by Jane Graves
"You have to get out of my room. If you don't—"
"Something will happen that shouldn't?"
"No! It's not that. It's Randall. If he finds out—"
"Will you forget Randall? Have a seat."
"You need to leave."
"No, I believe I'm going to stay. And I'd like it very much if you stayed with me."
Sarah knew she should demand he leave her suite immediately. Call security if she had to. But that would only call attention to the fact that there was something going on between her and Nick, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.
With a sigh of irritation, she sat on the other lounge.
"You're tense," he said.
"Of course I'm tense!"
"Put your feet up. Relax."
"Right about now a coma wouldn't relax me."
"So I guess you're a little surprised to see me."
"Yeah? You think?"
"Well, imagine my surprise when I popped onto Randall's Facebook page last night and there you were. The woman who left me a year ago without a trace."
It all came rushing back to her, the panic she'd felt that morning when she realized what she'd done, the desperation she felt to leave before he woke. But most of all she remembered that conflicted, heartbreaking moment when she looked at his handsome face by the light of the full moon coming through the window and said a silent goodbye.
"I'm sorry about that," she said. "But it was for the best."
"For the best? Who decided that?"
"You shouldn't be here with me. It's…inappropriate."
“Yeah, it probably is. But I don’t remember you having a problem with my inappropriate behavior. In fact, I’m pretty sure you liked it.”
Wrong. She hadn't just liked it. She'd loved it. And for the past year, she'd had a hard time forgetting it. But there was more to life than sex. Even great sex. Spectacular sex. The kind of sex that made rivers change course and continents tremble. Even now, a year later, she still blushed at the thought of it, but that had been an anomaly. An aberration. A momentary loss of the common sense she'd had all her life. That kind of crazy had never come over her before, and she didn't imagine it ever would again. At heart she was like Randall. Smart. Driven. Reserved. Civil. She’d chosen the right man, and nobody was going to tell her any differently.
“That wasn’t me," she told Nick.
“Yeah? Then who was it? Your sexy twin sister?”
“I don’t make a habit of that kind of behavior.”
“So the real you is the woman engaged to my brother?”
“Yes.”
“He's the man of your dreams?”
“Yes. In every way.”
"Boring sex and all?"
"Nick!"
"Hey, it's just an educated guess.”
"Well, stop guessing.”
When Nick just smiled, she felt totally transparent, as if he could read her thoughts. When she was with him before, communicating with little more than a look had been a glorious feeling. Now it made her nervous and wary, wondering what he was going to figure out next.
"So how did you meet Randall?" Nick asked.
"We were on the same plane," she said vaguely.
"Seems random. Where were you going?"
Nick wasn't going to like this. But how could she lie? If he asked his brother about it, Randall would have no reason not to say where he'd met her. "It was a flight from Salt Lake City to Houston. We happened to sit together."
"And when was that?"
She paused. "A year ago last January."
Nick's look of utter disbelief told her the precise moment he understood.
"Let me get this straight. You met Randall on your return flight to Houston only hours after you left me?"
"He was in Park City to finalize the sale of your family's condo."
"And now you're getting married."
"Yes."
Nick shook his head. "Big mistake."
Sarah blinked with surprise. "Excuse me?"
"He's not the man for you, and you’re not the woman for him."
"Why in the world would you say that?"
"Well, for starters, you’re a free spirit. He's a stick in the mud.”
"Free spirit? Me?"
“You insisted on making snow angels in the city park. You sang karaoke in the hotel bar even though you can't carry a tune in a bucket. And later you ordered champagne from room service and poured it on my—
"Stop!” She held up her palm, taking a deep, calming breath. “Please don’t remind me. Please.”
So that was what he meant. A free spirit was the same thing as a woman who had temporarily lost her mind. But the key word was temporarily.
“Nick. Listen to me. You can’t tell anybody what happened between us. Do you understand? Nobody.”
"The truth will set me free."
"No, Nick. The truth will get your teeth knocked out."
Nick laughed. "Yeah, it probably will. For Randall, one excuse to take a swing at me is as good as another. So I might as well spill it."
"Even if you hurt me in the process?"
"See, that's the point. I'm not sure that preventing you from marrying Randall would hurt you.”
"Are you kidding? How would that not hurt me?”
"So what makes him the man for you? Why do you love him?"
Sarah opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Absolutely nothing. She thought, He's handsome, only to realize how shallow that sounded. Then she thought, He's successful, but that was tied to money, and once again—shallow. Because he's the man I always imagined marrying, she started to say, but how reliable were adolescent dreams, anyway?
Answer him!
But not a single word would pass her lips.
"It's complicated," she said finally.
"Complicated?" Nick said carefully, as if he couldn't quite comprehend the word. "Hmm. So far you're batting zero."
"Now, that's where you're wrong," she explained. "Complicated relationships are interesting. They evolve over time. With the free expression of both parties, pretty soon, you know, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, creating a union with strength and substance and—"
"Hold on there, Sarah. You lost me back there where you were adding the parts together."
Damn it. She knew she should have kept that only in her head. Babbling incoherently didn't exactly make her case.
"Well, I just dropped by to say hi," Nick said with a cheery smile, swinging his legs around to sit on the side of his lounge. "Guess we'll be seeing each other around."
Wait a minute! Was he or was he not going to torpedo her wedding and destroy her life? That was the ten thousand pound elephant in the room.
"So…that's it?" she said.
"Yeah. You've given me a pretty good picture of how you feel about Randall. Passion, passion, and more passion. It just oozes out of you, Sarah. You can barely contain it."
She was ninety-nine percent sure he was being a smart ass, but in case it was the other one percent, she kept her mouth shut.
"Now it's time to find out how he feels about you."
Sarah froze. It was on the tip of her tongue—No! Don't you dare do that! But then he'd wonder what she had to hide. And she had nothing to hide.
"Go ahead," she said nonchalantly. "Ask him."
"Oh, I intend to. We'll have all the time in the world to chat when we're playing golf in the morning."
Her heart jumped with apprehension. Nine holes. That took about two hours. God only knew how much damage he could inflict in that length of time.
Nick stood up. "Gotta go, Sarah."
He rose and walked to the edge of the balcony. In a single quick move, he leaped up to stand on the concrete ledge.
"Nick!" Sarah gasped. "What are you doing?"
"Going back to my room." With that, he launched himself off the ledge, flying through the air between the balconies.
Nick!"
He touched down on the oppos
ite ledge with one foot, then sprang off it to hop to the balcony floor. Sarah stood there, her hand clutched to her chest.
"Are you out of your mind?" she shouted. "It's three stories to the ground!"
Nick turned back and grinned. "I've made bigger leaps. Way bigger. Try a switchback 1080 double cork on a snowboard. Now that's hard."
"You're right next door? How did that happen?"
"It was open. Five hundred bucks a night, and it was all mine."
"You asked them to put you next to me?"
"Bad move, I know. You snore. I can probably hear you through the wall. It'll keep me up all night."
"I do not snore!"
He gave her a pointed look, and she withered with embarrassment. "Okay, so I snore,” she snapped. “But that's not the issue. You can't be right next door. You need to stay away from me!"
“No way. I didn’t fly two thousand miles to stay away from you." He went to the ledge again, motioning for Sarah to come closer. Then he leaned over and spoke in a loud whisper.
"If you hear three knocks on the wall…"
"Yes?"
"It means I'm thinking about you." With that, he gave her one last smile and disappeared into his suite.
Sarah went back inside. Sat down. Stood up. Paced across the room and back again.
Sensory overload. That was what she'd felt ever since she'd seen Nick in that courtyard bar. She took a deep, calming breath, only to imagine him asking Randall the same question he'd asked her. So what makes Sarah the woman for you?
Well, that was easy. He would say…
Say what?
Oh, hell. She had no idea what he would say, but she had a feeling Nick would never hear the word passion escape his lips.
She grabbed her phone and dialed Randall's number. She listened through five rings before he finally answered.
"Sarah? What's up?"
"Nothing's up. I just thought…you know. I'd call to say good night."
"Oh. Okay." He paused. "I thought we already said good night."
"That wasn't a real good night," she said, injecting a note of smoldering sexuality into her voice. "I miss you. Do you miss me?"
"Yeah."
"I can't wait to see you tomorrow," she murmured breathlessly.
"I can't wait to see you, either."
The words were the right ones, but where was the passion? She knew that tone. It was the one he used whenever she called him at the office. He had one ear tuned to her, but every other part of his anatomy was engaged in something else.
"Randall? Do you remember the night we kissed beneath that streetlamp outside Café Vienna?"
"Uh, no. I don't remember that."
"It was Valentine's Day," she purred.
No response.
"After we had dinner at Cavanaugh's."
Nothing.
"Don't you remember?" she said, her sexy voice slipping away. "It was that romantic restaurant on the twenty-fifth floor of that bank building. The one with the beautiful view."
Silence. Had he fallen asleep?
"I wore a black halter dress and those four-inch heels you said you liked."
"Uh…"
"The ones with the sequins on the toes."
"Sorry. I don't—"
"Randall," she snapped, "you had a sixteen-ounce ribeye and two glasses of Islay single malt Scotch!"
"Oh, yeah! Now I remember. I liked that place."
God. She was convinced he'd remember flying to the moon only if he sat down on the lunar surface and ate a rack of ribs.
"Anyway, back to the kiss," she said, searching for her sexy voice again. "We went to that coffee house afterward, remember? And as we were walking to your car, we stopped and kissed under that streetlight."
"You know, I do remember that."
"You do?"
"It was raining."
"Yes! Yes! And we ignored it, because we were so hot for each other that we couldn't wait until we got to the car. I'd say that was pretty…you know. Passionate. Wouldn't you?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Until the trash truck came down the street and slung water all over us."
Well, hell. She'd forgotten that part. All she remembered was the kiss. Randall remembered the muddy water.
"Did you need something else?" Randall asked.
Sarah sighed. "Will you meet me for lunch after you get back from golf?" So I can see if there's still going to be a wedding?
"Sure."
They said their nonpassionate good nights and hung up. Sarah tossed her phone aside, apprehension creeping in. If Nick asked questions about their relationship and all Randall could talk about was muddy water, Nick was going to think they really weren't right for each other. Then what? Would he tell Randall what happened just to keep her from marrying him?
Or maybe her well-being wasn't his true motive.
Nick and Randall clearly had some kind of sibling rivalry they'd never gotten over. If Nick was looking for a way to get back at his brother, telling him he'd slept with his fiancee would probably fit the bill. She imagined being in her suite tomorrow morning getting ready for lunch, only to have Randall bang on her door, barge inside her room still dressed in his golf clothes and fuming with anger, demanding to know what the hell had happened between her and Nick. She couldn't even think about that without going insane with worry.
And then she heard it. Three soft knocks on the wall behind her. And she almost melted into the mattress.
Nick knew how to rattle her. No doubt about that. And no doubt he was locked and loaded. If he chose to fire, he could blow her wedding plans to smithereens.
4
Golf. God, how Nick hated it.
Life was not intended to be lived in slow motion, so he didn’t understand why any man would spend hours of that life walking, swinging a club, walking, swinging a club, and then waaaalking some more.
That was why he was so addicted to snowboarding. Speed, speed, and more speed, topped off by an exhilarating rush of adrenaline. But he’d been taught that golf was a game for wealthy businessmen, assuring them a place in the inner circle, so he was expected to learn it. Playing golf in high school had been one of his many attempts to please his parents. It had worked, right up to the time he quit the team. Yet one more time in his youth when the proverbial shit had hit the proverbial fan.
It had been three years since he’d seen Randall. He'd thought it was possible Sarah had changed him for the better, and he was no longer the sanctimonious jerk of a brother he remembered. Then last night he pulled the golf thing. He’d always been like that. Always. Dictating to other people as if he ruled the world.
Nick may have shown up at Cinnamon Hill this morning just as Randall had demanded, but the last thing he intended to do was take any crap. Instead, he planned to find out a few things, such as why a woman like Sarah would be marrying a man like his brother. Was he treating her right? Did he love her? Did she love him? A million questions swirled around inside his head, and he wanted answers to all of them.
“I can’t believe you haven’t kept up with golf,” Randall said, as he prepared to tee off. “There are some great courses in Park City.”
“I told you before. It’s not my game.”
“Yeah. Your game is snowboarding, right?"
The derision in his voice irritated the crap out of Nick. He felt that age-old swell of anger and shoved it back down again.
"Yep. Snowboarding. That's my thing."
"I assume you're still teaching it to the tourists?" Randall asked.
So Randall really didn't know. He didn't know Nick had started an online business and was well on his way to making it a success, the very business Randall had refused to invest in. Yeah, Nick still occasionally taught snowboarding lessons on the mountain, but that was more for fun than anything else. The money he made doing that was dwarfed by the money his business brought in. Randall had just assumed that without his participation, the business had never gotten off the ground. Nick had the urge to toss a few num
bers his brother's way. But while they were respectable for a new business, he had a long way to go for a real profit to come his way, so knew it wouldn't be long before Randall found a way to disparage him. After all, nothing could ever approach the success of Baxter Industries.
"That's right," Nick said. "Still preying on the tourists."
Randall shrugged dismissively. "If you don't have a degree, I suppose it's a decent way to make a buck."
Nick took his swing. The ball sailed straight down the fairway and landed fewer than ten feet from the pin. Take that, you sanctimonious jerk.
"Nice shot," Randall said. "But can you keep it up for nine holes?"
"Probably not," Nick said. "You know me. Can't keep my attention on anything for very long."
They finished the first hole with Randall even and Nick one under par. Randall climbed behind the wheel of the golf cart, and they started toward second hole. The course was stunning, with most of the holes offering a view of the Caribbean Sea. Under normal circumstances, Nick might actually have enjoyed himself, but he knew for a fact this round of golf was going to take every bit of patience he had.
"So, Nick," Randall said casually. "Tell me why you're really here."
"I told you before. I was invited to my brother's wedding."
Randall brought the cart to a halt. "There has to be more to it than that."
"Park City is cold this time of year. I could use a little sand and surf."
"I don't want you causing trouble."
“What makes you think I’m going to cause trouble?”
“Experience.” Randall slid his five iron out of his bag. “Take a certain family reunion. You showed up with a woman who looked like a hooker. Gee, you must have had to hit a dozen streetcorners on Castellano Avenue before you found her.”
“Nope. Found her right off the bat. Castellano Avenue is a regular smorgasbord.”
“Mom practically had a stroke.”
“I don’t know why. She was a nice enough girl.”
“She told Mom she bought her clothes from a website called Slut-Strutter.com.”
Okay, so nice really wasn’t the right word to describe Bonnie. Or Betty. Or Barbara. Whatever her name had been. He remembered being in a bar the night before, and when she sashayed over and showed him her considerable assets, he asked her if she’d like to go to a family reunion. Just for fun. Just to shake things up.
