“Help yourself in here,” Zoe said when they’d entered the kitchen. She turned to face him and for the briefest of beats her eyes flicked to his mouth and he knew she was thinking about the kiss, too.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I probably won’t be around much.”
“Wyatt said you’re on vacay. What brings a guy to Sunshine, Idaho, for a vacation?”
Much more than he was willing to share, starting with the fact that forced leave would’ve been far more accurate than vacay. “Peace and quiet,” he said.
She looked at him from fathomless light brown eyes that appeared to be as good at hiding her thoughts as his own were. Good for her. She was interesting, his temporary landlord, he’d give her that.
And she tasted good, too.
“Wyatt also says that you work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” she said, watching him carefully. “And that you travel around a lot.”
Close enough, he supposed, even if it was an understatement on all counts. He was actually a supervisory special agent, or RAC—Resident Agent in Charge. It was his division’s duty to enforce the many federal conservation laws in place to protect endangered species and other forms of wildlife. He did so by investigating and infiltrating wildlife trafficking rings, illegal guiding operations, and all matter of assorted other criminal groups.
Since that often meant going undercover for cases that ranged from a simple buy-bust transaction to multi-month undercover stings, it was his usual MO to leave out the details. “Yep, I’m at the USFW service,” was all he said. Besides, this was just small talk, casual chatter. She might as well have said, Nice weather we’re having.
Except that he didn’t feel casual with her and he suspected it had something to do with the way she was still looking at him with those honey-colored eyes that inexplicably drew him when he didn’t want to be drawn.
Did she feel it, too?
Did it matter? No, he decided, it didn’t. Whatever the odd tension between them, nothing was going to happen. So he met her gaze calmly and coolly, usually a pretty clear indication that he didn’t want to be engaged in further conversation, but his heart wasn’t in it.
And it didn’t matter anyway, because unlike most everyone else, she completely ignored the look, pushing for more information. “So you what?” she asked. “Keep hunters and fishermen in line, making sure no one exceeds their license quota, that sort of thing?”
He could appreciate her nosiness. He really could. He himself was nosy as hell, but he never spilled his guts, no matter how good a woman tasted. And she smelled good, too, like chocolate chip cookies, so he made some vague sound of agreement to her assessment of the job she’d described, a job that was genuinely important.
It just wasn’t his job.
“What about poachers?” she asked, not giving up. “People are always getting arrested for poaching in Idaho.” She paused. “You mentioned wrangling some big-game poachers.”
So she tasted good and she was sharp.
He made another low hum of vague agreement because she was right, poaching was a problem. In fact, the man he was currently hunting had started out poaching and had made millions on his illegal gains.
Not that he was going to share with the class.
“You Fish and Wildlife guys have a reputation for being real hardasses,” she said. “You a hardass, Parker?”
“The hardest,” he said.
That got him a smile. “It’s a good thing, the job you do,” she said, surprising him. “We’d lose a lot of species to extinction without you.”
Aw, hell. Now he felt like a dick for misleading her, but he still kept his silence. She didn’t need to know that he had a reputation for being one of the toughest wildlife criminal investigators in the country—something he’d proven the hard way with his badge and gun. Officially he worked out of the D.C. office, but the truth was he was actually rarely there.
He’d arrested people who’d smuggled ivory, skins, rhino horns, parrots, and rare reptiles from all over the world. Big-game poachers had become his trophies in federal court. In one case he’d arrested a cheetah poacher who’d smuggled illegal hides from Africa into the United States. He’d located and stopped eagle poachers who were using traps, bullets, and poisons to kill the birds for their feathers. His cases had halted illegal use of endangered-species body parts in Chinese medicine from New York to San Francisco.
Fact was, over his career he’d worked hundreds of cases for wildlife—each of them unique, all-consuming, and dangerous. As a result, he’d lost more than one decent relationship with a woman to the job, and most of his family. And this latest job hadn’t proved to be any different—none of which he wanted to talk about.
Zoe looked at him for a long minute and then blessedly changed the subject. “So when you are around,” she said, “do you cook?”
He smiled at the hopeful tone in her voice. “Yes, but only when I’m trying to get laid.”
She snorted and then turned away, clearly over him.
He told himself that worked for him. Completely. Socializing wasn’t high on his list of priorities. Hadn’t been for three weeks now. Getting hit by a truck full of big-game poachers making their getaway had put a real kink in his life plan. But since it had nearly put a kink in his life period, he wasn’t complaining.
Much.
And he’d caught the bad guys. Or some of them anyway, though their ringleader, Tripp Carver, aka the Butcher, had eluded him—which the slippery son of a bitch had been doing for three long years now.
A fact that infuriated Parker beyond reason.
Around him, the kitchen smelled delicious, and his gaze locked in on the plate of cookies on the far counter. Homemade cookies. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had homemade anything, and like Pavlov’s dog he migrated over there, passing an open laundry room on the way. In the doorway hung the only thing that could have taken his eyes off the cookies—a row of enticingly lacy and silky things in all colors and textures.
Damn. They were hot as hell, especially when he pictured them on the leggy brunette trying to ignore him every bit as much as he was trying to ignore her.
But then she caught where his gaze had gone and gasped in clear horror at the sight, as if she’d completely forgotten the things were there. To his dismay, she started snatching down the panties and bras, shoving them into a basket.
“Sorry,” she said, grabbing something black and lacy. “It’s been a hectic week.”
“No apologies necessary.” His voice sounded rough and husky to his own ears, but his brain was very busy picturing her in that black and lacy number and it was messing with his entire equilibrium in a big way.
“It’s laundry day,” she said, her cheeks red as she hugged the basket to herself. “The dryer’s harsh on delicates.”
“I’ll remember that. I’ll be sure to hang all my delicates,” he said.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like laughing so much in such a short period of time. Not surprising as the entire first part of the year he’d been on a joint task force between the Department of Justice and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, stuck in a courtroom testifying on a case for two months. For most of that time he’d alternated between wanting to bash his head against the wall in frustration at the snail’s pace of the case and yearning to get back in the field, back to doing what he did best—sniffing out the asshats of the animal world.