The Secret Sin

by Darlene Gardner

  “You have the red one on, don’t you?” Lindsey asked excitedly from outside the dressing room. “I can’t wait to see it!”

  Annie took a deep breath, then swung open the thin door.

  Lindsey clapped her hands. “You look beautiful! That’s the one. That’s the dress.”

  “I’m not wearing this to the Blue Haven,” Annie stated. The cut was too sexy, not to mention she’d heard that a recent study had concluded the color red made men feel more amorous toward women. “It’s too…red.”

  “It’s perfect,” Lindsey protested. “You have to buy it.”

  “I’m not buying this dress,” Annie said forcefully.

  “Fine.” Lindsey’s features tightened. She reached into the dressing room, yanked out the garments Annie had already tried on and marched back through the store.

  Annie battled despair as she returned to the dressing room and slipped out of the slinky dress. She’d planned to bond with Lindsey, not to snap at her.

  She was in her underwear, taking another dress off a hangar when she heard footsteps, then a knock on the door. She opened it a crack, which immediately filled with something green. “Try this,” Lindsey said.

  It was the same dress in a different color. She sighed, expecting to find it no more suitable than the red one, then put it on. The dress fit her the same way, but the more subtle color changed everything. She turned this way and that, amazed at how good she looked.

  “Well?” Lindsey asked loudly, sounding impatient.

  This time Annie was smiling when she opened the door. “I love it.”

  “Me, too.” The girl’s gaze dropped to Annie’s sturdy sandals. “But we have to do something about those shoes.”

  “THAT WAS a blast!” Lindsey said.

  Other kids got a high from playing sports or music, but to Lindsey, nothing beat a day at the shopping center. A trip to a strip mall with her little brothers along didn’t count.

  The small back seat of the truck was full of stuff Lindsey had convinced Annie to buy, including a pair of strappy white sandals Annie could wear with the green dress.

  Lindsey hadn’t done so bad herself. She’d scored a really cute top and a paisley-print skirt. Lindsey would rather have had the tighter, shorter black skirt, but let Annie choose because she was buying.

  She still wasn’t happy about Annie telling Jason how old she was, but Annie wasn’t so bad. Even when she was really busy, she made time for Lindsey.

  “Now that I’ve gone shopping with you,” Annie said, “you can come rafting with me.”

  “Oh, no!” Lindsey shook her head vehemently. “That is so not happening.”

  “Why not? I had fun shopping. What’s to say you won’t have a good time rafting?”

  Was she serious? “You can shop on dry land.”

  “Getting wet isn’t that big a deal.”

  “That’s because you haven’t seen my hair when it loses body. It goes limp.” Sunlight shone through the window, backlighting Annie’s hair. “Yours does the same thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Not so much,” Annie said, then backtracked. “Well, maybe a little, when it’s humid.”

  “Then we’ll use hot rollers tonight when I do your hair.”

  “I wasn’t aware you were doing my hair,” Annie said, “and I don’t have hot rollers.”

  Who didn’t have hot rollers? Annie sure needed her help bad. “My curling iron, then. After I get through with you, Ryan’s gonna be drooling.”

  “Not if I chicken out and wear blue jeans.”

  “You can’t!” Lindsey cried. “I know what you said before, but don’t you want him to think you look hot?”

  Annie didn’t answer, but her cheeks reddened.

  “You’re blushing!” Lindsey exclaimed. “That’s so romantic!”

  “What’s so romantic about a blush?”

  “It means you really like him. So now you have to tell me how you met.” Lindsey turned to face Annie so she had a better view of her, settling in for a story. She hoped it was sigh-worthy.

  “I already told you,” Annie said. “We met in high school.”

  “That’s right.” Lindsey thought of the book she was reading. The teenage characters had known they were destined to be together at first sight. “Were you into him back then, too?”

  “We hardly knew each other.” Annie looked at the highway instead of Lindsey. “We, uh, ran in different circles.”

  Lindsey figured that could only mean one thing. “He was popular and you weren’t?”

  “Something like that.”

  That made sense. Annie had probably been teased about her birthmark. The mark didn’t bother Lindsey, but most high-school kids weren’t as mature as she was.

  “Ryan’s still pretty cool,” Lindsey said. “How did you get him to ask you out anyway?”

  “I didn’t get him to ask me out. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time when I took you to the pediatrician’s office,” Annie said. “I guess he wanted to catch up.”

  “You mean I had something to do with you getting together?”

  “You could say that,” Annie said slowly.

  “Sweet,” Lindsey said.

  She leaned back against her seat, thinking about how cool that was. Annie was letting her visit, and she was helping Annie with Ryan.

  Making sure Annie looked great tonight, though, was just a start. It wouldn’t kill Lindsey to do her part to get Ryan to keep coming around. That meant sacrifice.

  “I’ll come rafting on one condition,” she said. “Ryan has to come, too.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  TOBY BRADFORD had egg on his face.

  The scrambled yellow stuff was also on his hands, smeared over his clothes and dotting his baby-fine blond hair.

  So far Ryan was the only one in the Bradford kitchen who’d noticed the egg-splattered one-year-old. Annie had excused herself to use the restroom shortly after they’d delivered Lindsey for Tuesday-night babysitting detail. Kelly and Chase had their backs to the high chair as they gave Lindsey instructions. Lindsey probably couldn’t see anything other than a talking wall of overprotectiveness.

  Toby grinned at Ryan with an open mouth that showed gaps in his baby teeth. He lifted both chubby hands and patted the eggs stuck to them, pure joy crossing his face. It felt to Ryan as though he and the little boy were sharing a private joke. Toby picked up another handful of egg and the moment was over.

  “Somebody better check on Toby,” Ryan said, interrupting Kelly’s recitation of the little boy’s bedtime routine.

  Both Kelly and Chase whirled just as the eggs flew. They didn’t travel far, falling harmlessly to the kitchen floor.

  “Toby!” Kelly was instantly at his side, whisking away the plate of scrambled eggs she’d given him for dinner. “Stop that!”

  Toby’s face fell at the loss of his entertainment. He seemed to shoot an accusatory look at Ryan.

  “Sorry, bud,” Ryan mouthed silently to the little boy.

  “I’ll get a washcloth,” Chase told Kelly, springing into action but hiding a grin.

  Kelly lifted Toby out of the high chair, holding him at arm’s length. She was everything Chase had said she was: pretty, sweet and wild about the little boy Chase had discovered wasn’t related by blood to either of them. An ex-girlfriend of Chase’s who was serving a prison sentence had signed over custody of Toby, which was ironic considering the woman had tried to blame her crime on Kelly. The way Chase told it, he’d met Kelly while she was trying to exonerate herself. So Toby’s birth mother was inadvertently responsible for getting them together.

  “What were you trying to do?” Kelly asked Toby, her voice indulgent. “Scare away the babysitter?”

  “It’d take more than that to scare me,” Lindsey said. “I have two little brothers.”

  “Then you know how handy paper towels are,” Kelly said. “Can you get me some? They’re beside the sink.”

  Lindsey located them, pulling off a few. Ryan went to help
her, turning on the faucet so she could wet them.

  “Girls are just as messy,” Ryan said as they worked.

  Lindsey reached the high chair at the same time Chase reentered the kitchen with a washcloth and a towel. She wiped up the tray while Chase helped Kelly strip off the baby’s clothes and clean him up. Ryan grabbed some fresh paper towels from the roll, exchanging them for the ones Lindsey had soiled.

  “I was never messy,” Lindsey proclaimed.

  Ryan had no way of knowing if that were true. Lindsey was his daughter, but he’d never seen her as a baby.

  He dumped the used paper towels in the trash can beneath the sink, his mind whirring. This wasn’t the first time he’d thought about Lindsey’s childhood.

  Even before he’d learned his daughter’s name and what had become of her, he’d wondered about her. Every time his work had brought him in touch with babies, he’d thought of her. The first time Ryan had delivered a baby, he could hardly see through the tears. He’d missed his own child’s arrival.

  “Lindsey, give those paper towels to Chase so he can wipe up the floor. I need you to hold Toby while I get him some clean clothes.” Kelly even had a sweetness about her when she gave orders.

  Annie walked into the kitchen, stepping gingerly on high heels he guessed she wasn’t used to walking in. He’d always liked the way she looked, but her green dress emphasized how truly lovely she was. No, not lovely. That was too mild a word. Stunning. He’d barely been able to speak when he first saw her. In the car, he’d had trouble keeping his eyes off her and on the road.

  She was just in time to see Lindsey take the baby, who was now clad only in a diaper. Toby snuggled against the teenager, leaning his blond head against her chest. Lindsey picked bits of egg from his hair.

  Ryan stared at the two of them, his throat going dry. He exchanged a glance with Annie, who appeared as staggered as he felt. All the moments of Lindsey’s life they hadn’t been part of came into sharper focus. They hadn’t walked her to the bus stop for school, slipped money under her pillow when she’d lost her first tooth or wiped her nose when she was sick.

  Ryan hadn’t done anything but give Lindsey up without a fight or even much thought. He’d let Annie go with hardly any protest, too, although he’d never connected with anyone on a deeper level than he had with her during that amazing night they’d shared.

  If he’d possessed the strength of character to suggest they keep their baby, he might not be here in Chase Bradford’s kitchen regretting what might have been.

  Had Annie agreed, she wouldn’t have been a stranger for the past fourteen years. He didn’t delude himself that the road would have been easy. They’d been too young to marry and possibly too immature to stay together through the demands of raising a child.

  Loving their daughter, however, might have led them to love each other.

  Kelly returned to the kitchen with a change of clothes, and Lindsey laughed at Chase’s crack about Toby making a bigger mess than Humpty Dumpty. Her young face hinted at what she might have looked like at Toby’s age.

  “Looks like I missed something,” Annie said.

  “We both did,” Ryan said softly. “We missed a lot.”

  ANNIE HAD probably been inside the Blue Haven Pub on a hundred different occasions, but this time she hesitated outside the door.

  Ryan’s warm hand instantly rested against the small of her back, his voice soft in her ear. “Don’t be nervous. Think of it as meeting friends for drinks.”

  It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left the Bradford house. During the ride to the bar, he’d been subdued. Thinking about missing out on Lindsey’s childhood, she supposed. She thought about it, too. A lot. She didn’t, however, wish to discuss it.

  “Friends who think we’re involved,” she said.

  “Kelly and Chase didn’t have any trouble believing that.”

  They’d originally planned to ride to the bar with the other couple, but Kelly and Chase were still dealing with the aftermath of the egg incident. Kelly had urged them to go ahead so all four of them wouldn’t be late.

  “Kelly and Chase were distracted,” Annie said.

  “You’re distracting me in that dress,” he said.

  This wasn’t the first time tonight he’d commented on her appearance, although Lindsey had practically insisted he give his reaction to the dress. He hadn’t disappointed the girl, lavishing Annie with compliments.

  “You don’t have to say things like that when nobody else can hear,” Annie said.

  “What if you look so beautiful I can’t help myself?” His breath tickled her ear.

  Annie knew she looked good. The dress flattered her, and Lindsey had curled her hair to make it fall in soft waves around her bare shoulders. The girl had done her makeup, too, although Annie had stopped her when she tried to cover the port-wine stain.

  But beautiful? She hardly thought so.

  His hand exerted gentle pressure at her back, propelling her forward. She wouldn’t take his comments too seriously. She could handle a friendship with him but nothing more.

  Look at how she’d reacted to his kiss at the miniature golf course.

  She reminded herself she’d goaded him into the kiss and shoved it out of her mind, the same way she had since it had happened. It hadn’t been real, just as tonight wasn’t real.

  “Over here!” Johnny Pollock waved them over to a table at the back of the bar. His wife Penelope’s chair was flush against his so there wasn’t any space between them. Michael Donahue had his arm around Sara Brenneman.

  Annie was so hyperaware of being watched she might have stopped walking if not for Ryan’s gentle prodding. She touched her cheek, then remembered what Lindsey had said and dropped her hand. “I don’t think we can pull this off,” she murmured under her breath.

  Ryan placed his hand on her waist, holding her so close his intoxicating scent overrode the faint bar smell of beer and the peanuts the staff put out on every table. “Sure we can.”

  After they reached their group and explained that Chase and Kelly were running late, Johnny made sure everybody was acquainted. Annie had gone to high school with Michael and Johnny and had met Sara several times. Sara looked stunning in red pants and a sleeveless top shot through with jagged red-and-black lines. Annie knew Johnny’s wife, Penelope, less well.

  “Annie runs Indigo River Rafters,” Johnny repeated the increasingly common misconception to his wife.

  “Only until my dad gets back from Poland.” Annie hadn’t spoken to her father since he’d phoned the morning after she’d found out about Lindsey and told her what he knew about the girl’s life. Until she was ready to forgive him, she couldn’t bring herself to keep in regular contact. “I’m still with the magazine.”

  “What magazine?” Penelope asked.

  “Annie’s a staff writer for Outdoor Women,” Ryan said. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll say,” Penelope rejoined, then asked so many questions about working for a magazine that Annie was relieved when the arrival of Kelly and Chase took the spotlight off her.

  “There was so much egg in Toby’s hair we gave him a bath,” Kelly explained. “I didn’t want Lindsey to have to do it alone the first time she babysat.”

  “Who’s Lindsey?” Penelope asked.

  Annie’s muscles knotted as they did every time somebody asked about the girl. Ryan’s hand covered hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

  “She’s a friend of Annie’s family,” he answered easily. “She’s in town for a visit.”

  Annie prepared herself to be bombarded with personal questions about Lindsey, mentally readying the careful responses she’d devised.

  “She helped pick out Annie’s dress,” Kelly said.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you it looks great,” Sara said. “That style is perfect on you.”

  Annie let herself relax a little. “Thanks.”

  “Lindsey told me you got it at the mall,” Kelly interjected.
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  “Not my favorite place,” Annie said, “but I did get Lindsey to agree to go rafting with me and Ryan in exchange.”

  “Oh, really?” Ryan asked.

  “I didn’t get around to telling you yet,” Annie said, “but saying you’d go was the only way she’d agree.”

  “Then I’m there.”

  Ryan kept hold of her hand, a good idea. It gave the impression they were really together. His thumb caressed the inside of her wrist, an unnecessary touch. A shiver ran through her.

  “If Lindsey wants to go shopping again, I’ll take her,” Sara said. “Look how great Annie looks tonight.”

  “You’re giving Lindsey too much credit.” Ryan picked up their linked hands, lacing his fingers through hers. “Annie looks fantastic in whatever she wears.”

  He was pouring it on too thick. Annie’s pulse raced. Her cheeks, she felt certain, had reddened. Surely everybody else at the table had noticed he was trying too hard.

  “I agree with that,” Johnny said, “but be careful of my buddy there, Annie. He’s always been a smooth operator.”

  “I’ve never been a smooth operator,” Ryan protested. “Why do you think I didn’t become a surgeon?”

  Everybody laughed, although Annie had to force hers. Johnny was right. She couldn’t start believing Ryan meant what he said, especially since their goal tonight was to be convincing as a couple. Even if it weren’t, she knew better than to fall for Ryan a second time.

  The conversation drifted to other topics. Through a backdrop of jukebox music and a TV baseball game that was turned up too loud, Annie found out Ryan had gone to med school at Temple University and did his residency at a hospital in Philadelphia.

  “How were you able to drop everything to help out your sister?” Chase asked.

  “There was nothing to drop,” Ryan said. “After my residency, I filled in for a doctor on maternity leave at a health center in the city. She came back right when Sierra broke her leg.”