knew better than to argue with a woman like Inez Ramirez. And he wanted to talk to Joe. He supposed he could wait out here as well as inside.
The hand he smoothed over his shirt did little to erase the wrinkles it’d gotten as a result of the hour of sleep he’d caught at the hospital. Wandering to a table near the pool, he noticed a tray containing glasses and a tall pitcher of iced tea. Next, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Well, well, well. He wasn’t alone in the courtyard.
One woman appeared to be sleeping, fully clothed, on a chaise lounge on the other side of the pool. Another woman clad in a pale lavender swimsuit was on all fours near the center of the garden. He couldn’t see her face, but this angle awarded him a view of long legs and the nicest rear end he’d seen in a long time.
“Lose something?” he called.
The woman swung around in surprise. Shading her eyes with one hand, a smile spread slowly across her face. “Why, Tripp Calhoun! I didn’t know you were here.”
“Amber Colton. It’s been a while.”
She placed a finger to her lips. “Shh. Claire’s sleeping.”
He cast a cursory glance at the other woman, who hadn’t so much as moved a muscle, then walked a little closer to Amber. From this position he could see the tan line along the inner swells of her breasts. It wasn’t easy not to stare. She certainly had curves in all the right places. Her hips flared just enough to entice a man’s imagination and her legs were long.
“You’re probably thinking I remind you of my mother.”
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,
