CHAPTER 13
“Leaving so soon, dear?” Norah asked as Emma handed over her room key. “I thought you’d planned to stay through the weekend.”
Emma swallowed. She couldn’t tell her the truth, that there was no longer any point in staying. “Something’s come up,” she said vaguely.
Norah printed out her receipt and indicated where Emma should sign. “Well, we’re sorry to hear that. If you’re ever back in the area, we do hope you’ll stay with us again.”
It was unlikely that she’d ever be back in the area and she was years away from being able to afford to stay there again--unless someone else was picking up the tab, anyway--but that was hardly worth mentioning, so Emma merely smiled and waited for her receipt.
If she wouldn’t have had to wake Norah up last night, chances are she would have packed her bags and left right after Payne had walked out of her room. That’s what she’d wanted to do, because knowing that he was in the room next to hers had been utterly excruciating.
Whatever Emma might have expected out of him, his cheating at his own rules hadn’t been it. In fact, she hadn’t been able to decide which had been the greater betrayal--that he’d found the watch and had failed to tell her, or that he’d automatically assumed the worse from her when she’d confronted him with his own duplicity.
Did you go through my pockets?
Mr. Impassive might have mastered hiding his thoughts from everyone else, but for reasons she couldn’t begin to explain--a twisted act of fate, she imagined--she’d never had any problem peering into that frighteningly pragmatic mind.
Point of fact, she’d accidentally kicked his pants when she’d walked back to the bedroom from the bathroom, and the pocket-watch he’d told her that he didn’t believe existed either had come sailing out of his pocket.
She’d been so stunned--so shocked and hurt--that it had taken every iota of willpower she possessed not to hurl right there on the spot. Brian Payne, a man she’d come to respect because his honor was such an integral part of his personality, had lied to her.
Actually, it was the same sort of lie of omission that she’d employed when she first met him, but now that she was on the receiving end of one, she couldn’t say that she altogether appreciated the difference.
Subtle, hell.
A lie was a lie, no matter how one tried to spin it.
He’d said that he’d found the watch last night, but she couldn’t imagine when and, considering that he hadn’t told her about it, she had no way of knowing if that was the truth or not as well. He’d seemed sincere enough, but then she never imagined that he’d have found it and kept it from her to start with. This was precisely the sort of pointless circle her brain had been spinning in all night long, and between the head-ache it had given her and the heart-ache compliments of Major Payne, Emma was feeling pretty damned bruised at the moment.
She’d watched him lump her into the same category as those money-grubbing step-mothers he’d had--a little tidbit he’d shared over the course of the past few days--and she’d been so devastated by the unfair comparison that it had been all she could do not to cry. Thankfully, anger had saved her long enough to keep the flood back, but the instant she’d gotten him out of her room, Emma had dropped her head against the door and the let the gates of her despair open.
Dropping that pocket-watch--her future--back into his lap had been the proudest and most disappointing moment in her life, one she imagined would ultimately define her. She wouldn’t have taken the damned thing--despite rumors to the contrary, she was not ruthless and had fully believed that Payne had known that, too.
Clearly she’d been wrong.
But letting it go--knowing what it was costing her-- had been pretty damned hard, also. Emma let go a bracing breath and accepted her receipt from Norah.
Regardless, Payne had won fair and square--he had put his hand on it first and per their rules, he was rightly entitled to it. She didn’t know what he owed Garrett, but she hoped like hell it was worth it. He’d betrayed her trust and broken her heart for it.
Emma murmured a distracted thanks to Norah, then turned to go.
“Oh, wait!” Norah said. “I’ve got something for you.”
For her? Emma thought. What? More cookies? She brightened marginally, thinking she could use a little sugar therapy.
“Brian Payne checked out early this morning as well, but left this for you.” She grabbed an envelope from beneath the desk and handed it to her. “He told me to make sure that you got it and I’m such a ninny, I almost let you walk out of here with out it.” Embarrassed, she shook her head.
Emma’s heart jolted into an irregular rhythm. Payne had left her something? She accepted the envelope with slightly shaking hands and new from the uneven weight that it held Robert E. Lee’s pocket-watch. Her mouth parched and little spots danced before her gritty eyes, forcing her to sit down in the nearest wing-chair near the door.
She carefully opened the envelope, confirmed that the watch was in there, then pulled out a note that he’d left for her. His crisp masculine scrawl filled a little piece of paper she recognized from the pad in her room.
Emma,
Sorry’s inadequate, but I hope that you’ll believe me when I say that I’d intended for you to find the watch all along. I knew you’d never let me pay you for it without actually finding it first--your word was worth more than my money, right?--but that had been my plan, such as it was.
You needed to prove that you could find it first and you needed the money. I don’t begrudge you that or think any less of you for wanting it, despite the way it might have appeared last night.
I merely needed the watch, but it’s not worth what it’s cost me.
Take it and start vet school, and always know that I never intended to hurt you.
Yours,
Payne
P.S. Matilda was wearing the damned thing last night. That’s how I found it. Evidently Norah had been at the estate sale, but her name hadn’t been on our list. I thought you might have been wondering...
Matilda had been wearing it? Emma thought, astounded. The pig? She thought back, remembered seeing the top hat and tuxedo and...and a pocket-watch. That’s what he’d hung around for. He hadn’t wanted to talk to Matthew--he’d wanted to talk to Judith and get a look at that watch. And he’d wanted her to find it first, then he’d planned to buy it from her? Emma paused, considering.
If she had found it first, had proven herself, then she imagined she would have allowed him to buy it from her. She would have won the bet for Hastings, would have had the money from Payne to reimburse Hastings for initial payment, as well as the extra to get started in school. Payne would have had the pocket-watch to present to Garrett and everyone would have been happy.
Even Payne, who would have plunked down thousands of dollars simply to be able to hand the watch over to Garrett.
Though she’d tried to worm it out of him, Payne had never told her what he owed Garrett, but it had to be something substantial--something important--to go to all of this trouble. Trouble he could have avoided by simply finding the watch himself and moving on. What on earth would prompt him to--
“You look startled, dear,” Norah said, concern lining her brow. “Is something wrong?”
Distracted, Emma looked up and shook her head.
She paused, seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something, then said, “I was surprised to see Mr. Payne this morning. He’d indicated last night after the ghost stories that he’d intended to lengthen his stay and that he had a favor to ask of me. It was odd,” she remarked, frowning. “You two seemed to be getting along so well.” She offered a kind smile. “I hope you didn’t have a falling out. Love’s too precious to squander on petty fights.”
He’d planned to stay? Had wanted Norah’s help? He’d never told her that he wasn’t leaving this morning. Of course, he’d never really gotten the chance, she conceded, remembering why. Hot kisses, tangled sighs, naked flesh and bone-wringing orgasms... Her belly clenched with remembered heat and her nipples tingled behind her bra. Merely thinking about him almost set her off and he was half-way to Atlanta by now, Emma thought, going home empty-handed when he could have had it all.
She carefully refolded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope, then stood on legs that weren’t altogether steady. She couldn’t accept this, Emma decided. Did she appreciate it? Yes. Did she love Brian Payne? More than anything.
But whatever this was costing him had to be more than she stood to lose.
“Have a safe trip back to Marble Springs,” Norah said.
“Thanks, I will,” Emma told her, smiling. Right after she detoured to Fort Benning and delivered the pocket-watch to Colonel Garrett.
If Payne wouldn’t do it, then she would.
* * *
Atlanta
“Where’s Payne?” Jamie asked.
Guy frowned, looked up from the surveillance report he’d been studying. “Same place he’s been ever since he came home yesterday afternoon. The Tower.”
In a completely uncharacteristic move, Payne had come directly home from the airport, bypassed the office without so much as a status report and taken the elevator upstairs. Guy had called to check in on him, but Payne had gone into lock-down mode and hadn’t wanted to talk. He’d kindly told him to butt out and Guy had thought it prudent given the ominous tone in his friend’s voice to take that advice.
Then again, when did he ever do the prudent thing? He stood, cocked his head toward the elevator. “Let’s go talk to him.”
Jamie cocked a you’re-shittin’-me brow. “Storm the Tower?”
Guy nodded. “Something’s wrong. This isn’t like him.”
“Didn’t he tell you to butt out?”
Guy blinked innocently. “He did. What’s your point?” He depressed the call button, waited on the elevator doors to slide open, then selected Payne’s floor.
Jamie grimaced, but followed him anyway. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said, canting his head to a skeptical angle.
“I do, too,” Guy told him. “If he’s gotten into the whiskey, then we know we’re in trouble.”
Payne wasn’t much a recreational drinker, but had been known to his the liquor hard when he found something particularly disturbing. He’d gotten dog-ass drunk when his mother had married a guy half her age several years ago--a marriage which had promptly ended in a nasty divorce six months later--and had gotten drunker still when Danny had died. Payne liked to be in control--thrived on it--which is why Guy suspected his friend rarely drank. Occasionally, though, something would happen which would force him to let go and feel like a normal human being and when that happened, he typically turned to alcohol for help.
If he was drinking, it could only mean one of two things--he either lost the bet and came home without the pocket-watch, or Emma Langsford had gotten under his skin.
Guy grimaced.
Worse still, it could be both.
Jamie knocked on Payne’s door and he and Guy stood in the hall and waited for him to open it. Half a minute later, Payne opened the door. Looking like death warmed over, he wore a silk robe, which had probably cost more than Guy’s entire NASCAR memorabilia collection, and held a bottle of Jim Beam loosely in one hand.
He and Jamie shared a significant look.
Oh, hell.