Trading Secrets (2 page)

“I haven’t made any offers. Merely an introduction.”

“Which is designed to lead to bed.”

“Only if everything goes the way I want it to go.” That last bit took a little courage. She reached for her Margarita. Damn it, she wasn’t going to let him intimidate her or make her feel like a scarlet woman. She had a right to live her life the way she wanted. Every woman had that right. Especially on the day she turned thirty.

Matt’s gaze came back to rest on Sabrina’s slightly flushed features. A glimmer of unwilling appreciation moved in the hazel depths and then disappeared. Watching him, Sabrina was suddenly certain that Matt August had come to some inner decision.

“All right, Sabrina Chase. We’ll do things your way. What do you want from me?”

“At the moment only a little intelligent conversation,” she informed him stiffly.

“Intelligent conversation. If we have to exclude existential philosophy, what does that leave us? I’ve got it. Business. How did you know about the bookshop? I don’t recall seeing you in there today.”

“Would you have remembered?”

“Oh, yes. I’d have remembered.”

The way he said it, Sabrina felt abruptly warmed. She relaxed slightly and tried another sip of the Margarita. “I was browsing in the window and I noticed you behind the counter. You were busy at the time. I intended to drop in later, but I went swimming instead. Have you been running it very long?”

August lifted one shoulder uninterestedly. “About two years.”

“Is it very profitable?”

He looked at her. “I’m not making a fortune, if that’s what you want to know. But tourists are always looking for something trashy to read on the beach. I get by.”

“I was just curious. I own a small shop, too, in Dallas.” She glanced away, wishing she hadn’t pried. As she kept pointing out to Matt, prying was not allowed under the rules of this particular game. It threatened to jeopardize the illusion.

“Books?” he surprised her by asking.

She shook her head. “Texas souvenirs. You know, little brass cowboy boots, barbecue sauce, stuffed bulls…

“Stuffed bulls?”

“I have a lovely one in the window. I actually would have preferred a stuffed cowboy, but my assistant thought that would be overkill. My assistant has excellent taste,” she added with a small grin.

“I see.” Matt looked slightly disconcerted. “So your question was one of professional interest? One businessperson to another?”

Sabrina relaxed still further. “Well, when you think about it, we do have something in common. Similar professions, you could say. I sell tacky souvenirs to tourists and you sell trashy novels to them. At least down here you don’t have to mess around with the IRS.”

“Believe me,” he corrected, “Mexico has its equivalent.”

This was much better, Sabrina decided. As if she were handling a small sailboat in danger of capsizing at any moment, she carefully maneuvered the conversation around light, impersonal topics, trying to establish the sort of casual rapport that she thought might be appropriate for a vacation affair. He was right about her lack of practice in such matters, but she was convinced her instincts would guide her.

Two drinks later the romantic aura she had sought to create seemed to be firmly in place. Matt was matching her with a whiskey on the rocks for every Margarita she consumed, and the conversation had loosened up considerably.

“You know,” Sabrina remarked seriously at one point, “you really can be quite charming when you try.”

“Thank you,” he said with a formal inclination of his head. “I really am trying.”

“It shows. Do you hang out here a lot?” She waved a hand casually to encompass the elegant tropical bar setting.

“Occasionally, when I feel like imbibing a little atmosphere.”

“Or when you get homesick?”

“I don’t get homesick. Acapulco is home now.”

“No family?” Sabrina pushed, unable to help herself even though the question violated her own rules on the matter.

“Are you asking me if I’m married? I thought those sorts of questions were forbidden.”

Sabrina licked more salt off her glass. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I had no right to ask.”

“But you’re curious?”

“No,” she declared. “I don’t want to know anything that personal.”

“Yes, you do. I can see it in your eyes. You have very expressive eyes, Sabrina Chase of Dallas.” Matt’s mouth lifted at the edge. “The answer is no. I’m not married. Not any longer.”

She chewed her lip for a moment and then smiled.

“Thanks.” The sensation of relief was very real. Much too strong. Whether or not Matt August was married shouldn’t have mattered. Not for her purposes tonight. “I’m not married, either,” she offered magnanimously.

He let the free information pass as if he no longer cared. “Another drink?”

She stared doubtfully down at her nearly finished Margarita. “Actually, I think I’ve had enough. I had a couple before I came over to introduce myself.”

“Liquid courage?” he mocked softly. “I didn’t realize I was so unapproachable.”

“It wasn’t you. It would have taken a little courage to go up to any of the others, too.” She was feeling comfortable enough with him now to be honest, Sabrina realized with a sense of shock.

Matt abruptly reached for her hand, turning it palm up on the table. His roughened fingers drew a random pattern on the sensitive skin of her wrist. “It’ll probably get easier, you know.”

“Talking to you?”

He shook his head. “Approaching strange men in bars. Unless, of course, you decide you don’t like taking the risks after all.” He was staring at her palm as if mildly fascinated.

“Ah, but I’m having excellent luck first time out, aren’t I?” she challenged with deliberate provocation. “Just look at how well we’re doing.” Laughter flared in her eyes. “You,” she warned, “are falling into my hand like a ripe pineapple.”

He winced. “Not a plum?”

“Nope. Pineapple. Rough on the outside but sweet on the inside.”

“No chance you’ve misjudged me?”

“I don’t think so.” She hesitated. “Matt?”

“Hmmm?”

“Will you dance with me?”

Without a word he got to his feet, tugging her up beside him. He took her willingly enough into his arms on the floor, but there was a curious stiffness to his movements. Matt danced as if he hadn’t done it often and certainly not recently. The steps he guided her into were simple and almost austere. The band was a four-piece ensemble playing the standard, torchy lounge music one could have heard in any hotel bar in the world, but Sabrina could have sworn Matt was counting the beat under his breath. The realization was somehow endearing.

Deliberately she moved closer, instinctively using her own softness to urge him to unbend. Matt’s arms tightened around her, but his body grew more rigid rather than relaxed. Then she felt his mouth brush her hair.

It was nice hair, Matt decided, inhaling the clean, fresh scent of it. A couple of shades darker than the whiskey he’d had too much of tonight. She wore it in a loose topknot, but he had a hunch that when it was free it would cascade down around her shoulders.

Not at all like Ginny’s. Ginny’s hair had been midnight-black and cut in a sleek style that framed her delicate, classically beautiful features. There was nothing all that beautiful about Sabrina Chase, he told himself, but there was an interestingly piquant charm to the expressive mouth and the lively, intelligently aware eyes of smoky green.

So she was thirty and just now starting to wander? Ginny had started earlier. Twenty-five, probably. Right after Brad had been born. It was as though she had to prove to herself that she was still a stunningly attractive woman even though she’d had a child. Had Ginny’s first affair begun this way? Had she walked up to a strange man in a bar and calmly introduced herself? Had she been tense and a little unsure of herself the way this woman was? Probably not. Ginny had never been unsure of herself that he could recall.

But after a few such encounters Sabrina Chase would soon be feeling certain of herself, too. As he had told her, it would get easier. He was sure that she was married. Why else would she have been so evasive about the question? What was she going to tell her husband when she returned to Dallas? Or did he even know she was gone? Perhaps he was out of town.

Matt knew that he himself had spent a lot of time out of town. And Ginny had gotten very good at lying. Her stories had always been carefully detailed and utterly sincere. Had she told her lovers that she wasn’t married, as Sabrina did? Probably. It made a pleasant fiction when all parties concerned could pretend that no one else was involved. Women undoubtedly lied about the matter more frequently. They wouldn’t want to scare off potential lovers with uncomfortable images of irate husbands.

The lifestyle she was choosing was going to be harder on Sabrina than it had been on Ginny. Hell, Ginny had taken to it like a fish to water, Matt reminded himself grimly. But Sabrina Chase might not find it so pleasant. There was a softness in the woman he held in his arms that Ginny had never had to suppress. His ex-wife had always been able to take care of herself.

One thing was for certain. Sabrina was still very new at this game. He could sense the
unsureness
beneath the flippant exterior. Perhaps all she needed was a good lesson. Maybe she wouldn’t be turned into another Ginny if she ran into more than she could handle tonight. This was his chance to play instructor, he told himself with whiskey-induced idealism. His opportunity to change the course of someone else’s life.

Matt August: wise and all-knowing guide to young women at the crossroads.

Christ! What the hell made him think he had a right to do that? So what if Sabrina was married? So what if she was bent on traveling the same path Ginny had chosen? It was her own business. If he didn’t want to be the first in a series of one-night stands for Sabrina Chase, then he should get out of the mess now.

But that was going to be easier said than done. Sabrina felt surprisingly good in his arms. He liked the feel of her small breasts lightly brushing his chest. Apparently she wasn’t wearing a bra under her outrageously gaudy turquoise Mexican dress. The bright pink sash that outlined her narrow waist emphasized the full flare of her thighs. And she had a fragrant warmth that was making him restless. Her husband was a fool not to keep her close at hand. The same kind of fool he himself had been with Ginny.

Damn it to hell. Why was he so worried about the future of one Sabrina Chase, tourist? He sure hadn’t overly concerned himself with the other occasional women who flitted in and out of his life. It beat him why he should be seriously thinking of playing guardian of the future for Sabrina. Matt’s hands tightened on her waist and she flinched in surprise before nestling closer.

He got the feeling he wasn’t the smoothest dancer she had ever encountered. Matt paused for a couple of seconds, mentally reestablishing the count. It wasn’t that he couldn’t dance. It was just that he didn’t dance all that well after several whiskeys. Matt frowned momentarily to himself as he realized that he couldn’t remember the actual number of drinks he’d had that evening. The realization bothered him. It was a bad sign.

Sabrina smiled as a relieved sense of serenity began to replace her earlier uncertainty. It was going to be all right. Everything was going to be wonderful. A romantic fantasy come true. She had selected a man who wasn’t really accustomed to picking up women in bars and who was definitely not accustomed to being picked up himself. Poor Matt seemed a little shy, and that had probably been the cause of his initial gruffness.

Maybe her instincts had focused on him because she had sensed he wouldn’t be too polished or too smooth. Being new at this sort of thing herself, it was best that she chose someone like Matt. Someone who was in her lane instead of the fast lane. She had been right to fly down to Acapulco on the spur of the moment to celebrate this major turning-point in her life.

In a very real sense tonight was going to represent the end of an era for her. The end of a lifelong caution where relationships were concerned. The end of the anger and fear that had been implanted in her in California when she’d found herself trapped in someone else’s nightmare. Tonight was indeed a celebration of the new beginnings she had been creating for herself in Dallas.

The thought made her shift slightly, seeking the reassuringly solid planes of August’s chest. Dreamily she rubbed her cheek on the crisp white cotton of his shirt and allowed her fingers to gently knead the smooth, firm lines of his back. He felt like a well-muscled stallion beneath her touch. A little restless, surely hot-blooded, and excitingly strong. Her light laughter was muffled against his chest.

“Now what?” Matt inquired huskily.

“I was just thinking that I’ve always wanted a horse of my own. That’s all.” A wonderful, spirited stallion. She smiled secretly.

The remark threw off his careful footwork. “It sounds like some kind of adolescent sexual fantasy.”

Sabrina’s mouth curved. “Perhaps it is.”

“One you haven’t outgrown?” he asked disapprovingly.

“Oh, I’ve sublimated.”

“How?”

“With an Alfa Romeo GTV-6. If you ever come to Dallas I’ll give you a ride in it. Beautiful car. I love it.”

“How did you get the car?” he asked curtly. Sabrina’s languid amusement faded. “I bought it myself. Want to see the pink slip?”

“That wouldn’t prove anything, would it? If someone else bought it for you he would probably have had it put in your name.”

Sabrina hesitated a fraction of a dance beat, enough to ruin the carefully plotted rhythm Matt had established. Both of them came to an awkward halt in the middle of the floor. “And you’re thinking of him and that bothers you.”

His mouth tightened. “Of whom?”

“Someone you imagine is waiting for me back in Dallas, perhaps?” she suggested gently.

“Is there someone?”

“No.”

“Oh, hell. Never mind.” He pulled her back into the predictable pace of the dance. “Don’t say anything else. Just come here and I’ll promise to keep my mouth shut, too.”

He was worried, Sabrina decided compassionately. He was concerned about her obligation to another man. It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned it. It was none of his business, but she found his touch of conscience endearing. Part of some male code of ethics, no doubt—no poaching on another man’s territory. She sighed. Her fingers slipped along his shoulders as she wordlessly tried to convey that he was the only one she was thinking of tonight.