Unexpected Temptation

Padding down the narrow hall, she found the suite had two bedrooms and Luke’s luggage was in one of them.

She saw the robe thrown over the back of a chair, and while she didn’t feel right intruding on his personal space, she couldn’t walk around in a damp towel, either.

She picked up the robe on the back of the chair and let the towel drop as she wrapped the thick, blue terry around her.

It smelled like him—like his soap. She smelled like him, too.

Her eye caught a folder on the small table next to the bed, and she knew she shouldn’t look, but she was here in a hotel with a man she didn’t know. She only had his word and the word of the detective about who Luke really was. She approached the file as if it might bite her, carefully picking it up and opening the cover.

Her own face stared back at her—she didn’t recognize the photo, but then she realized it was from her return trip from Puerto Rico. This had to be from airline security.

How could Luke get his hands on something like this? Wasn’t it restricted to the government? A chill chased down her spine as she flipped through the papers and blinked, tears stinging her eyes.

Julie.

Though the file called her Nicole. Nicole Brooks.

Nicky.

Of course. Logic had been lost in the panic of what had been happening, but now it made sense. Luke and Vanessa were both looking for the same woman. Her sister.

Vanessa paged through a few more of the files. There were a lot of pictures. Pictures of Julie with Luke, the two of them together, looking close. Intimate.

Her breath caught again. Luke had been her sister’s lover.

Is that why he wanted to find her so desperately? Why he’d kissed her? And why he’d stopped, knowing that she wasn’t the woman he was searching for? The woman he wanted.

Vanessa’s hand shook as she closed the file to put it back on the nightstand.

“Anything you want to know, feel free to ask.”

Vanessa jumped, dropping the file as she did so, Luke’s voice startling her.

“You’re back. I, um, I came in looking for a robe, and...”

“And you saw the file. It’s understandable. I would’ve done the same thing,” he said, unperturbed.

He set two bags down on the bed.

“Do you need help bandaging your side?”

Vanessa wasn’t sure if she was more flustered by being caught peeking or that he didn’t seem upset by it.

“I’ll be able to do it myself, thanks.”

What she’d seen in the file had poured ice over all of her adrenaline-fired fantasizing. When Luke had kissed her, he wasn’t kissing her. He’d been kissing Nicky.

So she was using an alias. No wonder Vanessa hadn’t been able to find her sister. She’d been looking for Julie Newman—her sister’s last registered surname—not Nicole Brooks all this time.

When she turned around, Luke was gone, and she was still sitting on his bed. Getting up, she took the bags and went into the other, unoccupied room. She was glad she found the file. It meant that she might be closer to locating her sister, and it also meant she could keep a clear head about Luke Berringer.

No more crazy romantic dreams. He was clearly in love with Julie—Vanessa could see that from the pictures of them together. What mattered to her was that she was one step closer to finding her sister, and Luke Berringer would help her do that.

She took off the robe and put on the lacy underwear and soft cotton shorts and tank that Luke had bought her—much sexier than what she would have bought for herself. Her mind went back to the file as she dressed. What this also meant was that Julie was in danger—someone clearly wanted to kill her. While Luke appeared smitten in the photos in the file, he hadn’t appeared that way earlier, in the police cruiser, when he thought she was Nicky.

He’d looked like he hated her.

Vanessa supposed there was only one way to really know what was going on. Luke said all she had to do was ask, so that was exactly what she intended to do.

4

LUKE DIDN’T EVEN taste his food as he ate. All he could think about was Vanessa sitting on the side of his bed, naked under the robe he’d worn that morning. She’d gone directly to her own room, and he assumed she went straight to bed. Maybe to avoid him after he caught her in his room going through his files.

It wasn’t a big deal, really. He believed her that she’d needed the robe and had picked up the file out of curiosity—and he probably would have done the same. She deserved to know why someone was after her and how he had come to find her. What he hadn’t expected was the devastated look on her face when he caught her.

“Hi. Mind if I join you? It’s too early to sleep, even though I’m worn out.”

She was standing in the entry, poised as if she were ready to run in the other direction. So different from Nicky. As he took her in, the salad nearly lodged in his throat. He really should have bought her some baggy sweats.

The shorts hugged her like a second skin, the tank top revealing the curve of her hip and breast. What had he been thinking? The clothing had seemed innocent enough when he’d picked it from the shelves.

With her damp, curling hair and no makeup, she looked much younger, more vulnerable, and he would never have mistaken her for Nicky. Her breasts were smaller, her general stature a bit more slight. And there was that mole....

Luke cleared his throat.

“Sure, come on in. Help yourself if you’re hungry. My eyes were bigger than my stomach,” he managed conversationally, though he had a hard time not watching her cross the room, admiring how gracefully she moved, even with her injuries.

She sat in the love seat across from him and curled into it like a cat, folding her legs under her in the way that women often did. He loved that.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” she said. “Thanks for the supplies.”

“No problem. We can pick up anything else you need as we go.”

“About the file,” she said, cutting to the chase.

Luke nodded. “You’re probably wondering—”

“Julie. The woman you think is Nicole—Nicky—her name is really Julie. She’s my sister.”

Well. Luke sat back, hit between the eyes by that bit of information. So that’s why she’d been so upset.

Her sister, of course. He was an idiot, not putting two and two together sooner. They said everyone had a double, but Nicole told him that she was an orphan. No family. Then again, she’d lied about everything else, so why not this?

“I see.”

Though he didn’t really see. Not entirely.