Christine Rimmer - A Hero for Sophie Jones Page 7

  "No."

  "A man feels protective of a sister. I suppose what I'm tellin' you is, I would do bad damage to a man who hurt her."

  "I see."

  "Good. And I got work to do." Sin watched him walk away.

  That night, as they lay in bed, Sin kept thinking of that other man, the one she had almost married.

  And Sophie knew, the way she always did, that something was bothering him. "Okay, what is it?"

  He went ahead and told her. "I spoke with Caleb today."

  "He was civil—I hope?"

  "Civil enough. He told me you were almost married once."

  "That's true."

  "What happened?"

  Sophie thought, he wasn't you, but didn't say it.

  She'd gone and cried out her love just last night, and he'd said nothing. She didn't want to push him with constant declarations of her feelings. To her, it seemed she'd been waiting all her life for him to come and find her. But in reality, this was only the fourth night since he'd walked into her movie theater and stolen her heart. She wanted him to feel free to open up to her in his own time and in his own way.

  "Sophie?" His warm breath caressed her shoulder. "Tell me about him."

  She didn't hesitate. She wanted him to know all about her own life, just as she hoped he would soon tell her more about his. "His name was David. He was a lawyer. Family law. He handled my aunt Sophie's estate—she was the one who raised me, really. My parents were killed in a car crash when I was only five.

  "I met David when Aunt Sophie died. That was six years ago. I was twenty-one, with a degree from a business school and a job in an insurance office. I felt very grown-up. After we'd been dating for about six months, he asked me to marry him. He was a good man and I was … lonely. With Aunt Sophie gone, I had no family left. I said yes."

  "And?"

  "And then we came here. For a weekend. I went off by myself one day, exploring. I stopped at this coffee shop in Grass Valley and got talking to some of the old fellows at the counter. They told me a few stories. About the town."

  He added for her, "And about the Rikers, who carved an empire here—and then lost it, all in the space of two generations?"

  "Yes." She turned toward him, cuddled closer. "I asked where the Riker Ranch was. They gave me directions and I found my way here. I drove up the entrance road and … fell in love."

  "With this place." It wasn't a question. He understood.

  "Yes. I wanted to move here. To spend the money my aunt had left me to create the Mountain Star."

  "And David didn't share your dream."

  "He had his life in San Francisco and he didn't want to move." Sinclair's black hair had fallen over his forehead. Tenderly, Sophie combed it back with her fingers.

  "Do you still think of him?"

  "Sometimes. But not with regret. It just … wasn't meant to be."

  He reached for her, cupped the back of her neck. "Lucky for me."

  "Oh, Sinclair…"

  "Kiss me."

  She did.

  For a good while, they didn't speak. The only sounds in the lace-curtained room were soft moans and sighs.

  Later she gathered all her courage, and asked, "When did your mother die?"

  He hesitated, but then he did answer. "About three years ago."

  "Of what?"

  "Complications from diabetes, the doctors said."

  "You don't believe that?"

  He moved away from her a little, and sat up against the carved headboard. "I believe she wanted to die. Diabetes can be managed, but she refused to take care of herself. She was never happy, in all those years after my father killed himself."

  She pulled the sheet against her breasts and sat up beside him. "It must have been hard for you growing up, if she was unhappy."

  "We got by." The three words were like a wall with a sign on it: Keep Out.

  Still, she pressed on. "What did she do … for a living?"

  He gave her a long, deep look. "You don't want to know."

  She felt for his hand, twined her fingers with his. "No, that's not true. I do want to know."

  "All right." He paused. She thought for a moment that he had changed his mind and wouldn't go on, but then he said, "She lived off of men."

  Sophie hoped she hadn't heard right. "Excuse me?"

  Sinclair chuckled, a cold sound. "You ought to see your face. You shouldn't have asked."

  She scooted over even closer to him, brought their twined hands to her heart. "But I want to know, I do. Whatever you're willing to tell me."

  He looked at their clasped hands, then pulled his away. "All right, Sophie. I'll tell you. She was a whore."

  "A…?" She gulped, her throat closing over the ugly word.

  "You heard me. A whore."

  "But I don't understand. You're saying she became a … prostitute? Just like that?"

  He made a low, impatient sound. "No. Not just like that. She drifted into it. She was a pretty woman and men were attracted to her. Like my father, she had little ambition to get out and make things happen. At first, I remember she had a job in an office. We lived in east Hollywood then, a tiny 'garden' apartment in a neighborhood that had gone downhill. The job didn't pay much. She was always late with the rent and always worried about how we would get by. And then she met someone at that office. I suppose you could say she was his mistress for a while. Then he dumped her and she lost the job. She met someone else. And someone else. Eventually, she stopped having affairs. She went out with men and went to bed with them and they paid her for it.

  "She went on like that until I got old enough to do something about it. I bought her a little house in the San Fernando Valley and I took over paying her bills for her. She lived quietly after that, but she drank. Drinking and diabetes don't mix." He was looking at the far wall. "Three years ago, she died."

  At last, he turned his gaze her way again. "Heard enough?"

  She kept picturing him as a little boy, in that tiny apartment he'd mentioned—all alone, while his mother went out with strange men. "How did you stand it? How did you live?"

  "Let's say I was determined."

  "Determined to do what?"

  Sin wondered what the hell was the matter with him, to have revealed so much.

  "Sinclair."

  "Umm?"

  "What were you so determined to do?"

  He backpedaled—smoothly, he hoped. "To … better myself, I guess you could say." He settled down onto the pillows and pulled her close. "You ought to get some sleep."

  She wrapped one arm around him, twined those long, smooth legs with his. "Sinclair?"

  "What?"

  "I'm so sorry for her. And for you."

  "Don't be," he commanded. "She's gone now. And I've got what I wanted."

  She snuggled up closer. "You mean money, right?"

  "Right," he lied in a whisper, "that's what I mean." He smoothed her shining hair back from her temple and placed a kiss there. "Now, go to sleep."

  "Sinclair?"

  "Sophie. Go to sleep."

  She sighed. She had a thousand more questions, and he knew it. But he wasn't going to answer them. He'd already told her way too much.

  She must have realized that he was through talking, because she said no more.

  The next morning, right as the sun rose, she dragged him over to the cottage to eat breakfast in the kitchen with her and the help—which included Caleb, the cook named Myra and a skinny little part-time maid called Midge.

  Sin still didn't care much for spending time in that house. One of the first things he intended to do once he took over was to tear the damn thing down and build again.

  But that morning, with Sophie next to him, the old demons stayed away.

  Midge was a talker. She had a boyfriend who kept leaving and then coming back, a mother who wouldn't quit giving her advice—and she'd flunked her last semester at Sierra Junior College.

  "Oh, I dunno," Midge informed them all between big bites of scram
bled egg, "I just dunno what to do. Maybe I should get a full-time job. Get my own place, not have to listen to Mother anymore. But then, higher education has always been my dream. Without a college degree, how will I ever really make something of myself?" She gulped down more egg and fluttered her skimpy lashes at Sin. "What do you think, Mr. Riker?"

  He said something neutral.

  She started babbling again.

  The red-haired cook spoke up the next time Midge paused to shovel in more food. "So, how long will you be staying in town, Mr. Riker?"

  Beside him, he felt Sophie go very still. She'd asked him that question herself once, the first night he came here. He had evaded. And she hadn't asked again.

  "Mr. Riker?" the cook prompted, reminding him of a disapproving schoolmarm who'd waited too long for a response from a student she didn't much like anyway.

  "I'll be here another week. Maybe two." Idiocy. Pure and simple. Things couldn't go on this way for another two weeks.

  But even as he admitted the impossibility of the situation, he knew he planned to carry on with it—and with Sophie—for as long as the lie lasted.

  "Sophie says you're here on business."

  "Yes."

  "And what kind of business is that?"

  Sin caught the warning glance Sophie sent Myra's way, but Myra kept her sharp green eyes right on him.

  "I'm in real-estate acquisition."

  "You're buying property here, in Nevada County?"

  "I'm … checking out the situation."

  Caleb joined the interrogation then. "What does that mean?"

  "Caleb, please." Sophie jumped to the rescue. "Sinclair is our guest."

  Sin put his hand over hers. "It's all right." He looked at Caleb—and began dishing out more half truths. "What I mean is, before I would buy property here for potential development, I would have to thoroughly investigate the climate for such a project."

  "The climate?"

  "Would the community be open to it? Would local government stymie us at every turn—or make the thousand and one permits we'd need easy to acquire?"

  "We don't want another shopping mall around here anyway," Caleb said sourly.

  Now it was Myra's turn to shoot the big man a quelling look, after which she started in on Sin again. "So, you're here to find out if you want to do business in Nevada County. Is that it?"

  "You could say that, yes." Though it wouldn't be true.

  "And that could take two more weeks?"

  "It could."

  Right then, someone tapped on the door that led out to a small back porch. All heads turned that way. Sin knew a shameful moment of total relief, to have the inquisition over—at least for the moment.

  Myra pushed back her chair. "That'll be the campers." She went to the door.

  Two thin, shabbily dressed older men stood there, bedrolls and packs slung over their shoulders. "Good morning, Myra." One of them tipped the sweat-stained felt hat he wore.

  "You just hold it right there." The cook bustled off toward the pantry.

  The man in the felt hat caught sight of the rest of them and tipped his hat a second time. "Howdy, folks—Sophie B."

  Sophie gave him one of those smiles of hers, a smile bright enough to light up the whole room. "Hello, Edgar. And Silas, how are you?"

  "Just fine, ma'am. Beautiful day."

  "Yes. It certainly is."

  "Come on in," Sophie said.

  "No," the one called Edgar shook his head. "We got to be going."

  Myra emerged from the pantry carrying two small brown paper sacks. "Just a little something. It'll be lunchtime before you know it."

  "We surely do thank you, Myra."

  "That we do. A bite always comes in handy."

  "You boys take care of yourselves now."

  "You know we will…" They went off down the walk and Myra closed the door. She returned to the table.

  Sin looked at Sophie. "Bag lunches for the homeless?"

  Midge piped up again. "Edgar and Silas aren't homeless. Well, not exactly, anyway. They're prospectors. They dredge the South Fork. But they never made a big strike. So they kind of ended up living day-to-day."

  Sin held back a chuckle over that one. His grandfather had worked in the mines, after all. And his father had been an expert on the history of the area.

  Silas and Edgar had chosen the wrong business. Though some hard-rock mining concerns still operated in the gold country with reasonable success, no dredger he'd ever heard of had made a big strike in the past hundred years or so.

  Midge went on. "But they do drink, I heard—Edgar and Silas, I mean. They both got a liquor problem, like a lot of miners. It's sad. It comes from busted dreams, the way I see it. If you got no dreams left, you got to soothe yourself with something."

  Sin hardly heard her. He was looking at Sophie, remembering how it had irritated him the other night when she'd sent those kids out to sleep on his land.

  Today he felt differently. Today he felt … admiration. Yes, admiration was the word. Admiration for a woman who didn't have the money to put a decent kitchen in her rundown resort, but still let her cook pass out food to every down-and-outer who knocked on the back door.

  Admiration.

  It wasn't like him. Not like him at all.

  Sophie smiled at him, reached for her coffee cup and drained the last of it.

  Midge went on, "But still, I gotta say, it might not be so bad. To live free in an old van like Silas and Edgar. And in the summertime, to sleep out under the stars. To have Myra give me bag lunches when I got really hungry. It might be better than my life, for instance.

  "I mean, It's not easy, worrying every day about my GPA, listening to my mother nagging and wishing that my boyfriend would either ask me to marry him or get his sorry butt out of my life. I just—"

  Myra had heard enough. "Finish up. I want some help to get the breakfast on in the dining room. And then you've got vacuuming and dusting and a freezer to defrost."

  Midge let out a long, deep sigh. Then she picked up her fork and finished her second helping of scrambled eggs.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  Sin left as soon as he'd finished his breakfast. After all, he had to keep up the fiction that he had lots of work to do, checking out the local business climate, courting the county politicos.

  Sophie walked him to his car. They stopped on the path before they reached the parking area under the pines.

  "The theater's closed tonight." She swayed a little closer to him, turning her face up, so her sweet mouth was only inches from his. "And tomorrow night. And the next night, too. I only run it Thursday through Sunday. Did I tell you that before?"

  He looked at her slim nose and her wide mouth and those beautiful eyes. He was like some adolescent with his first crush—he just couldn't get enough of looking at her.

  "Sinclair, did I tell you?"

  "You might have."

  "Well, anyway, now you know. That's three nights a week I have to myself."

  He knew what she was hinting at, and gladly played right along. "I hope you're planning on spending those nights with me."

  She went on tiptoe and kissed him, a little peck of a kiss. "I would not spend those nights with anyone but you."

  A quick kiss was never enough. "Kiss me like you mean it."

  She cast a glance around. "Well, I don't think anyone's looking."

  "I don't give a damn if they are." He pulled her close and took the kiss he wanted—a long, slow, achingly sweet one.

  Finally he had to take her by the waist and put her away from him. "I'd better go. I know you have to get to work."

  She let out a rueful little sigh. "And you, too."

  The conscience he wasn't supposed to have jabbed at him. "Right." He kissed the end of her nose, not daring to kiss anything else or he would scoop her up and carry her back to the guest house and keep her there all day long. "Tonight." He backed away, knowing he had to go, but jealous of losi
ng sight of her.

  "Tonight." She stood there in the shadow of the pines until he drove away.

  That day went much like the day before. Sin returned to his hotel. He checked in with Rob. Then he went to that fitness club again to swim and lift weights.

  A gray sedan pulled out into traffic behind him when he left the health club's parking lot. Sin drove slowly, signaling clearly at every turn, making it easy for whoever it was to trail right along. Glances in his rearview and side mirrors told him little. The driver was male, of medium build. He wore a tan shirt, had a crew cut. Dark glasses hid his eyes. He might have been twenty or forty or anywhere in between.

  Finally, about two blocks from his hotel, Sin put on his blinker and carefully pulled to the shoulder of the road. The sedan drove on by. Sin looked over just as the car passed him. The eyes behind those dark glasses were looking right at him. Sin waved.

  The gray car sped off.

  Sin sat there for a moment before pulling out again. Whoever lurked behind those dark glasses understood now that Sin had spotted him.

  And why in hell was he being followed in the first place? What was there to discover about his visit here—beyond the fact that he was having an affair with Ms. Sophie B. Jones?

  Could that information be of use to someone in some way? Offhand, Sin didn't see how.

  Sin had lunch at the hotel restaurant, then placed a call to his second in command at Inkerris, Incorporated. His associate said just what he expected him to say. The two projects they had in the works were running smoothly and he couldn't think of any reason someone might put a detective on Sin.

  "But I'll be happy to check into it more thoroughly."

  Sin told him not to bother. "If it becomes necessary, I'll handle it at this end."

  When he hung up, he found himself wondering about Sophie, remembering all the questions he saw in her eyes—questions he knew she was careful not to ask for fear she might chase him away.

  Could she have decided to get some answers another way?

  No. He couldn't believe that. Not Sophie. She didn't have a devious bone in her body.