Christine Rimmer - A Hero for Sophie Jones Read online

  In an effort to fill the ominous silence that seemed to emanate from him, Sophie talked about the small changes she'd made. "I couldn't bear to tear out the wainscotting," she said of the shoulder-high paneling that lined the walls of most of the rooms. "But the old wallpaper had to go. Cabbage roses on a black background, if you remember. It was just way too dark. I chose only light colors for the ceilings and upper walls. I think it helps."

  "Yes," he said flatly. "It helps."

  In the kitchen, he seemed to relax a little—enough to point out deficiencies of which she was already fully aware. "How old is that stove?"

  "Too old," she confessed. "Myra, the cook, is always saying rude things about it."

  "Myra is right." He looked in the too-small refrigerator and ran a hand over the chipped counter tiles. "You could use a serious upgrade here."

  "Tell me about it."

  "So why haven't you done something?"

  She had. She'd gotten some estimates. Even without the chef-style range and refrigerator Myra wanted, a remodel of the kitchen would cost at least fifteen thousand dollars. It was fifteen thousand more than she had.

  But that wasn't his problem, so she only said, "I'll get around to it. Eventually."

  He looked at her then, one of those looks she couldn't read at all. "You're sure about that?"

  "I like to think positive."

  "I noticed." It sounded like a criticism, but she let it pass.

  She led him up the narrow, dark back stairs next. "I can't show you much of the other two floors," she explained as they climbed. "This is my peak season and all of the rooms are occupied. But we can at least take a quick look around."

  He followed behind her, saying nothing. She didn't like his silence. It spoke to her of a deep unease. He did not want to be here, and yet he was forcing himself to stay, to carry on with this unnecessary tour.

  Finally she couldn't stand it. She stopped midway and turned to him in the confined space.

  "Are you sure you wouldn't rather forget about this?"

  He just looked at her, his face a blank.

  "Sinclair? Can you hear me?"

  Sin did hear. And he wanted to reply. He wanted to tell her that he was fine, to order her to get going, get it over with, show him the rest of the damn place and be done with it.

  But somehow, he couldn't make any words come out. Too many memories swirled around him: smells and sights and sounds. Fleeting impressions of the life he'd once lived here.

  The smell of his mother's cinnamon cookies baking. Even in their last days here, when money got so tight they rarely had meat, she still baked those cookies. For him. Because he loved them.

  Cinnamon cookies. And roses.

  His mother had loved roses. She would pick them from the poorly tended garden, where they grew in a wild tangle, and put them in vases all over the house. And stories.

  His father used to tell him stories. About great-grandfather Riker, who had labored in the gold mines, deep in the earth, alongside the Cornishmen who came all the way from England to work the mother lode. Great-Grandfather Riker had died in a cave-in, but not before he'd borne a son, Sinclair—for whom Sin had later been named. The first Sinclair Riker had grown up smart and lucky and used every penny he could scrape together to buy land, to create the Riker Ranch.

  Which Anthony had lost in barely a decade after the first Sinclair's death.

  Yes, his father's voice. He could hear it now. Telling the old stories.

  And his father's laughter, deep and rich, he could hear that, as well.

  And his mother, he could hear her, too, singing to him.

  She used to sing all the time, when he was little. She would move through the dark rooms of the cottage, filling them with roses, making them seem light with her smiles and her songs. But then had come the bad day, the day they had to leave their home forever, the day when he stumbled down from the attic, unable to speak.

  His mother had been standing at the window in the west parlor, staring out at the sunshine and the overgrown lawn. He had run to her, buried his face against her skirt.

  Her soft arms went around him. She knelt down. "Sinclair. Darling. What's happened? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

  He backed from her embrace, grabbed for her pretty white hand. Ridiculous squawking noises were coming from his mouth.

  "Sweetheart, slow down. What is it? What's wrong?"

  He gave up on trying to talk and started yanking on her hand.

  "All right, I'm coming. I'm coming. Settle down."

  He ran then, through the hall to the kitchen, up the back stairs—these very stairs he stood on now—pulling his mother along behind, all the way, up and up, to what used to be the maid's room, long ago when they could afford a maid.

  When she saw it, she screamed. A terrible, never-ending scream of despair.

  And after that day, she never sang again.

  A cool hand touched his face. "Sinclair?"

  He realized he was clammy under the arms and across his chest. He lifted a hand to swipe at his brow. It came away dripping with his own sweat.

  "Let's go outside," the Jones woman said. She stood so close to him. God, the scent of her. Like sunshine and flowers, like something so clean and fresh. The reality of her, the life in her, seemed to reach out to him…

  He put out both hands and took her around the waist. She gasped. He felt her stiffen under his touch, but he couldn't help himself. He yanked her tight against him and buried his face in the thick, sweet tangle of her hair.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  Sophie's first instinct was to push him away.

  Her second was to gather him close.

  She never acted on the first. It passed as swiftly as her own sharply indrawn gasp of dismay. She was already wrapping her arms around him as they fell together against the wall of the stairwell. His lean body shook under her hands.

  "It's okay," she murmured, so low the words were barely audible, even to herself. "Shh. It's all right."

  He held on, tight enough to squeeze the breath from her lungs. His heart beat fast and furious, in time with her own. His face pressed first against her hair, then lower, into the curve of her neck. She felt his mouth on her skin in a caress that wasn't so much a kiss as a hungry demand for shelter from the chaos inside his own mind and heart.

  He needed to touch someone. He needed someone to hold him.

  She understood that. She let him touch. And she held him tight, his body branding all along hers, hot and needful, pleading without words.

  How long they stood like that, pressed against the wall, she couldn't have said. Gradually, though, his heartbeat calmed and his breathing slowed. His hard grip loosened. She found she could breathe again.

  He lifted a hand and stroked her hair. She felt his lips move at her neck in a tender kiss, sweet with gratitude.

  And then at last he pulled away, grasping her shoulders and stepping back in the cramped space. His baffled gaze found hers. "God. I'm sorry." A dark curse escaped him. "I don't know what—"

  She reached across the distance he'd made, put a finger on his mouth. It felt so soft. Tender. Bruised. "Let's just go. Outside."

  He stared at her for an endless moment—and then he captured her hand. "Yes. Now."

  He turned and headed down the stairs, into the kitchen, through the pantry, and out the door there—fleeing that house, and pulling her after him.

  They ran across the rear lawn and into the grove of oaks that grew just beyond the edge of the grass. There, at last, he stopped. He threw himself back against one thick twisted trunk. He still held her hand. He gave a tug.

  She fell against him. And she dared to laugh, a nervous sound, breathless and vivid at the same time. "Sinclair?"

  He took her face in his hands and tipped it up so the dappling of moonlight through the branches showed her to him.

  He felt so angry suddenly. Angry, exposed—and aroused, as well.

 
; He pressed himself against her, wanting her to feel his desire—half hoping she would jerk away in outrage, close herself off from him—and thus allow him to close himself off from her.

  But she didn't jerk away. Her body seemed to melt into his.

  "I don't know you," he said, each word careful, determined.

  Her soft, full mouth invited him. She said his name again—his grandfather's name, the name she knew him by. "Sinclair…"

  "I don't know you." He said it through clenched teeth that time.

  She smiled, the softest, most beautiful smile. "You know me."

  "No…"

  "Yes."

  He lowered his mouth to hers, to stop her from saying that—and discovered his error immediately. Her mouth was as soft as it looked. And as incredibly sweet. He moaned, the sound echoing inside his own head, as he plunged his tongue into that sweetness.

  He was out of control, gone. Finished. Not himself. Not himself at all.

  He took her by the arms, hard—and pushed her away. She let out one soft, bewildered cry—and then she just looked at him through those eyes that reproached him at the same time as they seemed to say that they understood.

  She flinched. He realized he was holding her arms too tightly, hurting her. He let go. She stumbled a little, righted herself, and then gave him more distance, stepping backward until she could lean against another tree, not far from him.

  For a time, all he knew were her eyes through the night—watching. Waiting. And the night sounds—crickets and plaintive birdsongs, some small creature moving about, rustling in the dried late-summer grass nearby.

  Slowly he came back to himself. More or less. "I'm sorry," he told her again, knowing as the pitiful words passed his lips that they weren't nearly enough. "I don't know what happened in there. Or just now, either."

  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, bac
k 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.