An Irresistible Temptation

by Sydney Jane Baily

  She ought to feel only relief that she hadn’t caused the division of a betrothed couple—and she did feel it—but she couldn’t deny that she also felt a sense of loss.

  “I always thought it would be just fine marrying her. There wasn’t any pressing reason not to, and many reasons why I have to. We have an agreement and . . . it’s complicated. She helped me out and I owe her.”

  “Wait,” Sophie said. “You’re marrying her because you are beholden to her?”

  “It’s a little more than that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter why, does it? An arrangement exists. But neither of us is in a hurry to marry. She knew I was going away to school, and she wants to stay with her father. And I’ll be back here soon enough.”

  “None of that has changed,” Sophie stated flatly.

  “Everything has changed,” he said, his voice rough. “From the first moment I saw you, I had to . . . know you.”

  She understood completely, but it didn’t make it right.

  “And when we kissed,” he said, “well, you felt it, too. How can we live without that feeling?”

  Sophie, who had had her heart stomped flat, disagreed.

  “You know something, Riley, you’d be surprised what you can live without. You don’t want to hurt her,” Sophie said.

  “No. But how can I explain this to you, so I don’t sound like a heel, being engaged to a woman I don’t love? She is my long-time friend and for that alone, you’re right, I absolutely don’t want to hurt her. But I will never love her—that sounds terrible, and it would be, if she didn’t feel the same. She does, and I know it.”

  “She told you that?” Sophie asked, wondering how any woman wouldn’t want to hold onto Riley with both hands and not let go.

  “No, but she doesn’t . . . that is, we don’t . . .”

  “I saw you kiss her,” Sophie interrupted him.

  He looked astounded. “How—never mind. Yes, I kissed her. Because of you.”

  Sophie’s eyes widened at that.

  “Eliza and I haven’t done more than hold hands in a long time, and I thought maybe, when I kissed you, it was due to something all pent up.”

  He brushed his thumb across her lips and they locked eyes.

  She parted her lips, not sure what she was going to say, but as his gaze fixed on her mouth, all her words died. He was going to try to kiss her again, and she was going to have to stop him.

  But he didn’t kiss her. He groaned instead. “I kissed Eliza and she kissed me back, and it was only a kiss. She knows it, I know it.” He looked chagrined. “I really tried, too.”

  Sophie cringed, not sure she wanted to hear about his attempts at ardor with Eliza.

  “I held her a long time, waiting for that feeling. But it didn’t come. Right now, sitting here with you, I’m dying to kiss you again.”

  “You’re engaged, Riley.”

  “I want you to know that I don’t go around trifling with women,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you did,” she told him, but it was nice to hear.

  He sat back on his heels. “I have to be honest, though, I’m no angel. I mean, men have needs.”

  She bit her lip, shaking her head slightly to stop him. She knew how her brother had kept company with a widow for three years before he met Charlotte, and it was obvious that they were more than platonic. But knowing about Reed was one thing; he was family.

  “There’ve been times, in San Francisco . . . Anyway, Eliza doesn’t know about any of that. You know she’s rather territorial. It’s a pride issue.”

  “Why tell me?” Sophie asked, as she brushed aside a feeling of jealousy that wasn’t by rights hers to feel. It was too easy, though, looking at him, to picture his strong, healthy body atop some beautiful harlot willing to do his bidding.

  “Because when I think of you, I imagine what I could have. And it would be so much better than the life I’ve got coming.”

  He should be having this heartfelt discussion with Eliza, not her. She reached out and touched his face, wiping a speck of dirt from his jaw. He caught her hand, turned his head, and kissed her palm.

  “Sophie,” he said, his voice husky. He leaned closer and, merely the tiniest bit, she leaned forward. It was inevitable.

  His lips brushed hers and a spark flared to life between them once again. This time he smelled like grass and she breathed it in. His hands went around her and she felt them on her rear. She gasped as he pulled her toward him until she was pressed against him, where he remained nestled between her legs.

  After a moment, his lips nibbled their way from her lips to her throat. “My knees are starting to kill me on this floor,” he said against her neck.

  She giggled, feeling a little hysterical at the feelings flooding through her but reveling in the heat where their bodies touched. She let him pull her to a standing position.

  “That’s better,” he said. And they didn’t speak again as his arms went around her, and hers encircled his neck.

  She raised her face to him and when his lips met hers, it seemed to her that the entire world fell away. He kissed like a man who knew what he was doing, she thought. Had they taught him in medical school some special way that lips liked to be touched by other lips? Now, his hand was on her hip. Yes, he was clearly a man who’d done this before.

  He said that he hadn’t done anything more than hold Eliza’s hand in a while.

  When they broke for air, Sophie opened her eyes. “Riley, have you and Eliza . . . that is . . .?” She broke off, feeling like a strumpet for even asking about his fiancée while locked in his embrace.

  He leaned his forehead against hers and took a breath. “No, never with Eliza.”

  But certainly with someone. He had mentioned prostitutes in San Francisco, but a man as winsome as Riley Dalcourt most likely had his pick of girls growing up. Maybe even . . .

  “Charlotte?” she asked suddenly, pulling back. That would be too terrible to contemplate.

  “No,” he was quick to assure her. “She and I were never even friends. We went to school together for a while, but she kept to herself, especially after her parents died, and then I went away.”

  “My brother worships her.” Sophie wasn’t sure why she was telling Riley. She had believed she had the same relationship with Philip, though she’d never seen him look at her the way Reed looked at Charlotte.

  “I’m glad she found love,” Riley said, tucking behind her ear a lock of hair that had escaped her bun. He was still talking but Sophie found it hard to concentrate as he ran his finger along the shell of her ear and down her neck. “I knew Charlotte’s brother better. Thaddeus was my age, and we got in some trouble together, just hijinks, playing in the mines, that sort of thing. Then later, having a drink behind the saloon. Whatever we could think of to amuse ourselves.”

  Including girls, Sophie imagined, having met Thaddeus and knowing he was nearly as good looking as Riley. She sighed. Well, she was not exactly pure herself. She had let Philip do more than he should, though not as much as he wanted, thank God. Or she could have found herself in a whole heap of trouble when he’d left her. Wickedly, resting now in Riley’s arms, she found herself imagining him doing the same things she’d forbidden Philip.

  He bent his head again and she yielded her mouth to his lips and opened herself to his tongue. She could feel his thudding heartbeat, along with her own, and the pulsing low in her body was becoming insistent.

  “I want to touch your bare skin,” he said, voicing her own thoughts.

  The kitchen door flew open and they jumped apart. Too late.

  Sophie looked into Sarah’s shocked face and the color drained from her own. She had no excuse, nothing she could say.

  “I . . . I . . . should have knocked,” Sarah said, clutching a basket with a pretty blue cloth over it.

  Riley looked shaken but was the first to recover.

  “We, that is, I . . . Sophie and I—shoot, Sarah, please don’t say anything to anyone.
You hear?”

  “Well, of course,” Sarah said, one hand fluttering to her throat, perhaps already choking on the words that threatened to spill out. Sophie knew that she would, at the very least, tell Doc, and he would think badly of her. She couldn’t bear it.

  “Sophie.” Riley shot her a glance that was as intense and bewildered as she felt. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”

  She had no idea how it could be all right, but watched him nod to Sarah, grab up his hat, and flee through the back door.

  Wishing she could run away as well, Sophie stood stock still, blinking for another moment, unable to think of anything to say to this woman to make her predicament seem less damning.

  “I didn’t mean to . . .,” Sophie began. “That is, Riley . . . uh . . .,” she trailed off.

  Sarah put the basket down on the table. “Riley is about the most handsome young man this side of the Mississippi River, I warrant. Something about that dimple.”

  Sophie nodded miserably. Sarah had her hands on her hips, looking Sophie up and down. “You got dirt all over you, girl.”

  “Oh.” She put her hands up to her face and then brushed them down her dress.

  “He’s going to marry Eliza Prentice; you know that?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “She might get her pride pricked if she finds out Riley’s sweet on you, but you’re the one who’s going to get really hurt here. And I wouldn’t want to see that.”

  Sophie lowered her head.

  “Maybe it’s time you moved on to where you’re going next,” Sarah said, her voice had gentled, but that only increased Sophie’s anguish. Beforehand, Sarah had been urging her to stay. Sophie knew she was going to cry and desperately wanted to be alone.

  “I’d better get upstairs and wash up.”

  “Some things can’t be washed away,” Sarah said, turning for the door. Sophie noticed she left the basket of food, which made her feel even worse.

  Chapter Eight

  San Francisco, California

  Sophie hurried along the street toward the clang of the cable car’s bell. Charlotte’s friend, the editor, had opened a number of doors for her. She’d had one audition already at the opera house and was headed to another at the San Francisco Symphony that afternoon.

  So far, Sophie didn’t like two things about San Francisco—that she hadn’t come sooner and that she wasn’t there with Riley. Most days, she longed to see him, just leaning in a doorway, as he did at Doc’s practice, a smile on his devastatingly attractive face. He haunted her thoughts, an apparition of the man whom she would probably always wonder about, the man who had somehow crept into her heart and soul in a very short time.

  “Watch your step, ma’am,” said the car’s conductor, and Sophie handed him a nickel.

  The city was everything she’d hoped; Boston was larger, but maybe because she was so unfamiliar with it, San Francisco seemed infinitely more exciting. And she’d never seen so many foreigners within her country’s borders.

  She hadn’t ventured out at night as yet, and had seen nothing of the Barbary Coast that Riley had mentioned. She knew she’d have to have a companion to do that.

  At her stop, she jumped off and got her bearings. Up ahead was the concert hall. She stretched her fingers out and curled them a few times and went inside.

  *****

  “What’ll it be, Miss?” Sophie sat in The Ladies Grill at The Palace Hotel and ordered herself a meal. It hadn’t gone well. She’d performed at her best, but she could see by the bored look on his face that the conductor, Herr Becker, was only doing it as a favor to Charlotte’s friend. He seemed to be barely listening and was writing on a piece of paper through her whole audition.

  The symphony had no open positions, in any case. Becker had said she was gifted, as if he ran into gifted people every day, which perhaps he did. He took her address on Green Street, and that was the end of it.

  She hoped the director of the opera house called her back from her first audition, but for the first time, she felt unsure. She had already asked Charlotte to return the favor and pack more gowns in a trunk and send them along. She needed to be dressed for the city or she would seem like an untutored country girl. She wondered how well Riley cleaned up for the city. But then she remembered that when he did arrive back, he could be married to Eliza.

  The last time she’d seen him, he’d been running from the kitchen to escape Sarah’s condemning gaze. Sophie had hardly slept that night. She’d thanked her good fortune that the envelope Riley had delivered to her contained her letters of introduction to the symphony’s conductor and the opera house’s director. She’d packed up and stopped at the Cuthins’ house to say goodbye. Despite her embarrassment and shame, they had seemed as warm as ever, and then she’d left on the northern-bound train without ever seeing Riley again. After all, what was there to say?

  She decided to write to Sarah when she got back to her room and let her know how she was faring. Meanwhile, Sophie was going to have a proper walk around The Palace, which opened less than a decade earlier as the largest hotel in the world. It was certainly the most opulent she’d ever been in.

  In the Grand Court, where carriages could enter the building and circle around to drop off their passengers, she couldn’t help walking with her eyes lifted to the ceiling that stretched up for miles, it seemed, but was actually seven floors. Marking each floor was a columned balcony from where guests could gaze down at the interior courtyard.

  Sophie glanced at the hotel’s brochure in her hand, 755 rooms, each with a bathroom and a parlor. Sophie couldn’t imagine that many people needing a place to sleep on any given night.

  “Can I help you, miss?” A young woman dressed in the hotel’s uniform had approached her, with brown hair neatly pinned up, regarding her with kind hazel eyes.

  “I’m just looking,” Sophie said. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Many do,” the girl said, then smiled. “Are you new to the city?”

  “A week, so far.”

  “Carling.” The girl spun around as a man approached, also in uniform. “Room 4008 has a question about The Oakdale.” He sighed and his nostrils flared, as if with distaste over the establishment in question. “Go tell them it isn’t nearly as nice as our bar. But if they must go, we’ll provide them transport.”

  And the tall young man with his slicked down black hair and patrician good looks was off without a glance at Sophie.

  Carling turned to Sophie with a raised eyebrow and half a smile. Then they both laughed. “Sorry about Egbert. He was a bit rude. He runs the reception and the help staff, and he knows every single guest at any given moment, so he knew you weren’t staying here.”

  “Yet,” Sophie offered. “I mean, perhaps I was thinking about it, and he’s put me off.”

  “And are you thinking about it?”

  “No,” Sophie admitted and they laughed again. “I’ve a room on Green Street.”

  “Oh, I’m on Russian Hill, too, on Lincoln. That’s the next street up. Kind of cat-a-corner to yours.”

  “Carling,” she heard Egbert’s voice again.

  “I’ve got to get on with it. What’s your house number? I’ll find you later.

  “1039, and my name’s Sophie,” she called after the girl whom she hoped would become her new friend.

  *****

  “So you didn’t even tell him goodbye,” Carling said, shaking her head in wonder. “Good God!”

  Sophie shrugged and poured another cup of tea. They sat at Carling’s table in her small flat on Lincoln Lane, in a white stucco building that seemed to have sprung up in an alley overgrown with trees and plants and accessible only by a cobblestoned walkway. Sophie had jumped at the invitation when Carling had come knocking at her door the day before. Another day had passed and she was unsure how to continue in her job pursuit.

  Carling was more interested in other aspects of Sophie’s life.

  “Still,” she said
, with a jaunty wave of her hand, “you did good to get away as you did. No harm, so to speak. Not used and sent packing.”

  Sophie agreed, though at the time, she hadn’t felt used by Riley; rather she had been a willing and equal participant. But Carling was right that she’d had to get away. The path they were on was clear to Sophie. And being someone’s mistress was not exactly her heart’s dream.

  “I’ll go mad,” Sophie said, “if I can’t touch a piano soon.”

  Carling, who had been working at The Palace for two years, seemed to know everyone and everything that went on in the heart of the city, but she was in no way connected to the classical music enthusiasts.

  “Hey,” she said, thumping her forehead with her palm. “Have you tried The Grand?”

  Sophie furrowed her brow, “A grand piano?”

  “No, silly. The Grand Hotel. You know, the gingerbread structure, next door to The Palace.”

  “I saw it,” Sophie said. “But what would I do there?”

  “They’ve got a lovely bar. My fellow—well, when he was my fellow, before he caught sight of my landlady’s daughter, that cheating cur,” she paused, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, he took me there once. They’ve got a lovely piano and all. I know it’s not the opera house, but you could at least play and maybe they’d pay you. Just get on with it.”

  Sophie tapped her chin. It was worth a try. The next day, she wandered into The Grand Hotel, which sat on the corner, like a squat, showy, even gaudy aunt compared to The Palace next door.

  At ten in the morning, the bar was empty. It was also quite lovely, Sophie thought, even more so when she espied the piano, which, as luck would have it, was a beautifully carved, square grand, in the dark corner of the room. She was drawn to it like a moth to the flame. Without asking, she sat on the stool. Taking a deep breath, she started to play, and it was like sinking into a comforting, warm bath. The sounds were rich and full and true—someone had tuned it recently, it seemed. And then she let herself drift into the music with no other thoughts at all.