Sinful Seduction

by Christopher, Ann

  “What? Swept up in a little whirlwind romance with a soldier who was shipping out soon? Is that it?”

  Why did it sound so ridiculous when he said it like that?

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “To what?” he roared. “To what? To fall in lust the second you met my brother at our engagement party? Because that’s what happened, isn’t it? Don’t lie to me.”

  She struggled, helpless to explain something she still couldn’t understand. “It was more than that—”

  “Yeah? What was it, then?”

  “I love him,” she said simply. “If I’d cared about you the way I should have, I would never have been attracted to him in the first place. And that’s why I’m so sorry. We should have always just stayed friends, Tony—”

  “Is this you making me feel better? Because here I’d thought you loved me. That’s why you said yes when I asked you to marry me. And now I find out you were just killing time until my brother came along?”

  Could shame kill a person? It was crawling through her, drowning her in prickling heat. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Sorry? Don’t tell me that! That’s not what I want to hear!”

  “What, then? What should I do to—”

  “You tell me why!” he shouted. “You tell me what he’s got that I haven’t got!”

  “I don’t want to hurt you—”

  “That ship has sailed, sweetheart. And I need you to tell me so I can get past this. You owe me an explanation.”

  Yes, she did. Even if she didn’t want to give it.

  “It’s his eyes. It’s his tenderness and his vulnerability. It’s the way I feel when I’m with him—”

  “How is that?” he asked sharply.

  “I’m not good with putting it in words,” she tried.

  “Tell me.”

  “I feel like I’m home when I’m with him. That’s all.”

  She waited, certain that this fuzzy and probably unsatisfactory answer would set off another round of enraged shouting. It didn’t. To her surprise, Tony’s face eased, slackening with what looked like sudden understanding.

  “But we’re twins, Sky.”

  “I’m not saying it makes sense. But you and he are completely different.”

  They stared at each other for several beats, his expression slowly clearing.

  At last his mouth softened into the scant beginnings of a smile. Her chest loosened with relief and a crazy kind of gratitude she’d never felt before.

  “Tony,” she began, her heart full of a thousand other apologies—for giving up on him, for not having more faith in him, for not being the woman he’d needed her to be—but he waved her to silence.

  “We had some fun, didn’t we? I didn’t imagine it.”

  The implicit forgiveness choked her up, making her lips twist with repressed tears. This was a wonderful man standing here with her, even if he wasn’t the wonderful man for her.

  She took his face between her hands and stroked his gaunt cheeks. “We had a lot of fun.”

  Satisfied, he gave her a rueful nod, and a sweet charge of remembrance went through her. The next thing she knew, he’d cupped her cheeks and was leaning closer, his lids lowering.

  “Goodbye, Sky,” he murmured.

  “Goodbye,” she said, and tipped up her mouth to meet his.

  The kiss was gentle, lingering, and so poignant that her heart ached with—

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Sandro said.

  Oh, God.

  Flustered, Sky broke away from Tony and turned to the doorway in time to meet the frigid blast of Sandro’s gaze as he entered the room. Nikolas and Mickey followed behind and headed for Tony with glad cries.

  She opened her mouth, ready to explain away the kiss, but Sandro wheeled around and was gone before she found her voice.

  None of Sandro’s usual coping mechanisms worked for him that night.

  His study felt simultaneously overwhelming and stifling, as though a rain forest had been crammed into a cave, making it impossible for him to get his breath. The lamp in the corner was too bright, and yet the study was a crypt that threatened to suck the remaining pulse of life out of him. He couldn’t sit still behind his desk, but pacing exhausted him. He longed for drunken oblivion, and should have been well on his way after four shots of vodka, but his mind remained stubbornly clear and the liquor became so disgusting that he couldn’t get another drop down.

  In fairness, though, it wasn’t the liquor that disgusted him. He did that to himself.

  Over in the corner, the piano mocked him, and he wished he had the energy to retrieve the mallet from the toolshed so he could come back and smash it.

  Three emotions had him in a stranglehold, and he couldn’t figure out which he felt the most.

  Was it joy that his brother was alive and Sandro was, therefore, no longer a broken half of the missing whole?

  Or was his old friend guilt reigning supreme, because not only had Sandro survived the attack, he’d left a man behind to suffer. Wasn’t that worse than his brother’s outright death would have been? Hell, when Tony was “dead,” at least he was at peace. Now it turned out that Tony had been alive and imprisoned—which meant, let’s face it, tortured—while Sandro endured such minor woe-is-me’s as Why does my son hate me? and What should I do with myself now that I’m not a soldier?

  So, yeah—guilt.

  But there was an ugly new emotion in the mix tonight. Well, not new, exactly, but certainly more primitive and ferocious than it had ever been before.

  Jealousy.

  The images stalked him in all their high-def glory, slowly making him insane.

  Skylar’s undisguised emotion at realizing Tony was alive.

  Skylar and Tony staring at each other with the intimacy of former lovers…touching each other…falling into each other’s arms.

  Skylar running after Tony to console him.

  Skylar…kissing Tony.

  The jealousy twisted and writhed in his gut, seething and expanding until he could taste its foul bitterness on the back of his tongue.

  He eyed the half-empty bottle of vodka. Hell, maybe it wasn’t so nasty after all.

  Topping off his shot glass, he raised it in a silent cheer to nothing and gulped it down. Gasping, he swiped a hand over the back of his mouth and resumed brooding.

  The thing was, he’d examined the situation from every angle, and there was only one way it could turn out: badly. In life, he knew, there was always an action and a reaction. A sweet balanced by a bitter. A yin and a yang. And the price to be paid for Tony’s miraculous return was simple.

  Sky would go back to him.

  It was inevitable.

  Tony always recovered. He always landed on his feet and came out ahead. He was always the winner, a simple fact that Sandro should never have forgotten. Tony was back, he wanted Sky back and he would get Sky back. The only thing that remained to be seen was whether it happened sooner or later. Which of course depended on Sky’s sense of duty. She’d claimed she’d loved Sandro, and maybe she really thought she did. But that was before. This was now. And she and Tony hadn’t even waited half an hour before they’d fallen into each other’s arms and picked up where they had left off.

  So what was left for Sandro?

  Nothing but the frigid emptiness he’d known before Skylar showed up on his doorstep.

  Reaching for the vodka bottle, he poured again.

  Suddenly Skylar strode in without knocking, came to stand on the other side of his desk, and stared down at him with her hands on her hips.

  Her lips thinned. “What a surprise. You in the study. In the dark. Drinking by yourself. Who’d have thought?”

  She had a fair point. “Like that old board game, Clue, isn’t it? Sandro in the study with the liquor. It’s got a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “Where were you at dinner?” she asked.

  “In here, of course.”

  “Why wer
en’t you with us?”

  “Thanks for noticing I was gone. I wondered about that. I didn’t want to ruin your little reunion scene.”

  “It’s your reunion scene, too.”

  He shrugged. “Tony didn’t seem that happy to see me.”

  “Tony’s in shock.”

  Her obvious and ongoing concern for his sainted brother tightened everything inside him to the breaking point. If she’d been worried about a troubled stranger she’d met on, say, the train, he’d’ve admired her compassion. But since her shadowed face was for Tony, he wanted to rage and smash everything in sight. He hated himself for this pettiness, but he still felt it.

  “Touching,” he murmured, reaching for his glass. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”

  She watched him, brows contracting. “He needs both of us now.”

  “Hmm. I’m betting he needs you more than he needs me. Cheers.”

  To his irritation, she interrupted his jeering little toast by snatching the glass from him and pouring its contents on his leather blotter. Then she slammed the glass back on the desk and wiped her hands on her jeans.

  He glared up at her, waiting and hopped up on adrenaline.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him.

  “For?”

  “That kiss.”

  “Oh, was there a kiss?”

  She shook her head, emitted a disbelieving little laugh, paced away from the desk and came right back, her face lined with determination. “Your sarcasm isn’t going to get to me.”

  “No?”

  “No. I know it’s a defense mechanism. Plus, you’re angry—”

  Angry? She had ripped his heart out and then opined about him being angry?

  Paralyzed by that poisonous jealousy, he couldn’t hate her enough, much less choke out a response.

  “—and you should be angry. I don’t blame you.”

  “How generous.”

  She paused, nostrils flaring, and he could almost feel the reins of her temper slip through her fingers. “But it was a goodbye kiss, Sandro. That’s all.”

  His face felt so hard and so hot that he could barely get his lips to move. “There was a lot more hello than goodbye in that kiss, Sky.”

  That caused the explosion he’d been hoping for and needing. With a harsh cry, she slammed her palms on the desk, making the bottle and glass jump.

  “What are you doing? Why are you acting this way? You know I love you.”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but Tony knew you loved him, too, didn’t he? Looks to me like there’s still some of that loving going on even though you’re trying to put a good face on it.”

  “‘A good face’—what? What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose it means that you don’t want to dump me right away.”

  Her jaw dropped with sudden comprehension. “Dump you? I’m not going to dump you!”

  “Don’t be too hasty. The perfect Davies twin is back and he still wants you. What’s a girl to do? Decisions, decisions.”

  “There’s no decision to make.”

  Hallelujah. She finally got it. Lunging across the desk, he caught her upper arm in a hard grip that made her yelp. “You’re damn right there’s no decision to make. He can’t have you.”

  Several beats of excruciating silence passed, broken only by the harsh rattle of her shocked breath. “You can’t seriously believe—” she began slowly and quietly, her voice cracking so badly that she had to stop and start again. “After the time we’ve spent together and the things we said and did together last night, you can’t seriously question my feelings for you.”

  Oh, he had a lot of questions, but as far as he was concerned, there was only one answer. He tightened his grip on her arm.

  “He can’t have you.”

  “I’m leaving.” With a low growl and glittering eyes, she snatched her arm free and pivoted for the open door. “I can’t stand to look at you right now.”

  Chapter 13

  A frozen moment passed, and all Sandro could do was stare after her and wonder how things had gotten this screwed up in such a head-spinningly short period of time. Then the panic set in.

  “Skylar.” Galvanized, he surged to his feet and hurried around his desk. If he could catch her before she—shit.

  He stumbled through the doorway and into the hall, his feet tripped up by an indignant mewling fur ball that didn’t appreciate the near loss of one of its nine lives. Perfect timing. Like he had time for kittens right now.

  He grabbed the thing up by its scruff and hung on while it tried to squirm free, but then he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. “Nikolas? Is that you?”

  His son stepped from the shadows and hit a patch of streaming moonlight from one of the hall windows. The sudden illumination let Sandro see the boy’s stark expression. The poor kid was shell-shocked, and Sandro should know because he’d seen the look often enough in Afghanistan.

  Things were, Sandro realized with a heart-contracting burst of clarity, about to get a hell of a lot worse.

  The boy’s blankness twisted and turned, knotting into anger fueled by fear. “Is she leaving?”

  Sandro didn’t know the answer to that question. He might be a sorry father, but he wasn’t a liar, so he took the only other option and told the sad truth.

  “I don’t know.”

  Nikolas’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know? Are you shitting me right now?”

  “Nikolas.”

  But it would take more than a firm voice to stop this volcanic burst of emotion that had been months, maybe years, in the making.

  “You’re unbelievable.” The boy’s deep voice boomed in the late night silence, reverberating off the walls and filling Sandro with a taste of his son’s misery. “You take anything that’s good and you screw it up! It’s like a talent you have! Do you work at it, or what? I mean, seriously—how do you manage it?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Mom left. Sky’s leaving. Hell, half the time I want to run away and get out of this gloomy-ass house! Why don’t you go back to Afghanistan, man? Things were better when you were gone!”

  Something was happening now that Sandro hadn’t seen in a good ten years or more. Nikolas, a tough kid who took his lumps and didn’t let much in life faze him, whether it was his mother’s decision to walk out on the family or his expulsion from summer camp, started to cry.

  Since he was equal parts man and boy now, the tears shamed him; Sandro could see it in the desperate way he swiped the back of his hand across his eyes and pressed his lips together while still struggling to talk. Suddenly all Sandro’s turmoil about Tony’s return and his future with Skylar—he would have a future with Skylar, and not even his irrational jealousy was going to ruin it—receded because his boy was in pain and needed whatever comfort he could offer.

  “Why don’t you leave, man? Why don’t you get the hell out of here—”

  “Nikolas.” Holding the struggling kitten in a firm grip against his chest, Sandro reached out and grabbed the boy around the shoulders, reeling him in. Like the kitten, he flailed and resisted, trying to get away, but Sandro was bigger and his determination stronger. “Come here,” he soothed, acting on pure paternal instinct, because God knew he was no Einstein when it came to dealing with tricky emotional scenes. “Come here. It’s okay.”

  “Leave, man! Leave!”

  “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

  To his astonishment, Nikolas wound down or wore himself out—Sandro couldn’t tell which. But the next thing he knew, his son was submitting…relaxing…wrapping his wiry arms around Sandro’s waist and holding on for dear life as he sobbed out all the turmoil of a teenager who’d lost a mother and gained a prickly relationship with a father who was learning how to be a dad.

  “It’s okay, buddy.” Sandro kept up the mantra, even when his throat grew tight and hoarse and his own unhappiness threatened to choke him. “We’re going to be okay. I’m not leaving you. I’m never leaving you aga
in.”

  Eventually, some internal switch deep within Nikolas was flipped, and it was over. Having cried himself out, the boy had nothing left to focus on but his embarrassment, which seemed to be overwhelming. He gave Sandro’s chest a hard push and broke free, hanging his head while he wiped his eyes and nose with the bottom edge of his T-shirt. Then he cleared his throat, shoved his hands deep into his pockets and shuffled his feet. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  Sandro, feeling clumsy and inadequate and wishing he had a child psychologist on retainer to advise him during excruciating moments like these, cleared his throat, too.

  The kitten continued to mewl.

  This was one of those moments, wasn’t it? Where a good father, one like, say, Cliff Huxtable, would offer a couple more words of comfort and wisdom.

  Too bad there was no sign of Bill Cosby around here.

  “So…” Since his throat still wasn’t clear, he coughed this time, opened his mouth and prayed for a word or two to come. “Things are, aah, kind of crazy around here right now, but they’ll settle down.”

  “I doubt it,” Nikolas grumbled, now studying his own toes. “You need to work things out with Sky. Don’t blow it, man. You’ll never do better than her. You know that, right?”

  Out of the mouths of babes, eh?

  “I know,” Sandro admitted, and since they were discussing hard truths tonight, he decided to throw another one into the mix. “I’m not sure I deserve her, though.”

  Nikolas waved a hand, flapping away Sandro’s biggest vulnerability. “Oh, you don’t deserve her—”

  “Thanks ever so much.”

  “But she’s crazy about you. I don’t think she’ll want to leave here unless you drive her to it. So don’t drive her to it. And give me the kitten. You’re strangling her.”

  With that, he snatched the kitten—Leia, right?—away from Sandro and headed down the hall toward the kitchen, cradling her against his chest in a protective grip.

  Leaving Sandro to wonder how to get himself out of the hole he’d dug with Sky.

  About an hour later, after much pacing and moody ruminating, but no further drinking, Sandro lingered at the top of the stairs, trying to decide what to do.