An Improper Affair (Millionaire of the Month #4)(27)
Author: Anna DePalo

She tensed. "Why do you thing I would know?"

"There’s no need to be coy, sugar," Webb responded. "Brenda’s filled me in on the fact that you and Ryan are lovers."

She sucked in a breath and the look on Webb Sperling’s face said he knew he’d struck a direct hit.

She opened her mouth to reply just as the front door opened and Ryan walked in.

Webb turned, coming face-to-face with the man Kelly had thouglit never to see in her shop again.

"Well, well," Webb drawled, "I see I’m interrupting a rendezvous."

"What the hell are you doing here9" Ryan shot back.

Webb’s lips twisted. "Isn’t it obvious0 I’m here to congratulate you on your recent coup."

"The element of surprise was part of my plan," Ryan responded coolly.

"If you’d just waited, it would have all been yours one day."

"It’s mine now." Ryan’s jaw hardened.

"You always were the impatient type."

Kelly looked back and forth from father to son, fascinated despite herself by the exchange.

"I’d been planning on retiring," W’ebb mused, looking out the store windows. "Roxanne wants to be able to travel and not be tied down by business." He looked back at Ryan. "We may even spend part of the year right here in Tahoe."

"Is that the story’ you’re spinning for the press9" Ryan said scornfully. "It’s the truth."

Webb adopted a look of such open sincerity, Kelly almost believed him herself despite the fact that his declarations were obviously a face-saving gesture, now that he’d been unceremoniously ousted from Sperling, Inc.

No wonder the man had been such a successful and clandestine adulterer for years, she thought— he created his own reality.

"Like hell," Ryan retorted, then his eyes shot to her. "When did he get here?" Her gaze met and clashed with his. "Just now." He looked back at Webb. "Where’s the wife0" "Roxanne"?"

"If she’s the one you’re still married to," he responded icily. "She’s back at the hotel. I didn’t think she needed to be here."

"More likely, you didn’t want her finding out any unsavory details she might not be aware of already." Ryan sneered. ".Alter all, a visit to the daughter of your former mistress might set off alarm bells, particularly for a woman with a well-honed sense of self-preservation like Roxanne."

Kelly almost laughed.

Webb managed to look wounded, then cagey. "The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. According to Brenda, you’re screwing her daughter."

Ryan’s eyes blazed. "My relationship with Kelly has nothing, nothing, in common with yours and Brenda’s. no matter what the hell that relationship is these days."

Webb’s eyes gleamed. "Brenda and I have stayed close friends." He threw a quick glance at Kelly. "I recommend it with one’s former lovers, by the way. You never know when they’ll prove useful, especially when a family affair looks to be repeating itself."

Ryan’s expression turned stony. "You’re out," he gritted. "Out of a job, out of Sperling. Inc. and out of here."

Webb laughed. "You’re quite protective of your little chickadee." He looked Kelly up and down, then murmured. "I can understand the attraction."

Ryan’s fists clenched, but Webb turned toward the door.

"Roxanne and I plan to take an extended European vacation," Webb informed them.

"Of course," Ryan replied acidly, "you’ll want to take a long vacation until all of your socialite friends move on to the next piece of gossip." He paused, then added. "Is that why you were tracking me down’? To let me know how you were going to spin this?"

".And there are the thoroughbreds to be raised and traded, of course," Webb went on, as if he hadn’t heard.

"The horse farm never interested me."

"You took after your mother’s side of the family in that way," Webb replied, shaking his head as he walked to the shop’s entrance, "but it’s heartening to see you’ve inherited my taste in women."

With that parting shot, Webb opened the store’s front door and left.

Ryan turned back to face her.

Before he could say anything, however, the door to the store opened again and a customer walked

Kelly smiled— with relief, really— at her unexpected customer, and moved forward. "May I help you’?"

As she walked past Ryan, she murmured, "We can’t talk now."

Moments later, as she was directing the customer to a display of furniture knobs, she noticed Ryan leaving.

She sidied. then watched as Erica emerged from the back room.

"You heard’?" she asked in a low voice.

Erica nodded. "But with all the fireworks going off around here. I was afraid to come out of the storeroom."

"I wish I’d been back there with you."

That night, Tahoe received buckets of rain. It was one of the most powerful thunderstorms in recent memory.

Kelly sat in her living room, contemplating the rivulets of water cascading down her windows.

She sat, still in her work clothes, worn out by the drama that had played out at Distressed Success earlier.

Even if she’d been brave enougli to face Ryan tonight— even if the storm hadn’t kept her home— she wouldn’t have known what to say to him.

Yes. he was maddeningly self-assured, arrogant even, with looks that were too sinful to waste on a hard-nosed corporate raider. But he was more than that.

She thought about the way he’d taken time to help her decorate the lodge, patiently waiting while she contemplated something, happy to move things if she changed her mind completely.

She remembered how he’d gotten her back safely and tucked into bed the night she’d put away too much at the White Fir.

She thought about the wind ruffling his hair that day on the sailboat on Lake Tahoe. She even thought about, yes, how he’d given money to Brenda.

And she realized that, whether she liked it or not. she had fallen for him. It was why she’d been so hurt when she’d thought he’d slept with her just because she might have been an easy lay, convinced by nothing more than her sexual experience that she was okay.

She wanted to be more to him. She wanted him to appreciate all of her. Her temper had had time to cool these last few days, allowing her to realize as much.

Tears threatened suddenly, but she held them back.

It was useless to feel the way she did, because Ryan didn’t feel the same way about her. To him, she was just a fling during his enforced stay in Tahoe.

There was no way Ryan could want a more permanent association with the woman who remained, unalterably, Brenda Hartley’s daughter.