Page 47 of Tempting as Sin
She loved her twin, but she was thirty-one years old. Exactly the same age as Paige. Minus ten minutes. She owned a house, she owned a business, and she even owned a dog. Partially. She could make her own choices.
Wait.She was staring at the phone. And then she called Paige back. She had a sort of roaring thing in her ears.
“Oh, good,” Paige said the second she picked up. “Because I have more to say. Tell me what happened back this spring. Heliedto you? That miserable SOB. He had to know about Antonio, and he still did that? Jace keeps saying Rafe’s great. Fine, he’s a good brother, but that doesn’t always translate. Some men really do think that all’s fair in love and war. They have completely different standards for their friends and for women. If you worked around as many cops as I do—well, if you worked around cops at all—you’d know that. And you’re—”
“Paige,” Lily said, and then, when Paige didn’t stop talking, she said it again.“Paige.”
“What?”
Lily had to work to remember what. “Of course he didn’t know who I was. Use your skills. What, he was going to meet me three weeks later in Australia and pretend he had amnesia? Why would he do that anyway? I’m fairly certain that he doesn’t have trouble finding women willing to sleep with him. Just a hunch. I was calling you back to say that I can decide for myself, and I’m really, truly not that fragile. Maybe I was once, but not anymore. Also,I’mnot the one who was pretending to be you—pretending to be me—you know what I mean—and sleeping with my scary neighbor so I’d have to deal with him later, and he’d wonder why I was suddenly running away. As for Rafe, maybe Jacedoesknow him better.”
“Oh, no,” Paige said. “Honey. No. He’s getting to you.”
“And maybe I want him to,” Lily said. “You know—I’m a big girl now. And I really do have to go. I’m glad I’m making Jace happy. Indirectly. Although, you know—you share alot.We might want to think about that. I’m going to say one thing, though. If he’s anything like Rafe…because, wow, that man cankiss.He also has the best body I’ve ever seen. And he’s so…No. I’m not telling you all this. I’m hanging up.”
Rafe had a fair number of conversations with himself over the rest of the day. They basically amounted to,How many bloody times does it take to convince yourself that you’re nobody’s hero?Also,Two sides to every story, whatever she or Antonio says. What makes you so sure her side is the truth?
What was it Carrera had said, though, after the first wave of revelations about Kylie? They’d been sitting in Rafe’s trailer running lines when Antonio had broken off, the bedroom eyes and faint Italian accent making him look and sound like a much higher-caliber bloke than he actually was, and said, “That Kylie—what a crazy bitch she is. High maintenance. Don’t worry about it. My ex was the same way. You have to handle them like glass, and any little thing you say turns into another breakdown. That is not your problem. At least you didn’t marry her.”
Two problems with that. First, Lily was nothing like Kylie. She didn’t ask for too much, she asked for too little. She didn’t cling, she pulled away. And second, maybe Rafewantedto handle her like glass. In every possible way.
Which, of course, made doing her on the table in her back room a very bad idea, even though it had felt like such a good one. Also, there was still that other thing.She’s going to be your sister-in-law. Your sister-in-law-in-law. Your twin-in-law.And that was much too close.
He spent the rest of the afternoon working on his lines forUnbreakable,then repeating them over, trying out different readings, while he chopped wood for the stove, attempted not to chop himself in the process, and was glad Lily wasn’t watching him do it. If he was going to be sore, though, he might as well be all the way sore. After that, he cooked vegetables for dinner, added half of the roasted chicken he’d bought the day before, watched an old Western, relaxed his brain, and let it absorb the background material.
Discipline, that was the ticket. Which was why, when it was time, he went to bed and didn’t think about Lily’s mouth opening under his. Of the curve of her thigh under his hand. Of the little noises she’d made. Arousal, and…surprise. Like she wasn’t expecting it to feel that good.
Yeah, that part was a lie. He thought about her. And at seven forty-five the next morning, he put on his running clothes and headed up to her house to get Chuck, because that was their arrangement.
This time, she wasn’t outside. Her goats were out in the barnyard, though, and a few chickens were pecking the ground around them, so she’d done her chores already. He headed to the front door, caught the scent of lavender and the hum of bees, and felt the promise of a warmer day underneath the morning chill as he rang the doorbell. He was answered by a joyful chorus of barking that sounded like about three dogs, and nothing else.
Why didn’t Lily have a hammock? She did have a porch swing, which was nice, but surely she should have a hammock, too. The kind made of woven white string, slung between two evergreens at the side of the house. She should be able to swing in there, one bare foot propped against the webbing, her pretty cotton dress falling away from her thighs and her blonde hair loose. A book in her hand, her fingers caught between the pages, her gaze somewhere off in the distance, and her thoughts there, too…
He heard some closer-up barking, the door opened, and he blinked. Chuck had barged out in front of Lily, his tail going a mile a minute, until Lily grabbed him by the harness and said, “Chuck.Sit,”in that no-nonsense voice that always took Rafe by surprise. It took Chuck by surprise, too, apparently, because he sat.
Rafe noticed that. Sort of. What he mainly noticed was that she was wearing a robe. In fact, the same one she’d shown him the day before. White silk. Short. Not all the way…opaque.
Thighs.That was a pretty good snapshot of the contents of his mind. Before it added,Breasts.He caught a glimpse of her bra when she bent over to grab the dog. It was pale purple with some creamy lace overlay, it was feathery-light and, he’d bet, close to transparent, and it only covered about half of her breasts. And absolutely none of that was terrible.
Yeah, he noticed all that from a glimpse. He was paying attention.
“Good morning,” she said. No makeup again, and her hair was falling around her face and down her back as if she’d just blown it dry and got it perfect. Gold and platinum and caramel. Any man who saw it would want to touch it, and Rafe was absolutely no exception.
“I thought you’d be, ah, still out with the goats, so I…” Well, this was smooth. “I came by for Chuck,” he finished with a shade more polish. “Good for him to run out the energy. Bought my own leash for him as well.” He held it up. “Simpler. I’ll drop him at the shop for Bailey when I head out for my lesson, same as yesterday.”
“Oh. I wasn’t sure you were still coming.” She pulled her hair back with one hand, which had the unfortunate effect—or the fortunate one—of making the white silk ride higher on her thighs and her robe part a little bit more. She smelled like roses and honey and sandalwood, and that wasn’t any worse than the rest of it.
He said, “I reckoned you weren’t sure. Something about the way you didn’t text me back.” Chuck was sitting at her side, panting in his eagerness, and Rafe dropped to his haunches and gave him a scratch. Lily hadn’t answered, so he told her, “I heard the ‘No.’ I got it. Could be I wish it was a ‘Yes.’ Could be you know exactly how much. But it isn’t, and we made a deal about Chuck.”
“To have fun,” she said. “That was the deal I remember. To make fools of ourselves, and not to care. In the taxi, that first night. You kept that deal. I remember how I felt about it, too.”
He looked up at her, then stood up. Slowly. That last bit had come out on a breath. “So…exactly what are you saying?” Was he meant not to notice what she was wearing? It wasn’t working. Fortunately, he was an actor, but bloodyhell.His body was saying, “Yes, boy,” and his brain was saying, “Back off.” It was confusing.
She asked, “Do you want some yoghurt and muesli? They’re homemade. I was about to eat breakfast. Or do you need to go on your run?”
He could turn around and take off with Chuck like a man who didn’t need to be tortured. Or he could take this ride as far as it would go. He said, “I just kicked my run to the curb.”
She smiled. Looking self-assured and a little remote again, the way she’d looked sitting on the bar stool. A look that kept a man guessing. It had worked then, and it still did.
