by Lisa Jackson
“It doesn’t do any good. Besides, that’s only part of the story. I owed my father a favor—a big favor.”
The uneasy feeling that had been threatening to overtake Sheila all evening caused her to shudder involuntarily. “And you’re repaying him now, aren’t you?”
“In my opinion, yes. You see,” he continued in a flat, emotionless voice, “when my son, Sean, was born, there were problems I wasn’t able to handle alone. I was too young. I was forced to ask and rely upon my father for help. He complied, and the bastard has never let me forget it.”
“But what about Sean’s mother?” Sheila questioned. “Certainly she could have helped if there were a problem with the child. Sean was her responsibility as well as yours.”
“Marilyn?” Noah’s face contorted at the irony of the suggestion and the memory of a young girl he had once thought he loved. “You don’t seem to understand, Sheila. Marilyn was the problem, at least the most evident problem, and it took all of my father’s money and power to deal with her effectively.”
“I shouldn’t have asked—it’s none of my business,” Sheila stammered, stunned by the look of bitterness and hatred on the angled planes of Noah’s proud face.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it never did. Anyway, it’s all a part of the past, dead and buried.”
Sheila pushed herself onto unsteady legs beginning to rise from the table. “There’s no reason for you to tell me all of this.”
His hand reached out and captured her wrist, forcing her to stay near him. “You asked,” he reminded her.
“I’m sorry. It was my mistake. Perhaps we should go.”
“Before you see all of the skeletons in the Wilder closets?” he mocked.
She felt her spine become rigid. “Before I lose track of the reason I came here with you.”
Her dark eyebrows lifted elegantly, and Noah thought her the most intriguingly beautiful woman he had ever met. “Am I coercing you?” she asked as her eyes dropped to her wrist, still shackled in his uncompromising grip.
“If you are, lady, it’s only because I want you to,” he rejoined, but the tension ebbed from his face and his hand moved slightly up her forearm, to rub the tender skin of her inner elbow. “Let’s go,” he suggested, helping her from the chair. His hand never left her arm as he escorted her down the stairs and into the night. He carried her coat and wrapped his arm over her shoulders to protect her from the damp breeze that still held the promise of rain.
The drive back to the Wilder estate was accomplished in silence as Noah and Sheila were individually wrapped in their own black cloaks of thought. Though separated from him in the car, Sheila felt mysteriously bound to the darkly handsome man with the knowing blue eyes. What’s he really like? her mind teased. In the flash of an instant she had seen him ruthless and bitter, then suddenly gentle and sensitive. She sensed in him a deep, untouched private soul, and she longed to discover the most intimate reaches of his mind. What would it hurt? her taunting mind implored. What were the depths of his kindness, the limits of his nature? He’ll hurt you, her bothersome consciousness objected. A man hurt you in the past, when you opened yourself up to him. Are you foolish enough to let it happen again? Just how far do you dare trust Noah Wilder, and how far can you trust yourself?
The Volvo slowed as Noah guided the car past the stone pillars at the entrance of the circular drive. The headlights splashed light on the trunks of the stately fir trees that guarded the mansion. As Ben Wilder’s home came into view, Sheila pulled herself from her pensive thoughts and realized that she had accomplished nothing toward furthering her purpose. She had intended to find a way, any way, to get the insurance proceeds to rebuild the winery, and she had failed miserably. She didn’t even know if Noah had the power or the desire to help her. Had the insurance company paid off Wilder Investments? The car ground to a halt as Sheila discovered her mistake. Caught in her fascination for a man she had been warned to mistrust, she had lost sight of her purpose for making the trip to Seattle.
“Would you like to come in for a drink?” Noah asked as he flicked off the engine and the silence of the night settled in the interior of the car.
“I don’t think so,” she whispered, trying to push aside her growing awareness of him.
“We have unfinished business.”
“I know that. You’ve found a way to successfully dodge the subject of the winery all evening. Why?”
Noah smiled to himself. “I didn’t realize that I was. Would you like to come inside and finish the discussion?”
Sheila caught her breath. “No.”
“I thought you were anxious to get the insurance settlement,” he replied, his eyes narrowing as he studied her in the darkness.
“I am. You know that, but I happen to know when I’ve been conned.”
“Conned?” he repeated incredulously. “What are you talking about?”
“It was difficult to get you on the phone and when I finally did, you refused to see me with some ridiculous excuse that any decision about the winery had to be made by your father. Then you agreed to talk about it over dinner, but conveniently avoided the issue all night. Why would I think that anything’s going to change? You haven’t listened to me at all….”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve listened to everything you’ve said all evening,” he interrupted in a low voice.
“Then what’s your decision?”
“I’ll tell you that, too, if you’ll join me for a drink.” His hand reached for hers in the car. “Come on, Sheila. We’ve got the rest of the night to talk about anything you want.”
Again she felt herself falling under his spell, her eyes lost in his and her fingers beginning to melt in the soft, warm pressure of his hands. “All right,” she whispered, wondering why this man, this stranger, seemed to know everything about her. And what he didn’t know, she wanted to divulge to him….
The fire in the den had grown cold, and only a few red embers remained to warm the room. Noah quickly poured them each a drink and took a long swallow of his brandy before kneeling at the fire and adding a wedge of cedar to the glowing coals. As he stood, he dusted the knees of his pants with his palms. Sheila sipped her drink and watched him, noticing the way his oxford cloth shirt stretched over his shoulders as he tended the fire and then straightened. In her mind she could picture the ripple of muscles in his back as he worked.
When Noah turned to face her, she couldn’t hide the embarrassed burn of her cheeks, as if she expected him to read the wayward thoughts in her eyes.
“Can I get you anything else?” he asked, nodding toward the glass she held tightly in her hands.
“No…nothing…this is fine,” she whispered.
“Good. Then why don’t you sit down and tell me what you intend to do with the insurance settlement, should it be awarded you.”
Sheila dropped gratefully into a wingback chair near the fire and looked Noah squarely in the eyes. “I don’t expect you to hand me a blank check for a quarter of a million dollars, you know.”
“Good, because I have no intention of doing anything of the kind.” Sheila felt butterflies in her stomach. Was he playing with her again? His face was unreadable in the firelight.
“What I do expect, however, is that you and I mutually decide how best to rebuild Cascade Valley, hire a contractor, put the funds in escrow and start work immediately.” Her gray eyes challenged him to argue with her logic.
“That, of course, is assuming that the insurance company has paid the settlement to Wilder Investments.”
“Hasn’t that occurred?” Sheila asked, holding her breath. Certainly by now, over a month since the fire, payment had been made.
“There’s a little bit of a hitch as far as Pac-West Insurance Company is concerned.”
Sheila felt herself sinking into despair. “The arson?” she guessed.
Shadows of doubt crowded Noah’s deep blue eyes. “That’s right. Until a culprit is discovered, the insurance company is
holding tightly on to its purse strings.”
Sheila blanched as the truth struck her. “You think my father had something to do with the fire…. You think he deliberately started it, don’t you?” she accused in a low voice that threatened to break.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it!”
“Not at all. I’m only pointing out the insurance company’s position…nothing else.”
“Then I’ll have to talk to someone at Pac-West,” Sheila said. “One of those claims adjusters, or whatever they are.”
“I don’t think that will do any good.”
“Why not?”
His smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Because, for one thing, I’ve already tried that. The insurance company’s position is clear.”
“Then what can we do?” Sheila asked herself aloud.
Noah hedged for a moment. How much could he tell her? Was she involved in the arson? Had her father been? He rubbed his thumbnail pensively over his lower lip and stared at Sheila. Why did he feel compelled to trust this beguiling woman he didn’t know? As he studied the innocent yet sophisticated curve of her cheek, the slender column of her throat and the copper sheen to her thick, chestnut hair, he decided to take a gamble and trust her…just a little. His intense eyes scrutinized her reaction, watching for a flicker of doubt or fear to cross her eyes.
“What we can do is investigate the cause of the fire ourselves,” he explained thoughtfully.
Her eyebrows furrowed. “How?”
“Wilder Investments has a private investigator on retainer. I’ve already asked him to look into it.”
“Do you think that’s wise? Doesn’t the insurance company have investigators on its staff?”
“Of course. But this way we can speed things up a little. Unless you’re opposed to the idea.”
If she heard a steely edge to his words, she ignored it and dug her fingernails into the soft flesh of her palm. “I’ll do anything I can to clear my father’s name and get the winery going again.”
“It’s that important to you?” he asked, slightly skeptical. “Why?”
“Cascade Valley was my father’s life, his dream, and I’m not allowing anyone or anything to take away his good name or his dreams.”
“You want to carry on the Lindstrom tradition, is that it? Follow in your father’s footsteps?”
“It’s a matter of pride…and tradition, I suppose.”
“But your father bought his interest in the winery less than twenty years ago. It’s not as if Cascade Valley has been a part of your family’s history,” he observed, testing her reaction. How much of what she was saying was the truth? All of it? Or was she acting out a well-rehearsed scene? If so, she was one helluva convincing actress.
Sheila was instantly wary. The doubts reflected in Noah’s eyes lingered and pierced her soul. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged indifferently. “Running the day-to-day operation at the winery is a hard job. You’ll have to be an accountant, manager, personnel director, quality control inspector…everything to each of your employees. Why would a woman with a small child want to take on all of that responsibility?”
“For the same reasons a man would, I suppose.” Her eyes lighted with defiance.
His voice was deathly quiet as he baited her. “A man might be more practical,” he suggested, inviting her question.
“How’s that?”
“He might consider the alternatives.”
“There are none.”
“I wouldn’t say that. What about the option of selling out your interest in the winery for enough money to support you and your daughter comfortably?”
Sheila tried to keep her voice steady. “I doubt that anyone would be interested in buying. The economy’s slow, and as you so aptly pointed out earlier, Cascade Valley has had more than its share of problems.”
Noah set his empty glass on the mantel. “Perhaps I can convince the board of directors at Wilder Investments to buy out your share of the winery.”
Jonas Fielding’s warning echoed in Sheila’s ears. Noah was offering to buy out her interest in Cascade, just as the crafty lawyer had predicted. A small part of Sheila seemed to wither and die. In her heart she had expected and hoped for more from him. In the short time she had known him, she had learned to care for him and she didn’t want to let the blossoming feelings inside her twist and blacken with deceit. She couldn’t be manipulated, not by Ben Wilder, nor by his son. “No,” she whispered nearly inaudibly as she lifted her eyes to meet his piercing gaze. “I won’t sell.”
Noah saw the painful determination in the rigid set of her jaw and the unmasked despair that shadowed her eyes as she silently accused him of a crime he couldn’t possibly understand. She had tensed when he had mentioned the possibility of buying out the winery, but it had only seemed logical to him. What did she expect of him…more money? But, he hadn’t even named a price. “I can assure you, Sheila, that Wilder Investments would be more than generous in the offer.”
Her quiet eyes turned to gray ice. “I don’t doubt that, but the point is, I’m not interested in selling.”
“You haven’t even heard the terms.”
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t sell,” she repeated coldly. How much like the father he so vehemently denounced was Noah Wilder?
Noah shrugged before draining his glass and approaching the chair in which she was seated. “It doesn’t matter to me what you do with your precious winery,” he stated evenly as he bent over the chair and placed his hands on each of the silvery velvet arms, imprisoning her against the soft fabric. “I only wanted you to be aware of your options.”
His voice was gentle and concerned. Sheila felt as if she had known him all her life rather than a few short hours, and she wanted to melt into his soft words. “I…understand my options,” she assured him shakily.
“Do you?” His blue eyes probed deep into hers, further than any man had dared to see. “I wonder.” His lips were soft as they pressed gently against her forehead, and Sheila sighed as she closed her eyelids and let her head fall backward into the soft cushions of the chair. A small, nagging voice in her mind argued that she shouldn’t give in to her passions; she shouldn’t let the warmth that he was inviting begin to swell within her. But the sensuous feeling of his lips against her skin, the mysterious blue intensity of his eyes, the awareness in her body that she had presumed to have died in the ashes of her broken marriage, all argued with a twinge of conscience and slowly took over her mind as well as her body.
His hands were strong as they held her chin and tipped her lips to meet his. A sizzling tremor shook her body in response when the kiss began, and she sighed deeply, parting her lips and inviting him quietly to love her. When his passion caught hold of him and he tasted the honeyed warmth of her lips, he gently pushed his tongue against her teeth and entered the moist cavern of her mouth. Her moan of pleasure sent ripples of desire hotly through his blood. His hands slid down the length of her neck and touched the fluttering pulse that was jumping in the feminine hollow of her throat. His thumbs gently outlined the delicate bone structure in slow, swirling circles of sensitivity that gathered and stormed deep within her.
Sheila heard nothing over the resounding beat of her heart fluttering in her chest and thundering in her eardrums. She thought of nothing other than the cascading warmth and desire that were washing over her body in uneven passionate waves. Feelings of longing, yearning, desires that flamed heatedly, flowed through her as Noah kissed her. Involuntarily she reached up and wound her arms around his neck. The groan of satisfaction that rumbled in his throat gave her a deep, primeval pleasure, and when he pulled his lips from hers, she knew a deep disappointment.
He looked longingly into her eyes, asking her silent, unspoken questions that demanded answers she couldn’t ignore. How much did he want from her? What could she give—what would he take?
“Sheila, dear Sheila,” he murmured against her hair. It was whispered as a pl
ea. She wanted him, ached for him, but remained silent.
His persuasive lips nuzzled against the column of her throat to linger at the inviting feminine bone structure at its base. His tongue drew lazy circles around Sheila’s erratic pulse, and Sheila felt as if her very soul were centered beneath his warm insistent touch. Her fingers entwined in the dark, coffee-colored strands of his hair, and she leaned backward, offering more of her neck…more of her being. When his wet tongue touched the center of her pulse, quicksilver flames darted through her veins, and she pushed herself more closely against his body.
His fingers found the buttons on her blouse, and cautiously he opened the top button. As he did so his head lowered, letting his lips caress the gaping space between the two pieces of silken cloth. Sheila moaned against him, asking for more of his gentle touch. He unbuttoned the next pearly fastener, and once more his lips dipped lower, touching her soft, warm flesh. Molten fire streamed through Sheila’s veins at his expert touch and in anticipation of his next move. His hot lips seared her skin, and she was not disappointed when his fingers unhinged an even lower button, parting the soft, rose-colored fabric and exposing the gentle swell of her breasts straining achingly against the flimsy barrier of her bra. When his mouth touched the edge of her bra, outlining the lace with the moistness of his tongue, she thought the ache within her would explode. His breath fanned heatedly over her sensitive skin, and she felt her breath come in short gasps. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room to keep her senses from swimming in the whirlpool of passion moving her closer to this man she had barely met and yet known a lifetime. She was drowning in his velvet-soft caresses, losing her breath with each passing instant of his arduous lovemaking. Take me, a voice within her wanted to scream, but the words never passed her lips.
She felt the wispy fabric of her blouse as he eased it gently past her shoulders, kissing her exposed neck and arms.
“Let me love you…” he moaned.
Her eyes, shining with a burning passion, yielded to his demands. But still the words froze in her throat.
Softly he pulled her out of the chair and gently eased her onto the carpet with the weight of his body. She felt the soft pile of the Persian rug against the bare skin of her back, and she knew that if she wanted to turn back, it would have to be soon, before all of the long-buried desire became alive again. His hands fitted warmly against her rib cage, outlining each individual bone with one of his strong, masculine fingers. A trembling sigh of submission broke from her lips.