Loe raamatut: «Christmas Seduction»

One

Outside the Brass Pony, a five-star restaurant where he’d nursed more than one whiskey at the bar, Tate Duncan stood beneath the canopy and watched the rain come down in sheets.

He’d picked a hell of a night to walk.

But, that’s the way the streets here were designed in Spright Wellness Community. With plenty of sidewalks and paths cutting through the woods, making a walk more convenient than a winding car ride to your destination. This was a wellness community, after all.

Tate and a dedicated team of contractors had developed the health and wellness community five years ago. Its location? Spright Island, an enviable utopia thirty-minutes by ferry from Seattle, Washington, and Tate’s twenty-fifth birthday gift from his adoptive parents. The island had been, and remained, a nature preserve and was the perfect spot to build a sustainable, peaceful, modern neighborhood that would attract curious city dwellers.

He’d imagined into existence the luxury wellness enclave, which had become a refuge of sorts for those who desired a strong sense of community, and wanted to be surrounded by lush greenery rather than concrete. As a result, Spright Wellness Community teemed with residents who glowed with wealth and stank of wellness. There was a big demand to live small and, even though it wasn’t all that small, SWC had that feel about it.

“Umbrella, Mr. Duncan?” The manager of the Brass Pony, Jared Tomalin, leaned out the door and offered a black umbrella by it’s U-shaped handle. His smile faded much as it had earlier when he’d attempted to make small talk and learned that “Mr. Duncan” wasn’t in the mood for small talk tonight.

There had been a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, that Tate would have turned, given Jared a smile and accepted the offer, saying, “Thank you. I’ll bring it back by tomorrow.” Now, he gave the manager a withering glare and stalked off into the abysmal weather. A twenty-minute jaunt—soggy, chilling and wet—was a good metaphor for the downward spiral his life had taken recently.

Everything in Tate’s world had been on an upward track, steady and stable until...

Until.

He popped his collar and tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. Chin down, eyes on the gathering puddles under his feet, he began to walk.

Surrounding neighborhoods were marked by a variety of shops; markets with fresh produce and organic goods, restaurants like the Pony with reputations that drew diners from the coast, plus plenty of service-based businesses like salons, art stores and yoga studios. With its high-end wellness fare, SWC was part luxury living, part hippie commune, but to Tate, simply home.

A rare flash of headlights caught his attention and he lifted his head. Summer’s Market stood on the opposite side of the street, the wooden shelves and brightly-colored stacks of produce visible from the windows. The safety lights spotlighted wheels of cheese and boxed crackers arranged near a selection of wine. It was hard to believe he’d once had nothing better to do than pop into Summer’s for a wine-tasting and cheese-pairing and have a chat with his neighbors.

Back when I knew who I was.

Tate had never thought of identity as a wily thing, but lately his own had been wriggling, slippery in his grip. He’d known once, with certainty, who he was: the son of William and Marion Duncan, from California. Life, apparently, had other plans for him. Plans that had sent him careening, grappling to understand how he’d become the son of William and Marion Duncan, right around the same time the woman who was supposed to marry him had walked away.

I can’t do this, Tate, Claire had told him, her delicate features screwed into an expression of regret. Then she’d given back the engagement ring. That was two weeks ago. Since then, he’d become a ripe bastard.

The rhythm of his breath paced the time along with his steps. Rainwater beat drumlike on his head and soaked into his Italian leather shoes.

On his side of the street, he came upon a building that held an array of businesses, including an acupuncture office, a family doctor and a yoga studio. The yoga studio was the only one lit inside, by a pair of pink hued salt lamps glowing warmly on top of a desk. He peered through the window, wishing he’d have accepted the damn umbrella. Wishing he could absorb the warmth emitting from the place. It was orderly, homey, with its scarred wooden floors and stacks of cubbies for storing shoes and cell phones during class.

He’d been inside once before, to greet the new owner who’d leased the space. Yoga by Hayden was run by Hayden Green, a new resident who’d been in SWC a little over a year now. He saw her around town sometimes. She was the equivalent of looking at the sun. Bright, glowing, joyful. She had a skip in her step and a smile on her face most days. He wondered if yoga was her secret to being happy, if maybe he should try it—make that his new therapy. God knew he wasn’t heading back to Dr. Schroder any time soon.

The first-world problems he used to bring to his therapist were laughable considering the actual drama surrounding him now. He could imagine that conversation, his doc’s eyebrows climbing her forehead into her coifed dark hair.

Yeah, so I found out I was kidnapped when I was three, adopted out for a large sum of money and my real parents live in London. No, my adoptive parents didn’t know I was kidnapped. Yes, London. Oh, and I have a brother. We’re twins.

Eerie. That’s what this was. Like a scary story told around a campfire, there was a large chunk of him that wanted to believe it was false. That the repressed memory of big hands cuffing him under the arms and dragging him away from his and his twin brother’s birthday party had been a nightmare he could awaken from. That George and Jane Singleton were no more related to him than the Queen of England.

Though he was from the UK, so God help him, he could be related to the Queen of England.

Ice-cold raindrops soaked through his hair to his scalp, and he shuddered. His mind had been bobbing in the atmosphere like a lost balloon for going on two months now. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get back to normal at this rate. Wasn’t sure if he knew what normal was any longer.

This entire situation was surreal. And after living an organized, regimented, successful life, a shock he hadn’t been prepared to deal with.

What were the odds of two estranged London-born twin brothers bumping into each other in a Seattle coffee shop nearly thirty years later?

Astronomical.

He let out a fractured laugh. “You’re not well enough to be in a wellness community.”

Overhead, he admired a streetlamp like the others lining the sidewalks, remembering how a formerly sane version of himself had commissioned a welder to design them. They resembled tree branches, complete with curling leaves along the top, the lights encased in a bell-shaped flower. Tate mused that they had a fairy-tale quality. Like that smoking caterpillar or the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland could appear perched on one at any moment.

“You’re losing it, Duncan.”

But his smile was short-lived when he abruptly remembered that he wasn’t a Duncan. Not really.

He was a Singleton.

Whatever the hell that meant.

The sharp whistle of the teakettle pulled Hayden Green’s attention from her book. She made the short trek to her kitchen, flipped the gas burner off and reached for her waiting teacup.

Through the driving rain, she could barely make out the shape of the market across the street and yet her senses prickled. Stepping closer to her upstairs window, she squinted at the street below and found her senses were, as usual, spot-on.

In the deluge lurked a figure. Right outside her yoga studio. It was a man, most definitely, his dark leather jacket unable to hide the breadth of his shoulders.

She pressed her forehead against the pane to get a better look, confident he couldn’t see her since the kitchen light was off. He tilted his head back; the street light overhead illuminating him as the rain splashed his upturned face and closed eyelids.

Hayden recognized her unexpected visitor instantly. “Tate Duncan, what are you doing?”

Tate’s reputation had reached almost mythical proportions on Spright Island. He owned the island, so everyone knew him or knew of him, anyway. Hayden was somewhere in between. She knew of him—of his legendary pushbacks on the laws that stated their community had to have standard streetlamps and ugly yellow concrete curbs. Tate had fought for, and won, the right to design streetlamps that were art sculptures and to install curbs of sparkling quartz. He’d personally overseen every detail because to him, the details mattered.

Hayden had been romanced by SWC. It was a relaxing, serene place to live—a retreat from bustling city life. She had been born in Seattle into a busy, distracting, dysfunctional household, and had longed her entire adult life to be somewhere less busy and distracting.

When she’d learned about Spright Island’s wellness community a year and a half ago, she’d come to visit. Days later, she’d taken out as big a business loan as the bank would give her and leased the space for her yoga studio. She’d quit her job at the YMCA, finagled her way out of her Seattle apartment’s lease and moved here with minimal belongings.

It’d been her fresh start.

Shortly after, Tate had stopped by her studio to personally welcome her to the neighborhood and invite her to a wine tasting happening that weekend at Summer’s Market. It was a kindness she hadn’t expected, and without it, she might never have met and grown to know her neighbors.

She rarely saw a suit and tie step foot into a yoga studio, so Tate’s presence had garnered every ounce of her attention. One of his signature quick, potent smiles later, she’d promptly lost any train of thought she’d had. As it turned out, the legendary Tate Duncan was also stupidly attractive, and when he smiled, that attractiveness doubled.

She’d grown used to his presence around town, if not his mind-numbing male beauty. She and Tate had bumped into each other several times in town, from the market to the restaurant to her favorite café. He’d always offered a smile and asked her how the studio was doing. Come to think of it, it’d been a while since she’d spoken to him. She’d seen him in recent weeks—or was that a month ago?—when she’d left the post office. He’d had his cell phone to his ear and was talking to someone, a deep frown marring his perfect brow.

He’d scanned the road and she’d waved when his eyes reached her, but he didn’t react at all, only kept talking on the phone. It was strange behavior for Tate, but she’d written it off.

But now, watching him stand in the rain and willingly get soaked, she wondered if his behavior that day had been strange after all. She glanced over at her teakettle, considering. It wouldn’t hurt to invite him in for a cup...

Once he’d gone out of his way to make her feel welcome. The least she could do was offer him a friendly ear to bend. Just in case he needed one.

She bypassed her front door for the door next to her coat closet. It led to a private staircase and down to her yoga studio. She shared the building with a few other businesses, but her apartment was in a hallway all its own. The attached studio and private entryway were her favorite aspects of the unique building.

Downstairs, she flipped on the studio’s overhead lights and Tate blinked over at her, recognition dawning. He lifted a hand in a semblance of a wave, like he was embarrassed to be caught outside her place of business.

The stirring of her senses reinforced her instincts to come down here. Tate needed someone to talk to even more than he needed a warm space to dry off.

She unlocked the door and held it open for him, tipping her head to invite him in. “Wet night for a walk.”

He ran a hand through his soaking hair and offered a chagrined twist of his lips, a far cry from the genuine smile he’d given her almost every other time she’d seen him.

He wore dark pants and shoes, his leather coat zipped to his chin. Her day had been packed with errands, so she still wore her jeans and soft, cream-colored sweater from earlier. If she’d greeted him wearing her usual—leggings and slouchy sweatshirt, minus the bra—he wouldn’t have been the only one of them embarrassed.

“My teakettle whistled and then I spotted you down here. You look like you could use a warm drink.”

“Do I?” He palmed his neck and glanced behind him. Maybe she’d misread this situation after all.

“Unless you’re waiting for someone?”

She’d seen him in town with a waifish blonde woman a handful of times. Claire, Hayden had gleaned. Tate’s girlfriend and very recently, fiancée. The other woman seemed proper and rigid, and Hayden’s first thought was that she was an odd match for the always bright and cheery Tate...though he wasn’t bright or cheery at the moment.

“No. I was at the Pony,” he said of the restaurant up the hill from here. “The rain caught me.”

“I’d offer to drive you home, but I don’t have a car.” One of the luxuries she’d given up to afford to move to Spright Island, but the sacrifice had been worth it. Peace had been worth it.

Every shop or store in the community could be reached on foot if she planned ahead, and she had a few friends in the area or could call a car service if she needed to venture farther.

“But I do have tea.” She opened the door wider.

“Of course. Thank you.” He stepped into the studio, his shoes squishing on her welcome mat. “Sorry about this.”

“No worries.” She locked the door behind him and grabbed a towel from a nearby cabinet. “Clean, fluffy towel? They’re for my hot yoga classes.”

He accepted with a nod and sopped the water from his hair.

“Tea’s in my apartment.” She gestured to the open doorway leading upstairs. “Don’t worry about wet shoes. I’m not that formal.”

Tate followed her upstairs and inside her blessedly spotless apartment. She’d cleaned yesterday. She was fairly tidy, but some weeks got the best of her and she didn’t get around to vacuuming or changing her sheets.

By the time he was in the center of her living room and she was shutting the door to the staircase behind her, she was questioning her invitation.

A man in her apartment shrank it down until it felt like she lived in a cereal box—and this man in particular infused the immediate space with a sizzling attraction she’d felt since he first shook her hand.

Hayden Green, he’d said. You have the perfect last name for this community.

Now, he pegged her with a look that could only be described as vulnerable, as if something was really, really off. She wanted nothing more than to cross the room and scoop him into her arms. But she couldn’t do that. He had a fiancée. And she wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship.

No matter how hot he was.

“Tea,” she reminded herself and then stepped around him to walk to the kitchen.