An Affair of Deceit (26 page)

“What had you expected?”

God, what
had
he imagined? Nothing like what had actually happened. Maybe he thought Abigail would get along famously with his mother, just like all of his other friends did.

He was quickly learning that Abigail was nothing like his other friends. “I guess I didn’t think you’d go for her jugular.”

She laughed. “Please. That woman can handle herself.”

“You really don’t get along with other women, do you?”

“I like them just fine. My secretary is a woman, you know.” She didn’t turn her head to answer, which was just as well. She needed to focus on her footing. Plenty of things burrowed in the ground around here, creating sinkholes that could take out an ankle.

“I do. I imagine that you get along very well with her. I also imagine that she’s quite firmly under your command.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean that you like women as long as you control them. You don’t like it when they’re loose cannons who might steal your man.”

“What?” Abigail whipped around, her usually placid face contorted. “
Steal my man?
”

“Well, yeah. You didn’t like that CIA agent Evangeline Quill at first, did you?”

Abigail crossed her arms.

“You didn’t like her. I could tell,” he went on. “You were a coiled spring in that meeting until you realized that she was engaged to Oliver McCrea. And what about your mother?”

“What
about
my mother?”

“You think she chased your dad off, which was bad enough, but when you found out he’d been visiting her, you nearly exploded.”

“Hardly. It was simply a secret—probably one of many—that she’d been keeping from me. I hate being lied to, or being kept in the dark by people who think they’re protecting me.”

Riley looked around. They stood arguing in the middle of his mother’s enormous front lawn. He didn’t sense danger, but that didn’t stop him from feeling uncomfortable. “Could we discuss this somewhere else?”

“How about we don’t discuss it at all?” She turned around and began trotting down the trail.

He ran to catch up. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t say anything, but she did slow her pace. He was able to appreciate the beauty of the trail that he’d walked a thousand times, usually with Greene or another friend, but sometimes alone. He’d spent a lot of time alone as a kid, however hard his mother tried to make their home a welcoming sanctuary for everyone he knew. He’d had plenty of friends, but strangely, none but Greene had stuck around. There was no one else with whom he still had contact.

Their path now led into the forest, where it was several degrees cooler and riotous with the sounds of songbirds and squirrels.

One screamed above Abigail’s head, and she stumbled backward into Riley. He caught her in his arms, and he thought she
stayed a little longer in his arms than she would have if she were a stranger. It actually frustrated him more to think that she was contriving to touch him. Such flirtations were too small for as well as they now knew each other.

“It’s just a squirrel,” he said, and let her go.

“It sounded like a demon,” she said breathlessly, and brushed her hands on her dark indigo jeans. She retook the lead, and they hiked silently for another few hundred yards.

The path was mostly level and well worn, though brush had begun to invade. He wondered if any of the neighbor kids were still using it, and then he remembered that they were all too old. Even the youngest was away at college. In a few years, the next generation might find the trail, but for now, it was empty. Nobody came down here anymore.

The white noise of running water began to crescendo as they walked closer to their destination.

“I think I hear it,” she said and sped up.

It broke his heart that she was excited. He’d hoped that she’d love this trail just as much as he did. He wanted so badly to share his life with her, but he was crestfallen that she hadn’t gotten along with his mother.

He trudged along behind her, almost wishing that they would turn back. She liked the trail but not his mom. Why the hell not?

“It’s beautiful!” Abigail stood at the end of the path, on the tip of a large, flat rock that jutted out over the series of waterfalls.

“Careful.” He hurried forward to grab her hand. “We used to jump off this.”

“Into what? The waterfall? You’re crazy.”

“If you get a running start, you can make it into the deepest pool.”

“And if you don’t?”

“We always did,” he said and felt a grin form on his face.

“Having a son would drive me insane.”

A son? She’d never mentioned children before. It struck him deeply. “Abigail,” he began, but faltered.

“What?” She turned. “Oh. Do you want to continue that conversation about me hating women?”

“Not particularly.”

“Why not? Did you realize that you were wrong?”

No, but he still regretted the words. It wouldn’t do them any good to discuss Abigail’s jealousy of other women. It was the sort of deep-seated problem that would take hours of therapy, and he wasn’t interested in taking her on as a patient. Riley had tried that self-flagellation once and would never again. “I’m just sorry that you didn’t get along with my mom.”

“Did you think we’d be braiding each other’s hair? Painting each other’s nails? Gossiping in sleeping bags?”

“Don’t be mean. I just…” He shook his head. It didn’t matter; there was no point in trying to convince her of why his mother mattered so much to him—and why Abigail did, too. He wanted the two important women in his life to like each other. Was that so hard to understand? “Let’s just go back. This isn’t working.”

“Fine.” Abigail took an angry step toward him, but there was no room for her to get to the trail unless he moved aside.

“Wait.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, wanting so badly to kiss her, but the look in her eyes warned him away. He dropped his hands. “I just wanted to bring you into my life, that’s all.”

“I was in your life,” she said with exasperation. “I just wasn’t in your mother’s.”

“But she’s a big part of my life. I can’t be involved with a woman who can’t stand my mother.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Abigail narrowed her dark gaze. “You’re a psychologist, and yet you really don’t understand what you’re saying, do you?”

“You think I have mommy issues, and you’re wrong. She means a lot to me—she’s
done
a lot for me—and I don’t think it’s
too much to ask a woman I’m dating to at least try to get along with her.”

Abigail’s face went blank.

Oh
. He’d just referred to her as
a woman he was dating
. Was that bad? Should he have said “girlfriend”? Or “partner”? He didn’t have the slightest clue what else to call her.

Maybe she just hadn’t thought of it yet.

As he watched her face, he realized that he’d pleased her, not upset her. Her eyes were brighter; her jaw was looser. She was happy.

Thank goodness for small miracles.

“The woman you’re dating might not want to play second fiddle to your mother,” she said in a small voice.

“The woman I’m dating should know that I can love her and my mother at the same time, in different ways. There’s enough love in me for the both of you.”

Abigail’s eyes softened, but her brow creased. “You can’t put your mother before your—woman you’re dating.”

“And you can’t keep score in love. What happens if you have kids? Will you begrudge their father if he loves them too much? Will you force him to choose between you and the kids? Will you keep track of the number of times he says he loves you versus the number of times he tells your kids he loves them?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Not from where I’m standing.” He looked over her shoulder, away from her dark, damp eyes. The air was misty from the spray of the waterfall. It was the sort of place where a man might propose to a girl, not break up with her.

Was one of those two things happening? His pulse thrummed beneath his skin.

“What about you?” Abigail insisted. “Will you always put your mother and your girlfriend on equal pedestals? No wonder you haven’t ever had a serious girlfriend.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your mother did, more or less,” Abigail said with a furtive smile. “I think she’s tired of being your wife.”

Riley frowned, wondering how these two women who seemed to be at each other’s throats had managed to eke out such a personal conversation. Moreover, he was astonished that his mother would even hint at such a thing. She adored having him around.

But then, after he’d turned thirty, she’d started asking him whom he was dating. And now that he really thought about it, she did seem to be pushing him away these days. She hardly ever invited him over anymore, and when she did, she always asked him to bring a friend.

He’d always thought she meant Greene. Now he was starting to think she’d wanted him to bring home a girl. Not that there’d been any to introduce, not lately. And not anyone he wanted to bring this far into his life.

Aw, hell. Riley wanted to sit down. He grabbed Abigail’s hand and led her back to the edge of the rock.

“Let’s sit,” he said, and they did, dangling their feet over the edge. The clean spray of the waterfall refreshed his clammy skin.

Her big, beautiful eyes looked chocolate-brown in the bright sunlight that filtered into the little canyon.

He sighed, ready to admit defeat. “All right, Abigail. I’ll give you this one.”

“Really?” she said. “You’ll agree that you’re too close to your mother, and you need to let go of her, just a bit?”

He exaggerated his nod, hoping she wouldn’t rub it in. “You were right. I was wrong.”

“My six favorite words.” She bounced her feet into the air.

“But you have to agree that you’ve been wrong, too.”

“Impossible.”

“You have to let go of your father.”

She glared at the waterfall. “I don’t even know what you mean.”

“You’re still waiting for him to come back. You’ve kept the home fire burning, even if all you want to do is roast him on it. If I have to let my mother go, you have to let your father go.”

“I let him go a long, long time ago.”

“Then why do you still care so much about him?”

“Because.” The delicate skin beneath her eyes was damp, but so was the rest of her face. Vapor from the falls had covered both of their faces with a fine film of water. She could be crying and he wouldn’t know it.

“Because,” she restarted, her jaw firm, “I just want to know why he left. It’s a puzzle that I’ve never been able to solve, and I can’t stand it.” She picked up a pebble and threw it into the waterfall.

“Maybe he underestimated you.”

“Bastard.” She sent another pebble flying into the foam.

“Bastard,” he agreed, and she smiled wickedly.

A cool breeze lifted the hazy air between them. What was once warm and soft now snapped with energy. Birds in the forest felt it, too; their twitters and whistles rang through the small valley with the strength and harmony of a gospel choir.

Riley saw color rise in Abigail’s smooth, perfect cheeks. She was happy again, he knew, and his hands ached to touch her. He wondered if he could reach for her now.

She turned her head slightly to him, a smile still on her lips. She’d never looked so bewitching, and his heart jumped into his throat when she said, “Well, don’t just sit there.”

They came together with a desire that was both simultaneous and equal, and his rational mind melted in the fire of a primitive longing that coursed through his body. She was alive in his arms, as passionate and engaged as he’d ever dreamed a woman could be. Her hands sought to touch him with as much urgency as his sought her. They tugged each other’s shirts away and off, and he wondered for a split second whether the neighbors would find their clothes floating down the river.

Then his mind was erased by the blissfully white-hot sensation of her skin against his.

She was half-naked, and part of him knew that now was the time when a man was supposed to say something to a woman about her beauty, but he couldn’t think of the words, and she didn’t seem too concerned about it as she tugged him closer. Their stomachs pressed together, and their legs struggled to do the same.

He rolled onto his back so she wouldn’t hurt herself on the rock. She was on top of him then, her small body proving to be more than strong enough to hold him down. He gripped her butt with both hands and pulled her close, wishing mutely that she’d worn a skirt. She kissed him harder in response and straddled him, rhythmically rocking her hips into his, the denim of her jeans gratifyingly hard against his groin.

His need for her was so strong, so unstoppable, that he had to hold her hips still for a moment while he transferred his thoughts back to his head. For all its romance, this wasn’t the place for making love—and Abigail wouldn’t appreciate having to face his mother again with the sweet smell of sex on her skin.

So he drew his lips away from hers and held her body close, marveling at the way their height differences were erased as soon as they lay down together. He rolled onto his side, letting her head fall onto his arm, and he caressed her cheek with his other hand.

So soft, so lovely! Even her flaws—a slight asymmetry in her eyelids, the faint wash of pale-brown freckles sprinkled across her nose—were charming. He touched her face, and she smiled that lovely, full smile that she’d only recently debuted. She was relaxed around him now; she trusted him.

He never thought a woman so exquisite, so passionate, so fascinating, would ever look at him the way she looked at him right then.

She loved him. There was no mistaking it. And he loved her.

Now he just had to keep her safe.