Tell Me Your Secrets.... Cara Summers

tired, Red. You’d better rest so that you’re up to handling them and dealing with their questions.”

      I couldn’t move. I was sure my legs had turned to water. He’d barely touched me, but I felt it clear down to my toes.

      He dropped his hand abruptly and turned to James. “I have to get back to work.” Without another word, he strode to the door and opened it.

      I stared after him, finally accepting what I had tried to deny before. I was attracted to Sloan Campbell. Big-time. I’d been attracted from the moment I’d first seen his picture, and it had only increased when we’d met face-to-face on the bluff and he’d kissed me. I could no longer blame it on adrenaline. It was lust.

      My stomach knotted. I’d come here to learn all I could about my sister, to find a clue to her whereabouts—not to fall in lust with her fiancé. And I couldn’t yet dismiss the possibility that he might have had something to do with her disappearance. These were the kind of plot complications that would be great for Secrets. But they should not be happening to nothing-ever-happens-to-me Brooke Ashby.

      At the door, Sloan turned back and looked at me. I realized something else. He knew exactly what effect he was having on me.

      What in the world had I gotten myself into?

      “Take a nap,” he said in that authoritative way he had.

      “You’ll be here for dinner,” James said to him.

      “I wouldn’t miss it.”

      When Sloan closed the door, I turned to face James and there was a moment of awkward silence between us.

      “He’s a good man,” James finally said.

      “Yes.” So far, I could agree with that assessment.

      “He’ll make you a good husband.”

      I didn’t have an answer ready for that. But I sensed that Cameron and he had had this conversation before. “Do you have any idea why I ran away?”

      James watched for a moment. “Everyone figured it was bridal jitters.”

      I studied him right back. He was a man who was used to getting what he wanted. “And I’m the type of coward who would have run away?”

      “No.” I saw a flash of something in his eyes. Pride? “But you’re headstrong and you have a temper. You and Sloan had a little argument the day before you disappeared.”

      “About what?”

      James shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”

      “So I ran away to punish him?” I could understand that my sister, the woman that I was coming to know, might have done that.

      “You ran away to think,” James corrected. “From the time you were a little girl, you liked to get away from everything and think.”

      Something moved through me. I’d always done the same thing. Wasn’t that one of the reasons I’d borrowed the SUV and driven up into the hills? “So you weren’t surprised when I just disappeared?”

      “No. I knew you’d eventually get it all figured out and then you’d come home. And I was right.” He smiled at me. “Marriage is a big step. But it’s always better when there’s love and at least a bit of chemistry involved, right?”