by Robyn Carr
He said, “You’re still half-asleep.”
She gave him a look that had nothing to do with sleeping. “Let’s go to bed.”
Once they got inside, she wanted a shower. They took one together. He lathered her hair twice for her, the sweet-smelling bubbles running down his arms. Then, when they stepped out onto the bathroom tiles, they dried each other.
Soon enough they were kissing, and laughing, the towels dropping at their feet.
He carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. She looked up at him, lifting her arms, her still-wet hair snaking on the pillow, reminding him…
Of the two of them, wrestling underwater, the bubbles rising all around them, her hair floating against his chest.
Happy.
He was happy.
Living a lie with Sophie B. Jones.
“Sinclair…” she beckoned him.
He sank down upon her, burying his face in the wet, coiling strands of her hair. She pulled him close, sighing.
And when her fulfillment shuddered through her, she said it again.
“I love you, love you, love you, I do.…”
In the morning, they went riding. And he stayed for breakfast after.
She kissed him goodbye before he left, in the grove of pines near his car, her sweet body pressing close, her hair smelling of sunshine and last night’s shampoo.
“It’s a new movie tonight,” she told him, pulling back just enough that she could look up at him.
“I know, I saw the ad in the Union. The next installment in—”
“Our Randi Wilding Film Retrospective.” She looked exceedingly pleased with herself. “Tonight, it’s Kerrigan’s Honor. Randi plays an FBI agent whose mother and sister are raped and murdered by a gang of thugs. Naturally, she has to kill them all…in very imaginative ways.”
“Naturally.”
“You’re going to love this one, I just know it. And next week, we’ll have—”
“Stop. Let’s take it one week at a time.”
Something happened in her eyes then. Their brightness dimmed a little. She looked down at where her hands rested against his chest, and then back up at him. “Sinclair?”
“What?”
And she dared to ask, “Is there going to be a next week for us?”
What could he say to that? How the hell did he know?
She fiddled with a button on his shirt. “I don’t want to push you. I honestly don’t, but…” And it all came pouring out. “Oh, Sinclair, I have to tell you, sometimes, when you leave, all I can think is how much I don’t know about you. I don’t even know where you live—well, L.A., I know that. But L.A. is so big. What part of L.A.? And what is your house like? Do you know your neighbors? Are they nice? And where do you work? What do you really do there? And your friends. What are your friends like? Will I ever meet them? Will they hate me or like me?”
“Sophie. No one could hate you.”
“Sinclair, do you understand what I’m asking you?”
He knew then that he could put off telling her no longer.
But where to begin?
“Sinclair, can you understand?”
“Yes. Of course, I can.”
“Could we talk? Really talk? About the two of us. About…what will happen next? Could we talk…tonight?”
“Sophie…”
She put up a hand between them, for silence. “Tonight. All right?”
He thought of the long day of work she had ahead of her. At least, if he waited till tonight, she’d have a few hours to herself after everything had been said. Maybe that was the best way. If there was such a thing in this situation.
Or maybe he was just putting off the inevitable again….
“Please, Sinclair.”
“All right, Sophie. Tonight.”
“Thank you.” She moved close again to brush a kiss against his lips. It wasn’t enough for him—when it came to her, nothing was ever enough. He grabbed her close and kissed her hard.
Then, as she had other mornings, she stood beneath the pines to watch him go.
Sin drove back to his hotel by rote, hardly seeing where he was going, thinking of the obsession that had got hold of him the day he’d learned his family’s ranch could be his again. The timing had seemed perfect. He had the money and the time to build himself a big new house, fill the stables with thoroughbred horses and live the life of the gentleman rancher. His second in command at Inkerris, Incorporated, would be taking over from him. Within a year he’d hardly have to travel to L.A. at all. Within a year, no matter what kind of fight she had tried to put up, he would have been able to remove the one obstacle to his plans: Ms. Sophie B. Jones and her five-acre lease.
He’d intended only to get rid of her.
But now he couldn’t bear to lose her.
Love changes a man, old Oggie Jones had said.
But Sin was a realist. No one changed that much in five days. He still wanted his land back, wanted his heritage back.
And love? It was a word people batted around a lot. His father had talked about love all the time—the love of family, the love of the land. And then he’d lost the land and opted out by hanging himself. And his mother had loved; she’d loved him and his father—and she’d claimed to love the first ten or so of the string of men who’d put food on her table.
By the time he was nine years old, Sin had learned that love was something it didn’t pay to believe in, something he simply did not have time for if he planned to crawl out of the hole his father and mother had put him in. He got his first paper route when he was ten, and he was working as a busboy by the time he was sixteen.
He’d been careful to stay on the right side of the law. He’d given a wide berth to the drug dealers in his neighborhood—and not out of any nobility of spirit. There was fast money in drugs, and money of any kind interested him. But unfortunately drug money was fast money he could lose if he got caught. And he couldn’t afford a prison record following him around. After all, he wanted to rebuild for himself the fortune his father had lost. So he kept his nose clean.
He bought his first house, a run-down rental duplex in San Pedro when he was twenty-one. He forced the tenants out over their constant—and sincere—protests that they had nowhere to go. Then he fixed the place up himself, reselling it a year after he bought it for three times what he’d paid for it.
By eight years ago, when he was thirty, Inkerris, Incorporated, was going strong. He’d come a long way. In the next eight years, he went even further. And love had played no part at all in his success.
No, Sin Riker didn’t believe in love and he didn’t have time for it. And he certainly didn’t deserve it—a fact that Sophie was going to have to face tonight when he told her the truth.
Three times, she had told him she loved him. After tonight, he doubted she’d be telling him again.
Sin parked his car in the hotel’s lot and went in the main entrance, where he stopped at the front desk.
“Sinclair Riker, room 103,” he told the clerk. “Any messages?”
The clerk pointed toward the small sitting area opposite the desk. “Someone to see you.”
Sin turned just as his former fiancée stood from a damask-covered wing chair. “Sin, darling. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for over an hour.”
Chapter 9
“Willa. I had no idea you were coming.”
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t.” After pausing to brush lightly at the few wrinkles that had dared to crease the front of her pencil-thin silk skirt, Willa strolled up to him and slid a proprietary arm through his. “We have to talk.” She scrunched up her perfect nose. “What’s that I smell? Horse, I do believe.”
He looked down into her exotically slanted blue eyes. “I’ve been riding.”
“Riding?” She squeezed his arm, raised a black eyebrow. “Oh, I have no doubt at all about that.”
The light dawned. “You hired a detective service to have me followed.”
“I c
ertainly did.” She made a tsking sound with her tongue. “And it cost me a serious chunk of change, too. I was assured you’d never know. But then you spotted him anyway—on Monday, wasn’t it?”
“Sunday, actually. Monday was the day I let him know that I knew.”
She ran a long, red, beautifully manicured fingernail down his arm. “I should probably demand at least half of my money back.”
“What do you want, Willa?”
She lifted a shoulder in a delicate shrug. “I told you. We have to talk.”
“All right.” He started to move toward the sitting area just a few feet away.
She hung back, casting a glance at the desk clerk. “Privately, please—how about your room?”
He dragged in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Fine. Let’s go.”
In his suite, Willa tossed her envelope bag on an end table, kicked off her Italian pumps and dropped to the sofa, stretching her long, silk-clad legs out along its length. Once she’d made herself comfortable, she got right to the point. “You’ve been having an affair, Sin. With that sweet little nobody who’s living at that ranch of yours.”
Sin leaned against the closed door and folded his arms over his chest. “Sweet, Willa? Was that how your detective described her?”
“I have pictures.”
He shook his head in disgust. “God, Willa.”
Willa recrossed her legs, ran a smoothing hand up her already smooth stockings, then looked up to make sure he saw the provocative gesture. “She’s not your type at all. So nice. Big innocent eyes. Acres of long, badly cut hair. And those outré calf-length dresses that look as if they were made from Laura Ashley window treatments. Honestly, Sin. I’m disappointed in you.”
Sin straightened from the door. “Is that all you got me up here to tell me?”
Willa sighed and cast a glance heavenward. “Isn’t it enough?”
“You’re completely off base here, and you know it. How I spend my time—and who I spend it with—are no longer any of your concern.”
She swung her legs to the floor and rose, catlike, to her feet. “Of course what you do is my concern. I’m your fiancée.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sin, please. Let’s not play games. You know I’m going to marry you.”
“I am not the one who’s playing games.”
“Oh, Sin.” She dipped her chin and looked up at him archly from under her lashes. “You know I only play the games you like.” She sauntered toward him.
“Stop.”
She paused, put a hand on her hip and pretended to look confused. “What, darling?”
“Let me refresh your memory.”
“My memory is fresh enough.”
“You called it off, Willa. You said, and I quote, ‘I have no intention of moving to the middle of nowhere to raise horses in the pine trees. If that’s what you think you want, then you and I are through.’”
Willa sighed. “I was just trying to get you to come to your senses.”
“You failed.”
“I can see that. And I’m willing to…reevaluate my position on this issue.”
“It’s too late.”
She shook her smooth cap of black hair. “No, it’s not.” And then, in a stunningly swift move, she reached behind her. He heard the zipper of that clinging silk dress as it started to slide.
“No, Willa.”
“Yes, Sin.”
The zipper parted all the way. The dress slid off her shoulders. She pushed it down, over her boyish hips and her perfect legs. Within seconds, she stepped free of it. Now she wore only a black garter belt and silk stockings. Her small, perfect breasts pointed right at him.
She was a beautiful woman. And she left him absolutely cold. He wondered abstractly what he’d ever seen in her. “Put your dress back on, Willa.”
“After I’m done here.”
“You are done. Believe me.”
She started toward him again.
“Willa. Don’t do this.”
She didn’t stop until she was against him, her impudent breasts pressed into his shirtfront, her grasping hand finding him through the fabric of his slacks.
Flaccid. She felt that. And the confident gleam in her eyes faded a little.
“It’s no good, Willa.” He had a powerful urge to shove her away, but he controlled it. She expected the old games to work on him. He couldn’t really blame her for that. They’d always worked before.
Her hand moved, stroking, squeezing, trying to inspire some response. But there was none. At last, she let go and stepped back. “Your little sweetheart must be very…demanding.”
“Leave Sophie out of this.” He kept his tone gentle, but she couldn’t have mistaken the underlying thread of steel in it. “And put your dress back on.”
A tight, feral sound escaped her red mouth. Sin thought for a moment she might make some remark about Sophie that he wouldn’t be able to let pass. But no words came. Finally she turned and stalked back to where she’d left her dress. She bent down, shook it out and stepped into it. She reached behind her. He heard the zipper close. Then she ran her hands down her waist and hips, straightening, smoothing.
She went to the sofa, collected her shoes, slid them on and grabbed up her bag. It was only a few steps to the door. She stopped with her hand on the knob to grant him one final caustic glare.
“You will regret this,” she said.
All he felt was sadness, for both of them. Two hard, acquisitive people. They’d struck sparks off each other once, sparks that had ignited to a white-hot blaze. But there had been no warmth to it. Only heat without comfort, like the heartless fires of hell.
“Do you hear me, Sin Riker? You will be sorry.”
“Willa, I swear to you, I already am.”
“Not sorry enough, I’m afraid.” She went out the door, slamming it smartly behind her.
She’d been gone a good ten minutes before Sin admitted to himself how very simple it would be for Willa to make him sorrier still.
About an hour after Sinclair had left for the day, Sophie sat on a stool in the hayloft, checking the sprockets on her aging projector, trying to figure out which one might be sticking. Last Sunday, the old monster had nearly burned a hole in the first reel. Naturally though, right now, it seemed to be working all right.
“Hello? Is anyone up there?” It was a woman’s voice, one Sophie didn’t recognize. The voice came from the foot of the ladder that led up to the loft.
Sophie rose from the stool and went to the top of the ladder. A tall, black-haired fashion plate of a woman stood below. “Sophie B. Jones?”
“That’s me.”
“The big man at the stables said I might find you here. I wonder, could I steal a few minutes of your time?”
“Sure. Be right down.” Sophie returned to the projector, swiftly rewound the short bit of test reel and turned the thing off.
The woman watched from the foot of the ladder as Sophie climbed down. “You actually run a movie theater in here?”
Sophie jumped from the last rung, brushed off her hands and shook out her long skirt. “You bet.”
The woman looked up toward the rafters and then right at Sophie. “Charming.” Her inflection said she found the barn—and Sophie herself—anything but.
Sophie moved back a step. “You didn’t say your name.”
“Willa. Willa Tweed.”
The name rang a bell somewhere far back in her mind, but Sophie couldn’t quite remember why. She gestured at the rows of theater seats that marched away from them, down toward the screen. “Have a chair.”
Willa Tweed licked her lips—nervously, it seemed to Sophie. “No. I think it’s better if I stand.” She took in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I have to admit, now that I’m here, I simply do not know how to begin.…” She let the words trail off. A long, significant pause ensued, a pause in which Sophie’s own uneasiness increased. Finally the woman spoke again. “I’ve come about S
in.”
Sophie felt more confused by the moment. Was the woman a representative of some religious group? “About sin? I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Sin,” Willa Tweed said again, impatiently. “Sin Riker.”
“You mean…Sinclair?”
The woman’s mouth tightened. “Yes. Sinclair Riker. My fiancé. That’s exactly who I mean.”
Right then, Sophie remembered where she’d heard the woman’s name before:
“There was someone,” Sinclair had said. “It didn’t work out.”
And Sophie had asked, “What was her name?”
He had answered, “Willa.”
Sophie said very carefully, “I don’t understand. Sinclair told me it was over between you and him.”
The woman laughed, a brittle angry sound. “Oh, I’m sure he did. I’m sure he told you whatever he thought you wanted to hear.”
Sophie fell back a step. “No. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe he would—”
Willa threw up a hand. “You have no idea what Sin is capable of.” She made a low, derisive sound. “Honestly. Your own situation says it all.”
Sophie’s heart was pounding way too fast. She put a hand against it, in a pointless effort to make it slow down. “My own situation?”
“The problem that Sin came here to handle in the first place—you.”
“Me?” Sophie shook her head. “He came here to handle me?”
“Yes. You and your inconvenient five-acre lease on his precious ranch. Of course, he would have offered you a good price for it. Did you take it? If you haven’t, I suppose he must think you will. I suppose right now he thinks he can talk you into just about anything. And I also imagine he’s right…don’t you?”
Sophie tried to comprehend what the woman was babbling about. “No. It’s not his ranch. Not anymore. Not for years and years. You don’t understand, he—”
The woman laughed again. “I’m not the one who doesn’t understand. Sin owns this ranch now. And if you don’t know that, you’re a bigger fool than I ever imagined. My God, you must be making lease payments—to Inkerris, Incorporated. Don’t you get it? It’s an anagram. For his name.”
“His name,” Sophie echoed numbly.
“Exactly. Sin Riker. Inkerris. Switch the letters around a little and you can have either one.”