An Irresistible Temptation (26 page)

“I’ll be here, on your step, at nine,” he
said. He had to escape now or he’d pounce. If he touched her,
they’d end up in bed, and where would that leave her when he
graduated in less than a month? He knew where. Alone, here in San
Francisco, with the impression that he’d used her. Again.

He turned to go.

“Riley,” she said.

He froze, his eyes fixed straight ahead of
him, not looking at her.

“Riley,” she repeated, more softly and he
turned.

“Sophie, I’m trying to do the right thing
here. Last night, I nearly didn’t.” His voice sounded odd to his
ears. But since he was trying, she could try, too, even though it
felt harder to leave her than to recite in alphabetical order all
the bones in the human body.

She sighed and he watched her breasts lift
gently, feeling heat shoot straight to his groin.

“Tomorrow, then.” She slid her key into the
lock and went inside. He kicked the wall viciously to relieve his
tension, and her head popped back out.

“Are you all right?” She had a bemused look
on her face that indicated she knew exactly how he was
feeling—frustrated as hell.

“I’m fine. I . . . stumbled.” And he
hightailed it down the stairs before he changed his mind. She
really didn’t seem to know that he planned to take over for Doc. It
had been mentioned, he remembered, at the dinner with Dan, but
perhaps Sophie had been as distracted as he was that night.

In any case, she was starting to make plans,
for Thanksgiving and beyond . . .

He could not see beyond tomorrow, at least
not a future with Sophie by his side.

For Sophie, it was an endless night. She had
been ready and waiting and looking out the window for at least
twenty minutes when she espied him coming up her front steps. She
flew downstairs to meet him.

“Ready,” she said, eager to take his arm in
the bright daylight, where temptation wouldn’t overcome them. It
had been as difficult as playing Beethoven’s
Hammerklavier
to stop herself from throwing her arms around him the night before.
They started to walk.

“This reminds me of walking with you along
the boards in front of Dan’s store, all the way to Fuller’s.”

“All the way, huh?” he said with a lopsided
grin.

She laughed, thinking how small Spring City
was. How did someone spend their whole life there, knowing every
person in the town and perhaps not liking half of them? Or seeing
the same faces day-in and day-out? In Boston, she could go weeks
without seeing someone she knew or cared to see, for that matter.
And here in San Francisco, why nearly everyone was new to her and
she loved it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier,” she
said.

“Really?”

“Mm, everything is just beginning. My career,
our relationship, your career, too.”

He stiffened, and she felt him falter in his
stride.

“What is it?”

He seemed to hesitate. “You reminded me about
the exams, coming up soon. That’s all.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine. Doc’s been
preparing you all your life, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, Doc’s always been there for me.”

Riley was quiet for a bit while she chattered
until Long Bridge stretched out before them across Mission Bay. It
was still early enough, not to mention chilly, that the only people
on the great span over the bay were fisherman, boys and men, who
had arrived hours before to obtain a choice spot at the railing.
Shoulder-to-shoulder they stood, most with the bamboo poles rented
from the bait shops on the bridge, and all of them were fishing for
smelt.

Sophie and Riley strolled along beside the
rail tracks on the bridge until a horsecar traveled down the
center, rattling the timbers. He pulled her close against his side
until it passed, and she relished his warmth that seeped into her.
All too soon, for the sake of decorum, Riley released her and she
was assailed once more by the cold. A young boy eagerly showed them
his catch of small silvery fish lying on a newspaper and then they
paused farther on the bridge to look out over the oyster beds.

“I love you,” Riley said, without taking his
eyes from the view and so quietly she almost missed it.

Her cowboy doctor loved her!

“I love you, too,” she told him, looking at
his strong profile and wondering fleetingly why he didn’t seem as
joyful as she felt. When he finally turned his face to hers, he
claimed her lips instantly, his hand reaching out to hold her to
him. With his mouth on hers, she ignored the November wind blowing,
until her shivering was no longer concealable. He rested his
forehead on hers as they reclaimed their breath and then he took
her gloved hand in his, starting back to the main land.

She thought he would take her straight home
and make love to her, but he stopped at a small café perched on the
pilings next to the bridge. He pulled her inside.

“Coffee or tea?” he asked, settling her in a
seat and walking to the counter.

Was the infernal man stalling or was he
missing her obvious signals? Why, now, did he have to start
courting her slowly?

“Coffee,” Sophie said, “with cream. That
would be lovely.” Though she’d rather warm up by kissing him
somewhere private.

Riley came back with two coffees and some
raisin cake for them to share.

They sat in companionable silence until
nothing was left, and Sophie moistened the end of her finger and
picked up the last of the cake crumbs off the plate.

“It’s the cold,” Riley said. “It makes your
body want to store up energy by eating more.” He was speaking
clinically, but she noticed he was staring at her finger that she’d
licked. Her insides did a funny flip. She pushed her chair out. No
more stalling. She wanted to be in his arms at last.

“We’d better start walking back. I need time
to change before rehearsal.”

He stood up and helped her on with her coat.
“You look lovely to me. You always do.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, “but this is not
the gown in which I want to appear in front of hundreds of
people.”

“Then we should get you out of it.”

Her eyes widened, as he grinned. “I mean,
we’ll get you home so you can change. What are you playing
tonight?”

“Don’t you know?” Her head was so full of
Amadeus that she could barely hear anything else. She imagined he
could hear it, too.

“I have to admit that I haven’t looked at the
program. After I saw your name in the paper, it didn’t matter to me
what you were playing.”

She smiled radiantly. “Tonight is
Mozart.”

“You know, Sophie, most of us mere mortals do
not know our Boccherini from our Bach, or our Mozart from our . .
.”

“Mendelsohn,” she supplied helpfully.

“Something like that.”

“That doesn’t matter, does it?” Personally,
she couldn’t bear the thought of not knowing the history of the
composers; their stories brought the works to life for her.

“No,” he took her hand in his and squeezed
lightly. “When you start playing, you could be playing ‘Mollie
Darling’ and we’d still be on our feet.”

“I can’t believe you’re comparing Kinkel to
Mozart.”

“I’m not. I’m saying you can spin straw into
gold, as the saying goes.”

Instead of walking, Riley pulled her up onto
the first cable car, and they were back at Sophie’s apartment in
minutes.

They went in silently, and he followed her up
the stairs to her door. She put the key in the lock and turned it.
Then she faced him, waiting for him to decide whether he was going
to kiss her good bye or keep his hands and lips to himself again
and walk away.

At first, he did neither. He seemed to be
studying her, a small frown in the middle of his forehead. Then,
slowly, he reached up and took her face in his hands.

“Sophie?”

“Yes?”

“I—” But whatever he was going to say, he
didn’t. He took a step closer and she tingled in anticipation. He
pulled her toward him and she fitted against his long muscular
frame. She exhaled slowly, feeling as at home in his arms as she
did at her piano keys.

Kiss me
, she begged him with her eyes.
His eyebrows went up slightly as he read the message. She watched
him swallow, looking serious, with no slow and sensual smile this
time. As his head bent to hers, her arms slipped up his chest and
her hands circled his shoulders to clasp together behind his
neck.

When his lips touched hers, she sighed again.
He groaned, causing something inside her to burst into flames.
Immediately, she knew this was no gentle welcome home kiss and no
brief lovers’ peck. This was a serious, feel-it-in-her-toes
kiss.

He pulled on her lower lip and then nibbled
beside her mouth and down her tender throat while she clutched him.
He reclaimed her lips and forced them open to accept his tongue,
and she felt his hips press against her stomach. Her knees softened
even as she tried to raise up on tiptoe to better feel his hardness
against her womanly places. Mostly, she wanted to lie down and feel
him settle on top of her.

She reached behind her and turned the knob.
With the pressure of them both against it, the door flew inward and
they nearly tumbled to the floor. Riley kept a hand on her waist as
he grabbed at the door frame to keep them upright.

“Sorry,” she muttered, “I should have warned
you.”

He half chuckled. “I was a bit lost in the
moment anyway.”

He walked her back a step and released her.
They were both breathing heavily and she could see his pupils had
grown larger, filling his gleaming eyes with black desire. She felt
the same. But he was hesitating as he had done at The Grand all
those weeks earlier, looking torn, even reluctant. No Eliza stood
between them, nor Philip on the horizon—nothing that could possibly
stand in their way.

“Riley, I . . . I want you.”

She watched his jaw clench, then he closed
the door behind him, pulling her into his arms once again.

“You feel like heaven, Sophie.”

He reached around and squeezed her buttocks,
pulling her up against him, so she could feel the whole length of
his shaft. Then he reached down and swept her off her feet
entirely.

“I feel like an unwieldy cello,” she
grumbled, when he paused as if he didn’t know where to take
her.

“You’re supposed to feel feminine. You’re
light as a butterfly.” He walked through her small parlor into the
kitchen and backed out, going to the next room and finding her
bed.

“Bigger than at The Grand,” he commented.

“I didn’t complain at The Grand.”

“Nor I.” He lowered her gently to her bed and
lay down beside her, resting on his elbow, looking down at her. “I
thought that was going to be our one and only time ever.” He
touched her cheek. “And I wanted you so badly, like I do now. I
hated to rush. I wanted it to last forever, but I also didn’t want
to do it at all.”

She winced. “Because of Eliza.”

“No. She didn’t enter my head. I swear
it.”

He brushed his thumb over her lip and she
trembled. She was hot and prickly in all the right places, feeling
as if she was wearing about a hundred layers too many of
clothing.

“I didn’t want to be the kind of man who
could take your innocence from you with nothing to offer in return.
But, as it turned out, I was that man.”

His voice sounded so sad when all she felt
was joy. She stroked his silken brown hair and breathed in his
familiar fresh vanilla scent. She had to admit that she much
preferred it to Philip’s sweet citrus fragrance.

She reached up and touched his face, reveling
in the roughness of his cheek against her palm. “I thought that one
memory was going to have to carry me through a lifetime.”

Riley captured her hand, turned his head, and
kissed her palm. “Instead, here we are.” He settled closer and
rested one leg over hers.

He lowered his head and kissed her. The
pleasing weight of his thigh across hers made her arch against him.
His arm brushed across her breasts, and she moaned with pleasure as
he shifted his position until he was on top of her.

“We can go slowly this time,” he said,
breathless, as he nibbled her ear lobe.

“Mm,” she murmured, not thinking they could
go slowly at all. “Riley,” she breathed against him. “We still have
our shoes on.”

She felt him kicking his off with some
effort, but her own were ankle-highs and she needed to sit up and
unlace them. She pushed against him and he slid down the length of
her body, kissing her through the layers of fabric, first her
breasts and then her stomach, until he got off the bed and knelt
down to start unlacing her boots.

She slipped off her coat and then her jacket
before undoing the buttons at her blouse’s cuffs. She glanced at
the clock that ticked relentlessly on her bureau, hating the
movement of the second hand. They still had time before rehearsal
but not a tremendous amount; their lovemaking would have to be a
lively and spirited
capriccio
after all, and not the
unhurried
adagio
she was hoping for.

But after tonight’s performance, they would
have all the time in the world.

She undid the front buttons of her blouse and
glanced up to see him standing motionless, still wearing his
trousers, staring at her.

“Riley?” she asked uncertainly.

“You’re so beautiful. Even your hands. You
have such lovely, capable hands.”

She blushed, but countered, “That’s
ridiculous. Your hands do far more important work than mine.”

Sophie watched the frown appear on his face
again and longed to smooth it away. She slipped her blouse from her
shoulders, and immediately, he was beside her again. She let him
remove her corset and then her shift before he pushed her gently
back down on the bed. Her nipples pebbled instantly under his gaze
and she started to cross her arms, but he held them away from her,
leaning down to reverently kiss the underswell of each breast. Then
he blew on one rosy nipple and it tightened even further.