Page 74 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

He stepped back, and she let her hand drop. “Later.”

She lowered her voice. “Didn’t last night mean anything?”

He looked up at the sky, where gray clouds were threatening the sun. “That . . . was great, but it was a surprise . . . I’ve got to go.”

“But—”

“I just need a little space.”

He saw a wounded look cross her eyes, and he mentally kicked himself from one side of hell to the other. Why was he always disappointing women? Causing them pain? Was he just that callous and self-ser

ving? Had he been sending out the wrong signals? Or had the women misread him?

“All of the above,” he muttered and while Sophia stayed where she was, staring at him, her full lips knotting into a sexy pout, he walked around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. Ralph was waiting. “Get in,” he said to the dog, tossing the dregs from his cup onto the snowy ground. By the time he’d settled into the seat and the shepherd was next to him, head pressed to the window, James saw that Sophia had turned around and was walking toward the hotel.

Had he really planned on moving in with Sophia when he hadn’t broken off his relationship with Megan? What had he been thinking? What the hell kind of idiot was he?

“Women trouble?” Bobby asked, ramming the Ford into gear.

He put his empty cup in one of the holders between the seats. “Always, I think.”

“Ye-up. Best to settle down with one.” He eased on the gas, and the big flatbed started rolling across the pocked parking lot. “Or at the very least settle down with one at a time. That’s what I did with Cyn, and it’s worked out.”

James didn’t argue. He winced from a sharp pain in his shoulder when Knowlton turned onto the long, rutted lane that led into the foothills, where his shop and office were located. What was it Rebecca Travers had said her sister accused him of being? A man-whore?

He thought about Rebecca—tall, dark, with red-tinged hair and, he remembered, whip-smart and someone who wasn’t that close to her sister. They were half-sisters as it was, but that wasn’t the reason. Rebecca and Megan just hadn’t gotten along—oil and water. She the calmer, Megan the hothead. He was even surprised that Rebecca was so determined to find her sister. As he recalled, she found her sister irritating.

Guiltily, he remembered other things about the older Travers sister as well, most of which involved laughing and talking and fierce lovemaking. There had been that last night in Seattle, in a hotel room overlooking Elliott Bay. They’d had too much to drink and had been ravenous for each other, as if they’d subconsciously known their time together was doomed.

While the lights of the city reflected on the dark water and they’d kissed wildly, her dark auburn hair spilling around them, they’d become tangled in the bed sheets and slid to the floor still wound in a lovers’ embrace.

That had been their last time together, and the thought was disturbing. For the first time in his life, he felt regret over the ending of a relationship and had a sense that he’d missed out.

The one that got away.

Because he couldn’t be faithful.

And he wasn’t faithful with the worst person possible, the person who could wound Rebecca the most deeply: her self-centered younger sister.

A man-whore, he thought again, deciding that the accusation wasn’t too far off the mark.

CHAPTER 19

Charity was getting nowhere fast.

Literally and figuratively.

Driving to the offices of the local paper, she’d found herself caught in a clog of traffic, as a steady stream of vehicles headed south. She could guess where. The Cahill Inn and Christmas tree farm drew visitors from all over the Northwest right before the holidays. This year, with the notoriety and mystery surrounding James Cahill’s missing girlfriend, even more people had arrived. Not just searching for Christmas trees at the farm or staying at the inn with its renowned Christmas theme, but because they wanted a glimpse of the place where all the intrigue had started: lookie-loos and gossips.

But they were also readers who would lap up the details of the newspaper’s report on the scandal. Details Charity expected to provide. If she could ever get through this knot of traffic, grab a cup of coffee at the shop near the office, and plead her case to her editor, who happened to also be the owner of the Riggs Crossing Clarion.

She tapped her fingers restlessly on the steering wheel, then gave a sharp beep with her horn as the older Cadillac in front of her wasn’t keeping up with the snail’s pace. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, wondering just how old the woman behind the wheel was. She was so small she seemed to be peering through the steering wheel rather than over it, and she certainly was in no big hurry.

But Charity was.

The Cahill story was hers! And she couldn’t allow some reporter from Seattle or Tacoma or Portland to steal it from under her!

No effin’ way. But she was stuck. She’d tried to phone Cahill at his home, on his cell, and through his businesses. And she’d struck out. She gave the horn another impatient tap. He was avoiding her. And it pissed her off.

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