The Senator’s Daughter Read online

  Lyle wasn’t turning out to be just pretty paper on the outside; he was holding up to her scrutiny.

  Sylvia raised her wineglass. “You’re a damned fine chef, Mr. DA. Shouldn’t there be some kind of rule against that… like me not making beds?”

  He gave a rogue’s grin. “I think we made that bed well together.”

  Warmth washed through her middle and down to soften her woman’s center. The old adage about making a bed and sleeping in it … but, of course, if she and Lyle were on a bed, there would be a lot more happening than sleep.

  Even so, right now her mood was less than sexy. She couldn’t stop worrying about what Lyle had told her.

  While they ate, Lyle could tell from Sylvia’s thoughtful expression that the subject of his mother had merely been tabled.

  Finally, the last of the meat and potatoes had been devoured. He took their plates into the kitchen and rinsed them under the tap, turning over what to say when she brought it up again.

  When he returned, he lifted the wine bottle, poured a little more into her glass, and placed it in her hand.

  “About your mother …” She turned away from the forest.

  He didn’t want to talk about it, but hadn’t he started it? Might as well find out if telling her his story was going to drive her away. “What would you like to know?”

  “Have you ever hired an investigator?”

  He stepped up beside her. “I’ve hired people. But after twenty-two years, the trail is pretty cold.”

  “Of course.” She sounded sad.

  He should have kept his mouth shut. Right now, he should be lifting her dark hair, pressing his lips to the side of her neck, giving them both delicious chills …

  Sylvia’s troubled dark eyes found his. “I feel so guilty.”

  “For what?”

  “Here, I’ve had every comfort while you picked crops …”

  He managed a shrug.

  “No! Don’t act like it doesn’t matter. My mother as much as called you ‘poor white trash.’”

  Her parents would have a stroke if they knew Lyle’s plans for getting their daughter into bed.

  “Thanks for sharing.” He tried to keep his voice even. “There’s a difference between being poor and being trash. My mother called it pride.”

  “She was right. My mother’s wrong, so wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he tried.

  “It does,” she insisted. “How dare Mother and Father presume to judge a man by how he was raised? You’re fine and honest and caring because of what you went through.”

  “That’s not an exciting mix.”

  “What about your father?” she asked in a hopeful tone.

  Lyle looked away. “He lives in the house I grew up in. Out in the valley. We don’t …”

  “You don’t get along with your father? After you both lost your mother, you didn’t pull together?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Not when James Thomas had claimed Lyle’s childish demands had driven Maddie away. That cut would never heal.

  “You should go to him. Let him know the man you’ve become.”

  “I’ve seen him. Only a few months ago.” Blood pressure rising, Lyle attacked. “What if I were to order you to the nearest telephone to tell your folks you haven’t been raped and killed? When your father tried to hire me, he seemed genuinely concerned.”

  Her quick anger matched his. “You don’t—”

  “I don’t have any idea about you and your parents. And you don’t have a clue about my father and me. Or that when people disappear it makes me …” His voice broke.

  Her eyes widened. “My God. That explains why you were—”

  “Yes,” he ground out. “That’s why when you took off without a trace, I went through hell.”

  Tears stung Sylvia’s eyes. When she had staggered out of the canyon, it had seemed imperative to disappear; now her decision must look to Lyle not only thoughtless, but cruel.

  She’d never intended to hurt any—

  Oh, yes, you did mean to hurt people, said her little voice inside. You sat on the floor and imagined you were six again and you’d show them, that they would be sorry if you were dead. Or in this case, they would regret being ashamed of their daughter when she disappeared without a trace.

  Was she satisfied?

  She’d hurt people, even managed to wound Lyle, and he was an innocent bystander.

  He caught her shoulders from behind and turned her toward him. Wrapped in his arms, her face pressed against his chest. One of his hands defined the curve of her waist.

  Yet, there was nothing sexual in this embrace. It was all about loss and wanting to find one’s way home, when Lyle would never find his mother and Sylvia had burned all her bridges.

  She shut her eyes against an image of the towheaded child this man had been, of the strapping youth he became, bending and stooping to pick onions in the blazing sun, fueled by peanut butter and jelly.

  While children like her ate organic granola bars and were shuttled to soccer and choir by the hired help.

  Lyle was nothing like the sons of wealthy men she had been used to. His appreciation of little things like a baked potato with a crisp skin stemmed from times when he had less.

  In these past weeks, she’d been developing a new attitude toward everything from clothes to feeling an intense satisfaction in pleasing the guests she served. In Lyle’s arms, she believed he could teach her a thing or two.

  Perhaps it was the humid night air, with a fog bank sneaking stealthy fingers inland from the Pacific, maybe it was the scent of something both fresh and sharp that hung about Sylvia …

  Anticipation hung between them, heavy as the approaching mist.

  And Lyle believed he saw clear. It was time to stop pussyfooting around. Hang that her father thought he was looking for her undercover. To hell with everything but this elemental magnetism pulling them together every time he got within forty feet of this woman.

  He kissed her wide pouting mouth. Quick heat flared, at the place where their lips brushed and below his belt.

  Though their clinch for the “On the Spot” cameras had been undeniably hotter to look at, this bare touch had him going a like house afire. “Sugar,” he whispered, thinking she tasted sweet.

  “No,” she whispered. “Passion fruit.”

  Lyle chuckled at the identification of her flavored lip gloss.

  He wanted every complex ingredient, this sweetness, the salt of their mixed sweat as they twined together naked, even the bitter that might come if their precarious connection fell apart.

  God, she was something. With his mouth on hers and his eyes shut, a wave of dizziness buffeted him, as though the two of them stood on the seat of a rowboat on San Francisco Bay.

  She pushed at his chest.

  He leaned back against the rail to steady them both.

  Even with his thighs firm against the boards, he imagined he was about to go over backward.

  Sylvia pulled away. “Lyle?”

  The two of them remained embracing, yet on alert. A shudder rattled through the porch boards beneath his shoes.

  “Earth tremor,” he concluded.

  As quickly as it came, it was gone, the same as the one earlier in the day.

  Sylvia kept her arms wrapped around him. “I hate earthquakes.”

  “You and me both.”

  “When that big one hit in 1989, the World Series Quake,” she said, “my folks and I were visiting in Santa Cruz. I was eating with the other kids around five p.m. When the house started jerking, I screamed and screamed. Mother and Father must not have heard.”

  “Sometime I’ll tell you my earthquake story.”

  With all quiet on the seismic front, and the front of Lyle’s trousers still strained by his arousal, he turned his attention back to Sylvia. “Let’s take this out of the public domain.”

  Last night, when she and Lyle had almost ended up in bed, she’d been the one to pull back. Tonight, she could no mo
re stop this than prevent the moon from rising. Despite the risk, she intended to have him.

  “My room has morning sun,” he murmured, pressing warm lips to her temple. His breath grazed her ear, sending shivers down her spine and making her knees wobbly.

  He must have sensed she needed support, for he slipped his arm around her waist and drew her against his side.

  She expelled a sigh of contentment. She’d never been with a man as powerful as Lyle, but she believed he would channel his strength in ways that empowered her as well as him.

  Hip to hip, they moved through the French doors into the darkened lobby. From the corner of her eye, Sylvia noted the black-and-white flicker of the TV in the far corner.

  Humphrey Bogart’s distinctive voice melded with Ingrid Bergman’s. “Casablanca,” Lyle identified.

  The actors embraced; the scene where Ilsa goes to Rick’s room to convince him she still cares for him. Yet, is she only there to procure the letters of transit for her and her husband, Victor?

  Sylvia stopped and stared at the screen. “When Rick puts her on the plane and sends her away with her husband, even though he loves her and she loves him … it’s so … so …”

  “Romantic,” Lyle supplied. The timbre of his voice sent a wave of longing through her. Even as the screen lovers had been joined at some elemental level, she believed accepting Lyle was tantamount to opening her soul.

  They left Rick and Ilsa behind and entered the intimacy of the hall leading to their rooms.

  Together, they walked past her door. Maybe she should grab a robe, but Lyle’s arm around her propelled her on toward his corner room.

  Her heart began to race.

  Lyle pulled out his room key with the big brass tag. Last night he’d unlocked the portal alone, in a similar state of arousal.

  Tonight, he just wanted to feel. Skin on skin … Even as he tried to believe this could be about pure sensation, he knew he was kidding himself.

  Did Sylvia have any concept of how much this meant to him?

  What did it mean to her?

  Though it would be easy to get distracted by all the reasons this was crazy, he wasn’t going to think about why Lyle Thomas and Sylvia Chatsworth made a doomed combination. He would not consider her senator father or his money. He would not try again to tell her how much Chatsworth had offered.

  Half a million might be a life-changing windfall to field worker and aspiring attorney, Lyle Thomas. It was probably chicken feed to a woman who drove an eighty-thousand-dollar automobile.

  He swung open the door. Sylvia walked ahead of him into the darkened room. “Still got those matches?” she asked over her shoulder.

  He reached into his pants pocket, got the box out, and tossed it.

  Sylvia pulled out a match, scratched it on the sandpaper, and lit the candle Lyle had failed to notice on the bedside table. Took a woman to see such things.

  In the flickering warm light, Lyle did detect other details. Such as how one of the turquoise straps of Sylvia’s halter had slipped down her arm and the way her smoky hair tumbled over her bare shoulders.

  Lyle closed the bedroom door, and they were alone.

  Sylvia watched Lyle come toward her.

  How gracefully he moved for a big man. In the candle glow, his blond hair darkened to gold. “Romantic” didn’t begin to touch this.

  When he stopped before her, she started to breathe more rapidly.

  He raised his hands and slid them up her bare arms. Encountering the fallen strap on one side, he flicked the other one down with his thumb. “This top is nice, but it’s getting in my way.”

  Slowly, Lyle lowered his head. His lips brushed her temple, then her earlobe, and trailed kisses down the side of her neck to nibble at her collarbone.

  She arched her neck to allow access.

  Lyle traveled on, outward to her shoulder, then back to the swell at the top of her breast. He tugged at the halter’s triangle of silky cloth. When it didn’t yield, he placed his lips over her covered nipple and exhaled warm breath through the material.

  Desire radiated out from their point of contact, through her middle and down between her thighs.

  Gently, he scooped an arm behind her legs and swept her up. Cradled against him, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. Wanting to make him feel what she felt, Sylvia caught his earlobe between her teeth and bit, lightly.

  He groaned.

  With care, he bent and deposited her on the thick-piled comforter. She kicked off her shoes, sending them flying.

  Keeping her grip around Lyle’s neck, she drew him down. To let him go for even a moment would turn the delicious ache inside her to real pain.

  Propped on elbows and knees, Lyle kissed her. Sylvia opened her mouth beneath his. His tongue dueled with hers, making her hips grind against his. “Ohhh …”

  His arousal pressed into the jeans-clad vee of her thighs. “We’ve got too many clothes on.”

  He sat up, gathered the hem of his white pullover, and yanked it over his head. It went sailing over the end of the bed.

  When he turned back to Sylvia and lay between her parted legs, her gasp of delight almost sent Lyle over the edge.

  To keep from embarrassing himself, he eased his weight so their bodies weren’t pressed as closely.

  Sylvia promptly slid her arms down his back and pulled him hard against her.

  Okay, if he lost it, he lost it. From the way this woman set him afire it wouldn’t be long before he was back to full arousal for her.

  With his hands in Sylvia’s silky hair and his fingers teasing the sweet button of her nipple, he heard a low rumble, almost beneath the level of hearing. More like a vibration in his breastbone that rose up to his eardrums. As it became audible, it sounded like a distant freight train.

  Sylvia stiffened beneath him. “Lyle,” she whispered, “what—”

  The room jolted as if a truck had driven into the wall, pitching him off the bed and onto the hardwood floor.

  Chapter 17

  Sylvia gave a shrill scream as the bed beneath her shuddered. Lyle grabbed her arm and pulled her off the mattress onto the floor with him.

  “The candle,” she cried. The thick taper, topped by a violently fluttering flame, was walking toward the edge of the night table.

  Lyle crawled over and extinguished their light source.

  In the faint glow of a hall light over the glass transom, he pulled the comforter down, covered her body with his, and pulled the thick cotton over both their heads. The metal bed frame jarred against the small of her back; the old wooden building creaked and groaned above the rumbling in the earth. Somewhere, glass shattered.

  The shaking increased and became a lifting and lowering, as though they were on an elevator that couldn’t decide whether to rise or fall.

  Lyle held Sylvia while they waited for the quake to end, or for the building to come down on their heads. Was this the “big one” everyone said was coming?

  She pressed into his arms. Her heart rate must be at least two hundred, her belief the roof was coming down absolute.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the shaking stopped. For a long moment she and Lyle continued to clutch each other in the uncanny silence.

  Until he started to get heavy and the air under the covers became stale.

  Lyle threw back the comforter. The light in the hall was out; the power must have gone off.

  “We have to get outside!” he ordered.

  That was what they taught in earthquake drills, how to get away from buildings that could become death traps due to structural instability or leaking gas. Thankfully, she didn’t smell any gas right now.

  “My shoes,” she said.

  She sensed from sound that Lyle moved on hands and knees, sweeping his hand over the floor.

  She shuffled around in the dark. “Your shirt,” she offered, holding it in his direction. A moment later, he passed over one of her shoes.

  Then she heard a scratch and a match
flared.

  Her eyes met Lyle’s over the flame. “You okay?” he asked.

  The small flame ate its way down the match toward Lyle’s fingers. He shook it out and lit another. She located her other shoe and pulled it on. Thinking they might need it before the night was through, she brought along the quilted comforter.

  Guests of the inn, in various stages of undress and emotion, joined Sylvia and Lyle in their exodus. They went out the French doors onto the porch and down to the level of the river. Then they skirted the building and mustered in the front parking lot.

  A teenager had a radio. “… Breaking news on the strong earthquake in the northern Napa Valley, reported by the U.S. Geological Survey. Seismographs picked up the signals at eleven fifteen p.m., approximately nine minutes ago.”

  Sylvia clung to Lyle, her arm around his waist. He’d slung the comforter around both their shoulders and beneath it she felt both warm and secure.

  An aftershock propagated through the earth.

  Her heart rate surged; she felt Lyle’s spine straighten.

  “Steady.” His arm tightened around her shoulder, and he drew Sylvia away from the inn. There might be aftershocks, but out here under the night sky nothing could fall and hurt them.

  Had everybody gotten out of the inn all right?

  As if in response to her thought, Buck came out the front door, paused at the top of the porch stairs, and raised his arms. “I need a couple of volunteers to help me be sure we don’t have anyone trapped or hurt. I thought I counted everyone from the register, but…”

  Lyle stepped forward and the comforter dragged the ground. “Be with you in a minute.” Sylvia gathered the bed covering, tossed it over a bush, and followed him to his car where he pulled out a powerful hand torch.

  On his return, a man wearing a red plaid shirt and carrying a yellow plastic flashlight had joined Buck on the porch.

  The innkeeper nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Lyle felt Sylvia’s hand on his arm, indicating she was going with them. He started to tell her to forget about risking herself, but he saw Mary through the open front door and remembered that Sylvia did work here.