Sedona Sunset

by Tanya Stowe

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Can we do it tomorrow?”

  Lara nodded.

  Christy gave her a quick hug, and then headed for her wheelchair. Instead of sitting in it, she grabbed it by the handles and walked to the door.

  Alex held the door open while she went through. With one last glance at Lara, he followed, closing the door. She could hear them talking as they walked down the hall.

  She zipped her bag, wrapped her skirt around her waist and slid the bag strap onto her shoulder. She might still find Troy. She hurried down the winding staircase toward the front door.

  Two guards in black suits stood outside La Guitarra’s room.

  She nodded a greeting as she passed. Behind her, the door opened. She glanced back to see Alex step out.

  Obviously, all of the valuable guitars were stored in the same room.

  Alex said something to the guards and followed Lara out into the bright sunlight. “You know,” he said as they walked down the steps toward the guesthouses. “You don’t have to do that.”

  She glanced sideways, barely pausing. “Do what?”

  “Take Brett out of your bag and flash him in front of you like a shield. I promise I won’t do anything else to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I don’t use him like a shield.”

  “Yes, you do. Every time I get too close, you talk about Brett to remind me about him. Or maybe you’re reminding yourself.” He studied her as they walked together. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re reminding yourself, arming yourself against my intense appeal.” He said it in a joking tone.

  But he was so close to the truth, she couldn’t smile at his teasing.

  They walked a few steps more before he touched her arm. “Lara?”

  She didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to give him the opportunity to wear down her resistance. Gritting her teeth, she turned to face him.

  “I don’t want to get in the way of your relationship with Christy. If you want to meet her in the spa, I’ll make some excuse.”

  “Oh no, that would be too easy. You’re not going to get off the hook.”

  “Off the hook? I was offering to let you have all the fun.”

  “Is it fun, Alex? Do you really want to spend the afternoon with a rebellious kid you barely know or are you just using her to get at me?”

  He leaned back as if he’d been struck. “Did I commit a crime you forgot to tell me about? When did I become the bad guy?”

  Irritated, Lara glanced at the side of the house. The longer she dallied with Alex, the less likely she would find Troy. Still she needed to settle things with Alex. She straightened and faced him. “From the beginning. All the signs were there, I just didn’t pay attention.”

  “What signs? Oh…I get it. You mean you should have listened to the gossip.”

  “Paid attention to the signs, Alex. First of all, you waltzed in here and sabotaged my mother’s school. You’ve made continuous advances even after I said no. Then you add insult to injury by questioning Brett’s motives.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I only stated the obvious about the school, Lara. The real reason you’re angry with me is because my suggestion about Brett struck a raw nerve.”

  Lara gripped her shoulder strap and met his gaze squarely. “The point is, you have no right questioning anyone else’s motives when you have your own past as an example.”

  “Finally, we get to the real issue. You’ve heard the gossip about the Comtessa.”

  “I’m not fishing for information about your private life. I just don’t think you should be intruding into mine.”

  He folded his arms. “Point taken. I overstepped the polite bounds, but in my defense, I was compelled. Quite honestly, Lara, I saw something special in you.”

  “And it doesn’t matter to you that I have an understanding with someone else.”

  “As far as I can see there’s not much of anything going on between you and Fraser, let alone an understanding. It seems more like what everyone else expects to happen. Has he made promises?”

  She spun away. “Of course not. Brett would never falsely lead me on.” Lara’s own words penetrated her angry refusal. They were true, of course. Brett wouldn’t hurt her in any way. But he’d never spoken any promises, any words of commitment. Their “understanding” had always been her wishful thinking. Her girlhood dreams brought them together…and Brett had never had the courage to tell her no.

  Not until this morning. With their frustrated exchange fresh in her mind, Lara could no longer deny the indications.

  Had her arrival, with her childish dreams and everyone’s expectations, created the tension in Brett? She had to speak to him, to sort this out.

  How was Alex able to know her so thoroughly while he remained a great, beckoning mystery?

  “That’s an unfair judgment on someone you don’t know…especially when your reputation isn’t pristine.”

  “We’re back to the Comtessa.”

  Exasperated, she recognized the waspish quality of her tone. “All right, we are. She’s managed your career. You’ve used her money for support.”

  “Of course. It’s her obligation.”

  Lara sputtered to a halt. Speechless, she stared at him.

  “The Comtessa is my mother, Lara. She remarried and took another name, but continued to manage my career with the same proprietary interest. People misinterpreted her motives. I’m not quite certain how the sordid rumor got started, but it did. She swears my father started it in an attempt to humiliate her and drive a wedge between us.”

  Stunned, Lara murmured, “But you didn’t let him succeed?”

  “I don’t believe he even tried. He wouldn’t have spent that much time on either my mother, or me.”

  His words mimicked the same words Rupert Townsend had used when talking about her father. “I guess there’s been gossip about my father as well.”

  He shook his head. “I told you. I don’t waste time on gossip, but I do recognize the kinship between us. That wasn’t a lie.” His words were too raw, too close to the truth.

  She wanted to turn away, but he grasped her arms and held her still.

  “Tell me you don’t feel it too, Lara.” He gave her a little shake, forcing her to meet his gaze. “If you tell me you feel absolutely nothing, I’ll walk away right now and never bother you again.”

  Lara sagged into his grip. “I can’t deny it, Alex. I feel it, but I have questions. You said you wanted only honesty between us so here it is. I don’t trust the kinship between us. You waltz into my life and know things about me a stranger wouldn’t know, almost as if you’ve made a study of me. You’re trying to drive a wedge between me and my…friend and you say things that make me feel wonderful and incredibly special. But I’m not. All women are special to you…and most of them are wealthy. I’m an heiress, Alex. I have to be suspicious.”

  Alex’s features hardened, and he looked away. In a momentary flash, she wondered if she was reading frustration or calculation. Lara couldn’t tell, and it only added to her confusion.

  When he turned back, his face was blank. “I know what it is to be wanted for something that has nothing to do with who you are, Lara. That’s why I asked for honesty between us.”

  She laughed out loud. “You said so, and then promptly did everything you could do to be different and create mystery around yourself.”

  Alex smiled his slow, knowing smile. “But it is the real me, Lara. Unpredictable. Free. It’s the life I’ve chosen for myself. The one I try to keep from my fans and the one I think you’re dying to live.”

  “How can I be dying to live it when I don’t even understand it?”

  “What don’t you understand? Ask me anything. I’ll try to explain.”

  Lara hesitated. What exactly had he done…except make her feel like a woman? Was the real problem that she didn’t trust Alex or her own sensuality? She needed to know the truth.

  Lara had to demysti
fy Alex’s compelling attraction. A few feet away, just off the path, a marble bench rested beneath an Arizona willow. Lara walked toward it and sat down. Alex joined her as she let her bag slide from her shoulder to the ground.

  “Why didn’t you stop the rumors about your mother? They were ugly and obviously upset her.”

  “When the rumors first started, my mother had earned her reputation. She was bitter and demanding. She was determined to control me as she had never been able to control my father. I was young and too inexperienced to check her efforts.” His jaw hardened and he paused, but only for a moment. “Eventually, we worked things out. By that time, the rumors served another purpose. I allowed my mother to handle the image of Alejandro Summers because it left me free to be Alex, student and eventually professor. The rumors kept away certain kinds of females.”

  “What kind?”

  “Mamas and their daughters. The ones in love with the myth, who knew nothing about the real man. The ones who wanted to keep the myth for their own, to take it out, and show it off when company comes to visit. I don’t fit into a cage very well.”

  “Is that what you think a relationship is? A cage?”

  “All relationships are cages, especially the legal institution called marriage. Most relationships are a way of controlling the people you supposedly care about.”

  Lara studied him, thinking he must have been hurt very badly. “Was it your mother or someone else who taught you that lesson?” she asked.

  He stared at a distant spot, his legs stretched out as he leaned back on the bench. His torso was long and lean…so touchable.

  Lara could easily understand why women wanted to hold him and keep him. She had to turn away to keep from reaching out.

  “Does it matter?” he asked after a while.

  “Yes, I think so. If that’s how you feel, I can’t imagine why you’d be interested in a relationship with me. Because that’s what it would be with me. I’m definitely not interested in anything else.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Our friendship would be based on kinship and mutual respect for each other’s freedom.” That smile. If he could bottle it or put it in a package and sell it, he’d have a million more fans.

  Lara felt her resistance slipping and yet he’d done little more than sit beside her and talk. “You assume a lot about me,” she said. “How do you know I wouldn’t want to keep you in a cage?” How do you know, once that smile and long, taut body belonged to me, I’d ever let it go?

  He leaned forward, inches from her face. “I know once you’ve tasted freedom as I have, you’ll respect it. You would never try to control someone else as you’ve been controlled.”

  “I haven’t been…” Lara halted. His dark eyes were so close, so piercing. They reached inside her and uncovered the lie even before she finished it. Hiding behind illusions was impossible with him only a breath away.

  She had always been loved, always known her parents’ deep and abiding commitment to her. She felt so much a part of their lives, she found it difficult to identify with Alex’s emotional distance from his parents. But she had to acknowledge that with her parents’ abiding love had come control. Her father’s expectations. Her mother’s rigid dictates. For as long as she could remember things had been demanded from her…gently and lovingly expressed, but demands nonetheless. Comportment. Grace. Conformity. Nothing less was acceptable. When her mother was taken so unexpectedly, Lara had felt cast adrift, rudderless. If her mother had lived, perhaps Lara would have matured on her own, pulled away from the rigid dictates. Instead, she had mourned and yearned for that safe, familiar environment.

  Rupert Townsend had referred to it and Eliza had tried to talk about it, but it had taken Alex’s piercing honesty to make Lara see it. That he should know, should say the words that had been swimming inside her, unsaid, unacknowledged, made her want to weep. She didn’t know whether to thank him or to be angry with him for once again forcing himself into her privacy.

  He was a breath away. His eyes were dark and caressing and full of compassion.

  She wanted him to kiss her.

  But he didn’t.

  Lara ached with the need to feel his arms around her. She was a twenty-four-year-old virgin, overripe, naïve, and more than anxious to be whole.

  Alex would make her transition into womanhood easy. With his powerful touch, musical voice and knowing ways, he would make it wonderful. Maybe even glorious.

  She leaned forward, hoping he would take the hint.

  His jaw tightened with tension, but he never moved.

  And suddenly she understood.

  He wouldn’t use this moment to seduce her even though he was quite capable of doing so. He was allowing her the freedom to choose for herself, to be in control of her own life.

  Right now, she hated him for it.

  Why wouldn’t he just sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she couldn’t think anymore? That would be so much more like a fairy tale. Lara closed her eyes. What was wrong with her?

  Somewhere behind the house, a door slammed.

  Christy was waiting for Alex, and reality rushed back to Lara. She was sitting on a park bench in the open. Anyone in the house or on the grounds could see them. Suddenly flustered, Lara reached for her bag. “I…I have to meet Brett.”

  Alex rose slowly to his feet, a wry smile on his lips.

  “I’m not using him as a shield,” Lara said when she saw the smile. “I’m just late.”

  “Then by all means, hurry.” He gestured down the walkway in a mocking manner.

  Clutching her bag, Lara strode away.

  ~*~

  Alex noted that she didn’t have the courage to look back. He stood a moment more, wondering at the game he played. Lara Fallon should be off limits. He didn’t have time to indulge in his bizarre fascination for forbidden fruit. But he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  The attraction between them was real, like wildfire. Everything he’d said to her about how he felt was true. He wasn’t lying. He had simply left out some information that didn’t need to be shared. So why did he feel so guilty every time she walked away? If he had his way, Lara wouldn’t go. She’d stay and what would happen between them would be consuming, important, maybe even life changing. But it would be tainted by what he had left out.

  The only way to prevent that from happening was to get to the bottom of the mystery with the directors of the Fallon School of Art. It was proving to be a difficult task.

  When Lara had entered the guesthouse, he made his way around the corner to the back of the main house. While playing his guitar at the window, he’d seen Troy leave the forest…and he’d seen Lara’s glance stray to this corner once too often. Obviously, she’d seen Troy as well. What was the man up to? And what part did Lara play?

  He had to check it out.

  At the edge of the forest, he found Troy’s footprints and tracked them into the softer soil of the bush. A few yards in, behind a stand of short, stubby pines, Alex found another set of prints. Troy met someone then retraced his steps alone.

  So where had his partner come from?

  Alex followed the other footsteps along a path edging the forest. They led him around the house toward the rest of the complex, and ended abruptly at the edge of the gravel between the two guesthouses. Alex’s gaze swept over the empty complex. Not a soul in sight. No gardeners or grounds men, no security men, not even a maid, who—considering the time—should have been making her way toward the guesthouses. No one was in sight. The trail was cold.

  Gritting his teeth, Alex studied the footsteps. Large. Definitely a man’s…and they ended precisely between the two guesthouses. Was it because the guesthouses provided cover to leave or because one of the guesthouses was the destination?

  Only three people, besides himself, occupied those guesthouses. Lara, Fraser, and Carlos. Fraser had ample opportunity to speak with Troy alone. They didn’t need to have clandestine meetings in the forest. And Lara had been wi
th Alex all morning.

  So that left Carlos. But what connection did Carlos have with Southwest pottery or even with Troy Madrigal? It didn’t make sense.

  Shaking his head, Alex stepped onto the gravel and headed toward his bungalow to change. The deeper he got into this, the less he knew. The simple task UNESCO had set before him was turning into a tangled web, especially since it had the potential to destroy what could be the first meaningful relationship he’d had in years.

  ~*~

  Lara called her driver upon entering the guesthouse. By the time he arrived, she’d showered and slipped into jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Not giving herself time to think, she pulled her hair into a tiny ponytail, grabbed a sweatshirt and headed out the door.

  When she arrived at the school, Troy was already there. He greeted her with a warm smile and a kiss on the cheek, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

  Brett was stressing, drowning in last-minute details.

  Troy had brought a picnic lunch from the house, and had been trying to get the younger man to slow down and eat but he’d resisted until Lara arrived, and even then, his capitulation was decidedly grudging.

  The three of them sat on the large overstuffed sofas of the meeting room and enjoyed cold-cut sandwiches put together by Troy’s cook. Their conversation centered around the last grand celebration of the week, a cocktail party at the school.

  Brett and Troy had been screening student’s applications for months and had narrowed the field down to fifty young applicants. The upcoming dinner was designed to showcase the applicants attending and to present donor appreciation plaques, which would be displayed on the school’s common room wall. The opportunity for one final bid for money would also take place.

  A tremendous amount of work still needed to be done before the event. Listening, Lara volunteered to help with the filing, mailing, and sorting of the paperwork.

  She headed down the hall to Brett’s office. Just as she opened the first file, Brett cursed. Lara hurried to the room from which the men’s voices now emanated. She found them intensely examining the contents of several boxes.