Tempt Me If You Can

by Janet Chapman

  “It’s not me you have to convince. It’s the people here. Sixteen years is a long time for a suspicion to take root.”

  Ben turned and looked at his son, who was now looking at him. “Charlie Sands was your grandfather. So more than anyone else, you have to be convinced.”

  “I already am.”

  “Just like that? You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

  Michael stood up and approached Ben, his stride confident, and stopped one step shy of touching him. “I know all about Benjamin Sinclair,” he said softly. “I can tell you how your grandfather, Abram, built his shipping company from nothing, and I can tell you what your personal net worth is. But most of all, I can tell you that my father never would have walked away sixteen years ago if he had been responsible for another man’s death.”

  Ben could only stare back, frozen in awe.

  Blind faith. Childhood loyalty. And a young man’s confidence in what he could determine from facts and figures and history.

  And maybe a little help from Emma Sands? Even hating him, for fifteen years she had apparently not held judgment on her nephew’s father. She hadn’t betrayed his identity when he arrived, and she hadn’t interfered this past week. She had simply let them walk their own course to this moment—then disappeared into the woods to give them this time.

  “Michael. What is it you want?”

  “A father.”

  He was going to drown in a puddle of emotion. Ben forced himself rigid, but the tremors began anyway, starting deep inside and working their way outward.

  This boy scared him to death. He wasn’t ready to be a father. Hell, until now, he hadn’t really believed it was possible. From the moment he’d read the letter, Ben had been sure it was all a dream—that he’d conjured up a long-lost child because he’d needed something to cling to after his grandfather’s death.

  Ben realized he was standing as still as a statue, sweating bullets, and staring at empty space. Michael was sitting at the table again, quietly eating his supper.

  As quietly as his son, Ben walked back and sat down. “I never would have left, Mike, if I had known about you. My God. It never even entered my mind that Kelly might be pregnant. She seemed so … she seemed like she knew what she was doing,” he finished on a whisper, heat climbing up the back of his neck. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “It’s not an excuse, but I was barely nineteen. I thought I had the world by the ass and my whole life ahead of me.” He leaned forward. “I asked her to come away with me, but she refused.”

  Michael finally looked up, a sad smile on his face. “I love my mother very much, Mr. Sinclair, and I came to terms with who she is many years ago. But Emma was the anchor that held my world together.”

  “And you’re worried that if you come to New York with me, she’ll be alone.”

  Michael nodded. “Yes. But that’s not the only problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Remember the guy who stopped in here Wednesday evening?”

  Ben snorted. “Galen something. He’s got the personality of Pitiful.”

  “Well, Galen Simms thinks he’s courting my aunt, which is why he was such a bastard to you. He didn’t like finding you staying in the lodge.”

  “So if Emma marries him, she won’t be alone.”

  “He’s not courting Nemmy as much as he’s courting Medicine Creek Camps and my aunt’s reputation as a guide,” Michael said. “Simms has a set of camps on a lake twelve miles north of here. But while our business is booming, his is sinking in red ink. He’s looking to marry himself a business manager.”

  “Your aunt is astute enough to see that. Besides, she didn’t seem all that enamored with Simms.”

  “But Nem might think about marrying him anyway, so I don’t feel obligated to stay. What she doesn’t know is that if I leave here with you, I intend to take her with me.” He tossed a smile across the table. “Kicking and screaming if I have to.”

  Ben blinked, then rubbed his hands over his face, several times, to wipe away his shock. “Excuse me?”

  “You finally came, and it’s time for me to leave Medicine Gore. But I’m not leaving here without Nem—and if I have to torch the Cessna, the cabins, and all one thousand acres, I will.”

  Chapter Four

  Ben gaped at his son.

  “Once we get home, she can start a new life, like me. You have a big house, don’t you?”

  Home. The boy wanted to go home. Just hearing him say it made Ben break into a cold sweat. “Have you mentioned this little plan to your aunt, by any chance?”

  Michael snorted.

  “Then she won’t be kicking and screaming. She’ll be going for her shotgun.” Ben stood up and planted his hands on the table. “Michael, you can’t tell a grown woman what to do. I know you don’t like being reminded of the fact, but you are only fifteen years old. Your sense of authority is all screwed up.”

  Michael also stood. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

  Ben grabbed the edge of the table, wanting to upend it, but closed his eyes and counted to ten. This was not at all going well.

  He finally followed Michael through the great room and into what he knew was Emma’s bedroom. He stopped in the doorway and watched Michael walk over to a window and reach up on the top of the casing, pushing the curtain aside to feel along the molding. When his hand returned, it held a key. He walked over to a long, scarred, unadorned chest and unlocked it.

  “Michael—”

  “Come here. You need to see this.”

  Ben took a guilty look back at the great room, then stepped into Emma’s private domain as the boy lifted the lid on the chest.

  It appeared to be full of … frilly things. Woman stuff—doilies, fancy bedsheets, a handmade quilt. And household goods—a teapot and matching sugar and creamer, a dark green candle, a sprig of dried flowers, a crystal vase.

  “This is where my aunt keeps her dreams.” Michael lifted the quilt and pulled out a silver picture frame. “She bought this in Portland when she and Kelly took me there for my fifth birthday. Nem said it was for her wedding picture.”

  Lovingly rubbing the frame, Michael smiled. “I told her she couldn’t ever get married, that I wouldn’t let any man take her away.” He looked up, and Ben took a step back from the pain he saw in the boy’s eyes. “She told me not to worry, that she’d only marry a man worth loving, and that he would be very hard to find.”

  He put the frame back under the quilt and ran his hand over the contents of the chest, touching everything, disturbing nothing. “She told me she’s had this chest since she was ten. I was often with her when she would find something that caught her eye, and she would buy it, bring it home, and it would disappear. It was a long time before I discovered she was squirreling her purchases away in this chest.”

  “Why are you showing me this, Michael? A lot of young girls start a hope chest. All of them plan for the day they’ll set up their own home.”

  “Nemmy stopped buying things after Kelly left. Once, when we were in a store and I caught her looking at some china, I asked her why she didn’t buy it. She told me there was no more reason to.”

  The boy slowly closed the lid and stood to face Ben, his eyes clouded with emotion. “It took me several years to figure out what she meant. Now, I intend to see she gets her dream.”

  “Does she blame herself for your mother leaving?”

  “In some ways, Nem feels responsible for everything. If a sport comes here and expects to catch a boatload of fish and it rains all week, she feels responsible. If I get caught driving to town, it’s Nem’s fault, not mine. If I run the plane up on a rocky shore and tear the pontoons all to hell, it’s because she didn’t teach me well enough.” Michael lifted his arms and let them fall back. “So she probably thinks she could have done something to prevent Kelly from leaving.”

  “So as penance she’s given up her dream of having a home of her own? But this is her home.” Ben pointed to the chest. “T
hose things should be out, being used.”

  Michael shook his head. “No. Nem’s dream wasn’t some unfocused hope. I believe it was aimed at one man in particular. And I realize now that she’s probably loved him since before I was born.”

  “Who is he?”

  The boy cocked his head and looked directly at Ben. He was silent so long, Ben didn’t think he would answer.

  “If I draw you a map, do you think you could find my aunt without getting lost?”

  That wasn’t an answer!

  And he wasn’t going to get one, Ben realized. This boy was going to dump the problem of his aunt right in his lap, and he wasn’t going to give him a clue.

  It was a test. Michael wanted to see if he had a son’s right to ask for help from his parent. He wanted to know if his father intended to take up his battles—not for him, but with him.

  So Ben was going to have to find Emma Sands, discover who the woman was in love with, and get her married to the guy. Then he could have his son.

  Damn if the boy couldn’t give lessons to Solomon.

  “I guess that would depend. Did your aunt take her shotgun?”

  “Yup.”

  “And that addled moose of hers?”

  “Probably.”

  It was a diabolical test. A gauntlet of heroic proportions. “You got a compass I can borrow? And a sleeping bag?”

  The smile Ben received could have blinded the sun.

  The cold, wet forest floor seeping through her wool pants made her uncomfortable, but it was nothing compared to the anger Emma felt as she watched the deliberate desecration of the woods she loved.

  Tree huggers were driving spikes into the trees. There were six men, and they didn’t at all look like the fancy environmentalists who had been hounding the state house and the nightly news for the last two months. These men were grubby, disgusting jackals with their own agenda for gaining their objective.

  She’d heard about the terrorist act of spiking trees, but that problem had been a distant one, usually in the northwestern forests of the country. Loggers, most of them friends of hers, would come here to harvest these trees, and be ripped to shreds when their chain saws hit those spikes. The saws would disintegrate on contact, sending missiles of sharp, jagged chain into unprotected flesh. Innocent, hardworking men would be maimed and possibly killed.

  Emma owned a thousand acres of prime forest herself, and had spent the last ten years adding to the acreage surrounding Medicine Creek Camps. It was to be Michael’s heritage. Whatever decisions the state government made would ultimately affect her, but she couldn’t take sides in this issue. She sold stumpage off her land to the paper and lumber mills, but she was careful what was cut.

  That wasn’t enough for the environmentalists. They wouldn’t be happy until all the forested land was rendered untouchable. They were targeting clear-cutting this time, but Emma feared it was just the first of several calculated steps aimed at turning millions of acres of woodland into another forest reserve or national park.

  She’d been minding her business this morning, headed for a crystal spring she knew had the sweetest drinking water in the area, when she’d heard the echo of metal thunking against live wood. It was a distinct sound that had rattled around in the forest, and it had taken her a good twenty minutes to find the source.

  Now she was wet, and cold, and getting madder and madder the longer she watched. But she couldn’t go charging in, like when she’d rescued Ben. These men were out-of-staters, not neighbors, and they didn’t look as if they would like being discovered.

  Yet she couldn’t walk away, either. There was no way she could point out all the vandalized trees, and no way the loggers could take metal detectors to all these trees.

  She could scare them off. Stay hidden and blast the air with birdshot, making them think the calvary had arrived. Maybe even find Pitiful and get him to introduce himself, the way he had to Ben yesterday.

  Emma checked her shotgun, making sure both the chamber and the magazine were full, then patted her pocket to make sure she had more shells so she could quickly reload. She raised the butt of the gun to her shoulder, aimed it ten feet above the men’s heads, and clicked off the safety.

  A large, powerful hand suddenly covered hers, muffling the click of the safety being replaced. Another large hand covered her mouth as a crushing weight landed on top of her, pinning her on the wet forest floor.

  She usually wasn’t one to panic, but Emma wildly struggled to dislodge her heavy assailant. Her shotgun was ripped from her hand and pushed away, and she was roughly grabbed by the shoulder and rolled over. Still pinned and her mouth still covered, Emma stopped struggling when she looked up into the iron gray eyes of a very angry Benjamin Sinclair.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t even offer a curse word.

  She didn’t even squeak, she was so stunned. The face less than a foot from hers didn’t belong to a city sport or corporate executive. She was looking at a man ready for battle, who didn’t intend to let her win it.

  He lifted off her and grabbed her shotgun and pack. He kept his other hand latched on her jacket and pulled her to her feet with one swift, powerful jerk, then started dragging her down the hill.

  Unable to do anything else, Emma stumbled after him. She tried to dislodge his grip on her jacket, but Ben Sinclair didn’t break stride, turn around, or even acknowledge that she had to run to keep up. He did start with his infamous cursing again, once they were far enough away they couldn’t be heard.

  Emma gave him a few choice words in return. When he stopped, she stumbled into the fist shackling her.

  “Lady, if you don’t shut up and quit struggling, I promise you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”

  Emma snapped her mouth shut and glared back at him. He turned and started along a brook, once more dragging her behind him.

  “How you and my son have survived this long is the eighth wonder of the world.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He stopped again and turned to her, his scowl darkening even more. “I’m on a fool’s mission.” That information given, he pushed her ahead of him and then prodded her back. “Keep going until I tell you to stop.”

  Emma thought about planting her feet, but he was a head taller, sixty pounds heavier, and definitely stronger than she was. So she walked.

  “You were going to go charging right in there, weren’t you? You were going to take on six men with a four-shot gun and not a soul to help within twenty miles. You’re more insane than your moose.”

  The lecture continued and Emma learned that she was impulsive, irresponsible, and lacking the brains of a chipmunk. She discovered she was too brave to rush in where even fools wouldn’t go, and that she needed a keeper. And then he asked her again how she’d managed to raise his son to manhood without getting either of them killed.

  Emma suddenly sat down on a rock beside the brook, put her chin in her fists, and scowled at the water.

  Ben loomed over her.

  “Are you through yet?” she asked, still not looking at him.

  “Not by half.”

  “Should I be taking notes?”

  Her pack and shotgun fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and the legs standing beside her bent at the knee, bringing an even angrier face within an inch of hers. “You could have gotten killed.”

  Emma smiled at him. “That would have solved a lot of your problems.”

  He lunged for her and Emma pulled back. He caught her shoulders and followed her down off the rock. Ben was back on top of her, and Emma was starting to get more than a little angry herself. “If you don’t quit manhandling me, I’m gonna make sure you never father another son.”

  Completely ignoring her threat, he grabbed her hands pushing against his chest and pinned them over her head with one of his own. Then he took his other hand and gently brushed the hair from her face.

  “Emma Sands. Such bravado you show the world. Such a scam artist you are.”

 
; “Get off me.”

  He used his knees to spread her legs, and Emma sucked in a surprised breath when she felt him nestle far too intimately between her thighs.

  “That was the wrong direction!”

  “But the safest, if I want more children.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Michael drew me a map.”

  “You’re supposed to be getting to know your son, not interfering in my business.”

  The gentleness left his face as suddenly as it had appeared. “Someone had to interfere. You were about to let your cannon loose on those men, weren’t you?”

  “They were spiking the trees.”

  He growled a nasty word.

  “If I ever get you near a bar of soap, I’m going to use it to wash out your mouth.”

  He suddenly grinned. “You have my permission to try.”

  “Are you planning to get off me any time soon?”

  He wiggled, settling himself even deeper against her. “I’m rather comfortable.” His grin turned sinister. “You’re nicely padded in all the right places.”

  “Get off—”

  Emma didn’t finish. His hand was at her mouth again as Ben’s head snapped up and he cocked it to the side, listening.

  “They’re walking down the back side of the ridge,” he whispered, his head lowered beside hers as every muscle in his body seemed to double in size.

  He didn’t uncover her mouth. Did he think she was going to scream hello to the terrorists? Emma bit down. She was rewarded with a ferocious glare as he rubbed the abused hand on her jacket.

  “I’m beginning to pity the poor bastard who ends up marrying you.”

  Emma tried to punch him, but he caught her fist, brought it up to his lips, and kissed it. “Don’t spar with me, Emma. I’m bigger and stronger and meaner than you.”

  “You also have a bigger ego than God.”

  “I need a big one if I want to hold my own against the Sands clan.”