Nine
Emma waited until she was certain that she wouldn’t be seen. She carried her suitcase to the study, where she penciled a note that Marie could read to Connor. With it, she left last week’s uncashed check. She asked Marie to tell him that she’d forfeit this week’s check as well, so that she could leave without working notice. She said she was sorry. She didn’t dare say why she was leaving.
She picked up her suitcase, left the note and check on the kitchen counter for Marie, went out the back door and locked it behind her. She’d walk to Mamie’s house. She still had her key. Mamie’s house could barely be seen from here, so Connor wouldn’t know Emma was staying there if she kept the lights in the front of the house off. And she’d be careful about being seen outside. Then she’d find another temporary job until Mamie came back.
It was easy to plan her next moves. But it was painful to leave Connor. In just a few weeks, he’d become the color in her world. Without him, everything was gray and sad. It felt as if the heart was being torn right out of her.
But she couldn’t stay and watch him and that brunette in each other’s arms all the time. She was sure Ariel wasn’t leaving tomorrow. After all, she’d gone to Connor’s bedroom with him tonight. She was sure that they hadn’t spent their time talking. It broke her heart.
Her suitcase was so heavy she couldn’t pull it. She had to carry it. She made it to the big log on the lake between his property and Mamie’s, where she’d been sitting the time he’d come upon her and they’d talked. That was long before she blinded him and later went to work for him.
She sat down on the log with a sigh. It was going to be a long walk. She might as well rest for a few minutes. Everyone at Connor’s house would still be asleep, except Marie. But the older woman had been in the bathroom when Emma sneaked out. So nobody would know she was leaving. Not until the next day, when Connor would have the note read to him.
It was the saddest thing she’d ever written.
* * *
The house was very quiet, except for faint sounds in the kitchen where Marie was clearing away the last of the party dishes.
Connor had sent a disappointed Ariel to bed alone. He couldn’t forget the taste of Emma he’d had while they were dancing. Her anguished response to him had made it impossible to feel anything for Ariel, except the lingering desire for Emma that hardened his body. Ariel thought she’d provoked it. He felt nothing when he held her past a basic hunger that any man might feel. She was beautiful and experienced. But tonight, she couldn’t interest him less.
He’d been cruel to Emma. He was sorry. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t think of a way to do it that wouldn’t savage his pride. He didn’t trust her. Yes, that was it. She responded to his advances, acted as if she would die to have him. And then she ran. Every damned time. It was like trying to hold something ethereal.
He couldn’t sleep. His brain kept humming like an engine. He got up, leaving the phone turned off on his bedside table, slipped on his loafers and felt his way to the door. He was still wearing his slacks and the white shirt, open down the front. It was no use dressing for bed when he wasn’t sleepy.
He paused by Emma’s door. He tapped on it lightly and called her name. He frowned at the sudden emptiness he felt, something of the senses that was unexpectedly strong. He opened the door and felt for the light switch. It was on.
“Emma?” he called.
Marie heard him and came to the end of the hall. “She’s gone, Mr. Sinclair,” she said quietly.
“She’s what?”
She walked closer to him, so that he wouldn’t wake the rest of the household. He looked furiously angry.
“She’s gone. She left a note for me to read to you. She said she’d left you last week’s uncashed check and she wouldn’t expect one this week, in lieu of severance pay. She took her suitcase and started walking down the shoreline.”
“In the middle of the night? God knows what she might find out there! Black bears come up near the lake...!”
“I’m sure that she knew the dangers, Mr. Sinclair.” Her tone was as disapproving as the expression he couldn’t see.
The panic he felt was unexpected. Emma was gone. A cold emptiness lodged in his chest at the thought that she wouldn’t be at the breakfast table with him, in the office where they worked together, sitting with him when he had a migraine and was too sick to take care of himself. Emma was necessary to him. He’d come to depend on her, for so much. She’d quit her job because he’d humiliated her in front of his guests. And it was all his fault. He’d been getting even because she wouldn’t sleep with him. It seemed a very flimsy and unworthy reason to hurt her. She was gentle and kind, not demanding or overbearing or greedy, as most of the women in his life had been.
He drew in a breath. “Wake Barnes for me, will you?” he asked in a subdued tone.
Her eyebrows arched. He didn’t even sound like himself. “Yes, sir.”
Barnes joined him shortly. “Yes, sir?”
“Lead me out to the shoreline,” he said gruffly. “And we’d better hurry. Emma’s leaving.” He was hoping that the suitcase would slow her down, depending on how much she’d packed.
“Sure thing, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Which way was she going, Marie?” Connor asked. “Did you see her?”
“I did, just after I found the note. She was going toward the road.”
“Thanks.”
Barnes guided his boss’s hand onto his arm and he led him outside, using the method Emma had taught him. The road that led around the lake was near Mamie van Dyke’s house. It was a long way. Connor only hoped that they could catch her in time.
He had no idea exactly where in North Carolina her people lived, or where she might go when she got to the road. She might be desperate enough to hitchhike, which would put her in danger, even in a rural area like this where most residents knew their neighbors.
“Do you see anything?” Connor asked Barnes, and he sounded almost desperate.
Barnes was peering ahead through the darkness. There was a full moon, so he could see a good ways from them. There, in the moonlight, was Emma, sitting on a big log near the shore with her suitcase beside her.
“She’s over there, sir,” Barnes said. “Sitting on a log.”
“Thank God,” Connor said under his breath. “Let’s go!”
* * *
Emma heard footsteps and jumped to her feet, frightened. Then she saw who was approaching, and her heart clenched in her chest.
“Okay, Barnes, leave me here,” Connor said quietly. “If I’m not back in an hour, it will mean she’s pushed me in the lake,” he added with a grin.
“Yes, sir.”
Barnes walked back toward the lake house. Connor stood a little away from Emma and tried to choose his words. He didn’t want to do any more damage than he already had.
“Are you going to push me in the lake, Emma?” he asked softly. “I won’t say that I don’t deserve it. But I want to talk to you.”
He was asking, not ordering. That was new. But she didn’t fancy that he was here because he cared. He needed her. She’d become like part of the office equipment, to be used and put away.
“There’s nothing to say,” she replied in her soft, quiet voice. “I’m sorry. I can’t...I can’t go back.”
“Where are you?” He contrived to look helpless, something she knew he wasn’t.
“I’m on the log.”
He cocked his head. “Something a little more specific?”
She drew in an audible breath. “Three paces forward, turn right, sit down.”
He followed the instructions, feeling for a place on the huge log. “Funny,” he murmured. “I think I remember this place. It’s a little blurry. There was a woman. She’d done something to irritate me, and I upset her,” he recalled, unaware of his companion’s sudden rigidity. “I felt guilty. I made her cry, at a party Mamie van Dyke gave.” He grimaced. “It’s hard for me to admit guilt. It’s a matter of pride. I never did one damned thing that pleased my father,” he recalled curtly. “He drew back his fist when I did something he didn’t like. Then he made me apologize, in front of as many people as he could find on the spot. He enjoyed humiliating me.”
“That’s sad,” she said quietly. The reference to Mamie’s party upset her. She hoped against hope that he wouldn’t remember any more about that time.
“One day, I came home from school. I guess I was about fourteen. He drew back his fist, and I drew back mine. I threw him to the floor and beat the ever loving hell out of him. And made him apologize for what he did to me and my brother.” He leaned forward, lost in time and pain. “He stopped hitting me after that. But he got even. He threatened me with William.” He smiled softly. “I loved my brother. I’d have done anything to spare him what I’d gone through. That was wrong, to punish you that way. I learned early that the people closest to you are the most dangerous.”
“I learned that, too,” she said, without elaborating.
“From whom?” he asked quietly.
“Someone in my family who drank to excess. It was hard to forgive what he did to one of my female relatives.” She didn’t add that the female had been her mother. “But I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to protect her. I guess I’ve been nervous about men for a long time.”
“You were engaged once.”
“Yes.”
He rested his elbows on his knees and looked, sightlessly, straight ahead. “You said you missed the intimacy,” he began.
“I missed having somebody I thought cared about me,” she corrected. “Steven didn’t... Well, he didn’t really find me attractive in any physical way.”
“Why not?”
“I never knew,” she confessed. She shifted on the log. “He said that we were soul mates, that he cared about me. But it was like he had to force himself just to kiss me. He...never wanted me. Not physically.”
Connor felt his heart stop and then start again, racing. “You weren’t intimate with him?” he persisted. “You didn’t sleep with him?” he amended.
She drew in a breath. “No.”
“Why?”
“Mainly because he didn’t want to. I used to go to church every Sunday,” she added slowly. “Religion was what got me through the hard times, and there were a lot of them. We learn that there’s right and wrong. And what’s wrong doesn’t change, no matter how society changes. I don’t sleep around because I was taught that decent people don’t do that.” She shifted again. “Go ahead, laugh at me. Most of my friends did. They thought I was crazy.”
His heart was racing. “You’ve never had a man, have you, Emma?” he asked in a subdued tone.
“No,” she said simply. “In my world, you fall in love, get married, have kids, live together until you’re old and then you die with your family around you.”
He laughed coldly. “In my world, you take what you can get and you never let emotion get in the way of a good time.”
“Crickets and casinos.”
He felt for her hand and slid his fingers in between hers in a slow, sensuous motion. “There’s nothing wrong with casinos. You liked the slot machines. Admit it.”
She smiled to herself. The touch of his big, callused hand made her feel safe, comfortable, valued. She felt shivery inside at the warm contact.
“I guess casinos aren’t so bad.”
“Maybe I could get used to crickets.”
“Not a chance,” she chided.
His fingers clasped hers closer. “You can’t leave me, Emma. I need you.”
“You replace computers and printers all the time,” she returned. “Think of me as an obsolete piece of office furniture.”
“No. I can’t.” He took a long breath. “I thought you were playing me.”
“You what?”
His hand contracted. “Tease. Retreat. Indulge a man and then run away to make him want you.”
“I’m not like that,” she faltered. “I mean, I don’t know how to play games like that...”
He brought her hand to his mouth. “I didn’t know you at all, did I, Emma?”
“You thought you did,” she said.
“I saw what I wanted to see. Pardon the irony. I can’t see anything.”
Guilt swept over her. “One day, you will,” she said. She was going to pray for it every single night. “One day, you’ll see again.”
“Think so? I’d take that bet and get richer if you had money.”
They were quiet. Crickets grew noisy around them. The faint slosh of the water coming up onto the shore was peaceful, like the distant baying of dogs.
“Come back,” he said gently. “I won’t ever put you in that position again.”
“I’m in the way,” she argued.
“That’s not it.” He could hear her breathing. It was fast. Unusually fast. He nudged her fingers with his. “It’s Ariel. Isn’t it?”
Her teeth ground together. No way was she admitting that she was jealous, possessive, of him.
She couldn’t have known that her silence was an admission. It made him feel things he’d forgotten long ago. He was protective of her. And yes, possessive. She belonged to him as no other woman ever had.
“I didn’t sleep with her,” he admitted curtly. “I sent her back to her own room.”
Her heart jumped. “It’s none of my business!”
While she was talking, he drew her to him and found her mouth blindly.
* * *
It was always the same. She loved him so much. More than anyone or anything in the world. He touched her and she melted into him. It was a response she couldn’t help.
He knew that. His hands were gentle, but not invasive. He kissed her with a tenderness she’d never had from him before.
“A virgin,” he breathed into her mouth. It excited him to think about being her first man. He’d never been the first with anyone.
Her hands touched his face hesitantly, feeling the jutting brow, the high cheekbones, the faint stubble around the mouth that was teasing hers.
“I should have shaved,” he whispered.
“I don’t mind,” she replied huskily.
“Don’t you?” He drew her across his lap and sat, just holding her, in the quiet moonlit darkness. “My first wife,” he said slowly, “was a debutante. She and I were just in our late teens when we married, but she’d been sexually active for a long time. I’ve never been a woman’s first man.”
“Listen,” she began worriedly, “I can’t...”
He drew her up so that his face was in the long hair draped across her soft, warm throat. “You won’t have to.” His arms tightened. “You make life bearable for me. I’ve never had tenderness from a woman,” he added softly. “Passion, aggression, all the usual things. But I don’t know a single woman who would have been willing to nurse me through a migraine headache.” He kissed her warm throat gently. “If you leave, nobody will know what to do for them.”
She was weakening. She loved being close to him. If he wasn’t demanding, if he’d stop pressing her... She swallowed and drew closer to him. “Can’t you go somewhere else with Ariel?” she asked miserably. “If she isn’t at the house, I guess I could go back.”
“You’re jealous.”
She swallowed. “She’s beautiful and cultured and experienced. She’s been with you for a long time.”
He scowled. “How did you know that?”
“Marie told me,” she lied.
“I see.”
“You’re my boss,” she added, trying to salvage what was left of her pride. “I guess I don’t like sharing you with other people. That sounds selfish.”
It sounded delightful. His dark mood lifted. He smiled against her throat. “I don’t mind.”
Her heart jumped. “But you can’t seduce me,” she said bluntly. “You’ll just walk away, but I don’t get over things easily. I’d never get over that.”
His arms contracted. “Whatever you want, honey,” he whispered. “Anything.”
She drew in a long breath. He smelled of cologne and soap, scents she always associated with him. The words warmed her as much as the embrace. She felt safer than she’d ever been.
Connor was feeling something similar and fighting it. She was something out of his experience. That had to be why it was so difficult to think of letting her go. He was fond of her. He loved kissing her. She was tender with him, efficient, great at reducing huge amounts of data into talking points that he could grasp easily.
“You’re one of the best PAs I’ve ever had,” he said unexpectedly. “I can’t handle the weight of business if I don’t have you to help me.”
She smiled sadly. “Office furniture. That’s what I am.”
“Precious cargo,” he whispered. His head lifted, his cheek slid against hers in a bristly caress. “The most precious thing in my home.”
She felt her heart racing at the words. Maybe he needed her for business, but the way he was holding her was new, sweeter than honey. “You don’t mean that. Not really,” she whispered back.
“I mean every word of it.” He lifted his head and looked down, wishing he could see her. Touch and hearing and smell told him that she was desirable, but he wanted to know what she looked like. He wanted to see her eyes while he touched her, see the visible proof of her attraction to him.
His fingers drew down her cheek, over her full lips, to her rounded chin. “I’d give anything to see what you look like right now, Emma.”
“You told that West Texas cattleman that I was homely,” she said, wincing inwardly at the way he’d worded it.
“I was being a jerk, and you know it,” he bit off. “You ran from me that night in Nassau. I went to bed expecting... Well, something more than I got. I was getting even. Ariel heard me talking to Cort on the phone and she couldn’t resist bringing it up when we were together at the party.” He sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it was one of the few times in his life that he’d said it. “Truly sorry. It was a lie. I don’t even know what you look like, Emma.”
“I’m plain,” she said quietly, resting against him. “It was the truth.”
“No ego,” he mused. “None at all. You’re soft and warm and desirable. You make me ache all over when I kiss you.”
“I do?”
He brushed back her disheveled hair. “Your engagement put you off men, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” she confessed. “I thought it proved that I wasn’t woman enough to make a man want me. It hurt so badly that I was afraid to try again. I did my job and went home.”
“Surely you were asked out again.”
She smiled against his broad chest. “I didn’t get asked out much. When Steven dated me, I was so excited by the attention that I didn’t question why he wanted us to get engaged so quickly. Looking back, I think his mother pushed him into it. She’d met me at the café and liked me. She introduced us.”
His hand tangled in her hair. “Maybe she just liked you.”
She grimaced. “She wanted to tell everybody about the engagement. She made sure it was in all the newspapers. When Steven dumped me, everybody knew about it. It was so humiliating. I couldn’t stay there and face the pity. Even Steven’s mother was upset. She told people her son was an idiot for letting me get away—like I’d left him, instead of him leaving me.”
“Odd,” he mused.
“She and Steven’s father moved away when he went up to San Antonio with his friend.”
He was getting a good picture of her engagement, and it did no credit to the boy. He wondered if she really knew what was going on? For his mother to push him into an engagement, she must have been desperate to protect her son, or herself, from gossip. After a moment of stillness, she said, “You’re very quiet.”
“I’d like to punch your ex-fiancé,” he said frankly.
She nuzzled her face against his chest. “That’s nice. Thank you.”
He chuckled. Under her ear she could feel the heavy, fast beat of his heart. “You’re welcome. So. Are you coming back home?”
He made it sound as if she really would be going home. Because home was wherever he was.
“Well...it’s a long way to the road, and my suitcase is very heavy,” she murmured.
He turned her face to his and drew his lips slowly, tenderly, over hers. “Yes, it is,” he whispered huskily. “And you might meet a bear along the way or a coyote, or even a person with ill intent.”
“I guess I could stay. For a while longer.” She panicked, thinking that Mamie would be coming home in less than two months. What would she do then? She worked for the famous author. Could she just quit and stay with Connor? She went cold at the thought of leaving him forever. She couldn’t even bring herself to tell him the truth. She should have told him right after the accident. She should have gone to him and confessed, regardless of the punishment. By working for him, staying with him, she was digging her own grave.
If he ever regained his memory, he’d think she’d stayed to play him, as he’d said before, that she was out for what she could get. She would never accept anything from him, except her salary, she decided. That way, when she left, if she did, he’d realize that she wanted something more than his easy conquests. She just wanted him.
* * *
He walked her back to Pine Cottage, carrying the suitcase while she clung to his other hand and guided him to the back door. Marie was still in the kitchen, almost done with her chores, when they came in.
She smiled from ear to ear. “Oh, I’m so glad you came back!” Marie exclaimed, running to hug her.
Emma grinned at her. “My suitcase got too heavy,” she teased as Connor set it on the floor in the hall.
“Besides, there are probably bears,” he remarked.
“There’s a big grizzly one who lives here,” she chided.
He grinned from ear to ear. “He’s tame,” he told her.
“Not so much,” she returned.
“Barnes will get the cars organized in the morning for the guests to get to the airport,” he told them. “For now, perhaps it would be good if we all went to bed and got a little sleep. I have contract negotiations to get through tomorrow in Atlanta. Emma, you’ll stay here and deal with the mail.”
“Yes, sir.” She was relieved. Maybe she wouldn’t have to see Ariel again.
“Stop that,” he chided. “Don’t call me sir again.”
“Okay, chief.”
He made a face.
“Boss?” she persisted.
“Harsh.”
“Dictator?” she went on. “Despot? Tyrant?”
“That’s no way to talk about your employer,” he said, but he was grinning.
“Boss, then.”
He shrugged. “I can live with that. For now,” he added, and he was almost purring from the tone of his voice. “Go to bed.”
“Good night,” she said to both of them.
“Sleep well,” he said softly.
“You, too,” she replied.
* * *
“I’m glad she came back,” Marie said when Emma had closed her bedroom door. “She’s a great little helper, and not just in the office.”
He nodded. “I almost ruined things. She isn’t at all what I thought.”
Marie glanced at his set features. “I could have told you what sort of person she was when she started guiding you around the plate at dinnertime. She’s not like some of the other women who come here,” she added deliberately.
He grimaced. “No. I should have realized that. She’s never asked me for anything,” he remarked.
“She never would. She works for what she gets.”
He smiled. “Remember when I took her to the casino on Paradise Island?” he asked Marie. “She won five thousand dollars. She put every penny of it in the donation box at a church in downtown Nassau.”
“Good heavens!” Marie exclaimed. “So much money, and her dressing out of thrift shops...” She put a hand to her mouth. She shouldn’t have let that slip.
He scowled. “Thrift shops?”
“She’s very frugal,” she replied. “I think it must have something to do with her upbringing. She said clothes didn’t matter to her, or what other people thought about what she wore. She said that people should only look at the character of a person, not at what they had on. She said snobbery was a sad thing and she wouldn’t look down on anyone, not if she had millions.”
“Quite a woman,” he murmured.
“She really is. Sir, you won’t tell her that I gave her away?” she asked worriedly.
“I won’t. But she doesn’t hold grudges.” His face hardened. “I do. I remember things people did to me years ago, and I still brood over them. I don’t forgive easily, and I never forget.” He drew in a breath. “I’m vindictive. I guess that goes back to my upbringing, as well. My father was...harsh.”
Marie smiled gently. She knew about his upbringing. “You’re a gentleman, for all that, Mr. Connor,” she said, using the name with affection.
His high cheekbones had a ruddy color. “Thanks.” He bent and lifted the suitcase. “Leave the rest of the party stuff until the morning, Marie, and get some sleep. You’ll have to make breakfast for everyone before they leave.”
“I don’t mind. But I’ll turn in, too. Good night, sir.”
“Good night.”
He picked up Emma’s suitcase and felt his way down the hall to her room. He knocked on the door. “Special delivery,” he called.
Emma laughed as she opened the door and took the suitcase from him. “Thanks.”
“Don’t get up until we all leave in the morning. Marie can make you a late breakfast,” he said solemnly.
She realized, with a start, that he was protecting her from Ariel, who would probably be furious that Connor turned down her offer to sleep with him.
“I think I’ll do that, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” He hesitated. “I don’t have plans in Atlanta that include her,” he added gruffly. “In case you wondered. Sleep well.”
“You, too.”
He went on down the hall. Emma went back into her room and closed the door. Her eyes were wet. She’d expected a different end to the evening than the one she got. She was so relieved that she didn’t have to go. She couldn’t even imagine life without Connor now. If she lost him, she didn’t know how she would survive. And he was a man who had nothing to offer except the occasional night in his bed. She had to keep that in mind.
But when she was bedded down for the night, all her mind kept turning to was the tenderness he’d shown her on the lakeshore, sitting on the log together. It was new and exciting, and it promised something she ached to have.
It might be foolish to stay, especially since he was getting more and more flashes of memory back following his accident. But she had to have just one more day, one more week, one more month. She’d live from day to day, hoping that he might someday want more than just one night with her.
He’d promised not to seduce her, though. That was something. It gave her the only hope she had that they might really have a future together.