BOUND TO HAPPEN

by Alison Kent

  He'd frightened her, turned her world upside down. He'd seen things in her she'd never seen in herself. It had been a staggering overload, the physical awakening and the birth of new emotions. She'd been glad when he'd told her he had to get back to College Station the following day. As glad as she was that she'd be heading to Austin the very next month.

  What Ray had offered had overwhelmed her. He'd fed her ego, given a boost to her weary self-esteem. He'd made her feel whole, when she'd always thought of herself as missing pieces. It had been too much to trust, to assimilate. Too much to ask of herself to believe in his instincts when she'd known herself for eighteen years. She'd tucked that night away.

  And now he was back. Sydney closed her eyes, opened them while shaking her head. She'd had another eight years of time spent in her own company. Enough time to know that loving Ray didn't change a thing. Her focus still had to be her business.

  If she lost her career footing, she'd fail all of those around her. And, worst of all, she'd fail herself.

  Ray found her in Nolan's office. The one and only place he hadn't looked. She'd disappeared right after the group had eaten. Right after everyone else had eaten, anyway. Sydney had barely touched a thing on her plate. She hadn't even lingered long enough to help clear the table, a task she'd helped Auralie take care of after almost every meal.

  She'd smiled at the conversation, but Ray had known even then that she hadn't heard a word. He could tell by the faraway look in her eyes. A look that had caused more than the jerk-chicken casserole to burn in his gut. By smiling, she'd been responding politely to etiquette's demands. Sydney was an expert on etiquette.

  An expert, too, on the talents most men considered a big part of life's finer moments. Sex between them had been indescribable. Ray had been totally blown away.

  Sure, he might be Mr. Big Shot Search-and-Rescue Man—and he was going to kill Doug for that one—but he did have enough sensitivity to know that, no matter that they'd knocked each other's socks off, what he and Sydney had done together earlier today wasn't sitting well with her. With either of them, to tell the truth. Ray knew about women. And he knew about sex. Sex wasn't supposed to turn a man's world upside down; he knew more than a few candy-ass names for men who let that happen. Well, it had happened. And the situation was laughable. Ray Coffey, done in by sex. Except, in this case, it wasn't the sex at all. It was Sydney. Only Sydney.

  He'd stepped into the office, and now he softly closed the door behind him. He had a few things to say and he didn't want to be overheard or interrupted. The others were spending their next-to-last night on the island on the villa's rooftop deck, searching the midnight sky for shooting stars.

  As much as he and Sydney had needed the time they'd spent wrapped in each other's arms and bodies earlier today, now they needed to talk. To use words not meant to arouse or to tease. But words designed to cut to the heart of the matter. "Sydney? You okay?"

  He knew she heard him. Because her shoulders lifted as she drew in a breath, sank as she released it.

  And she nodded. "Enjoying the view. Thinking."

  She could enjoy a better view from the veranda or the deck. Which left the thinking part. And if he had to hazard a guess, he'd say she was thinking about her father. "Must be about Nolan."

  She cast a glance over her shoulder before turning completely around to face him. She was so beautiful. So tall and so elegant in every move she made. Her loose-fitting pants managed to show off her body in ways Ray wasn't sure they were designed to do. Her hair swung when she tilted her head, every strand falling perfectly into place.

  He felt like a great big clumsy ox, watching as she seemed to float across the room, boosting one hip onto the corner of the desk, keeping her arms snugged around her middle as she lifted a questioning brow. But even more powerful was the strength and cunning he felt, the instincts driving a man to protect a woman he wanted to claim as his own.

  And that state of mind made him feel even bigger and clumsier than ever, because he seemed to be plowing heart first into a mine field, instead of taking carefully thought-out and logically measured steps.

  Finally Sydney responded, wetting her lips before she did. "Are you into reading minds these days?"

  The softly suggestive tone of her voice caught him off guard. He shook his head. God, the way she looked at him … he shook his head again. "Powers of deduction. You're in Nolan's office, surrounded by his things. And you haven't spent any time in here at all so far this trip."

  "Had your eye on me every minute, have you?"

  That was about the easiest of any question she could've asked. "Pretty much."

  Sydney smiled. "Well, your powers are amazing. But then, I already knew that."

  His ego wanted him to ask exactly what else she thought she knew. But he wasn't here for himself. At least not in the ego-stroking sense. This time he was here to discover if he had totally lost his mind.

  He gave her what he hoped was a heart-stopping grin. And he winked. "Well, Ms. Ford, if you know so much, then tell me why I invited you along on this vacation."

  She cocked her head to one side and considered him from beneath long lashes. "To finish what we started eight years ago?"

  Ray's grin began to slowly fade. He didn't like thinking that what they'd done today might be the end. A hard reality to face after sex that had turned him inside out.

  But even more than the sex, he didn't like thinking they were finished, because he was thinking, instead, of changing his mind. Of not being finished at all. Of making this a start, rather than an end.

  He could see himself growing old with this woman. Relaxing in the lagoon in matching orthopedic floats. Napping nude, hand in hand on the sundeck. Watching the sunset from the veranda as they rocked together to the rhythm of the sea.

  His self-preservation skills were strong enough, however, that he wasn't going to offer up his heart without a better idea of where they stood. "I wouldn't say to finish it necessarily."

  "What would you say?"

  "I'd say it was more a case of figuring out why that night has stuck like it has with both of us. For the entire eight years since."

  "I don't think that's so hard to figure out," she tossed off. "A girl only loses her virginity once in her lifetime."

  No. That was taking the easy way out. He wasn't going to let her get away with a quick surface swipe over something that needed a deeper excavation. "Well, it's not like a guy has his to lose more than once."

  "True," she said, then pressed her lips together, hesitating a minute, before asking, "So how did I compare?"

  He frowned. "Compare?"

  "To your other virgins." Her explanation came in a voice with a slight hitch.

  He moved farther into the room, making his way to the leather billiard chair facing the desk she was leaning against. He placed both hands on the corner posts and made sure he held her attention. "I haven't had other virgins, Sydney."

  "Really." She gave a quirky little frown of a smile, blinking rapidly as she did. "That surprises me. You certainly knew what you were doing."

  He chuckled. "I wasn't the virgin."

  "Still, you were only twenty."

  "Nineteen, actually."

  Her brows shot up. "You must've been a closet erotica aficionado. There are thirty-year-old men who don't know what you knew at nineteen."

  Ray grimaced. He didn't like to think of thirty-year-old men—men of any age for that matter—taking Sydney to bed.

  "Actually I was the, uh, subject of a sorority project. A … sex project." When her mouth fell open in horror, he shrugged. "Well, not an official sorority. And looking back, I can see it wasn't one of my more intelligent ventures. But, hey, I was a teenager. Most of my brain was in my pants."

  Sydney laughed. Stopped. Started again and covered her mouth with one hand before shaking off the laughter that was throaty and deep. "An unofficial sorority's sex project? This I have got to hear."

  Now he'd really stepped into it. This was
n't a story he particularly wanted to tell. "There's not much to it. I was a lab rat for three of the girls in my dorm. Five months' worth of instruction in, uh, sex. Their experiment was about proving that a guy could be trained right if caught early. Before he developed a lot of bad habits."

  "I see." Her haughty air had her looking down her elegantly long nose, had Ray feeling about three inches tall.

  He wasn't going to stand here and let her judge him by what he'd done before he'd been old enough to know better. Especially when she'd been the one to benefit. "Crap, Sydney. Don't look at me like that. It was a long time ago. And it didn't mean any more then than it does now. The girls were just … friends."

  "With friends like those—"

  "Who needs to waste time on virgins?"

  He knew that wasn't what she'd left hanging on the tip of her tongue, but this conversation wasn't going where he wanted it to go. And he was frustrated enough with her attempts to throw him off-kilter to force her back inside the lines.

  "Sure, if you want to put it that way." She pushed away from the desk and moved to stare out the wall of windows.

  Ray hung his head, studied the distressed leather seat of the chair before pushing away and walking toward her. He stood three feet behind, planting his hands on his hips and looking off into the darkness where flecks of sea foam caught the light of the moon.

  "When I won this trip all those months ago, the first thing I wanted to do was grab you up and bring you with me. I didn't want anyone else around. Just you and me and a week of fun in the sun." From his peripheral vision he saw her head come up, and he felt her gaze searching the reflection of his.

  "But you'd made it clear that you were more comfortable in my company when there were others around. Macy's game nights. The gIRL-gEAR open house. The cook-out I had on Memorial Day. So I decided my best bet was to turn the trip into a party."

  Sydney scrunched up her nose. "I still hate that we were grounded. And that you didn't get your cruise."

  "Don't hate it. Be glad." He chuckled. "Can you imagine what it would've been like with the eight of us at sea trying not to get caught banging headboards?"

  "Funny," Sydney said with a soft laugh. "Poe said something like that the first day we were here."

  "The first day we were here, all I wanted was to find out why you'd slept with me eight years ago." He said this in a rush, because he wanted to get it out and get it done with, to move on to what he'd really come to say. "But I got over it. Even if it was to get back at your mother, I don't really care anymore."

  Unexpectedly Ray found himself holding his breath, wondering what self-destructive part of his psyche was still so perverse as to give Sydney such an opening. And when she blew out a long, sad-sounding sigh, he braced himself.

  "It was, you know. To get back at my mother. At least it was at first." The shake of her head was as sadly resigned as the breath she'd exhaled. "You would've had to know my mother, Ray. I can't explain what I did or why without telling you about her. And I don't want to talk about her."

  Ray finally moved his gaze from the beach beyond the villa to Sydney's reflection, the pressed line of her lips, the deep V of her brows drawn together over her eyes. Oh, her eyes. They told him so much of what she was refusing to put into words. Words he needed to hear before he could expose any of the emotion he held in his heart.

  And he knew this was the tack he was going to take. "Interesting, isn't it. First you don't want to talk about your father. Now you don't want to talk about your mother. What's so wrong with your family, Sydney, that you don't want to talk to me about either one of your parents? It's not like I'm a stranger here."

  She glanced up into his reflection, her arms tightly crossed beneath her breasts, anger flashing in her eyes. "It's not my family, okay, Ray? It's me. I'm a spoiled little rich girl and I expect to get my way.

  Lately I haven't been getting it, thanks to Nolan and Vegas."

  She'd certainly had her way with him, Ray mused. "You may be rich, Sydney Ford, but you're about as far from spoiled as any girl I've ever known. Talk to me. Leave your mother out of it, if you have to. But tell me what's going on with you and your father."

  She snorted. "I can't do one without doing the other. Dammit, Ray. Just let it go. Please let it go."

  He moved to stand within inches of her, then put his hands on her shoulders. He was only taller by half a head, but even that small difference in height allowed him to keep his gaze focused on the reflection of her eyes. "I told you the other day that I'd gotten close to your father."

  She nodded and Ray continued, "Nolan knew I'd been to New York last year and he asked me how he could help. Help specifically, rather than having any donation he made lost in bureaucratic red tape. I put him in touch with one of the firefighter locals and he got what he wanted. His help went directly to families with the most urgent and immediate needs."

  "Never let it be said that Nolan Ford is not a generous man," Sydney said, her shoulders tensing beneath Ray's hands.

  He didn't like the tone of her voice. Or the way she was closing in on herself. At this rate it was going to be damn hard to reach her the way he wanted to, the way he would have to if they were going to take this relationship further.

  But that was assuming an awful lot, wasn't it, since really what they'd had here was only a fling. "He has been. Very generous. I asked him not to say anything, to you or my parents or anyone, but he's put a lot of money into finding out what happened to Patrick. I never asked him to. I only asked him if he had any contacts. He wouldn't give me any names. He told me he'd take care of it. And I'll always owe him for that."

  For several moments Sydney remained still. Between her silence and that of the room, Ray was able to hear the surf rolling onto the shore. Or maybe he was imagining things. Maybe what he was hearing was the rush of his blood through his veins. His pulse beat with a jackhammer reverb. Head pounding, he waited.

  Finally Sydney moved, stepping out from under his hands and returning to the desk. This time she took refuge behind it. All Ray could do was cross his arms and lean back against the window frame.

  "I'm glad Nolan's been there for you, Ray. I truly am." She pulled out the desk chair and sat, crossing one long leg over the other. "But that doesn't discount the fact that he hasn't been there for me. Or for Izzy."

  Ray frowned. "What about Izzy?"

  "I owe her so much," Sydney said, blinking hard against the wash of emotion Ray saw in her eyes. "And I wanted to pay her back for being there. Through everything. So I went to my father and asked him to help me fund her research grant. He said yes. Then he turned around and funded my mother's art gallery, instead." Sydney held the chair's armrests in a death grip.

  Her crossed leg had long since quit swinging. "He told me he couldn't do both. And that he'd gone with the gallery because it made the best business sense."

  Ray doubted she had any idea how much she looked like her father right then. "And you don't believe him."

  "I do believe him. But that's not the point. The money wasn't supposed to be about business. Which was a totally stupid assumption on my part. That Nolan would ever make a decision based on his heart … but he has, hasn't he? For you." Shaking her head, she curled her legs beneath her in the chair. "The money for Izzy was supposed to be about…"

  "About what, Sydney?" he asked, picking up the thought she'd let trail, sensing that his revelation had just struck a very sore spot he would've done better to avoid. The burn in his gut began to sizzle. "Buying a friend? Paying Izzy for her friendship? You think you owe her for those years of sticking with you? Knowing Izzy, I think she'd be insulted that you feel that way."

  Sydney took hold of the edge of the desk and used the leverage to swivel the chair until she faced away from the window. But Ray wasn't about to let her off the hook. Not when he had a strong suspicion that he was about to get all of his answers. And that he wasn't going to like a single one.

  He pushed away from the window and dragged th
e billiard chair in front of the desk until directly in her line of sight. Only then did he sit. And wait.

  Sydney stared at him for several seconds before giving him a reply. "No, Ray. The money was not about buying or paying for a friend. It was supposed to be about showing appreciation. And about giving back to someone who'd given so much to me. Not out of guilt or duty or any other narcissistic reason, but out of friendship. And love."

  "Is that why you slept with me then? To show me your appreciation? I made sure the cops didn't catch you drinking. Oh, I also held you while you cried about your parents' divorce. Damned if I didn't even take care to make sure your first time would be one you'd want to remember."

  Ray knew he sounded bitter; he hated that any emotion at all had crept into his voice. Especially since he'd just told her he'd gotten over wondering why she'd given him her virginity. Obviously he was the one with the narcissistic ego needing to be stroked. And how sick was that?

  "I'm not going to talk about sleeping with you, Ray. Not about then or about now." Chin in the air, Sydney laced her hands together. Her elbows rested on the arms of the chair. And as Ray watched, her expression took on the look of new resolve. "But for the sake of fairness, I'll be as honest with you as you've been with me."

  Fairness, right. That was really what he wanted.

  "The first day we were here, all I wanted was to figure out a way to get you out of my system. You distract me, Ray. Seriously. And I have too much at stake in my life to let that happen. My focus has to be on gIRL-gEAR. I wish it could be different," she said, and gave a little shrug that seemed full of a pity he didn't want. "The company is the only thing I can count on. I sure can't count on Nolan anymore."

  Ray got to his feet. His insides had gone beyond sizzling to seething. His anger was all over the place.

  At Sydney. At himself. At her parents and his brother and… He had to get out of here now. "I've seen a lot in my life, Sydney. And the one thing I've come to believe in is the importance of surrounding yourself with those you love, and who love you."