Tempting as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 2)

by Rosalind James

  What kind of fool did that? What kind of idiot didn’t seize his chance with both hands and hold that woman close, once he’d finally found her? Who sent her eight thousand miles away and gave her the opportunity to think better of it?

  That would be him. He brought the axe down hard, dead into the center of the block of wood, and watched the two pieces fall to either side.

  If you didn’t trust her to choose you, you didn’t trust her at all. Better to find that out now than later, for both of them. He told himself that again, and tried to believe it.

  Another gust of wind, stronger this time, and he picked up the pace. He’d push it hard, then grab a shower, light the stove, and settle down for a rainy evening with a cup of tea and the script. He was nearly there now. He had the feel of the part, the cadence and rhythm of the words, not just the words themselves, taking up residence in his hippocampus, and someplace deeper, too. And not only that. Today, he’d done a trail ride with Jo where Thunderbolt had splashed through a stream that came nearly up to his belly, then forced his way up a too-steep bank on the other side exactly like in the movies, and Rafe’s body hadn’t even thought about falling off.

  Progress. It literally meant “walking forward,” and that was what he was doing. When you walked on, you left things behind, unless they walked with you. He had to harden his heart, that was all. He had five days before Lily came back to do it. Heaps of time. It was another learning opportunity, and he was good at learning.

  Nobody’s hero.

  More chunks of wood fell to his axe. Picking up the rhythm, at the edge of “too fast,” just before you crossed over into danger. Where he needed to be.

  He heard the car first. Or, rather, Chuck did. Rafe straightened, axe in hand, and watched it come up the gravel road.

  Not another journo, surely. They’d left two days ago, once most of the story had left along with Lily and Bailey. No percentage in following Rafe around as he went for a coffee or stopped into Sinful Desires to have a chat with Martin. The Drama-Free Zone once again. He’d made bloody sure not to take off his shirt or go for any swims, and they’d left for greener pastures, to where somebody was divorcing or trashing a hotel room or otherwise melting down.

  Not a journalist, no. A taxi, turning into his drive. Chuck was barking joyfully, his tail wagging hard, and something inside Rafe was lighting up in exactly the same way, even though it wasn’t possible.

  The boot opened and the driver got out and went around, presumably to collect luggage. The back door opened, and there was a leg. A shapely one, and a foot wearing a canvas wedge sandal striped with color. Above it, a calf and a knee and a thigh, and a gaily striped skirt, snug on top and ruffled beneath, not too far down those thighs at all.

  Rafe had long since driven the axe into the chopping block. Chuck reached her first, but not by much. The taxi was reversing, pulling out onto the road, and Lily was making no move at all to grab her suitcase.

  “I came back,” she said. Laughing, not crying. Laughing, and putting her two hands onto his face. Pulling his head down for a kiss, then stepping into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and holding hard. “It’s the most beautiful place in the world. And I didn’t want to be there without you.”

  Rafe was holding her so tight. He could feel the joy in her like it was flowing straight into him, or maybe it was the other way around. The black dog sitting on his chest had risen, shaken itself, and moved off to torture somebody else. It had no home here.

  He didn’t even lift her off her feet. He just held her. Finally, though, he stepped back and said, “Luggage.” Trying to get a grip. Trying to catch hold of this thing, to know what it meant.

  “Leave it,” she said. “Take me inside. I don’t need any baggage. I’m dropping it here, and I’m dropping it now. Please, Rafe. Take me to bed and love me.”

  It was going to rain. Her suitcase would get wet. Chuck was butting his head in between them, trying to get into the circle. Rafe didn’t care about any of it. He had his arm around Lily and was taking her inside, hearing Chuck come in behind them. Ignoring the dog, heading straight up the stairs to the loft she’d dreaded, and he could tell she didn’t care about that. She only saw him. She only felt him, the same way he only saw and felt her.

  He stepped back, beside the bed, and pulled her red, scoop-necked T-shirt off her the way he’d wanted to do the first day he’d seen it, unhooked her red satin bra with a flick of his fingers, and sent it to join the shirt. She stood on one foot, then the other, with her usual grace and much more than her usual haste, unhooked the ankle straps on her sandals, and kicked them aside. His T-shirt was gone, and so were his shoes and socks, and then he had both hands under the sides of that stretchy skirt and was sliding it down her hips, watching it fall, then sending a tiny red thong after it. She stepped out of them, and she was naked, and he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. Like he would die if he didn’t have her.

  Like. He. Would. Die.

  She was unbuckling his belt, getting him naked, too, as fast as she could. Neither of them talking, and outside, the wind picking up the same way it had done that very first night. Wild, and almost dangerous, the open curtains revealing evergreens swaying like ships in the harbor, the rustle in their branches becoming a roar, the already dim afternoon darkening. Threatening, but only if you were out in it. If you were inside, you were safe.

  He took her into the shower. He’d ridden a horse for two hours today, run another two, and chopped wood. He took her into the shower.

  A wall of river rock on one side, gray tile on the rest with a dull patina like stone, and three shower heads like bathing under a waterfall. Warm, and wet, and wild. Lily’s arms around his neck, her feet off the floor, her mouth on his. He was kissing her like he meant it, like his tongue belonged in her mouth and all of her belonged to him.

  The moment her legs came up to wrap around his waist. His mouth at her neck, her shoulder, his hand on a breast, taking the response she was always so ready to give him, as he backed her up against the wall. And the heart-stopping moment when he slid inside her once again, and she welcomed him home.

  Lily said, when her soaked suitcase was in the house, when she was under the covers in Rafe’s bed with his strong arms around her and her head on his chest, “I had a whole speech. I had almost thirty-six hours to plan it. I saw you, and I forgot it. It just went…” She raised a hand and waggled her fingers. “Poof.”

  His palm smoothed down her back from shoulder to hip, then up again, soothing as a float in a pool on a hot summer day. “Suppose you tell me now,” he said. “I’d like to hear your speech.”

  “It had to do with a sunset,” she said, “and a sunrise, and some space to think, so in that sense—I guess I got what I came for. But the truth is, the bed was just so big, and you weren’t in it. Everything was perfect, except that I didn’t have you. I realized I’d rather be in the dust and the chaos, I’d even rather be facing the photographers, than be so far from you. I had something so wonderful, and I’d left it behind. And I thought—all right, so I was scared to come back in here, to come upstairs. So I had a reason to be scared. So what? I can stay stuck there, or I can move on. I’m supposed to be done with cutting off the things I do because I’m scared, done with saying, ‘No, I’ll just stand on this little tiny patch of ground where I’m safe. I don’t need any more than this. I’m fine.’ I wasn’t fine. That patch of ground was too small. I couldn’t move there. I’m still not fine all the time, maybe, but at least I’m trying. And if I can’t push past those barriers when I have somebody holding me in his arms and telling me he loves me and he’ll walk through them with me, when can I?”

  “Baby,” he said, his voice quiet, “you make me humble. You make me proud.”

  She kissed his chest, then twined her legs around his, because she finally could, and because he was hers. “And something else, too,” she told him. “I don’t have to leave you holding the bag. I thought, afterwards—there
that video is, there that story is out there, everywhere, making you look bad, and I’ve never stood up and said I believe you. I needed to be here, because I needed—not even to say that. I needed to show that. People will believe what they want to believe, but I can help them believe in you.”

  This time, he kissed the top of her head. “I don’t even know what to say,” he said, “So I’ll say—thanks. Why didn’t you tell me, though? I had some bad moments there when I couldn’t reach you. I thought you’d made…” He broke off, then said, “Another decision.”

  She pushed herself up to sitting and stared down at him. Silver-blue eyes, somber face. “What?” she asked. “Why? How could you think that? And the reason’s stupid. I forgot my charger, because I packed and left in one big hurry, and then I thought…I can’t even say what I thought. After a while, it was just a slog. Martin’s so good, makes it so easy, and getting back on my own—well, not so much. It was impulsive, and it was really surprisingly hard. Australia is a long, long, long way from Montana. I figured out what all I did. A shuttle to the Gold Coast Airport. A flight to Sydney. A flight to LA. US Customs, which deserves a chapter of its own. A flight to Seattle. A flight to Kalispell. A taxi. I may not even be the same person anymore, I’ve left so many pieces of myself behind along the way. But still—how could you think I didn’t love you? How could you imagine I’d change my mind? Couldn’t you feel me? Because I swear I could feel you. You were right there in my heart the whole way.”

  He raised a hand, let it fall. “Maybe because your life is here, and we both know it. Maybe because being involved with a celebrity has its share of pain, and its share of doubt, too, when he is kissing somebody else, pretending to make love to somebody else for hours on end, tangled up under the sheets with her, touching her body. I knew you’d wonder, in the middle of the night when you couldn’t sleep and I was halfway around the world, if you were the only one waiting.”

  “Like you did,” she said, lying down with him again. “I’m sorry, Rafe. I didn’t even think about that. I just wanted to get back to you.”

  He held her that much closer, then rolled her over and kissed her, long and sweet, like he could touch her heart. And he could.

  “It isn’t perfect,” he said when he was finished. “It’ll never be perfect. I’ll take it anyway. And I’ll take you.”

  A week later, at nine o’clock on a warm weekday morning, Lily sat down on the couch and picked up a magazine, then stood up again, set the magazine on the coffee table, and headed through the brand-new door that took her into the back of the house.

  Three windows. One on the short wall, overlooking her little orchard, and two with a view up the mountain.

  “It might feel like it’s looming over you,” she told Rafe, who’d followed her as far as the doorway and was leaning against the frame, ankles and arms crossed, and watching her. Possibly in bemusement. “If you don’t like mountains.”

  “I think Bailey likes mountains,” he said. “I think she likes mountains and animals and gardens. I know she likes you.”

  Lily picked up the throw pillow she’d put on the bed on top of an ancient coverlet her grandma had made, the one she’d slept under as a little girl. Nothing fancy, a machine-stitched tied quilt in cheerful, faded blues and yellows and greens, but it was homey, and so was the pillow. It showed a bicycle, outlined in flowered fabric on a background of white, and it was blue and yellow and green, too. Not too girly, but pretty. The butterflies, though…

  She’d painted them, then attached them. Larger painted ones at the bottom, on the wall behind the bed’s headboard, then getting smaller as you went, and finally, nearer to the ceiling, three-dimensional ones made of paper and silk, glued to the wall and looking like they’d take off.

  Rafe anticipated her. “It’s a perfect room for her. White furniture, pale-blue walls, white trim, blue rug. It’s clean and happy, and it’s Bailey. You know it is, because you know her. It’s not fussy. It’s fun.”

  “Your cousin Willow says you’re an empath.” She sat on the bed and gave Chuck, who’d come to stick his head in her lap, some scratches. “I think it’s true.”

  “Nah,” he said. “If I were, I wouldn’t have got it so wrong at the start, and you wouldn’t have wasted all that time hating me. I’m an actor, that’s all. It’s my job to see people.”

  “Ha,” she was saying when the doorbell rang. She jumped up so fast, she bonked Chuck under the chin. “Sorry,” she told him, then realized she was apologizing to a dog and followed Rafe out into the living room again.

  He didn’t tell her to calm down. He didn’t tell her anything. He stood back, and she opened the door. Charmaine Hopkins stood on the porch, and behind her, still holding her pillowcase, halfway up the stairs—Bailey. Looking small. Looking all the way locked down.

  “Hi,” Charmaine said. “I brought somebody for you. Come on up, Bailey.”

  Bailey couldn’t, not exactly. Not with Chuck barging past all of them and practically knocking her over in his eagerness to welcome her home. Charmaine stepped inside at Lily’s invitation and told her, “Congratulations on getting through the process so fast. I have to say, I was skeptical that anybody could get an addition done in a week. Maybe you want to send those guys over to do my kitchen.”

  Lily smiled, and Charmaine cast a sardonic glance at Rafe. “Good thing you weren’t applying,” she said. “It’s a violation to lie to the county.”

  “That sounds so sordid, though,” he complained. “Let’s just call it making life more interesting. That’s a beautiful dress, by the way.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “Tell it to somebody who believes in the tooth fairy.” Her cheeks were a little pinker, though, and Rafe laughed. “You need to remember,” she told Lily, serious again, “that you have three months to complete the classes to finalize your license. This one is provisional only. I do need you to sign a couple papers and leave some papers for you, and then I’ll take off.”

  “Sure,” Lily said, then hesitated. Bailey still hadn’t come inside. She was hovering out there like a butterfly checking whether it was safe to settle. “Come on up,” she told the girl. “Come in, so you and Chuck don’t get any more mosquito bites.”

  Bailey looked up at last. “I don’t think dogs get mosquito bites.”

  “Actually, they do,” Lily said. “But I was just checking to see if you were paying attention.” And Bailey smiled. Not a big one, but she smiled, and she came inside, too, bringing her pillowcase with her. “In two minutes,” Lily told her, “I’m going to show you your new room, and you are going to be amazed at how good it looks. Like it was always there. But I have to sign this first, so you can stay with me.”

  “OK,” Bailey said. She sat down on the rug, and Chuck plopped right down with her, put his head in her lap, and rolled over to show his hairy belly, inviting a scratch. Bailey obliged, and there his hind leg went, fully expressing his ecstasy at being reunited with his girl.

  Bailey would do for now. Lily signed the papers, said goodbye to Charmaine, and shut the door behind her. And then she showed Bailey her room.

  “I only did the butterflies,” she told her. “I left the rest of the walls bare. I thought you’d like to pick out your own pictures for everywhere else. A bulletin board above the desk, maybe, a big one. Then you could pin up whatever you wanted.”

  “OK,” Bailey said. She still had her backpack on, and she was still holding her pillowcase in front of her like a shield. She was wearing one of her new outfits, though. The shirt with the stars, her favorite. Lily could imagine her putting it on this morning, packing her pillowcase, sitting on a bed in a room that wasn’t hers, and wondering if it were really true. If she’d really be coming here. Pulling out her animal book, maybe, to escape the creeping fear that it was all a mistake and she had to stay.

  Lily thought again, What would Mamá do? And thought, Love her where she is. She dropped to her knees in front of Bailey, the same way she’d done in the library. Rafe w
as in the living room, still. Giving them space. Lily said, keeping her voice gentle, “You can put your things down, sweetie. You can put your books on the shelf and your clothes in the drawer. Hang your jacket in the closet and put your toothbrush by the sink. This is your room, and it’s your bathroom, too. This is your home, right here with Chuck and me. You’re here to stay.”

  “Are you going to get other kids?” Bailey’s eyes searched Lily’s. Wary and brown. A fawn who’d lost her mother, trying to find a safe place, without enough defenses to survive. She broke your heart. At least, she was breaking Lily’s. “You get money for foster kids,” she said. “You get more money if you have more.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Lily said helplessly. “No. There’s just you. Rafe had an idea, though. Would you like to go see your grandma? Has anybody taken you yet?”

  Something flickered in Bailey’s eyes. “No. I thought maybe she died.”

  Lily was going to cry, but she couldn’t, not yet. That could wait until she was alone with Rafe, when she could let her guard down, could stop being strong for a little while and let him hold her. Right now, she needed to worry about Bailey’s guard. “No,” she told her. “She didn’t die. She’s getting better, and they let her out of the hospital. She’s in a nursing home, though, getting some strength back. It’s here in town, and you can go see her every day if you want. You can even ride your bike there.”

  She saw it, then. The softening of Bailey’s shoulders, the movement of her throat as she swallowed. The girl blinked twice, three times, then whispered, “OK.”

  “OK,” Lily said. She didn’t hug her, not yet. Later today, though, she would. Maybe. She’d see. “Chuck missed you, and so did I. I missed you so much. I told you I’d get you back, and I did.”