The Secret Sin (5 page)

“Let me help you down the hill.” Ryan’s eyebrows were drawn together, and his mouth was pinched. She ignored his outstretched arm.

“You can carry the bike if you want to help.” She doubted she’d be able to lift it, not when she’d yet to recover her wits fully. She took a step, relieved when her leg supported her weight. She might be bruised and stiff, but she’d live.

He seemed about to protest, but then crossed the path to where the bike had come to rest against a bush. He righted it, then frowned. “It’s missing a pedal.”

“That’s why I fell,” Annie said. “When I stood up and put my weight on it, it came off.”

“Odd,” Ryan said.

“Not so odd,” she said. “Things like that happen.”

Too bad it had had to happen while he was watching. Annie trudged ahead of him, silently cursing her bad luck. If she’d stuck to the original plan to guide the early group down-river, she could have at least avoided one-on-one time with him.

“I thought you were going rafting,” she said.

“I thought you’d be the guide.”

She looked down at the trickle of blood running down her leg instead of at him. The scrape on her thigh
smarted so she doubled her efforts to walk as though she was injury-free.

“All our guides are capable,” she said.

“Yeah, but only one of them has been avoiding me for almost fourteen years.”

She kept walking, determined not to let him know his comment had thrown her, irked that it had. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I just haven’t had anything to say to you.”

“If I was the kind of guy who took advantage of the injured,” he said in a conversational tone, “I’d take exception to that comment.”

“I’m not injured,” she denied.

“I’d disagree with that one, too.”

She increased her pace, which should have been enough to put distance between them. She was in hiking shape, and he was rolling a broken bicycle, but the fall had slowed her down. The sun was shining brightly overhead, heating up the August morning and making her feel even more uncomfortable.

“You should let me take a look at you when we get back to your shop,” he said as though she hadn’t already refused him. “Then there are a couple of things I want to talk to you about.”

Before alarm took hold, the rational part of her brain kicked in. He sounded too cool and calm to have figured out the volatile secret about Lindsey.

“You can’t always get what you want,” she said.

It was a childish retort, one she immediately wished she could take back. She was a grown woman who successfully dealt with men in both her business and
personal lives. She’d had a serious romantic relationship, even though it hadn’t worked out in the end. It bothered her that she became a quivering mass of nerves in this man’s presence.

“You’re right,” he said. “I learned that lesson when I was sixteen.”

He was wrong. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted that night when she’d had sex with him. She’d later found out it was precisely what he’d set out on having.

She felt her face heat and could have kicked herself. She was no longer a teenage virgin. What had happened with Ryan had been a long time ago. She couldn’t let it matter. She couldn’t let
him
matter.

They’d almost reached the main building. Jason must have seen them approaching because he came outside. He’d changed the black T-shirt he’d worn to work into a green one with the Indigo River Rafters logo. In black jeans and with his sandy hair falling to his shoulders, however, he still looked like he was headed for a rock concert.

“What happened to you?” Jason asked.

“The pedal came off the bike,” she said. “Could you put it in the storeroom with the extra rafts? I’d rather the customers didn’t see it.”

“Sure.” Jason took the bike and the broken pedal from Ryan before disappearing around the corner.

Annie turned to face Ryan once they were alone again. He was possibly even more handsome than he’d been in their youth. His hair had darkened slightly so it tended more toward light brown than blond, and there
were laugh lines around his eyes and mouth she didn’t remember being there.

In khaki shorts and a T-shirt, he looked more like the athlete he used to be than a doctor. His legs were long and leanly muscular, and his arms and chest were nicely developed. His features—sensuous mouth, clear blue eyes, long straight nose—packed a powerful punch. She’d never thought it fair that one man had so much going for him.

“Thanks for your help,” she said and headed for home.

“You’re really not going to let me check those scrapes?” His voice stopped her progress.

She answered without turning. “I’ve told you a couple of times now, I’m fine.”

“Then I’ll check your mountain bikes.”

He was suddenly beside her. It had always surprised her that she didn’t need to look up far to meet his eyes. She guessed he was five-eleven, tops, but he’d been such an overwhelming figure in her life that he’d always seemed much taller.

“For loose pedals,” he added.

The suggestion was an excellent one, considering she’d be liable if a customer had a mishap. They called in a technician to service the bikes regularly to prevent exactly that.

“I’ll get Jason to do it,” she said.

“I worked in a bike shop one summer. I can help him.”

“You don’t have—”

“I want to,” he interrupted.

She stared at him, at a loss as to what to say to get
him to leave. Lindsey was probably awake by now; she could appear at any minute. Common sense dictated that the less time Ryan spent around the girl, the less chance he’d have to figure out their connection.

“I’ll get started on the bikes while you clean up.” He strode toward the rack of mountain bikes available for rental, as though she’d already given him permission.

Cursing herself for not speaking up more forcefully against his help, Annie started for the house. Lindsey was sitting on the sofa in front of the television, her legs tucked under her, a spoon poised above a small container of peach yogurt. She glanced at Annie, then did a double take. “Oh, my gosh! What happened?”

“I fell off a bike,” Annie said.

Lindsey put down her breakfast and unfolded her legs, scooting forward on the sofa. “Need any help?”

It made Annie feel marginally better that Lindsey offered.

“I got it.” Annie walked past her into the kitchen and tore a few sheets from a roll of paper towels. She wet them and mopped up the blood and the dirt the best she could, wincing as she did so.

“That looks like it hurts.” Lindsey had followed her into the kitchen, yogurt in hand. She wore a gray-and-pink-striped tank top that ended just above the low, elasticized waistband of her very short gray shorts. “How’d you fall anyway?”

“One of the pedals on my bike came off.” Annie reached into the cabinet where her father kept bandages and ointments and withdrew some supplies.

“Don’t you rent those things out?”

“Yes.”

Lindsey made a face. “I’d be afraid to ride one.”

The girl’s train of thought, Annie noted, was distressingly similar to Ryan’s.

“We’re checking the other bikes to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Annie said.

“Who’s we?”

Annie hesitated, reluctant to tell her Ryan was on the premises. “A teenage boy works for me.”

Lindsey ate a spoonful of her yogurt, then dropped the container in the kitchen wastebasket. “You sure you don’t need any help?”

She not only thought like Ryan, she sounded like him.

“I’m sure.” Annie smoothed a gob of salve over the brush burn on her thigh, then tore open a package containing an oversized bandage. She concentrated on centering it over the scrape.

“See you later,” Lindsey called.

Annie’s head jerked up in time to see the teen headed for the door on long, bare legs, her flip-flops smacking against the heels of her feet. “Wait! Where are you going?”

“To see if I can help with the bikes,” Lindsey tossed the words over her shoulder without breaking stride.

“Wait!” Annie called again, but it was too late. Lindsey was gone.

Annie made short work of dressing the rest of her wounds and charged for the door, only to look down at herself and discover her shorts were ripped and her T-shirt streaked with dirt.

She dashed for her bedroom, pulling the T-shirt over her head as she went, and yanked another shirt and pair of shorts out of her dresser drawers. Moments later, she was rushing out of the house, her sore arms and legs aching.

Laughter carried through the clear summer air, a girlish giggle mingling with the deep vibrations of a man’s laugh. She followed the sound around the side of the building to the mountain bikes they rolled out of the storeroom each morning, then stopped.

Ryan was crouched on the ground beside a bicycle, his hand on one of the pedals as he looked up at Lindsey.

“A squirrel really ran into your bicycle wheel?” Lindsey’s voice was filled with both laughter and doubt.

“Yep,” Ryan said. “Bounced right off. Lay there for a second, stunned, then scampered away.”

“Why would it do that?”

“Why do squirrels do anything? You’ve seen them run into the path of a car. This was the same kind of thing.”

“You didn’t fall off the bike or anything?”

“Nope. Just wobbled a little.”

Lindsey laughed again, then bent her head toward his. “Why are you wiggling the pedals like that?”

“I’m checking to make sure they’re securely fastened to the crank.”

“The crank?” Lindsey repeated.

“It’s this round thing with the jagged edges.” He ran his hand over the part, giving her a visual. “It’s pretty easy to check. You just jiggle the pedal from side to side to see if you feel any looseness.”

Lindsey moved to another bike, imitating what he’d
shown her, first on the right pedal, then the left. “I think this left one’s loose.”

Ryan joined her at the bike, performing the same check she just had. “You’re right. Good job spotting it. You might be a natural at this.”

Even from her position twenty feet away, Annie could see the effect of the compliment. Lindsey squatted, like Ryan, but she seemed suddenly taller.

If Lindsey had grown up with Ryan as her father, he could have built up her self-esteem in countless interactions instead of just this one.

How could Annie seize the opportunity to spend time with Lindsey, fully aware it could be the only one she’d ever get, and deny Ryan the same chance? Didn’t he have as much right as she did to know the girl, no matter how brief their window of opportunity? And if she didn’t reveal to him who Lindsey was, could she live with herself?

Lindsey spotted her first. “You didn’t tell me Dr. Whitmore was here, Annie. I’m helping him.”

“She catches on quick.” Ryan’s smile reached his eyes. “Hey, Annie.”

She didn’t attempt a response as she contemplated what would be the right thing to do.

The fair thing.

The decent thing.

He cocked his head. “Are you okay?”

He probably thought the bike accident had knocked some of her brain cells loose. Considering what she was about to do, maybe it had.

Lindsey was regarding her with the same interest as
Ryan, her head angled in exactly the same way so their resemblance was unmistakable.

“Can I talk to you alone, Ryan?” She swallowed. There would be no turning back now. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

S
INCE
their chance meeting at the pediatrician’s office, Ryan had thought of little else besides getting Annie alone to talk. As she led him away from the building that housed the river rafters, he got a notion of how alone they would be.

Annie didn’t head toward the wide ripple of river that was the best advertisement for her trips or take the shady, tree-lined bike path where she’d suffered the fall, choosing instead a skinny trail that led into the woods.

“We can’t chance anyone overhearing us,” she told him as she walked along at a clip faster than he would have thought possible given her recent accident. She brushed aside the dangling leaves from a tree branch, forging ahead.

They’d left Lindsey and Jason with the bicycles and instructions to check the rest of them for loose pedals. Lindsey had been pointing out to Jason where the crank was as they walked away.

“Fine with me,” Ryan said.

He guessed she wanted to talk some more about Lindsey’s fixation on her weight. After they dispatched
that topic, he could bring the conversation around to the past they’d never discussed.

He could tell her how sorry he was.

She stopped abruptly. The path was wider here, with a fallen log just about the right height to sit on. She remained standing, but he got the impression she’d sat on that very log before.

She wasn’t wearing a ball cap today. A ray of sunlight beamed down through the trees, striking her shoulder-length hair and turning it even more golden. He remembered how he used to be on the lookout for that blond hair in the halls of their high school, but she’d been as adept at avoiding him before their single night together as she had been afterward.

He waited for her to begin, visually assessing the scrape on her leg and the bruise on her arm. She was probably still smarting, but the injuries didn’t look serious. She seemed to be having trouble finding words.

“I know why you wanted to talk to me alone,” he said, helping her out.

He could see her throat constrict. “You do?”

“It’s about Lindsey, right?”

She nodded, her eyes growing huge.

“I’d keep monitoring her, but I don’t see this as a big problem. She’s fixated on her weight, but she doesn’t seem to have an eating disorder.”

“An eating disorder,” Annie repeated.

“I didn’t see any signs of one, which doesn’t mean she’s not at risk of developing—”

“Stop,” she interrupted, holding up a hand.

“Stop?”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about.” Annie’s upper teeth chewed her lower lip. She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself. He had absolutely no idea what she would say.

“Lindsey’s the baby we gave up for adoption.”

The words hung in the air between them like the fog that sometimes blanketed the Pocono Mountains.

“I found out yesterday just before I talked to you at the pediatrician’s office,” she said in a rush. “I should have told you then, but I wasn’t used to the idea myself. I’m still not.”

His brain whirred, trying to put the pieces together and not able to make them fit. “Lindsey can’t be our baby. She’s fifteen.”

“She lied about her age so she could travel alone on the train,” Annie said. “She turned thirteen in March.”

The birthday of the baby they’d given up for adoption had been five months ago. Even though he tried to live in the present, he’d marked the date in some way or another over the past thirteen years, sometimes with alcohol, always with guilt.

He sank onto the log, wrestling with the revelation, still trying to make sense of it. He’d never expected to lay eyes on their baby in his lifetime. “Lindsey really is our daughter?”

“Not
our
daughter,” Annie said. “We gave up all rights to her. She’s Ted Thompson’s daughter.”

“I don’t understand. I thought it was a closed adoption.”

“I thought so too until yesterday.” She plucked a leaf
from a nearby branch, then crushed it in her palm. “It seems my father let the daughter of one of his friends adopt her. He’s been visiting her for years.”

“Ted Thompson’s wife?” he asked, still feeling as though he was wading through fog.

“His first wife. She died eight years ago of breast cancer. Lindsey lives with her adoptive father and his second wife.”

He digested the information. He’d spent the duration of Annie’s pregnancy in a study-abroad program in Spain. Since Annie wouldn’t take his calls, his mother had kept him informed of developments. She’d relayed that Annie’s father had been tasked with handling the adoption.

“What my father did was unforgivable,” Annie said. “You have every right to be angry with him.”

“Angry?” Ryan searched inside himself but anger wasn’t the emotion coursing through him. “I’m not angry.”

“Betrayed, then,” she said. “My father had no right to do what he did.”

Betrayal wasn’t what he was feeling, either. Something bright and buoyant burst inside him, so powerful it felt as though it was warming him from within.

“Your father was wrong,” Ryan acknowledged, then spoke what was in his heart, “but I sure am glad he was.”

“Excuse me?”

He grasped for the right words to explain. “Haven’t you ever passed a girl of the right age and wondered if she could be our baby?”

Until he asked the question, he hadn’t consciously acknowledged he’d ever done anything of the sort.

“All the time,” she answered slowly.

He felt the corners of his mouth lift. “I accepted a long time ago I’d never know where she was or who she was or whether she was happy. But now…” He shook his head at the improbability of it all. “…now everything has changed.”

He rose from the log, eager to get back to river raft headquarters. To get back to their daughter.

Their daughter!

“Let’s go.” He strode down the path, excitement fueling his steps.

“Wait!” she called. “We have more to talk about.”

That was an understatement. They still hadn’t discussed his culpability in the night that had changed both of their lives. Once again, however, the present was infinitely more important than the past.

“We’ll talk later,” he said. “Let’s go see Lindsey.”

He heard the crunching of leaves and her inhale and exhale, and then her hand wrapped around his arm, startling him into stopping. It was the first time she’d touched him in years, and the contact felt electric. She dropped her hand almost immediately as though she’d felt it, too.

She gazed up at him, her eyes pleading. “You can’t tell Lindsey who we are.”

He usually considered a situation from every angle before acting, but he had been so impatient to see their daughter he hadn’t thought past this minute. “Doesn’t she know she’s adopted?”

“She does, but her father and stepmother don’t even
know I’m her birth mother. Only Lindsey’s mother knew and she’s dead.” Her eyes beseeched him. “Don’t you see? Telling her would only confuse things. She has a life that has nothing to do with us. In a couple of weeks, that’s what she’s going back to.”

The idealist in Ryan wanted to protest that the truth was never wrong, but the realist conceded they were discussing a minor. Neither he nor Annie had the right to make decisions for her.

“What do you know about her home life?” he asked.

“She lives in a suburb of Pittsburgh. She has two brothers and a stepmother who says she can be sullen and unhappy. I don’t know anything about her father.”

“If we tell him we’re her birth parents,” he ventured, thinking aloud, “he might decide that Lindsey should know, too.”

“What if he cuts her trip short instead?” she asked. “These next two weeks could be all the time I ever get to spend with her.”

He understood her position even though he didn’t fully agree with it. “I won’t tell her who I am, but I want to spend time with her, too.”

Annie exhaled, her shoulders visibly relaxing. “We can work that out.”

But could they?

Ryan didn’t speak on the walk back to raft headquarters; a question rattled around in his head. How could a thirty-year-old man legitimately spend time with a teenage girl who nobody besides Annie knew was related to him?

The potential roadblock slid into the background when they came upon Lindsey where they’d left her, examining the bicycles with Jason. Ryan barely afforded the teenage boy a look, his attention completely focused on Lindsey.

She jiggled a pedal, her long hair tucked behind her ears, her lower lip thrust slightly forward as she concentrated. The clock rewound a decade and he realized he could have been gazing at his sister as a teenager. Sierra’s hair was darker, but she had the same oval-shaped face and delicate features.

Lindsey looked up. Her eyes weren’t green like his sister’s, or hazel like Annie’s. They were blue like his.

“We didn’t find any more broken pedals,” Lindsey said, “but some chains are loose and a lot of the tires are low.”

Ryan could barely think of anything except Lindsey but found it strange that the rental bikes weren’t in better working order.

“This shouldn’t happen.” Annie tried to make sense of it, too. “We have the bikes serviced regularly. The technician was in last Thursday when I was out of town. Right, Jason?”

Jason rubbed his nose, his eyes looking everywhere but at Annie. “I, uh, forgot to tell you. He’s on vacation this month. He gave me the name of another guy we could call.”

“What?” Annie exclaimed. “That’s not something it’s okay to forget.”

Jason got to his feet, moving with what Ryan recognized as unaccustomed speed. “I’ll call him now.”

Annie started after him, but Lindsey jumped to her feet and headed her off. “Can’t you cut him a break, Annie? Everybody makes mistakes.”

Ryan had long thought he and Annie had made a mistake the night Lindsey was conceived but no longer. It seemed miraculous that they’d created this special, beautiful child.

“I suppose I could let it go just this one time.” Annie seemed no more able to resist Lindsey’s plea than Ryan would have been.

Lindsey had a few more inches to grow but she was already taller than Annie, he noted. Although she looked more like a Whitmore than a Sublinski, she did have Annie’s nose: small and straight with a slight upturn.

“Thanks.” Lindsey looked from Annie to Ryan and back again. “Now who’s going to tell me what Annie said about me.”

Annie’s eyes flew to Ryan’s, her expression guilty as charged.

“I knew it!” Lindsey said. “I knew you two were talking about me.”

Somebody needed to deflect Lindsey’s suspicion and fast.

“You got us,” he acknowledged. “Annie wondered whether we should cancel our date tonight because you’re in town.”

Annie’s mouth dropped open.

Lindsey’s eyes widened. “You two are dating? Wow. I knew Annie thought you were hot, but I never would have guessed.”

He quirked an eyebrow, keeping his eyes on Annie’s reddening face. “Annie told you I was hot?”

“Of course not,” Annie protested.

At the same time, Lindsey answered, “I could just tell by the way she looks at you.”

“Then no wonder she asked me out.” Ryan waggled his eyebrows at Annie.

“Annie asked you out?” Lindsey repeated. Annie appeared incapable of speech.

“Not exactly,” he admitted. “I knew she wanted to go out with me, though, so it’s almost the same thing.”

“It is
not
the same thing,” Annie retorted hotly, her chest heaving in indignation. He felt an unexpected stab of lust that explained the origin of his idea—his attraction to her had survived the past.

Lindsey giggled at their interaction. “Don’t cancel your date because of me.”

“We’re not canceling,” Ryan said, then added the kicker. “We’re taking you with us.”

“W
HERE ARE
we going?” Lindsey asked excitedly after Ryan invited her on the fictitious date.

The traitor.

If Lindsey had declined the invitation, Annie could have wriggled out of it too. She could barely understand how her carefully orchestrated campaign to avoid Ryan had come to this. As of late on Friday afternoon, she hadn’t talked to him in fourteen years and now they had a Saturday-night date.

“It’s a surprise,” Ryan said.

“I love surprises,” Lindsey said. “But are you sure it’s okay if I come along? Wouldn’t you two rather be alone?”

“Of course it’s okay. We’ll have lots of time to be alone.” Ryan had the audacity to wink at Annie. “We’re dating.”

“Wait just a minute.” Annie raised her index finger. “Since when are we—”

“How about walking me to my car, Annie?” Ryan interrupted.

“But—”

“I know we talked about me going rafting today, but I have some paperwork I really should catch up on.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, which surprised her so much she lost her train of thought. He applied gentle pressure, ushering her toward the field with the flattened grass they used as a parking lot. She was stunned into walking with him.

“See you tonight, Lindsey,” he called.

“Bye, Dr. Whitmore.”

“I’m only Dr. Whitmore during office hours,” he said. “Call me Ryan.”

“Okay,” Lindsey agreed happily. “Bye, Ryan.”

He kept moving, the right side of his body touching Annie’s left, his heat transferring itself to her. He not only felt wonderful, he smelled fantastic, like shampoo, soap and man. Her bones seemed to melt, her physical reaction to him not much different than it had been in high school. And look where that had landed her. She stiffened.

She was about to tell him to take his arm off her when
he dropped it. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t let you tell Lindsey we weren’t dating.”

“We’re not dating!”

“As of tonight,” he said, “we are.”

They reached his car, the flashiest one in the parking lot. It figured that the new young doctor in town would drive a Lexus. He leaned against it, looking cool despite the summer sun that beat down on him, appearing far too pleased with the situation he’d manipulated her into. It was time to set the matter straight.

“I’ll go out with you tonight,” she began, “but only because I understand the date thing is so you can spend time with Lindsey.”