Her Hidden Falls Bodyguard Billionaire Cowboy - Taylor Hart Page 0,36
before …” He checked the clock in the kitchen. “Before six a.m.?”
She fetched a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, taking a nice, long gulp. “Since you left Hidden Falls, I started running.”
He looked her up and down, unable to believe it. Not that she wasn’t smoking hot—she was—but he hadn’t realized she’d been exercising. “You woke up before me?”
She laughed and opened the fridge, pulling out some eggs. “Go for your run, and when you come back, I’ll have some breakfast for us.”
It was like he was in some kind of upside-down world. “You’re cooking for me, too?”
“You’d better stop, or I’ll make you take dance lessons at the resort.”
Dumbly, Sean rushed to his room and got his shoes on. He was still unable to believe that Zoey was running, and especially that Zoey had gotten up before him. He moved back through the kitchen to the back door.
“Should we go parasailing today?” she asked. “Does that sound good?”
“Perfect,” he agreed, flinging open the door.
And that was exactly how the rest of the day went. They ate breakfast, then went to the dock by the resort and out on a boat to parasail. There, they met another couple named Jim and Sara Winters, and “the Baxters” and the Winters had lunch together. Zoey was funny and teasing and kissy. Not a long kiss kind of a thing, but she’d kissed his cheeks, then his lips when they were at lunch and he said something complimentary about her. The couples agreed to meet back at the main part of the resort to go to the Mexican restaurant together.
Now, as he and Zoey walked hand in hand back toward the beach house, so many feelings buzzed through him. He’d thought he was done with this woman before he joined the FBI. Now he was even more in love with her, but he couldn’t be. He dropped her hand and raked it through his hair.
“Fun day,” she said. She smiled and tilted her face up to the moon, as if she were a flower absorbing moonlight.
All he wanted to do was grab her, hold her, stroke her hair, kiss her. Drink from her. The thought hit him hard, and he stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, turning back.
There was no way he could tell her these feelings. After all, this brave woman was willing to testify and put away this criminal, then sacrifice her own freedom and become someone new again. “Nothing,” he said, picking up the pace and letting out a light laugh. “You just … You’re absorbing moonlight or something strange.”
She squinted at him. “What?”
For fear of saying something stupid, he quoted Lord Byron. “‘She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that’s best of dark and bright meet her in aspect and her eyes …’”
“I always liked that part of you.”
“What part?”
She took his hand again. “The poetry part.”
They walked quietly for a few minutes.
“What were you saying about me absorbing moonlight?” she said after a while.
“The way you put your head back and …” He sounded insane. “Nothing. I guess thinking about, er, Angela, when we would always tease you about a full moon and you would read palms.” He realized that he was babbling like a complete idiot. “Never mind.”
“I bet it might be hard for you to know who I am.”
He nodded. “I’m getting to know you again.”
She stared at him.
“I like you. I know that.”
“I like me, too, but I’ll be honest with you. It’s hard for me to know the real me.” She shrugged. “The one that is just me. Not trying to be Angela, into the things Angela was into—not that I don’t like that stuff, I do—it just feels like this rabbit hole. I try to be me, but then I do like some of the things Angela liked and it’s confusing sometimes.”
“I think it would be.” He reflected on what he’d learned about her. “Tell me about Zoey. The Zoey before she went into WITSEC.”
She let out a light laugh. “You know I worked for my brother at the coffee shop.”
“Right.”
“Well, I was going to school to be a computer programmer.”
“What?” He couldn’t picture the astrology-loving Angela as a technical girl.
“How do you think I evaded the FBI and the Rafael Cortez family for so long?”
He couldn’t even fathom it, but he thought of the guarded way she never let him into her personal life. “You wouldn’t let me upstairs because you