A Tempting Engagement
Bronwyn Jameson
The last time he'd seen Emily Warner, she was crawling out of his bed, and then out of his life. Six months later, Mitch Goodwin luckily ran into lovely Emily and begged her to resume her job as his son's nanny. But he also had a question that had baffled him for far too long: what, exactly, happened that night…?Seeing Mitch and his little boy again reminded Emily how it felt to want what she couldn't have. But resisting the sexy single dad when it came to the welfare of his son was impossible. Now, as Emily tried to ignore thoughts of what could have–what should have–happened that night, there was only one solution: see if the fantasy lived up to the reality….
He’d Made Her An Offer
She’d Be Crazy To Refuse.
“Emily, say you’ll be a nanny to Joshua. The hours are flexible. You can double your previous pay.” Mitch paused. “Joshua misses you.”
Those three words widened the crack in Emily’s defenses.
“There’s no need to live in,” he said evenly. “If that’s what’s bothering you.”
Her heart lurched. Of course he wouldn’t want her in his house, not when she might do something inappropriate and embarrassing such as, say, climb into his bed. Again.
She had no choice but to refuse. “No, Mitch, I don’t want the job.”
He stared at her for what seemed like hours before speaking. “I won’t give up, Emily. Take a few days to think about it, to decide what it would take to engage your services. You know you can name your price.”
She didn’t need a few days to think, didn’t even need a few seconds. The answer vibrated through her body and centered in her heart, as sure and strong and passionate as always.
Your love, Mitch Goodwin. That’s all it would take.
Dear Reader,
Thanks so much for choosing Silhouette Desire—the destination for powerful, passionate and provocative love stories. Things start heating up this month with Katherine Garbera’s Sin City Wedding, the next installment of our DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS series. An affair, a secret child, a quickie Las Vegas wedding…and that’s just the beginning of this romantic tale.
Also this month we have the marvelous Dixie Browning with her steamy Driven to Distraction. Cathleen Galitz brings us another book in the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE STOLEN BABY series with Pretending with the Playboy. Susan Crosby’s BEHIND CLOSED DOORS miniseries continues with the superhot Private Indiscretions. And Bronwyn Jameson takes us to Australia in A Tempting Engagement.
Finally, welcome the fabulous Roxanne St. Claire to the Silhouette Desire family. We’re positive you’ll enjoy Like a Hurricane and will be wanting the other McGrath brothers’ stories. We’ll be bringing them to you in the months to come as well as stories from Beverly Barton, Ann Major and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson. So keep coming back for more from Silhouette Desire.
More passion to you!
Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor
Silhouette Desire
A Tempting Engagement
Bronwyn Jameson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
BRONWYN JAMESON
spent much of her childhood with her head buried in a book. As a teenager, she discovered romance novels, and it was only a matter of time before she turned her love of reading them into a love of writing them. Bronwyn shares an idyllic piece of the Australian farming heartland with her husband and three sons, a thousand sheep, a dozen horses, assorted wildlife and one kelpie dog. She still chooses to spend her limited downtime with a good book. Bronwyn loves to hear from readers. Write to her at bronwyn@bronwynjameson.com.
For my good mates Lisa, Kim and Yvonne—
thanks for the brainstorming and for your friendship.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
One
Emily—his Emily—was working in a bar?
Everything inside Mitch Goodwin tensed at his sister’s casually delivered piece of news. Chantal was kidding, right? Looking to get a rise out of big brother on his first night back in Plenty. Welcome home to Australia, Mitch. Now you’ve unpacked and enjoyed a nice neighborly dinner, here’s something to get your blood pumping.
And of all things guaranteed to get his blood pumping, his son’s former nanny topped the list. With careful control he slotted another plate into the dishwasher. “And you didn’t think you should mention this development when you rang me? When you said ‘Guess who’s moved back to Plenty?’ and I asked how she was doing?”
“How, not what,” Chantal corrected mildly.
“You said she was fine.”
“A change of occupation doesn’t necessarily mean a person’s not fine and/or dandy.”
Mitch gave up all pretence of calm and slammed the dishwasher door shut. “The back bar of the Lion is some kind of change.”
“Hey, it’s not so bad since Bob Foley took over. As a matter of fact, the last brawl—”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s the Ritz. She’s a trained nanny, for cripe’s sake, not a barmaid!”
His angry outburst stopped Chantal midstride. For several surprised seconds she stared at him, the coffee cups in her hands suspended midway between cupboard and bench. “I thought that information would interest you in a more positive way. As in, you moved back here to write, you need a good nanny.”
Precisely. And knowing that the best nanny was pulling beers in the town’s seediest pub added urgency to his objective as well as heat to his conscience. “Joshua can stay here with you and Quade for an hour or two?” he asked.
“Of course,” Chantal answered automatically before she saw him start for the door. Then she threw down a handful of teaspoons with a metallic clatter. “Wait there, just one minute.”
Hand on the doorknob, he started counting down the sixty seconds.
“You’ve been driving half the day, cleaning and unpacking for the rest of it. Go home and sleep. Introduce yourself to a razor and see Emily tomorrow when you’re not looking quite so primitive.” She paused, eyes narrowing as she studied him head to foot. “I assume you do want to engage her services?”
No, want didn’t really cover it. He needed Emily. He and Joshua both.
That steely determination must have shown in his expression because Chantal sighed and shook her head. “Go easy on her, Mitch. I know you’ve had a tough couple of years, but so has Emily.”
Mitch knew all about Emily Warner’s tough years, and the fifteen-minute drive into Plenty provided plenty of time for that knowledge to turn him inside out. His ex-wife dismissing her as Joshua’s nanny for no good reason. Her grandfather’s death and the subsequent battle over his estate. That injustice still boiled Mitch’s blood…although not half as much as his own error of judgment.
Error of judgment? He snorted with self-disgust. That didn’t even begin to describe how he’d abused his duty of care two months after reemploying her, how he’d taken advantage of her warm, compassionate nature and shattered her trust.
As Joshua’s nanny, she’d lived in his home, and the night he learned of Annabelle’s death… His hands tightened on the wheel reflexively. He remembered the gut-kick of intense, impotent anger and the numbness he sought at his local bar. Emily had fetched him home, Emily with her gentle brown eyes and her comforting arms and her soft words of sympathy.
He’d kissed her, possibly to shut off those platitudes. Possibly because he’d ached to lose himself in something softer and sweeter and more supportive than a whiskey bottle. Oh, yeah, he remembered the kissing and the falling into bed and then…a dark, black hole in his memory.
A vision of Emily as he’d last seen her, dressed in nothing but his white linen sheets and a soft, pink flush, drifted through his thoughts and rubbed every raw edge of his conscience. He might not recall what happened that night, but he would never forget the morning after. Her wariness, his clumsy questioning, her insistence that nothing had happened. Except, hot on the heels of that “nothing”—while he and Joshua were traveling to Annabelle’s funeral—she packed her bags and disappeared.
Frustration twisted his gut into a tight, hot knot as he pulled into the car park behind the Lion and switched off the engine. Six months wondering and worrying over the consequences of that night, and he didn’t think he could wait another minute, certainly not the hour until closing. From the near-empty lot he figured she wouldn’t be too busy—the impending rain had kept most sane folk home. He jumped down from the cab, shut the door and—city habit—paused to lock up. He almost missed the small, female figure that slipped from a side entrance. As she hurried off down the street, the wind tore at her hooded parka. Long hair, stick straight, shone silvery pale under a streetlight.
Emily.
His pulse kicked, an instant response to the tumult of sensations that swamped his body. Most of them he didn’t want to identify, so he concentrated on the quick surge of anger. She was walking home alone, through the dark streets, and she didn’t even have the sense to pull her hood over that luminous beacon of hair. Might as well shout, Here I am, young, blond and female. Come and get me.
Suddenly the door to the bar swung open, and two men veered toward Mitch, two men he recognized as former classmates at Plenty High. He had nowhere to hide as Dean Mancini did a classic double take.
“Mitch Goodwin? Stone the crows! I heard you were coming back. Moving into the old Heaslip place, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.” Beyond the mens’ shoulders, Mitch could see Emily’s rapidly retreating figure. “Sorry, mate, but I—”
“Lucky break, your sister getting married and letting you take her place.” Rocky O’Shea rode right over the top of Mitch’s attempt to end the conversation. “But then you always were a lucky bastard.”
Dean planted an elbow in his mate’s side and Rocky, eventually, caught on. His gaze skittered, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and Mitch didn’t really want to hear whatever fumbling words came next. “I have to be somewhere,” he said shortly. “Catch you another time.”
Dean cleared his throat. “Sorry about your…you know.”
“My ex-wife?”
Both men shifted their feet, awkward and ill at ease, but Mitch was already climbing into his truck. Powerful engine gunning, he wheeled the vehicle into the street, but his irritation faded as quickly as it had flared, replaced by a tinge of sympathy for the discomfited pair.
What were you supposed to say to a man whose wife ran off to chase her dazzling career without a thought for their three-year-old son? A wife whose glamorous must-have lifestyle placed her in a doomed jet in a Caribbean thunderstorm?
Even six months after her funeral, he didn’t know what the hell kind of etiquette covered that.
When the first spots of rain dotted the pavement a block from home, Emily huddled deeper into her parka and walked more briskly. She didn’t run. Running would be like ceding defeat to the fear crouched low in her belly, woken by the dreaded combination of rain and darkness and the revving of a powerful motor.
“For pity’s sake, Emily Jane, you’re not even in the car,” she muttered. “Plus you’re in Plenty, not Sydney.” Reasonable points, but the sweep of headlights turning into her street sent her memory into a tailspin.
Her car stopped at traffic lights. The door wrenched open. The man, the knife, the icy clutch of terror as he told her to drive.
Emily was jolted back to the present by the sound of a vehicle slowing and pulling into the curb behind her. Now she should run but her stupid, scared legs refused to cooperate.
“Emily.”
At the sound of her name—of that voice—her heart stuttered, then resumed at the same frantic pace, except with a different kind of panic. A Mitch Goodwin kind of panic. She’d heard talk of his imminent move from Sydney to his family’s hometown, had known he wouldn’t let sleeping dogs—or nannies—lie. That was Mitch’s way, ever the journalist, needing the full story, fact by painful fact.
Six months she had spent constructing her version, preparing for this moment, and now her brain appeared to be in meltdown. Wonderful. With a fatalistic sense of doom, she turned toward the car…correction, truck. Mitch Goodwin sat behind the wheel of a crew-cab truck that could have been tailor-made. Big, dark, rugged. A shivery tension weakened her limbs as he stretched across the front seat to open the passenger door. The cabin light cast tricky shadows across his darkly stubbled face, and his deep-set eyes, too, looked unfathomably dark. Emily tried not to stare at his lips, not to remember their determined heat as they—
“Get in,” those lips said. “It’s starting to rain.”
Her first reaction, innate, unthinking, was to get in. Emily Warner, always eager to please, to avoid conflict and make life easy for herself and those around her. But the combination of his arrogant demand— “Would you like a ride?” or even “Get in, please,” may have worked—and a festering pique set her back on her heels. She was angry about him appearing without forewarning, for following and scaring the daylights out of her, and she was more furious with herself for reacting as always—same old want, same old need.
“You’re getting wet.” Curt, impatient.
“I did notice that, actually.” She lifted her face, and a score of heavy raindrops spattered her heated skin. “But I don’t have far to go and I would rather walk.”
She didn’t run, she walked, and when his truck door slammed, she barely flinched. When he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him, she did flinch. His gaze narrowed but he didn’t let her go, and she was mad enough to lift her chin and glare right back at him. “What do you want, Mitch?”
“To get you out of this rain,” Mitch fired back, burning from the way she’d refused his lift and jumped from his touch.
“Then perhaps you had best let go of my arm.”
He lost all patience. Tightening his hold, he ushered her the last thirty yards, through her front gate and onto the sheltering verandah. When he tipped her face to catch the glow of a nearby streetlight, a raw tightness gripped his gut. Her skin felt as baby soft as he remembered, but her face looked strained with a new weariness. And her eyes…still deep, warm, mellow, but no longer trusting. They shifted under his scrutiny, her expression edged with a wariness he’d seen only once before.
That morning in his bed. Damn.
“You’ve been working too hard,” he muttered, stroking the dark circle under one eye with the pad of his thumb. Wishing he could erase it along with that leap of reaction in her wide eyes. Fear?
When he let her go, she backed up so quickly she almost tripped over her feet. Mitch’s gut twisted with consternation. “What’s the matter, Emily? Why are you so jumpy?”
That chased the wariness from her eyes. “You drove up behind me and scared me half to death. You manhandled me into my own yard. Do you really have to ask?”
Put like that… “I’m sorry for frightening you. I meant to catch you before you left the pub.”
Distrust darkened her gaze but she didn’t look away. “Why? What do you want, Mitch?”
The directness of her question swept all contrition aside, leaving only the hot, churning frustration born of seeing her again. “Why did you run away, Emily?”
“I left a note—”
“That said absolutely nothing except sorry. What was that supposed to mean? Sorry, Joshua, for leaving and breaking your heart?”
She flinched as if he’d grabbed her again, as if he’d struck her, and stared at him with wide, stunned eyes. Hell. He hadn’t meant such a low blow. Undeserved, given her reason for running. He raked a hand through his hair, scraping the wet strands back from his face and wishing he could tidy up his rampant emotions as easily.
“I’m sorry, Em.” He closed his eyes a moment. “That was uncalled for.”
When she didn’t answer, he looked back to find she’d sat. On top of a packing box. Distracted, he gestured at its many mates sitting higgledy-piggledy along the porch. “Are you moving?”
“Yes.” Her reply sounded as much like a weary sigh as a word.
Mitch frowned. Chantal hadn’t mentioned this in her update. “Because of your grandfather’s will?”
“Stepgrandfather.”
“Semantics. Every man and his dog knows you did more for Owen in his last years than all his blood relatives lumped together. You shouldn’t have given up fighting, Emily.”
“I didn’t give up, I lost,” she fired back. Defiance lent color to her cheeks; her eyes sparked fiercely. She no longer looked stunned, no longer sounded defeated. If he touched her now, she wouldn’t jump and tremble. If he touched her now… Don’t go there, Mitch.
He blew out a long, serrated breath and hitched his chin toward the boxes. “When are you moving?”
“This weekend.”
“To?”
“I have a room at the Lion.” She stood up and straightened defensively, as if in response to something she saw in his eyes. Possibly pure, hot exasperation. “It’s clean and it’s conveni—”
“It’s cold, and there’s nothing convenient about living on top of a bar. Hell, Emily. You about jumped out of your skin when I drove up beside you. How do you think you’re going to manage when a drunk knocks on your door?”
“I’ve taken self-defence classes,” she said, lifting her chin. But the words came out coated in hesitation rather than bravado. With a jolt of satisfaction Mitch sensed the shift, and started toward her. No way was she moving into any hotel room, and he intended to make that crystal clear.
“What did they teach you, Emily?” he asked softly, backing her up with slow, steady deliberation. “Did they teach you the three prime targets?”
“Yesss.”
Her husky whisper wouldn’t have scared a mouse. Disgusted, annoyed, he kept coming. “Which would you go for first?”
Her back hit the wall and her eyes widened, thick lashes fluttering. Her mouth opened, no words came out, but Mitch felt the touch of her exhalation against his skin. And knew he was much closer than he’d intended.
She shifted, drawing breath, and her jacket brushed against his, a soft shush of fabric against fabric, yet he felt it as intensely as if he’d leaned right into her body. An intense desire to do just that expanded in his blood, catching him completely unaware. Hands planted either side of her face, he felt the soft temptation of her body inches from his. Saw her lips, pink, moist, open.
You’re supposed to be talking her into coming back, he told himself, not reminding her why she left.
“What would you do, Emily?” he asked, irritated with himself, his body, his cursed male hormones. “If I were that intruder?”
Blinking, she stretched taller against the wall, and he wondered if she was trying to escape or trying to get closer. Mouth to mouth. And still she said nothing, did nothing but breathe fast and shallow, air sloughing against his throat until he could stand it no longer. With a muttered oath, he used his purchase on the wall to push himself away.
From the edge of the porch, he heard her sigh, the sound as soft as the slow fall of rain. “I guess you made your point.”
“Which point would that be?” he asked with rueful honesty. Something like—now I’ve seen you in my bed, I can’t think of anything else but getting you back there?
“The lessons were a big fat waste of money. I am a wimp and nothing will change that.” She tried to temper the words with a smile, but when Mitch didn’t return it, she looked away. “The room is only temporary. Until I find a better place.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said slowly. This was it—the opening he’d been waiting for. He paused, deliberately, until her gaze swung back to his. “If you come back and work for me.”
At first she simply shook her head, eyes hauntingly dark with some unnamed emotion. But when he opened his mouth to explain, she stepped in quickly. “I have a job. Two jobs, actually.”
“Chantal told me about the bar job.” Mitch shook his head, hoping to clear it of the residual, hazy desire. “What else are you doing?”
“Cleaning. At the Lion.”
“Pulling beer and cleaning hotel rooms?” The words exploded from his mouth. “Hell, Emily, that’s not the kind of work you should be doing.”
Hell, Mitch, that’s not the way to go about this. What is wrong with you? Scaring her out of her wits, all but jumping her bones, judging her job choice…or lack of choice. He needed to remember what this was about. Joshua needed a secure and stable home environment, constancy and routine, and he wanted Emily. Mitch had let him down enough times this past year—this time, he wouldn’t fail.
“Joshua needs a nanny,” he said more softly. Evenly. “I’m working from home, writing, so the hours are flexible. My Everyday Heroes series is going into production soon, so I’ll have trips to Sydney where I might be away most of the week. I’ll make the extra hours worth your while. You can double your previous pay.”
She choked out a laugh, a strangled sound of surprise. “With that kind of pay, you should have candidates lined up halfway to Cliffton.”
“I’m only making the offer to you.”
Her amusement faded, her eyes looked large and somber in the low light, and when she spoke, the one word was barely audible. “Why?”
“Joshua wants you.”
Those three words widened the crack in Emily’s defences—the crack that had started when he’d accused her of breaking Joshua’s heart. Not knowing how to answer—not wanting to answer too fast, too emotionally, too thoughtlessly—she touched an anxious hand to her throat.
“Ever since you left, he’s been…difficult.”
Oh, Lord, he knew exactly where it hurt most. Emily’s gaze darted back to his shadowed face, found his expression as hard to read as the color of his eyes. Hazel, according to his passport, but they changed as often as his mood. One minute as green as a winter garden, the next the cool gray of a rainstorm.
“There’s no need to live in,” he said evenly. “If that’s what’s bothering you.”
Her heart lurched. Of course he wouldn’t want her in his house, not when she might do something inappropriate and embarrassing such as, say, climb into his bed. Again.
“I’ll find you a place in town and pay the rent.”
“As well as that extra pay?” She swallowed audibly. “You are kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I am?”
No, he looked intent and purposeful, his jaw set as hard as the rest of his body. A ripple of sensation shimmered through her nerve endings as she recalled the look in his eyes as he’d tracked her across the porch. The feeling of all that dark heat so close, and so far. Because naturally, she’d misread those signals, too. He’d been playing with her, proving his point, demonstrating her vulnerability.
Frustrated and annoyed, she shook her head. “That’s plain ridiculous, spending so much money—”
“Money isn’t the issue. I’ll pay whatever it takes, Emily.”
A strangled, hiccuping laugh escaped her lips at the irony. He’d pay whatever it took, and no amount of money could compensate her deficit. His house was twelve miles from town, and she couldn’t bring herself to sit behind the steering wheel, not once since the carjacking. “I can’t drive, Mitch. I don’t have a car.”
“What happened to your Kia?”
“I needed the money for my legal bills,” she said simply. The insurance money for her burned-out car, dumped at the end of a terrifying joy ride. But that wasn’t something she had shared—or would share—with anyone. “And before you offer to buy me a new car, I should add that it won’t make a lick of difference. The answer is no.”
A word he apparently didn’t understand because, after the barest beat of a pause, he kept right on. “You can stay with Quade and Chantal. It’s not a long walk across the paddocks and they have—”
Anger flashed, quick and hot. “No, Mitch.”
He stilled, straightened, tensed. She had surprised him, she noted with a spurt of pride. Dark frustration burned in his eyes right alongside fierce determination. “Fine. We’ll find somewhere else.”
“I meant, no, I don’t want the job.”
For an instant he looked too taken aback to respond, then he drew a hand down his face, the gesture so achingly familiar she felt its kick in the solar plexus. “What can I offer to change your mind?” he asked softly.
Emily shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mitch.”
Breath held, she waited for him to say more. She could see the more in his expression, in the firm set of his jaw. She knew how stubborn he could be.
“I’m not giving up, Emily. Take a few days to think about it, to decide what it would take to engage your services. You know you can name your price.”
As she watched him walk away, she shook her head sadly. She didn’t need a few days to think, didn’t even need a few seconds. The answer vibrated through her body and centered in her heart, as sure and strong and passionate as always.
Your love, Mitch Goodwin. That’s all it would take.
Two
“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy.”
Emily had scarcely opened the door before a pair of surprisingly strong four-year-old arms wrapped themselves around her legs. Their owner didn’t stop talking, thirteen to the dozen, his run-on words indistinguishable, given the way he’d buried his face and a large part of his body in her cumbersome winter bathrobe.
Oh, and perhaps her hearing was hampered slightly by the treacherous buzzing in her ears, a reaction to both the warm enthusiasm of Joshua’s welcome and locking gazes with the second of her early-morning visitors.
Six foot two of clean-shaven, square-jawed purpose.
Beneath her thick, flannel robe and not-so-thick satin pajamas, Emily’s tummy flipped. “Oh,” she said. Then, even more intelligently, “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Were you expecting someone else?” Hazel eyes slid over her, devastatingly direct.
“No one.” Absolutely no one.
“We’re here to help,” Joshua said. “In our truck.”
Emily fastened both hands around her coffee mug, anchoring herself against this latest thunderbolt. They were here—unannounced, no forewarning—to help her move. Mitch and his backup weapon, a three-foot-tall pistol of a kid who still hadn’t disengaged himself from her clothes. She ached to sink down and hug him back, but feared she wouldn’t be able to let go.
Or that she might totally let go, releasing all the pent-up emotions swirling inside and catching at her throat and the back of her eyes. Three days ago this man had flabbergasted her with his crazy, name-your-price job offer yet it seemed more like three weeks. So much had happened since, events that had brought her life to a crippling new low.
Mitch Goodwin sure could pick his times.
“You should have rung first,” she said. “I could have saved you the trip into town.”
The words came out more tersely than she’d intended, and Mitch’s gaze narrowed in response, although his expression lost none of its determination. A shiver rocketed up her spine. Standing on her porch in the pearl-edged winter sunlight, he should not have looked so steely hard. Hard eyes, hard face, hard body.
“You’re not finished packing?” he asked, hard voiced.
“I’m not moving.” Emily allowed herself one small luxury, one hand on Joshua’s head, one fleeting caress of his silky hair. “Not today, at least.”
“Because you lost your job?”
Emily’s hand stilled, although she had no reason for surprise. In a town such as Plenty news traveled fast, bad news even faster, and with all the cosmic forces currently conspiring against her, it made sense for Mitch to turn up on her doorstep…while she was at her most vulnerable.
“I didn’t only lose the job,” she said. There seemed little point in hiding the truth. “I also lost the room.”
“Emmy, did you really sock that moron?” Joshua asked.
While the father admonished the son for his language, she closed her eyes. Shook her head. “I didn’t sock anyone, sweetie.”
“But Uncle Zane said—”
“Too much,” Mitch finished. “He also said he’s seen you out walking a dog.”
“Was he right, Emmy? Have you got a dog?” Instantly diverted, Joshua fizzed with excitement. “Is he black and white like Mac? Didya know Uncle Zane’s keeping Mac ’cuz he’s grown ’tached? That’s what Daddy said. Is he a she? Is he big?”
Emily squatted down to four-year-old level and waited for him to draw breath. “He’s a bitzer, not as big as your Mac, but just as smart. His name is Digger.”
“Where is he?”
“In the yard out back.”
“Can I see him?” His eyes, so like his father’s, pleaded with hers. Oh, boy, she was in some trouble if he started asking for things other than viewing her gramps’s dog. “Please, Emmy?”
“Let’s see what your dad says.” She looked up past long denim-encased legs, hands in pockets— Don’t look there, Emily Jane!—and a sky-blue sweater she’d always fancied. Perhaps because of the way it stretched across his broad, beautiful chest. She swallowed to find her voice. “He’s used to kids. The Connorses next door took him after Gramps died, until they moved.”
“Okay, but make sure you…” Mitch’s voice petered out as Joshua sprinted across the porch and disappeared around the corner. “Is there a fence to negotiate?”
“There’s a gate. He’ll manage.”
Excited barking announced his success, and Emily was suddenly very conscious of being alone with Mitch. Despite the broad daylight, she felt more self-aware than the other night in the rain and dark. With every movement she felt the gentle slide of satin nightwear against her skin. Hoped he couldn’t see the effect of that stimulation through her thick robe. She folded her arms across her chest and tried to remember what they’d been talking about before the dog distraction.
“So, you didn’t sock the moron?”
Now she remembered. Unfortunately. A flush warmed her cheeks from the inside out. “I didn’t touch him, I only threatened to—”
“Did he touch you?”
Emily shook her head. “I don’t know what you heard, but I’m sure at least fifty percent is exaggerated.”
“Suppose you tell me which bits are true?”
Ahh, that protectiveness. She heard it in his grim voice, saw it in the tight set of his jaw and wished she didn’t find it quite so bone-meltingly appealing. She wanted to be strong, wanted to stand up for herself and develop some backbone, but every time she was put to the test lately, she managed to fail.
“This traveler was trying to chat me up in the bar. Harmless stuff,” she said quickly when his eyes darkened. “I didn’t think anything of it, but then he was waiting when I finished my shift and, well, I told him I wasn’t interested.”
“Did he touch you?” he asked again.
“No.” She shook her head, surprised by his vehemence. “It was nothing, Mitch, really.”
“If it was nothing, how did you come to lose your job?”
“Maybe I walked under a ladder or a black cat.” Emily faked a laugh. “It’s like bad luck’s following me around.”
“What happened, Emily?”
Mitch Goodwin in journalist mode made a formidable opponent. He kept on ferreting around, circling and digging. She might as well get it over with, the whole belittling truth. “The next day he told my boss that some money was taken from his room. I cleaned it, so I was the scapegoat.”
Mitch swore. “You were sacked on this jerk’s say-so? Because you rejected him?”
It sounded bad, put like that, but at the time she’d almost understood her boss’s dilemma. She hated it, but she’d understood. “His company does a lot of business with the hotel. I guess they didn’t want to lose it.”
“So you’re just going to take this?” Their eyes met and held, his as dark and angry as a winter storm.
“I know I should do something, and if it didn’t involve conflict, I would. But these last months with Gramps’s will and his family and all…”
“Chantal told me about that. I’m sorry, Em.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I’m just tired of fighting.”
Something shifted in his eyes and he nodded, as if with satisfaction. “I’m pleased to hear that.”
Then, before she realized what he was about, he strode along her porch, hunkered down in a way that threatened the seams of his jeans and lifted the first of her packed boxes.
When he started back the way he’d come, Emily jumped into his path. “What are you doing?”
His look was an undisguised challenge. “Are we fighting about this or not?”
“Yes.” She tugged at the box, but he held firm. “No.” She released her grip and a heavy sigh. “I don’t know.”
There was something incredibly undignified, not to mention futile, about playing tug-of-war with a man nine inches taller and at least forty pounds heavier. Especially while dressed in one’s nightwear. Emily lifted a hand to tuck a loose tress of hair behind her ear and felt him looking. Not at her hair. Face flushing, she pulled the gaping sides of her robe back together and tightened the sash at her waist.
He used her momentary distraction to haul the box off to his truck. When he came back for a second load, she stepped in front of him. “Where do you think you’re taking my things?”
“Chantal’s.”
“Wait.”
Naturally, being Mitch Goodwin on a mission, he paid no notice. Not until she stopped him with a hand on his arm. For a moment she lost her place. Her senses focused on the rigid strength of his muscles, taut under the heavy load, and her memories of touching him another time. Without the barrier of a soft woolen sweater.
He cleared his throat and she snatched her hand away.
“You can’t just move me somewhere,” she said, her voice husky with rising heat and panic. This was so much worse than she’d imagined, being close to him, touching, remembering. “Does your sister know?”
“She made the offer.”
Because Mitch asked? Maybe. The Goodwins—unlike her splintered family—supported each other unfailingly. Or perhaps Chantal, who’d been her lawyer at the start of the estate wrangle, did offer without any prompting. Even after off-loading Emily’s case to a city estate specialist, her support and help continued. But she and Cameron Quade were newlyweds with a baby on the way. They deserved their own space. She shook her head. “I don’t want to move in with them.”
“Where do you want to move then? It has to be somewhere…unless you want me to buy this place for you.”
Heart pounding, she read the direct challenge in his eyes. This is why he’d come, to offer this choice—his sister’s charity or his.
Standing so close, with the feel of his hard strength still coursing through her veins, with the scent of some masculine soap in her nostrils, she knew she had no choice. At least Chantal might provide some respite, some thinking time.
Gazes still locked, she drew a short, sharp breath and stepped aside. She didn’t need to say a word. A small nod signaled his satisfaction, and he got on with the job, one box after another. Feeling utterly defeated, Emily started to sink down on the top step, then thought better of it. He might just pick her up like one of the boxes and dump her in the truck.
She needed to get dressed, preferably in the kind of thick, winter clothing that might numb his potent effect, or at least keep her responses contained. Then she needed to check on Joshua and Digger before they found mischief.
Five minutes later she watched them scamper around Gramps’s big yard, a hairy tricolored mutt and a boy whose laughter soared, as pure as the winter sunshine. A surge of tenderness rushed through her, so huge it rendered her dizzy. She rested her chin atop her arms on the chest-high fence and let her heart enjoy the moment.
How could he have known? How could he have picked this perfect time and this perfect blond-haired accomplice?
Oh, it wasn’t only Joshua who got to her, but the whole father-son package. It would be so easy to capitulate, to talk herself into the benefits of a secure job with a mind-boggling pay packet. To succumb to the seductive knowledge that they needed her in all the everyday practical ways, that they wanted her—plain, old, vanilla variety Emily Jane Warner—ahead of anyone else.
Except that after she tumbled completely and impractically under their spell came the heartbreaking truth that she was only the nanny and could never replace the beautiful, exotic, triple-choc-and-mocha Annabelle. All she needed to do was remember the pain of his point-blank rejection. In his bed, naked and willing, and he’d turned away. She wouldn’t set herself up for another bout of humiliation and heartache, not of that magnitude, not ever again.
A low ache settled in the pit of her stomach when she sensed Mitch’s approach, his footsteps muted by the thick, damp lawn. He rested his hands on top of the fence next to hers, and side by side they watched Joshua climb into an old tire slung from a tree in the far corner of the yard. Digger yapped gleefully as he tracked the swing’s motion, back and forth, back and forth.
“It’s zactly like Uncle Zane’s swing,” Joshua yelled, clearly delighted with the discovery.
She sneaked in a sideways glance and caught the ghost of a smile on Mitch’s lips. Pleasure, pure and strong, pierced her chest. She remembered his companionship with his own dog, back in the days before Annabelle decided they needed an upmarket apartment and that she might be allergic to dogs.
“I’m surprised you let Zane keep Mac.”
His shrug brushed against her shoulder. “Well, he’d grown ’tached.”
She smiled at the echo of Joshua’s words and didn’t need another glance to know he shared the smile. Ahh, she missed these moments. There’d been so many in those first years, so much warmth and understanding.
“He ran away.”
For a moment she thought she’d misheard his low words. “Joshua ran away?”
“At the mall.” Mitch expelled a harsh breath. “He was there with the nanny.”
“When?” Alarm tightened her throat, so the question came out as a husky squeak.
“Two weeks ago. It took three hours to find him.”
Emily struggled to accept what he was telling her. “That doesn’t sound like Joshua. Why would he do that?”
Mitch didn’t answer for so long that she thought he wouldn’t…or couldn’t. Then his sleeve brushed against hers again, although this time it wasn’t a casual shrug but a tightening of muscles. Everything inside her tensed in reaction. “He thought he saw you. The nanny called after him but he kept on running and she lost him in the crowd.”
Not your fault, Emily Jane, not your problem, she told herself, but guilt swamped logic. Fingers pressed against her lips, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Sorry for Mitch’s despair, sorry for leaving and breaking Joshua’s heart. Sorry even for the hapless nanny.
“And this is why you moved back here?” she asked quietly. “Why you want me to come back and work for you?”
“I’ll do anything to stop that happening again. Anything.”
The steel-capped purpose in his voice should have alarmed Emily, could have intimidated her. But all she heard was the sentiment behind the words, and when she placed a comforting hand on his forearm, she didn’t feel hard muscles and heat. She felt his vulnerability as a father, the fear and helplessness he must have suffered in those three hours.
“It’s been a rough time for him,” she said quietly. A rough time for both of you. “Does he…talk about his mother?”
In the hard plane of his cheek, a muscle jumped. “Not often. You know she wasn’t around much.”
Yes, but the impact of her leaving, her death, must have scored painfully deep. Much deeper than her own departure. “She was his mother,” Emily said simply. Under her hand his arm twitched with tension and she increased the pressure in a gesture of comfort and support. A pittance, she knew, given the depth of his grief. “No matter where she was.”
He opened his mouth to reply, closed it again. Emily’s heart stalled, waited, longed for him to share. Dangerous, her mind whispered. Remember the last time you offered comfort? Remember that heartache?
Lost in the intensity of the moment, she didn’t hear Joshua until he was right at the fence, his small hand tugging at her sweater to attract her attention. “You’re right, Emmy. Digger is a smart dog. Watch this, Daddy.”
He tossed a much-chewed tennis ball long and straight, a sportsman in the making, his father’s son. They applauded the retrieval part of the act, even though Digger absconded with the ball, circling the yard and refusing to give up his toy.
“See, Daddy? He doesn’t give it back when he wants to play chasies.”
Eventually Joshua gave up the chase, falling flat on his back at their feet. A small boy filled with exuberance, happy and exhausted from the simplest kind of play, not thinking about the mother who deserted him. Emily’s heart twisted with sympathy. Her own mother might still be alive, but she knew all about that kind of rejection.
“After we take your stuff to Chantal’s,” the boy said, puffing from his supine position, “we’re going shopping. Can you come with us? We hate shopping.”
“Why is that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Last time, Mrs. Hertzy patted me on the head. I’m not a dog.”
“You smell like one.”
He laughed uproariously and Emily was doomed. This kid…how could she turn her back on him?
“But we’ve got to shop,” he continued with breathless sincerity. “We’re sick of eating s’getti.”
At which point Digger dropped the slobbery ball on his new friend’s chest, his eyes lambent with come-play pleading. Batteries recharged, Joshua leaped to his feet and took off again. As she watched him run, Emily felt her own peculiar sense of breathlessness. She shook her head.
“What?” Mitch asked, and she turned to catch him watching her, his expression tricky.
“‘We hate shopping. We’re sick of spaghetti.’ Have you been coaching him?” she asked.
A corner of his very attractive mouth kicked up. “He has a point about the head patting.”
“They do that to you, too?” she asked, tongue in cheek.
He didn’t laugh. “I’d pay you triple just to avoid the supermarket.”
Oh, yes, she saw it very clearly now. The pained looks of pity and tuttings of sympathy for “that poor Mitch Goodwin whose wife up and left.” How he must hate that. And, oh, how she ached to help. She felt herself wavering, the need churning and building and crying out for her to accept.
“I’m no use to you as a shopper,” she said, striving for a light tone. “Unless you think I can wheel one of those trolleys all the way out to your place.”
“You know I’ll provide a car.”
“I don’t drive.” There, she’d said it. The truth. And she turned her gaze to Joshua climbing into the tree swing again.
“You used to drive just fine,” Mitch said slowly. “What happened, did you have an accident and lose your nerve?”
“Something like that.”
“Then you just need to retrain.”
She blew out a scoffing breath and shook her head. “You just need to force me behind the wheel of a car, first.”
“I’ll get you driving again, Emily.”
That confidence—he was a man who thrived on accomplishment—could have convinced most people. Except Emily knew how easily she froze, not every time but with certain combinations of stimuli. Darkness, city streets, a male passenger, the strident sound of an overrevved engine.
She didn’t know what to say or how to explain her problem with driving. Remembering his vehemence when she’d told him about losing her job…no, she could not add this story to her growing inventory of victimhood. He would ask more questions, demand more answers, when all she wanted was to forget the whole episode. When all she wanted—just one blessed time—was to feel strong and in control.
Agreeing to work for Mitch Goodwin did not seem like a wonderful step in that direction. She exhaled on a ragged sigh just as Joshua scampered back to unwittingly tighten the screws. “Can Digger come and live with us, too?” he asked.
Oh, boy. Emily hunkered down to his level. “I’m not coming to live with you, sweetie.”
“Why?”
Why, indeed? “Because I’m moving in at your aunty Chantal’s and uncle Cameron’s.”
Joshua stared at her hard. “D’you mean Uncle Quade?”
Everyone called him by his surname, why not Joshua? “Yes, I mean your uncle Quade. It’s not far from your house if you want to come visit.”
“Daddy said I’m not to go ’cross the paddocks.”
“That’s because he’s worried that you might get lost.”
Expression solemn, he seemed to consider her point. His eyes were deep, gray-green pools of hope. “Not if I had a smart dog like Digger. He wouldn’t get lost.”
Emily struggled to suppress a grin. The dog might be smart, but Joshua Goodwin was a genius at twisting the conversation. He wanted a dog. Perhaps she didn’t have to let him down completely.
“I think it’s time you guys got going,” she suggested, rising to her feet. “I have to finish packing.”
“Is there much more?” Mitch asked.
“Not really.” She shoved her hands in her jeans pockets, not wanting to think about the implications. Once she finished packing, there’d be nothing left to do but leave. She would be adrift again, homeless. “Just some clothes and personal things.”
“I’ll call back in a few hours, then?”
She nodded. Watched as Mitch let his son through the gate, then followed them around to the front of the house. Seeing them together, fair and dark, short and tall, but bonded by blood and love, her own feeling of aloneness swelled from the pit of her stomach, tightening her chest and constricting her throat. She had to sit on her porch steps, had to close her eyes and fight the tears and the clamoring need to call out.
She also had to ask Mitch about the dog.
Taking a deep breath, she rose to her feet as he closed the truck door behind Joshua and started around to the driver’s side.
“Mitch.”
She waited until he came back, out of Joshua’s earshot, one brow raised in query.
“It’s about Digger. I can’t keep him.” The reason didn’t need stating—a dog couldn’t be packed away in a storage box. “I was thinking that a dog might be good for Joshua.”
“It would,” he said slowly, but his expression remained closed. Not the good-idea-Emily smile she’d hoped for. His eyes met hers, hard and direct. “But right now he needs something more than a dog. He needs you, Emily. We both do.”
Three
Living with Chantal and Cameron Quade wasn’t as bad as Emily had imagined. Allowed to housekeep and cook, she didn’t feel like a complete charity case, although she had spent the last forty-eight hours on tenterhooks, waiting for her nearest neighbor to resume his recruitment campaign.
He’d been surprisingly silent during the fraught trip from Gramps’s to her new temporary residence, although Joshua compensated with his mile-a-minute chatter. She hadn’t helped them shop and she hadn’t seen either since, yet she remained hyperaware of their presence, a mere mile away, closer, across the three paddocks that separated the farmhouses.
Was it any wonder she jumped every time someone walked into the room?
This time it was Chantal. Yawning widely as she came through the kitchen doorway, she seemed sleepy enough from her afternoon nap not to notice Emily jump. Unfortunately, Chantal had been a lawyer all her adult life and a Goodwin even longer. Even half-awake, she noticed.
“You have to stop doing that while you have a knife in your hand. You’ll have a finger off.”
Emily studied the paring knife in her hand. No blood. And her fingers were all intact. “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else and you startled me,” she said unnecessarily.
“Well, I kind of hoped I didn’t look that frightening.” With one hand resting comfortably on her pregnant belly, Chantal hitched herself up onto a kitchen stool. “Not with another two months to grow even fatter.”
“You know you look beautiful.”
“You know you have a friend for life,” Chantal countered. Then her expression turned ominously serious. “Is that incident with the jerk at the hotel making you jumpy?”
“No,” Emily replied truthfully. Probably too truthfully, seeing as Chantal would now go digging for another explanation. She was very much like her brother in that way.
“What are you making?”
“This soup.” Emily pointed to the recipe card on the bench. “Is that all right?”
Chantal laughed. “Anything I don’t have to prepare is fine by me.”
Emily continued chopping vegetables. What-are-you-making-for-dinner had been a diversion, to settle her down. Questioning would resume shortly.
“I was talking to my brother earlier,” the inquisitor continued with a deceptive casualness that didn’t deceive Emily.
Her knife skidded off the side of a carrot. She didn’t dare look up, to see the smug satisfaction on Chantal’s face at finding the answer to her why-is-Emily-jumpy riddle so easily. Her brother, as always.
“He’s concerned about Joshua.”
Emily’s gaze flew up. “What’s wrong? He seemed fine on Sunday.”
“He is…and he isn’t.”
Keep dicing and slicing, Emily. Don’t prompt… “Because I won’t take my job back?” she blurted, unable to help herself.
Chantal’s pause was measured. “Have you almost finished there?”
“For now.”
“Great. Get yourself a drink and we’ll sit somewhere comfortable. This stool is not big enough for the pregnant version of my butt.”
With shaky hands Emily poured two glasses of apple cider and followed Chantal—with crackers and Brie—into the lounge. Easier to hide behind a glass than a knife, she reasoned, should her hostess’s cross-examination prove too savvy.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Chantal mumbled around her first bite of cheese. “Which, I guess, is back when Annabelle fired you.”
“She didn’t fire—”
“She didn’t find fault with everything you did? She didn’t suggest you’d be happier somewhere else?” Chantal waved a dismissive hand at Emily’s how-the-heck-did-you-know? look. “Not so clever of me. She was impossible to please.”
Emily’s heart thudded hard as she wondered where Chantal was going with the history lesson, but she couldn’t not listen. Like a moth to the flame.
“Anyway, Mitch took an in-studio job so he could be home more regular hours, and Joshua went to day care, and they didn’t need a live-in nanny.”
“Until Annabelle left.”
“And while Mitch chased around the world trying to talk her into coming home, Joshua was shuffled around between grandparents and aunts.” Chantal looked up as she reached for another cracker. “You know how that feels, don’t you?”
Throat tight with compassion, Emily nodded. Oh, yes, she knew all about shuffling. From mother to stepfather to mother to the next stepfather with only Gramps making her feel as though she had a secure home and a modicum of love.
“Which is when you came back into the picture, Emily.”
Oh yes, this part she knew all about. The day after his other sister, Julia’s, wedding to Zane O’Sullivan, Mitch had come to see her. Less than a week after Gramps’s funeral, lost and alone and at her most vulnerable, she’d taken her old job back and prayed that her infatuation with her boss would die…or at least not live long enough to humiliate her.
“What happened after I left?” she asked, eager to skip the humiliation part. Hoping Chantal couldn’t hear the skittery beat of her heart.
“Oh, we talked him into getting another nanny. She was hopeless. The next one—”
“There were more?”
“Two more.” Smiling wryly, Chantal shook her head. “I suppose you’ve noticed that my brother is somewhat attractive?”
Somewhat? Emily made a noncommittal sound, sort of a cross between an uh-huh and clearing her throat. Now seemed like the perfect time to hide behind her glass.
“Nanny number two…” Gaze narrowed in concentration, Chantal tapped a nail on her chin. “Her name was Monique, from memory, and she misinterpreted the live-in part of the clause.”
While Emily choked on her juice, Chantal laughed with genuine amusement. She reached across and touched Emily’s arm, compatriots in gossip.
“Can you imagine Mitch when he found her in his bed?”
“Um…not really.”
Liar. She didn’t have to imagine, she knew. He’d look stunned, then so uncomfortable he couldn’t meet her eyes. There’d be a softly muttered expletive, some stony-faced silence, and, finally, with her nerves stretched to snap point, he would start asking questions.
She wondered if Monique had handled them any better than she had done.
“The third nanny is the one Joshua ran away from at the mall?”
Chantal nodded. “After that episode, Mitch accepted my offer to take over the lease on Korringal. We all thought he’d have more luck finding reliable child care here.”
Emily rolled her cold glass across one warm cheek and then the other. Finally Chantal was getting to the point. Not a cross-examination, after all, but a sales pitch. She wondered if that’s what her brother had been talking to her about earlier, enlisting her help.
“Mitch needs someone he trusts, someone Joshua loves. I know he can be a giant pain in the neck, but if anyone can put up with him, it’s you, Emily.”
For no particular reason—except the sentiment behind those words, the faith, the trust—Emily’s eyes misted with tears. She heard Chantal cluck with sympathy, although she watched with her shrewd lawyer’s eyes as Emily battled for composure.
“So far—” she continued quietly “—we’ve only talked about what Mitch and Joshua want. What about you, Emily? What do you want?”
What did she want? Apart from the impossible. “I’m not sure,” she whispered in true, hesitant, Emily Jane Warner style. Oh, how she hated that tremulous voice and the tears that still prickled the back of her throat. How she wished for the courage to either go after what she wanted, or to tell it—him, them—to go take a flying leap off Mount Tibaroo.
After a long, intense silence Chantal spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “You know what I think? You’ve just lost your job and your home, you’ve been bodily shifted out here and you feel pressured. You’re not seeing a lot of choices.”
Oh, yes. That pretty much described her life.
“There’s no need to make a decision right off. You can stay here as long as you like—” She lifted a hand to silence Emily’s attempted objection. “And if you decide you don’t want to work for Mitch—and he’ll kill me if he finds out I’m saying this!—then that’s your choice.”
Choices. What a tempting notion except— “I can’t stay here indefinitely. I need to work, to find another job.”
“I know a lot of people.” Chantal hitched a shoulder nonchalantly. “If I ask around, I’m sure I can scare up another nannying job, although it may not be close to Plenty. Does that matter?”
“Only if they need a nanny who drives.” Her first, tentative flutter of hope took a swan dive. Which parents chose a caregiver who couldn’t ferry their kids to school or kindy or the park? Who couldn’t, in an emergency, get them to a doctor quickly?
“You didn’t sell your car, did you?” Chantal asked, eyes narrowing with uncanny perception. “Did you crash it while you were in Sydney? That’s it, isn’t it? I recognize a fellow victim when I see one.”
“But you’re driving again,” Emily said, remembering Chantal’s bad wreck. “Wasn’t that hard, getting back behind the wheel?”
“It took some discipline and practice, but I conquered my fear.” Chantal reached out again, her touch warm and supportive. “We’ll have you ready for Le Mans before you leave here, Emily.”
“You’re seven months pregnant.”
“Quade will do it if I ask nicely.” Chantal winked. “If I ask really nicely, he might let you drive the sports car.”
The tears returned, this time more a pea-souper fog than a mist. Emily wiped them with the back of her hand, sniffed, smiled shakily. “Thank you. I don’t know why you’re doing all this.”
Chantal shrugged. “Remnant guilt, maybe.”
“What?”
“I wanted your case so badly I encouraged you to fight your grandfather’s will. I didn’t do you any favors, huh?”
“It was my choice, I wanted to do something proactive for a change. You didn’t influence my decision.” Emily paused, remembering Mitch’s heated challenge on her porch that first night. “Do you think I gave up too easily? That I should have appealed?”
“That was your choice to make,” Chantal said firmly.
“Your brother thinks I did.”
“Thinks what?”
At that deep-voiced question they both started and turned. Mitch’s height and width filled much of the doorway; his black sweater and dark-stubbled jaw lent him an air of danger, and that awareness swamped Emily in a slow rolling wave.
Mitch noticed that unguarded response, exactly the same as when she had opened her door Sunday morning, pale hair spilling over her shoulders, all pink-faced surprise and soft-eyed temptation. And Mitch reacted in the exact same way now, with sudden, insistent heat.
Damn.
Now wasn’t the time to remember that glimpse of pale skin when her robe gaped, the curve of her full breasts or the knowledge that she slept with satin next to her skin. He needed to concentrate on the purpose of his visit. He leaned over the back of the couch and kissed his sister’s proffered cheek.
“We were talking about Owen’s estate,” she explained. “Emily says you think she should have appealed.”
“I think she should fight harder for her rights…in some instances.” He tilted his head toward the kitchen. “Shouldn’t you be making dinner?”
“Nope. Emily’s cooking.”
He fixed his sister with a meaningful look and her eyes widened in acknowledgment, her lips forming an okay as she rose to her feet. “I do have to get you a drink, though.”
“Make it a long one.”
She winked as she walked by, leaned down to turn on the stereo—so she couldn’t inadvertently eavesdrop—and then left them alone. Sometimes his littlest sister was okay. Although…
“Marriage hasn’t improved her taste in music,” he said as a popular boy-band crooned from the speakers. He crossed the room and turned the volume down a couple of notches before asking, “Have you heard from Bob Foley?”
The hotel owner had been taken aback by Mitch’s visit but most helpful. A high-media profile—not to mention a lawyer sister—garnered respect.
Emily looked up, surprised, then not. “I wondered why he rang.”
“I assume he rang to apologize.”
“I now assume he rang because you told him to.” She did not sound happy about his intervention. He didn’t care.
“I suggested he show a little faith in his staff.”
She exhaled softly, the breath lifting a loose strand of her white-blond hair. “He apologized rather nicely.”
“And I didn’t?”
Hell. Mitch raked a hand through his hair. Two minutes alone and they were on the brink of another clash. He could all but hear the crackle of tension in the air, and he didn’t need to ask if she got his point. The past swirled, dark with shadowy secrets, in her eyes.
“You had no need to apologize.” Her voice sounded about as tight as her pale-knuckled grip on the empty glass. “I told you nothing happened.”
“Hell, Emily, you were in my bed, and I can’t remember anything after kissing you. If that’s all that happened—”
“It is.” She put the glass down with a decisive clunk. “You were drunk and grieving and, yes, you kissed me, and we somehow ended up in your bed. You passed out and that’s all that happened.”
The rushed telling brought a flush to her face, the same sweet, pink color he’d seen all over her body that next morning. “We also, somehow, ended up naked,” he pointed out.
The color in her cheeks flared, hotter, darker, but she met his eyes. “You didn’t have a clue what you were doing. Or who with.”
“I knew who I was with, Emily,” he said emphatically. “Now I need to know what I did.”
“Nothing, Mitch.” Temper sparked in her eyes, charging Mitch with the same fiery frustration.
“It’s not ‘nothing’ if it sent you packing and if it’s still preventing you taking your job back. Damn it, Emily, I’ve given you the freedom to name your price and conditions. I’ve given you thinking time. Joshua loves you and I’m pretty sure you feel the same way. If it’s not me—if it’s not about that night—then what’s the problem?”
With the music suddenly shut down, that last question sounded far too loud, aggressive, abrasive. Obviously, his sister thought so, too, because from beside the stereo she insisted, “Stop bullying her.”
“Butt out, Chantal.” His focus switched back to Emily, needing her response, her answer. “Tell me why you won’t come and work for me.”
“How about because you’re obnoxious,” Chantal said, putting herself between them, arms folded, expression determined.
“She needs a job, sis.”
“We’re working on that.”
Everything inside him ground to a halt. “Care to explain?”
“Good grief, Mitch, you can’t force Emily to work for you. And when she makes up her mind—which won’t be with you standing over her—it will be because she has choices. Now, was there anything else you wanted?” his sister, the turncoat, asked sweetly. “Besides the chance to browbeat my houseguest?”
Seething, Mitch gritted his teeth. “If it’s still all right with your houseguest, I’d like to buy her grandfather’s dog for Joshua.”
Through an agency in Cliffton, Mitch found temporary child care in the form of a middle-aged cleanliness guru with the unlikely name of Mrs. Grubb. More interested in keeping the house free of dust and lint than keeping Joshua entertained and happy, she wasn’t working out.
As if to punctuate that thought, her vacuum cleaner started up, its high-pitched whine eating through the last of his concentration. Earmuffs, industrial strength. He started a mental shopping list, then wondered if Mrs. Grubb did shopping. It would get her out of the house, even if it did defeat the child care purpose of her employment, because he was not, no way, sending Joshua to any shopping center.
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