Christine Rimmer - A Hero for Sophie Jones Page 6

  "Sometimes you simply have to be ready. Or the best things in life will pass you by."

  Caleb turned back to the horses again. "The vet said Black Angel's doing fine." The Arabian mare had come up lame a few weeks ago. A bad sprain, but not a break, thank heaven. The owner had had a fit, though both Sophie and Caleb knew the limp had started right after the woman had taken the mare out for a long ride on the twisting trails of Riker Ranch. Caleb had suffered the owner's abuse, then wrapped the injured pastern joint, stalled the horse and called in the vet.

  "She looks good as new," Sophie said.

  Caleb turned his pale blue eyes on her again. "I guess if you think this Sinclair Riker's okay, it's good enough for me."

  Sophie touched his arm again. "That's what I hoped you'd say."

  "He just better treat you right, that's all."

  "Oh, Caleb. He's a fine man."

  "If you say so."

  "I do."

  That night, Sinclair arrived at intermission. Sophie looked up and saw him. He smiled. She almost dropped a can of grape soda on a guest's sandaled foot.

  "Careful, Sophie B.," the guest warned.

  She apologized, handed the guest his change and waited on the next person in line—a true exercise in concentration since every atom in her body seemed to be bouncing around in pure joy.

  Finally everyone had been served. Sinclair straightened from the little table by the door, where he'd been leaning, watching her. In three long strides he stood before her.

  She looked up at him, feeling stunned and glorious. Out of her depth, over her head—and thrilled to be that way. "Hi."

  "Hello."

  "Popcorn? Bottled water?"

  He shook his head. "Not tonight."

  "Oh." She felt at a loss, all at once, like an actress who had forgotten her next line. "Will you … watch the rest of the show?"

  "I think I'll pass. Those poor evil rustlers. I can't stand to see them all die a second time." He was teasing her.

  By some minor miracle, she found she could tease back. "They deserved to die. They crossed Randi Wilding."

  "Who looks damn good in a tight plaid shirt."

  She put on a reproachful expression. "Randi Wilding is more than a sex symbol. She is a genius on film."

  "I still think I'll pass up the second half."

  "And do what?"

  "Go for a walk—if that's all right."

  "You know it is."

  His mouth twisted wryly. "Maybe you should give me a grounds pass. Something that says it's all right if I'm here—in case I run into Caleb."

  "Caleb won't bother you. He knows you're okay now."

  His eyes gleamed. "And how does he know that?"

  "Because I told him."

  "And how do you know that?"

  "I have my ways." She glanced toward the curtain that led to the rows of seats. All her guests were waiting to see the second half. "And I also have to get that projector going."

  "I know."

  Neither of them moved.

  "Sinclair, I really have to go."

  He reached out and slid his hand under her hair, cupping the back of her neck and pulling her close. "I know," he said again. And then he kissed her.

  Oh, had there ever been such kisses as his? They seared her synapses. Sent her eyeballs spinning…

  When he let her go and stepped back, she swayed toward him, like a green tree in a high wind. He laughed then. "Just so you won't forget me."

  "As if I ever could."

  "Go on. Your audience wants to see the rest of the show."

  Somehow she made her feet turn toward the hayloft.

  Afterward he was waiting. He helped her wash the bowls and sweep the floor. Then they went to the guest house together.

  They were barely through the front door before he was grabbing her, pulling her close, kissing her as if he might die if he didn't. She kissed him back. She felt just the same way—as if she must kiss him, or she wouldn't survive.

  They took off all their clothes and lay down on the couch.

  The things they did there should have made her blush for shame.

  But she didn't blush. And she felt no shame. She felt only rightness.

  And pure ecstasy.

  Those beautiful hands moved over her, revealing all her secrets, making her cry out. Making her moan. She lifted herself up to him, offering herself, welcoming whatever glorious anguish his next caress might bring.

  Finally he said, "The bedroom. Now."

  He got up and took her hand and tugged her along, totally naked, dazed, yearning, fulfilled and yet still hungry, into the other room. He let go of her hand just inside the door and she stood there, watching him, as he moved toward the bed. His body glowed in the darkness, lean and hard, the muscles spare and tightly sculpted. So beautifully formed. So perfectly male.

  As she looked at him, she wondered at herself. "This isn't like you," Myra had said. And it wasn't.

  Or rather, it hadn't been. Until Sinclair.

  And now she couldn't get enough of this. Of him. Of his body. Her body. The two of them. Joined.

  He found the box of contraceptives, took one out, rolled it down over himself. And then he turned. "Come here."

  The yearning inside her rose up, hotter than ever, to meet the command in his voice. In his burning dark eyes. There was a thrumming all through her, a rhythm of pure need.

  She moved toward him. He sat on the edge of the bed, held out his hand. She took it. He pulled her onto his lap, there on the edge of the bed.

  She settled over him, gasping a little at the torrent of pure feeling as he filled her. He guided her legs around his hips and his mouth found her throat in a long, hungry kiss. She closed her eyes, let her head fall back.

  Heaven. A forbidden heaven, it was. She soared through it, her whole body shimmering. Joyous. Free.

  Finally, near the end, she made herself open her eyes and look at him.

  He stared back at her, a look as deep and powerful as the uproar in her blood.

  She whispered, "I love you. Love you, love you…"

  The fulfillment came. Hard and fast. Her head fell back again. She left all conscious thought behind as sensation had its way with her.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Right at daylight, she shook him and called his name.

  He put an arm over his eyes and groaned.

  "Sinclair, I want you to go riding with me."

  He sneaked a glance out from under his arm. Her hair hung over her bare shoulders, glorious and tangled. She looked like some sleepy angel—a frowning angel.

  "What's the matter?" He lowered his arm.

  "I just realized that you don't have riding clothes."

  He grinned at her. "I do. In the car."

  "You do?" Now she was beaming, happy as a good child on Christmas Eve.

  "You said you wanted to ride this morning, so I brought some jeans and boots."

  She yanked back the sheet. "Well, don't just lie there. Get up. We have to get going. Come on…"

  The hulking stableman didn't seem much friendlier, but he stayed out of the way as Sin and Sophie saddled up a pair of horses and got ready to go.

  The sun was just sliding over the edge of the mountains when they started on the trail that wound off into the trees not far from the main house. She led the way through the pines and then out into a sunny, rolling pasture overgrown with tangled wild rosebushes. Soon enough, they went back into the trees again and then upward, switching back and forth toward the rocky crest of a high hill.

  When they reached the top, they stopped and looked out over the blanket of evergreen below, broken up here and there by small meadows and the shining ribbons of mountain streams. Sin leaned on the saddle horn, thinking that the damn pines were choking out everything. They encroached on all the meadows now, saplings and even midsize pines dotting what had once been open land. Something would have to be done about them, or the ranch would be n
othing but forest.

  "Is it the same as you remember it?" she asked.

  He let out a low laugh. "Sophie. I was only six." Yet he did remember. His father had brought him up here once, about a year before the end. To look out over the land, just as he and Sophie were doing now.

  "All that you can see is ours," his father had said. "Riker land. Your grandfather scraped and saved and wheeled and dealed for every square foot of it. It's what makes us who we are."

  Even now, over thirty years later, Sin felt his blood stir as he remembered his father's words. Anthony Riker had always been a hell of a talker. He could bring tears to the eyes of the coldest heart when he quoted poetry or told the old family tales.

  Unfortunately he'd hated work and never planned ahead. Busy telling stories and quoting Browning and Shelley, he'd let the land that "made them who they were" slip right through his fingers. And then he'd killed himself, a final dramatic statement that also allowed him to escape a future in which he'd no longer be Anthony Riker of the Riker Ranch, but just another nobody trying to scrape by day-to-day.

  Beside him, Sophie spoke. "It gives me such a feeling of … peace, just to look at it. To know that even with all the ugliness in the world, a place like this exists."

  The brown gelding Sin rode snorted and tossed his head, eager to be moving again. Sin patted his neck to settle him down a little and set his mind on practical matters. "It's overgrown. A little clear-cutting would help." He used the logger's term for the removal of every last tree from any given area. Sophie sent him a sharp, disapproving glance. He laughed. "Come on. Clear-cutting has its uses, in spite of what your average rabid conservationist would like you to believe. Give it another twenty years, and those pines down there will choke out everything."

  She looked out over the land, her angel's face wistful. "I suppose. But still, it's so beautiful and wild-looking."

  "Overgrown," he reiterated grimly. Then he couldn't resist adding, "I'm surprised that teachers' association you mentioned didn't bring in some logging crews. The lumber would have brought them a little return on that 'bad investment' of theirs."

  She made a face at him. "You'll be pleased to know that they did get some crews in here at first."

  "But lately?"

  "The past few years, the laws have become so much stricter. It's hard to get permits to cut trees, even on private land."

  "Hard, but not impossible."

  She smiled at him, a rather sad smile. "Maybe Inkerris, Incorporated, will put some loggers to work."

  He only shrugged, though he knew damn well that Inkerris, Incorporated, planned to do exactly that.

  She clucked her tongue at the mare she rode. "Come on. I have to get back."

  He didn't argue, just turned his horse for the trail.

  "Stay for Sunday brunch," she urged once they'd handed their horses over to Caleb. "It's buffet style. We put it out from ten to one. You could go back to the guest house and relax for a while, then wander on over and get something to eat."

  The offer held definite appeal—except for the idea of entering that house again.

  It was as if she read his mind. "You're uncomfortable about visiting the cottage again. I understand. Listen, I could load you up a plate and bring it back to the guest house and we could—"

  He cut her off with a flat lie. "I'm not uncomfortable about that damn house."

  She looked down at the pine needles under their feet. "Fine."

  He dragged in a breath. "Look. I'm sorry. I spoke too harshly."

  She shot him a glance. "So stay for brunch."

  "No, I can't. I've got some work to do back at the hotel." Another lie. His only job here was getting rid of her—a job that had not progressed at all as he'd planned.

  She met his gaze again. And smiled. God, she could finish a man off with that smile. "You could go work for a few hours—and come back for brunch. I'd fix us each a plate and take it to the guest house."

  The word yes, was out of his mouth before it even took form in his brain.

  At the hotel, he showered, checked his messages and called Rob Taylor, his personal assistant in L.A., at home. Rob had a number of issues to report on. Sin listened with half an ear, made a few suggestions, then said he had to go.

  By then, it was nine-thirty. Too soon for a man who had "work" to do to be showing up again at the Mountain Star. He checked at the front desk and got the name of a local health club that took drop-ins on Sunday, then he got in his rental car and drove over there.

  He worked out for an hour, pushing his body until the sweat was streaming off of him and his muscles felt like limp spaghetti. When he couldn't press another pound, he showered for the second time that day.

  He was on his way back to the Mountain Star when he noticed the gray sedan behind him. A late-model Plymouth or Dodge. So nondescript as to be almost invisible. But now that he thought about it, it seemed he'd seen more than a few late-model gray sedans in his rearview mirror the past day or two.

  Right then, he was just leaving the part of Grass Valley known as the Brunswick Basin, a busy shopping area packed with strip malls, fast-food restaurants and gas stations. He swung into the next parking lot: home to a bank, a title company and a beauty parlor. The gray sedan sped on by. When Sin pulled back onto the road again, the car was nowhere in sight.

  Through the remainder of the short drive to the ranch, he tried to think which of his current competitors or business associates might want him followed. No one came immediately to mind. But that didn't mean anything. He had a reputation for sealing up prime pieces of property before his potential rivals even realized that the property could be bought.

  He'd left L.A. in the middle of last week. No doubt by now, the word would be out that he was gone. It was entirely possible that someone had had him followed just to see what fabulous deal he might have in the works.

  Sin smiled to himself. If someone had had him followed, they should have done some spying a little closer to home first. Sin paid his people well and expected their discretion, but information could always be obtained at a price. An effective rival could have learned that the property in question already belonged to him—and that this was a purely private matter anyway.

  Sin signaled, slowed down, and turned into the long driveway that led to the Mountain Star. He wasn't overly concerned—but nonetheless, he would remember to keep an eye out for nondescript sedans.

  Sin and Sophie had their private brunch in the bedroom of the little house.

  Afterward she couldn't linger. She had to get right back to work. Reluctant to return to his hotel where he would only sit and contemplate the sheer idiocy of his own behavior, Sin wandered out to the stables. There he found Caleb, the surly stableman, helping an angry-looking blonde onto the back of a coal black Arabian mare. The woman, who might have been anywhere from thirty to forty, wore English riding gear—jodhpurs, a neat little hat and knee-high boots. Once she found her seat, she sawed on the reins, forcing the mare to prance. "Easy," Caleb warned.

  The woman cast him an icy glance, yanked on the reins some more, and rode out into the sun as if she owned the world.

  Shaking his head, Caleb watched her go. Then he turned and saw Sin standing there.

  "That's a fine mare," Sin said.

  "And that woman's set on ruining her," Caleb replied. He turned to leave.

  Sin should have let him go, but instead he heard himself say, "Wait."

  The big man turned. "Yeah?"

  "How did you meet Sophie?"

  Caleb broadened his stance a little—a pose that Sin read as wariness. "Why do you need to know?"

  "I don't. I'm just curious."

  A gray cat came strolling toward them across the red dirt in front of the stables. It looked like the same one Sophie had held in her arms that first night, while she gave her cute little introductory speech before the Randi Wilding Western. The cat ran up to Caleb, let out a meow and then sat back in a sinuous movement on its hind legs.

&nbs
p; The stableman bent, scooped it up and began petting it in long strokes. The cat closed its eyes and purred in ecstasy. Caleb said, "She found me here."

  "Sophie?"

  Caleb nodded, his big head bent down, his gaze on the purring cat. "She came here by accident. She was living in the city then."

  "The city? You mean San Francisco?"

  "Yeah. She came up here for a weekend with a boyfriend."

  Sin felt a completely irrational surge of jealousy. "A boyfriend."

  "That's right. She was going to marry him."

  "Why didn't she?"

  Caleb looked up. "You'll have to ask her about that." He looked down at the cat again, went on stroking the gray fur. "She was alone when she came here, though."

  "You mean to the ranch itself?"

  "Uh-huh. Just drove up the driveway one day, curious, wanting to look around at the old Riker place. She found me in the barn. I was … camped out there. I had nowhere else to go." He raised his head, his pale eyes proud, defiant of any judgments Sin might make.

  "You were homeless."

  "That's what they call it." His gaze was on the cat again, stroking, rubbing. "She wasn't even scared of me. She's like that. She trusts. Everybody gets the benefit of the doubt with her." He shot another quick glance up at Sin. Sin caught the meaning of that glance: Everybody gets the benefit of the doubt with her, even some who probably shouldn't, even you…

  The cat rolled over in the groom's huge arms. He scratched its belly. "Anyway, she found me here. We started talking. I told her I loved horses, could fix just about anything with a motor, and knew what to do to bring the grounds back under control—everything was grown pretty wild by then. She always says she got the idea for the Mountain Star that day, with just her and me. Talking in the barn."

  Sin decided to go for the throat. "You're in love with her."

  Caleb crouched and let the cat down. It strolled away, tail high. Then slowly Caleb stood. He assumed that wide, guarded stance again. "I love her. But not the kind of love you think. I'd do anything for her. She's the sister I never had." He paused, looked at Sin sideways. "You ever had a sister?"