The Trophy Wife. Sandra Steffen

      His eyebrows arched before he could stop them. That wasn’t what he’d been thinking at all. “I don’t recall ever seeing your mother pull weeds wearing a purple bikini.”

      As if she was suddenly aware of the view she was inadvertently awarding him, she rose almost shyly to her feet. Amber Colton, shy?

      She glanced at the bottle of sunscreen in his hand. “Did Inez send you out with that?”

      Inez. Ah. So this was what she’d had up her sleeve. “That woman is trying to start something.”

      “With you?” Amber asked.

      He nodded.

      No, Amber Colton definitely wasn’t shy. She was very blond, extremely pretty. He’d wondered how tall she was. Now that she was standing he’d put her at close to five-six. A leggy five-six.

      He jerked his gaze away before he got caught looking. “Very funny. Obviously, Inez doesn’t know that I’m not the type to have a tête-à-tête with a rich little heiress out by the mansion’s pool.”

      A blind man would have caught the haughty lift of Amber’s chin. Tripp figured he probably deserved the scathing comment that was certain to follow. After all, he hadn’t exactly been nice. Truthful, but not nice.

      There was a terse silence. But the scathing comment never came. She didn’t accept the bottle of sunscreen from his outstretched hand, either. Instead, she strolled to an ornate bench and reached for a white cover-up. When she’d fastened the last big button, she said, “I still say your name should be Chip, not Tripp, to go with the mountain-sized chip you carry around on your shoulder.”

      They stared at each other, unmoving.

      A memory swirled over Tripp, and he smiled, a rarity for him. “That was the first thing you said to me the summer I stayed here.” She’d been what, nine or ten? That would make her twenty-six or seven now. “You’ve grown up, Amber.”

      Amber found herself gazing into Tripp’s dark brown eyes, and wondering… Oh, no she didn’t. After that last comment of his, she wasn’t about to give in to the curious swooping sensation tugging at her insides.

      Stark and white, his smile did crazy things to her heart rate. She dragged her gaze away. It was bad enough that his look sent a tingling to the pit of her stomach. She would be darned if she would let him know it.

      She remembered the first time she saw him. He’d been fifteen, lean and belligerent and street-smart. He was still lean today, but his shoulders were wider, his chest thicker. His jet-black hair wasn’t as long as hers anymore, but it was still too long to be considered reputable. There was more than a hint of Latino in his features, passed on to him from one of his grandfathers, who had immigrated to America when still a boy. The first time she’d laid eyes on Tripp, she’d thought he looked like Zorro, the legendary superhero her brothers used to pretend to be when they were kids.

      With his looks, he could have acted on one of those medical dramas or police-detective shows. Tripp was a pediatrician now. Her gaze caught on the gold stud in his ear; he certainly didn’t look like the pediatricians she’d visited as a child.

      The good manners and etiquette instilled in her from the cradle dictated that she stride to the table and pour iced tea into the waiting crystal glasses. His fingers brushed hers as he accepted the glass. Their gazes met, held. For a moment, neither of them moved.

      That tingling was back in the pit of her stomach, stronger than ever. She didn’t know why she glanced at his knuckles. His hands were large, his fingers long, his knuckles bony, especially the first two. She reached out with her other hand, covering the hard ridge of the largest one with her finger. “So these broken bones healed.”

      He drew his hand away from hers very slowly and took a sip from the glass. Ice jangled, his Adam’s apple bobbled slightly as he swallowed. A bead of perspiration trailed down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his white dress shirt. He seemed nervous.

      Or was it something else?

      Running a hand through his hair, he peered into the courtyard and said, “I was sure your parents were going to send me to another foster home before I even unpacked my bags.”

      Amber decided she must have been imagining his unease. “You said Peter Bradenton threw the first punch.”

      “I lied.”

      “I know.”

      He spun around. “You knew?”

      She’d never heard more surprise or disbelief in two little words. He wasn’t smiling now, and yet something was still happening to her, something delicious and exciting and fun.

      He said, “How long have you known?”

      “I saw the fight from my bedroom window.”

      Tripp was looking at her, his expression one of total dismay.

      “Then why didn’t you tell your father the truth?”

      She sashayed closer. “If I’d done that, you wouldn’t have spent all these years trying to make it up to him. Guilt is a great motivator. Besides, he knew.”

      “You just said you didn’t tell him.”

      She pulled a face. “I didn’t have to. He always knew when any of us lied. Besides, Peter Bradenton had it coming. He was always trying to put people in their places. In your place wasn’t where you wanted to be.”

      “You were what, nine years old, and you knew that?”

      She batted her eyelashes. “Girls mature faster than boys.” She watched in fascination as his lips parted and his eyes went from very wide to narrow slits. He wasn’t immune to her charms. He looked as surprised about that as she was.

      She remembered the fight between Tripp and Peter Bradenton, and the chaos it caused. The Colton rule was: No fighting. Period. They could argue all they wanted, and had, but her parents simply did not allow fighting. Tripp was the only foster child to come through the ranks who broke the rule. And he did it the first week he was here. Her mother had heard the commotion and had come running. Without saying a word, she’d separated them. Still silent, she’d gotten Peter a towel for his bleeding nose, and Tripp an icepack for his hand. She sent Peter home, and Tripp to the stables to tell Joe. Amber had followed from a distance. When her dad had confronted Tripp about lying, she’d slunk out of the shadows and backed up Tripp’s story, saying that Peter took the first swing. She’d shaken beneath her father’s probing stare. In the end, he’d told Tripp to have Meredith take him to the doctor for X rays, and then sent them both back up to the house.

      Tripp hadn’t said a word until they were well away from the stables. She’d expected a thank-you. Instead, he’d shoved his hair behind his ears, his lips curling with contempt as he said, “I don’t need anybody doing me any favors, least of all a scrawny, spoiled little rich girl like you.”

      She’d stuck her nose in the air and informed him that his name should have been Chip, not Tripp. He’d stared at her, and she’d held his gaze despite the fact that she was half his size. Back then she hadn’t known they were rich and she wasn’t spoiled, no matter what he said. Even then she’d known what really mattered, and it wasn’t something a person could buy. What truly mattered was trust, love and loyalty. Everything else faded away without them.

      Amber looked around the courtyard today. The garden, with all its demanding tea roses and ornamental shrubs and bushes had faded, too, as if it too was lacking what it truly needed.

      “What have you been doing out here?”

      His question brought her back to their earlier conversation. Swirling the iced tea she had yet to taste, she said, “I went for a swim. Then I watched the clouds.”

      “You watch clouds? Like a meteorologist?”

      She shook her head. “Nothing that interesting. It was a game we used to play when we were kids.”

      Tripp