How to Live with Temptation

by Fiona Brand

  Apparently, Esmae’s personal family items, for convenience, were situated close to the door. Almost instantly, Allegra spotted an old dresser shoved up against the wall. A small wooden box sat on top of it.

  In order to reach the dresser, she had to skirt a broken armchair and clamber across what looked like an ancient travelling trunk. The second she touched the box, which had a small white label on it bearing her name, a small pulse of excitement went through her.

  She brushed her palm over the smooth surface of the lid. As she cleaned the dust off, the nascent gleam of the letter A inset in mother-of-pearl in the fine, dark wood, sent another small thrill through her. This must have been Alexandra’s personal jewelry box.

  Out of nowhere, emotion washed through her, strong enough that she even felt faintly teary, which was unusual since she hadn’t expected to feel much of a connection. After all, she had never met Alexandra Mallory, and most of what she’d learned had left a conflicting impression.

  She hefted the box, which was surprisingly heavy, and decided to carry it downstairs where she could clean it up, wash her hands, then examine the contents in the light.

  Several minutes later, she set the box down on the kitchen counter. After washing the dust from her hands, she checked out the kitchen cupboards. Esmae had always kept the kitchen fully stocked with cleaning products and basic items, just in case someone came to stay, so there was no problem finding paper towels and hand wash.

  As she wiped away the remaining dust that coated the box, the quality of it became clear. Allegra couldn’t be sure, but the dark, swirling wood looked like rosewood, and the mother-of-pearl inlay wasn’t just confined to the letter A, but was used as a decorative edging and for a delicate filigree of flowers that encircled the A and flowed around the box.

  Throwing the soiled paper towels in the trash, she unlatched the silver catch and opened the lid. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but the faded diary sitting on top wasn’t it.

  She removed the diary and found a series of worn black velvet bags. She opened the first one and a fiery necklace flowed into her palm. She was no expert, but from the color shooting off the clear crystals, she was pretty sure they were diamonds. Although, she couldn’t really tell in this light. She would have to examine them in the morning, and get them properly assessed by a jeweler.

  If they were diamonds, that just didn’t make sense. She knew how the story went. Alexandra and Esmae were both supposed to have been broke.

  Who lost everything but held onto the family jewels?

  The remaining bags contained matching earrings, a brooch, a bracelet and a stunning ring. There were also simpler, prettier pieces, comprised of pearls and garnets, that looked like they belonged to an older time, the gold heavy and gleaming, the settings blurred.

  Feeling more than a little confused, because she hadn’t known that this jewelry even existed, and Esmae had never breathed a word, Allegra carefully replaced all of the items. She could only assume that her aunt had inherited the jewelry at some point but, because she had married an incredibly wealthy Hunt, she had stowed it away rather than wear something that might be contentious.

  But that still didn’t explain why Esmae had never spoken about it, or why it had all been left up here, to molder in a dusty attic.

  Leaving the box on the counter, she made her way through the dim house and climbed back up to the attic to see if she could locate the painting of Alexandra. She was in the middle of clambering across an old sofa when a scraping sound made her freeze. Her first thought was that she had disturbed rats, in which case she was leaving now; then the low, gravelly timbre of Tobias’s voice registered.

  “Damn, what’s happened to the lights?”

  Allegra stepped on something that shifted under her foot, a moldering pile of magazines. Luckily, she was still holding onto the back of the sofa, so she kept her balance. “I think I blew a fuse when I switched on the hall light.”

  A beam of light briefly pinned her. “When you didn’t return to the house, I thought something must have happened. I’ll check out the fuse box in the morning. If it’s still the old, antiquated system my grandfather had put in, the whole thing probably needs replacing.” He swept his phone light around the room. “Damn, didn’t Esmae throw anything away?”

  “Apparently not. And neither did anyone else.” She held up what looked like an ancient cattle whip. “I’m thinking this didn’t belong to Esmae.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  She caught the gleam of a wicked grin, quickly gone, and for a moment, her heart stopped in her chest. She had seen Tobias laugh and smile before, but it had always been for others, never for her.

  Tobias dragged the huge old horsehair sofa she had just scaled aside. The next obstacle was a large and hideous armchair that was leaking stuffing.

  He hefted the chair as if it weighed nothing, propping it on top of an old mattress. “About time most of this stuff went in a dumpster.”

  Dust swirled in the air, making her sneeze, but at least he had cleared a path. “Thanks, I think.” She found herself smiling in Tobias’s direction, which was faintly shocking, because in all the years she had known him, she didn’t think they had ever shared this kind of light banter.

  “No problem. Looks like Esmae stored a good three generations of junk up here. It’s going to take weeks to clear it all out.”

  Tobias beamed his phone light into the corner. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

  Allegra glimpsed the outline of a painting, covered by a sheet and propped against the wall. Her heart sped up. If she didn’t miss her guess, that was Alexandra’s portrait.

  “That would be four generations of junk,” she said softly.

  Dragging the dustcover aside, she shone her light on the painting and caught her breath. Apart from the fact that Alexandra’s skin was pale and her hair was darker than Allegra’s—and the time period was Victorian—it was eerily like looking into a mirror.

  Her great-grandmother had clearly been painted when she was young, possibly before she had married. Her smile was warm and faintly mischievious, as if she was on the edge of dissolving into laughter, and there was a sparkle in her very direct gaze. Allegra hadn’t expected to feel any kind of a connection with her ancestor, but the painting was so lifelike and vivid that it seemed to bridge the gap of years.

  Allegra checked out Alexandra’s hands in the painting. There was no ring, so she was definitely painted before she had married. She also noted that while Alexandra was wearing some of the older, more ornate garnet-and-pearl jewelry from the box, there wasn’t a diamond in sight.

  Tobias’s phone light joined with hers, bringing out the Titian glow of Alexandra’s hair, the gleam of her eyes and the exotic cut to her cheekbones, as if somewhere along the line she had Italian blood flowing through her veins. “She’s beautiful,”

  An unexpected glow of happiness flooded her as Allegra attempted to lift the painting up, in order to move it closer to the attic door. If Tobias thought Alexandra—who looked remarkably like herself—was beautiful, then, by definition, he must also think that she was beautiful.

  “I’ll get that.” Tobias lifted the heavy painting from her hands as if it weighed almost nothing and propped it by the attic door. “No wonder Jebediah wanted to marry her.”

  Allegra frowned. “That’s the first I’ve heard of that.”

  Tobias made his way across the attic to the nearest window. He yanked at a catch that had stuck, and eventually got the window open. A cooling breeze relieved the heat. “They were sleeping together, and he had plans to marry her. That was the reason he went into business with her.”

  Indignation rose in Allegra. “Last I heard, sleeping with a man isn’t part of a business contract, unless—”

  “She agreed to the marriage,” Tobias said bleakly. “Then, practically the next day a city lawyer
turned up and Alexandra and her two children disappeared. No explanations, no goodbyes. The lawyer wrote from New York to terminate the business relationship and the rest is history.”

  Suddenly, the animosity between the Hunts and the Mallorys was beginning to make more sense. It hadn’t all been about the oil well; it had been personal.

  Allegra stared at the fresh-faced portrait of a young lady with a firm chin and a remarkably steady gaze. Allegra hadn’t dwelled overmuch on the conflicted history of the Hunts and the Mallorys, but in her opinion, Alexandra didn’t look anything like a gold-digger. “It sounds like we have two different stories. Mine says that my great-grandmother who was left on her own after her husband died, brought up two children who turned out to be successful, functional human beings. When the money ran out, she died poor and still alone. I don’t know what happened between them, but Jebediah must have gotten it wrong.” But, even as she said the words, she couldn’t forget the cache of diamonds in the jewelry box downstairs.

  “Whether he got it wrong or not,” Tobias said on a flat, hard note, “it was Jebediah who got hurt.”

  Her gaze clashed with his. “But he clearly recovered and married, while Alexandra never did. Explain that. And, if she was so beautiful and so focused on the bottom line, why go to bed with a ranch hand? For that matter, why go into business with him? It doesn’t make sense. The obvious solution for a woman who wanted riches was to marry someone with a fortune.”

  “Is that what you would do?”

  The words seemed to drop into the well of the night, and suddenly the conversation was deeply, unbearably personal. Years of hurt coalesced into a hard bands across her chest. She had lost count of the times men, in general, had seen her as on the hunt for a rich husband, or trivialized her because she was a woman and attractive. For Tobias to do it was the last straw.

  “That would be no and no.” Dragging in a deep breath, she tried to dial down the tension that was humming through her. It registered that half the problem was that it was so hot and humid and dusty in the attic that it was hard to breathe. Deciding to leave the painting where it was and get it another day, she stepped through the door and started down the pitch-black stairs, her trusty phone with its light beaming ahead of her.

  She was aware of the click of the attic door closing, Tobias’s tread on the stairs behind her, and suddenly she was sick and tired of being treated like a cheap opportunist, and spoiling for a fight. When she reached the hall landing, she spun and jabbed a finger at his chest. “I don’t know how you can make a comment like that. You don’t know the first thing about me. I didn’t get a business degree because I wanted to sit at home doing my nails while some man goes out and provides for me. I prefer to create my own business opportunities and make my own money.”

  Something flashed in Tobias’s gaze. “And keep your men controllable. Like Mike.”

  Her brows drew together. There was something fundamentally wrong with the conversation. First she was some kind of cliché gold-digger looking for a man to take care of her. Now, apparently, she was domineering. “What makes you think Mike’s controllable?”

  “He is your employee.”

  “And you think I’d hold that over his head?”

  “It’s not the kind of relationship I’d be aiming for.”

  “Now I’m interested,” she shot back. “Tell me what the perfect relationship looks like, since, clearly I haven’t stumbled across it yet.”

  Tobias’s hand landed on the wall beside her head. Suddenly, he was close enough that she could smell the clean scent of his skin and the subtle hint of an expensive aftershave. “You need someone who won’t take orders.”

  “Last I heard you’re not even close to a love doctor.” She drew a lungful of air and lifted her chin, but that was a mistake, because it brought her mouth closer to his. “Got someone in mind?”

  Something heated and unbearably familiar flashed in his gaze. Wrong question. She had practically issued an invitation.

  “Now that you mention it,” he said flatly, “that would be me.”

  Nine

  Heat flooded Allegra, almost welding her to the spot. She met Tobias’s gaze boldly. “I thought you didn’t want a relationship.”

  “It’s more that I don’t want to want one,” he ground out.

  “That makes it worse!”

  His head dipped, and she felt the edge of his teeth on one lobe. Sensation arced through her. The passionate moments on her bedroom balcony replayed through her mind. She needed to move, now. The conversation had gotten too personal and, when it came to Tobias, her willpower wasn’t good. This close, she was reminded of the night they’d spent together, of how good it had felt before everything had gone so horribly wrong.

  She drew back. “What makes you think I still want you?”

  “This.” He brushed his mouth across hers.

  She drew an impeded breath. “That’s not fair.”

  Tobias picked up a strand of hair and wound it around his finger, tugging lightly. “Believe me, if I could control whatever it is that happens to me when you’re around, I would.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, that she was someone he was unwillingly attracted to, rather than someone he could have a genuine relationship with. But, along with the hurt, there was a glimmer of light at the end of a long, dark corridor. “But you do want me.”

  And, ever since they’d first slept together, he hadn’t been able to stop wanting her. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t enough, but it was something.

  “Six years now, and counting.”

  Her breath came in. She had expected him to say two years, not six.

  Six years ago, she’d had her first holiday in Miami. It had been a gift from Esmae to celebrate the successful completion of her first year at Stanford. It had also been the start of her crush on Tobias, who, at that point, had used to keep his yacht moored off the end of Esmae’s pier. Allegra had used to sit on the beach with her sunglasses and a magazine and try to pretend that she wasn’t fascinated and a little heartsick that Tobias always had his beautiful blond girlfriend in tow.

  Her aunt had been kind enough to invite her back during subsequent summer breaks. In all of that time, Tobias, who had always been cool and distant, had barely seemed to notice her. Until they had ended up sitting on the same log at a beach party that had followed the more formal birthday party Esmae had thrown.

  She planted her palms on the warm, hard muscle of his chest. “Then why did you walk away after our night together? Don’t tell me it was because of the Jebediah and Alexandra thing.”

  “To be honest, that never entered my mind—”

  “Because it doesn’t apply to us,” she said fiercely “It never has.”

  He pulled her close, and she let him, suddenly needing to feel that the wanting was real.

  “I’d broken up with Lindsay a couple of weeks earlier—”

  “The tall, blond girl you were engaged to?”

  And, suddenly, she got it. He had said six years, which meant he had wanted her while he had been in a relationship with Lindsay. She frowned, because that meant she had been the “other woman” for Lindsay, which wasn’t cool. Not that she had known it! “And you felt guilty because you wanted me.”

  “Something like that.”

  She registered that there was more that he wasn’t telling her, but it was hard to concentrate on what that could be when she was so thrilled that he had genuinely wanted her for six years. She was on the verge of probing into what, exactly, that more could be, when he leaned down and kissed her and the question dissolved.

  Lifting up on her toes, she angled her jaw to deepen the kiss, looped her arms around his neck and fitted herself more closely against him. His instant response sent a wave of heat through her.

  She registered his hands on her waist, then they were moving, one step backward, thr
ough a doorway. Even though it was dark, and the phone lights were not much help, if she didn’t miss her guess, this was the bedroom they had made love in last time. Two more steps, and she felt the soft but firm outline of a bed at the back of her knees.

  Tobias lifted his head, but she pulled his mouth back to hers and kissed him again, long enough that she felt she was drowning in sensation. His hands settled at her waist, then glided up her back. She felt her dress slacken as her zipper glided down. Flimsy cotton puddled around her feet on the floor. By the time she had stepped out of it, Tobias had dispensed with her bra.

  She dragged at the buttons of his shirt and found naked skin, and the intriguing roughness of the hair sprinkled across his chest. With an impatient movement, he finished the job, shrugged out of the garment and let it fall to the floor. His hands closed around her breasts, sending heated sensation zinging through her. He dipped his head and took one nipple into his mouth, and time seemed to slow, then stop, as heat gathered and coiled tight.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” he said huskily.

  A split second later, the room went sideways as he swung her up into his arms. Dimly, she registered that one of her sneakers had slipped off her foot, while the other was still on, then the coolness of the linen coverlet sent a faint shiver through her as he set her down on the soft expanse of the daybed.

  Outside, the wind, which had picked up, sent rain scattering against the windows. But in the darkened room, illuminated only by their phone lights, it still felt close and overly warm.

  Feeling suddenly vulnerable and exposed, despite not quite being naked, she toed off her remaining sneaker and watched as Tobias peeled out of his pants. Light and shadow flowed over his broad shoulders, tiger-striping his muscled torso and narrow hips, and her breath came in at his raw, masculine beauty. Dimly, she registered that Tobias had just sheathed himself with a condom. The fact that he carried condoms on him made her go still inside. Maybe he was just careful, and they were not for anyone specific. But the fact that he had them on hand pointed out the obvious, that Tobias was a sexually active male.