Sinful Desire (Sinful Nights, #2)(79)

“Do you have it?”

“I do,” he said, turning to look her in the eyes. “Why?”

“I have an idea. Would you like me to make it for her? As a gift. You could bring it to her. I mean, obviously she doesn’t have a dog in prison. But she might enjoy seeing the jacket. It might make her happy, right? Just to see it. If that was her dream to make them.”

His heart stuttered. It stopped beating for a moment, then it thumped harder against his chest, as if it were trying to fight its way out to get closer to her.

“You’d do that?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Sure. I can sew. I’m sure I’m not great at it like she was. I couldn’t make a living from it. But I know what I’m doing. I still have a Singer machine. I could do it an hour. It’s not hard to make a doggie coat if there’s a pattern.”

“And you’d do that for my mom? Who’s in prison? For murder?” he asked, and he was sure shock was etched on his features.

She shifted in the water that was now cooling. Some sloshed over the side of the tub. “I don’t judge her. It’s not my place,” she said softly, her blue eyes so honest, so guileless. “She’s your mother, and the only thing that really matters to me is that without her I wouldn’t have you in my life. And I want you in my life.”

And then his heart managed to break free. It jumped from the steel cage he’d once kept it in and raced to the woman in his wet arms. He belonged to Sophie. He cupped her beautiful face in his hands and memorized this moment. The cooling water. The dark of the night. The still in her home. The racing of his heart.

She’d bewitched him, and he didn’t ever want to be without the only person, besides his family, who he’d ever loved. “I’m in love with you, Sophie. I’m so in love with you.”

She beamed. A smile broke across her face. “Oh, Ryan. I am so madly in love with you. I never stood a chance of not falling in love with you.”

He smothered her in kisses in the tub. Then he lifted her out, dried them both off, and led her to the bed. Holding her close, he planted kisses all along her sweet skin, from belly to breast, elbow to ear. “I’m so in love with you,” he said, over and over. It was like a dam breaking inside him, and he couldn’t hold back anymore. He’d spent so long keeping all his secrets clutched tight and locked up, and this one truth, this incomparable, all-encompassing fact of his existence, insisted on being heard tonight.

He couldn’t stop telling her as he held her tight. “I’m so in love with you I don’t even know what to do.”

“Just love me,” she whispered back, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“I do. I will,” he said, and he kissed the tear away. “Please love me, too.”

“I do, Ryan. I do love you so much.”

Then, he made love to her as midnight fell across the city of sin. As he moved over her, they were the only two people in the whole wide world.

She’d become his world.





Chapter Thirty-Two


Something wasn’t right.

She’d noticed it when she traced the pattern on paper, and now she was seeing it for sure on the muslin fabric.

Sophie studied the cloth in front of her, trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong. The little doggie neck-to-tail measurement simply didn’t line up. Was it a shorter jacket, perhaps? Mid-back? But as she peered at the printout of the pattern again, she reconfirmed that the coat was supposed to cover up the belly and back, as a coat should do.

Bright morning sun streamed through her living room window. It was an early morning for a notorious late sleeper, but her day was packed, especially since she needed to squeeze in this sewing project before she began her final preps for the benefit tonight. Ryan had departed at the crack of dawn to take care of his dog, and she’d dusted off her sewing machine, setting up on the table by the window, ready to tackle this gift.

He’d emailed her a photo he’d taken of the printed pattern, and she’d grabbed some fabric she had on hand from a few years ago when she’d made a mod retro skirt.

Grabbing a new section of fabric, she followed the measurement once again.

Whoa. That definitely was wrong. Wrong size. Wrong shape. Wrong everything.

Had it been that long since she had sewn? No, it was only two years ago when she’d made that skirt. This pattern didn’t seem so complex as to throw her off like this, even with a dog bone design on the back.

Staring at the pattern again as if it would reveal its secrets, she spotted something odd in the first row of instructions, then her brain turned it around. A light switch flicked on.

“Ah!” she said, tasting victory.

She’d just reverse a few of these steps to make the pattern work. Easy enough. Grabbing her pencil, she jotted down the correct order of the steps.

She blinked.

She peered more closely at the numbers in the first row. They lined up precisely with the reverse letters of the alphabet.

She counted off in her head, quickly transposing the numbers into letters, her analytical mind easily sliding into coding mode.

James Street.

A hotbed of crime once upon a time.

Studying the numbers more closely, they clicked into place, sliding like puzzle pieces.

This pattern wasn’t a dog jacket.