An Irresistible Temptation (32 page)

Sophie stopped with her cup halfway to her
lips. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t know what happened in San Francisco,
dear, but you have to take him back. He loves you.”

Too many things were wrong with what she was
saying. She started to shake her head, but Sarah continued,
“Please, Sophie. When Eliza broke it off with him, I never saw a
happier man. He went charging out of here, ready to claim you. It
was clear as day to me and Doc. And then, instead, the only happy
news I heard was that he’d passed his exams and was coming back a
licensed doctor.”

Sarah sipped her tea but barely took a breath
between sentences. “I still thought, until he got off the train
alone, that he was surprising us by bringing you back as his
bride.”

Sophie’s eyes had grown increasingly wider
until she put her head in her hands and groaned.

She felt Sarah stroke her head. “He’s a good
man,” she said.

Sophie’s breath felt ragged. She wanted to
cry, this was so downright confusing. Instead, she raised her head.
“Sarah, I cannot take him back because he was never mine.”

“I don’t understand.” Sarah had a frown on
her face that mirrored Sophie’s confusion.

“I don’t either.” Riley, alone, had those
answers. “He never . . . asked for my hand, or declared his love.
Well, he did once, but then, he changed his mind.”

“Does he seem like a man who changed his
mind?”

“Are you saying he’s behaving this way
because he loves me?”

“Pining for you, more like. Missing you with
an ache as big as his heart. Why, I saw more sparks between you and
him in the short time you were here than I ever did in over two
years between him and Eliza.”

Sophie knew a thing or two about those
sparks. She blushed.

“See, I was right.” Sarah had a knowing glint
in her eye.

“But I’m leaving soon,” Sophie protested. “I
have to get back. I have rehearsals and another concert in a
week.”

“Then I don’t know what will happen after
you’ve gone, but I know that ol’ Webster sent telegrams to two
hospitals requesting a doctor come apply for town physician. He was
that upset about how Riley treated Anna last week.”

“I hadn’t heard about that. What
happened?”

“Anna came to the surgery, all in a tizzy,
’cause she thought she’d been bit by a rattlesnake. Nasty looking
red mark on her leg. Riley started treating her and then Doc came
in and took over so Riley could go find the snake where she said
she’d cut its head off with a shovel.”

Sophie cringed. Charlotte had told her about
that particular method of protection, but she’d not seen a rattler
and hoped to God she never would.

“When Riley got back he was all yelling about
the foolishness of women and Anna started crying. He said it would
serve her right if she died from fright. Then he dumped out the
dead, headless snake right on the table next to the poor girl and
said, ‘It’s a damn harmless bull snake.’ And he walked right out of
there.”

“I tell you it took me a while to get Anna to
stop crying and Doc was flabbergasted at his behavior. Webster was
hopping mad, and still is.”

Sophie had seen him with young Jack and had
no doubt it was all true. However, she remembered his kindness with
her when her hand was injured, not a life threatening injury at
all, but he’d been patient and caring.

“He was never like this before, though, was
he?”

“He’s a different man. And unfortunately, no
one likes him. No one blames Eliza, at this rate, either.”

“I guess I better talk to him. I tried last
night, but he got defensive.”

“Webster’s got a doctor coming to see if
she—yes,
she
—likes the town enough to live here, so if Riley
wants to keep his job, you’d better turn him around, right
quick.”

She used Sarah’s wagon to reach the Dalcourt
homestead about twenty minutes out of town. In the mild weather,
Sophie could have walked, but it would have been a long journey,
and she might be coming home after sundown. In any case, the
rattlesnake story had given her pause about walking past the
outskirts of town, such as it was.

Mr. Dalcourt, the elder, certainly must like
his isolation, she thought, as she left any semblance of a road.
All around her were the wide open spaces that Riley loved to ride;
the grass was a yellowish-green after the long winter and the sky
was a cloudless blue. There were red scrubby plants, which she had
no idea what they were, and plenty of white flowers. Foothills
stretched away to bigger mountains in the distance.

It was beautiful and enormous and made Sophie
want to run for the nearest cable car. Except there weren’t any.
She felt about an inch tall and a bit panicky for a moment. Yes,
she decided, she liked the paved streets of Boston and the masses
of people in San Francisco.

Following Sarah’s directions of landmarks—a
large pine and a juniper, an old fence, and a strangely shaped
boulder—at last she saw a small white house seeming to be growing
out of the landscape, itself, along with a barn. More pine trees
shaded a fenced paddock, and a windmill was turning lazily. Riley’s
horse grazed behind the fence, keeping company with two others.
There was also a goat grazing nearby; it looked at her idly as she
halted the wagon and got down from the seat.

Suddenly, her hands were sweaty and her heart
was pounding. This new Riley who yelled and thumped the table was
daunting. But she didn’t fear him.
Just a lion with a thorn
.
Right!

She swallowed, wiped her hands on her dress,
arranged her bonnet that had fallen sideways, and walked up to the
front door.

She knocked and waited. Silence. She knocked
again. Should she be feeling as relieved as she did? She could turn
around and tell Sarah she’d tried. But then Riley would lose his
job and the respect of everyone in town.

She bit her lip. Where could he be? He wasn’t
in town. She knew that because she’d ridden right through it to get
to Riley’s. His horse was there; three of them, in fact, but that
didn’t mean he didn’t have another one that he was riding. Perhaps
he was sleeping. The thought of him in bed made her prickly and
nervous. Riley’s bed. What did it look like?

She tried the knob. It turned easily in her
hand and she pushed the door open.

“Riley,” she called out. “It’s Sophie” Still
nothing. A thief could walk right in, but she guessed he didn’t
worry too much about anyone happening upon his place out here.

Venturing inside, she realized she was
tiptoeing at first and started to walk with heavy feet, making as
much noise as possible. If he was upstairs, she didn’t want to
startle him.

The house was very similar in style to
Charlotte’s home. She bypassed the empty front parlor and went down
the hallway to the kitchen, which she found also empty. Out the
window was a beautiful view of the mountains. She looked for a
moment and then her eyes drifted over to a small wooden structure
and it dawned on her it was an outhouse.

Good God!
If Charlotte’s house hadn’t
had a real water closet upstairs, why, Sophie wouldn’t have been
able to stay in it. She was not the pioneering type.

Turning away, she considered venturing
upstairs, to take a peek. Right then, she felt the hair on the back
of her neck stand up and at the same time, she heard boots on the
back step.

“Sarah,” Riley said coming in. He stopped
short when he saw Sophie in his kitchen.

They stared at each other a moment.

“I borrowed her wagon and her horse, too, of
course,” Sophie said, clutching at her skirts nervously in both
hands, for something to hold onto. Indeed, the room seemed to
shrink with his presence and tilt with the sudden rush of blood to
her head. “Sorry to barge in. I knocked. More than once.”

“I was in the barn,” he said. That was
obvious. His clothes were grimy and pieces of straw stuck in his
hair. He had streaks on his face and a cloth tied around his neck
to catch the sweat. He looked more appealing than ever.

“I didn’t think to look there,” she admitted.
“Not yet. I mean, I only just arrived.”

He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he hadn’t moved
an inch farther inside his own house. But he did close the door and
lean against it, legs crossed at his ankles, arms crossed over his
chest.

He looked utterly forbidding, Sophie
thought.

“Why did you come? Does Doc need me?” he
asked.

“No. I came to talk to you.”

“About?”

“About whatever is going on with you. Sarah
said—”

“Sarah sent you?” He made a sound of disgust
and pushed away from the door. He wrenched off first one boot, then
the other, and dropped them to the varnished wooden floor. She
shrank aside as he approached her, but he went to the sink and
started washing his hands. He stared out the window while he dried
them, leaving a bunch of dirty streaks on the kitchen towel, she
noticed.

Finally, he looked at her again, his lustrous
eyes so deep she could fall right into them. “What did Sarah say?”
he asked.

She couldn’t tell him all that Sarah had
said, in case Doc’s wife was plain wrong about Riley’s
feelings.

“She said you’re acting differently than you
did before you went away the last time.”

He sighed. “We went over this at Ada’s last
night. I’ll talk to Doc later.”

She hugged herself. “It may be too late for
that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Webster has an open invitation to any
doctor who’ll come fill the position. And already someone’s coming
to answer his request.”

“Well, damn.” He ran his hand up the back of
his head. “I don’t think Doc’s going to replace me, but I owe it to
him to do better. I’ll paste on a smile, if that’s what people
want.”

“Riley,” Sophie tried again. “What the people
of Spring City want is for you to be happy.”

“Well, that’s not going to be easy.”

“Why?”

He dismissed her question. “Are you staying
long? ‘Cause I need to take a bath.”

“Are you refusing to talk to me?”

“Suit yourself and stay.” He put on a large
kettle and two pots of water to boil. Then he opened a cupboard and
dragged out a tin washtub. Sophie’s mouth opened.

“No bathroom upstairs,” he drawled. “My
parents weren’t quite as modern as the Sanborns or about everyone
else in town, for that matter.” He removed his dirty neckerchief
with a tug.

Poor, unfortunate Mrs. Dalcourt, the elder,
was all Sophie could think. Or the younger, for that matter,
knowing that whomever Riley took for a wife probably would be
expected to live here. Certainly, she couldn’t picture Eliza
bathing in the kitchen, but then they would most likely have lived
in the Prentice home in town, not his. His parents still lived here
sometimes, didn’t they?

She had no more time to ask questions because
he was stripping off his dirty shirt faster than she could blink.
Suddenly, she was staring at his rippling flat stomach and the
barest amount of dusky hair tapering right down to his—

“Riley,” she said with a warning, as he undid
his belt and put his hands to his button fly. He shrugged and
opened a button, then another, and she started to see more dark
hair.

Sophie fled before any more skin or anything
else was exposed. She was sure she heard him laugh at her. Well, he
wouldn’t get rid of her that easily. From the front hall, she
listened for the sounds of water hitting the tin tub and then
splashing as he bathed. She paced the hall, sat a moment in the
parlor on a well-worn chair, and then paced some more. At last, she
heard his footsteps and turned as he opened the kitchen door.

“Christ Almighty!” she muttered, as he stood
there in nothing but a small bleached white towel, damp brown hair
curling everywhere on his head at once. Everything else was flesh
and muscle. She hadn’t seen this much of him in any of their
previous encounters, and she couldn’t stop staring. He was like the
statue of David she’d seen in Florence or any number of paintings
of Adonis. Not that she’d ever say such a thing to fill his
head.

Even the light hair on his strong legs and
muscled arms fascinated her. She wanted to run her hand over it and
over his sculpted chest, where it ridged down to his waist. She
recalled the feel of his firm chest from their encounter in her
hotel room. That was all she’d had the chance to caress when he’d
deflowered her.

He didn’t look like he wanted her to caress
him now, though. If she had to name his expression, it would be
annoyance.

“It’s not polite to stare,” he rasped, and
she thought she saw his towel move, all on its own accord.

“If you’re going to prance around—”

“—in my
own
house. And, Sophie, I
don’t prance.”

“Still,” she said, flushing red and unable to
keep her eyes from roaming over his body and her brain went
blank.

“I was in such a hurry to get clean, I didn’t
get any clothes from upstairs, or even a bath towel. Besides, I
wasn’t sure you were still here.”

“I think you knew I was here,” she
countered.

He tilted his head. “Maybe I hoped you
weren’t.”

That stung and without warning, she felt
tears in her eyes. Crying was the last thing she wanted to do in
front of him. He didn’t want her here. He didn’t want to talk to
her. She couldn’t help him anyway, and she had no idea what would
make a man happy.

Turning away, she was already blinded by her
unshed tears, but she made it to the door, hand on the knob, when
she realized he was close behind her. He touched her, his fingers
resting very lightly on her shoulder, then he pulled away
quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice so low and
rough, it sounded raw. “You shouldn’t have come here, not
alone.”