LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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