Informed Risk: A Hero For Sophie Jones

by Robyn Carr

  She waved away his apologies. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Damn it, it does matter.” The words came out low, but hard with leashed fury.

  She only leaned against that tree, looking at him. He wanted to cover the short distance between them, grab her again, and shake her until she admitted what a bastard he was. But somehow he contained himself.

  She just went on staring, those wide eyes so sweet, full of understanding and patience.

  “Don’t,” he commanded.

  She winced at his harshness. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  And she immediately turned her head and looked away.

  There was silence, but for the sounds of the night.

  After a few moments, she turned her face to him again. “Would you like to see my favorite spot?”

  Impossible though it was, he knew immediately the spot she meant: a certain place along the nearby creek.

  Past the oak grove, around the bend—a tiny grotto, green and magical, with willows growing all around and yellow-green moss like a blanket on the ground. He had found the place himself as a child. And loved it. And thought of it as his.

  Anger arrowed through him again. Who the hell was she to choose his spot as hers?

  “Sinclair.” Her knowing eyes seemed to see right through him. “It’s all right. All of it. Really.”

  He shook his head and looked away from her, because it wasn’t all right. It was crazy. This whole thing—the wide-eyed woman and the August night, what had happened in that damn house and what was happening inside him now. Never in a million years would he have imagined that tonight would go like this.

  No. Tonight was supposed to have been nothing more than a scouting expedition, a chance to check out his adversary in person before she even knew that he planned to reclaim what was his at any cost.

  Sin slumped against the oak tree. Short seconds ago, he had been furious. Now his fury had fizzled to nothing. In its place remained a raw awareness of his own idiocy.

  He’d grabbed the woman, in the house and here—and forced himself on her, completely out of nowhere. And what point could there possibly be in becoming irate because she favored the same section of creek he had liked as a child? It was ridiculous.

  Ten to one, he’d learn it wasn’t the same spot he remembered anyway. After all, decades had passed. The creekbed would have shifted in high-water years. The place he remembered wouldn’t even exist anymore.

  “Please.” She came away from her tree trunk and took two hesitant steps toward him. “Come with me.” She extended her hand.

  He took it. He was an idiot. No doubt about it. A shiver went through him—from the sudden breeze that had come up, he told himself, a breeze that chilled him as it dried the sweat of his preposterous anguish from his skin.

  “This way.” She was already turning toward the creek.

  He stumbled along behind her, dazed—spellbound in spite of himself. Out of the oak grove and into an open field of tall, dry grass that made her calf-length skirt whisper sweetly as she ran. He looked up. A million stars winked back at him, jewels of light strewn across a midnight ground of sky.

  As a child, he had run like this. Under this same Sierra sky in high summer, with the moon benign and shining white, smiling down on him.

  The field sloped away and they came to the creek. It sparkled in the moonlight, its dark surface glistening as it fled over the rocky bed beneath.

  She turned to him, granted him one brief, conspiratorial glance. “Not far now.” And then she was off again, along the bank, pulling him after.

  Within moments, they came to the spot. And it was the same. Exactly the same as he remembered it.

  She pulled him up onto the big black rock at the very edge of the stream, the rock he used to sit on for hours as little boy. “Here,” she said. “Right here. Sit down.” He obeyed her command, dropping down beside her as she gathered her legs up, smoothed her skirt and wrapped her slender arms around her knees.

  They sat there saying nothing for the longest time, close enough that their shoulders brushed whenever either of them shifted so much as an inch. As the silent moments passed, Sin found that an answering stillness was growing inside him. He welcomed that stillness. After what had happened in the house and in the oak grove, that stillness felt cool and clean as the creek water sliding past at their feet.

  Finally she said softly, “This spot appeared two years ago.”

  He looked at her, wondering what exactly she meant.

  She told him. “We had a wet winter. The creek changed course. In the spring, this beautiful little glen was here.”

  He almost said, No, it was here before. Right here. When I was little. But he held the words back. Clearly the spot he’d loved as a child had been washed out years ago. This one was a new one, in just about the same place. No big mystery. Just an eerie coincidence.

  She nudged him lightly with her shoulder, then asked in a shy voice that thoroughly captivated him, “Do you like it?” He looked at her directly as he had not dared to do since he’d forced his kiss and the knowledge of his desire on her, back in the shadowy grove of oaks.

  She asked again, “Do you like it?”

  “Yes. I do. Very much.”

  She let out a breath, a sigh that seemed to come not only from her, but from all around them—from the whispering willows, the gleaming creek and the tall pines, as well. “I knew that you would. I’ll bet when you were little, you had a spot of your own, along this creek.” A lock of that honey-colored hair lay curled on her shoulder. He couldn’t resist touching it, smoothing it into the mass of thick waves that flowed down her back.

  “Sinclair?” she prompted, her eyes bright as twin Sierra stars.

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you have a spot you called your own along this creek?”

  “I might have.”

  She faked an injured look. “You’re not going to tell me.”

  He touched her face, rubbed his thumb across her full lower lip. “No. I’m not.” His body stirred again as her smile bloomed under his caressing thumb.

  “It’s all right. Keep your secrets.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  Beneath his brushing thumb, her mouth felt like some ripe, ready fruit. He went on stroking it, back and forth, images flashing through his mind—the two of them, moving, naked, on the soft blanket of moss nearby; a big bed, with both of them in it, her skin like cream against snowy sheets.

  Her eyes went lazy—with a desire that answered his own. And she canted toward him, closer, in a clear invitation to a kiss.

  Sin wanted that kiss, the way a starving man wants bread.

  And because he wanted it so badly, he refused to take it.

  Inside his veins the blood pounded in hard, heavy bursts. And still, he pulled his hand away and sat back a fraction.

  She remained absolutely still for a moment. Then she made a little show of rearranging her skirts. He knew she was gathering herself back from the brink of the intimacy they hadn’t quite shared.

  He watched her compose herself, wondering why everything about her enchanted him, why he wanted to touch her so, when touching her should have been the last thing on his mind.

  There was something about her. Something he couldn’t turn away from, couldn’t stop reaching toward—an innocence that beckoned. A goodness that lured.

  Fool that he was, he did reach out again. He touched her white hem of cotton lace. “Your slip is showing.”

  She sat a little straighter. And then she stretched—an indolent movement that would have looked brazen on any woman but her.

  Sin rubbed the soft, lacy fabric of her slip between his thumb and forefinger as she lifted her heavy hair with both hands and tipped her face toward the moon and the trees overhead. She smiled. Her throat gleamed, pale and perfect in the darkness, and her breasts pushed insolently against the supple fabric of her dress.

  Watching her, Sin could feel
his own natural restraint slipping inexorably away, like the water in the creek before them, so steadily and smoothly he could almost have told himself he didn’t know that he would end up in her bed tonight.

  But he did know. And in terms of his real goal, it was a mistake. In terms of his real goal, it would gain him nothing. Chances were, it would only make things all the messier later.

  Sin Riker was a ruthless man. But even a ruthless man had his standards. It was one thing to check out his adversary, another altogether to climb into bed with her. For a man of his fastidious nature, having sex with people he intended to get rid of showed no discernment at all. It was simply a line he’d never crossed and never intended to cross.

  But you will cross it now, a voice in his head taunted. You will spend the night in her bed—and she will hate you later when she learns exactly what secrets you’ve kept from her tonight.

  He released her hem as she let her hair drop, the bronze mass cascading in a curling tangle down her back. “It’s not a slip, it’s a petticoat,” she informed him. “And it’s supposed to show.”

  “A petticoat.” The old-fashioned word charmed him.

  “Yes.”

  “Women don’t wear petticoats anymore.”

  “This woman does.” As she spoke, she took his arm and laid it across her shoulders. She slid him a mischievous grin. “All right?”

  “Fine with me.”

  She leaned closer to him, fitting herself against him as if she belonged there. It felt very good. Soothing. To have her body touching his from shoulder to hip.

  They were quiet once more, until she let out a sigh, and he whispered, “What?”

  “Nothing. Life.” She found his free hand and twined her fingers with his. “And you. I feel so close to you. Is that crazy?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You should care.”

  Sophie registered the warning in his voice. She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him again.

  Something had happened to her back in the house and then among the dark oaks. Some…sureness had come over her, that nothing that occurred between her and this man would ever be wrong. That a bond existed between them, never-ending and unbreakable: he who’d lost this place so young and she who was entrusted with the care of it now.

  Yes, it was corny. And outrageously, impossibly romantic. And to Sophie B. Jones, that was just fine.

  She lifted his hand and pressed it to her lips. “You feel it, too.” He started to speak. She shook her head. “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t say you don’t feel it. Don’t tell a lie like that.”

  He said nothing. He was thinking of his other lies, though she couldn’t know that.

  She whispered, “And we do know each other.” Now she guided their twined hands to her heart. “Here. Where it counts.”

  Sin could feel her heartbeat, feel the firm slope of her breast.

  And her face was turned up to him, once more offering a kiss.

  This time he couldn’t resist. He moved closer. And so did she. Their lips touched so lightly.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Not near enough.

  He wanted more. He would have more.

  With a low, hungry moan, Sin settled his mouth over hers.

  Chapter 4

  Warmth and life and breath made flesh, she melted into him. The scent of her surrounded him. Her soft lips gave beneath his, opening like some night-blooming flower to let him inside.

  He took what she so freely offered, pressing her back against the dark rock they sat on, pulling her up even closer to him, so he could feel her slim body all along his as he plundered the sweetness beyond her parted lips.

  But the rock was no good as a lovers’ bed. Finally he had to end the kiss before they rolled off into the creek below. With a low groan of regret, he pulled away and looked down at her.

  Her brown-and-gold hair spilled across the rough rock and her face, in the darkness, glowed like some rare pale flower. Her eyelids fluttered open and she stared back at him, giving him a mirror of his own yearning—as well as her absolute trust.

  Trust he would ultimately demolish.

  “I live in the guest house, did I tell you?”

  He nodded.

  “Come there with me now.”

  His body ached for the pleasure and release she would bring him. Yet, somewhere, far back in his mind, a stern voice commanded, Stop now, walk away. Or give her the truth.

  “Sinclair. Come with me.” She lifted a hand and laid it on the side of his face. He turned toward that hand. She sighed when he kissed the tender heart of her palm.

  “Come with me,” she murmured again.

  He opened his mouth, put his tongue out, tasted her flesh. She whispered his name on a moan.

  He clasped her waist, and then higher, until he encompassed the soft globe of her breast.

  “Now, Sinclair.” She grasped his shoulder, the touch urgent and needful. “Let’s go now.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers once more, stopping just short of the kiss they both craved.

  “Sinclair.” She used his name as a plea.

  “Yes,” he said against her parted lips. “Yes. Let’s go. Now.”

  She led him along the creek again, and through the open field and the grove of oaks, then across the back lawn, through a rose arbor gate, to the small woodframe house a hundred yards from Riker Cottage.

  He recalled that house vaguely. For a while, when he was very small, his grandmother Bernadette had lived there. It held only good memories for him. With no feelings of uneasiness at all, he stepped over the threshold into the small living room.

  “I’ll turn on some lights,” she told him breathlessly.

  She left him standing near the door as she went to flick on a Tiffany-style standing lamp in a corner. The warm light spread over the room, showing him fat, comfortable chairs, a sofa upholstered with twining vines and flowers, and tables that looked like antiques, though none of them matched. Before the lace-curtained front window stood a big Boston fern in a Chinese pot painted with rearing dragons.

  On the walls were a number of pictures she must have picked up from estate sales or at flea markets, charming old-fashioned country scenes and a series of Victorian-looking prints. In one print, a turn-of-the-century lady sat at a writing desk, staring off into the middle distance as she composed her next line. In another, a man and a woman sat across from each other on twin love seats, sharing a coy look. And in a third, three golden-haired children picked flowers in a lush garden.

  All the individual pieces were different than the ones his grandmother had owned. But it still felt exactly the same. Inviting. Comforting. Cozy. Warm.

  “Hopelessly quaint, I know,” Sophie said softly, still standing there by that Tiffany lamp.

  He let himself look at her again. “I like it.” And he did. Which was just more insanity. His house in the Hollywood Hills was all clean lines, light woods and floor-to-ceiling windows. Thoroughly modernist, with no clutter at all. A monk’s mansion, Willa had called it. And maybe it was. As a grown man, there had been no appeal for him in Victorian prints and overstuffed furniture.

  Until tonight…

  “Well.” Sophie brushed her hands nervously against the front of her skirt. “I’m glad. That you like it.” Though a smile tilted the corners of her mouth, he could see the apprehension in her eyes.

  He understood. Out there by the creek, under the spell of the night, making love with a stranger had seemed like just the right thing to do. But this wasn’t a woman who gave her body to strangers. And now that they were actually here in her private space, her real nature had resurfaced. She couldn’t keep the doubts at bay.

  Which was good, Sin told himself. Looked at logically, it was the best thing that could have happened—so why did he feel this sharp pang of regret?

  Hesitantly she moved toward him, stopping a few feet away, on the other side of
that huge Boston fern. “I…my bedroom’s that way.” She gave a quick, awkward toss of one hand, toward the arch beyond her shoulder. He let his gaze follow the gesture, then looked at her once more.

  She gulped. “Well. Shall we…?”

  Slowly he shook his head.

  Bewilderment clouded her beautiful eyes. “No?”

  “Sophie. You’re not ready for this.” And neither am I, for that matter.

  She took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes. I am. I…”

  “Listen.”

  “What?”

  “Just be a little practical. Think about safety. Think about…pregnancy.”

  Her face went red to the roots of her shining hair. “Pregnancy.” She whispered the word.

  Bluntness would be the kindest course. He took it. “Do you have contraception? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Oh.” She gulped again. “I’m not…I didn’t even think…”

  “I know. Neither did I. Until right now.”

  She pressed her lips together, embarrassed, confused. She looked absolutely gorgeous to him in her indecision. He found he was becoming aroused all over again.

  Best to get out. Now. “Look. It’s been…beautiful.” He allowed himself a grin. “And awful.”

  She actually smiled back. And then her eyes turned sad. “You’re going.”

  “Yes.”

  “But…where?” Her honest face was so easy to read. She’d just realized she knew next to nothing about him. Nothing but his name, his distant past—the feel of his mouth on hers. “Um…where are you staying?”

  He named his hotel in nearby Grass Valley.

  “How…how long are you staying there?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. I have some business to take care of. I’ll be here till it’s handled.” Which will be as soon as I can send you on your way.

  “I see.” She dragged in another long breath and squared her slim shoulders. “Will you come back? Please? Tomorrow night. I’m free, same time as tonight, after the movie’s over.”

  He nodded. He would come back, all right. And he would have himself thoroughly under control. He’d get things straight with her. Explain that he was her new landlord—and he wanted her out. He’d make her his offer. She would take it or not.