The Seduction of His Wife

Chapter Eight

O n Tuesday morning, the first day of December, Sarah found herself standing in front of a monster. The darn thing actually had a ladder built into it for climbing up into the cab, and it was such an ugly green that it looked like a seasick monster. Heck, even the tires were taller than she was. But what truly alarmed Sarah was that Alex was smiling at her with the same expectant smile she often saw on Tucker whenever there was trouble brewing. What was Mr. Alex Knight up to now? He had pulled her aside after breakfast this morning and asked if she would like to come to the cutting with them today, adding that maybe he would even let her drive his skidder. Surprised by his offer, though admittedly more curious than anything else, Sarah had said yes without even stopping to wonder why he was offering. Besides, if Delaney and Tucker could drive a skidder, she wanted to learn how.

Which was why she was standing in a logging yard full of downed timber, suddenly uncertain as she eyed the ugly green monster. Then she looked at Alex and found him inspecting her. Sarah tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, remembering that he had told her to braid and pin it out of the way. It was dangerous work they did in the woods, and loose clothing and long hair were a no-no. Apparently satisfied that she passed inspection, Alex plopped a hard hat on her head that covered her eyes. He laughed and removed it, adjusted the inner band, and plopped it down again. “Climb aboard,” he said, bowing formally and gesturing with his hand. “Your chariot awaits.”

“This,” Sarah said as she climbed the ladder, “is the ugliest chariot I’ve ever seen.”

Alex helped her along by placing his hands on her hips to give her a lift. “This is my Mean Green Machine, lady, and don’t you insult it.”

Sarah stopped climbing when she reached the entrance to the cab, trying very hard to ignore the heat of his hands on her hips as she looked inside. “Ah, are you sure we’ll both fit in here?”

“Sure we will, providing you keep your elbows to yourself,” he said as he climbed up behind her. Oh, Lord. Now his chest was cradling her bottom, and Sarah closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She’d been doing so well this last week about keeping her attraction to Alex in check, and here she was with his arms holding the ladder on either side of her, wrapping her in an embrace of heat and denim. Sarah scrambled into the cab, sat down in front of the steering wheel, and stared at the array of switches, dials, and levers.

She looked at Alex, who was still standing on the ladder. “About the only thing I recognize is the steering wheel. I’ll never be able to drive this,” she muttered, her voice betraying her disappointment. Alex dismissed her worry with a smile of assurance. “Sure you will. I’ll teach you in no time,” he promised as he climbed into the cab. He picked her up, ignoring her squeak, and sat her back down on his lap.

Alex groaned. And then, like any sane man, he carefully set Sarah beside him, pinning her between his thigh and the cab wall, and calmly let out his breath—until she suddenly squirmed. Alex buried his second groan in the grinding of the large diesel motor as he brought the huge skidder roaring to life. This may not have been one of his more brilliant ideas. Spending the morning plastered against Sarah might be more than his overactive imagination could handle. But how in hell else could he seduce a woman who had mastered the fine art of being invisible? Getting Sarah alone had been an exercise in frustration for the last six days. If she wasn’t busy running the Knight Bed-and-Breakfast Inn, she was giving Delaney sewing lessons or helping Tucker fix up his room to look like the inside of the space shuttle. And when she wasn’t being indispensable to everyone, the woman kept vanishing into thin air. Sometimes she went for walks in the woods, Alex knew, because he would find carefully arranged bowls of twigs, moss, birch bark, and pine cones placed throughout the house. And other times, when he

’d pop home unexpectedly in the middle of the day—with an unexplainable need to make sure she hadn’t run off to Crag Island—Alex would call her for two or three minutes before Sarah came down from upstairs dressed in a heavy sweater, her cheeks red with cold and her eyes looking as guilty as a mouse in the pantry.

So this morning he’d come up with what he thought was a brilliant way to get Sarah all to himself. Now, though, he wondered if he was brilliant or masochistic. Alex ended up groaning a hundred times that morning. It may have been only thirty-five degrees outside, but it might as well have been a hundred degrees inside the cab. The skidder had a heater, but he’d shut it off after the first half-hour. Between his raging hormones and Sarah’s squirming backside, there was no need for artificial heat. She had shed her own jacket two hours ago, and Alex could only hope she was suffering as much as he was. The woman was all over the place. If she wasn’t turning this way or that to see everything at once, she was sticking her head out the window to watch the trees dragging behind them, thus sticking her cute little backside in his face. Alex gritted his teeth and hauled her back into the cab for the hundredth time in as many minutes.

She was smiling more than he’d seen her smile since he met her. And she kept asking him dozens of questions about everything, acting worse than his kids. Alex knew he was finally seeing the real Sarah

—the real woman behind her eager-to-please facade. That fool Roland had to be responsible for her having learned to hide her emotions so well. It was obviously a defense she had polished so well that Alex suspected Sarah didn’t even realize she did it.

But she was coming alive today, driving him nuts in the process. Sarah was a stunningly beautiful woman at her worst times, but today her glowing face left him speechless. She had also left his crew speechless when she had asked them one question after another during their morning break. Caught up in her own curiosity, she hadn’t noticed the way the men could only stare, not knowing exactly what to make of her. They had all solemnly tried to answer her questions but had smiled foolishly whenever she turned her back. They’d also given Alex a few envious looks.

Not that he could blame them. Sarah’s jeans fit her like a second skin. And Alex knew exactly how thin they were, because those jeans had been burning a hole in his thigh all morning. His only saving grace with the men was that Sarah had put on her jacket when she’d gotten out of the skidder. Alex pulled her inside the cab yet again, this time with a stern look to stay put. Honest to God, he hadn’t had this much trouble on Tucker’s first ride when the boy was two. Lunch was a repeat of the morning break, the men all sitting on downed logs in the loading yard to eat their meals. Ethan suddenly cursed. Alex followed his stare, then cursed as well. Sarah had taken off her jacket as the weak noon sun had brought the temperature up to a blistering thirty-six degrees. She was bent over the food basket, her perfectly molded fanny facing them. Alex heard a few choked coughs as coffee went down the windpipes of several men, and he grabbed Sarah’s coat and stood up to throw it over her fanny. Or her shoulders. Or her head. He wasn’t sure what he should cover, since every inch of her was enticing. He spun her around, stuffed her into the jacket, and zipped it up to her chin. “I—ah

—I don’t want you to catch a cold,” he said at her questioning look. But when Alex thought he heard someone softly mutter the words “chest cold,” he decided lunch was over for Sarah and himself. He grabbed her hand and hauled her toward the skidder.

Sarah smiled over her shoulder at the crew as they watched Alex drag her off. “Alex is in such a hurry because he’s going to let me drive his Mean Green Machine,” she called back.

“Hell!” Ethan yelped.

“No!” Paul shouted.

Grady stepped in front of his sons. “Not one word, you understand? Don’t either of you say anything to Alex,” he commanded. And then he smiled. “He’ll find out soon enough about Sarah’s driving abilities.”

“But dammit, Dad, that’s a skidder, not a truck. She’s going to take ten years off his life, not to mention shave all the bark off every tree we own,” Ethan argued.

Grady beamed brighter. “Lord, I hope so. Giving Alex a go at teaching her to drive will do him, and me, a world of good.”

The two brothers nodded, their worry turning to grins as they sat down to watch the show. They were not disappointed. They heard the engine start and the gears grind as the powerful green beast suddenly lurched forward, digging up the ground as it roared into the forest. All the men wore stunned expressions that turned to pained winces when they heard small trees snapping and saw large trees shuddering. If they listened very carefully, they could hear colorful curses scorching the air, but nobody was sure if it was Alex yelling…or the forest.

Well, so much for that bright idea. Alex downed his fourth beer amid the swirling waters of the hot tub and pictured his excited wife in the house, likely crying her eyes out. God, he’d yelled at her. He’d even cursed her. Alex closed his eyes, trying to block out the images of their hair-raising ride this afternoon. The crazy woman only knew one speed, apparently, and that was full speed ahead. No matter if there were a few trees in the way—she simply drove right over them. Alex figured NorthWoods Timber had at least three new logging trails, one of them coming damn close to the lake. That was when he had finally lost it and grabbed the wheel. It had been the longest fifteen-mile ride home he had ever taken. Sarah had sat silently beside him in the pickup, and Alex had felt like a bigger monster than his skidder for turning her bubbling excitement into head-hanging shame. When they’d gotten home, she hadn’t even been able to look him in the eye but had walked quietly into the house.

Damn it to hell. He’d been making such progress.

Maybe more roses?

Dinner was a quiet affair that night, Sarah’s glaring absence reminding everyone that all roads occasionally had bumps. Alex felt as if he’d driven into a major washout. Sarah was sitting in the great room, watching another one of those incessant how-to shows while mending shirts, saying she wasn’t hungry. Delaney and Tucker were merely pushing their food around on their plates, when they weren’t scowling at Alex.

Grady, Ethan, and Paul were somber but understanding. Each of them had tried to teach Sarah to drive, Grady had finally admitted. No one had fared any better than Alex, but they had never reached the yelling stage. However, they had never put Sarah behind the wheel of a ten-ton skidder dragging two tons of logs through the forest.

“We told you Sarah can’t drive,” Ethan said into the silence. “Is there any particular reason you decided to start her lessons in a skidder?”

Alex looked down the table at his father, then at Paul, Delaney, and Tucker, before looking back at Ethan and shrugging. “I thought she just couldn’t drive on state roads because she didn’t have a license. How in heck can anyone not have the sense to steer around immovable objects instead of through them?”

“It’s not the steering Sarah can’t get a handle on,” Paul said. “It’s the speed. She can’t seem to coordinate the two.”

“She won’t push softly on the gas,” Ethan clarified. “She’s either got the throttle shoved all the way to the floor, or she’s slamming on the brakes and driving our faces into the dash.”

“She’s the same with the sewing machine,” Delaney softly interjected, her cheeks tinged pink for tattling. “She keeps breaking needles because she’s always got the machine going at full speed. That’s why she does most of her sewing by hand.”

“She drives a bike real good,” Tucker piped up. “She rides down our lane to the artery with me all the time. But she does like to go fast,” he admitted with a proud grin. “I have to pedal really hard to keep up.”

“You need to apologize for yelling at her,” Delaney added, “because it’s not Sarah’s fault she doesn’t know how to drive. You just need to teach her.” She scowled at Ethan and Paul. “They gave up after only a few tries.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said evenly. “She’s your wife, you teach her. But in a pickup, not a skidder.”

Alex had had enough. He really hadn’t done anything wrong this afternoon, other than react like any normal, terrified man. He pushed away from the table with an overloud sigh and headed into the great room to straighten out the mess he’d made, with encouraging smiles from his offspring and snickers from his brothers following him through the swinging door. He quietly walked up to the television, shut it off, then walked over to Sarah and held out his hand.

It took her a minute to look up from her mending, and then she simply stared at his outstretched hand.

“Come for a walk with me, Sarah.”

“I have to finish mending this shirt for Grady,” she said, looking back at her work. Alex gently pulled the shirt out of her grasp, set it on the table beside her, and held out his hand again, wiggling his fingers. “Your mending will be right here when you get back. I promise, Grady won’t do it himself.”

She finally looked at him, and Alex felt a spurt of hope that the large brown eyes meeting his were not filled with shame or embarrassment but with impatience. “You’re not actually afraid of me, are you?”

he asked before she could say anything, keeping his smile to himself when her chin came up. “I mean, my yelling today didn’t leave any bruises, did it?”

She tapped the side of her head and cupped one ear toward him, her eyes guilelessly wide.

“Excuse me?” she said a bit loudly. “Could you please repeat that? I seem to be deaf in my left ear.”

Alex reached down with a bark of laughter, captured her hands, and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, brat. Let’s get out of here before Ethan and Paul realize they’re stuck with the dishes again.”

“I don’t want them doing my dishes,” she said as Alex all but dragged her into the kitchen.

“I’ll help,” Delaney offered, scrambling away from the swinging door and picking up her plate from the table. “I know where everything goes.” She beamed a smile at Sarah. “You and Daddy go for a nice, long walk.”

Alex frowned as he led Sarah over to the wall of jackets. Delaney was acting a little too eager for his liking. He glanced at his family sitting at the table. Hell, they all looked too eager. Alex handed Sarah her jacket, then slipped into his own, fully aware of the five sets of expectant eyes watching them. Dammit, he had warned his dad and his brothers that the marriage was only temporary and had told them not to read anything into his actions concerning Sarah. Delaney and Tucker, however, were proving to be a more delicate matter. Alex had tried, but he couldn’t seem to get through to them that Sarah would be leaving in January and that they shouldn’t get their hopes up. Tucker kept insisting Sarah was their mom now and that she would never, ever leave them. Delaney only smiled her young lady smile and silently patted Alex’s arm.

Just when had his little girl grown up?

“I’ll wash the pots,” Sarah said over her shoulder as Alex herded her out the door. She stopped on the porch to glare up at him. “They dented my roaster the other day.”

He took hold of her hand. “It will still roast with a dent in it,” he said, letting her go when she wiggled her fingers to get free. “Let’s walk this way,” he suggested, taking the path around the house that led to the lake.

“Where are we going?” she asked, falling into step beside him.

“Just for a walk. It’s a beautiful night, and I want to see the moonlight on the lake.”

“You didn’t have to bring me on a walk to apologize. A simple ‘I’m sorry for yelling and cursing you out’ would have been sufficient.”

Alex stopped and faced her. “I have no intention of apologizing for anything. There’s not a man alive who wouldn’t have reacted exactly the same way. You tore up nearly two miles of woods and murdered thousands of trees, Sarah.” He turned away and started down the lawn. “It’s a miracle we’re both still in one piece.”

“Then why didn’t you stop me?” she asked, running to catch up. She pulled him to a halt by grabbing his sleeve. “What took you so long to grab the wheel?”

“I was frozen in horror. Hell, Sarah, all you had to do was slow down and turn the wheel whenever you came to a tree. How could you not grasp that simple concept?”

She glared up at him, the moonlight bright enough for Alex to see her cheeks were pink with anger. She pushed on his arm as she let go of his sleeve and shoved her hands, which were fisted, into her jacket pockets. “Then if you have no intention of apologizing, why are we going for a walk?”

“So you can apologize to me.”

Her jaw dropped on a gasped “What?”

Alex turned so she wouldn’t see his smile and started walking toward the lake again. Again, she ran to catch up and grabbed his sleeve. But instead of stopping, Alex simply captured her hand and continued walking, ignoring her attempts to get free.

“What am I supposed to apologize for?” she asked, her voice as stiff as her fingers digging into his.

“For scaring ten years off my life today.” He stopped at the narrow ramp to the dock and guided her ahead of him, then took her hand to lead her past the wing strut of the floatplane. “I need to know you weren’t intentionally trying to scare me to death.”

She tried to pull them to a halt, but Alex continued to the end of the dock, then stopped and turned to face her. “Okay. This is a good place for you to apologize. We’re all alone, and the moonlight is bright enough that I can see your sincerity.”

“I am not apologizing. I wasn’t the one cursing and shouting.”

Alex fought his urge to laugh. “Two simple words, Sarah. ‘I’m sorry.’ And then you can kiss me.”

Her jaw dropped again, and her shoulders stiffened. “I am not kissing you.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” she repeated, her expression incredulous.

Alex nodded. “Yeah, what’s wrong with two consenting adults—who happen to be married to each other, by the way—sharing a kiss in the moonlight?”

“We are not married. Not legally,” she said, dropping her gaze to his chest.

“It’s legal as long as I don’t dispute it,” he reminded her, lifting her chin to look at him. “Do I frighten you, Sarah?”

“Yes. No,” she said more firmly, pulling her chin free. “I’m not afraid of you because of what…of that first night.”

“I don’t believe you,” he softly told her. “You’ve been avoiding me all week.”

“I went with you today.”

“Only because your curiosity got the best of you. One kiss, Sarah, just so I know I didn’t turn you off men.”

She actually snorted. “If Roland Banks wasn’t able to turn me off men, you certainly can’t.”

Alex’s grip on her shoulders tightened. “Was he abusive?”

Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “He never laid a hand on me.”

“Abuse isn’t always physical. What did he do to you?”

“Roland was a bully and a jerk, but his bark was worse than his bite. Just as I have with you, I soon learned to ignore his outbursts.”

Alex ignored her little dig and stayed on the subject. “Why did he marry you, if he didn’t care for women?”

“Because he didn’t want anyone on the island to find out he preferred men.” She angled her head to stare up at him. “What better way to disguise the fact that you’re gay than to marry a pretty seventeen-year-old who is too naive and filled with grief to know any better?”

“This is the twenty-first century, Sarah. Gay men don’t hide behind marriage anymore.”

“They do if they live in a small, isolated fishing village that hasn’t evolved in a hundred years. Roland would have been ostracized if anyone found out, and his mother would have been humiliated.”

“Why didn’t you divorce him once you realized your mistake?”

“Because by then it was too late.” She dropped her gaze to his chest. “And I had a debt to pay off.”

“What debt?”

She looked up. “To Roland and his mother. They sold their house and moved in with me when my father fell off our roof. They helped me run the inn and take care of Dad for the nine months before he died. It was Martha Banks’s idea that Roland and I get married, and I couldn’t very well say no and kick them out after all they’d done for me. They had no place to go.”

She stepped out of his grip and turned her back to him, facing the lake. “It took me nearly a year to come out of my fog of grief and finally figure out that Martha hadn’t cared about me or my father but had only coveted our inn.” Sarah looked over her shoulder at him. “But by then, she had convinced me to put her and Roland’s names on the deed.”

Alex pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So you stayed married to a bully for eight years out of gratitude?”

“And I lived with his dragon of a mother for four years after that. Martha died this past June, and that’s why I was free to accept Grady’s offer and finally get off Crag Island.”

“Only to get yourself trapped in another marriage,” Alex said, shaking his head when she turned to face him. “And you don’t know what to do with this new husband, either, do you? Especially considering that I happen to like women.”

Her response to that was a smile. “I’m not seventeen years old this time. And I am not afraid of you, Alex Knight. I apologize for scaring ten years off your life today, but I’m not going to make this more of a mess by kissing you.”

“Then I guess I’ll do the kissing,” he said, reaching out and gently cupping her face, lowering his mouth to hers.

Alex wasn’t sure if Sarah would recoil in disgust or give him a sharp kick in the shin, but she merely went perfectly still, her hands gripping his jacket sleeves and her lips unmoving. Deciding that no response was actually a good sign, he moved one arm around her shoulders to pull her into his embrace and ran his fingers into her hair to deepen his kiss—all the time being ever so gentle, careful not to scare her off.

Alex couldn’t believe it had been ages and ages since he’d wanted so badly for a kiss to be perfect. But it was surprisingly important to him that Sarah respond, that she like the feel of his arms around her and his mouth on hers.

He almost shouted when she softened against him, parted her lips on a tiny sigh, and slid her hands around his waist. His victory was short-lived, however, when Alex realized that instead of worrying about Sarah’s reaction, he’d better start paying attention to his own. Without even trying, the woman was igniting a fire inside him.

He knew better than to continue to kiss her but was unable to stop. Sarah tasted so sweet, felt so good in his arms, and fit so perfectly against him that he was one second away from going too far. He straightened, holding her head against his pounding chest.

“Okay,” he said into her hair. “Maybe that wasn’t such a bright idea, either. You might be right about this getting messy.” He kissed her hair, then set her free. “You must know that I want you, Sarah.”

“I know,” she whispered, her face flushed, her lips swollen, and her expression direct. “Most men do.”

“What?” He took a step back.

Sarah studied him calmly. “Which surprises you more? That I know you want me or that I’m not shocked by it?” She smiled. “I’ve been running a bed-and-breakfast since I was fourteen. Do you have any idea how many men have said those same words to me?” She shook her head. “I’ve spent nearly half my life being propositioned by men from twenty to ninety years old. I know exactly how enticing long blond hair, large brown eyes, and a stacked chest are. Heck, I was married because of my looks.”

Alex frowned so hard his face hurt.

“I’m sorry if my bluntness upsets you,” she continued before he could say anything. “Or appalls you. But you’re not exactly in a minority.” She smiled again. “Although you certainly got a lot farther than any of the others.”

Alex felt heat rising up the back of his neck. Was he angry that Sarah was lumping him in with all those men or angry at himself for being no better than they? How in hell could she stand there smiling at him, mocking the fact that he had been the only one of dozens actually to have scored? And the fact that he obviously wanted to score again? Hell, why wasn’t she shoving him into the lake?

“Don’t worry,” she continued, again before he could say anything, not that he could have strung two words together if he’d wanted to. “As soft as my skin is, it’s grown quite thick over the years. None of those men wanted more than just a romp in bed, either. I wasn’t long figuring out that bodies like mine are for fulfilling fantasies, not marrying.”

Alex was seconds away from throwing himself into the lake.

She smiled again, her face stunningly beautiful in the moonlight as she gazed up at him. “If it’s so important that I forgive you for what happened that first night, then I forgive you, Alex. And I’ll stay here long enough for our marriage to appear real for Grady’s sake. But that’s as far as it goes between you and me. I don’t have the courage to have an affair, and I won’t stay in another loveless marriage.”

She looked at him expectantly, but dammit to hell, what could he say? That he was a bigger jackass than Roland?

Her chest rose and fell at his silence. She shrugged one delicate shoulder in resignation, then turned and silently walked down the dock. Alex could only watch as Sarah made her way up the lawn, her body washed in moonlight, until she disappeared into the shadows at the side of the house. They didn’t want more than just a romp in bed, either, she’d said so matter-of-factly. A body for fulfilling fantasies? Hell, he hadn’t stopped fantasizing about Sarah since he’d stepped into the kitchen that first day.

Alex turned to face the lake and let out a frustrated sigh. Talk about feeling like a jackass; she’d nailed his intentions exactly. But the woman didn’t have a clue about men if she dared to admit she didn’t have the courage for an affair.

She hadn’t said she didn’t want to, only that she was afraid to. Most men would consider that a direct challenge. And if that was how he took it, what did that make him?

Alex snorted. It made him no better than any one of those damn bastards who had propositioned Sarah over the years.