Suspicions: A Twist of Fate\Tears of Pride (35 page)

“I wondered if you would notice.”

“Did you think that you had captivated me so completely that I would lose my sense of direction?”

“Hardly,” she whispered dryly.

“Is it a secret?”

“No.”

“Then why are you being so mysterious?”

“Because I’ve never taken anyone up here before…aside from Emily.”

“What is it, your private part of the mountains?”

Sheila smiled broadly, slightly embarrassed. “I guess I kind of thought of it that way. It’s just a place I used to go, as a kid, when I wanted to be alone.”

Noah’s hand strengthened its grip on her arm. They followed the path around pine trees that had fallen across it and over a summit, until they entered a small valley with a clear brook running through it. The water spilled over a ledge from the higher elevations of the mountain, creating a frothy waterfall with a pool at its base. From the small lake the stream continued recklessly through the valley and down the lower elevations of the foothills.

They walked around the small pond together, arms linked, eyes taking in the serenity of the secluded valley. Noah helped her cross the stream, nearly slipping on the wet stones peeking from the rushing water. Once on the other side of the brook, Noah spread the blanket. They sat together near a stand of ponderosa pines, close to the fall of cascading water and able to feel the cool mist of water on their skin.

“Why did you bring me here?” Noah asked, his eyes following the path of the winding mountain stream.

“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to share the beauty of this place with you…. Oh, Noah, I just don’t want to lose it.”

Grim lines formed at the corner of his mouth. “And you think that I’ll take it away from you.”

“I think you have that power.”

Noah rubbed his thumbnail over his lower lip. “Even if I did, do you honestly think I would use it?”

Her eyes were honest when they looked into his. Lines marred her forehead where her brows drew together. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

She took in a steadying breath. “Yes…”

“But?”

“I don’t think you’re telling me everything.”

Noah tossed a stone into the pond and watched it skip, drawing circles on the clear surface of the water. “What do you want to know?”

“About Anthony Simmons’s report on the fire.”

“What if it isn’t complete?” he heard himself ask, damning himself for hedging. The truth should be so simple.

“It has to be. He hasn’t been here in two weeks. He strikes me as the kind of man who doesn’t give up until he finds what he’s looking for.”

“And you think he has?”

“I think that if he hadn’t, he would still be knocking on my door, digging through Dad’s records, asking his inane questions.”

Noah rested his forearms on his knees. “You’re right about that much.”

“And I’m right that his report is complete?” she asked, barely daring to breathe.

“Right again.”

“Well?”

“Well, nothing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not convinced that Simmons’s report was conclusive. There are a few discrepancies.”

“Such as?”

Noah found himself lying with incredible ease. Was this how it started, with a single deception that multiplied and compounded until it became an intricate network of lies? Is this what had happened to his father? “Nothing all that important…it’s just that the insurance company needs some more documents to support his theories. Until Pac-West is satisfied, the entire report isn’t considered valid.”

Doubts darkened her eyes and her confidence in him wavered. The trust he had worked so hard to establish was flowing from her as surely as sand through an hourglass.

“I assume that means that Mr. Simmons and his questions will be back.”

“Maybe not.”

“Noah.” Her voice was amazingly level for the sense of betrayal that was overwhelming her. “You’re talking in circles. Just tell me the truth…all of it.”

One lie begat another. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Then why did you come here? I thought you had news about the winery. I thought we could finally put the fire behind us.”

This time he didn’t have to lie. His eyes were a clear blue, filled with sincerity. “Don’t let the fire stand between us. I came here because I wanted to see you. Can’t you believe that?”

“Oh, God, Noah, I want to,” she whispered fervently. She let her forehead drop into the open palm of her hand. Noah’s heart turned over, as he witnessed her defeat. “It’s just that I feel that you’re holding back on me. Am I wrong? Aren’t there things you know that you should be sharing with me?”

He traced the sculpted line of her jaw with his finger. The curves of her bones neared perfection. “Just trust me, Sheila,” he stated, feeling the traitor he was. He tilted her head with the strength of one finger and pressed his lips against hers. His lips were gentle but persuasive. His seduction began to work. Against her will, she thought less of the fire and the damage to the winery and concentrated with a growing awareness of the man. She realized that he was pushing against her, that she was falling backward, but she knew that his strong arm would break her fall and before her back would encounter the plaid blanket and cold earth, he would catch her. She wanted to trust him with her life.

His hands parted her blouse, slipping the cotton fabric easily over her shoulders, and his tongue rimmed her lips, which opened willingly to his moist touch. His fingers grazed her breast and finally settled against it, warming her skin and causing her to moan. She trembled with need of him and felt contentment welling from deep within her when he unclasped her bra and pressed his flesh against hers, molding his skin to hers.

Her nipple hardened under his erotic touch, and he growled hungrily in the back of his throat. “You do make me crazy, you know,” he whispered against the pink shell of her ear. “You make me want to do things to you that will bind me to you forever,” he admitted raggedly. “I want to make love to you and never stop…. Damn it, Sheila, I love you.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat that had formed during his tortured admission. How could she possibly sort the fact from fiction? Tears began to collect in her eyes. “You…you don’t have to say anything,” she stammered, bracing herself for the denial that was sure to come once his passion had subsided.

“I don’t want to love you, Sheila…but I just can’t seem to help myself.” His black brows knit in confusion as he looked down upon her, witnessing her tears and misreading them. “Oh, no, Sheila, darling, don’t cry.”

To still him and prevent any more half-truths to form on his lips, she kissed him, holding his head against hers and letting him feel the depth of her desire.

Her heart began to thud in her chest, and the blood rushing through her veins turned molten. His hands smoothed the skin over her breasts and down her rib cage, pressing against her with enough force to mold her skin tightly over her ribs and inflame the skin when his fingers dipped below the waistband of her jeans.

His lips followed the path of his hands, and his hungry mouth caressed each breast moistly as his tongue massaged a nipple. She felt the convulsions of desire rip through her body as he trailed a dewy path of kisses across the soft skin of her abdomen. Still, his hands kneaded her breasts. Involuntarily she sucked in her breath and arched against him. Her fingers pushed his shirt off his shoulders and dug into the hard, lean muscles of his upper arms.

When he removed her jeans, he tossed them aside and she sighed in contentment. Slowly he rose and took off his jeans, discarding them into a pile near hers. She stared at him unguardedly, devouring the contours of his tanned muscles as if her eyes were starved for the sight of him.

The sun was beginning to set, casting lengthening shadows across the valley. The fading light played over his skin, adding an ethereal dimension to the oncoming evening.

Noah was silent as he settled next to her and began caressing her with his lips and hands. He stroked her intimately, forcing the tide of her desire to crest, making the blood within her throb with fiery need as it pulsed through her body. They lay together, face-to-face, man to woman, alone except for the hungry need that controlled them.

He took her slowly, coupling with her as gently as if she were new to him. He waited until he felt her demand a faster rhythm, until he saw passion glaze her eyes, until the pain in his back where her fingernails had found his flesh forced him to a more violent, savage union.

Her breath came in short, uneven gasps, her body broke into a glow of perspiration, and the ache within her deepest core began to control her until she was rising with him, pushing against him, calling his name into the wilderness.

She began to melt inside, and convulsive surges of fulfillment forced her to cling to him. He groaned her name against the silken strands of her hair as he shuddered in an eruptive release of frustrated desire that turned his bones to liquid.

“I love you, Sheila,” he whispered over and over again. “I love you.”

Chapter 10

“You’re out of your mind,” Noah stated emphatically. Twilight was rapidly approaching and the last thing he wanted to do was take a quick dip in an icy lake.

“Come on…it’s not that cold.”

“Save that for someone who’ll believe it, Sheila. That water is runoff from the spring melt on the Cascades. You’ve got another think coming if you think you can talk me into swimming in ice water.”

“It could be fun,” she suggested. He could see her body through the ripples in the water. The firm contours of her limbs were distorted against the darkening pool. He would catch a glimpse of one breast as she treaded in the water, and then it would be gone, covered by her arm as she kept herself afloat. Her hair was damp and tossed carelessly off her face. Dewy drops of water clung to her eyelashes and cheeks. “Come on.”

“I’ve never done anything this irrational in my life,” he admitted, testing the water and withdrawing his foot.

“Then it’s time.” She shoved her hand through the clear ripples and set a wave of cold water washing over his body. His startled look was replaced by determination as he marched into the lake. Quickly she dove under the water and swam near the bottom, to resurface behind the waterfall. Just as she took in a gulp of air, her legs were pulled out from under her by strong arms. When she came up again, she was sputtering for air. Noah’s arms encircled her waist.

“You lied,” he accused. “This lake is
too cold.
”

“Refreshing,” she bantered back.

“Frigid.” He captured her blue lips with his and kissed the droplets of water off her face. His hands and legs touched her intimately beneath the surface of the water; his kiss deepened and their tongues entwined. Her skin heated, but was cooled by the chilly temperature in the water.

His fingers touched her thigh, smoothing the soft skin and caressing her as they stood, waist deep in the lake. The waterfall was their flowing curtain of privacy as Noah kissed a hardened nipple and pushed her against the ledge.

“We should be going,” she pleaded.

“Not now, you little witch. You coerced me into this lake with you, and you’re going to suffer the consequences.”

“And just what consequences are you talking about?”

“I’m going to make you beg me to love you.”

“But Sean…Emily…” His hand continued its exploration, warming her internally while her skin was chilled by the water.

“They’ll wait for us.”

He kissed her again, his hand still extracting sweet promises from her. Her breasts flattened against him, and he licked the moisture from them.

Despite the temperature of the water, Sheila began to warm from the inside out. She felt her legs part and wanted more than the touch of cold lapping water on her skin. She yearned to be a part of the man she loved, ached for him to join with her. His kisses upon her neck enticed her. The dewy droplets of cold water on her breasts made her skin quiver. And his hands, God, his hands, gently stroked her, driving all thoughts from her mind other than the desire welling deep within her body.

“Oh, Noah,” she whispered as she felt the excruciating ache within her beg for release.

“Yes, love,” he whispered thickly.

“Please…”

“What?”

“Please love me,” she murmured against his chest, stroking her tongue against the virile male muscles, wondering if it were possible ever to get enough of him. How long would it be before her love for him would consume her?

“I do love you, Sheila. I will forever,” he vowed as he pushed her gently against the ledge beneath the water’s surface. He placed his legs between hers, and the spray from the waterfall ran in lingering rivulets down her face and neck. The water lapped lazily around her hips and thighs and Noah came to her, burying himself in her with savage strokes.

She found herself clutching him, clinging to him, surging with him over the final barrier until satiation and exhaustion took its toll on her.

“I love you,” she whispered, licking a drop of water from his temple, and the strength of his arms wrapped her more tightly to him, as if he were afraid that in releasing her he would lose her.

They shivered as they got dressed, packed their belongings and hiked down the path. Dusk began to shadow the hills in darkness, but when they were within sight of the château, they could see that no lights burned in the windows. It was obvious that Sean and Emily hadn’t returned. Sheila became uneasy.

“I thought the kids would be back by now,” she said, voicing her thoughts. “I told Emily to be home before dark.”

“She might have had trouble convincing Sean,” Noah muttered. “It’s quite a hike, and the best fly-fishing is in the evening.”

Sheila wasn’t convinced. “They should be home.”

“They will be. Don’t worry. I bet they’ll be here within the next half hour.”

“And if they’re not?”

“We’ll go looking for them. You do know where Emily was headed, don’t you?”

Sheila nodded and smiled in spite of her apprehension. “It’s the same place Dad used to take me.”

“Then let’s not worry until we have to. There’s something I want to talk about.” He settled upon a rope hammock in the yard and indicated with a gesture that he wanted her to lie next to him.

She slid into the rope swing, careful not to lose her balance. “Okay—so talk.”

“I think I should tell you about Marilyn.”

“Sean’s mother?”

Noah’s lips twisted wryly. “I don’t think of her as his mother, merely the woman who gave him birth.”

“You don’t have to explain any of this to me.” Sheila wanted to know everything about him, and yet was unwilling to know his secrets more intimately. The past was gone; what was the point in dredging up bitter memories?

“I don’t have to tell you anything, but I want to. Maybe then you’ll understand my feelings for my son…and my father.”

“Ben was involved.”

Noah’s entire body became rigid. “Oh, yes, he was involved all right—he couldn’t help himself. You don’t know my father, but if you did, you’d realize that he tries to dominate everyone or everything he touches.”

“Your father’s ill,” Sheila reminded him gently.

Noah relaxed a little and stared at the stars beginning to peek through the violet-gray dusk. “He wasn’t ill sixteen years ago,” Noah asserted as he squinted in thought. “As a matter of fact he was in his prime.”

Noah paused, conjuring up the period in his life he had tried to forget. “Marilyn was only seventeen when we first met. She came to a fraternity dance with a friend of mine. I thought at the time she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Long blond hair, clear blue eyes and a smile that could melt ice. I was captivated.

“It wasn’t long before I was dating her, and Ben told me to ‘dump her.’ In the old man’s opinion, Marilyn wasn’t quite up to par, socially speaking.” Noah shook his head at his own young foolishness.

“You know that I haven’t ever gotten along with Ben?” Sheila nodded, afraid to break the silence. “Well, Ben considered Marilyn a ‘gold digger,’ after the family fortune. Maybe she was. Hell, she was just a kid, barely seventeen. Anyway, I suppose that because my father was so hell-bent against her, it made her all the more attractive to me…at least for a while. We dated for about four months, I guess, and then we started arguing, over stupid little things. We never got along.”

Noah absently ran his hand across his chin, rubbing the beard shadow that had begun to appear. “Anyway, just as I decided to break things off with her, she turned up pregnant. She was probably scared, but she didn’t have the guts to tell me about it. I heard the news secondhand, through a friend of mine who was dating her sister.

“At first I was angry—furious that she hadn’t come to me with the news. When I found out that she intended to have an abortion, I thought I would kill her myself. I drove around for four hours, and I had no idea where I’d been, but I had managed to calm down. By the time I went to her house, I knew that I wanted my child more than anything in the world and that I was willing to pay any price to get it.

“I tried pleading with her to keep the baby, but she didn’t even want to talk about it. I told her that I would marry her, give my name to the child, whatever she wanted, if she would reconsider.”

Noah closed his eyes, as if hiding from the truth. “She finally agreed and I thought I’d won a major victory because it was pretty evident that she was more concerned about being a cheerleader to the football squad than being a mother to my unborn child. And maybe I’ve been too rough on her—she wasn’t much older than Sean is now. Just a kid. And I was just as foolish. Although we’d made one mistake, I thought we could correct it. Given time, I was sure that Marilyn would mature and learn to love the baby. I even thought she and I had a chance.”

Bitterness made his voice brittle. “But I was wrong. Dead wrong. Ben couldn’t leave it alone…and maybe it was better that he didn’t…I don’t know. Anyway, Ben was against the marriage from the first, baby or no baby, and he offered Marilyn a decent sum of money to go quietly away and give the baby up for adoption. The offer was attractive to her; she had no other means to afford college.

“I was outraged at my father’s proposal and sickened by Marilyn’s transparent interest in the money. I tried to talk her out of it and insisted that she marry me and keep the child. If she wanted to go to school, I was sure we could afford it, at least part-time. She was adamantly against any solution I provided. I didn’t understand it at the time, not until she told me what she had come up with as an alternative solution.”

Sheila was breathless as she watched the angry play of sixteen-year-old emotions contort Noah’s face in pain. “In Marilyn’s beautiful, scheming mind, she found the answer. The price was considerably higher of course, but she agreed to give the baby up for adoption to me, his father, for a discreet and large sum of money. Although Ben didn’t like the idea of being manipulated by a girl he considered socially off-limits, he seemed to almost…enjoy her sense of values.

“It was obvious that a marriage to Marilyn under the best circumstances would be a disaster for both the baby and myself, so I swallowed my pride and pleaded with my father to agree to her demands, in order that I could gain custody of Sean. Sixteen years ago fathers’ rights were virtually unheard of, and without Marilyn’s written consent, I could never have gotten custody of my son. I wanted the only decent thing I could retrieve from that relationship with Marilyn—my unborn son.

“Ben thought I was completely out of my mind, but finally agreed. In the past sixteen years, every time he and I would disagree, Ben would remind me that it was
his money and his power
that gave me custody of Sean.”

Noah ran an angry hand through his dark hair and uttered an oath under his breath. Sheila knew she was witnessing a rare side of him. As she watched the cruel emotions tighten his jaw, she understood that she was learning things about him that he kept hidden from the rest of the world. He was letting her become closer to him, divulging his innermost secrets. She leaned her head against his shoulder and listened to the steady beat of his heart.

“Ben even has the stubborn pride to think that he saved me from an unhappy marriage…. Maybe he did. Who can say? The point is that he’s held it over my head for sixteen years. Finally, I’ve paid him back in full.” He spat the words out with a vehemence that sent a shiver skittering down Sheila’s spine.

“Because you’ve taken over the business while he’s been recuperating in Mexico?”

“That’s right. It took me this long to get out of the old man’s debt.” Sheila could see the emotional scars of pain etched on Noah’s broad forehead; she could read the agony in his blue eyes.

Her voice caught as she began to speak. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s over.”

“It bothers you.”

“I said, it’s over.” He shifted on the hammock and seemed to notice the darkness for the first time. His eyes searched the hillside. “The kids should be home.”

Sheila, too, had been caught up in the complexity of his story. Panic began to take hold of her as she realized that night had descended and Emily was missing.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, clasping a hand over her mouth. “Where could they be?”

“You tell me. Do you have any flashlights?”

She nodded, and was on her way to the house before he could tell her to get them. She fumbled with the light switch in the kitchen in her hurry. Within two minutes she was back outside, listening for a response to Noah’s shout. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the night.

“Damn,” Noah muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I should have listened when you wanted to search for them earlier.”

“You didn’t know they wouldn’t come home.”

“But you did.” He turned to look at her as they followed the bobbing circles of lights flashing on the ground before them. “Why were you worried—is it part of being a mother?”

“Emily’s never late,” Sheila asserted breathlessly. They were climbing the hill at a near run.

“Next time I’ll pay more attention when you begin to worry.”

“A lot of good that does us now,” Sheila snapped back. She knew she was being short with Noah and that it was unfair, but her concern for her daughter made her irritable.

Noah stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth to call Sean’s name. From somewhere in the distance they heard his answering shout. Sean’s voice sounded rough and frightened.

“Oh, my God,” Sheila whispered, listening for Emily’s voice and hearing nothing. “Something’s happened.” Fear took a stranglehold on her throat, and she started running up the path, jumping to conclusions and imagining scenarios of life without her daughter.

She stumbled once on an exposed root. Noah reached for her, but couldn’t break the fall that tore her jeans and scraped her knee. Wincing in pain, she continued to race up the hill, mindless of the blood that was oozing from the wound.

Sean’s shouts were louder, and within minutes his anxious face came into range of the flashlights. Sheila choked back a scream as she saw Emily in his arms. The child was dripping wet, her face was covered with mud and there were several scratches on her cheeks.