Love on the Line (30 page)

The crowd laughed.

“Um, Sam?” Ryan said as he leaned down to Sam’s eye level. “Tell them about your asthma.”

“Oh, that. Well, if Ryan hadn’t had such a fast car and been able to drive like Jimmie Johnson, I might be dead now.”

He turned to look at Ryan. “That what you meant?”

“Sort of,” Ryan said over the roar of laughter from the crowd.

Ryan called Belva up to the stage.

“If you folks can match the funds we have in hand, we’ll be eighty percent there. I don’t want to do some sort of public step-up routine. I know that’s what people say works, but it’s not my style. If you’re inclined to help, Mrs. Rosario will—”

“Call me Belva, please,” Belva said, crossing her arms and smiling out at the crowd.

“If you’re inclined to help,
Belva
will be accepting your checks and pledges. She’ll send out an email and let you all know how we did.” He paused and scanned the faces he was coming to know. “It means a lot that you all came out for this.”

And before he said something mushy that he’d regret, he stepped away from the mike and down off the dais.

People clustered around Sam and others headed off to the bars scattered throughout the club. He went up to the nearest bar and ordered a beer. Next he was going to find Cara and kiss her, no matter how much she’d try to wriggle out of it. He knew there was fire between them. He just needed to stoke it a bit and remind
her
.

“That was a good show up there,” an unfamiliar voice said.

He turned to face a man his height, maybe an inch shorter, with a face that said he’d spent years in the sun.

“Ryan Rea.”

The man took his hand. “Henry Beaumont.” Henry took the martini the bartender handed him and motioned Ryan to the side of the room.

“You know, if you really want to wrap up this project, you should hit her up.”

He pointed to Cara, who stood with Molly near one of the potted palms.

Ryan laughed. “You’re kidding, right? She drives the school bus. Or did before the county cut the funding.”

“Now you’re the one who’s kidding. That’s Caroline Barrington. Her twin brother plays on my polo team when he’s in the Hamptons. Her family’s worth billions.”

Ryan took a swig of his beer and swallowed down his urge to tell the guy he was nuts. If Beaumont really traveled in high-money circles, maybe he was considering a donation. Ryan couldn’t afford to insult a donor.

He laughed a second time. “Perhaps she just has one of those familiar faces.”

Even as Ryan said it, Cara looked up at him and smiled, gesturing as she spoke to a group of ladies from Albion Bay. But when her gaze shifted and she saw the man he was talking to, her face froze midsentence and she turned and raced out of the room.

“Excuse me,” Ryan said.

Her reaction drove the stranger’s words through his mind. More than that, it drove images through his head, images of inconsistencies he’d seen but ignored. The valuable painting and book, the way she handled the coffee machine, her utter lack of reaction to the Bugatti, her studied ease and well-practiced mannerisms. Seeing her in New York...

Damn, he
had
seen her in New York. And none of it made any sense.

She was fast, he’d give her that. But as he raced down the marble hall, he was faster.

He reached her and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, turning her to face him.

“Whoa, not so fast. Mind telling me why you’re in such a hurry?”

She didn’t look at him, just pulled her hand from his grip. “I saw you talking with Henry.”

“You know him?”

“Not well. My... my brother does.”

“Is it true?” He bit back the anger threatening to flood him.

“Is what true?”

“That you have billions?”

She tipped her head back. “Ryan, I—”

“Just tell me if it’s true.”

“Not quite.” She put her hand to her throat and held it there. “Not till next week.”

He felt like someone had pumped air into his veins.

“Then you
are
Caroline Barrington?”

“Some part of me is.”

She lowered her hand and started to reach toward him, but whatever she saw in his face made her pull back and clasp her hands in front of her.

She stood unmoving. Silent.

He tried to convince himself that she was the same person she’d been just minutes before.

But she wasn’t.

The force of her deception crashed into him.

He couldn’t breathe.

He turned and dropped his forearms on the cold marble wall. If it hadn’t been solid, he might’ve punched it.

Still might.

Anger and images of the day he’d stood in court—publicly defending himself and his honor against the deceit of a lying woman—washed over him, buffeting him. Slamming into him. And now he discovered that another woman had lied to him. And not just any woman.
Cara
had lied to him. Deliberately. Systematically.
Cara
. He pounded the marble under his hands. She’d pretended to be something, someone, she wasn’t.

Images and emotions came flying at him—the summons to appear in court, the day he’d read over the DNA test results, the day he’d admitted to himself that he’d been taken in by the woman scheming to mold his life to hers. And then there were the images of Terese. Of Terese lying to him, knowing in her bones—all the damned while
knowing—
that he’d have slain dragons for her.

Cara might not have been scheming to bend him to her plans, but she’d deceived him. And worse, he’d fallen in love with a woman who wasn’t what she appeared to be. A woman who’d deceived not only him but an entire town.

She’d pretended to need a job, for God’s sake. She’d pretended everything. Hell, he didn’t even know who she really was. A name. A family. But the person?

Emotions flooded him so fast that he knew he couldn’t trust his reactions.

“Ryan, I—”

“I need some air,” he said without looking back at her. “Alone.”

He went out the first door he saw and found himself facing the massive spires of Grace Cathedral. Her family probably built it. Or could have. He raced across the street and hailed the valet.

Lies
.

They ripped out your heart and left an abyss in their wake, a fathomless abyss that couldn’t be crossed.

Chapter Twenty-three

Cara stared out the window of her hotel room. From thirty stories above, San Francisco looked like a glittering octopus. It was a fanciful thought, something to take her mind off her betrayal of Ryan. But the city didn’t hold her attention for long. It couldn’t. What she needed to escape was inside her, and nothing on the outside could heal that inner pain.

After the scene with Ryan, she couldn’t face going home to her cabin or returning to Albion Bay. Just as she’d imagined, everything had gone horribly wrong. The look on Ryan’s face told her more than she needed to know. Though she hadn’t directly lied to anyone, she had lied by omission and she knew it. Omission was just as much a lie as telling a direct untruth. It didn’t matter what her motives were, what her dreams had been, what scared her. There was no way to paint her actions in any other light but a negative one.

She’d walked the streets for hours before checking in to the hotel, and though it was now well past midnight, there was no way she could sleep. She replayed the scene with Ryan over and over in her mind. He hadn’t given her a chance to explain. She hadn’t expected that he would. And she didn’t blame him. How exactly was she going to explain the motivation for her deceit? Or tell him she was waiting for the right moment to reveal that she’d kept her true identity from him—that at her core and in her heart she really was the simple woman he’d fallen for? That her money didn’t make any difference?

But the money did make a difference. It was the reason she’d run from her roots and started her quiet life in Albion Bay, away from all the hype and constraints and expectations.

He’d reacted with such burning anger; likely everyone else would as well. On the outside they might not be unkind, but she’d never live again at the heart of the town, as one of their own.

She’d lost Ryan and when the news broke, she’d soon lose everything else she’d spent three years building, moment by moment, action by action.

At least she’d felt for a brief time what it was like to belong to a community. Maybe that was enough. Maybe she could start over somewhere else.

Of course she could. People did it all the time.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to start over. She wanted Albion Bay and Molly and Sam and Belva.

She wanted Ryan.

She opened the lock on the mini bar and fingered a bottle of wine. Then she put it back and snapped the lock shut. What she had to sort out would take more than a miniature bottle of wine.

No part of her wanted to return to New York and go through the motions of being Caroline Barrington again. That was the coward’s way out.

She had to burn a new path no matter how much it scared her. And now that she’d met Ryan, now that she’d felt what it was like to love a man—a man who lit a fire in her that time could never extinguish—a flame of courage burned in her. She could only hope that its power was strong enough to fight back her fears.

Exhausted by adrenaline and drama, she drew the curtains, shutting out the lights of the city, and then fell across the bed.

In the morning Cara picked at the breakfast she’d ordered from room service. It hadn’t helped her state of mind that she’d slept fitfully and when she
had
slept, images of Ryan had snaked through her dreams. Worse, an anguished Laci had risen in the darkness, reaching pale arms toward Cara and crying out. But Cara couldn’t reach her, and she’d slipped back into the blackness. In the strange fog between dreaming and waking, Cara knew that Quinn was right: she wasn’t Laci. They’d tried to help her friend fight her demons, and they’d failed. But they’d failed because Laci couldn’t, wouldn’t, face what it would have taken to pull her life together. Though her grief for Laci might never dissolve, Cara felt the tight knot of guilt release in her belly.

And she made the decisions she’d fought with in the dark night.

She shoved her breakfast aside, pulled her cellphone from her purse and called Alston. He listened as she told him to draw up the papers for her to sign, that she intended to start running the foundation immediately. He asked if she wanted him to draft a letter to fire Dray Bender, but she told him she wanted to do it herself. She owed her grandfather that, at least.

And she might as well get some pleasure out of her new position. She was looking forward to telling Bender what she thought of him and his shady practices and his kickbacks.

Her cellphone rang as she went to slip it back into her purse.

“Cara, thank goodness you answered.” Jackie sounded alarmed.

“Is something wrong?”

“When you didn’t return home last night, Ryan called here. I had to talk both him and Alex out of calling the police.”

She glanced at her phone and saw that there were messages.

“You heard what happened at the club?” she asked Jackie.

“In colorful detail; I can understand why you didn’t answer any calls. I knew you were holed up somewhere, that you were okay, but the guys were hard to convince.” She heard Jackie take in a breath. “I would’ve done the same.”

“I stayed in the city last night. I needed to think. But I’m headed back now.”

“You sure you’re okay? Do you want me to come with you?”

“And leave the marine mammals of the world without their champion for an entire day?”

“I could do some work up at the lab.”

She told Jackie about her decisions and her conversation with Alston.

“I have to do this on my own, Jackie. All of it. And I have to talk with Ryan. He may slam the door in my face, but I have to try.”

“The madder he is, the more you mean to him.”

“You don’t know Ryan.”

“It’s true, I don’t.”

There was a commotion in the background. Cara heard Jackie tell someone to put an animal under anesthesia and that she’d be right there.

“Anesthesia sounds good to me right now,” Cara said, trying for a humorous tone. “I’ll stop by. Maybe you could numb my heart.”

“The trouble with anesthesia is that when you wake up, nothing will have changed. Look, drive safely, okay? I have plans for you.”

Jackie hung up without explaining. Cara stared at the phone. What plans could Jackie have for her?

Cara called for her car and headed back to Albion Bay. She didn’t care if it was seven in the morning—Ryan had awakened her earlier than that, was it only a week ago?

She would say her piece. And then it was up to him.

Hope was a devious devil. It drove her ever forward while at the same time the ground was washing out from under her feet.

Ryan’s Jeep was in his drive. She stepped out of her car, smoothing her moist palms against the silk of her party dress. It was hopelessly out of place against the backdrop of the ranch. And perhaps so was she.