The Secret Sin (13 page)

He rinsed a dish, put it in the dishwasher and took the one she was holding before responding. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why are you acting like everything between us is fine?”

He continued to clean up, then said, “I’m acting like an adult.”

“Could have fooled me,” she said.

He ignored her sarcastic comment, drying his hands on a dish towel. “Last night I found out Sierra was the one who told you about the bet.”

Annie felt her muscles seize up. “I don’t want to talk about this again. There’s nothing else to say.”

“You might not have anything else to say, but I do. Sierra, by the way, feels terrible about what happened.”

Annie had been about to walk out of the kitchen without hearing him out, but her feet felt frozen in place. “She shouldn’t.” Annie had never blamed Sierra for being the bearer of degrading news. “She didn’t know we’d slept together.”

“Exactly,” Ryan said. “What struck me last night was that her actions would have been forgivable even if she had known. Sierra’s grown up now. We all are. Every one of us regrets some of the things we did when we were teenagers.”

“You’re saying we should be given carte blanche for everything we ever did wrong?”

“Not carte blanche and not for everything, but for the mistakes we own up to,” he said. “Seeing you again made me realize what a jerk I was. I should
have at least tracked you down to make sure you were okay after the baby was born, and I’m sorrier for that than you’ll ever know. But I can’t keep beating myself up over it.”

He looked her straight in the eyes, the words seeming to come from his heart. She could hardly refuse to accept them. She nodded, waiting for the rest of his confession. Except he seemed to have finished.

“What about the bet?” She hadn’t intended to mention it again, but the question slipped free. Tears immediately pricked the backs of her eyes. “Do you take responsibility for that?”

His head shook from side to side. “I’ve made enough mistakes. I’ll be damned if I’ll own up to one that wasn’t mine.”

His unflinching gaze met hers. She searched his eyes for a sign that he was lying. Last night she’d claimed he couldn’t say anything that would get her to believe him. It turned out his words hadn’t done the trick. His eyes had.

He truly hadn’t had an ulterior motive.

She thought back to that night, before Sierra had told her about the bet and the pain had kicked in. The connection between her and Ryan had seemed so real, the lovemaking special even though it had been her first time.

If he hadn’t slept with her to win a wager, he’d done it purely because he was attracted to her.

The knowledge swept through her like a bright light, banishing the final remnants of the pain she’d held on to for far too long.

She knew enough about the man he’d become to believe he’d regret any past mistakes, but he wasn’t guilty of the sin which she’d long attributed to him, and that made all the difference in the world.

“You believe me,” he said softly. It wasn’t a question.

She nodded anyway, hardly able to process her feelings.

“Yes,” she said. “I believe you.”

He closed the distance between them and framed her face with his hands. His gaze dipped to her mouth as though asking if he could kiss her. She raised her lips.

One of his hands slid from her cheek to cup the base of her skull. The other reached down so they were holding hands. His mouth lowered, claiming her lips with an unhurried gentleness.

It was the same as the kiss at the miniature golf course yet different. Time seemed to move in slow motion, magnifying every reaction. She could swear her heart had never beaten so hard, her legs had never felt so weak, her senses had never come so alive.

It wasn’t because of the kiss, she acknowledged. It was because of the man.

Even when they were teenagers, before circumstance and misunderstanding had muddied the issue, the chemistry between them had been transcendent.

She opened her mouth, and he deepened the kiss, his tongue at first toying with hers until they were both no longer in the mood for playing. He slanted his mouth over hers, and she met his tongue thrust for thrust, her body molding against his.

Throughout it all, he held her hand, the sweetness of the gesture touching her on a level his kisses couldn’t.

She lost her bearings, where they were in the room being less important than their proximity to each other. She felt something against the backs of her thighs. It took a moment to realize it was the edge of the kitchen table.

“Ryan,” she said against his mouth. “The table.”

He blinked, seeming to realize where they were. He lifted her onto the table. She put her right hand down to brace herself and heard something crash. A glass vase. Flowers and water pooled on the floor.

“Oh, no,” Annie said. “We need to pick that up.”

“Leave it.” He settled between her thighs and then he was kissing her again, the thrusts of his tongue and the heat of his mouth making her almost dizzy. He pressed against her, his erection unmistakable. The flat of his hand traveled from her waist to her breast. She moaned into his mouth and kissed him some more.

Finally he lifted his head. “We can’t do this here.”

Disappointment crashed into her. “I know. Lindsey and Sierra could be back at any minute.”

“They won’t be back until at least ten.” He sounded out of breath, barely in control. “I got Sierra to promise.”

“You were that sure of yourself?”

“Not at all,” he said, “but a man can hope.”

She reached around his neck, intending to pull his mouth back down to hers, but met with resistance. She
blinked up at him. “You’re serious? We’re really not going to do this?”

“We’re not going to do it
here,
” he said. “We’re doing it in my bedroom.”

He swept her into his arms like a modern-day Rhett Butler. She encircled his neck with her arms, holding on while he carried her up the curving stairs.

“If you drop me,” she said, “it’ll ruin the mood.”

He laughed, holding her more securely against him.

“Why the bedroom?” she asked, her face buried in the softness of his neck. He smelled wonderful, like soap, warm skin and Ryan. “I would have done it in the kitchen.”

“The last time I made love to you, I was sixteen years old,” he said. “Like I said before, I’m not that same person anymore.”

Yet he was. He laid her on his large mahogany bed when they reached his room, then they simultaneously embarked on a race to see who could get undressed faster. When he got his head stuck in his T-shirt, laughter slowed her down.

“I win!” he declared after finally struggling free of the T-shirt. She looked his nakedness up and down, appreciating his sculpted chest, his flat abs and his impressive erection.

“No,” she said with a flirtatious smile, “I do.”

He growled playfully, then came across the bed to help her remove the rest of her clothes. Then they were in each other’s arms, reestablishing the connection they’d started to form on that long-ago night when Lindsey had been conceived.

Before Annie had found out about the bet, she’d considered that to be the best night of her life.

Not anymore.

This was.

W
HEN
R
YAN
got his sister to agree to stay away from the house until ten o’clock, he figured that would be plenty of time. With Annie naked in his arms, he discovered it wasn’t nearly enough.

Especially when she slipped away from him and started rummaging on the floor for her clothes.

He checked the wall clock, resenting the relentless ticking away of the seconds. “Come back to bed. We have twenty-five more minutes.”

“Not if they show up early, we don’t.” She tossed a grin over her bare shoulder, looking so sexy with her tousled blond hair he nearly succumbed to temptation and pulled her back into bed.

“Not gonna happen.” He propped his head on his elbow to watch her dress. “I told Sierra we had things to talk about.”

He’d also informed his sister he aimed to get Annie to trust him.

Annie shimmied into a pair of hip-hugger panties. Next came her bra, which she put on with disappointing speed. At least there was a delicious intimacy in watching her dress.

“I appreciate that you have faith in your sister,” Annie said, as she pulled on a sleeveless top that showed off arms toned from rowing, “but I’m not taking any chances.”

Annie picked up her jeans. He sighed and swung his
legs off the bed, figuring he might as well get dressed himself. He’d rather their daughter not catch them in bed together.

Their daughter.
He liked the ring of that.

“Do you know yet how much longer Lindsey is staying?” he asked.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Annie said slowly. The mood in the room instantly changed from playful to serious. “She starts eighth grade a week from Monday. Her parents want her back with enough time to do some school shopping.”

“How much time?” Ryan steeled himself to hear the answer.

“A week.”

That meant Lindsey was leaving in four days.

“Her stepmother’s checking the schedule,” Annie continued. “She said she’d let me know which train to put Lindsey on.”

He tugged on his pants, thinking about the situation at work. Sierra was supposed to get her cast removed tomorrow. If the nurse practitioner who worked part-time agreed to come in on Monday, together she and Sierra could handle the patient workload.

“If you line up guides to fill in for you on Monday, Lindsey wouldn’t have to take the train,” he said. “We could drive her back.”

Annie’s hands froze at the waistband of her jeans, leaving them unbuttoned. Her body went equally still. “Is that why you slept with me? To get me to agree to talk to Lindsey’s parents?”

Ryan jumped up from the bed and crossed the room
to where she stood like a statue, stunned that she still didn’t trust him. “I slept with you because I think you’re amazing.”

She stared at him, her eyes unblinking. “So you’re dropping the idea that we should tell her parents who we are?”

“Well, no,” he said truthfully. Was it so wrong for him to want the three of them to be a family?

“Are you sure one thing has nothing to do with the other?” she challenged.

The sounds of the front door banging open and footsteps on the hardwood floor carried from the downstairs. Ryan’s eyes flew to the bedroom door. In their haste to reach the bed, they’d left it open.

“Ryan? Annie? We’re back.” It was Lindsey’s voice, full of life and happiness.

Neither he nor Annie moved. More footsteps echoed, along with the thump of Sierra’s walking cast, as though the two females were moving from room to room, searching for them.

“What happened in here?” Lindsey cried. “Look, Sierra, the vase is broken. Ryan? Annie? Where are you?”

“We’d better get downstairs.” Annie moved away, putting distance between them that seemed symbolic.

He picked his T-shirt off the bed where they’d so recently made love and tugged it over his head, her question ringing in his ear.

Are you sure one thing has nothing to do with the other?

The hell of it was she’d created doubt where before there had been none.

R
YAN REMOVED
the patient’s chart from the holder on the closed door Friday afternoon, glanced at the name and swallowed a sigh. Forcing a pleasant expression, he rapped three times and entered the examination room.

“Hello, Edie,” he told the blonde who held a tissue to her nose. She was already positioned on the whitepaper-covered table, her legs dangling in space.

Why was it that the person you ran into the most tended to be someone you least wanted to see? Edie Clark hadn’t changed much from the girl she’d been in high school, the one who had made it her business to know everybody else’s. It seemed that now she was omnipresent. At the pediatrician’s office with her twin boys. At the miniature golf course with her family. And now here at Whitmore Family Practice.

“So what’s the problem today?” Ryan asked.

“I feel terrible,” she whined. “I caught the cold my kids had. They were sick for only a couple of days. It’s going on four for me.”

Great,
he thought.
Yet another patient who thinks the medical profession has the cure for the common cold.

He deliberately censored himself. If he hadn’t lain awake last night unsuccessfully examining his motives for pursuing Annie, that uncharitable thought wouldn’t have entered his tired mind. He’d gone into medicine to help people feel better, no matter how minor their complaints.

He got out his stethoscope and listened to her heart and lungs, checked her ears with his otoscope and asked her to open wide so he could examine her throat. Yep, she had a cold. He wasn’t about to write out a prescription for antibiotics, but took out his pad anyway. He’d found that patients who visited the doctor for minor ailments liked to have a written plan.

“Rest and drink lots of fluids,” he told her. “I’ll jot down the name of a cough medicine I want you to pick up. You should feel better in a few days.”

“Thank you, but it’s tough to take it easy when you have three kids,” she said, sniffling and coughing. “They’re always wanting to do something. You should know. I saw you and Annie at the miniature golf course with that teenager who’s visiting.”

He made a noncommittal noise while he wrote. No way was he discussing Lindsey with Edie Clark.

“It was good to see Annie in town,” Edie continued. “Writing for that magazine, she doesn’t get back home much, does she?”

“Not much.” He deliberately kept his response short.

“Until this summer I could count on one hand the times I’ve seen her since high school.” Edie’s throat sounded increasingly scratchy, but she kept talking. “I
heard her father’s retiring to Florida. Do you think Annie will move away for good after he sells the business?”

His head jerked up from the pad. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know the Sublinskis are selling their business! Annie was in town just yesterday talking to a real estate agent. Phil Mangini. He’s married to my cousin.”

“Are you sure it was yesterday?”

“Positive. I saw Annie coming out of Phil’s office, plain as day.”

Yet Annie hadn’t said a word to Ryan last night about a potentially life-changing meeting with a real estate agent, not even after they’d slept together.

“I called my cousin and she told me Phil has a buyer lined up.” Edie’s voice gave out and she coughed, evidently to clear her throat so she could continue. “If the Sublinskis sell, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, it’ll be interesting to see if Annie takes that job in Australia.”

Ryan had planned not to respond to Edie’s gossip but couldn’t stop himself. “Australia?”

She coughed some more, then nodded. “I hear the company that publishes her magazine also puts out something called
Outback Women
. I imagine after you work at the same place for so long, writing the same kinds of stories like Annie has, you’re ready for a new challenge.”

Could that be true? Was Annie really thinking about moving to Australia? It made a hazy sort of sense to Ryan and could even explain her reluctance to discuss the future.

“To each his own.” Edie’s voice was so hoarse he could hardly hear her, but she kept on talking. “But why anyone would willingly go to the Australian Outback is beyond me.”

The thought of Annie leaving sliced through him like a hot knife. How could he possibly let her go when he’d just found her again?

She didn’t even know yet that he loved her.

The realization slammed into him with a soul-deep certainty. Last night he hadn’t been able to separate how he felt about Annie from his love for Lindsey. Now he could.

“You agree, don’t you, Ryan?”

With difficulty he focused on Edie, amazed that she had been the impetus for his discovery, especially since he’d lost track of what she was saying.

“Agree about what?” he asked.

“The Outback. Haven’t you seen those nature shows with the dingos and the heat and the bush? I mean, would you ever consider living there?” Her bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes widened. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

Would he?

He stood up, ripped the top piece of paper off the pad and handed it to Edie. “Any grocery store or drugstore should carry that brand of cough medicine. Get some rest and you’ll be better in no time.”

He left the room without answering Edie’s question. He was through talking to her, but once the office closed he had something very important to say to Annie.

He needed to tell her that he loved her.

A
NNIE WADED
toward the rocky riverbank in water that was calf-deep, pulling her kayak behind her. In the distance she could hear a police siren, a jarring reminder that life wasn’t as tranquil as it seemed on the river.

The serenity Annie could usually count on when she was cloaked on all sides by water had been hard to come by today, though. She couldn’t regret having made love to Ryan, but her feelings were as jumbled for him as his appeared to be for her.

It all came back to Lindsey.

She was terribly afraid she wouldn’t be able to convince him they should keep quiet about being Lindsey’s birth parents. Yet the girl’s happiness could depend on it.

She dragged her kayak onto the bank, then motioned for the rafters in front of the pack to follow her lead.

The siren got progressively louder.

The flatbed trailer they used to transport the rafts to the put-in spot was waiting along with two high-school kids who worked part-time loading and unloading the boats. One of the boys was a head shorter and probably weighed forty pounds less than the other. He did the bulk of the work.

“Hey, Annie.” Barry, the smaller, thinner boy, rushed up to meet her. “You better get up to the shop quick. There’s trouble.”

The siren’s wail nearly drowned out his words. A police cruiser came into view, its tires kicking up dirt, sliding to a stop at an angle as though the driver was in too much of a hurry to straighten out the car. A longtime
Indigo Springs cop she recognized as Joe Wojokowski got out and headed for the shop.

Had something happened to Lindsey? Annie’s heart beat so hard she could hear the thump of blood in her ears.

“Lindsey,” she breathed. The girl preferred staying at the shop with Hobo during the rafting trips. Considering that Jason had started treating Lindsey like a kid sister, Annie had been fine with the situation. “Is Lindsey all right?”

“Well, yeah.” Barry seemed confused by her question. “She’s not the one that customer has been yelling at.”

The first rafters weren’t yet off the river, but Annie would have to trust the boys to make sure they safely disembarked. She rushed up to the shop, the short distance seeming five times its normal length.

Lindsey met her at the door, Hobo at her heels. “I’m so glad you’re here! I was just coming to check if you were back.”

A very thin man wearing professor glasses and a straw hat that branded him as a tourist was gesturing angrily to the police officer, who everybody in town called Wojo. Behind the counter slouched Jason.

“This is unacceptable!” the man cried in a high-pitched, irritated voice. “I demand something be done about it.”

“Excuse me.” Annie approached the counter. She nodded to the cop, whom she’d known before his waist had spread and he’d started balding. She introduced
herself to the irate customer. “I’m in charge while my father’s out of town. What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” the man bellowed. “When I got back to the B-and-B, I discovered the camera equipment I’d left in my car trunk was gone.”

“I just got here.” Wojo’s expression was almost bored as he chomped on a piece of gum. Peppermint from the smell of it. “He alleges the stuff was stolen while he was taking one of your trips.”

“Alleges?” The man’s face turned red. “I’m stating it as fact. My things were in the trunk when I left my keys with that smart mouth over there.” He jerked his thumb at Jason. “Now they aren’t.”

“Smart mouth?” Jason’s voice rose. “Was I just supposed to take it when you called me an idiot?”

“You
are
an idiot,” the man retorted. “First you overcharged me, and now you’re responsible for my camera being stolen!”

“That’s enough,” Wojo said roughly. “Name-calling won’t get us anywhere. I need someone to tell me how this could have happened.”

“Simple,” the tourist said. “You take the keys, go into the parking lot and hit the remote. Whichever car beeps is your target.”

“That shouldn’t be possible. We have safeguards in place.” Annie went on to describe their procedure. The keys were kept in a basket, then locked in a cabinet until the trip was over. Until now, they’d never had a single complaint.

Wojo turned to Jason. “You were in charge of the keys, right?”

Jason nodded slowly as though he didn’t want to admit it.

“Then I’d say we have a suspect,” Wojo said.

“Whoa. No way, man!” Jason exclaimed. “I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the only one who could have done it,” Wojo said. “Nobody else had access to the keys.”

“That’s not true!” Jason said. “Anybody could have taken them. I forgot to lock them up so they were there on the counter the whole time.”

“You assured us that wouldn’t happen!” the man exclaimed. “I never would have left my keys if I’d known you couldn’t be trusted.”

Annie cringed inside. Any moment now the rafters from the afternoon trip would start dribbling into the shop. She couldn’t afford to have them hear about the unforgivable lapse.

“That doesn’t leave you off the hook,” Wojo said to Jason. “You still could have done it.”

“I was in the shop the whole time,” Jason claimed. “Ask Lindsey.”

Lindsey had been standing unobtrusively at Annie’s side, as quiet as a ghost.

“Tell ’em, Lindsey,” Jason urged.

Lindsey wet her lips, hesitating slightly before answering. “Jason didn’t leave, not even for lunch. He ate behind the counter.”

Relief coursed through Annie that Jason wasn’t a thief, but they were no closer to solving the mystery of what had happened. The people embarking on the afternoon white-water trip arrived before the morning customers returned. Any one of them could have snatched the keys, stolen the camera, then returned the keys to the basket.

“What are the chances you can recover what was stolen?” Annie asked Wojo.

“Honestly?” Wojo shrugged. “Not good. Unless somebody saw who took the keys, I can’t prove anything.”

“That’s unacceptable,” the tourist fumed. “I won’t stand by and let this happen. I demand—”

“I’ll reimburse you the cost of the camera,” Annie interrupted. “Just give me a way to contact you and I’ll have my insurance agent call you. I’m sure he can take care of this to your satisfaction.”

The bluster left the man. “Well, okay. I’ll do that.”

“I’ll write up the report,” Wojo said. “You’ll need it for the insurance claim.”

“Thank you,” Annie said.

In the flurry of activity over the next hour, she barely had time to prepare for her inevitable confrontation with Jason.

Then, suddenly, she and Jason were alone in the shop. She might not be ready, but it was time.

Jason flipped his long hair out of his eyes. “I’m gonna take off if that’s okay.”

“Actually, I need to talk to you first.”

“I don’t have the money to pay for that camera, if that’s what you’re going to ask,” he said.

“That’s not it,” Annie said, although she would have been in her rights. She took a deep breath. “Things aren’t working out. I have to let you go.”

He huffed out a breath. “You’re freaking kidding me! Because I made one mistake?”

“You made a lot more than one mistake,” Annie said. “You didn’t get the bikes serviced. You usually come in late. Half the time you won’t wear the company T-shirt. You’re not exactly rude to the customers but you’re not friendly, either. You don’t even seem to like working here.”

“That’s a load of bull.” Jason showed a fire he’d never displayed before. If he’d been this passionate about his job, things could have turned out differently.

“I’ll mail your last paycheck,” she said.

“You’d better,” he growled, then he strode through the shop, banging through the door and letting it slam shut behind him.

Annie sank onto the stool behind the counter and gazed down at the floor, massaging her forehead. She had too much on her plate. The demands of the business. Lindsey’s imminent departure. And Ryan.

She still didn’t know what she was going to do about Ryan.

She didn’t immediately look up when she heard the door open, fairly certain Jason had returned to argue his case further.

“Annie?” It was Ryan’s voice, filled with urgency. “Are you all right?”

He appeared before her as though he’d materialized out of the ether, but he looked strong and solid. And dear.

“I’m fine.” She tried to summon a smile but found that she couldn’t. “Okay, I’m not so great. It’s been a really bad couple of hours.”

“Does this have something to do with that kid who works for you? He looked pretty mad.”