Tempting as Sin

by Rosalind James

  “I could be offended by that,” Rafe said. “Or I could be tactful, except that your head’s too hard for tact to get through, and I’m a realist. So I’m just going to ask you this. How many women were there between Caroline and this one? And how many before Caroline, once you stopped killing people?”

  “None of your bloody business.”

  “Thought so. Is ‘zero’ the number we’re looking at?” When he got no answer, because the answer was already out there, Rafe said, “Besides, a Special Forces soldier marrying a cop with a tragic backstory is bound to be PTSD City. Tell me you don’t take turns waking up trying to kill each other during a flashback.”

  “If you mean that we understand each other,” Jace said, “you’re right. In my world, that’s a positive. Not that I asked your opinion.”

  “One more time,” Rafe said. “You need a sweet, stable woman. The loving, giving type who’ll tame the demons.”

  “Which you would know because…”

  “So I don’t go for that myself,” Rafe said. “That’s because I’m the shallow one. Also not the one scaring his family.”

  “I don’t scare my family.”

  “Yeah, mate,” Rafe said. This, Jace needed to hear. “You do. We had a bad couple years there.”

  A good thirty seconds of silence, like Jace thought Rafe could be pushed by an uncomfortable pause into talking, like he was that much the younger brother still. Finally, Jace said, “When you suddenly decided to spend your time between films in Manhattan, and I happened to be living there myself. Don’t tell me.”

  “All right,” Rafe said, “I won’t. I don’t have to. You just found out.”

  “I do not need a bloody caretaker,” Jace said. “I may have gone through a few dark days, but those days are over. I don’t need the kind of woman you’re talking about, either. You’d think she was boring, and I’d think she was worse. I want Paige and she wants me, and that’s all you need to know.”

  Of course she wants you, Rafe did not say. How much was that last advance? What’s not to want? She’s a divorced cop with a loser ex and a father who worked in the Modesto stockyards. Rafe had checked her out. Jace hadn’t been to Modesto. Rafe had. Well, not to it. Through it. In July. Modesto in midsummer looked good in the rearview mirror.

  Jace had been born with an extra protectiveness gene, but even protectors sometimes needed protecting. Which was why Rafe was here. Unannounced. If he was right, he’d be saving Jace from falling into that pit again. Better now than after that proposal, or, worse, after the marriage. He didn’t want to think what another shot to his brother’s heart would do. There were only so many times you could put the pieces back together without permanent damage.

  And if he was wrong? It could get dicey, but he was an actor. He knew how to pivot. And he wasn’t expecting to be wrong.

  An hour later, Rafe was waiting his turn at the concierge desk in the ornate marble lobby of the Fairmont Hotel. It was proving to be quite a wait, because the couple in front of him was having difficulties.

  “So,” the woman was asking, “when we go out of the hotel, which way do we turn?”

  “To the right, madam,” the patient fella in the suit answered. “Just remember—downhill.”

  “And then we go where?” she asked.

  “I’ve got it, honey,” her husband said, a shade of impatience tingeing his voice.

  “You say you’ve got it,” she said, “but we always end up lost.”

  “We do not always end up lost,” he said. “You always think we’re lost.”

  The concierge said, “I could program it into your maps app, if you like.”

  “I don’t trust those,” the man said. “I’ll just follow my nose, and we’ll get there.”

  “Eventually,” the woman said. “Maybe. It’s our anniversary,” she told the concierge. “Forty-five years. If we end up stabbed to death in some horrible neighborhood, tell our grandchildren that I loved them.”

  Her husband snorted, the concierge smiled, and everybody started folding up maps. The hubby was letting her have the last word, then. Maybe that was the secret to forty-five years.

  Rafe stayed where he was. The fact that nobody was paying any attention to him meant that the new look and brown contact lenses were working. Besides, it was fascinating, and not just in a cautionary-tale kind of way. The woman had her hand through her husband’s arm, he’d squeezed that arm tighter and put his other hand over hers as they walked away, and Rafe could swear that they both felt that those forty-five years had been well spent. Loving each other right where you were. Not easy.

  The carefully groomed, business-casual brunette behind him sighed and said, “Finally,” and Rafe said, “Yeah,” and stepped forward.

  He didn’t need the advice. He wanted the practice.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the concierge asked, with no flicker at all in his eyes.

  “You sure can,” Rafe said, channeling his not-inner West Virginian. Clay Austin, to be precise, late of the Union Army. He had an unexpected night off? He might as well use it. Which meant taking his slow-talking, fast-drawing sheriff-for-hire out for a spin. Superheroes were all good, but this…this was a part. It wouldn’t be big money, but that wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed a stretch, and a way out of the seductive quicksand of the easy road. “I’m looking for a real nice bar,” he told the concierge. “Someplace with some class. Where would you suggest?”

  That was why, half an hour later, he was walking into the gorgeously lit, exotically paneled Redwood Room of the Clift Hotel. The bar was busy, but not crowded. Monday evening, he calculated. He tended to get his days of the week mixed up when he traveled across time zones.

  Some finance and corporate types here, and some tourist types, too. Not many techies—at least, nobody wearing skinny jeans and wool sneakers. Those, the concierge had told him, would be the South of Market crowd, next on his list. If this group were the Old West’s bankers and cattle brokers, what would the techies be? The cowboys? No. Cowboys worked too hard and died too poor. The gold miners, maybe, except, again, that most of them had died broke. Maybe the blokes who’d sold the picks and shovels to the gold miners. Or the homesteaders, staking their claim and digging deep to make it pay off, taking their shot at independence. But would you get rich? Maybe, if you prospered and expanded and became one of those cattle barons…

  The thought was in his head, and then it was gone.

  She was sitting at one end of the backlit, etched-glass bar, swiveled around enough on her stool to take in the room, with her elegant legs crossed, her coat thrown over the back of the stool, a glossy white shopping bag on the floor beneath her and a fashionable clutch on the bar in front of her. One graceful hand caressing the stem of a martini glass, and the other in her lap. No tension. No fidgets.

  It wasn’t that she was dressed up, because she wasn’t. Casual all the way, except that her look had taken effort, and he knew it. Dark stretch jeans, soft gray low-heeled boots, and an asymmetrical top in patches of blue velvet, lace, and something like linen. It had two collars and was ruffled on one side only, and had just enough vee of neckline to let you check out whether her skin could possibly be as smooth as you imagined. One of those garments that always confused him, but then, a woman like that would confuse you anyway. The dark-blue velvet jacket she was wearing over it added some more softness, in case you hadn’t got the message.

  She was wearing the kind of makeup meant to make a man think she wasn’t wearing any and was just naturally that perfect, while her blonde hair, a glorious mixture of gold, platinum, and caramel, shone as if that bar had been lit up just to showcase her. Even that, though, managed to look accidental. The hair was pulled up into a messy knot with stray wisps brushing a sweet curve of jawline, her full pink lips held a faint smile, and she wasn’t looking at a phone or using any of the other tricks a woman like her would have in her arsenal to put up a barrier. All the same, she had a dignity and a distance about her that dare
d you to breach it.

  Or maybe that was just him.

  He couldn’t tell what color her eyes were. He was guessing blue. He wanted to know. He also wanted to know if there was a ring on her finger. Probably. She spelled “rich and pampered” all the way.

  And yet…and yet. Something about her was pulling him straight across the room as if she had a superpower of her own, and it was more than her confidence and her sophistication. It was something else. Something sweeter. Softer. Velvet and lace.

  Every alarm bell was going off. His defenses had dropped too low, clearly, part of him still caught up in that breakup and its messy aftermath. When you’d loved and left America’s Sweetheart, and she’d bravely taken on the world with that perfect, heart-shaped, wounded-kitten face, the shine in those big blue eyes and the tremble of those pink lips as she insisted she was “fine,” you tended to get wary. Actors didn’t get to the top by accident, and Kylie Jordan had had years of practice looking sweet and broken. It wasn’t much fun, Rafe was discovering, being America’s Bastard. So—vulnerability? No, thank you. Failed experiment. Back to a woman with her own priorities, but who was willing to fit you in.

  His breakups had always been amicable, or at least they’d ended up that way. There may have been a glass or two thrown at the time, and he may have heard the words “Peter Pan” and “Commitment Phobe” more than once, but the bad feelings hadn’t stuck, had they? As often as not, he’d be invited to the wedding a year later, and he always made sure to send a great gift.

  Take the brunette behind him at the concierge desk, back at the hotel. She’d flashed the room number on her key folder a little too obviously, had held his gaze a shade too long, but she’d seemed pleased enough with a slow grin and a tilt of his head, giving her the rush and the confidence of knowing she was beautiful, and making her feel like he was tempted. What was wrong with that?

  He didn’t want to make anybody feel bad. He never had. That was the opposite of what he wanted. He loved making women happy. But you couldn’t exactly hold a press conference to explain that you weren’t trying to break any hearts and your only goal was to leave a woman with a smile on her face, could you?

  No. You couldn’t.

  He didn’t head for the blonde. He headed for the bartender, a competent bloke with fast hands who was blending a couple margaritas right now, his sharp gaze not missing a trick. When Rafe caught his eye, he said, “Be right with you,” poured the drinks into two salt-rimmed glasses with a little extra showmanship, added lime wedges with a flick of his wrist, and turned to Rafe even as the cocktail waitress headed off with the tray. “What can I get you?” he asked, wiping down the bar with a clean towel, summing Rafe up with a glance and then coming back for a second look. Classic double take.

  “Give me a beer,” Rafe said, taking his brand-new soft twang out for another airing. “Whatever’s on tap that’s good. And another one of whatever the blonde at the end of the bar is drinking.”

  More assessment, and the barman said, “She’s been shooting everyone down so far. If it doesn’t work, you could take out the contacts and drop the accent.”

  Rafe grimaced. “Still need some work, do I?”

  “To me,” the barman said. “But what do I know.” He drew a pint glass of IPA from the tap and then went to work on the other drink.

  “What is that thing?” Rafe asked, not sure if he was fascinated or appalled.

  The barman poured it out, then added a couple of fresh raspberries, which sank slowly through the bubbles, and a sprig of mint. “Pink Flirtini. Raspberry vodka, cranberry juice, and Champagne.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Nope.” The bloke slid it across the polished surface of the bar, took Rafe’s credit card, and said, “Woman like that sits at the bar for two reasons. One, because she wants to be noticed, or two, because she wants backup. That’s my job.”

  “Message received,” Rafe said. “Run a tab for me, would you? I could end up drinking alone.”

  Was it stupid? Probably. But it was one drink on one night. If it worked. What harm could it do?

  How long had it been since she’d gone out alone, Lily wondered? At night, among strangers? She couldn’t even remember. Ever since the divorce, she’d felt like she was missing the top two layers of skin. Or maybe she’d just stopped being numb, and this was what having feelings was like. In any case, the last thing she’d craved was any experience that reminded her of Manhattan, let alone Hollywood. The surface gloss and the ugliness beneath, the constant positioning and repositioning. A hall of mirrors, until you didn’t know what was real and what was illusion.

  In a small town, she’d discovered, you saw the same people every day, and they saw you. Asking a question about your snowplow blade at the hardware store, pumping your gas, or waiting your turn at the four-way stop. You never really knew somebody to the bone, of course. Except Paige. All the same—who you were wasn’t who you said you were. It was what you did when you thought nobody was watching, and in small-town Montana, somebody was always watching.

  Or what you did when you were with people with less power than you. That, most of all.

  So—no. She hadn’t been out alone in a while, especially not in the fishbowl that was a high-end bar at night. But it was working. She’d declined three offers of company without losing her poise, and she’d been able to stay detached, to use this as a research trip, and as…fun.

  That’s right. It was fun, not an ordeal from which she’d return home to have sentence passed on her looks and her behavior. She’d always tried not to hurt anybody. Tonight, she’d realized that she didn’t have to let anybody hurt her. It felt like a big moment.

  Meanwhile, there was that people-watching. San Francisco wasn’t the trendiest place on earth, but some of the women in here were rocking their day-to-night style all the same. A structured trouser suit in cream, paired with giant hoop earrings and stilettos. A deep gray jacket with ruffled detailing, saying you were serious, but you were a woman, too, and anybody with a problem could move along. A sleeveless silk top in rich purple with a bow at the high neckline, showing off toned arms. Strong and feminine and fun, and she was loving it.

  Nobody was giving much hint of the lingerie underneath. They had the confidence to save that for later. She’d bet they were spending on it, though. She hoped so, because she’d decided this afternoon to add a couple more high-end lines to the shop. Ones that came in sizes that went beyond “Medium.” Not everybody here was young or thin, but they cared about their presentation, and they were looking just fine. She could work with that.

  She didn’t notice the man until the cocktail glass hit the bar beside her nearly empty one. He was on her other side, standing in the smidgen of space at the end of the bar. She glanced over just enough to see his arm. Black sweater with the perfect amount of white cuff showing beneath, fastened by a silver cuff link. With a chain. The trousers would be black, too, she’d bet anything.

  She didn’t have to look any further to be sure, but she did anyway, maybe to doublecheck whether her instincts still worked.

  They did.

  His dark-blond hair was cut long at the top, slicked back, and parted at the side. Check, check, and check. He was missing the fashionable scruff, but that was probably because blond didn’t work so well for that, or because the financial services company didn’t allow it. He’d probably had a David Beckham poster on the wall of his suburban bedroom growing up, though, right next to his shelf of “I Participated” soccer trophies.

  She’d never been snarky, even in her own mind. It was kind of fun.

  “Cosmopolitan, right?” her visitor said, inclining his head toward the hot-pink drink, his confident smile showing off the effectiveness of his tooth-whitening program. “A little too much Sex and the City, but I can forgive you being stuck in the past when it looks that hot.”

  She looked him over, and his smile went all the way from confident to cocky. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, leaning
a bit closer. “If you’ve got a tattoo on your lower back, I win a bet. My buddy says a flower. I say a bow, because you’re just asking to be unwrapped. I might have to take a picture to prove it, though. Would that bother you?”

  Ah. A pickup artist. She said, “You’re a little behind the times yourself, aren’t you? It’s been a while since The Neg worked on women. We don’t actually fall for being belittled, whatever the workshop said.”

  Definitely fun. Paige must feel this way all the time.

  Mr. Non-Beckham’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Challenging, huh? That’s good. Want to get out of here? I’m hungry, and I’ll bet you are, too.”

  She’d already started to swivel back around when her view of his arm was cut off. Somehow, another drink and another hand had found their way onto the bar between her and the cuff link, and another arm, too. The shirt on this one was gray cotton, the cuff was rolled up, and there was no ornamentation visible, not even a watch. But it was a beautiful hand. Solid. Strong. Tanned. Big palm, long fingers. A deep V-shaped scar showed white against the bottom knuckle of his forefinger, and the beginnings of some impressive muscle corded the few inches of arm visible beneath the cuff. That hand and arm had done some work.

  The shirt was tucked into jeans, both pieces cut slim but not overdone. The body under there was pretty special, too, but he wasn’t flaunting it.

  Oh, boy.

  All of that went through her mind in the instant before he said, his voice low, amused, and tinged with the sexiest drawl east of the Mississippi, “Sorry I’m late, honey. Does another Flirtini make up for it?”

  “It might,” she said, with a glance out of the corner of her eye. The David wannabe hesitated a second, then made the prudent decision to withdraw.

  Because…wow. This guy’s—man’s—too-long dark hair brushed his collar all the way around, and it wasn’t slicked back in any way, shape, or form. He did have some black scruff to go with it, and a pair of golden-brown eyes that were…she didn’t have the right word, or maybe she just didn’t want to think it. It was more than that, though. The amusement in those eyes was drawing her in, inviting her to share the joke. He didn’t look around, but asked, “Is he gone?”