Love on the Line

by Aares, Pamela

  Ryan took the stub the valet handed him and followed his buddies up the stairs of the Pacific-Union Club. The brownstone was one of only two buildings in the area that had survived the San Francisco earthquake and resulting fire in 1906. The club was exclusive, members only, exactly the sort of venue to entice guests who’d otherwise never have a chance to cross the club’s threshold.

  One of the Giants owners was a member and with Hal Walsh’s help, Ryan had talked him into sponsoring the party to raise funds for the Albion Bay clinic. The guy was so happy that Ryan had signed the six-year contract with the team, he threw in expenses for the food and drink as well. His enthusiasm made Ryan think that his agent could have negotiated a higher salary, but fifty million was more than enough. If only he’d had it up front, he could’ve funded the clinic himself.

  They’d arrived a few minutes early. Waiters in variations of tuxedos and other staff in red and gold uniforms hustled efficiently through the marbled foyer, setting out food on long, high tables.

  Ryan had worried when the game had been tied in the eighth that it would turn into one of those legendary fiascoes that went nineteen innings. But Alex took care of that in the bottom of the ninth. When the Giants won four to three, Ryan had never been so happy to have a game end.

  “Look at that ceiling,” Scotty said as they nosed around the various rooms. “It must’ve taken an army to carve that thing.”

  Although the arched ceiling was impressive, Ryan wasn’t interested in the architecture. His mind was on the speech he’d rehearsed. His job was to make clear the need for the clinic.

  His mind was also on Cara. He wasn’t sure she’d come. He’d emailed and left two phone messages, but she hadn’t replied. He’d gone over every damn moment they’d spent together, but he’d been unable to add any of them up into a reason for her silence.

  He’d rehearsed a few lines for her too. If she attended the fundraiser, he hoped the event and the conversation he’d imagined having with her more times than he could count would melt through whatever qualms she might’ve dreamed up about him.

  But he had a hell of a lot more confidence in the words he’d strung together about Albion Bay and the clinic. His feelings for Cara didn’t lend themselves to rehearsed lines and imaginary conversations. Hell, his feelings for her didn’t lend themselves to anything that made sense.

  “Champagne?” One of the tuxedoed waiters held out a tray of glasses.

  Ryan took one and handed it to Scotty. Took another and started to down it.

  “Whoa, a toast,” Scotty said, tilting his glass to Ryan’s. “To the Ryan Rea Clinic.”

  “No way it’s being named after me. I have an aversion to anything being named after me.” He clinked Scotty’s glass. “But here’s to success tonight.”

  Scotty motioned Alex over to join them.

  Alex pulled an envelope from the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

  “We wanted you to have these,” Alex said. “To get you started.”

  Ryan opened the envelope. The check on top was from Alex’s foundation. Ryan squinted in the light. It really did say eight hundred thousand dollars. He looked at the second check. Three hundred thousand dollars written on the foundation account Scotty had set up with his wife, Chloe.

  “People always like to come in after the first gifts,” Alex said. “And now you’ve got those first gifts, so they don’t have any excuses.”

  “This is more than a gift,” Ryan said. He still wasn’t used to money. Maybe never would be.

  “Hey, let’s get this thing funded,” Alex said. “Who knows, my intrepid wife might be the first customer, given the risks she takes. Consider it insurance.”

  Sam Rivers came bounding through the hall. He looked tiny and fragile in the cavernous space.

  “Great hit!” he said as he ran up to Alex. “Mom let me watch the game in the sports bar down the street. She thought we might hit traffic and be late, so we came to the city early.” He turned his face up to Ryan. “I practiced my story.”

  Sam was Ryan’s ace for the night. He’d asked Sam’s mom if it would be okay for Sam to recount his experience of the day Ryan and Cara had to rush him to the emergency room in Novato. He’d also used the opportunity to ask if Cara was planning on coming. Molly had assured him she was and told him Cara had a surprise for him. He tried to wrangle the surprise from her, but she’d told him to wait and see.

  Ryan snagged an iced tea from a passing waiter and handed it to Sam. “You’re our DH.”

  “I’d rather be a pinch hitter,” Sam said, suddenly serious. “Designated hitters only get to hit in opposing leagues. I want to hit a lot.”

  The men laughed. Sam colored, but then grinned and laughed along.

  “Where’s your mom?” Ryan wanted to ask about Cara, but took the oblique route.

  “She’s in the ladies’ room. With Miss West.”

  “Perhaps they should call it the West Clinic,” Scotty teased. “She seems to be the instigating factor.”

  Ryan glared at him.

  “Just saying,” Scotty said with a shrug and a wink. “C’mon, let’s get this boy something to eat.”

  Scotty and Alex walked off with Sam, leaving Ryan standing in the center of the marble rotunda. It reminded him of pictures he’d seen of the Roman Forum, of the sort of place where treachery and intrigue unfolded over the ages.

  He saw a flash of red pass between two of the columns. Then he saw Molly. But she was wearing a blue dress. Then the flash of red came around the column nearest him, and his throat swelled with the surging of his pulse. Molly looked pretty, but Cara looked like a goddess. A goddess who’d cast a spell on him. All his carefully rehearsed words fled his brain.

  Cara stopped when she saw him. Then she linked her arm through Molly’s and sauntered toward him. He couldn’t read her expression, but Molly was beaming.

  “Told you he’d like it,” Molly said. “I told her you’d like red.”

  More than like. The soft fabric of the dress hugged Cara in every way possible. She had on makeup that made her eyes sultry, almost smoky. Her lips were a deeper shade of red than the dress, and he couldn’t help staring at them. He’d give anything to forget about the party and plunder those lips. Heat shot to his groin at the thought of kissing her.

  “Hello, Ryan.”

  He hadn’t heard Cara’s voice for days. It rolled over him like a warm tropical wave and had him wanting to have her in just such a wave with him, naked, laughing and—

  “Yes, hello, Ryan.” Molly said, her voice pulling him out of his fantasy.

  Cara watched his face. With her standing close, he could see from her gaze that he wasn’t struck off her dance card. In fact, unless he was losing his ability to read faces, he was pretty sure she was as glad to see him as he was to see her.

  “You came,” he finally managed to get out.

  “Molly is a persuasive agent,” Cara said, squeezing Molly’s arm.

  He fought the urge to drag Cara off to one of the alcoves and kiss her senseless. Maybe he’d do it later. Why a club that normally didn’t even allow women inside had alcoves obscured by palms made no sense. The sheltered, intimate spaces were perfect for what he had in mind.

  “Mom!” Sam ran up and tugged his mother’s arm. “They have a picture of Babe Ruth! You have to come see!”

  “See you two later?” Molly asked, as if he and Cara might be able to disappear. At that moment, Ryan wished they could.

  Cara pulled the shawl that rested on her arms up to cover her bare shoulders. “Molly made this too. Dyed to match.”

  “It’s lovely,” Ryan said. “You’re lovely. Look, whatever I said or did to make you back off, I—”

  “You didn’t do anything.”

  She shivered, and he took off his jacket.

  “Here,” he said, offering it.

  “Molly would kill me,” she said. “This dress is her pièce de résistance.”

  Molly had that right. If he’d had in mind res
isting Cara, he couldn’t have, not with her looking like the hottest woman on the planet. He shrugged back into his jacket. Then he pulled the envelope Alex had given him from his pocket.

  “One million one hundred thousand dollars,” he said, tapping it with his fingers. “Alex, Scotty and Chloe wanted to give us a good start.” He hadn’t meant to put such emphasis on the word us. It had dropped from his lips like a phantom force.

  She looked down at the floor. When she looked up, there were tears pooling in her eyes. He had expected her to be happy, but tears? Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe he shouldn’t have said us. Maybe it spooked her.

  “Hey,” he said, “we’ll get there. A couple of the guys are thinking about getting places up near Albion Bay. They’re going to pitch in.”

  She shook her head. “It’s wonderful, what you’re doing. Truly wonderful.”

  But she didn’t look like she thought it was so wonderful. Maybe it was just the stress of having to dress up and come into the city; maybe she was overwhelmed by the opulent club and felt out of place. Yet she didn’t look out of place; she probably looked finer than any woman who’d been in the joint. But looking the part and feeling at home, well, didn’t he know the difference.

  “Let’s go find Scotty and Alex,” he said. “Chloe’s coming up in an hour. She’ll miss Sam’s speech, but not the party.” He wanted to say, Let’s duck into one of the back rooms and let me get that dress off you, but that would have to wait.

  “Sam’s giving a speech?”

  “I pulled out all the stops,” he said with a grin. “Who can resist an earnest twelve-year-old?”

  She smiled then. And he knew he was in love. Like a throw that landed just right, snug in the pocket, it all came together and he just knew. He reached for her hand, twined his fingers in hers. And took a breath when he felt her hand relax in his.

  “If I’d known you were going to be dressed to take everyone’s breath away, I might’ve had you give the speech instead,” he said.

  He leaned down and kissed her cheek. To his surprise, she curved into him, and he held her, felt the motion of her breathing against his chest. She was a strange one—he never knew what to expect. But he’d take this. Just as he started to trail his fingertips down the curve of her back, she drew away and looked toward the door.

  “Your guests are arriving,” she said. “Looks like I’ll have to share you.”

  “There’s always the after-party.”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. He regretted saying such a bull-headed thing. The fire that drove him to her left any finesse he once could’ve mustered in a pile of ashes.

  He greeted his teammates and the people from Albion Bay. Belva had on some sort of spangled blouse that caught the light as she moved. Cain and Perk wore suits, Perk looking much happier in his than Cain did. Most of the guys from the team headed for the bar.

  Twenty minutes later he hadn’t spotted Cara once in the crowd milling through the club. But when Sam stepped up with him to the microphone, he saw her standing in the back of the room.

  Ryan announced the funds they had in hand and pledged half a million of his own.

  “But before we go on,” he said with a wave at Sam, “this young man has a story for you.”

  Sam pulled himself up, beaming.

  Then he proceeded to give a blow-by-blow and very embellished account of Ryan’s car and the drive to the hospital.

  The crowd laughed.

  “Um, Sam?” Ryan said as he leaned down to Sam’s eye level. “Tell them about your asthma.”

  “Oh, that. Well, if Ryan hadn’t had such a fast car and been able to drive like Jimmie Johnson, I might be dead now.”

  He turned to look at Ryan. “That what you meant?”

  “Sort of,” Ryan said over the roar of laughter from the crowd.

  Ryan called Belva up to the stage.

  “If you folks can match the funds we have in hand, we’ll be eighty percent there. I don’t want to do some sort of public step-up routine. I know that’s what people say works, but it’s not my style. If you’re inclined to help, Mrs. Rosario will—”

  “Call me Belva, please,” Belva said, crossing her arms and smiling out at the crowd.

  “If you’re inclined to help, Belva will be accepting your checks and pledges. She’ll send out an email and let you all know how we did.” He paused and scanned the faces he was coming to know. “It means a lot that you all came out for this.”

  And before he said something mushy that he’d regret, he stepped away from the mike and down off the dais.

  People clustered around Sam and others headed off to the bars scattered throughout the club. He went up to the nearest bar and ordered a beer. Next he was going to find Cara and kiss her, no matter how much she’d try to wriggle out of it. He knew there was fire between them. He just needed to stoke it a bit and remind her.

  “That was a good show up there,” an unfamiliar voice said.

  He turned to face a man his height, maybe an inch shorter, with a face that said he’d spent years in the sun.

  “Ryan Rea.”

  The man took his hand. “Henry Beaumont.” Henry took the martini the bartender handed him and motioned Ryan to the side of the room.

  “You know, if you really want to wrap up this project, you should hit her up.”

  He pointed to Cara, who stood with Molly near one of the potted palms.

  Ryan laughed. “You’re kidding, right? She drives the school bus. Or did before the county cut the funding.”

  “Now you’re the one who’s kidding. That’s Caroline Barrington. Her twin brother plays on my polo team when he’s in the Hamptons. Her family’s worth billions.”

  Ryan took a swig of his beer and swallowed down his urge to tell the guy he was nuts. If Beaumont really traveled in high-money circles, maybe he was considering a donation. Ryan couldn’t afford to insult a donor.

  He laughed a second time. “Perhaps she just has one of those familiar faces.”

  Even as Ryan said it, Cara looked up at him and smiled, gesturing as she spoke to a group of ladies from Albion Bay. But when her gaze shifted and she saw the man he was talking to, her face froze midsentence and she turned and raced out of the room.

  “Excuse me,” Ryan said.

  Her reaction drove the stranger’s words through his mind. More than that, it drove images through his head, images of inconsistencies he’d seen but ignored. The valuable painting and book, the way she handled the coffee machine, her utter lack of reaction to the Bugatti, her studied ease and well-practiced mannerisms. Seeing her in New York...

  Damn, he had seen her in New York. And none of it made any sense.

  She was fast, he’d give her that. But as he raced down the marble hall, he was faster.

  He reached her and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, turning her to face him.

  “Whoa, not so fast. Mind telling me why you’re in such a hurry?”

  She didn’t look at him, just pulled her hand from his grip. “I saw you talking with Henry.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not well. My... my brother does.”

  “Is it true?” He bit back the anger threatening to flood him.

  “Is what true?”

  “That you have billions?”

  She tipped her head back. “Ryan, I—”

  “Just tell me if it’s true.”

  “Not quite.” She put her hand to her throat and held it there. “Not till next week.”

  He felt like someone had pumped air into his veins.

  “Then you are Caroline Barrington?”

  “Some part of me is.”

  She lowered her hand and started to reach toward him, but whatever she saw in his face made her pull back and clasp her hands in front of her.

  She stood unmoving. Silent.

  He tried to convince himself that she was the same person she’d been just minutes before.

  But she wasn’t.

 
The force of her deception crashed into him.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  He turned and dropped his forearms on the cold marble wall. If it hadn’t been solid, he might’ve punched it.

  Still might.

  Anger and images of the day he’d stood in court—publicly defending himself and his honor against the deceit of a lying woman—washed over him, buffeting him. Slamming into him. And now he discovered that another woman had lied to him. And not just any woman. Cara had lied to him. Deliberately. Systematically. Cara. He pounded the marble under his hands. She’d pretended to be something, someone, she wasn’t.

  Images and emotions came flying at him—the summons to appear in court, the day he’d read over the DNA test results, the day he’d admitted to himself that he’d been taken in by the woman scheming to mold his life to hers. And then there were the images of Terese. Of Terese lying to him, knowing in her bones—all the damned while knowing—that he’d have slain dragons for her.

  Cara might not have been scheming to bend him to her plans, but she’d deceived him. And worse, he’d fallen in love with a woman who wasn’t what she appeared to be. A woman who’d deceived not only him but an entire town.

  She’d pretended to need a job, for God’s sake. She’d pretended everything. Hell, he didn’t even know who she really was. A name. A family. But the person?

  Emotions flooded him so fast that he knew he couldn’t trust his reactions.

  “Ryan, I—”

  “I need some air,” he said without looking back at her. “Alone.”

  He went out the first door he saw and found himself facing the massive spires of Grace Cathedral. Her family probably built it. Or could have. He raced across the street and hailed the valet.

  Lies.

  They ripped out your heart and left an abyss in their wake, a fathomless abyss that couldn’t be crossed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Cara stared out the window of her hotel room. From thirty stories above, San Francisco looked like a glittering octopus. It was a fanciful thought, something to take her mind off her betrayal of Ryan. But the city didn’t hold her attention for long. It couldn’t. What she needed to escape was inside her, and nothing on the outside could heal that inner pain.