The Secret Sin

by Darlene Gardner

  Air whooshed over her face, cooling her skin and blowing through her hair as the bike jostled over the slightly uneven ground.

  She glimpsed base camp in the distance, her signal to ease up. Intending to coast the rest of the way, she stood up, resting her weight on the pedals.

  The left pedal snapped off with an audible click.

  Annie’s foot touched air and then the sole of her shoe scraped along the dirt of the path.

  The bicycle skidded sideways, sliding out from under her. She pitched forward, her upper body going airborne. The ground rushed up to meet her.

  Desperately fighting the impulse to tense up, she let herself fall. The right side of her body smacked the ground, with her rear end absorbing the brunt of the impact.

  Then she was half sliding, half rolling down the hill.

  “Annie!” Someone was calling her name. She was too stunned by the fall to figure out who it was.

  She smelled grass and saw stars. She blinked a few times and her vision cleared enough for her to realize she was sprawled in a soft patch of grass to the side of the trail.

  “Annie!”

  She heard the same voice, closer this time and jarringly familiar.

  She groaned, not so much in pain but in dread. Sitting up, she struggled to gather her scrambled wits for the confrontation she couldn’t avoid.

  “Are you okay?” Ryan Whitmore’s face entered her field of vision, his handsome features full of concern. He bent over, looking as though he intended to determine the extent of her injuries.

  She raised a hand, dismayed to find it shaking. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” He didn’t touch her but still hovered over her. “That was quite a fall.”

  She didn’t yet know how badly she was hurt, but wasn’t about to admit to anything. She brushed the leaves and the grass and the dirt from her arms and legs, taking stock of her injuries. A bad scrape on her right thigh. A sore spot on her hip that would turn into a bruise if it hadn’t already. A banged-up elbow.

  And severely wounded pride.

  “Like I told you,” she said, “I’m fine.”

  Before he could insist on helping her up, she got to her feet. Various body parts screamed in protest. The world went momentarily black, the stars returning before they performed another disappearing act.

  “Let me help you down the hill.” Ryan’s eyebrows were drawn together, and his mouth was pinched. She ignored his outstretched arm.

  “You can carry the bike if you want to help.” She doubted she’d be able to lift it, not when she’d yet to recover her wits fully. She took a step, relieved when her leg supported her weight. She might be bruised and stiff, but she’d live.

  He seemed about to protest, but then crossed the path to where the bike had come to rest against a bush. He righted it, then frowned. “It’s missing a pedal.”

  “That’s why I fell,” Annie said. “When I stood up and put my weight on it, it came off.”

  “Odd,” Ryan said.

  “Not so odd,” she said. “Things like that happen.”

  Too bad it had had to happen while he was watching. Annie trudged ahead of him, silently cursing her bad luck. If she’d stuck to the original plan to guide the early group down-river, she could have at least avoided one-on-one time with him.

  “I thought you were going rafting,” she said.

  “I thought you’d be the guide.”

  She looked down at the trickle of blood running down her leg instead of at him. The scrape on her thigh smarted so she doubled her efforts to walk as though she was injury-free.

  “All our guides are capable,” she said.

  “Yeah, but only one of them has been avoiding me for almost fourteen years.”

  She kept walking, determined not to let him know his comment had thrown her, irked that it had. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I just haven’t had anything to say to you.”

  “If I was the kind of guy who took advantage of the injured,” he said in a conversational tone, “I’d take exception to that comment.”

  “I’m not injured,” she denied.

  “I’d disagree with that one, too.”

  She increased her pace, which should have been enough to put distance between them. She was in hiking shape, and he was rolling a broken bicycle, but the fall had slowed her down. The sun was shining brightly overhead, heating up the August morning and making her feel even more uncomfortable.

  “You should let me take a look at you when we get back to your shop,” he said as though she hadn’t already refused him. “Then there are a couple of things I want to talk to you about.”

  Before alarm took hold, the rational part of her brain kicked in. He sounded too cool and calm to have figured out the volatile secret about Lindsey.

  “You can’t always get what you want,” she said.

  It was a childish retort, one she immediately wished she could take back. She was a grown woman who successfully dealt with men in both her business and personal lives. She’d had a serious romantic relationship, even though it hadn’t worked out in the end. It bothered her that she became a quivering mass of nerves in this man’s presence.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I learned that lesson when I was sixteen.”

  He was wrong. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted that night when she’d had sex with him. She’d later found out it was precisely what he’d set out on having.

  She felt her face heat and could have kicked herself. She was no longer a teenage virgin. What had happened with Ryan had been a long time ago. She couldn’t let it matter. She couldn’t let him matter.

  They’d almost reached the main building. Jason must have seen them approaching because he came outside. He’d changed the black T-shirt he’d worn to work into a green one with the Indigo River Rafters logo. In black jeans and with his sandy hair falling to his shoulders, however, he still looked like he was headed for a rock concert.

  “What happened to you?” Jason asked.

  “The pedal came off the bike,” she said. “Could you put it in the storeroom with the extra rafts? I’d rather the customers didn’t see it.”

  “Sure.” Jason took the bike and the broken pedal from Ryan before disappearing around the corner.

  Annie turned to face Ryan once they were alone again. He was possibly even more handsome than he’d been in their youth. His hair had darkened slightly so it tended more toward light brown than blond, and there were laugh lines around his eyes and mouth she didn’t remember being there.

  In khaki shorts and a T-shirt, he looked more like the athlete he used to be than a doctor. His legs were long and leanly muscular, and his arms and chest were nicely developed. His features—sensuous mouth, clear blue eyes, long straight nose—packed a powerful punch. She’d never thought it fair that one man had so much going for him.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said and headed for home.

  “You’re really not going to let me check those scrapes?” His voice stopped her progress.

  She answered without turning. “I’ve told you a couple of times now, I’m fine.”

  “Then I’ll check your mountain bikes.”

  He was suddenly beside her. It had always surprised her that she didn’t need to look up far to meet his eyes. She guessed he was five-eleven, tops, but he’d been such an overwhelming figure in her life that he’d always seemed much taller.

  “For loose pedals,” he added.

  The suggestion was an excellent one, considering she’d be liable if a customer had a mishap. They called in a technician to service the bikes regularly to prevent exactly that.

  “I’ll get Jason to do it,” she said.

  “I worked in a bike shop one summer. I can help him.”

  “You don’t have—”

  “I want to,” he interrupted.

  She stared at him, at a loss as to what to say to get him to leave. Lindsey was probably awake by now; she could appear at any minute. Common sense dictated that t
he less time Ryan spent around the girl, the less chance he’d have to figure out their connection.

  “I’ll get started on the bikes while you clean up.” He strode toward the rack of mountain bikes available for rental, as though she’d already given him permission.

  Cursing herself for not speaking up more forcefully against his help, Annie started for the house. Lindsey was sitting on the sofa in front of the television, her legs tucked under her, a spoon poised above a small container of peach yogurt. She glanced at Annie, then did a double take. “Oh, my gosh! What happened?”

  “I fell off a bike,” Annie said.

  Lindsey put down her breakfast and unfolded her legs, scooting forward on the sofa. “Need any help?”

  It made Annie feel marginally better that Lindsey offered.

  “I got it.” Annie walked past her into the kitchen and tore a few sheets from a roll of paper towels. She wet them and mopped up the blood and the dirt the best she could, wincing as she did so.

  “That looks like it hurts.” Lindsey had followed her into the kitchen, yogurt in hand. She wore a gray-and-pink-striped tank top that ended just above the low, elasticized waistband of her very short gray shorts. “How’d you fall anyway?”

  “One of the pedals on my bike came off.” Annie reached into the cabinet where her father kept bandages and ointments and withdrew some supplies.

  “Don’t you rent those things out?”

  “Yes.”

  Lindsey made a face. “I’d be afraid to ride one.”

  The girl’s train of thought, Annie noted, was distressingly similar to Ryan’s.

  “We’re checking the other bikes to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Annie said.

  “Who’s we?”

  Annie hesitated, reluctant to tell her Ryan was on the premises. “A teenage boy works for me.”

  Lindsey ate a spoonful of her yogurt, then dropped the container in the kitchen wastebasket. “You sure you don’t need any help?”

  She not only thought like Ryan, she sounded like him.

  “I’m sure.” Annie smoothed a gob of salve over the brush burn on her thigh, then tore open a package containing an oversized bandage. She concentrated on centering it over the scrape.

  “See you later,” Lindsey called.

  Annie’s head jerked up in time to see the teen headed for the door on long, bare legs, her flip-flops smacking against the heels of her feet. “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “To see if I can help with the bikes,” Lindsey tossed the words over her shoulder without breaking stride.

  “Wait!” Annie called again, but it was too late. Lindsey was gone.

  Annie made short work of dressing the rest of her wounds and charged for the door, only to look down at herself and discover her shorts were ripped and her T-shirt streaked with dirt.

  She dashed for her bedroom, pulling the T-shirt over her head as she went, and yanked another shirt and pair of shorts out of her dresser drawers. Moments later, she was rushing out of the house, her sore arms and legs aching.

  Laughter carried through the clear summer air, a girlish giggle mingling with the deep vibrations of a man’s laugh. She followed the sound around the side of the building to the mountain bikes they rolled out of the storeroom each morning, then stopped.

  Ryan was crouched on the ground beside a bicycle, his hand on one of the pedals as he looked up at Lindsey.

  “A squirrel really ran into your bicycle wheel?” Lindsey’s voice was filled with both laughter and doubt.

  “Yep,” Ryan said. “Bounced right off. Lay there for a second, stunned, then scampered away.”

  “Why would it do that?”

  “Why do squirrels do anything? You’ve seen them run into the path of a car. This was the same kind of thing.”

  “You didn’t fall off the bike or anything?”

  “Nope. Just wobbled a little.”

  Lindsey laughed again, then bent her head toward his. “Why are you wiggling the pedals like that?”

  “I’m checking to make sure they’re securely fastened to the crank.”

  “The crank?” Lindsey repeated.

  “It’s this round thing with the jagged edges.” He ran his hand over the part, giving her a visual. “It’s pretty easy to check. You just jiggle the pedal from side to side to see if you feel any looseness.”

  Lindsey moved to another bike, imitating what he’d shown her, first on the right pedal, then the left. “I think this left one’s loose.”

  Ryan joined her at the bike, performing the same check she just had. “You’re right. Good job spotting it. You might be a natural at this.”

  Even from her position twenty feet away, Annie could see the effect of the compliment. Lindsey squatted, like Ryan, but she seemed suddenly taller.

  If Lindsey had grown up with Ryan as her father, he could have built up her self-esteem in countless interactions instead of just this one.

  How could Annie seize the opportunity to spend time with Lindsey, fully aware it could be the only one she’d ever get, and deny Ryan the same chance? Didn’t he have as much right as she did to know the girl, no matter how brief their window of opportunity? And if she didn’t reveal to him who Lindsey was, could she live with herself?

  Lindsey spotted her first. “You didn’t tell me Dr. Whitmore was here, Annie. I’m helping him.”

  “She catches on quick.” Ryan’s smile reached his eyes. “Hey, Annie.”

  She didn’t attempt a response as she contemplated what would be the right thing to do.

  The fair thing.

  The decent thing.

  He cocked his head. “Are you okay?”

  He probably thought the bike accident had knocked some of her brain cells loose. Considering what she was about to do, maybe it had.

  Lindsey was regarding her with the same interest as Ryan, her head angled in exactly the same way so their resemblance was unmistakable.

  “Can I talk to you alone, Ryan?” She swallowed. There would be no turning back now. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SINCE their chance meeting at the pediatrician’s office, Ryan had thought of little else besides getting Annie alone to talk. As she led him away from the building that housed the river rafters, he got a notion of how alone they would be.

  Annie didn’t head toward the wide ripple of river that was the best advertisement for her trips or take the shady, tree-lined bike path where she’d suffered the fall, choosing instead a skinny trail that led into the woods.

  “We can’t chance anyone overhearing us,” she told him as she walked along at a clip faster than he would have thought possible given her recent accident. She brushed aside the dangling leaves from a tree branch, forging ahead.

  They’d left Lindsey and Jason with the bicycles and instructions to check the rest of them for loose pedals. Lindsey had been pointing out to Jason where the crank was as they walked away.

  “Fine with me,” Ryan said.

  He guessed she wanted to talk some more about Lindsey’s fixation on her weight. After they dispatched that topic, he could bring the conversation around to the past they’d never discussed.

  He could tell her how sorry he was.

  She stopped abruptly. The path was wider here, with a fallen log just about the right height to sit on. She remained standing, but he got the impression she’d sat on that very log before.

  She wasn’t wearing a ball cap today. A ray of sunlight beamed down through the trees, striking her shoulder-length hair and turning it even more golden. He remembered how he used to be on the lookout for that blond hair in the halls of their high school, but she’d been as adept at avoiding him before their single night together as she had been afterward.

  He waited for her to begin, visually assessing the scrape on her leg and the bruise on her arm. She was probably still smarting, but the injuries didn’t look serious. She seemed to be having trouble finding words.

  “I kn
ow why you wanted to talk to me alone,” he said, helping her out.

  He could see her throat constrict. “You do?”

  “It’s about Lindsey, right?”

  She nodded, her eyes growing huge.

  “I’d keep monitoring her, but I don’t see this as a big problem. She’s fixated on her weight, but she doesn’t seem to have an eating disorder.”

  “An eating disorder,” Annie repeated.

  “I didn’t see any signs of one, which doesn’t mean she’s not at risk of developing—”

  “Stop,” she interrupted, holding up a hand.

  “Stop?”

  “That’s not what I wanted to talk about.” Annie’s upper teeth chewed her lower lip. She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself. He had absolutely no idea what she would say.

  “Lindsey’s the baby we gave up for adoption.”

  The words hung in the air between them like the fog that sometimes blanketed the Pocono Mountains.

  “I found out yesterday just before I talked to you at the pediatrician’s office,” she said in a rush. “I should have told you then, but I wasn’t used to the idea myself. I’m still not.”

  His brain whirred, trying to put the pieces together and not able to make them fit. “Lindsey can’t be our baby. She’s fifteen.”

  “She lied about her age so she could travel alone on the train,” Annie said. “She turned thirteen in March.”

  The birthday of the baby they’d given up for adoption had been five months ago. Even though he tried to live in the present, he’d marked the date in some way or another over the past thirteen years, sometimes with alcohol, always with guilt.

  He sank onto the log, wrestling with the revelation, still trying to make sense of it. He’d never expected to lay eyes on their baby in his lifetime. “Lindsey really is our daughter?”

  “Not our daughter,” Annie said. “We gave up all rights to her. She’s Ted Thompson’s daughter.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought it was a closed adoption.”