An Irresistible Temptation

by Sydney Jane Baily

  “What in God’s name happened to you?”

  He had the gall to shrug as if walking around looking like a thug were an everyday occurrence. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s not what I asked. I can see that you’ll live. Tell me, how did you get your face in that condition?” She glanced over the rest of him, to see if he had any other injuries, and noticed that the knuckles of his right hand, curled around his bag, were scraped.

  “You were in a fight.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Are you going to tell me or do I have to keep asking? Remember, you said you can’t lie to me.”

  “I paid a visit to Alonso.”

  She frowned, and then it dawned on her. “Gold-Tooth?” She felt scared all over again. And yet Riley stood in front of her, whole and safe. “You went to that awful place?”

  “It’s not that awful in broad daylight, at least if you’re a man.”

  “Why? What could you possibly hope to accomplish?”

  “Justice.”

  “Oh, please. That’s for a court of law. You went for revenge.”

  “Payback, then.” He smiled. “And it felt great.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone there. It’s not your place to defend me.”

  “Who then? Does your brother even know about your hand?

  She didn’t answer him. The fact that she hadn’t yet written to her family was not his business. “Tell me what happened. How did you escape alive?”

  “Have a little faith, woman. I didn’t just walk in and ask to wrestle with Carlos Alonso and his gooneys.”

  “Gooneys?” Was that what he called the prostitutes?

  “Yes, those big guys who guard the doors.”

  She was sure her face had gone three shades whiter, and immediately, she had to sit, which she did, pulling out one of her kitchen chairs, as there was no place else to sit other than the bed. The thought of Riley up against three men, particularly those three dangerous men, made her blood run cold.

  At the look on her face, his own expression became sheepish. “Sophie, I’m fine. I merely wanted to make sure that Alonso understood that he’d made a mistake. I informed him that you are a lady.”

  “And?” Her voice sounded strange to her ears.

  “And when he didn’t apologize, I punched him in the mouth. Split my hand open on his stupid gold tooth.”

  She winced.

  “Then one of his men tried to grab me from behind, but I was quicker. I kicked Alonso in the stomach and then the face before I turned to address the other two.”

  “I’m not sure I need a blow-by-blow report.” In fact, she knew she didn’t. “Just tell me how it is you’re still alive.”

  He grinned. “Honestly?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “One of the guys was about to take my head off with his fist, when a customer came in. He was distracted long enough for me to get my hands around his neck and squeeze.”

  “Squeeze?”

  “Yes, I cut off the blood supply to his head by pressing here and here.” He pointed to his own neck. “He got a strange look on his face and dropped like a stone. Then the other guy spun me around and socked me in the eye before I could knock him out with a blow to his chin, which I did. If you land your fist right here,” he pointed under his chin, “you can knock ’em out almost every time.”

  “Good to know,” she murmured, thinking she could easily be sick, thinking of Riley in the middle of such an altercation.

  “That left Alonso, who held his hands up in surrender, the coward. I’m actually a little surprised that he didn’t have a gun.”

  She felt a little faint at the idea.

  “What about your lip?”

  He shrugged again. “One of the whores did it. Caught me by surprise. At that point, I decided I’d done enough.”

  “More than enough.” She looked at her bandaged hand and held it up to him. “And look—I’m all healed.” She ought to be grateful instead of sarcastic, but the thought of what could have happened to him . . . “Oh, no, wait.” She looked pointedly at her hand. “I’m not. In fact, now you’re injured, too. Men!” she said with disgust.

  “I know, I know.” He smiled ruefully. “But maybe he’ll think twice before he grabs a woman off the street.”

  “Perhaps, but I bet he’ll forget about me and you in the time it takes his face to heal.”

  “I think losing this will remind him.” He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out something small. Holding his left hand out to her, he uncurled his fingers. Lying on his palm was a gold tooth.

  Sophie gasped, then her eyes flashed up to Riley’s twinkling gaze.

  “Sweet mother,” she exclaimed. “How did you get that?”

  “Came out when I kicked him in the face. It went in a perfect arc over my head and I caught it and pocketed it, right before I had to put my hands around the gooney’s throat.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I’m glad you went.” She couldn’t help grinning. “You are my hero,” she said, and she meant it. “But don’t do anything like that again.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, Sophie. No more forays like that one.”

  “I promise.” Suddenly, the room had closed in again. With her sitting and him standing over her, she felt the unwelcome desire to kiss him. She watched him place the tooth on her table.

  “A memento,” he said, his voice gone quietly serious.

  “Is that why you came? To give me his head on a platter, so to speak?”

  He gestured to his medical bag again.

  “Oh, right. You said this was a medical visit?”

  He nodded. “Doctor Finley said you’d have to go back for a follow-up visit and I thought to save you a trip.”

  She stood up again, wanting to be on even ground with him, though all this did was bring her closer to him.

  “Are house calls standard procedure for medical students?” Now, why had her voice gone all husky?

  “No.”

  She cleared her throat with a little cough before she asked, “And did you ask me if I wanted you to save me a trip?”

  “No, but—”

  “It’s not like I have much else to do right now,” Sophie added, feeling as though she needed to keep her tone practical and even a little cold. Riley was in her room. At night. They were alone. Every nerve ending in her body was clamoring. “The hospital was rather an exciting place. And I think it might take me three trolley car changes to reach it.”

  “Only two, in fact,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry.” He gazed directly into her eyes and seemed to shrink the room again. “I overstepped my bounds coming here. I’ll leave. Doctor Finley will want to see you in the next day or so. His nurse will look in your eyes—stunningly gorgeous eyes, by the way—and listen to your heart. Doctor Finley will examine the bump on your head. That type of thing. They won’t touch your hand, Sophie. Not yet.”

  He turned to leave, and all she could think was how she loved to hear him say her name. He had the slightest of drawls and her name sounded nothing like it did on the lips of any man on the east coast.

  “So this is purely a medical visit?” She didn’t know why she pushed him to admit anything. He was almost out the door. She’d nearly escaped this wildly perilous situation unscathed. Yet somehow, she’d looked him in the eyes and asked him a question, the answer to which could make their circumstances end badly.

  He looked down at his shoes, at his bag, at the wall behind her head, then finally back at her. “I really can’t lie to you.”

  She stared at him, frozen. He stepped closer, putting the bag on the floor before taking her face in his hands and looking ever so deeply into her eyes. “But I am going to look into your lovely eyes, like this.” She swallowed.

  “And I’m going to listen to your steady warm heart, like this.” Shockingly, he bent low and turned his face, pressing his ear to her chest in which she knew her heart was thumping like a trapped rabbit. He stayed like that a moment,
while she barely breathed, then he raised his head.

  “And I’m going to give you my best diagnosis.”

  She waited.

  “I’m a man who desperately needs to kiss you.”

  She very nearly laughed. He had diagnosed himself instead of her. She was grateful, for he could have said it the other way and he would have been right—she was a woman who desperately needed him to kiss her—but to hear him say it would have been a tad embarrassing. Instead, she was downright terrified. Sarah was not going to barge in and stop them, and Carling was safely back at her own apartment.

  There were only the two of them and neither of them had proved to be very good at restraint.

  He took her composure as encouragement, she supposed, for he tilted up her chin. She breathed in his scent of vanilla soap for a moment. As his lips touched hers, his kiss sent a surge of warmth all the way down to her toes. She let him explore, reveled in feeling his tongue slip between her lips to touch hers. It was wicked and blissful, and she didn’t want him to stop.

  But stop he must.

  With her good hand, she pressed against his suit coat, in the vicinity of his chest. Straightaway, he released her.

  “You can’t keep doing that,” she told him exasperatedly. Her legs felt wobbly and her lips were tingling.

  “You didn’t tell me not to,” he pointed out.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you. You’re engaged. Are you going to marry Eliza Prentice?”

  “Yes,” he ground out.

  “You have to leave. I’m not going to be your chere amie.”

  “My what?”

  “Fancy term for someone to warm your bed after you’re married.”

  He cringed. “That wasn’t what I intended.”

  “What did you intend?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m an ass.”

  “Agreed.”

  He grinned.

  “Don’t smile at me like that. You’re a doctor and a good one from what I saw in Spring City. How can you be so good at that and not have it carry into other areas of your life?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Just be a faithful fiancé and, after that, a supportive husband.”

  “To a woman who has no real feeling for me, nor I her.”

  “Then you shouldn’t marry.”

  “I have to.”

  “Yes, you said that before. You owe her, I believe. Medical school tuition, is that it?”

  “More than that.”

  “Do you want to tell me?” Sophie sat down at her table, now that the present danger had passed.

  He sighed. “She convinced her father not to take my parents’ house and land when they couldn’t pay. I never even explained to my father why the threatening letters from the bank stopped.”

  “And why did Eliza do that for you?” Sophie could imagine the payment she might extract from Riley, and she looked at his firm generous mouth and his long lean body. Yes, payment wouldn’t be so hard to accept.

  “We agreed to get married. Her father wanted to know that she’d be taken care of after he died and there wasn’t anyone else in town who . . .” He trailed off.

  “Who . . . what?” she prompted him.

  He shrugged, looking embarrassed.

  “Who looks as good as you?” Sophie suggested. “Who measures up to Eliza’s level of attractiveness?”

  Riley flushed. “That’s not what I was going to say. Jesus, woman. There are plenty of good-looking folk in Spring City.”

  Perhaps he really had no idea of his own draw, but Sarah had been right that he was the most handsome man in the United States. Or, at least, Sophie remembered her saying something to that effect. In his denims or his city clothes, when Riley was near her, Sophie felt overly warm all over. She almost missed the fact that he was speaking again.

  “Eliza couldn’t see herself married to a farmer or a rancher or a storeowner. That left me, I suppose. Or Thaddeus Sanborn, but he was never around.”

  “A doctor or a drifter? I guess she made the right choice.” Riley would have been Sophie’s choice, too, but for other reasons than him being a doctor.

  “When I’m so close to earning my degree, I can’t leave her high and dry.”

  “A well-developed sense of honor,” Sophie mused, knowing she ought not to be mocking him. “And Eliza is willing to settle for this match, without love, without passion?”

  “I suppose so. She’s a good woman despite her temper.”

  “You admire her. Well, that’s something, I guess, to base a marriage on. Perhaps in time . . .” She couldn’t believe she was advising the man whom she . . . had such strong feelings for on how to make his marriage work with another woman. Next she’d be helping to choose Eliza’s dress.

  He shook his head. “We already know that we can be kind to each other; we even understand each other to a degree. Our marriage will be a real one, I imagine, with children.”

  Sophie wanted to scream, thinking of Eliza growing big with Riley’s child one day. How fondly he would look at his beautiful wife. Yes, Sophie wanted to have a full-blown tantrum. Instead, she asked him, “Knowing all this, why do you persist in dallying with me?”

  He groaned and closed his eyes. “Why, indeed! You’re like a fascination, Sophie. Or like opium—once addicted to it, it’s nearly impossible to break the habit. When you disappeared from Spring, I went mad for a few days and then, after getting stymied by the Cuthins, I resigned myself. Or I thought I had.”

  He opened his eyes again and looked at her. “You left my life as abruptly as you entered it, and I convinced myself your disappearance was for the best. But I found you again, and my feelings for you haven’t changed.”

  He sat down heavily in the chair next to hers and took hold of her undamaged hand. “I need to see you and touch you. I want to breathe in the fragrance of your skin. Damn it, you’re mine.” He brought her hand to his lips and lingeringly kissed her knuckles before turning her hand over and placing a searing kiss in the middle of her palm.

  Sophie’s breath hitched and she felt her toes curl inside her leather slip-ons, while her stomach seemed to drop away as though she were on a swing. She stared, enthralled, at her hand held in his.

  “You were meant to be mine,” he stated. “I know it as surely as I knew I was meant to be a doctor. I knew it when you opened your mouth and apologized after I’d knocked you into the street. I wanted you more than I ever wanted any woman, especially after I saw your purple drawers.”

  “They were lavender,” she corrected him, without any hint of humor for certainly two hearts were breaking in that one small apartment. She had known this feeling before but had been alone in it, when Philip had let her go the way a child captures and then releases a butterfly. She tugged her hand out of his.

  Thank God Riley hadn’t gone so far as to say he loved her, though he had danced around it. Throwing away love was even worse than throwing away their physical attraction. It was downright wicked to waste love. That’s how she’d felt with Philip, too, though in honesty, her blood had never stirred within her when Philip was near or when he touched her. Though she had imagined herself in love with the cool, ideological man who was Philip, he had hardly made her feel anything—in comparison to Riley.

  Exhausted with the strain of wanting him and knowing she couldn’t or shouldn’t have him, Sophie’s tone was harsh. “If we gave in to this ‘fascination,’ what then? My bed is right there.” They both looked at it. She saw him swallow, then his jaw tightened.

  “You could persuade me to lie down with you,” she continued, feeling her heartbeat speed up, “or I could . . . entice you, I suppose. Either way. But after we went to bed together, what would happen? Do you think after we make love once or twice, we’ll be done with each other? Will it be easier, then, to marry Eliza?”

  He looked stricken. “I think after I have touched you in all the ways I want to, that I’d never be able to let you go.”

  Her mind fli
tted to the tempting thought of his hands on her bare skin. She let her breath out slowly. Their relationship was like a piece of music; they were stuck in the chorus, though she could imagine the verse, beginning to end, and her heart felt tight and heavy with the futility of loving him.

  “You might not intend it,” she said quietly, “but perhaps you’re using me to get out of your engagement. I think you’re an honorable man, terribly torn right now. I think if we end up in that bed, you won’t go through with marrying Eliza, but it will be my fault. You will be able to place the blame at my feet rather than making the decision on your own.”

  “I would never blame you.”

  “You misunderstand me. I don’t think you’d resent me, Riley, but I would still be the catalyst, the reason you had to tell Eliza finally that you won’t marry her. She could blame me, too, of course.”

  Sophie got up and went to her door, walking a little stiffly to keep her legs from shaking. “I decline to be the tool for either of you to disentangle yourselves from your passionless business-arrangement of a marriage.” She heard his chair scrape the floor.

  “How did you get to be so smart?” he asked, standing closely behind her. She turned and he pulled her into his embrace. If she hadn’t had one hand in bandages, she would have moved his coat aside and started to unbutton his shirt—just so she could press her face against his chest, to feel his warm skin. She swallowed and his gaze darted to her throat.

  “I won’t drag you to that bed,” he assured her, “I promise.” The words were barely out of his mouth before his lips were on the pulse point of her throat. He kissed her skin and then flicked his tongue over the same spot. She shuddered.

  “I’ve wanted to taste you . . . forever, it seems,” he said, his voice husky. As close as they were, she could feel his manhood firm against her stomach and she pressed closer, feeling him shudder slightly. She longed to touch him everywhere. Now that they’d decided they wouldn’t act on this white hot desire, they were teasing each other beyond reason.

  “What were you doing before I arrived?” he asked against her neck.