His for the Taking by Julie Cohen Page B

to Fairfield and visit us? Kelsey and Justin would love to see their auntie.’
    ‘I’ll bring the cab by the next time I have a fare out there,’ Zoe lied.
    She knew when Nick came up next to her, partly because she felt a warming and excitement of the air, partly because of the breath of freshness that seemed to cling to his body, and partly because both her sisters’ eyes widened.
    Jade might be happily married with two toddlers and Cindy might have half the male population of New York at her feet, but neither one of them minded having a good look at a prime specimen of man. Zoe guessed that was one family trait she’d inherited, at least.
    ‘Jade, Cindy, this is Nick,’ Zoe said, and watched as her gorgeous sisters beamed all their blonde beauty in Nick’s direction. Nick smiled, obviously dazzled, and held out his hand to them.
    ‘Nick, these are my sisters,’ Zoe said unhappily, watching him shake hands with each of them in turn. ‘Is Di already here?’
    Jade and Cindy were bound to know where their second eldest sister was; the three of them were practically attached by mobile phone.
    ‘She’s upstairs with Mom and Dad,’ Cindy answered, not tearing her eyes away from Nick’s handsome face.
    The elevator dinged. ‘Well, we might as well go up,’ Zoe said. She restrained the urge to put her arm through Nick’s in the sort of possessive gesture she often saw her mom and her two older sisters making with their men. There wasn’t any point. He wasn’t her possession, and he never would be, and Jade and Cindy would never believe her even if she pretended.
    When they stepped in the elevator Zoe could see that her sisters were dying to ask all about Nick. They were holding it in well, though. Jade was arranging her pretty face into the sombre expression appropriate for a reading of one’s great-aunt’s will, and Cindy wasn’t about to break etiquette if Jade didn’t first.
    ‘Poor Aunt Xenia,’ she said instead, softly.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Zoe, irritated, because Cindy hadn’t spent more than four hours with Xenia in the past five years, as far as Zoe knew. ‘Getting killed while doing a skateboarding stunt was a pretty classy way to go. I bet she was pleased.’
    ‘Zoe,’ Jade said, more for form’s sake than because she could ever possibly be shocked by anything that Zoe said.
    ‘Really,’ Zoe said. ‘I bet she’s up in heaven laughing her ass off. Nick and I were just talking about it, weren’t we Nick?’
    She heard the possessiveness in her voice, as blatant as the gesture she’d resisted, and winced.
    ‘We were, and it does seem like a good way to go,’ Nick said genially, and Zoe was immediately fifty times as irritated because Jade and Cindy didn’t demur against Nick’s comment and it seemed as if she needed him for backup. Which she didn’t.
    Zoe made a mental note not to ask Nick anything else. Her family would be all too glad to see her depending on a man.
    The elevator dinged and they all went into the plushly carpeted hallway, and down it to the lawyers’ office. Zoe hadn’t been here before, but she guessed if you had to choose a lawyer it made sense to choose one who was rich, because they obviously had to be good at their stuff to earn all that money. Nick opened the glossy door for them as if he’d been opening doors for women all his life—he probably had; he had that whole ‘shining armour and white charger thing’ going on—and Jade and Cindy glided in as if men had been opening doors for them all their lives, which they had, of course. Zoe filed in after them, her hands on her hips.
    Her mother and father and other sister Di were all in the waiting room, sitting on leather chairs. They stood when the four of them came in and there was the obligatory hugging session. Zoe suffered it.
    ‘Oh, Jade, you look stunning,’ her mother said, fingering Jade’s cashmere cardigan, and then turning to Cindy with a smile. ‘And that suit is beautiful,