The Rival Page 13

  Waiting while her mother swore softly under her breath a few times, conceivably crossing multiple lanes to find an exit ramp, Regina’s gaze traveled back to the window where Devon was still in his meeting in an upper-level conference suite. Seeing him there, remembering how supportive he’d been of her journey—with no thought to the consequences for his own family—made Regina realize that the progress she’d made in her quest for answers wasn’t as exciting as she’d hoped it might be. Somehow, nailing Alonzo wasn’t bringing her the peace she’d expected because he’d just exposed problems that were already there just under the surface of her family dynamics. She just hadn’t known about them.

  Like it or not, Alonzo Salazar had only spoken the truth.

  “Okay.” Her mother’s voice sounded sharply in her ears. “I’m in a parking lot and I’m ready to hear it all. Spare no detail, Regina. I need to know all about the bastard who destroyed my family.”

  A twinge of worry passed through her that her mother sounded so serious about a topic Regina thought she’d put behind her long ago. Could her decision to share the news with her mom dredge up old unhappiness that Tabitha had put behind her? That hadn’t been her intention. Maybe she’d just really needed to share the information with someone else—someone who’d been as affected by the scandal as her—because it was eating away at her inside to know the truth and not be able to talk about it.

  “I’m telling you this in confidence, Mom,” Regina reminded her. “I won’t have the tabloids hounding us again.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” her mother assured her. “I understand.”

  Satisfied, she took comfort in the words. “Thank you.”

  While she finished filling her mother in on the new developments in the investigation, Regina watched the camera crew film a few laughing ice skaters on the small pond, trying to reevaluate her feelings about the book and her family. It occurred to Regina that she was finally in the perfect position to unmask the author of the book that had ruined her life. She had a captive media audience. The storyline would be relevant since Alonzo Salazar had been a frequent guest at Mesa Falls Ranch, and his son was working with the ranch.

  As tabloid news went, it seemed like a slam dunk.

  It was an opportunity she’d been waiting for ever since she’d found the front door to her childhood home locked, her life as a pampered heiress—a beloved daughter—over forever.

  Except, seeing the snow globe beauty of this place, seeing how her previously empty world had filled with friends and a warm, generous lover, Regina didn’t feel the same thirst for revenge she once had. Because while she still wanted more answers about Alonzo Salazar’s motives and where the profits from his book had gone, they no longer felt like the most important things in the world to her.

  She’d placed all her anger on that one man—and things were more complex than that. People were more complex. Time to quit thinking of the past in terms of black and white and to see the nuances beneath. Her gaze flicked back up to the conference suite window, where Devon was passing his tablet to a colleague, pointing out something on the screen. He’d been so kind to her this week.

  Even when she’d been spying on him and trying to wheedle information from him, he’d been supportive. So no matter how many issues from her past she dragged into this relationship, she knew he deserved better than what she’d given him in the past.

  By the time she wound up her phone call with her mother, sharing more with her than she had in years, Regina felt ready to take a new kind of chance. A new risk.

  And it had Devon Salazar written all over it.

  Eleven

  Devon’s meeting ran long, making him late for his evening with Regina. He hadn’t bothered to return to his cabin to ditch the business attire, or trade his overcoat for a parka, but at least he’d had a pair of boots in the utility vehicle he’d used earlier in the day. Now, as he trudged through the packed snow to where they’d agreed to meet, he could see the bonfire happy hour must have ended. The white lights over the skating pond were still lit, but the ice was empty except for a couple of antler trees twinkling in the dark.

  He pulled out his phone to text Regina to apologize and see if he could still salvage some time with her. But before he could remove his leather glove to key in his password, a snowball pelted him between the shoulder blades.

  Feminine laughter followed the ambush.

  Tucking his phone back in his pocket, he turned to see Regina peeking from behind a tall ponderosa pine. She stood mostly in shadow, but the glow from the skating pond let him see her smile. The red ski jacket she wore was different from the dark duster she favored for riding. A white knit hat covered her dark hair. Seeing her stirred him so much that the feeling stopped him in his tracks. It made him nervous that she had that kind of power over him. He pushed aside those sensations to greet her.

  “Hello to you, too,” he said, closing the distance between them. “I’m going to let you get away with that since I’m late.”

  He wrapped her in his arms, pulling her against him for a taste of her lips, grateful to lose himself in the feel of her. This, he understood. He just needed to keep things simple. Enjoy the physical connection.

  Even with the wind blowing off the mountains and a light snowfall swirling around them, he was all in for this kiss. More than any wind or snow, he simply felt the arch of her spine toward him, the give of her soft mouth under his.

  “Very late,” she reminded him as she broke away to look up into his eyes. She didn’t sound upset, though, for which he was grateful. “I might need to throw a few more rounds at you to even the score.”

  “I’m sorry.” He brushed another kiss along her forehead, wondering how she could feel so right against him. “With the party day looming, we had a lot of details to finalize. I didn’t feel like I could rush through the conference call with the staffers doing the heavy lifting.”

  “I understand.” She slid one arm around his waist and ended up tucked under his arm, subtly steering him toward a couple of Adirondack chairs flanking a firepit. “The one positive thing about being late for the party is that we’ve got a bonfire all to ourselves.”

  He’d rather have her in front of the fireplace at his cabin, where they could be alone, but he liked seeing her this way. She appeared happier than the last time they’d been together, when she’d rushed out of his cabin to dive deeper into April Stephens’s latest findings.

  “Sounds good.” He followed the path around the perimeter of the ice. The catering staff was hauling the food carts back up to the dining area on the hill overlooking the pond. “Were you able to speak to April?”

  He figured it would be better to dispense with the dicey subjects first so they could move past them. As they reached the stone firepit, he swiped off the snow from one of the seats for her.

  “Yes.” She dropped into the chair and leaned forward to warm her hands by the fire. “She was on her way to Kalispell to interview Fallon Reed and she got me up to speed while she was driving.”

  “I heard she didn’t have any luck speaking to Weston Rivera.” Devon had been receiving regular updates, too, and that one frustrated him. He took the seat beside her. “Which makes me wonder if the Mesa Falls Ranch owners are more tightly connected to my father than I first realized.”

  Peeling off her gloves, she laid them on the chair arms and held her bare fingers out to warm in the heat from the blaze. “I’m wondering if Weston said something to make April revisit her perspective on Alonzo. Because she asked me to weigh the possibility that your dad wrote the book without any intention of connecting to my family.”

  That was news to Devon. The idea sure as hell had appeal. He grabbed a nearby stick and poked at the logs in the pit, stirring the flames higher.

  “What do you think?” he asked, dropping the stick to study her expression in the brighter orange glow.

  “At th
e time, I said ‘no way.’” She gave him an apologetic smile. “But I’ve been thinking about it ever since. And I know that it’s wrong of me to pin all the blame on your dad when it was my mother who betrayed my family.”

  The pain in her words was unmistakable. He reached to touch her, to soothe her somehow, his hand skimming her back through her parka.

  “But it wasn’t his story to tell,” Devon assured her, empathizing with how much it hurt to realize the people you loved didn’t share your moral compass. He’d struggled his whole life with forgiving his father for how much he’d hurt his mom. “I understand that. Though I guess the book wouldn’t have experienced the level of fame or sales that it did without that gossip columnist getting involved and going public with her idea that the story was based on real people.”

  “No one made the connection to my family for eight months.” Shifting in her chair, she turned toward him, shadows chasing through her eyes in the moonlight. “Maybe no one ever would have if not for that columnist.”

  He wanted to comfort her for all the ways her life had spiraled out of control. He stroked her back, wishing his father had left more clear answers in the paperwork he’d left behind at the ranch.

  “No matter what his intentions,” she continued, dragging in a deep breath, “I feel like the time has come for me to put it behind me.”

  As the light snowfall picked up speed, she lifted her chin a fraction, and he saw the determined glint in her gaze.

  “Really?” he said, feeling wary. He wondered what that involved.

  “The biggest transgression was my mother’s,” she said firmly. “I’ve always known that, and that’s why I started counseling, to try and work through my resentment at her. And my father was at fault, too, for just walking away. But even though I thought I’d gotten past it, I’m still here, spinning in circles looking for a way to blame my lack of family on someone else—anyone else—besides me.”

  “You’ve never been at fault—”

  “Not moving on is my fault.” From her pensive tone, she seemed to be at peace with the idea of taking full ownership. “I’ve seen that more clearly in my time here than I did in all the months I spent dragging myself through counseling sessions.”

  Weighing her words, he gazed at the skating pond, where the falling snowflakes sizzled softly when they met the bonfire’s blaze. Then he turned back to her and searched her eyes, hating what she’d been through. His hopes for an uncomplicated evening together got more and more remote by the minute.

  “That much I can understand. Being in Montana has given me a serious dose of perspective, too.” He peeled off his gloves and threaded his bare fingers with hers. “As much as I want to support my mother at her wedding, I’m in no hurry to return to my grandfather’s world, where everything is an excuse to network and get ahead in business.”

  Regina stared down at their joined hands for a long moment before raising her gaze to his. “Maybe it will be easier for you if I accept your invitation to be your date.”

  His heart slugged harder inside his chest.

  “Are you sure?” He hadn’t pressed her about continuing their relationship after this week, but he’d damn well been thinking about it.

  A smile curved her lips. “Yes.”

  The light in her eyes called to him, making him realize how much he wanted to be alone with her. To spend more time with her. No matter what happened during the rest of their stay at Mesa Falls Ranch, at least he had that to look forward to afterward.

  Edging forward in his seat, Devon captured her lips in a kiss. She sighed into him as her free hand wound around his neck, slipping under the collar of his overcoat to his bare neck just above his shirt.

  She hummed a pleasurable sound against his lips, the vibration echoing through him and ratcheting up his need for her. It could be below freezing and he would still burn when she touched him.

  “Come home with me,” he urged her, scarcely breaking the kiss.

  “Yes,” she murmured back as the snowfall renewed its intensity.

  Sensual hunger firing through him, he rose to his feet, lifting her with him, then peeled himself away. Blinking through the fog of red-hot attraction, he saw the same lust—or could it be more than that—mirrored in her eyes. Whatever was happening between them was moving fast.

  As he led her to the utility vehicle on loan from the ranch, he told himself that as long as the fire remained purely sensual, there was no need to worry about it consuming them both.

  But even as he opened the passenger door to help her inside, Devon wondered if he was only fooling himself.

  * * *

  Waking up beside Devon the next morning, Regina became aware of two things simultaneously.

  First, she’d never felt this level of happiness in her adult life. Every cell in her body seemed to sing with contentment to be naked and lying next to this endlessly sexy man. He’d adored her from head to toe the night before, lingering in all the best places in between, until she’d drifted into deep, blissful sleep on a raft of happy endorphins.

  Her second realization as the light of dawn streamed over the bed was that she’d never spent a full night with another man.

  And as she examined that idea more closely, she acknowledged that was both strange and messed up. Somehow, she’d always found a way to distance herself from romantic interests, telling herself those guys in her past were never “the one,” so it didn’t matter. After the way her father turned on her, it wasn’t easy to trust men. Yet her subconscious had quit blocking her from Devon, allowing her to enjoy the whole night in his arms.

  Now, here she was. Naked. Happy.

  And then realization number three hit: her heart was suddenly vulnerable.

  Amazing how quickly realization number three could torpedo the first two.

  Slipping from the covers, she retrieved her clothes to dress, worry spiraling out from that one thought like ripples in a pond. Millie had told her no one went through life unscathed. But was it so wrong for Regina to feel like she’d already had her cuts and bruises? She wasn’t ready to take on more just when she was starting to let go of the need for revenge that had been driving her for too long.

  She dug in her purse for enough toiletries to comb her hair and put herself back together, taking her time to try to steady her nerves, too. By the time she was ready to head out of the bedroom, she smelled the heady scent of coffee brewing and bacon cooking.

  This man was too good to be true.

  The feeling was confirmed when she first spotted him from the doorway of the kitchen. “How do you like your eggs?” he asked over the brim of a white coffee mug, the steam drifting up to caress his handsome features as he drank.

  His flannel shirt was unbuttoned over his naked chest, his jeans low on his waist. Even after the supreme fulfillment of the night before, her gaze got stuck on the center ridge between his abs that ended in a sprinkle of dark hair above the top button on his jeans.

  With an effort, she set aside some of the morning panic and uneasiness to enjoy his well-meaning offer.

  “Over easy.” Setting her purse on a chair in the living room near the cowboy-themed Christmas tree they’d decorated, she padded on stocking feet into the kitchen and helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot on the breakfast bar. “You look decidedly comfortable in the kitchen for a man who grew up in a life of privilege.” She realized how that sounded after the words left her lips. “No offense meant. I know I never learned to cook anything for myself until after my dad cut off my mom and me.”

  He grinned as he cracked the eggs into the skillet. “No offense taken. I had a brief notion that my father would let me visit more often if I was independent and didn’t behave like a trust-fund kid.” He shrugged as he tossed the eggshells in the trash. “So when I was about eight or nine, I asked our cook to teach me some stuff. And while my father never discovered my c
ulinary skills, I’ve never regretted the lessons.”

  Eight or nine years old? She hadn’t thought before about how his father’s defection must have hurt at such a young age. Her heart ached for the boy he’d been... And the weight that he must still carry with him now.

  “Consider me grateful to your cook.” She helped herself to the cream and sugar he’d left on the counter. “And it must have been hard having so little of your dad’s time growing up. As much as it hurt when my dad cut me off completely, at least I had him in my life until my midteens.”

  Devon shook his head while he dug in a drawer to retrieve a spatula. “I don’t think anyone would say that the teens are an easy time to go through that kind of loss.”

  His words were yet more proof that Devon was a thoughtful man. Butterflies fluttered in her belly. She sipped her coffee to quiet the feeling while his phone rang. He silenced it with one hand and flipped eggs with the other.

  “Do you have a lot of work obligations today?” She wondered about the schedule for the launch event. And their flight out afterward.

  Last night she’d agreed to attend his mother’s wedding with him, extending their relationship after the event ended. Her stomach knotted a bit at the memory. Not because she didn’t want to be with him, but because of how very badly she did.

  What if this risk exploded in her face?

  Her belly tightened painfully.

  “Yes. Although that message was from my mother, who’s thrilled I’m bringing you to the wedding.” His green eyes met hers for a moment before he plated the eggs and bacon he’d already cooked. “She’s excited to meet you.”

  Her pulse raced at the realization that this was really happening. She was genuinely taking the next step with Devon, no matter that their relationship had started in such strained circumstances. Should she come clean about how she’d rifled through his jacket on purpose that first day?

  She didn’t want her first effort with a man who mattered to her to be marred by a lie going in. If she allowed that, she wasn’t all that different from her mother.