Hot Prospect

“The computers are down,” she said in a quavery tone.

He crooked his thumb at the filing cabinets lining the wall behind her. “How about your files?”

She scrunched up her face, staring vacantly at him.

“They look alphabetical. Maybe the cabinet that says E-F-G on it,” Jake suggested. “E for Explorers?”

“Oh.” She stumbled back there and pulled open the top drawer. “Hmm…these are mostly European tours. What did you say it was again?”

“Explorer’s Journey.”

“Is that Europe?” she asked, giving him a hopeful glance.

“I don’t know.”

She sighed again. “I don’t see anything.” After poking through those files for a few more minutes, she continued on to the second drawer, fumbled through a few more folders, let her shoulders sag in defeat, turned back, saw the look on Jake’s face, and—just at the point where he was ready to leap over the desk and start looking himself—reluctantly returned to her halfhearted search. “Nope. I don’t see anything…oh, wait. What did you say it was? Explorer’s Journey. Here it is.”

Jake held his breath. Although she seemed astonished to have located it, she actually had a file folder in her hands. The label pasted to the front really did identify it as Explorer’s Journey. She slid it onto her desk and opened it up, carefully, slowly flipping the pages over one at a time.

“Is there a brochure or anything in there? Any information?”

“No. Just the registration pages. They look really full. It must be popular.” She continued to turn pages at the speed of mud. Slow mud. “There’s one a month, I guess. Here’s March… April…”

Could she be any slower, even if she really, really tried? “I need July,” he reminded her, holding himself back from snatching the file away from her. “It’s supposed to leave tomorrow.”

“Here it is. July.” Peering down at it, she smoothed the page with one hand, blocking his view, neatly detaching a piece of pink memo paper clipped to the corner and setting it aside. “Oh, that’s too bad. All the spaces are filled.”

“Can’t you add me as an extra?” How hard could it be? He could see, even upside down, that there were names on all the lines, neatly divided into two columns. A quick count told him there were forty people scheduled to be on this trip. So what difference would it make if they went to forty-one?

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.” She turned the page around, pointing to the instructions scrawled across the top. Someone had written No Extras! No Waiting List! in big, bold letters.

Jake ignored that little problem for the moment, glancing down the list now that he had a chance to see it right side up, scanning for possibilities. One Antoinette, a Tonya, a Tori, and two names that just used T as a first initial. Plus there was one listed under the last name Antonini. The woman he was looking for could be any of them. Or none, if she had a pile of aliases.

“So you see I can’t add you,” she continued. “It’s very clear that I’m not allowed to do that even if I did know how to register you for this trip, which I don’t, because the computers are down and I can’t even look up what it costs or anything.”

She painstakingly reattached the pink memo and its paper clip and then moved to close the folder, but Jake laid a hand on top of hers. “Isn’t there any other way you can let me in on this tour? Anybody else I could contact? Any other source of info? Anything?”

“Not that I would know about…” Looking even more unhappy and put-upon, she glanced back at the beeping fax machine and blinking phone. “Here.” She shoved the folder at him. “You look.”

He flipped through it again, noting no contact name, no info, no help. But then he saw the pink memo attached to the June sheet, and his eyes caught the word “cancel.” Holding up the sheet of pink paper, he read aloud, “‘Zoë Kidd tried to cancel 6/12. Told her no cancel/no refund but would pass on her name if anyone wanted to buy her spot.’” He raised an eyebrow. “What about this? Can I buy her spot?”

“Oh. Well. I don’t know. I guess you can try,” she said with a shrug. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Then she wandered back to the fax machine as Jake considered this stroke of luck.

The tour was full, but Zoë Kidd wanted to cancel and had a space available to give. For the first time since he’d heard his father’s unlikely tale, Jake Calhoun began to smile.

Zoë Kidd. She wanted to cancel. He wanted her spot.

Sounded like a match made in heaven.

2

ZOË BREATHED in the scent of sandalwood from her meditation candles. Lovely. Soothing. Cleansing.

Sitting there on her new purple yoga mat, she maneuvered her legs into the full lotus position, balancing her elbows on her knees and curling her index fingers and thumbs into the proper O’s.

She had a terrible impulse to sneeze, and she decided she probably shouldn’t have lit all eleven candles at the same time. The waves of sandalwood were really kind of overpowering. But eleven was her lucky number. And now that she had gotten herself twisted like a pretzel into the full lotus, she really didn’t want to extract herself just to blow out a few candles.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. Lovely. Soothing. Cleansing. Breathe the sandalwood, she ordered herself. And don’t think. Whatever you do, don’t think.

Yeah, right. Don’t think about the fact that today was supposed to have been her wedding day and tomorrow was supposed to have been the day that she and that snake Wylie left for their honeymoon on the Explorer’s Journey.

He was the one who’d wanted to get married, damn it. She was perfectly happy to live together. Or not even, just to coexist peacefully in their separate apartments. But no. He’d insisted they had to be married. And she’d said, But we’re not ready for that. We have issues. And he’d said, But, hon, I want to be a real couple, like regular people. I want to build a real life together. Which made her heart melt a little, just like he knew it would. If we have issues, Wylie had told her, so sincere, we can work through them.

Which should’ve been a hint right there that Wylie was off his rocker at that particular moment, because he was so not the work-through-your-issues type. But then, like the dim bulb she was, she had been thrilled to hear him finally admit that, yes, there were things that he needed to improve—because this was sure as heck the first time he’d ever said that, seeing as how he was convinced he was perfect. So she’d said, quite sternly, actually, Yes, Wylie, I will marry you, but only if we go on the Explorer’s Journey for our honeymoon because I just saw it on Oprah. Newlyweds only, all about communication, harmony, trust, blah, blah, blah, all the things we have trouble with. It’ll be the perfect way to work through some things, right there, right then. And we can begin our married life as full and equal partners, communicating, harmonizing, trusting.

Had there been a funny light of terror in his eyes when he’d agreed? Or was that just hindsight?

“Did you ever have any intention of doing the Explorer’s Journey with me?” she asked out loud. “And if not, why the hell couldn’t you say so before I paid for the damn thing?”

Well, there she was, with her eyes wide-open, not calm or relaxed or cleansed at all. And her right ankle was starting to kill her where it was mashed between her other leg and her lap, not to mention the fact that the backs of both thighs were plastered to her mat.

“Ow…” She wrenched herself out of her lotus position, peeling the sticky mat away from her skin. She was positively dripping with sweat in this hateful apartment. It was so humid, without a hint of a breeze. And all those candles were making it worse. “I shouldn’t be wearing shorts. But it’s too hot for long pants! And I could’ve afforded air-conditioning if I hadn’t paid for that stupid Explorer’s Journey. They can just stuff their no-cancellation policy.”

Well, she wasn’t feeling particularly meditative, was she? Maybe a few rounds with her tarot cards would help her get in touch with her higher power and stop all the angsting already.

Refastening one reddish-brown braid back over the top of her head, she slicked the moisture off her forehead with the back of one hand, swearing again, louder this time. Stupid, stupid Wylie for being too chicken to be part of a real couple. Stupid, stupid Zoë for ever thinking he was worth it in the first place. She’d ignored her cards on that one, when they kept throwing her the Prince of Hearts every time she asked about Wylie. Everyone knew the Prince of Hearts meant an Inconstant Suitor. Which described Wylie exactly.

“How can you respect a man who doesn’t know his own mind?” she groused. “I should’ve believed the cards.”

Zoë picked herself up off the ground and started rooting around on her bookshelves for her pack of Enchanted Tarot Cards. They had beautiful pictures and she really did find them soothing as long as they kept that nasty Inconstant Suitor card to themselves. The deck was on the bottom shelf, and she was bent over, reaching for the last card, which had slipped to the very back of the shelf, when she heard the clomp of footsteps coming up the stairs to her apartment. She paused. Maybe a new student, she thought. Which would be a very good thing, because she needed the extra money now that she’d spent every last dime she had on the nonrefundable Explorer’s Journey.

She raised her head, planning to call out to whoever it was to just come on in, but she lifted up too quickly, cracking her head squarely on the next shelf.

“Yeow!” she cried, stumbling back, scattering a waterfall of tarot cards like something out of Alice in Wonderland. There was only one card left in her hand.

She rubbed the back of her head, almost slipping as she stepped on one of the slick cards on the floor. She groaned. It had to be bad karma to drop all your tarot cards. “I guess I’d better pick ’em up.” She slid the one card she still had into the back pocket of her shorts and bent down to get the deck back together before the potential student walked in and saw the mess. But when she bent over, she started to feel really dizzy. “I must’ve bumped it harder than I thought,” she whispered, stretching her fingers to her toes, letting her head hang down to the floor while she recovered her equilibrium. It was at that point she heard the door open behind her.

“Come—” she began, but she only got the one syllable out.

“Stop, police!” a very male voice announced. “Don’t move!”

“What? Stay where I am?” Bent over with her backside in the air? Frozen to the spot, she stared at him through her legs. Good God, he had a gun! Kinda cute, but scary, with both his arms outstretched and that creepy gun pointed mostly at the floor. But he wasn’t wearing a uniform. Man. Gun. “Are you really a cop? Show me your badge!” she screamed.

He immediately pulled out a shield and flashed it at her. Okay, good. So he really was a cop.

“Were you shouting at someone?” he asked in a calmer voice, relaxing his stance a little as he surveyed the empty room.