Carole Buck - Zoe And The Best Man

“Ah,” was all he said, glancing to his left.

It was a bad idea. A very bad idea. Because he shifted his attention at precisely the same moment he reached the row of pews in which Zoe was seated.

She was on the aisle. Close enough so that for one crazy instant he imagined he could smell the scent of her smooth, feminine flesh and fair, silken hair. Certainly close enough so that he could have touched her if he’d chosen to do so.

Again Flynn was buffeted by the changes he saw, and sensed, in her. The difference between Zoe’s appearance now and the way she’d looked nearly sixteen years ago was extraordinary enough. But the rest of it…

Her eyes met his. Her gentian blue gaze was cool. Selfcontained. Politely curious.

Nothing more.

After a moment she cocked her well-shaped chin upward a fraction of an inch. The long, lovely line of her throat arched, ever so slightly. Some fragment of his exhaustion-hazed brain registered that she was wearing a delicate silver chain and locket. He wondered with a surge of savagery whether the dainty piece of jewelry was a token from a lover.

Her brows lifted. Her expression clearly communicated the message that she was not the kind of female who was likely to be flattered by a stranger’s stare.

Flynn’s muscles clenched.

A stranger?

“Mr. Flynn, are you all right?” he heard the woman who’d identified herself as Eden Powell ask through the sudden pounding of his pulse. He was dimly conscious of the anxious pressure of her fingertips against his forearm.

“Never better,” he lied through his teeth, struggling to come to terms with what seemed to be the only possible explanation for Zoe’s distant manner.

Damn her!

She didn’t remember him.

“So that’s the infamous Flynn, hmm?” Annie Powell said several hours later, her long-lashed brown eyes sparkling as she watched the celebratory swirl on the dance floor. Among those coupled for a waltz were the bride and the best man. “You never mentioned he was such a hunk.”

Zoe nearly spewed out the sip of champagne she’d just imbibed. “H-hunk?” She stared at her former college roommate, shutting her mind to the memory of the wildfire lure of sexual attraction she’d felt outside the church. Her body was less amenable to discipline. She felt a quicksilver sluice of heat rinse through her veins. The tips of her breasts started to harden. “Hunk?”

“Oh, definitely,” Annie affirmed, fluffing her pertly bobbed hair. After a moment she transferred her gaze back to Zoe’s face. “Now I understand why you played it so cool when some of the hottest guys on the U. Va. campus were flinging themselves at your feet. What girl would settle for undergraduate frankfurters when she knew there was filet mignon in the world?”

Zoe struggled for control. She realized she was being teased. Teasing was one of Annie’s favorite activities. And most of the time she genuinely enjoyed her friend’s clever quips and perceptive little jokes. But on this particular occasion…

She wouldn’t have to stay much longer, she assured herself. During the traditional cutting of the wedding cake a short time ago, she’d noticed Peachy and Luc exchanging looks that indicated they were both eager for some privacy. A romantic getaway was definitely in the offing. As soon as the new Mr. and Mrs. Devereaux left the reception, she would be able to make a discreet exit from the scene.

And once she did that, she would never have to see Gabriel James McNally Flynn again. Out of Sight, Out of Mind was going to be her motto from this evening onward. She fully intended to forget her one-time rescuer as thoroughly as he seemed to have forgotten her.

She should have purged him from her thoughts a long time ago!

“I wasn’t playing at anything back at U. Va.,” she began, carefully placing her champagne glass on the small, linencovered table at which she and Annie were seated. “I was there to get a good education, not waste my time going to keg parties and football games with a bunch of frat rats. As for Flynn being prime filet mignon…well, you’re entitled to your opinion, of course. But all I see when I look at him is—is—” she searched furiously for a suitably scathing analogy “-gristle!”

Annie remained silent for several long seconds, appearing to subject this last assertion to a considerable amount of mental mastication. Zoe watched her dark eyes stray speculatively toward the dancers but refused to follow the visual cue. She knew Flynn was partnering Peachy and she felt no needno desire!—to watch him do it. She wondered nastily whether the former Special Forces officer realized that there was a world of difference between a waltz and a forced march. Bad luck for him if he didn’t. Although she didn’t know the new Mrs. Devereaux as well as she knew her older sister, Eden, she had a strong hunch that the former Pamela Gayle Keene wouldn’t take kindly to being ordered around like an incompetent recruit.

Her friend exhaled on a hissing breath then looked back at her with an oddly knowing expression. “He’s that tough, huh?”

“I told you what he did!” Zoe retorted, stung. In point of fact, Annie and Eden were the only two people in whom she’d ever confided the humiliating details of her five-day odyssey through the jungle. She’d given everyone else—the government officials who’d questioned her, even her mother and father—a carefully edited version of what had happened.

She never figured out exactly why she’d done this. She supposed it might have been because she’d harbored a fear that adults wouldn’t see anything wrong with Flynn’s behavior toward her. So he’d bruised her sensibilities, she’d imagined them saying to her. Didn’t she understand that he’d been acting in response to exigent circumstances? Couldn’t she see that what really, truly mattered was that he’d saved her life?

Her parents had actually declared that they thought their daughter’s rescuer deserved a medal. Whether formal action had ever been taken on this suggestion, Zoe didn’t know and had convinced herself she didn’t care. But given that inherited wealth and professional achievement had endowed Griffin Armitage and Alexis Fitzpatrick with a fair amount of pull in some pretty high places, she was inclined to guess that Flynn had at the very least received a glowing commendation for his personnel file at the Pentagon.

She’d wondered more than a few times what kind of accounting of his actions—and hers—Flynn had provided when he’d been debriefed by U.S. Army authorities, as he surely must have been. She’d also wondered whether he’d complained to his military buddies about “baby-sitting duty” as much as he’d complained to her.

“You told me he’d saved your life, Zoe,” Annie pointed out.

“I told you a lot of other things, too.”

“Well, yes. You did. It’s just that…uh…”

“Just what?”

Zoe watched as Annie began twiddling with the small bellshaped locket that dangled at the base of her throat. Except for the initial engraved on its softly gleaming surface, the exquisite silver ornament was identical to the ones hanging around her neck and that of the blushing bride.

“Annie?” she prodded.

Her friend stopped twiddling. “Okay,” she said, leaning forward. “First and foremost, I don’t doubt for a second that those five days you spent tromping around the jungle were every bit as awful as you told me and Eden.”

“I really appreciate your faith.”

The sugared sarcasm provoked a grimace of exasperation. “Come on, Zoe. I realize it was a terrible experience. And I’ll grant you that Flynn might have made it worse—”

“Might have?”