A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

by Joan Johnston

  The moment he got back to the carriage house, Sloan slipped out of his jacket and pulled off his boots. Then he grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and walked out onto the deck that offered a view of both the stables and the hacienda. Settling himself in a cushioned chair, he propped his feet up on the railing and took a long swallow of beer.

  Taking a half hour to sit down, put his feet up and review the events of the day was a habit he’d developed in his late teens—minus the beer, of course. Sometimes he turned some music on, but tonight he wanted the quiet. He had a lot to sort through. And it all centered on Red.

  He’d called her that at first because he wasn’t going to call her Cameron. And he had figured it might annoy her or at the very least throw her a bit off balance. But the name seemed to somehow fit her.

  And he’d kissed her again. The kiss hadn’t been a test this time. He wasn’t a man who felt there was anything to be gained by lying to himself. He’d kissed her again because he wanted to. And because he hadn’t been able to resist finding out if she’d have the same effect she’d had on him the first time.

  And now he knew. He wanted Red with an intensity that he’d never felt for any other woman.

  It hadn’t done much good telling himself that she might be a lying little, fortune-hunting imposter. The fact remained that he wanted more from her than a kiss. And there was no use lecturing himself that he shouldn’t take more. No use at all pretending that he wouldn’t take more. Because he would.

  Hell, he nearly had.

  His gaze dropped to the garden below. He thought he could make out the bench where they’d kissed just a few hours ago. If someone hadn’t interrupted them, he would have made love to her right there. He was skilled enough, and she’d been aroused enough. It would have been wild, and crazy…and very dangerous. Everything else aside, he certainly hadn’t gone to James’s little dinner party with condoms at the ready. He hadn’t been tempted to run a risk like that since he was a teenager in the grip of almost-terminal hormones.

  Red could certainly push his buttons all right. And why not? Any man would be tempted by the passion that was simmering just below the surface. One taste of her and all he could think of was having her beneath him, of losing himself inside of her.

  That didn’t bother him as much as the fact that when he’d seen her in Hal Linton’s arms, jealousy had sliced through him right to the bone. He hadn’t felt that when he’d seen Hal kissing Cameron in the garden five weeks ago.

  Sloan took another swallow of beer. The other thing worrying him was that he was coming to like Red. He thought of the way she’d marched across the parlor to face down James. Even in his wheelchair, the old man had been able to glower at her at eye level. David taking on Goliath, he thought with a smile. And there was that shove she’d given Linton. It had sent him tumbling back against the wall.

  Not only was he beginning to like her, he was also more and more intrigued by her. She was dead set against marrying him. Before the party broke up, she’d taken him aside to try and talk him into persuading James to postpone the wedding. His gaze shifted to the hacienda and the light he could see in James’s suite. She was there with him now, trying to plead her case.

  Why? If she was the fortune hunter he suspected her of being, why wasn’t she happy about the wedding? She had to figure that in two days, James would sign his new will and she’d be a millionairess.

  And just what kind of a game was James playing? Had he moved up the wedding because of what he’d said in the parlor or was he involved in something deeper?

  He couldn’t help wondering what part Cameron might be playing in all of this. Leaning his head back against the chair, Sloan closed his eyes and tried to sort through what he knew and what he didn’t.

  Fact number one, Cameron had disappeared five weeks ago, and everyone including himself had believed that she’d taken off because she was having second thoughts about the wedding.

  He knew for a fact that she had been. Right after he’d caught her kissing Hal Linton in the gardens, they’d argued. He’d told her that it wasn’t the kind of behavior he would accept after they were married, and she’d blown up, told him she’d act whatever way she pleased. She’d threatened to call the wedding off, and he’d told her to go ahead.

  But there hadn’t been any real passion in the fight. Cameron had been angry, but not at him. She’d been angry with her father, angry that he wouldn’t leave the land to her because she was a woman. As a result, their quarrel was more like an argument he would have had with Cameron years ago—the kind that a brother and sister might have.

  And that was the crux of the problem. As the wedding date drew closer, both of them were realizing what they would be giving up if they went through with the marriage.

  They’d have the land, and he had no doubt that they’d eventually have children. But there would never be anything between them but the kind of love that exists between siblings or good friends.

  Opening his eyes, Sloan looked at the hacienda and the stables beyond drenched in moonlight. What he and Cameron shared was a passion for this land, but not for each other. That was why Cameron had asked him to marry her. He wasn’t sure whether it had been entirely her idea or if James had proposed it. But he knew why Cameron had gone along with it. She’d been scared when James had had the heart attack. She’d been angry then, too, because James was not going to leave the estate entirely in the hands of a woman. In the will he’d made out after the heart attack, he’d left it to a board of directors he’d personally selected. The board would make all the business decisions. Cameron would be provided for, but she’d have little control in the daily running of the ranch.

  Sloan rubbed a hand over his face. The old man knew how to push the right buttons to get what he wanted. If Cameron was a game player, she’d come by it honestly. Wasn’t that why he’d left five years ago—because he’d wanted to decide on his own what he wanted in life? He hadn’t wanted to spend his life working for James McKenzie. He’d wanted to run his own ranch.

  The proposition that Cameron had made to him at the Derby would allow him to do just that. They would be equal partners. He would be in charge of the horses and the ranch. She would be in charge of client relations and recruiting new business. They’d both have what they wanted. All they had to do was get married.

  He swept his gaze over the estate again, lingering first on the stables and then on the hacienda itself. This was what he’d always wanted, from the time he was a kid. He’d accepted Cameron’s proposal because of this.

  And she wasn’t the only one who’d been having second thoughts five weeks ago. He had been, too, and he’d been secretly relieved that she’d taken off and given them both a little time to think.

  That brought up fact number two. Red’s appearance raised the question of whether or not Cameron’s disappearance was voluntary or if someone else had played a hand in it. To answer that question he was going to have to spend a lot of time with the woman he was calling Red.

  And that was going to lead to…having her. He was not going to fool himself about that. In spite of those honest eyes, she was a liar and possibly a fortune hunter. Worst-case scenario, she might be a pawn in some deeper game that James McKenzie was playing. But even that possibility was not going to make a difference.

  Realizing that his thoughts had come full circle, Sloan reached down for his bottle and discovered that it was empty. He took his feet off the railing, but he didn’t go into the house for a very long time.

  When I finally let myself into Cameron’s room, my stomach was in knots, I had a headache pounding behind my eyes and I very badly wanted to kick something. The room was dark except for the moonlight pouring through the balconied windows on either side of the bed. I moved to one of the tables and flipped on a lamp.

  Hannibal was sprawled across my pillows glaring at me through narrowed eyes.

  I fisted my hands on my hips. “You don’t want to mess with me. I’ve had a very bad night.”
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  The cat’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t even blink.

  “Okay,” I said. “You don’t like me and I don’t like you. But I need some sleep, and I intend to sleep in this bed—not curled up on the foot like a…like a…” Cat, I finished silently.

  It occurred to me then that I was taking out my frustration on the poor cat when what I really wanted to do was strangle Sloan.

  With a frustrated sigh, I strode to the cabinet and got out treats for both of us. Luckily my sister kept a generous supply. After tossing a couple of cat tidbits at Hannibal, I walked to the window and took a bite of chocolate. I’d learned after the guests had left that Sloan didn’t live in the main house. He lived in the carriage house beyond the stables. I could just make it out in the moonlight.

  I’d never met a man like him before. Not that I hadn’t had to deal with some difficult men in my life. Male soap stars whose careers can depend on what twist a story line takes are not the easiest people to deal with. But at least their ego-driven motivations were always clear. Sloan Campbell’s were a mystery to me.

  He hadn’t seemed at all upset when he’d found me with Hal Linton. What had his relationship with my sister been? Was their marriage strictly a business arrangement? Or was it one of those “modern” deals where, after the knot was tied, the two individuals went their separate ways? Sloan hadn’t impressed me as that kind of a man. And I hoped that my sister wasn’t that kind of a woman.

  I turned back to Hannibal. “Maybe I’m just too much of a romantic. And I’m not rich.” My parents had been able to raise me in a very comfortable house, provide me with a good education, private schools and nice vacations. But they weren’t rich, rich. Cameron was. I’d already discovered that there was a world of difference between the contents of my closet and hers. And Sloan Campbell would be rich when he married her and James deeded the estate and the business to the two of them.

  I knew enough, had lived long enough to know that the rich were different. I turned back to look out over the gardens and the stables. Maybe inheriting a place like this was motive enough to settle for an arranged marriage. Perhaps in Cameron’s shoes, I would have agreed to it. I now knew from experience how persuasive James could be.

  But Sloan? Somehow, I couldn’t picture him allowing anyone to push him into something like that. Not even for money. Unless he was doing it for James. James McKenzie had raised him, and I could see that Sloan loved him like a father.

  I frowned and pressed my hands against the headache that was beginning to drum at my temples. Even if Sloan had originally agreed to the marriage out of love for James, that didn’t explain why he was agreeing to the rushed wedding now.

  Hadn’t the man told me that he picked his battles with James, and that when he went to the mat, he usually was able to make the old man see reason? So why had he allowed us to be manipulated into this wedding on Friday?

  He couldn’t possibly want it any more than I did. Good heavens, the man thought I’d run away and now was faking amnesia just to save face. Agreeing to the marriage in the first place was one thing. But why in the world would he want to go through with it when Cameron was so clearly ambivalent? His acquiescence contradicted everything that my instincts told me about the man.

  Unless my instincts were being clouded by the fact that he attracted me so strongly and on such an elemental level. Or unless there were facts that I didn’t know.

  Turning, I walked to the bed. I needed to sleep on it. I found that sleeping on problems—knots that I couldn’t untie in a plot—often solved them. Hopefully, my unconscious mind would sort through everything, and in the morning I would have a fresh perspective.

  Hannibal was still sitting on his throne of pillows at the head of the bed.

  “Okay,” I muttered to him. “I’ll share, but I’m not sleeping at the foot of the bed. You’re going to have to move over.”

  After shooting me a bland look, he began to lazily clean one of his paws. Hoping it wasn’t a threat to scratch me, I circled around the bed. It was only then that I noticed my duffel bag. I’d brought it up when Elena had first taken me to the room. It was sitting on the bench at the foot of the bed, but I was sure that I’d left it in Cameron’s closet. I was equally sure that the zipper had been closed, and it was open now.

  I reached in and pulled out my wallet. A quick check assured me that my money was still there. But the bills had been pulled out and stuffed back in carelessly. The few clothes that I’d brought had been rifled through.

  Ice formed a hard little ball in my stomach as I sank down onto the bench. Someone had come into my room and searched my duffel bag and wallet, and they didn’t care if I found out. Somehow that frightened me more than the fact that someone had searched my things.

  Who?

  The answer to that was anyone could have done it sometime during the evening with the possible exception of James. After everyone else had left, he’d asked me to accompany him to his suite. I’d gone because I’d thought I might be able to reason with him and get him to change his mind about the wedding on Friday. But he’d looked tired when we reached his room. And fragile. For the first time I’d realized that the evening had been as much of a strain for him as it had been for me.

  I frowned down at the wallet that I was still holding so tightly that my fingers had begun to ache. Even Sloan would have had an opportunity to come up here and search through my things before he’d returned to the carriage house.

  Deliberately, I willed my hands to relax and set the wallet down on the bench beside me. Why was it that my mind constantly circled back to Sloan Campbell? He’d been the one person to express openly his doubts about my being Cameron.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t stop thinking about him. The man had a grip on me, mind and body, that I’d never experienced before. If I wasn’t careful, he might turn into an obsession.

  I forced myself to think about what had happened as if it were a plot line I was developing. Character—who could have done this? And then motivation—why? Why usually pointed to who.

  Anyone could have slipped in here. Austin, for example. He didn’t like me and had made no effort to hide it. Plus, my return meant that he had to step down from a job that he might have grown attached to. I knew from Pepper’s report that Austin was only a year older than Cameron, so they’d grown up in the same house together. Had they always been in competition with one another? That might explain why he hadn’t bothered to hide his animosity toward me from James.

  In spite of his mother’s intervention, Austin had been drinking pretty heavily at dinner. That might explain why he’d been so careless about looking through my things. Or he may have wanted me to know that he’d searched them.

  Then there were the Lintons—Marcie and Hal. What was their stake in all of this? Marcie had been friendly enough, but if she hadn’t lied about who had signed the Radcliffs as clients, she’d certainly stretched the truth. Hal had been a bit too friendly, and it was clear from what Cole and Pepper had found out that he had an agenda. The land developers he represented wanted that strip of McKenzie land along the Pacific. Romancing the heiress apparent could be his way of furthering that agenda.

  And I couldn’t shake the thought that Austin and Marcie had helped Hal Linton get me alone after dinner. It had been too neat a maneuver to have been an accident.

  Marcie was engaged to Austin. Had Hal made a move on my sister with the hope that if he could prevent the marriage, then James might decide to leave the estate to Austin…? I was going to have to find out more about Cameron’s relationship with Hal. Did he have his sights set on becoming Mr. Cameron McKenzie or was he playing a deeper game?

  Any one of the possible scenarios I’d just cooked up would work beautifully in Secrets, but in real life…?

  Rising, I started to pace back and forth at the foot of the bed. I needed to find out more about these people. And I could do that. I was a writer, and I knew how to do research. First thing in the mornin
g I’d call Pepper and give her the information I’d gotten from Elena so she could check out alibis, and I’d ask her to check out the Lintons more thoroughly. And I’d talk again to Elena. Servants knew a lot about the families they served, and she might have more objective insights than I was likely to get anywhere else.

  Who else could I interview? Doc Carter. He was going to drop by tomorrow after lunch to see me, and I’d use my time with him to gather more information. And then I’d go riding with Marcie and Austin and gather more data from the “horse’s mouth” so to speak.

  I jumped at the sound of my cell phone, then grinned. It had to be Pepper. Was this ESP or what? She was the only one who had the number for my new cell. I pulled it out of the duffel and pressed the button to take the incoming call.

  The voice was soft and tinny sounding.

  “You should never have come back. You weren’t supposed to come back. Ever. Leave now or you’ll share the fate of the other mistresses of the Hacienda Montega.”

  I wasn’t aware of it when my knees gave out. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor staring down at the cell phone in my hand. There was a lump blocking my throat, I was shivering, and even my brain cells seemed numb.

  In spite of that, questions filtered through. What had been the fate of the mistresses of this house? And had my sister already shared it?

  Chapter 10

  “Good morning.”

  I had to swallow disappointment when I saw Marcie Linton at the foot of the stairs. I smiled and said, “You’re an early riser.”

  “Not usually. But I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you…alone.”

  “Sure,” I said. I had to admire her strategy. I’d gotten up at six-thirty and managed a quick shower and an even quicker phone call to Pepper in the hopes of doing the same thing with Elena.

  “We usually have breakfast in here.” Marcie led me down a short hallway.

  There was an energy about the petite brunette that I admired. But I didn’t quite trust her. Of course, my perspective on her could have been tainted by the fact that she reminded me of the ingenue on Secrets who had put Mallory Carstairs in the coma. But Cameron had hired her, I reminded myself.