The Secret Sin

by Darlene Gardner

  “He’s missing all his shots,” Johnny said. “Why should we be afraid of him?”

  “You gonna take that?” Michael asked before tossing the ball to Ryan.

  He caught it, squared up to the basket and launched a three-pointer that felt good coming off his fingertips. He raised his hands in the air in triumph before the ball swished through the hoop with perfect backspin.

  “Lucky shot!” Chase yelled.

  Ryan scored again on a pretty defensive move the next trip down the court, then followed it up by dishing the ball to Michael for the winning layup.

  “That’s it!” Chase declared as the four of them gathered at the bench on the side of the court where they’d left their water bottles. “I’m done with the trash-talking.”

  “Good idea.” Ryan picked up his water bottle and drank thirstily. “You suck at it.”

  “Tell me about it,” Chase said. “Everything about my game’s rusty. I need to play more.”

  “Chase was a single dad for a while.” Johnny was sitting down on the bench, his legs spread in front of him. “Now his girlfriend helps out with his son.”

  “Fiancée,” Chase corrected. “We’re getting married later this year, then we’re going to legally adopt Toby. Kelly’s already a great mom.”

  “Congratulations.” Ryan thought there was probably a story there. “I’d like to meet her sometime.”

  “How about tomorrow night?” Michael’s face was damp from where he’d splashed water on it. “A group of us are getting together at the Blue Haven. You and Annie should come.”

  “How do you know I’m seeing Annie?” Ryan asked.

  “Sara told me.” Sara Brenneman was Michael’s girlfriend and a lawyer with an office a few doors down from Whitmore Family Practice. “She hears everything so she knows everything.”

  “Then she knows about the teenage girl visiting Annie.” Ryan figured it was best to talk about Lindsey openly as though he had nothing to hide.

  “Only because I told her,” Michael said. “Her name’s Lindsey, right? Nice kid. I met her the other day with Annie.”

  “Annie won’t want to leave her alone.”

  “Does Lindsey babysit?” Chase asked. “I’d rather not ask my dad. He and his wife are settling into their new house.”

  “Charlie and Teresa got married!” Michael exclaimed, while Ryan figured out that the Charlie Bradford who’d been in for a physical last month was Chase’s father. “When did that happen?”

  “My dad talked Teresa into flying to Las Vegas last weekend,” Chase said. “He didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind about marrying him.”

  “Sounds like something Charlie would do,” Michael said, chuckling. “So you and Kelly didn’t go to the wedding?”

  “Hell, yes, he did.” Johnny joined the conversation, answering for Chase. “Kelly got my wife to agree to watch their little boy, then told Chase no way were they missing the big event.”

  “She can be a bossy little thing,” Chase said as if he minded, but he sounded like a man in love.

  Ryan wished there was a woman who cared enough about him to make sure he did the right thing. His mind skipped to Annie and the night they had planned. He tossed his water bottle in the trash just as he spotted another player approaching the court. “Here comes a fourth. I need to call it a night anyway.”

  He headed away from the men, fishing his cell phone out of his bag, intending to order a pizza, then take a quick shower.

  “Ask Lindsey about the babysitting,” Chase’s voice trailed him. “I’ll call to see if it’s a go.”

  “Sounds good,” Ryan responded casually, as though getting together at the Blue Haven wasn’t a big deal. On the surface, it wasn’t. Couples met friends in bars every night of the week.

  Except this was different because he and Annie weren’t a couple in the traditional sense. Sometime in the past few days, though, he’d gradually realized he wanted them to be.

  Joy had suggested he spend more time with Annie. If she agreed to the Blue Haven, she might start wanting to be with him instead of feeling it was a duty.

  Those, however, were very big ifs.

  THE DOG leaped in a blur of yellowish-brown fur. Ryan stood his ground, holding the cardboard takeout box above his head while withstanding the assault of oversized puppy paws scratching at his legs.

  “Down, boy,” he said.

  The dog’s eyes were bright, his tongue hanging from a mouth that looked as if it was grinning. Ryan laughed aloud and reached into his pocket, withdrawing the rawhide bone he’d picked up at the drugstore and giving it to the eager dog.

  “Bad boy, Hobo!” Lindsey appeared, pulling the dog away from the door by his collar so Ryan had a path to enter. She slanted Ryan a narrow-eyed look. “Did you just reward him?”

  Ryan felt like a little boy caught scarfing down cookies before dinner. “I guess I wasn’t supposed to do that?”

  “No, you weren’t. I need to train him not to jump on people. If he’s anything like Angel, it’s gonna be, like, so hard.”

  Considering she’d stopped scolding Hobo and was hugging his neck, Ryan silently agreed she could have a tough road ahead. “Is Angel your family’s dog?”

  “She was my dog.” The expression on her face suddenly looked too serious for someone so young. “I got her after my mom died.”

  Sympathy stabbed at him, not only for Lindsey’s loss but for the woman who’d mothered her through the first years of her life. “What happened to Angel?”

  “I had to give her away.” Lindsey’s voice cracked. “My brother Timmy has allergies.”

  Ryan heard the resentment in her voice and couldn’t fault her. Giving up her beloved dog must have brought the pain of losing her mother back. He wondered why Lindsey’s family hadn’t pursued other options, such as buying a doghouse or enclosing the back porch.

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said.

  Lindsey nodded, her eyes meeting his.

  “If you get tough on Hobo, you won’t have trouble training him,” Ryan continued in a lighter voice. “The way he looks at you, you could have him doing anything you say.”

  “I hope so.”

  He walked through the great room to the kitchen, setting the pizza box down on the table. His stomach rumbled at the spicy smell of sauce and cheese. “Where’s Annie?”

  “Changing clothes. She had a busy day.” Lindsey had followed him into the kitchen. Her straight hair fell to the middle of her back. In blue jean shorts and a short-sleeved red top dotted with tiny hearts, she reminded him of the way his sister Sierra had looked as a teen.

  He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. “How about you? Did you have a busy day, too?”

  “Pretty busy.” Lindsey opened and closed kitchen cabinet doors as she talked. “We got Hobo his shots at the vet, and I’ve been trying to housebreak him. He’s going to spend a lot of time at the shop, so I’m shop-breaking him, too.”

  Finally finding what she was looking for, she pulled some paper plates and napkins from a cabinet and carried them to the table. Hobo followed closely behind her, clamoring for attention. Ryan bent down to pet the dog.

  “What’s that on your arm?” Lindsey asked as she set down the dishes.

  Ryan glanced down at the long, angry-looking scratch he’d already treated with antiseptic. “A war wound from the pickup basketball court. I play after work a couple times a week.”

  “I didn’t know guys your age still played basketball.”

  “Hey!”

  She giggled as she crossed to the refrigerator, pulled out an unopened large bottle of diet cola and poured herself a glass. Lindsey, who seemed to have talked Annie into buying her drink of choice, had been teasing him.

  “In between wheezes, one of the guys asked if I knew a teenager who could mow his lawn,” he said. “So I recommended you.”

  She whirled. “You did not!”

  He winked at her. “You’re right, I didn’t. But I did sa
y I’d ask if you could babysit.”

  He heard a door opening and the soft thump of footsteps. Even with his attention divided between Annie’s approach and Lindsey, he still noticed the wariness that descended over the teenager.

  “How old is the baby?” she asked.

  “Thirteen months, I think.”

  Annie entered the kitchen, wearing a Save the Planet T-shirt and khaki shorts that didn’t entirely cover the healing scrape on her thigh. Her legs and feet were bare and her hair tumbled to her shoulders, free of her usual ponytail. She looked beautiful. He felt himself smile. “Hi, Annie.”

  “Hi.” This time, she smiled back. “Who has a thirteen-month-old baby?”

  “Chase Bradford,” Ryan said.

  “I know Chase. His fiancée Kelly, too. They’re a nice couple.” Annie opened the cardboard pizza box. “This smells great. Thanks for picking it up. You even got pepperoni.”

  “Pepperoni’s a must. Without it, it’s only a pizza-like substance.” He waited while the two females helped themselves, Annie to a regular-sized piece and Lindsey to the smallest one in the box. “Chase asked if Lindsey could babysit tomorrow night.”

  “Do you want to babysit, Lindsey?” Annie asked.

  Lindsey paused in the act of picking off the pepperoni from her pizza. Too fattening, Ryan guessed. “If they’d trust me with the baby, sure.”

  “Why wouldn’t they trust you?” Ryan asked.

  “I’ve never even babysat my brothers.”

  “I’ll vouch for you,” Ryan said. “Look how trustworthy you are with Hobo.”

  Annie pulled two beer bottles from her refrigerator, the dark, rich color marking the brew as his favorite brand of Irish stout. She held one bottle up to him with a questioning look. He nodded, then he could have kissed her when she got two chilled mugs from the freezer.

  It seemed as though she shared an affinity for one of his favorite things.

  “Wednesday, tomorrow night,” Annie repeated slowly. “We don’t have anything else planned.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Ryan said. “Chase and Kelly are getting together with some friends at the Blue Haven. I’m pretty sure you know the other couples—Penelope and Johnny Pollock, and Michael Donahue and Sara Brenneman. They invited us to come.”

  Annie had a piece of pizza in her hand. She set it back down on the plate. “They know we’re dating?”

  “Word travels fast,” he said.

  “Did you tell them we can’t make it?” Annie asked.

  “Why can’t you make it?” The question came from Lindsey. “If I babysit, you don’t have to worry about me.” She gasped and covered her mouth. “But if nobody’s home, who’ll take care of Hobo?”

  “It’ll only be for a couple of hours,” Ryan said. “Hobo needs to get used to staying by himself.”

  The dog whimpered, walked in a circle then started to lift its leg. Lindsey bolted out of her chair.

  “No, Hobo! Not in the house.” She pulled the dog by his collar, herding him toward the door, pausing only long enough to attach a leash.

  Annie waited until Lindsey was out of the house before she spoke. Her slice of pizza sat on her plate, forgotten. “You should have run the Blue Haven thing by me before you mentioned it to Lindsey.”

  “Don’t you want to go?” He took a bite of pizza, pretending nonchalance.

  “We can’t go,” Annie said. “We’re only pretending to date because of Lindsey. People will talk when we don’t act like normal couples act.”

  “Then we’ll act like a normal couple.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too risky, especially since they already know Lindsey is here visiting.”

  “They know a family friend is visiting,” he said.

  “What if someone gets suspicious?” Her fingers drummed on the tabletop.

  “If we do the things normal couples do, like meeting friends for drinks, why would anybody get suspicious?”

  “We could just say Lindsey can’t babysit.” Even though she was still trying to weasel out of the date, she spoke of them as a unit, which he took as a positive sign.

  “You’re forgetting something. Lindsey is the one we don’t want to make suspicious.” Ryan reached across the table and captured her hand, stilling her drumming fingers. Her eyes flew to his, her mouth parting.

  The door banged open, admitting girl and dog. Annie’s hand slipped out from under his, and he felt the loss of her warmth.

  “Success!” Lindsey shouted. “Hobo did his business outside.”

  “He’s training you as much as you’re training him,” Ryan remarked a moment before his cell phone rang.

  “Is that the theme song from ER?” Lindsey asked.

  “Of course not.” He dug his phone out of his pocket as he answered. “Not all doctors watch medical dramas.”

  The phone played another line of the song.

  “That’s the Scrubs theme song!” Lindsey exclaimed. “You do too watch doctor shows.”

  He checked the number, confirming that the caller was Chase Bradford. “It’s Chase. What should I tell him?”

  “I’ll do it,” Lindsey said. “That way you two can go out.”

  Ryan slanted a questioning look at Annie, feeling as though he was asking her about more than whether she’d get together with his friends.

  Her nod was almost imperceptible, but it was enough.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANNIE SCOOTED sideways, barely getting out of the way of the shopping bag the woman coming toward her was swinging. Behind the woman the mall was filled with a mass of people, their shoes making clicking sounds on the polished surface of the tile floor, their faces oddly bright.

  Annie grimaced, feeling a headache coming on. She hoped Lindsey was happy because she sure wasn’t.

  “This is great!” Lindsey exclaimed. “I can’t believe you haven’t been here before.”

  Lindsey obviously didn’t know her very well. Annie wouldn’t have agreed to drive more than an hour to the three-story mall in the far western suburbs of Philadelphia if she hadn’t been trying to connect with Lindsey. The teenager had lobbied hard to come here after discovering the river rafters didn’t run trips on Tuesdays, arranging to leave Hobo with a guide she’d befriended, then persuading Annie to close the shop at noon.

  The girl was beaming as she checked out the window displays on either side of them, her long hair swinging from left to right. She was in her element; Annie wasn’t. No matter how much Annie wished for it, there probably wouldn’t be a whole lot of bonding going on.

  “Okay. First priority is finding you something to wear on your date tonight,” Lindsey said.

  “Oh, no,” Annie said. That wasn’t part of the deal. “I have lots of clothes.”

  “Lots of outdoorsy clothes. Not lots of date clothes.” Lindsey looked good enough to go out on a date herself. She wore a neutral-colored, sleeveless print baby doll dress she’d paired with wooden wedges that must be hell to walk in. “Don’t you want to look pretty for Ryan?”

  She shouldn’t want to.

  “That’s not high on my list of priorities,” Annie said.

  “Why not?” Lindsey sounded alarmed. “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do like him,” Annie immediately reassured her, then realized she’d spoken the truth.

  “Then why not dress up for him?”

  The short answer was that she intended to keep their relationship friendly instead of romantic. She couldn’t tell Lindsey that so seized on the opportunity to impart some motherly wisdom.

  “If a person can’t see past your appearance to who you really are,” Annie said, “he isn’t worth your time.”

  “Is that why you still have that birthmark?”

  Annie’s step faltered. Nobody else asked her about the port-wine stain—ever—but this was the second time Lindsey had brought it up.

  “I suppose so,” Annie muttered.

  “So it’s a test to see if people like
you for you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Don’t get uptight,” Lindsey said. “I’m trying to understand why you still have the thing. I mean, it obviously bothers you.”

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Annie denied.

  “Then why are you always touching it?”

  Annie felt the weight of her fingertips on her cheek and dropped her hand.

  “There’s a cosmetics store at this mall,” Lindsey said. “We could get somebody to do your makeup. Places like that do an awesome job. They could cover it up for sure.”

  “I’m not going to a makeup store.”

  “But—”

  “What kind of outfit do you think I should wear tonight?” Annie interrupted.

  Lindsey stopped suddenly, pointing to a mannequin in a window display dressed in a slinky red sundress. “Something sexy. Like that!”

  The birthmark apparently forgotten, Lindsey headed for the store as if an unseen force was propelling her forward. Moving impossibly fast in her wedge-soled shoes, she wove through the store like a pro until she located the sundresses. Annie had no choice but to follow.

  Lindsey shuffled through the rack, pulling the red one out, guessing Annie’s size right the first time. The garment looked even skimpier than it had on the model.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” Annie said, instead of ripping it from Lindsey’s hand and putting it back on the rack the way she wanted to.

  “That’s why you need choices.” Lindsey zigzagged through the displays, pulling dresses off the racks and handing them to Annie until her arms were overloaded.

  “This is too many,” Annie protested.

  “The more dresses you try on, the better chance we have of finding the perfect one.” Lindsey took half the dresses from her and folded them over her arm. “Come on. The dressing room’s over here.”

  Figuring she didn’t have a choice, Annie followed. She tried on a number of dresses that Lindsey rejected for various reasons until she got to the red one. The dressing-room mirror confirmed her initial impression. Her bruises from the bike accident had already faded, but the neckline plunged into a deep V, the material clung to her and it was way too short.