proverbial martini-glass tits—small and pert. Lightly freckled. Her nipples were bubblegum-pink when they hardened.

“I have a lab coat,” he blurted. “Over there.”

“So I see.” Her steep platform clogs clacked on the floor as she crossed the room to the row of pegs where black rubber aprons, safety goggles and lab coats hung. “Can I try it on? Or is that like trying on a cowboy’s hat?”

“What?”

“You know. Wear my hat, try me on.” She winked and slipped into the shapeless white coat.

Except it wasn’t shapeless on her, even though her slender figure was swallowed by the starched white cotton folds. The coat completely covered her own clothing. There was something erotic about seeing her bare legs beneath the crisp hem, especially when he glimpsed a thigh in the unbuttoned gap. As if she might be naked underneath.

Add the notion she’d put in his head that he could have allowance to slip as easily into her and—

Brain freeze.

But fever everywhere else. He tugged at his collar, then an ear. Other areas needed more intimate adjustment. He was thirty-three years old, for crying out loud. He hadn’t had such a swift and awkward boner since high school. No, make that since his one and only spring-break trip to Mexico, when he’d learned that alcohol magically untied the bikini straps of cute college coeds.

Zoe twirled, kicking up a heel. “What do you think?”

“Nice,” Donovan croaked. That was all he could think of to say, because her twirl had lifted the edge of the coat and the ruffle on her flirty little skirt, flashing him a glimpse of a taut bottom clad in a pair of zebra-stripe bikini panties. Boing.

Guillermo’s jaw hung slack.

“This has been fun, but I came to ask for a favor,” Zoe said when neither of the men spoke. Her voice had taken on an unusual gravitas.

Donovan was both intrigued and disappointed. How many times had cute females like Zoe flirted with him, only to ask for something two seconds later, from copying his chemistry homework to requesting overnight lab results?

She shrugged out of the coat as she walked toward the lab bench, the solid table they worked on. Her sharp eyes made a quick survey of the contents. “I’m writing a story for the Times.”

“But you’re a gossip columnist.” Donovan read her twice-a-week columns even though most of the names and faces meant nothing to him, not unlike the details of what they wore and where they partied. “Excuse me. I should introduce you to my intern. Zoe Aberdeen, Guillermo Reyes. She works for the San Diego Times.”

The boy nodded with glazed eyes. He was six inches taller than Zoe and almost twice her weight, but he was thrown for such a loop by her presence that she could have hog-tied him without a squeak of protest. Donovan knew the feeling.

Zoe twiddled her fingers at Guillermo. “Ciao.” To Donovan, she said with a highly arched brow, “I may be a gossipmonger, but I’m also a journalist.”

“Oh. Yes, of course. Did you study journalism?”

“I have a master’s in literature. Before everything changed, I was planning to find a nice, cozy position as a teaching assistant so I could expand on my thesis, but, uh—” She broke off and, oddly tongue-tied, looked down at the material her hands were wadding.

Donovan waited, so curious about her claims that he didn’t even consider taking the coat from her to shake out the wrinkles.

“But that’s not relevant,” she continued with a frown. “My degree isn’t in journalism anyway.” Her eyes rose to Donovan, narrowing as she threw out one of her typically unexpected remarks. “Do you only answer the questions of those with the proper pedigree?”

“Of course not.” He was still trying to absorb the news that Zoe had an advanced degree of any sort. From what he knew of her, with the string of boyfriends and the loud parties and the comings and goings at all hours, she was strictly the Holly Go-lightly of the West Coast, dedicated to burning her candle at both ends.

“That’s good, because I need—”

He interrupted her request. “Sorry. I turn everyone away, regardless of their credentials. This lab’s test results aren’t for public consumption.”

“What about if it’s a case of the public good? Like something dangerously contagious?”

“In that case, I suspect the Times wouldn’t send a gossip columnist to investigate.”

Her pointy chin jutted at him. “But what if they did?”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t make those decisions. You can get in touch with the police department’s press liaison and ask your questions there.”

Zoe flung his coat at the table. It hit the edge and slid to the floor. Spots of color had flared in her cheeks. “Why do you work so hard at making me dislike you, Donovan Shane? I’ve tried to be friendly, but you’re distant and implacable. Dry as dust. You have no—” Her hands flew up in the air. “No zest!”

“I’m not an orange.”

She blew out a sigh. “You’re also too literal.”

“I was making a joke. A bad one, granted.”

Her gaze zeroed in on him and she was silent for several seconds—an eternity for Zoe. He feared what might come next, but she asked mildly, “Do you always frown when you’re trying to be humorous?”

His answering frown was automatic. “I don’t know.”

“Interesting. I’ve never known you to crack a joke.” Her lips puckered. “It appears that you have unplumbed depths, Shane.”

“Likewise, Aberdeen.”

She took another moment to evaluate him. The gradual, sensual lowering of her coppery lashes was only slightly less distracting than the pouty lips. His blood thickened.

“Sooo, Shane, what can I do to get you to give me a peek at a substance-analysis report?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head. Or at least he thought he did. There was very little feeling left in his body outside of the blast furnace that had developed in his groin. For propriety’s sake, he shifted until he’d put the lab bench between them.

“There’s got to be something. Tickets for the Chargers. Uncensored candids of the Ocean Beach women’s volleyball tournament. A backstage pass to Shakira in concert.”

A soft, bubbling groan came from Guillermo’s direction. Although twenty pounds overweight and prone to sloppiness, he was a well-meaning kid who worked a couple of hours several mornings a week, washing beakers, labeling files and losing track of hydrometer jars. He planned to major in chemistry when he went to San Diego State next fall.

Donovan remained stalwart. “I won’t be bribed.”

Zoe glanced at the intern.

“Don’t even think about it, Gil.”

She laughed. “I was only wondering if I could speak to you in, um…” She put her hands flat on the bench top and leaned toward Donovan. A few of the cascading curls fell into her eyes. Her voice lowered. “In private.”

His gaze flicked to the spot where the weight of her sunglasses dragged at the orange tank top. Her freckled cleavage was modest compared to the silicone valleys that populated the city. But powerful nevertheless. “Gil…”

“I’m out of here.”

Donovan had meant to ask the intern to stay, but he let the words die on his tongue.

While Guillermo hastily departed, Zoe leaned farther over the table to push at a file folder with one finger, flicking it open.

Donovan suspected he was supposed to be mesmerized by her feminine wiles, but he wasn’t quite that far a goner. He whisked the stack of files away, then rescued his clipboard, no longer certain that she couldn’t understand the forms it held. That possibility was almost as tantalizing as her cleavage.

She lifted her chin to stare broodingly at him. “Tell me the truth now. Did you send Gil away so we could be alone?”

Surely she was joking. “What?” he said, feeling awkward and shy. High school all over again.

Her smile became mischievous. “You’re cute when you’re worried. I’m only curious about how the lab operates. Do others work here?”

She’d managed to put him off center again. He collected his thoughts. “This is the toxicology lab. Today I was alone except when Gil came by for an hour. I do have a colleague who’s out on maternity leave. And there are plenty of other employees in the building, working in other labs or offices, technicians with different specialties. We share some of the equipment.” He paused. “They can pop in at any time.”

“My goodness. That was a thorough answer. You’d think I was suggesting something naughtier than giving me a peek at an analysis.”

He wouldn’t let himself think about what he wanted a peek at. “I’m not relenting,” he said, “but what’s this about, this result you’re so eager to read?”

She straightened, giving him a provocative look. “It’s about sexual enhancement.” Her voice had taken on the rough velvet of a cat’s purr.

He gaped. “What?”

“I want to know if the lust potion works.” Her brows arched wickedly. “And you are the only man who can help me.”

3

“WHAT’S WRONG, SHANE? Cat got your tongue?”

He continued staring.

Zoe waved a hand in front of his face, feeling fine and sassy. She could wrap Donovan Shane, nerd scientist, around her pinkie with very little effort. Amazing how the adrenaline of female power had cured the lingering effects of her hangover.

He brushed her away. “How do you know about the lust—” Suddenly he had to clear his throat. “How do you know about the alleged lust potion?”

“It’s not a secret. Jag’s been selling it to the tourists for months.”

“Jag?”

“I presume. We don’t know his real name. He runs this seedy little shop in the Gaslamp that sells the lust potion. Along with voodoo dolls, cheap beads, amulets and charms, carved tchotchkes—whatever.” She shrugged. “I’ve been there. I was the one who—”

“Not that.” Shane dismissed her in that autocratic way of his. The man really did make her hackles rise. He was so rigid, even when she’d “discombobulated” him. “I meant how did you know I was testing a lust potion?”

“If you’d let me finish…” She fished out another deliberate smile, remembering that she needed a favor from him no matter how irritating he was. “I was the one who turned the potion over to the police.”

“You?” Shane’s eyes flickered behind his wire-framed glasses. “Then you’ve already tried the potion?”

She’d love to tell him that, yes, the loud activity he’d recently heard coming from her apartment had been the result of headboard-banging hot monkey love and not the installation of a shelf in her closet after an overloaded one had collapsed. But that would be dishonest.

She didn’t have any problem with telling white lies. It was only that she preferred to do so to gain an advantage.

And Shane already believed she was a sex-crazed party girl.

Zoe drew herself up. So what if the assumption wasn’t completely wrong? She’d rather have too much fun than none at all.

She aimed another sultry gaze his way. “If I’d tried it, Shane, I would know if it worked.”

He cranked his head back, as if looking at her required a distance between them. He’d probably slide her under a microscope if he could. “Maybe it worked and you couldn’t tell a difference?”

Was that another joke?

She tossed her curls. “Maybe. I do like to have a good time.”

“You don’t have to tell me. We share a bedroom wall.” Zoe thought he was about to smile, but he shook his head instead, scoffing at her. “Don’t tell me you actually believe in this hokum about a lust potion?”

“I didn’t. Until I heard the stories.”

“Stories? Gossip, I suppose.”

Annoying man. She crossed her arms, glaring at him even though she should be flirting. Whenever they got near each other, he bristled at her teasing and she ended up wishing she could take the starch out of him by any means necessary. “You have a problem with my job?”

“Why should I?” He peered at her, making her squirm. “It suits you.”

Counting to ten, she stopped at four. “I doubt you mean that as a compliment.”

“What do you think?”

“That if you consider me mere window dressing, you shouldn’t have a problem sharing what you know about the potion.”

He took off his glasses and polished them with the end of the tie he’d liberated from his shirtfront. His forehead had creased. Without the glasses, he seemed more vulnerable and rather boyishly awkward in his confusion over how to deal with her. She realized that his huffiness was a defense mechanism. And that he had thick lashes, a well-shaped mouth and might be rather sexy if he’d stop acting like a prude.

“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.” He glanced at her with softened eyes, his brows turning up in the middle. “I’m sure you give pleasure to many people. Your columns, I mean.” His gaze dropped to her body, then bounced back up as he turned a dull shade of red. “It’s just that you have this way of, um—” He put on the glasses and ran his fingers through a short crop of brown hair as he looked away. “You get under my skin.”

“Because I’m so loud and outlandish?”

“You are, but no.”

This time when he looked at her, she saw the naked desire he’d suppressed. A sexual hunger seethed in him so viscerally that she felt it melting into her, too.

But he wasn’t her type! He was quiet and conventional and brainy and dull—

A hot spike of inexplicable emotion went straight through her. “Don’t look at me that way,” she blurted, confused by her reaction. The idea of having sex with Shane should have been laughable instead of disconcerting. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“That sounds like a warning.” He scowled. “So when you said I was the only man who could help you with the lust potion…?”

“Oh!” She blinked a couple of times, trying to resist studying his face as if she’d never seen him before. There’d always been a sort of unpolished manliness about him. A well-hidden potential. Even so, she’d never considered him in that way, at least not seriously.

This time she couldn’t help herself. She looked. And the heat in his dark eyes flowed through her. She could feel her cheeks coloring to match his. “You thought I wanted…”

He thought I was offering to participate in a very intimate lab experiment.

Zoe couldn’t decide whether to be amused or aroused. Objectively, with his lean, rangy body and a face that was all nose and high cheekbones, Donovan Shane was not unappealing. Under the right circumstances, he could melt her like butter. But he was always so stiff around her, verging on antagonistic. Even if that was only a defense, a front to hide his insecurities—and, boy, she knew all about those—there was still no reason for her to be flustered by his hoping she’d give him a jump.

Of course, she’d suspected all along that secretly he thought she was sexy. The signals were obvious no matter how hard he tried to conceal them. She’d simply assumed that he’d go on fighting the attraction to a woman who was obviously not his type.

Apparently he was willing to lose the battle.

To test a lust potion he didn’t believe in?

Which meant his motivation was her.

Zoe was uncomfortable. While she was willing to charm her way in and out of sticky situations, she didn’t want to be responsible for Shane’s interests that way.

And yet…

And yet the way he was watching her made her nerves jangle. She felt like a top that had been spinning tightly in its place and was now wobbling out of control as it slowed.

She set her fists on top of the table. Giving over control wasn’t her strong suit. What she couldn’t manage, she avoided, starting with the day she’d run away from her duties as the last of the Aberdeens.

“I’m looking into the validity of the lust potion,” she said, her voice thick in her throat as she restated her objective to skim by the past few moments of sheer lunacy that might be a mutual attraction, even a potent one. “And I would very much appreciate it if you’d do me this one tiny, little favor and share the results of your tests.”

Shane opened his mouth, but she overrode him. “I know you have the sample. My friend Ethan Ramsey, the newspaper’s crime reporter, was the one who turned the potion over to Detective Arroyo when we first became suspicious.”

“I can’t—”

“But it was mine.” She skipped past the detail that Jag had planted the vial in her purse. “I did the responsible thing by seeing that the potion went to the authorities. Don’t I deserve special consideration?” She brought the tips of two fingers together. “Just a little?”

Shane remained unmoved. “You should have retained a sample. Then you could have taken it to a commercial lab for your own analysis.”

“We didn’t think of that.” She shrugged. “At the time, my friends and I didn’t seriously believe that the potion might be real.”

“You said you had suspicions.”

“That was only because of the officers that swarmed the shop as we were leaving. I guess there had been complaints about the product being a rip-off, so they were checking out the story.” She ground her teeth. She had to persuade him to help her out. “There have been actual symptoms since then, symptoms we can’t explain.”

“Symptoms of lust.” Shane crossed his arms. “Uh-huh. I’ll bet those are hard to come by in your world.”

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” If she counted Kathryn and Coyote as evidence.

Shane’s jaw, already firm, clenched even more. “But you haven’t experienced the effect yourself?”

“No.”

He waved a dismissal. “Then it’s all hearsay. That doesn’t cut it for me. Or a court of law.”

“No one’s being prosecuted.” Yet, she added silently, thinking of the cruiser arriving at Jag’s shop. She made a mental note to interview Detective Arroyo about the progress of the investigation.

“Doesn’t matter,” Shane said. “The lust potion is still in police custody. There may be charges pending.”

“The case can’t be very important if you haven’t analyzed the potion yet.”

“Who says I haven’t?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Me.” She glanced around the organized yet crowded room. The tables, desks and shelves were jammed with scientific accoutrements, including computers, microscopes, scales, a centrifuge and several impressive machines that were far more advanced than her knowledge. A large industrial waste can was labeled with a biohazard sign. She was most interested in the racks of beakers and test tubes that sat near a humming industrial steel freezer. “Where is the potion? On ice? Can I see it at least?”

His eyes went straight to one of the racks. He’d be a lousy poker player. “You’ve already seen it, so how would that help?”

She strolled past the central lab table. “Never mind. I can look for it myself. I’m sure it’s labeled.”

Shane moved with a swift athleticism she hadn’t expected out of him but should have, considering how often he went bicycling. If she’d looked past the dorky helmet and knee pads, she’d have noticed the muscles in his long legs and tight butt.

“Keep away,” he said. “Don’t touch. I have a chain of evidence to protect.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. She instantly froze. The warmth and strength of his grip was also surprising. A soft, gloppy weakness dropped through her, buckling her knees before she caught herself and snapped back to her center of balance.