T is for Temptation (13 page)

“No, no wine. I haven’t even told
Dee
the whole nightmare. Even if you don’t believe me, it feels good to finally say it aloud.”

For you
, Jake thought,
not for me
.

“I need a drink.”

He stalked to the kitchen and opened and slammed several cabinet doors. He was sick and tired of this bucking bronco ride and wanted something tangible to cling to—anything.

“The bar’s in the wall unit over there.” She pointed across the room. “The middle section.”

By the time he poured a tumbler of Scotch and settled back into a chair opposite her, the weather cleared and the fire died out. He didn’t want to consider the implications of either event.

“Tony really hated me towards the end. I had to keep up appearances until I figured out what to do, so I attended a dinner function with him. A friend owns the restaurant it was held in, Solimar. I’m severely allergic to a local herb called chadon bene, and my reactions worsen each time I’m exposed to it. The last time, I went into cardiac arrest and was lucky to survive.”

His stomach somersaulted. He knew what came next.

“Joe, my friend who owns the restaurant, knows about my allergy and would never serve me food with chadon bene in it. Tony and I were seated next to each other. Before the second course could arrive, I had difficulty breathing. They rushed me to the hospital and pumped my stomach that night. Everyone put it down to chadon bene, but I know how I react to it. It starts with a tingling, a prickling, itchy sensation all over. Sort of like a swarm of ants stinging every inch of skin.”

“It was something else?”

“Yes, there was no itching or prickling at all. He’d slipped me something, I’m sure of it, but I couldn’t prove anything. Two days later, my brakes failed on the way home from
Maracas
Beach
. You know how mountainous the road to that beach is. My car almost went over the cliffs. I managed to wrench the steering wheel and ended up in a ditch. It took a couple more accidents like that before I realized Tony would stop at nothing to have me dead. So, I confronted him.”

Her complexion, already pale, took on a slate cast.

Jesus, Tony, a psychopathic thug, his gut told him her suspicions were justified.

“Sure you won’t take that wine now?”

She shook her head, stared at the fireplace, and a log burst into a lone single flame. The sight made his belly hollow. Was she controlling the fire subconsciously?

Tee snagged her lower lip with her eyetooth, and it reddened under the pressure she exerted. “I didn’t want anyone else to hear us, so I asked him to go for a walk. I told him I would take him to the Vikings and leave him there permanently if anything further happened.” Her mouth twisted into a dry smile. “That afternoon, I drove down to his office and told him I was starting divorce proceedings. He threatened to harm my parents, Dee, anyone I cared about. Do you know what frightened me the most?”

She met his gaze, and a sneer tugged at her lips.

“He never admitted trying to kill me, not once. He turned me into a blithering coward, afraid of a damned shadow. I was so paranoid, I watched everything my parents ate, supervised all the cooking. Made my mother change cars with me randomly. I knew I could save myself, but what if I wasn’t around when he did something to them?”

“He had you where he wanted you. You couldn’t go to the police, because you had no evidence. There was nothing you could do.” Trying to lighten the moment, he picked up a handful of rose petals and threw them in the air. “Is this why you always smell of roses?”

Tee shrugged, rose to her feet, and turned around. She glanced over her shoulder at him.

The sad little smile and her slumped shoulders tempted him to offer sympathy. He shook his head. He should be the one needing reassurance, not her.

“What happens now?”

The strained silence lengthened. The only sounds in the cottage were the popping from the fire, which seemed to ebb and rage in tempo with Tee’s emotions.

Jake grabbed the blue material on his lap, stood up, and tied it around his waist. He moved to stand beside her and tugged on his earlobe, indecision wracking his brain.

She wet her lips. His gaze followed her delicious pink tongue flicking at the corner of her mouth, and his prick vaulted to attention.

Decision made.

However, he could take no more of this today. It was time to take control of the situation.

“I have a proposition. We need to spend some normal time together, just a woman and a man talking. No Vikings, no gladiators. How about a simple day at the beach tomorrow?”

“I promised
Dee
I’d do an exhibition ride for a meet tomorrow.” Her eyes shifted to the grandfather clock to the left of the bedroom doorway. “It’s at nine and will last the whole morning. We could go to the beach afterwards if you like?”

He dragged her against him and locked his arms around her waist. “I like. Can I come and watch you ride?”

“You want to see me ride?”

He melted at the pure joy shining in her honey eyes and fingered the dimple in one cheek. “It turns me on. How about those three weeks in
London
?”

“I’ve thrown a lot at you tonight, and I need some time to think. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to sleep in separate beds tonight. Why don’t we talk about it in the morning?”

A logical suggestion, one he should welcome. Instead, Jake tried to talk her out of it, to seduce her into the shower, but she glowered at him and threatened to conjure herself to
Dee
’s home. He surrendered, but pouted and cursed his damned luck.

Since they hadn’t eaten and the dinner in the oven proved inedible, she conjured a pizza, and they shared it. He bit into the last slice, and something that had been nagging at him suddenly came into focus.

“How do you do it?”

“What?”

“Keep the food at a perfect temperature.”

“I’m not sure, but I hate cold food, cold baths too.” A half shrug lifted one gleaming shoulder.

“So, your water temperature’s always perfect too?” Uneasiness cricked his neck as the implications of how such a small feat impacted on normality loomed.

She nodded, but must have heard the insecurity in his voice. “You can still have an out, Jake. That’s the reason I think we need tonight. I won’t be upset if you change your mind.”

Temptation wracked him and kept him awake in the smaller bedroom into the wee hours of the morning. Jake wrestled with the day’s events, going over them again and again, analyzing every detail, trying to find a logical explanation, and coming up bankrupt. By eating the chocolate cake, had he accepted the rest?

For a couple of seconds, he considered telling Alex, his best friend, about everything, but discarded the notion before the temptation materialized into a late-night telephone call. If their positions were reversed, he knew his instinctive reaction would be to get Alex help, commit him if necessary. He fell asleep wondering if this was how insanity began, with the blurring of the edges of reality. A cupcake at a time, one rose-petal shower, then another, each incident eating away at a predefined, rational world, like flesh-eating bacteria devouring a finger, a limb, until the heart stops beating.

Tee knocked on his door the following morning, and after he’d showered and dressed, they munched bran muffins on the way to the meet. When they reached the exclusive country club, he kissed her in the parking lot, and giddy and flushed, she agreed to
London
.

His feelings about Tee slid willy-nilly over the next two hours from absolute admiration to fury to frantic terror as he watched her through a series of acrobatic feats designed to light the fear of God in him. Before the ride started, she explained the different movements, and it all seemed relatively tame. She went through a series of dressage movements in a riding ring: walk, trot, canter, figures of eight, canter pirouettes. Tee moved as one with her mount, an enormous jet-black stallion with a massive, arrogant head.

Then came the jumps, and after she cleared the first set, they raised the bar a foot and repeated the procedure with each successive round. At the end, she flew over four-foot-high bars. He gripped the wooden fence encasing the riding circle so hard splinters wove into his palms and fingers. The applause at the end of her performance prompted his relieved sigh. He slumped against the fence and breathed in the rural aromas of manure, sweat, and leather. Gradually, he regained control over his hammering pulse and turned to find his way to the waiting area.

A new round of clapping drew his attention back to the ring. He whirled around and spotted Tee riding bareback on the monster horse, feet encased in Indian-style moccasins instead of high black riding boots. She went through the same routine as she’d done before. There was a smattering of applause when Tee finished and signaled the horse to take a bow.

Abruptly, she kneed the horse into a canter from a slow walk and promptly stood up on its back. Jake’s heart dropped right to
China
. She went a half round and then somersaulted and landed, seated, as the horse continued its smooth gait around the arena. Someone threw her a rifle, and Tee used it as a cowboy prop, pretending to shoot as she leaned sideways, head parallel to the stallion’s. Then she tucked her feet under the horse’s forelegs and arched backwards, helmet-clad head pointed to the animal’s swishing tail. That was as close to fainting as he’d ever come in his entire life.

Time stood completely and unalterably still for the next few minutes. It turtled by with each crazy stunt, and he found himself praying for the first time in years. Long after she left the circle to a thundering ovation, he braced against the fence, willing his pulse to return to a normal cadence.

Sweaty, disheveled, and exultant, Tee slid into the rented car and snapped her seat belt closed.

That did it for him.

“Why in blasted hell do you bother even wearing a seatbelt? You’re a million times safer in a car without the blasted thing than you were in that ring minutes ago!” he roared, all his tension and fear converted to rage. “Jesus Murphy, I died a thousand deaths watching you. Christ, how in God’s name did your parents let you take up such a dangerous sport? Are you insane?”

Hell, if she thought to have their daughter follow in her footsteps . . . He stopped, arrested mid-thought, and went numb with the realization that, somewhere along the line, his subconscious had accepted his vision as reality. The image burned into his pupils the first time he met those amber-shaded eyes sprang to the forefront.

The little girl with the black curls, a baby, theirs.

No one knew better than he did about the impossibility of such an event occurring.

“It’s really not that dangerous, and I did wear a helmet.” She peered up at him; her forehead furrowed, and touched a fingertip to his bicep.

“I trained with Cavalia, a trick-riding school in
Canada
, for a couple of years. What I did today is nothing compared to what we did then. You didn’t like it?”

For a few minutes, they drove on in silence.

“Jake?”

“You scared the daylights out of me, babe,” he finally blurted as they arrived at Harbor Lodge. “I expected you to do the stuff I’ve seen on television, jumps and the figures you explained before the exhibition. Why didn’t you warn me about the rest?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” she muttered. “I guess I wanted to show off a little.”

He snagged her into his arms and tilted up her chin. “You could have broken your neck.”

She grinned. “I’m too good for that, and besides, there was no real danger. I trained Brandy before I sold him to the riding school here. He and I were partners for about five years.”