The Last Man on Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

beats, so hard she wondered if he could feel it where their bodies met. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and closed her eyes, needing a few seconds to get her head screwed back on straight, since at the moment the top of it felt as if it might blow right off.
    What on earth was she doing? She didn’t even like Zack, so why had she let him kiss her? Worse, how could she have let his kiss affect her so strongly?
    ’Cause, wow, had it ever!
    At the next break in the music, she excused herself and headed for the ladies’ room.
    Once inside, she held her hands under a stream of cool tap water, then blotted a few drops over her face and along her throat.
    She studied her reflection in the mirror.
    Cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, lips reddened—she looked like a woman who’d just been thoroughly kissed.
    I have to get out of here.
    She knew a rear hallway ran behind the ballroom. If she slipped around that way, she figured she could retrieve her coat and be outside and into a cab in a matter of minutes.
    She pushed open the door and stepped into the corridor.
    Zack unfolded himself from the opposite wall, where he’d been waiting.
    She stopped short, flustered. “Do you often loiter outside the ladies’ room?” she said, going on the defensive in order to cover up her discomfort.
    “Not generally, but something told me I might not see you again tonight if I didn’t.”
    There were times, she thought, when he could be way too perceptive. “As a matter of fact, I was just heading out.”
    “Without a good-bye?”
    “I didn’t think you’d need one, a big boy like you.”
    He laid a hand on his chest and made an exaggerated face. “I’m wounded.”
    “To the bone, I’m sure,” she said sarcastically. “But if a good-bye will make it all better, then good-bye and good night.”
    She started forward, but he caught her before she could take more than a couple of steps. “Don’t go. Not yet. I mean, has it really been so terrible tonight? Spending time with me?”
    She considered lying, knew she probably should.
    “No,” she answered honestly, “it hasn’t.”
    And maybe that was the problem. She’d liked being with him, far more than she should.
    Christ, she really needed to get out of here.
    “Look, it’s late and I’ve had way past my limit of alcohol,” she said. “I need to be going.”
    “Okay, sure, then I’ll take you.”
    “Oh no. That’s not necessary. I’ll be fine in a cab.”
    “If you can get one. It’s New Year’s Eve, remember? I wouldn’t feel right unless I made sure you made it home safely.”
    He took her elbow and steered her toward the ballroom. “We’ll grab your coat, take a brief detour upstairs to get mine, then be on our way.”
    “Upstairs?”
    “I booked a room, a suite. I often do for holiday parties I know will run late. It’s convenient having a place close when I’m ready to call it an evening. Beats dragging home through heavy traffic in the dark and the cold.” He stopped in front of the coat check. “Do you have your ticket?”
    Madelyn retrieved the stub from her small beaded handbag and handed it directly to the woman in the booth instead of passing it to Zack.
    She waited until the clerk moved out of earshot. “I am not going up to your hotel room with you.”
    “Why not? Afraid I’ll put the moves on you the moment the door’s closed?”
    She returned his look with a firm one of her own. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”
    “I promise nothing will happen that you don’t want to happen. Okay?”
    “Okay,” she said.
    For some inexplicable reason, she believed him.
    He handed her coat to her and smiled. “Ready when you are.”

C HAPTER THREE
    C lean and attractively furnished, the hotel suite was decorated in a muted collage of blues and grays. A conversational grouping of plump upholstery and wood—sofa, chairs, coffee and end tables, and an armoire—took up the majority of the main room. A narrow Pullman kitchen and wet