An Irresistible Temptation (9 page)

“Wait,” Sophie said. “You’re marrying her
because you are beholden to her?”

“It’s a little more than that.” He ran a hand
through his hair. “It doesn’t matter why, does it? An arrangement
exists. But neither of us is in a hurry to marry. She knew I was
going away to school, and she wants to stay with her father. And
I’ll be back here soon enough.”

“None of that has changed,” Sophie stated
flatly.

“Everything has changed,” he said, his voice
rough. “From the first moment I saw you, I had to . . . know
you.”

She understood completely, but it didn’t make
it right.

“And when we kissed,” he said, “well, you
felt it, too. How can we live without that feeling?”

Sophie, who had had her heart stomped flat,
disagreed.

“You know something, Riley, you’d be
surprised what you can live without. You don’t want to hurt her,”
Sophie said.

“No. But how can I explain this to you, so I
don’t sound like a heel, being engaged to a woman I don’t love? She
is my long-time friend and for that alone, you’re right, I
absolutely don’t want to hurt her. But I will never love her—that
sounds terrible, and it would be, if she didn’t feel the same. She
does, and I know it.”

“She told you that?” Sophie asked, wondering
how any woman wouldn’t want to hold onto Riley with both hands and
not let go.

“No, but she doesn’t . . . that is, we don’t
. . .”

“I saw you kiss her,” Sophie interrupted
him.

He looked astounded. “How—never mind. Yes, I
kissed her. Because of you.”

Sophie’s eyes widened at that.

“Eliza and I haven’t done more than hold
hands in a long time, and I thought maybe, when I kissed you, it
was due to something all pent up.”

He brushed his thumb across her lips and they
locked eyes.

She parted her lips, not sure what she was
going to say, but as his gaze fixed on her mouth, all her words
died. He was going to try to kiss her again, and she was going to
have to stop him.

But he didn’t kiss her. He groaned instead.
“I kissed Eliza and she kissed me back, and it was only a kiss. She
knows it, I know it.” He looked chagrined. “I really tried,
too.”

Sophie cringed, not sure she wanted to hear
about his attempts at ardor with Eliza.

“I held her a long time, waiting for that
feeling. But it didn’t come. Right now, sitting here with you, I’m
dying to kiss you again.”

“You’re engaged, Riley.”

“I want you to know that I don’t go around
trifling with women,” he said.

“I didn’t think you did,” she told him, but
it was nice to hear.

He sat back on his heels. “I have to be
honest, though, I’m no angel. I mean, men have needs.”

She bit her lip, shaking her head slightly to
stop him. She knew how her brother had kept company with a widow
for three years before he met Charlotte, and it was obvious that
they were more than platonic. But knowing about Reed was one thing;
he was family.

“There’ve been times, in San Francisco . . .
Anyway, Eliza doesn’t know about any of that. You know she’s rather
territorial. It’s a pride issue.”

“Why tell me?” Sophie asked, as she brushed
aside a feeling of jealousy that wasn’t by rights hers to feel. It
was too easy, though, looking at him, to picture his strong,
healthy body atop some beautiful harlot willing to do his
bidding.

“Because when I think of you, I imagine what
I could have. And it would be so much better than the life I’ve got
coming.”

He should be having this heartfelt discussion
with Eliza, not her. She reached out and touched his face, wiping a
speck of dirt from his jaw. He caught her hand, turned his head,
and kissed her palm.

“Sophie,” he said, his voice husky. He leaned
closer and, merely the tiniest bit, she leaned forward. It was
inevitable.

His lips brushed hers and a spark flared to
life between them once again. This time he smelled like grass and
she breathed it in. His hands went around her and she felt them on
her rear. She gasped as he pulled her toward him until she was
pressed against him, where he remained nestled between her
legs.

After a moment, his lips nibbled their way
from her lips to her throat. “My knees are starting to kill me on
this floor,” he said against her neck.

She giggled, feeling a little hysterical at
the feelings flooding through her but reveling in the heat where
their bodies touched. She let him pull her to a standing
position.

“That’s better,” he said. And they didn’t
speak again as his arms went around her, and hers encircled his
neck.

She raised her face to him and when his lips
met hers, it seemed to her that the entire world fell away. He
kissed like a man who knew what he was doing, she thought.
Had
they taught him in medical school some special way that lips liked
to be touched by other lips?
Now, his hand was on her hip.
Yes, he was clearly a man who’d done this before.

He said that he hadn’t done anything more
than hold Eliza’s hand
in a while
.

When they broke for air, Sophie opened her
eyes. “Riley, have you and Eliza . . . that is . . .?” She broke
off, feeling like a strumpet for even asking about his fiancée
while locked in his embrace.

He leaned his forehead against hers and took
a breath. “No, never with Eliza.”

But certainly with someone. He had mentioned
prostitutes in San Francisco, but a man as winsome as Riley
Dalcourt most likely had his pick of girls growing up. Maybe even .
. .

“Charlotte?” she asked suddenly, pulling
back. That would be too terrible to contemplate.

“No,” he was quick to assure her. “She and I
were never even friends. We went to school together for a while,
but she kept to herself, especially after her parents died, and
then I went away.”

“My brother worships her.” Sophie wasn’t sure
why she was telling Riley. She had believed she had the same
relationship with Philip, though she’d never seen him look at her
the way Reed looked at Charlotte.

“I’m glad she found love,” Riley said,
tucking behind her ear a lock of hair that had escaped her bun. He
was still talking but Sophie found it hard to concentrate as he ran
his finger along the shell of her ear and down her neck. “I knew
Charlotte’s brother better. Thaddeus was my age, and we got in some
trouble together, just hijinks, playing in the mines, that sort of
thing. Then later, having a drink behind the saloon. Whatever we
could think of to amuse ourselves.”

Including girls, Sophie imagined, having met
Thaddeus and knowing he was nearly as good looking as Riley. She
sighed. Well, she was not exactly pure herself. She had let Philip
do more than he should, though not as much as he wanted, thank God.
Or she could have found herself in a whole heap of trouble when
he’d left her. Wickedly, resting now in Riley’s arms, she found
herself imagining him doing the same things she’d forbidden
Philip.

He bent his head again and she yielded her
mouth to his lips and opened herself to his tongue. She could feel
his thudding heartbeat, along with her own, and the pulsing low in
her body was becoming insistent.

“I want to touch your bare skin,” he said,
voicing her own thoughts.

The kitchen door flew open and they jumped
apart. Too late.

Sophie looked into Sarah’s shocked face and
the color drained from her own. She had no excuse, nothing she
could say.

“I . . . I . . . should have knocked,” Sarah
said, clutching a basket with a pretty blue cloth over it.

Riley looked shaken but was the first to
recover.

“We, that is, I . . . Sophie and I—shoot,
Sarah, please don’t say anything to anyone. You hear?”

“Well, of course,” Sarah said, one hand
fluttering to her throat, perhaps already choking on the words that
threatened to spill out. Sophie knew that she would, at the very
least, tell Doc, and he would think badly of her. She couldn’t bear
it.

“Sophie.” Riley shot her a glance that was as
intense and bewildered as she felt. “I’ll talk to you later,” he
said. “It’ll be all right.”

She had no idea how it could be all right,
but watched him nod to Sarah, grab up his hat, and flee through the
back door.

Wishing she could run away as well, Sophie
stood stock still, blinking for another moment, unable to think of
anything to say to this woman to make her predicament seem less
damning.

“I didn’t mean to . . .,” Sophie began. “That
is, Riley . . . uh . . .,” she trailed off.

Sarah put the basket down on the table.
“Riley is about the most handsome young man this side of the
Mississippi River, I warrant. Something about that dimple.”

Sophie nodded miserably. Sarah had her hands
on her hips, looking Sophie up and down. “You got dirt all over
you, girl.”

“Oh.” She put her hands up to her face and
then brushed them down her dress.

“He’s going to marry Eliza Prentice; you know
that?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“She might get her pride pricked if she finds
out Riley’s sweet on you, but you’re the one who’s going to get
really hurt here. And I wouldn’t want to see that.”

Sophie lowered her head.

“Maybe it’s time you moved on to where you’re
going next,” Sarah said, her voice had gentled, but that only
increased Sophie’s anguish. Beforehand, Sarah had been urging her
to stay. Sophie knew she was going to cry and desperately wanted to
be alone.

“I’d better get upstairs and wash up.”

“Some things can’t be washed away,” Sarah
said, turning for the door. Sophie noticed she left the basket of
food, which made her feel even worse.

San Francisco, California

Sophie hurried along the street toward the
clang of the cable car’s bell. Charlotte’s friend, the editor, had
opened a number of doors for her. She’d had one audition already at
the opera house and was headed to another at the San Francisco
Symphony that afternoon.

So far, Sophie didn’t like two things about
San Francisco—that she hadn’t come sooner and that she wasn’t there
with Riley. Most days, she longed to see him, just leaning in a
doorway, as he did at Doc’s practice, a smile on his devastatingly
attractive face. He haunted her thoughts, an apparition of the man
whom she would probably always wonder about, the man who had
somehow crept into her heart and soul in a very short time.

“Watch your step, ma’am,” said the car’s
conductor, and Sophie handed him a nickel.

The city was everything she’d hoped; Boston
was larger, but maybe because she was so unfamiliar with it, San
Francisco seemed infinitely more exciting. And she’d never seen so
many foreigners within her country’s borders.

She hadn’t ventured out at night as yet, and
had seen nothing of the Barbary Coast that Riley had mentioned. She
knew she’d have to have a companion to do that.

At her stop, she jumped off and got her
bearings. Up ahead was the concert hall. She stretched her fingers
out and curled them a few times and went inside.

*****

“What’ll it be, Miss?” Sophie sat in The
Ladies Grill at The Palace Hotel and ordered herself a meal. It
hadn’t gone well. She’d performed at her best, but she could see by
the bored look on his face that the conductor, Herr Becker, was
only doing it as a favor to Charlotte’s friend. He seemed to be
barely listening and was writing on a piece of paper through her
whole audition.

The symphony had no open positions, in any
case. Becker had said she was gifted, as if he ran into gifted
people every day, which perhaps he did. He took her address on
Green Street, and that was the end of it.

She hoped the director of the opera house
called her back from her first audition, but for the first time,
she felt unsure. She had already asked Charlotte to return the
favor and pack more gowns in a trunk and send them along. She
needed to be dressed for the city or she would seem like an
untutored country girl. She wondered how well Riley cleaned up for
the city. But then she remembered that when he did arrive back, he
could be married to Eliza.

The last time she’d seen him, he’d been
running from the kitchen to escape Sarah’s condemning gaze. Sophie
had hardly slept that night. She’d thanked her good fortune that
the envelope Riley had delivered to her contained her letters of
introduction to the symphony’s conductor and the opera house’s
director. She’d packed up and stopped at the Cuthins’ house to say
goodbye. Despite her embarrassment and shame, they had seemed as
warm as ever, and then she’d left on the northern-bound train
without ever seeing Riley again. After all, what was there to
say?

She decided to write to Sarah when she got
back to her room and let her know how she was faring. Meanwhile,
Sophie was going to have a proper walk around The Palace, which
opened less than a decade earlier as the largest hotel in the
world. It was certainly the most opulent she’d ever been in.

In the Grand Court, where carriages could
enter the building and circle around to drop off their passengers,
she couldn’t help walking with her eyes lifted to the ceiling that
stretched up for miles, it seemed, but was actually seven floors.
Marking each floor was a columned balcony from where guests could
gaze down at the interior courtyard.

Sophie glanced at the hotel’s brochure in her
hand, 755 rooms, each with a bathroom and a parlor. Sophie couldn’t
imagine that many people needing a place to sleep on any given
night.

“Can I help you, miss?” A young woman dressed
in the hotel’s uniform had approached her, with brown hair neatly
pinned up, regarding her with kind hazel eyes.

“I’m just looking,” Sophie said. “That’s all
right, isn’t it?”