The Secret Sin (12 page)

“I’d never get tired of it,” Lindsey said dramatically. “But that doesn’t matter to my dad.”

“He doesn’t want you to try it?”

“He doesn’t care what I do,” she said bitterly.

It was a cloudless day with the sun illuminating every nuance in her dejected expression. “He just doesn’t want to miss any of my brothers’ stupid games.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to. A couple of weeks ago I asked that girl at school who her photographer was. I finally got my dad to let me make an appointment. At the last minute he couldn’t drive me because he had stuff to do. Do you know what that stuff was? He took my little brothers fishing!”

“How about your stepmother? Couldn’t she have taken you?”

“She’s busy all the time. Cooking and cleaning and working.”

“Do you get along with her?”

“She’s not so bad.” A sad expression crossed Lindsey’s face. “But she’s not really my mother. She’s Timmy and Teddy’s mother. My mother’s dead.”

Except that wasn’t precisely true. Lindsey’s adoptive mother, to whom he and Annie owed a world of grati
tude, was dead. Lindsey’s birth mother was very much alive. Her birth father was, too.

Hobo, apparently recovered from his dizzying antics, bounded toward them. Lindsey bent down to pet him.

“Have you asked your dad to spend more time with you?” Ryan asked.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” she said, burying her face in the dog’s fur. “He’s not the one who wanted me.”

“Who told you that?”

“My grandpa. He’s my mom’s dad. He said she wanted a baby worse than anything and that she loved me more than life. It didn’t matter to her that I was adopted.”

“That doesn’t mean your dad didn’t want you, too.”

“Not in the same way he wanted my brothers. He’s always saying how much they look like him when he was a kid. They’re even all left-handed.” She sniffed. “I know he loves them more than me.”

Ryan cast around for something reassuring to say. “Your dad doesn’t love your brothers more than you because they’re all lefties.”

Lindsey stood up. She hadn’t touched up her makeup and her hair was messier than he’d ever seen it, but the childish quality that had hung over her all afternoon had vanished.

“I know that,” she said. “He loves them more because they’re really his.”

Q
UIET FILLED
the house, which happened every night when Lindsey retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. She took Hobo with her, having convinced Annie
that the dog was better off sleeping at the foot of her bed than beside the sofa. Annie suspected Hobo sneaked into bed with her, but didn’t make an issue of it.

Annie usually straightened the house, then settled down with a book until her eyelids got too heavy to read and she went to sleep. Tonight she did neither because of the man in her living room leafing through a copy of
Outdoor Women
.

Ryan looked up at her when she entered the great room. “You’re an excellent writer. I’m reading your story about backpacking through Glacier National Park. I’ve never been to Montana, but I can see those vast stretches of green pasture and that big blue sky.”

Annie didn’t let his praise sidetrack her because she suspected that was his intent. She’d dropped a half-dozen broad hints for him to leave since the rafting trip had ended. “Why are you still here, Ryan?”

He closed the magazine and set it on the coffee table. “I needed to talk to you alone.”

“We already talked at the river.”

“Not about what Lindsey told me this afternoon about her family,” he said in a soft voice.

The girl hadn’t confided in Annie except to make passing comments suggesting she wasn’t happy at home. Annie had lost sleep at night trying to figure out how to get her to open up, yet Ryan seemed to have done it effortlessly. She wanted to hear what Ryan had discovered more than she wanted him to leave.

“Come on,” she told him. “We can’t talk here.”

Although it probably would have been safe to talk on
the porch, Annie wasn’t willing to take the chance. She descended the porch steps and walked with Ryan over the expanse of lawn between the house and the business.

The trees near the river didn’t grow as thickly, letting in the glow from the moon. Day had turned into night, bringing clouds that obscured most of the light so they couldn’t make out the river.

The collection of tables outside the shop was mostly in shadows. She chose the farthest one and sat down, her knees facing outward. Ryan remained standing, the moon’s faint light silhouetting him so he looked almost ethereal.

“Lindsey’s problem isn’t with her stepmother,” Ryan said. “It’s with her father. He wasn’t the one who wanted to adopt her.”

Annie’s mind rebelled, even though the information jibed with what her father had told her over the phone about Helene Nowak Thompson pushing for the adoption. “How could you possibly know that?”

She listened with growing distress while Ryan repeated what Lindsey had shared, then desperately searched for a reason to explain the girl’s perception that she wasn’t wanted. “Her brothers are young. They need more attention than she does.”

“If Lindsey was unhappy enough to run away from home,” he reasoned, “there has to be something to what she says.”

Annie hadn’t called Lindsey’s visit to Indigo Springs “running away.” Surely that was an exaggeration. “Her
stepmother said she’d never done anything like this before. If she’s been so unhappy, why wait until now?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I think not taking her to the photographer was the final straw.”

Annie shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. The mental picture of Lindsey as a happy, well-adjusted child with an ideal home life had comforted her over the years.

“I think we should approach her adoptive father about letting her come to Indigo Springs for regular visits,” Ryan stated.

The river water was gurgling, the cicadas were singing, the wind was rustling the leaves in the trees and an owl was hooting. She wanted to believe she hadn’t heard him correctly, but none of the ambient noise had gotten in the way.

She shook her head, refusing to consider his suggestion. “That’s crazy! Lindsey doesn’t even know who we are!”

“Then we’ll go to Pittsburgh to talk to Ted Thompson and his wife. We’ll explain why we gave Lindsey up and make a case that we should be part of her life.” He continued talking even though she was shaking her head back and forth. “We’ll make them understand how much we love her.”

“That won’t fly,” she said. “We don’t have any legal claim on her.”

“If it’s what Lindsey wants, we might not have to,” Ryan said. “She’s thirteen. She’s old enough to have a say in this.”

Annie put her hands to her head. She felt as if she was on a merry-go-round that wouldn’t stop, her thoughts
swirling. The notion she kept returning to over and over was that maybe it could work. Maybe they could keep Lindsey not only in their hearts, but in their lives.

Before hope took hold and blotted out reason, she tried to think, grasping for the hole in his argument. The carousel crashed to a stop when she found it because the flaw in his plan was as big as a crater.

“Lindsey’s family life might not be perfect but it’s stable. She has a father and a stepmother and brothers. Add us and it’s like saddling her with a set of divorced parents.”

“Not if we’re together,” he said.

The moon peeked out from behind a cloud, illuminating his face. She’d never seen him look more serious.

“I’m not saying this only because it would help our case with Lindsey.” He moved a step toward her. She sat very still. “I meant what I said on the river today. I want to give what’s between us a shot.”

“There’s nothing between us,” she denied, jumping to her feet, intending to return to the house. Instead of backing away, he took a step forward, trapping her between the picnic table and his body.

“You know that’s not true.” He laid a hand against her cheek. “You can feel it, the same way I do. There’s always been something there.”

The pain she’d suffered as a sixteen-year-old bubbled to the surface, nearly choking her. She knocked his hand away.

“No,” she said. “It wouldn’t work.”

“It’s already working,” he argued, his eyes steady on hers. “Haven’t you noticed what a good time we have
together? Lindsey doesn’t even have to be around. She wasn’t there at the Blue Haven.”

“No,” she said again, more emphatically.

“I keep hearing the word but not a reason you’re saying it.” He sounded exasperated, frustration tugging at his features. “Why? Tell me one good reason you won’t give us a shot?”

“Because I could never trust you.”

He ran a hand over his lower face. “I’m not a kid anymore, Annie. I’d protect you. I’d never screw up like that again.”

He’d misunderstood her, but that wasn’t surprising. They’d never talked about his betrayal. It was possible, even likely, that he thought he’d pulled one over on her. She hadn’t intended to discuss this with him, but it was the only way she could make him understand. She took a deep breath.

“I know about the bet, Ryan.”

He blinked, confusion crossing his face. Was it possible it had been so long ago that he’d forgotten? That thought was almost as mortifying as the revelation had been.

“I know you and your friends challenged each other to see who could be the first to sleep with the girl with the birthmark.” She willed her voice not to crack, for her hand not to cover her port-wine stain. “I know you won.”

“No!” he denied. “That’s not true.”

“But you did sleep with me. You won the bet.”

“You’ve got it wrong. Look, I knew about the bet. But I wasn’t part of it.”

How gullible did he think she was? Her stomach heaved and she felt as though she might be sick. “You just happened to see me leaving that party by myself and offered me a ride home? That was just a coincidence?”

“No,” he admitted. “I followed you because—”

“You saw your buddy Jim Waverly hitting on me.” She finished the sentence for him, forcing herself to get everything in the open. “You were afraid he’d win.”

Understanding dawned on his face. “That’s why you asked about Waverly when we left the Blue Haven.”

“Can you blame me?” she asked. “He knows we slept together. He could know about Lindsey.”

“How would he know we slept together?”

“You told him.” She could barely believe he was making her spell it out and came close to hating him. “To collect on your bet.”

“Except I didn’t.” He appeared pained that she could believe anything of the sort; it was a performance worthy of an accomplished actor. “Like I told you, I didn’t take any bet. I followed you from the party to make sure nobody else tried anything.”

She had a mental flash of her and Ryan lying on the blanket he conveniently kept in the trunk of his car, gazing at the stars. She saw him turning to her, kissing her. She steeled herself against his feeble explanation. “You mean the way you did?”

“I only meant to take you home.”

“Oh, please.” She injected a wealth of sarcasm in her voice. Maybe
she
was the good actress because she managed to speak even though her chest was tight, the
pain making it difficult to breathe. “Next you’ll say you were only trying to get to know me better.”

“That’s the truth,” he said. “Don’t you remember how we connected that night?”

“You wanted to have sex with me,” she accused, both her lips and her voice trembling.

“I was a sixteen-year-old boy. Of course I did.” He placed a hand on her upper arm. “But if I’d planned it, don’t you think I would have been smart enough to have a condom with me?”

Annie had wondered that exact thing and never come up with a satisfactory answer. As he said, though, he’d been sixteen years old.

“Teenage boys aren’t known for thinking ahead.” She shook off his hand and shouldered past him so he had to get out of her way.

“Isn’t there anything I can say to make you believe me?” he asked, his voice laced with what sounded like desperation.

The birthmark seemed to sear the side of her cheek.

“No,” she choked out and walked away from him into the house, refusing to look back.

R
YAN KNELT
in front of the bookcase in his late father’s basement study, pulling books off the shelves, opening them, then shoving them back into the slots.

“Try
The Teetotaler’s Guide to Healthy Living
.” Sierra stood at the entrance to the office, dressed in a short sleeveless nightgown, the walking cast on her left leg making her right one look thin and pale. He must really have been banging around not to have heard her approach.

“Excuse me?” Ryan said.

“Take my word for it and try it,” she said.

He stood up, located the thick hardback book on the shelf, slipped it out of its niche and checked inside. The hidden compartment was there, the pages hollowed out. He reached inside and pulled out an empty flask. He held it up to Sierra. “How did you know this was here?”

“Probably the same way you did. I came down here once to ask Dad something and saw him taking a nip.”

“How do you know he didn’t tell me he had a flask hidden in one of his books?” Ryan said.

“Dad? I can’t see it. He would have been too afraid Mom would find out to risk telling anybody.” Their mother wouldn’t hear of their father drinking a drop of alcohol after his first heart attack. “Besides, this family’s good at keeping secrets.”

“At drinking up the secrets, too,” Ryan said ruefully. He put the empty flask back in the book and returned it to the shelf.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re down here hunting for whiskey?”

“I didn’t feel like drinking alone at the Blue Haven, and we don’t have any alcohol upstairs,” he said.

She crossed her arms over her midsection. “I’ve never seen you drink anything stronger than beer.”

“Things change.”

“Does this have anything to do with Annie?” At his questioning look, she said, “I know you’re still seeing her. Chad told me he saw you together the other night.”

He sighed. When had Sierra gotten so interested in his life? For years she’d been content to go her way and let him go his. She stood between him and escape from the office, clearly expecting an answer. “Yeah, well, I might not be seeing much more of her.”

“Want to talk about what happened?” she asked.

“It happened a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand.”

Of course she didn’t. She’d been on the mark when she’d said their family was good at keeping secrets. They’d kept one from Sierra for fourteen years. Despite the small age gap and choice of the same profession, or maybe
because of it, he and his sister had never been close. It had always seemed as if Sierra was competing with him. Most of the time he’d been content to let her win.

She seemed different tonight, standing there in her nightgown and walking cast. Softer. Easier to talk to. Maybe it was time to trust her with his secret, especially because a part of him longed to announce it to the world.

“There’s a thirteen-year-old girl in town visiting Annie,” he said. “Her name is Lindsey Thompson.”

“She’s the one taking care of that stray dog you picked up, right?”

“Right.” Ryan took a deep breath. “She’s my daughter.”

The disclosure hung between them, filling the silence. He watched emotions flit across Sierra’s face. The easiest one to identify was confusion.

“How could she be your daughter?” Sierra asked.

“I got Annie pregnant when we were both sixteen.”

“No.” Sierra turned pale. “You couldn’t have. You weren’t even seeing Annie.”

“It was one time,” he said. “It happened the night before I left for that year in Spain. You were at college when we found out she was pregnant.”

“Nobody told me.” She spoke softly, almost to herself.

“Mom didn’t want anyone to know. Annie left town before the pregnancy showed, we gave up the baby for adoption and Mom never mentioned it again.” He marveled that he could so easily sum up the events that had had such an impact on his life. “Hell, Annie and I didn’t even talk about it until Lindsey showed up in town and Annie found out who she was.”

He briefly filled in Sierra on the girl’s surprise visit and Annie’s agreement to date him.

“So what’s between you and Annie isn’t real?” Sierra asked. “It’s all just because of Lindsey?”

“Not on my part, it isn’t. Unfortunately I can’t convince Annie of that.” He’d told Sierra this much. He might as well confide the rest. “She thinks I slept with her on a bet some of the other guys made. I don’t even know how she found out about it.”

“Oh, no!” Sierra gasped and put her hands to the sides of her face. “She knows because I told her.”

“What?” He couldn’t process what his sister was saying. Sierra was many things but she’d never been cruel. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I heard some of the boys talking about it. I was just trying to warn her to be careful,” she said. “I knew I was too late when her face turned white and she looked like she might pass out. I never imagined you were the one she’d slept with.”

Ryan massaged the space between his eyebrows as things that had never made sense suddenly did. No wonder Annie had been so cool when he’d phoned her from Spain.

“I’ve felt terrible about it all these years,” Sierra said. “Every time I ran into Annie, no matter how many years went by, I wanted to apologize.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Ryan murmured, but he certainly wished he had. He would have called—or better yet, come home—and convinced Annie what had happened between them had been genuine.

Yeah, right.

He’d tried that tonight, and she hadn’t come close to believing him.

“I’ll talk to Annie for you,” Sierra offered.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” Ryan said. “You can’t prove I wasn’t in on the bet.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sierra said. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Her face crumpled and tears welled in her eyes. Ryan crossed the room and put his arms around his sister, maybe for the first time in his life.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. “It was high school. We were all kids. What did we know back then?”

“That’s not the only thing I’m sorry about.” She sniffled. “If I’d been in your corner back then, you would have told me about your daughter.”

“You’re in my corner now and I’m in yours,” he said, holding her a little tighter.

They weren’t the same people they’d been as teenagers. They’d both made mistakes, but they’d grown up. It was time to forgive each other the transgressions of the past.

That was it! Ryan thought with a burst of insight. That was what he hadn’t seen clearly in all of this.

“I wish there was something I could do to help you with Annie,” Sierra said.

“There is,” Ryan said and proceeded to tell her exactly what it was.

L
INDSEY RUSHED
halfway up the sidewalk to the Whitmore house Thursday night, then pivoted and hurried a quarter
of the way back. Quite a feat considering she was wearing her skinny jeans with wedge-soled sandals.

“Aren’t you coming, Annie?” Lindsey called. “It’s already past seven!”

Annie closed the door to the pickup, unable to muster the same enthusiasm as Lindsey. The confrontation she’d had the night before with Ryan was too raw, bringing up memories she thought she’d put behind her. She didn’t relish seeing him again or telling him about the phone call she’d gotten earlier from Lindsey’s stepmother concerning the girl’s return trip home. She couldn’t bear it if he persisted with the fantasy that they could have Lindsey with them always.

Annie was already feeling separation anxiety. She’d gotten too little time with the girl today, having spent the bulk of her day on the river guiding white-water trips after a morning appointment in town. A call from Ryan to Lindsey had dashed Annie’s hopes to spend a quiet evening alone with Lindsey. He hadn’t asked to set up a dinner date for himself but for his sister. It seemed Sierra had done some modeling in her teen years that Lindsey was dying to hear about.

“I’m coming, but I still don’t understand why I had to drive you here,” Annie said. The sidewalk leading up to the house was made of redbrick pavers, a classy touch on a property that transcended the ordinary. The landscaping was immaculate, the green blanket of grass neither too long nor too short. “It seems like it would have been easier on Sierra if I’d dropped you at the restaurant.”

Lindsey giggled although Annie hadn’t said anything
funny. The girl had been doing a lot of spontaneous giggling since talking with Ryan earlier.

“Don’t ask me,” Lindsey said. “I didn’t make the plans.”

Annie didn’t have a firm idea of what Ryan’s plans for this evening were. She’d gotten the impression the dinner date was for two but she could be mistaken. Maybe Ryan would go along. He might even try to get Annie to accompany them. Annie would rather not be around either Ryan or his sister, but she’d gladly go to be in Lindsey’s company.

“Annie! Come on!” Lindsey was already on the wide, spacious porch, ringing the doorbell.

The door, the fancy kind with the stained-glass insert, opened before Annie reached the porch.

Ryan greeted Lindsey with a big grin. Even from the bottom step of the porch, Annie spotted the love in his eyes. She could take issue with his treatment of her, but had no complaints about the way he dealt with Lindsey.

“I got Annie here,” Lindsey announced, which was a strange way of putting it. How else would Lindsey have gotten to the Whitmore house?

“Hi, there, Annie.” Ryan smiled at her as though last night hadn’t happened. “Come on in.”

She had the uneasy feeling that he was like a spider drawing her into a web, which was ridiculous. She couldn’t have made it more clear that she wouldn’t get involved with him.

The foyer of the Whitmore house was even grander than Annie had imagined, with gleaming wood floors
and a curving staircase that ascended to a second-floor hallway. The dining room was off to the right.

Annie had envisioned the interior of the house enough times that she couldn’t resist a peek. A crystal chandelier hung over a mahogany table. The light was set on low, the soft glow illuminating a table set for two. Tall, unlit candles added a touch of elegance.

“Surprise!” Lindsey cried, grabbing Annie’s elbow. “While I’m having dinner with Ryan’s sister, he’ll be serving dinner to you! I almost told you about it a dozen times but I didn’t.”

“You did good, Lindsey.” Ryan winked at her. “Thanks for getting her here.”

Lindsey beamed. Annie simmered. Of all the underhanded tactics he could have used to get her alone, enlisting a child’s help was the most grievous.

“Where’s your sister, Ryan?” Lindsey asked excitedly. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

“She’ll be hobbling along any minute now.” Ryan didn’t even have the humility to avoid Annie’s glare. Her displeasure didn’t even seem to affect him. “Ah, I hear her now.”

Sierra’s footsteps on the wood floor got progressively louder until she appeared. Annie sucked in a breath. Dressed in a short-sleeved top and a denim skirt, with her light-brown hair falling past her shoulders, Sierra looked even more like an older version of Lindsey than she had the last time Annie had seen the woman.

She stood silently by as Ryan made the introductions, afraid Lindsey would pick up on the resemblance.
Lindsey was thinner than Sierra, her hair was a little lighter and her eyes blue instead of green, but the two females had similar bone structure and mouths almost identically shaped.

Emanating warmth, Sierra grasped Lindsey’s hand. Sierra knew who Lindsey was, Annie realized with a start. Ryan must have told her.

Annie had difficulty getting through the next few minutes, although she managed to greet Sierra cordially and extend her wishes that she and Lindsey enjoy the dinner.

Sierra’s boyfriend soon arrived to drive Sierra and Lindsey to the restaurant, adding assurances that he’d pick them up when they were through eating. As soon as the three of them were out of the house and far enough away not to overhear, Annie spun on Ryan. “How could you?”

He shrugged. “I figured you and I had to eat, too. Why not together?”

“No.” That transgression paled in comparison to his latest offense. “How could you have told Sierra about Lindsey? What if she lets something slip?”

Ryan didn’t ask how she’d figured out Sierra was in on the secret. “She won’t. She knows the deal.”

“You saw them together. You must realize how much they look alike. What if somebody figures it out?”

“Nobody will figure it out,” he said. “You saw the resemblance because you were looking for it. Now stop worrying and let’s eat. I got takeout and it’ll only stay warm for so long.”

He left the foyer, heading in the direction of what must be the kitchen, as though she’d already agreed to have dinner with him. She glanced at the door, tempted to make her escape. If she did, how would she explain it to Lindsey? The girl surely expected her to be at the Whitmores’ to drive her home after she and Sierra finished dinner.

“I could use some help,” Ryan called.

She took one last longing look at the door, then trailed him into a spacious kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. He must have swung by the dining room en route to the kitchen because he’d set the two plates from the table beside small white takeout boxes. Wordlessly Annie helped him transfer food from the containers to the plates.

“I went to that new Thai restaurant,” he said. “I got red curry chicken and basil fried rice with beef. You can either pick one or we can share.”

Sharing food with him seemed too intimate so she chose the curry chicken, keeping from him that it was her favorite Thai dish. He’d picked up some spring rolls and green tea, too, and seemed content to enjoy the meal. He didn’t object when she turned the dimmer up on the chandelier, honored her request not to light the candles and didn’t complain about her one-word answers when he attempted to start a conversation.

The meal over, she was helping him carry dishes into the kitchen when she couldn’t stand the uncomfortable silences anymore. It would be best to get everything in the open. “What’s going on, Ryan?”