Although she didn’t remember much about the sister from their first, embarrassing encounter, the woman was a smaller version of Ryder, with ash blond hair and high cheekbones. She was wearing a plain black one-piece bathing suit with a long, flowered sarong tied at her small waist. Very similar to Monica’s outfit, but a bit more demure. And, actually, Josie would probably be better off with a shorter skirt. Having worked in the fashion industry for so long, Monica knew that showing some leg would make the petite Josie look taller, more reed-like. But she was very pretty, and it was obvious she thought the world of her brother.

  Ryder took off his hat and held it while he hugged Josie tightly around the waist. If she weren’t his sister, Monica thought she might be a tad jealous.

  “I can’t believe it!” Josie exclaimed breathlessly. “When Mama and Daddy called to tell us you’d gotten married and were on your way here…why, I almost fainted dead away. Didn’t I, darling?”

  “Darling”—a.k.a. Matt the Rat—came to her side, a wide smile on his even-more-tan-than-usual face. Of course, given the spray-on tan she’d given herself, she could hardly criticize. “You sure did. I didn’t know what she was screaming about, but she was certainly excited.”

  He held out his hand. “Good to see you again, Ryder.”

  “You, too.” Ryder took his hand for a quick shake.

  Still hanging back, Monica bristled at Ryder’s friendly response to Matt’s greeting. She’d told Ryder about Matt. Why was he being so nice to the lousy cheat?

  “So where is she?” Josie asked. “I can’t wait to meet her. Where did you meet her? None of us even knew you were seeing anyone since Stephanie.” She slapped his chest in a teasing gesture. “Shame on you, Ryder.”

  “What’s the matter—didn’t Mom tell you all about her?”

  Josie shook her head. “We didn’t get to talk long. Matt and I were already late for our couple’s massage at the hotel spa, and she only called to let us know you were on your way. All she said was that you’d run off to Vegas to elope and would arrive in Honolulu sometime today. So where is she?”

  That was her cue. Taking a deep breath, Monica pulled herself up as straight and poised as possible, then stepped forward, glad they’d overlooked her in their excitement. Or maybe they’d expected Ryder to show up with someone more his speed—a country girl in cutoffs and a straw hat rather than a gold lamé bikini. She did so love the element of surprise, especially when it came to knocking Matt for a loop, and this was one look he’d never seen from her.

  “Right here,” she called out, stepping forward to plaster herself to Ryder’s side. Then, as an explanation for why she hadn’t been by his side all along, she said, “I just stopped in the lobby for a book of matches. I want as many souvenirs from our honeymoon as I can carry.” Turning a beatific smile on Ryder, she coughed up her best madly-in-love voice and asked, “Aren’t you going to introduce us, sweetie?”

  His arm tensed at her cooing tone. Not that she blamed him; faking blind adoration made her a little nauseous, too.

  “This is Monica,” he said without elaboration. Monica pinched him under the arm, and he quickly added, “My wife.”

  The words came out so strangled, she thought it sounded like he’d rather be swimming with piranha than introducing her to his family.

  “Monica,” he continued, “this is my sister, Josie, and I’m pretty sure you already know her husband, Matt.”

  Matt turned three shades of white beneath his fresh tan, then drifted into a sickly gray until Monica thought he might lose the dinner they hadn’t even eaten yet. His eyes, however, were as dark as obsidian and twice as cold.

  Monica smiled as brightly as possible, envisioning herself as the bulb in a lighthouse. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she told Josie before turning to Matt with the same grin plastered on her face. “Hello again.”

  Nothing more. No ranting about his betrayal, no accusations about the money he’d stolen from her, no threats to tell Josie what her new husband was really like. Just a simple hello. Let him stew. Let him wonder and worry over when, or if, she’d say anything. Let him live in fear.

  “You two know each other?” Josie asked, glancing first to her husband, then to Monica.

  “We, uh…uh…”

  Monica just blinked innocently, letting Matt squirm like a worm on a hook. Secretly, his nervousness and irritation filled her with an almost unholy glee. Ha! Take that, she thought and gave him a mental punch to the gut.

  After a full minute, when it seemed all he could do was stutter, she said, “We’ve worked together. I’m a fashion photographer, and Matt and I have discussed the idea of starting a new magazine together.” She shot a pointed look at her ex-fiancé, pleased to note a touch of color slip into his cheeks while the rest of his skin faded to nearly translucent.

  Josie apparently didn’t notice the change in her husband’s pallor. “I had no idea,” she said. But she didn’t sound the least bit suspicious. She simply took Monica’s hand and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “Well, welcome to the family. I’m so happy for both of you. I hope you and Ryder will be very happy together.”

  If Monica had been holding a grudge against Ryder’s sister for stealing Matt from her, it quickly disappeared. Feelings of anger molded themselves into instant esteem and maybe just a bit of sympathy for this pleasant young woman who had wound up with the likes of such a rat bastard.

  And now that she knew Josie wasn’t some gold-digging tramp who’d purposely stepped in to ruin her life, Monica could focus her hostility exclusively on Matt, who truly did deserve her animosity. Not to mention a little payback. Okay, a lot of payback.

  Josie leaned back suddenly, an odd expression on her face as she studied Monica. “Do I know you from somewhere?” she asked. “You look familiar.”

  Thoughts of revenge against Matt dissipated as Monica’s heart slowed just a bit and she felt Ryder’s fingers dig into her wrist. First Ruth Ann, now Josie. And if Josie recognized her through all of her cosmetic adjustments, her whole plan would be ruined.

  “I don’t think so,” Monica answered. And then, because it was the first thing that popped into her mind, she added, “But some people do say I look a lot like Julia Roberts. Not so much with the hair”—she touched the side of her darker-than-usual, slicked-back ’do—“but in the face and figure.”

  Ryder made a rude sound of disbelief at her side. “Julia Roberts?” he whispered just above her ear. “So who does that make me—Richard Gere?”

  “More like Lyle Lovett,” she shot back under her breath.

  “Maybe I saw your picture on Ryder’s phone or something,” Josie suggested, completely missing their low-key battle of wit. Then she waved a hand, as though shooing the thought away. “Shall we find a table and sit down?”

  Monica released a pent-up breath. Ryder was getting on her last good nerve, but the most important thing was that his sister didn’t seem the least suspicious. Whew.

  “That sounds great,” Monica replied. “I’m starving.” Even though she’d eaten her lunch and half of Ryder’s on the plane, it still seemed like weeks since she’d had a decent meal.

  Josie insisted she and Matt pick up the tab and urged everyone to have the lobster special. But while the other three at their table took her up on the offer, Monica stuck with an order of fettuccine Alfredo sans seafood, a Cobb salad, and tropical fruit sprinkled with coconut.

  They made small talk until their drinks were served—a domestic beer for Ryder, double Scotch on the rocks for Matt, Mai Tai for Josie, and a very non-alcoholic iced tea for Monica. She hadn’t been lying when she told Ryder alcohol did a number on her, and considering the mess she’d gotten into the last time she drank, she was putting both feet firmly on the teetotaling wagon for a while.

  “So, Monica… Tell me a little about yourself. How did you and Ryder meet?”

  Monica stirred a bit of artificial sweetener and fresh-squeezed lemon into her tea as she tried to formulate a flawless response. She much preferred the dull small talk to being cross-examined. Of course, she’d known people would be curious, and that she and Ryder would have to come up with some type of tale to recount, but as much as they’d tried to brainstorm exactly what they would tell people, almost every suggestion had only led to an argument, so they hadn’t cemented any brilliant ideas.

  But before she could utter a word, Ryder took over with an anecdote of his own. “You know, that’s a funny story.”

  Yeah, Monica couldn’t wait to hear it. She held her breath.

  “Monica called one day, looking for Matt. He was visiting you, and when she couldn’t reach him, I guess Mom gave her my number.”

  The waiter came then with their meals, and Ryder paused while everyone was served. “Anyway, she started to give me a message for Matt, but it got complicated and she told me to forget it. But after all that, we had to laugh over the time we’d wasted to begin with.” Ryder spread the cloth napkin over his lap, gave it a couple absent strokes, then reached for his beer. “We got to talking, and the next thing I knew, I’d missed feeding time.”

  Josie’s eyes went wide. “You missed feeding time?”

  From the tone of her voice, Monica assumed this was big deal. The equivalent of blowing off a meeting with the mayor or forgetting to pick your child up from soccer practice.

  “Yep.” Ryder gave a little chuckle. “Good thing Ned was there to take up the slack or we’d have had a stampede on our hands.”

  Josie leaned her cheek against the back of one hand, fork dangling from her fingers. “It must have been love. Ryder never misses a feeding,” she told Monica, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “He even warned me before my wedding that he’d have to leave the reception early enough to get home and take care of the horses and cattle. And sure enough, he disappeared right after he took care of that hideous woman.”

  Josie’s teeth clicked angrily on her fork after she finished speaking, and Monica’s eye twitched. Just a quick, almost imperceptible spasm in the corner of her right eye. She smiled and pretended to brush a speck of dust from her lashes as she smoothed away the tick.

  What was it with everybody dumping on her about that blasted reception? Okay, so she’d been a little tipsy. So she’d crashed her ex-fiancé’s wedding reception and accused the groom of being one rung below pond scum on the ladder of life. It’s not like she’d killed someone.

  And, frankly, her opinion of the groom hadn’t changed. If more people would open their eyes and take a good, hard look, she suspected they’d realize what a weasel Matthew Castor was, too.

  “Actually,” Ryder said, leaning toward her, letting his sleeve-covered arm brush her bare one, “I didn’t get home in time for feeding that night, either.” He flashed a grin unlike any Monica had ever seen on him. His eyes sparkled and his teeth gleamed. All thirty-two of them. His smile was so beguiling, she actually began counting.

  “I’d invited Monica to the wedding, and after I put that other woman in a cab…” He stroked the inside of her arm, sending shivers straight to her spine. If he was trying to distract her from getting worked up about being called that woman, he was doing a damn fine job. “Monica and I decided to leave and attend a little ceremony of our own. Isn’t that right, dumplin’?”

  Dumplin’? She forced her lips to curve. Two could play at this game. “That’s right, sugar lips.” And before she could think about it, she leaned forward and planted a big, fat kiss on his mouth.

  Ryder’s eyes widened in surprise, and Monica gave a silent whoop of satisfaction. For one-tenth of a second…right up until Ryder wrapped his arms around her back, pulled her flush with his warm body, and opened his lips.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When a woman makes up her mind, you can always be sure she’s gonna do exactly what she says—or not.

  Tongue. That’s all Monica could think as they sat there at the dinner table, sucking face like a couple of teenagers under the bleachers. Josie and Matt were staring, she was sure. Probably so were the other diners. But all Monica could think was that Ryder had the warmest, softest, trickiest tongue she’d ever had the pleasure of having in her mouth. He did wicked things to her lips and the inside of her mouth, and his hands were doing soft little stroke-y things to the skin beneath the strap of her bikini top and the nape of her neck. Lightning struck and zigzagged its way straight to her toes, hitting every erogenous zone in its path. She went limp, letting Ryder do to her what he would—audience be damned.

  Then, just as she turned herself over to him, to the sensations he was creating, he let go. If it hadn’t been for the protective curve of the patio chair, she’d have slumped back and fallen flat on the ground.

  “Sorry,” Ryder said, giving his sister and brother-in-law an apologetic nod as he reached for his beer. He took a long swallow before going back to eating as though he hadn’t just seared Monica’s insides and left her steaming.

  She stared at him, snapping her jaw shut to keep from looking too stunned. After all, she was supposed to be used to Ryder’s lusty attentions.

  “He does that all the time,” she said with a lopsided grin.

  When she looked in Matt’s direction, she saw his lips tense into a thin, disapproving line. She wanted to snap at him, ask what he was staring at or what right he had to look put-out when he’d run off with another woman in the first place. But she merely lifted a pinky to slowly wipe the corners of her mouth, as though Ryder had smudged her lipstick or left too much of a trace of passion behind.

  In contrast to Matt’s reaction, Josie gave her an impish smile and wink that said she understood all too well.

  Monica tried to work up a kernel of jealousy or anger, thinking she ought to feel something over the fact that Ryder’s sister was so obviously sexually satisfied by Monica’s ex-lover. Funny, but it didn’t seem to bother her. All she could feel was the heat of Ryder’s kiss and the lingering need for completion.

  She took a sip of tea to wet her suddenly dry throat and then dug in to her salad, trying to pretend everything was normal. Just another day of wedded bliss.

  “So are you going to live at the ranch with Ryder?” Josie asked.

  That wasn’t something she and Ryder had covered, so Monica took her time chewing while she thought up a decent answer. Laying her free hand over the top of Ryder’s, she rested her head on his shoulder and said, “Absolutely. I’m used to traveling, so I can take short assignments anywhere in the country and still be back home in under a week.” She tipped her face to look at Ryder and batted her lashes adoringly. “I couldn’t bear to be away from my honey-bunny longer than that, I don’t think.”

  Ryder pressed a kiss to her forehead and ran his fingers down her bare spine…and farther. She jerked and bit down on a squeak as his hand curved over her left buttock and squeezed. “Nor I you, darlin’.”

  Her eyes narrowed. He was definitely up to something. Playing happily married was one thing. Copping a feel at the dinner table was something else entirely. Not that the copping didn’t feel mighty good.

  But she could hardly drive her fork into his leg or throw her tea in his lap, now could she? So she’d just have to give him a taste of his own medicine.

  She ignored the placement of his hand and went back to her meal. Ryder did, too, except that he used his left hand to eat, leaving the other comfortably stationed on her derriere. And every once in a while, when she least expected it, he’d pat or squeeze or tweak and almost drive her out of her skin.

  It took her a few minutes, but she finally came up with an idea. Can you say, “Tit-for-tat?” she thought wickedly.

  “Mmmm, that rice looks delicious,” she commented innocently, zooming in on the pilaf on Ryder’s plate. She dug out a big scoop and pulled it toward her mouth. And just as she passed over his thigh, she tilted the fork and let a few grains fall.

  “Oops.” She giggled. As she picked up the grains between her thumb and forefinger and popped them in her mouth one at a time, she made sure to dislodge his napkin with her pinky. She knew Ryder was watching her every move and only hoped he wouldn’t notice. By the time she finished, she had the napkin pulled all the way to his knee and gave it one final flip to send it floating to the ground.

  “For heaven’s sake. I’m such a klutz tonight.” She laughed again and gave her eyes a roll before bending to retrieve the cloth. And as she did, she made sure her hand passed dangerously close to Ryder’s crotch, sweeping over the taut denim of his jeans and just brushing the edge of the bulge at the apex of his thighs.

  She had to reeeeeeaaach for the napkin, so of course she ended up resting her head in his lap for a good fifteen seconds. And she didn’t come up for air until she heard his sharp intake of breath and felt every muscle in his body stiffen.

  Still under the table, she allowed herself a wide smile of triumph, but as she straightened, she schooled her features and forced herself to look recalcitrant. Lord knew this wasn’t the most outrageous thing she’d ever done in her twenty-nine years, but it ranked right up there.

  She shook the napkin to remove any lingering bits of dirt or sand from the patio and then replaced it on Ryder’s lap, being sure to place it evenly and smooth out all the wrinkles. “There. I’m so sorry, darling. I hope I didn’t hurt you by leaning on you like that.”

  Their eyes locked and Monica could all but read his mind through their dark blue depths. He was thinking hot thoughts—very hot thoughts—and her gaze slid to his lap. Sure enough, her wheedling had affected him. Her breath hitched and she realized she wasn’t completely unaffected herself. If she didn’t do something to douse their mutual ardor, things could get out of hand—if they hadn’t already.