The only man she wants is the one who’ll never forgive her

Falling in love with her boss’s handsome millionaire neighbor was easy for young Emma Copeland. Despite the vast differences between them, and a past that’s left Connor Sinclair reclusive and wary, Emma gambles her heart on a desire that rocks them both. But there’s something Connor doesn’t know: Emma is responsible for an accident that changed his life forever.

Connor lives by rules intended to protect both him and his vast wealth. Emma’s innocence is the only thing that’s ever broken through his cold reserve, but now his trust is shattered. By the time he realizes how much he stands to lose, it might take a miracle to win her back. But it’s a challenge he’ll gladly face for the woman and the family he needs more than his next breath...

Undaunted

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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In memoriam:

Robert (Bobby) Richard Hansen, Jr. 1951–2016

He leaves behind a daughter, Amanda; a stepson, Johnny; sisters, Helen, Darla, Marlene and Lavonna; a brother, Bruce; four grandchildren; a niece, Elizabeth; and numerous other relatives. He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Terry Hansen. He was a Vietnam veteran. We will miss him very much.

Dear Reader,

It seems that I am dedicating more and more books to loved ones who have passed away. This one is no exception. Our nephew Bobby was a character. When James and I had been married about a year, there was a knock on the door late at night. Disturbed, we ran to answer it—usually bad news at that hour. So we open the door, and there stands Bobby with two sandwiches from Dairy Queen. He just wanted us to taste these wonderful new sandwiches he’d discovered! That was Bobby: full of fun and unpredictable.

He’d served in Vietnam. He told me some stories about his combat experiences that I’ve never shared, and never will. I was a newspaper reporter. Things we see and hear about on the job aren’t shared with civilians, as a rule, because they’re pretty horrible. Bobby saw a lot of those things. Despite his experiences there, he went on to marry our Betty and had a daughter, Amanda, and a stepson, Johnny, and several grandchildren.

We also lost our sweet nephew Tony and our brother-in-law Doug within a space of months. You never know how long you’ve got to appreciate the people you love. Never go out the door without hugging your family and telling them that you love them. You just never know.

I hope you enjoy reading Undaunted. It’s a little offbeat and mostly takes place on a Georgia lake. I truly enjoyed writing it. (I used to spend a lot of time on the lake in the book, fishing). I loved the hero, but I did want to clobber him by chapter three! The heroine is from Comanche Wells, Texas, and you might recognize Cash Grier and one of his unmarried brothers in this book, also.

I am still your biggest fan,

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Dedication

Dear Reader

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

One

Emma Copeland was sitting on the end of the dock, dangling her bare feet in the water. Minnows came up and nibbled her toes, and she laughed. Her long, platinum-blond hair fell around her shoulders like a silk curtain, windblown, beautiful. The face it framed wasn’t beautiful. But it had soft features. Her nose was straight. She had high cheekbones and a rounded chin. Her best feature was her eyes, large and brown and gentle, much like Emma herself.

She’d grown up on a small ranch in Comanche Wells, Texas, where her father ran black baldies in a beef operation. She could ride and rope and knew how to pull a calf. But here, on Lake Lanier in North Georgia, she worked as an assistant to Mamie van Dyke, a famous and very wealthy writer of women’s suspense novels. Mamie’s books were always at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. That made Emma proud, because she helped with the research as well as the proofing of those novels in their raw form, long before they were turned over to editors and copy editors.

She’d found the job online, of all places. A Facebook friend, who knew that Emma had taken business courses at her local vocational school, had mentioned that a friend of her mother’s was looking for a private assistant, someone trustworthy and loyal to help her do research and typing. It wasn’t until she’d applied and been accepted—after a thorough background check—that Emma had learned who her new boss was. Mamie was one of her favorite authors, and she was a bit starstruck when she arrived with her sparse belongings at the door of Mamie’s elaborate and luxurious two-story lake house in North Georgia.

Emma had worried that her cheap clothing and lack of social graces might put the older woman off. But Mamie had welcomed her like a lost child, taken her under her wing, and taught her how to cope with the many wealthy and famous guests who sometimes attended parties there.

One of those guests was Connor Sinclair. Connor was one of the ten wealthiest men in the country—some said, in the world. He was nearing forty, with wavy jet-black hair that showed only a scattering of silver. He was big and broad and husky with a leonine face and chiseled, perfect lips. He had a light olive complexion with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes under a jutting brow. He was handsome and elegant in the dinner jacket he wore with a spotless white shirt and black tie. The creases in his pants were as perfect as the polish on his wing-tip shoes. He had beautiful hands, big and broad, with fingers that looked as if they could crush bones. He wore a tigereye ring on his little finger. No other jewelry, save for a Rolex watch that looked more functional than elegant.

Emma, in her plain black cocktail dress, with silver stud earrings and a delicate silver necklace with a small inset turquoise, felt dowdy in the glittering company of so many rich people. She wore her pale blond hair in a thick bun atop her head. She had a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, and lips that looked as if they wore gloss when they didn’t. Light powder and a soft glossy lipstick were her only makeup. She held a champagne flute filled with ginger ale. She didn’t drink, although at twenty-three, she could have done so legally.

She was miserable at the party, and wished she could go somewhere and hide. But Mamie was nearby and might need an iPad or her phone, which Emma carried, ready to write down something for her. So she couldn’t leave.

From across the room, the big man was glaring at her. She squirmed under his look, wondering what she could have done to incur his anger. She’d never even seen him before.

Then she remembered. She’d been out on the lake in Mamie’s speedboat once. She loved the fast boat. It made her feel free and happy. It was one of the few things that did. She’d been crazy about a boy in her class at the vocational school where she’d learned administrative skills. When he’d asked her out, all her dreams had come true. Until he’d learned that her father ran beef cattle. They were even engaged briefly.Unfortunately, he was a founding member of the local animal rights group, PETA. He’d told Emma that he found her father’s profession disgusting and that he’d never have anything to do with a woman who had any part of it. He’d walked out of her life and she’d never seen him again. After that, he ignored her pointedly at school. Her heart was broken. It was one of the few times she’d even had a date. She went to church with her father, but it was a small congregation and there were no single men in it, except for a much older widower and a divorced man who was her father’s age.

Her home life wasn’t much better. She and her father lived in a ranch house that had been in the family for three generations and looked like it. The furniture didn’t match. The dishes were old and many were cracked. Water came out of a well with an electric pump that stopped working every time there was a bad storm, and there were many storms in Texas. Her father was a rigid man, deeply religious, with a sterling character. He’d raised his daughter to be the same way. Her mother had died in childbirth when she was eight years old, and she’d seen it happen. Her father had drawn into himself at a time when she needed him most. That was before he’d started drinking. He’d rarely been sober in recent years, leaving most of the work and decision making on the ranch to his foreman.

He’d never seemed to feel much for his only child. Of course, she wasn’t a boy, and it was a son he’d desperately wanted, someone to inherit the ranch after him, to keep it in the family. Girls, he often said, were useless.

She dragged herself back from her memories to find the big man walking toward her. Something inside her wanted to run. But her ancestors had fought off floods and cattle rustlers and raiding war parties. She wasn’t the type to run.

She bit her lower lip when Connor Sinclair stopped just in front of her. He wasn’t sipping champagne. Unless she missed her guess, he held a large glass of whiskey, straight up, with just a cube of ice in the crystal glass.

He glared down at her from pale, glittery silver eyes. “I had a talk with the lake police about you,” he said in a curt, blunt tone. “I told them who you worked for and where you lived. Pull another stunt like yesterday’s on the lake, and you’ll find out what happens to kids who take insane risks in speedboats. I’ve had a talk with Mamie, as well.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t see the Jet Ski!”

“You weren’t looking when you turned,” he bit off. “You were going too fast to see it at all!”

She was almost drawing blood with her teeth. Her hand, holding the flute, was shaking. She put her other hand over it to steady it. “There was nobody out there when I started...”

“Your generation is a joke,” he said coldly. “Unruly kids who have no manners, who think the world owes them everything, that they can do whatever the hell they please, do whatever they like, without consequences! You go through life causing tragedies and you don’t care!”

She felt tears stinging her eyes. “Ex-excuse me,” she said huskily, turning away.

But he took her firmly by one shoulder and turned her back around. “I never make threats,” he said coldly. “You remember what I’ve told you.”

Tears overflowed her eyes. She couldn’t help it. And it shamed her, showing weakness before the enemy. She jerked away from him, white-faced and shaking.

He frowned, as if he hadn’t expected her reaction. She turned and ran for the kitchen. She put the flute down on a counter and went out the back door into the cool night air, desperate to get away from him. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody cared. The tears tumbled down over her cold cheeks. She’d grown up without love, without the simplest display of affection after their housekeeper Dolores left the ranch, except for an occasional hug from the women in her church. She’d lived alone, had her dreams of romance shattered. And now here she was, her pride in shambles, hounded out of her home by a relentless enemy who seemed to think she was a juvenile delinquent bent on killing people. All that, because she went a little wild in the speedboat.

By the time she got herself together and eased back in, Connor Sinclair was nowhere to be seen. She went back to Mamie’s side and stayed there the rest of the night, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t return.

* * *

It had been a sobering confrontation. She hoped she never had to see Connor again. Sitting on the dock, she moved her toes in the cool water, laughing softly at the tiny fish still nibbling on them. The lake was glorious in autumn. Leaves were just beginning to turn, in every single shade of red and gold the mind could imagine. There was a soft breeze, lazy and warm, because autumn had come late to North Georgia. Emma, in her long cotton dress, with its brown and yellow and green print, looked like part of the scenery in a postcard.

“What the hell are you doing on my dock?” a cold, angry voice growled from behind her.

She jumped up, startled, and grabbed her shoes, too unsettled to think of putting them on. “Your dock?” She’d thought the house was closed up. She hadn’t seen any lights on in it for days and she’d never considered who might own it. The dock had always been deserted. She’d been coming here for several days to enjoy the minnows and the view of the lake.

“Yes, my dock,” he said angrily. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his tan pants. He wore a brown designer polo shirt, which emphasized the muscles in his chest and arms.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, her face turning bright red. “I didn’t think anybody lived here...”

“Funny girl,” he shot back. “Mamie knows that I’m here three months of the year. You knew.”

“I didn’t,” she bit off, feeling tears threaten all over again. She moved away from him. “Sorry,” she added. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know...”

“I come here to get away from people, reporters, telephones that never stop ringing. I don’t want my privacy invaded by cheap little girls in cheap dresses,” he added insolently, sneering at her off-the-rack dress.

Her lower lip trembled. Tears threatened. But her injured pride wouldn’t let that insult go by unaddressed. “My dress may be cheap, Mr. Sinclair, but I am not.” She lifted her chin. “I go to church every Sunday!”

Something flashed in the eyes she could barely see. “Church!” he scoffed. “Religion is the big lie. Sin all week, then go to confession. Sit in a pew on Sunday and hop from one bed to another the rest of the week.”

She just stared at him. “From what I hear, bed-hopping is your choice of hobbies. It is not mine.”

He laughed shortly. “Women will do anything for a price.”

As if in answer to that cynical remark, a beautiful brunette in a fashionable dress stuck her head out the door of his lake house. “Connor, do hurry,” she fussed. “The soufflé is getting cold!”

“Coming.” He gave Emma’s dress a speaking look. “Did you get that from a thrift shop?” he asked insolently.

“Actually, I bought it off a sale rack. And for a very good price.”

“It looks cheap.”

“It is cheap.”

“Stay off my dock,” he said coldly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll never walk this way again,” she murmured as she turned to leave.

“If you take that speedboat on the lake again, you pay attention to where you’re driving it. The lake police will be watching.”

She didn’t turn around. Her stiff little back told its own story.

“Impudent upstart,” he muttered.

“Overbearing pig.”

She thought she heard amused laughter behind her, but she didn’t turn around. She kept on walking.

* * *

Mamie looked up as Emma walked into the living room. The house was two stories high, overlooking the lake. It had a grace and beauty much like Mamie herself. It seemed to blend effortlessly into its surroundings. She was smiling, but the smile faded when she saw the younger woman’s face. It was flushed, and traces of tears marred her lovely complexion.

“What’s wrong, sugar?” she asked gently.

Emma drew in a breath. “I didn’t know Connor Sinclair owned the house down the shore,” she said. “I’ve been sitting on the dock, dangling my feet off the edge. He caught me at it and ordered me off the property.”

Mamie grimaced. “I’m sorry, I should have told you. He spoke to you at the party, about the boat, didn’t he?”

“Yes, if you can call threats and intimidation a conversation,” she replied with a wan smile. “I wasn’t being reckless at all. I just didn’t see the Jet Ski. It came out of nowhere.”

“You have to anticipate that people on Jet Skis do crazy things. So do other motorboat drivers. We had a tragedy here on the lake a few years back. A speeding motorboat hit a houseboat and killed two people.”

“How horrible!”

“The driver had been drinking. He was arrested and charged, but the passengers on the boat were still dead.”

“I’ll be more careful,” Emma promised. She grimaced. “I don’t understand why he dislikes me so much,” she murmured absently. “He was horrible to me at the party. And he looks at me as if he hates me,” she added.

Mamie had a feeling about that, but she wasn’t going to say what it was. She only smiled. “I’ll have a dock built on the lake, just for you, sweetheart, so you can dangle your little feet.” Mamie’s was one of the few homes on the lake that didn’t boast a private dock. Emma had to drive Mamie’s car over to the marina to use the boat. Or walk, if Mamie was away, as she often was, since Mamie was eccentric and only kept one luxury car at her lake house. It wasn’t that much of a walk for someone as young and athletic as Emma was.

Emma laughed. “You don’t have to go to that trouble. I’ll walk over to the marina and dangle my feet off the docks there. It isn’t as if I can do it much longer, anyway. It’s October already.”

“With your luck, the dock you choose at the marina will be the one where Connor keeps his sailboat.” Mamie chuckled. “Docks don’t cost that much—they’re mostly empty drums with planking on top. I’ll have someone see about it next week.” She waved Emma’s protests away, then said, “Come on in here, will you, honey? I want to dictate some chaotic thoughts and see if you can inspire me to put them into an understandable form.”

“I’ll be happy to,” Emma replied.

* * *

“Who was the girl on the dock?” Ariel asked as she and Connor shared the overcooked soufflé she’d taken out of the oven.

“One of the new generation,” he said coldly. “And that’s all I want to say about her.”

She sighed. “Whatever you say, darling. Are we going out tonight?”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked, giving up his hope of a quiet night with a good book and a whiskey sour.

“The Crystal Bear,” she said at once, naming a new and trendy place on the outskirts of Atlanta, near Duluth, where the main attraction was a huge bear carved from crystal and a house band that was the talk of the town. The food wasn’t bad, either. Not that he cared much for any of it. But he’d humor Ariel. She was beginning to get on his nerves. He gave her slender body a brief appraisal and found himself uninterested. He’d felt that way for several days. Ever since that little blonde pirate had almost run into him on the Jet Ski and he’d given her hell for it at Mamie’s party.

The girl was unusual. Beautiful in a way that had little to do with her looks. He’d seen her, from the porch of his lake house, usually when she didn’t see him. There had been a little girl who’d wandered up on the beach. The blonde woman—what was the name Mamie had called her? He couldn’t remember—had seen her, bent to comfort her, taken the child up in her arms and cuddled her close, drying her tears. He’d seen her walking back down the beach, apparently in search of the missing parent.

The sight had disturbed him. He didn’t want children, ever. Countless women had tried to convince him, practically trick him into it, for a decade, but he was always careful. He used condoms, despite assurances that they were on the pill. He was always wary because he was filthy rich. Women were out to ensnare him. A child would be a responsibility that he didn’t want, plus it also meant expensive support for the child’s mother. He wasn’t walking into that trap. He’d seen what had happened to his only brother, who lived in misery because of a greedy woman who’d gotten pregnant for no other reason than to trap him into a loveless marriage. That marriage, his brother’s, had ended in death, on this very lake. It chilled him to remember the circumstances. The blonde woman brought it all back.

Still, the sight of the blonde woman with the child close in her arms, her long, shiny hair wafting in the breeze, made him hungry for things he didn’t understand. She had no money, and wasn’t even that pretty. It puzzled him that he should have such an immediate response to her. That night, at the party, he’d stared at her, hungered for her, wanted her.

He’d made her cry, frightened her with his reckless anger. He hadn’t meant to. She didn’t seem like other women he knew who pretended tears to get things. Her tears had been genuine, like her fear of him. He’d been shocked when she backed away from him. It had been a long time—years—since anyone had done that. And never a woman.

Then he’d found her sitting on his dock, laughing as she dangled her feet in the water. The sight had hit him in the heart so hard that it had ignited his temper all over again. He had no need of this blonde woman. He had Ariel, bright and beautiful, who would do anything he asked, because he showered her with the expensive diamonds she loved.

The blonde in the cheap dress had been wearing even cheaper jewelry. Her shoes had been scuffed and old. But she had a regal pride. It amused him to recall her cold defense of her morals. Which were of no concern to himself, he thought, and promptly shut her out of his mind.

* * *

Mamie called Emma to her office a few mornings later as she was sealing the last of several envelopes that contained the neat little notes Emma had typed and printed for her. Mamie had just finished signing them.

“I would have done that for you,” Emma protested.

“Of course you would, but I had some time.” She put the envelopes in a neat stack. “You can stamp them and put the address labels on. Here’s the thing, sweetie, I’m going to be away for about two or three months. A sheikh has invited me to stay at his palace and see the sights in Qawi with his family. We’ll watch horse races, attend cultural events all over the Middle East, even spend some time on the Riviera in Monaco and Nice on the way home. Do you want to stay here or go home to your dad?”

Emma swallowed. “Well...”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” she said gently, because she knew how Emma’s father treated her. Emma had often lived with another family in Texas, but she’d said that she didn’t want to impose on them. “I know how much you hate to travel. It’s why I’ve never taken you overseas. But you’d be doing me a favor actually, because I wouldn’t have to close up the lake house. What do you think?”

“I’d love that!”

Mamie smiled. “I thought you might. Okay. You know what to do. You can drive the speedboat, too, but no speeding,” she added firmly. “You don’t want to make Connor angry. Really, you don’t.”

Emma frowned at her employer. There was something odd about the way she’d said it.

Mamie sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t always a famous author,” she began. “I started out as a newspaper reporter on a small weekly paper. From there I moved to entertainment magazines, doing feature stories on famous people.” She grimaced. “One of them was Connor Sinclair. His best friend—who turned out to only be a distant acquaintance—had assured me that he had Connor’s permission to tell me things about his private life. So I quoted the man as my source and ran the story.”

“This sounds as though it ended unhappily,” Emma said when her companion was very quiet.

“It did. The man who gave me the quotes was a business rival who hated Connor and saw an opportunity to get even for a business account he lost. Most of what he told me was true, but Connor’s fanatical about his privacy. I didn’t know that until it was too late. Long story short, the magazine fired me to keep him from suing.”

“Oh, no.”

“It was a bad time,” Mamie recalled quietly. “I was just divorced, with no money of my own. I depended on that job to keep my bills paid and a roof over my head. I landed another job, with a rival magazine, a couple of weeks later. Luckily for me, that publisher didn’t like Connor and wasn’t going to be forced into putting me on the street for what another magazine printed.”

“He tried to have you fired from that job, too?” Emma asked, aghast at the man’s taste for vengeance.

“Yes, he did. So when I tell you to be careful about dealing with him, I’m not kidding,” Mamie concluded. “I would never fire you, no matter what he threatened. But I still work for publishers who can be threatened.”

“I see your point,” she said quietly. “I won’t make an enemy of him. I’ll make sure I stay out of his way from now on.”

“Good girl,” Mamie said gently. “You’re very special, Emma. I trust you, which is more than I can say about most people I know. I wanted children, but my husband didn’t.” She smiled sadly. “It’s just as well, the way things turned out.”

“Why is Mr. Sinclair so bitter?” Emma asked suddenly. “I mean, he never smiles and he’s always upset about something or someone. It just seems odd to me.”

“He lost his brother, his only sibling, in an accident on this lake. A drunk driver in a boat hit him and his wife in their houseboat and left the scene. They both died.” She swallowed. “Connor spent a fortune, they say, searching for the man’s location for the police. He was prosecuted and sent to prison. He’s still there.”

“Did the drunk man have family?”

Mamie nodded. “A wife and a little girl. They lost their home, their income... The child had to go to social services. The mother ended up dead of a drug overdose. It was a tragic story, all the way around.”

“Life is so hard for children,” Emma murmured, thinking of the poor little girl. Connor Sinclair was vindictive.

“It is.” Mamie looked around. “Well, I’d better be on my way. Come help me pack, Emma. I have a couple of evening dresses I want to give you. They’re too small for me, and they’ll suit you very well.”

“I never go anywhere to wear evening dresses.” Emma laughed. “But thank you very much for the thought.”

Mamie glanced at her. “You should be dating, meeting men, thinking about starting a family.”

“I haven’t met anyone I felt that way about, except Steven.” She shuddered. “I thought he was the perfect man. Now I’m not sure I’ll trust my judgment about a man ever again.”

“You’ll get over it in time, honey,” Mamie said, a gentle smile on her face. “There are plenty of handsome, eligible men in the world, and you have a kind heart. You don’t think so right now, but men are going to want you, Emma. That nurturing nature is something most men can’t resist. They don’t care as much for physical beauty as they do for someone who’s willing to sit up with them when they’re sick and feed them cough syrup.” She grinned.

Emma laughed, as she was meant to. “Well, one day. Maybe.”

Mamie left in a whirlwind of activity, met by a stretch limousine with a stately driver in a suit and tie. She gave Emma a handful of last-minute chores, a research assignment to complete for her next book and an admonition to be careful about going out after dark. Her parting shot was to stay off the lake in the speedboat until Connor went to his home in the south of France as he did most years just before Christmas.

Emma promised to be careful, but no more. The speedboat had become her solace. When she was out on the lake, with the wind blowing through her long hair and the spray of the water on her face, she felt alive as she’d never felt before.

* * *

She hadn’t told Mamie, but she was still wounded by Steven’s rejection several years later. She’d been too wounded to ever trust another man. She’d felt close to Steven, felt a sense of belonging to someone for the first time in her young life. His rejection had been painful. She’d always been shy, lacked self-confidence. Now she distrusted her own judgment about people. Steven had seemed so perfect. But he had prejudices she hadn’t known about.

Ideals were worthwhile, certainly, but it had been her father’s choice of vocations that had alienated him. He hadn’t considered that she might not feel as her father did. He simply walked away, without a backward glance.

For several weeks, she hoped that he might call or write, that he might apologize for making assumptions about her. But he hadn’t. In desperation, she’d written to a former girlfriend in San Antonio, where Steven had moved to, a mutual friend from high school. The friend told her that Steven was involved with a new organization—a radical animal rights group, much larger than the one he’d belonged to when Emma knew him. He and his friend were apparently still living together, too. Neither of them dated anybody. Steven said that he was never going back to Jacobsville, though. That was when Emma finally gave up. She wasn’t going to have that happy ending so beloved by tellers of fairy tales. Not with Steven, anyway. She walked idly through the woods, a stick held loosely in her hand. She touched it to the tops of autumn weeds as she walked, lost in thought.

She almost walked straight into the big man before she saw him. She jumped back as though he’d struck out at her. Her heart was beating a mad rhythm. She felt breathless, frightened, heartsick. All those emotions vied for supremacy in her wide brown eyes.

She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry,” she said at once, almost cringing at the sudden fierce anger in his broad face.

His hands were jammed deep in his trouser pockets. He was wearing a beige shirt with tan slacks, and he looked, as usual, out of sorts.

He glared at her from pale glittering gray eyes, assessing her, finding her wanting. His opinion of her long brown checked cotton dress with its white T-shirt underneath was less than flattering.

“Well, we can’t all afford Saks,” she said defensively.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Some of us can’t even afford a decent thrift shop, either, judging by appearances,” he returned.

She stood on the narrow path through the woods that led to the lake. “I wasn’t trespassing,” she blurted out, reddening. “Mamie owns up to that colored ribbon on the stake, there.” She pointed to the property line.

He cocked his head and stared at her. He hated her youth, her freshness, her lack of artifice. He hated her very innocence, because it was so obvious that it was unmistakable. His whole life had been one endless parade of perfumed, perfectly coifed women endlessly trying to get whatever they could out of him. Here was a stiff, upright little Puritan with a raised fist.

“You’re always alone,” he said absently.

“So are you,” she blurted out, and then bit her tongue at her own forwardness.

Broad shoulders lifted and fell. “I got tired of bouncing soufflés, so I sent her home,” he said coolly.

She frowned, searching his face. He showed his age in a way that many older men didn’t. He pushed himself too hard. She knew without asking that he never took vacations, never celebrated holidays, that he carried work home every night and stayed on the phone until he was finally weary enough to sleep. Business was his whole life. He might have women in his life, but their influence ended at the bedroom door. And nobody got close, ever.

“Can you cook?” he asked suddenly.

“Of course.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“My father has a little cattle ranch in Texas,” she said hesitantly. “My mother died when I was only eight. I had to learn to cook.”

“At the age of eight?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded. Suddenly she felt cold and wrapped her arms around her body. “I was taught that hard work drives out frivolous thoughts.”

He scowled. “Any brothers, sisters?”

She shook her head.

“Just you and the rancher.”

She nodded. “He wanted a boy,” she blurted out. “He said girls were useless.”

His hands, stuffed in his pockets, clenched. He was getting a picture he didn’t like of her life. He didn’t want to know anything about her. He found her distasteful, irritating. He should turn around and go back to his lake house.

“You had a little girl with you a few days ago,” he said, startling her. “She was lost.”

She smiled slowly, and it changed her. Those soft brown eyes almost glowed. “She belongs to a friend of Mamie’s, a young woman from Provence who’s over here with her husband on a business trip. They’re staying at a friend’s cabin. The little girl wandered over here, looking for Mamie.”

“Provence? France?”

“Yes.”

“And do you speak French, cowgirl?” he asked.

“Je ne parle pas trés bien, mais, oui,” she replied.

He cocked his head, and for a few seconds, his pale eyes were less hostile. “You studied it in high school, I suppose?”

“Yes. We had to take a foreign language. I already spoke Spanish, so French was something new.”

“Spanish?”

“My father had several cowboys who were from Mexico. Immigrants,” he began, planning to mention that his grandfather was one.

“Their families were here before the first settlers made it to Texas,” she said, absently defending them.

His pale eyes narrowed. “I didn’t mean it that way. I was going to say that my grandfather was an immigrant.” He cocked his head. “You don’t like even the intimation of prejudice, do you?”

She shifted on her feet. “They were like family to me,” she said. “My father was hard as nails. He wouldn’t even give a man time off to go to a funeral.” She shifted again. “He said work came first, family second.”

“Charming,” he said and it was pure sarcasm.

“So all the affection I ever had was from people who worked for him.” She smiled, reminiscing. “Dolores cooked for the bunkhouse crew. She taught me to cook and sew, and she bought me the first dress I ever owned.” Her face hardened. “My father threw it away. He said it was trashy, like Dolores. I said she was the least trashy person I knew and he...” She swallowed. “The next day, she was gone. Just like that.”

He moved a step closer. “You hesitated. What did your father do?”

She bit her lower lip. “He said I deserved it...”

“What did he do?”

“He drew back his fist and knocked me down,” she said, lowering her face in shame. “Dolores’s husband saw it through the window. He came in to protect me. He knocked my father down. So my father fired Dolores and him. Because of me.”

He didn’t move closer, but she felt the anger emanating from him. “He would have found another reason for doing it,” he said after a minute.

“He didn’t like them being friendly to me.” She sighed. “I felt so bad. They had kids who were in school with me, and the kids had to go to another school where Pablo found work. Dolores tried to write to me, but my father tore up the letter and burned it, so I couldn’t even see the return address.”

“You should have gone with them,” he said flatly.

She smiled sadly. “I tried to. He locked me in my room.” She looked up with soft, sad eyes. “Mamie reminds me of Dolores. She has a kind heart, too.”

There was an odd vibrating sound. She frowned, looking around.

He held up the cell phone he’d kept in his pocket. He glared at it, turned the vibrate function off and put it back in his pocket. “If I answer it, there’s a crisis I have to solve. If I don’t answer it, there will be two crises that cost me a small fortune because I didn’t answer it.”

“I don’t even own a cell phone,” she said absently. It was true—Mamie paid for hers.

How would she pay for one, he almost said out loud. But he didn’t want to hurt her. Life had done a good job of that, from what he’d heard.

He nodded toward the sky. “It will be dark soon,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out alone at night.”

She managed a smile. “That’s what Mamie says. I’m going in.”

She turned, a little reluctantly, because he wasn’t quite the ogre she thought he was.

All the way down the path, she felt his eyes on her. But he didn’t say another word.

Two

Emma wondered about Connor Sinclair. She was curious why he was so angry, because she saw it in him, felt it in him. She didn’t want to think about him so much. He disturbed her, fascinated her, in ways she didn’t understand. Probably, it was because he was so hostile toward her. It had to be that.

Tired of the lake house, she walked to the marina and got into Mamie’s speedboat. Nobody saw her leave, but then, she had the key and she could come and go whenever she wanted to.

It was a beautiful early October morning. All around the lake, mostly trimmed with pine trees, a few hardwoods were beginning to show their lovely fall colors. The leaves turned more slowly here, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Up in North Carolina, people said, the leaf season was in full swing, attracting tourists from all over the piedmont. Around the North Georgia lake where Mamie’s house was situated, the maples were going to be glorious in their reds and golds. This was Emma’s favorite season. She loved the bright beginnings of the season, the many different shades that combined to turn the whole world bright and new in its last feverish gasp before winter.

She turned the boat toward the wide-open part of the lake and revved it up. She laughed as the wind blew her hair back, bit into her face, made her feel alive and young, as if the whole world was hers.

The sun was low on the horizon, making a bright trail in the water as she whirled the boat and sent it spinning toward the distant shoreline. It was so early that nobody was on the lake. She had it all to herself. She could step on the gas and never have to worry—

There was a horrible scraping sound, a horrible jolt that shook the boat and Emma.

“Damn it!”

The angry curse came out of nowhere, like the Jet Ski that she hadn’t seen in the brilliance of the morning sun that blinded her for just a few seconds.

She let off the gas, shaking from the collision and fear of what she’d done. She stood up in the boat, her eyes searching the water around her. There was a Jet Ski on the side of the boat toward the small cove.

“Oh, no, oh, no!” she cried. “I’m sorry!”

There was no answer. The Jet Ski revved and headed toward the distant dock. She knew at once whom she’d hit, and her blood froze. But he seemed to be all right. He got to the dock, and climbed off the Jet Ski. He sat there, seemingly disoriented, and called to someone.

As Emma watched, three people spilled out of the huge, luxurious lake house and ran toward him.

Unseen by the people in the cove, Emma eased the boat into motion and moved it back toward the marina. Her heart was racing like mad. She’d hit Connor Sinclair. He’d be out for her blood. He’d warned her. He’d threatened her. When he found out who’d hit him, she’d have no safe place to hide in the whole world.

She had no place to run. She couldn’t go home. Her father would want to know why she’d come, why he wasn’t getting the money she was supposed to send him every month. He’d be furious. Mamie was overseas and she’d called just once to tell Emma that she’d be in places where she wouldn’t have cell phone service for a few days.

Emma had all of a hundred dollars in her bank account and less than two hundred in savings. Not nearly enough to run and hide from a multimillionaire who’d want her arrested.

She drove the boat back to the marina, aware that it had a dent on one side where it had hit the Jet Ski. It was a sturdy boat. It didn’t seem any the worse for the collision. She drove it into the slip and got out, pausing to ask the custodian if the boat could be dry-docked, because Mamie was going to be away for the rest of the year and it was turning cold.

The older man smiled and said of course they could, and did she want him to beat out that dent in the hull? She smiled back, very calmly, and said that would be very kind; she’d hit a stump in the water too close to a cove.

That happened more often than folks realized, he said, chuckling. When the dam was built, and the land flooded, which created Lake Lanier, many trees had been covered with the water that became the lake. He’d do the work and send Mamie the bill, he promised.

Emma walked back to the lake house, prepared to find the lake police on the front porch waiting for her.

But they weren’t. She spent a sleepless night worrying about it, waiting for it. Connor Sinclair was her worst enemy. He’d never stop until he made her pay for what she’d done.

She hated her own cowardice. She was hiding from him, from retribution, from punishment. She hoped he wasn’t badly hurt, but what if he was?

* * *

On the second day after the incident, she got up enough nerve to call his lake house. It wasn’t listed under his name, just under its own designation: Pine Cottage. Only local people knew it was Connor Sinclair’s home.

Emma called the number and let it ring. Her heart was running wild as it rang once, twice, three times, four...

She was about to hang up when a female voice answered.

“Pine Cottage,” she said, using the name local people gave the sprawling vacation home.

“Is Mr. Sinclair available?” she asked in her most businesslike tone.

“Connor?” the woman replied. “Oh, no, he’s at the hospital. He fell off the Jet Ski and hit his head. Poor thing, he has no idea how it happened...is this Jewell?”

“No, this is Adrian Merrell’s personal assistant. Mr. Merrell was hoping to speak to Mr. Sinclair about an upcoming conference they’re both attending,” she lied.

“Merrell? I’ve heard that name. No matter, Connor won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, I’m afraid.”

“I’m very sorry to hear about his accident. I’ll tell Mr. Merrell. Thank you. Goodbye.”

She hung up. Connor was alive. He’d hit his head. Why wouldn’t he be going anywhere soon? Emma groaned as she wondered just how much damage she’d done. There hadn’t been anybody on the lake, she was certain of it!

But the sun had been in her eyes. She’d been daydreaming, not paying attention. How could she not have realized where she was, whose cove she was near? She could have cried at her lack of good sense, at her own recklessness. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. But would that matter in the end?

* * *

She agonized about it for the rest of the week. On her walks, she got near enough to the big house to tell that people were still coming and going. There didn’t seem to be any frenetic activity. She didn’t see lake police or ambulances there. Perhaps he knew it had been Emma who hit him, though, and he was just biding his time, waiting to let her worry about what he was going to do about the accident.

She finally realized that it was doing no good to wear ruts in Mamie’s carpet. She was hiding, like a coward. Whatever the consequences, she had to apologize and beg him not to press charges. She’d offer to work for him, free, to do anything within reason to help make up for injuring him. Surely he’d realize that she hadn’t done it maliciously. Then she recalled his warnings, his anger at her for earlier near-misses. He wasn’t going to be merciful. He’d want blood.

But hiding wasn’t helping her, either. She was a nervous wreck. She might as well face the music. She didn’t want Mamie to suffer for something that was her own fault. However painful, she had to face the music.

* * *

She walked slowly toward Pine Cottage. It was late afternoon on Saturday. There were boats scattered on the lake. The sailboats were elegant and beautiful. Emma loved to look at them. She wondered if Mr. Sinclair ever sailed. Mamie had said that he owned a sailboat. If only he’d been in it the previous week, and not on that stupid Jet Ski—

“Oh!” she exclaimed as she almost ran right into a huge man standing on the lakeshore. “I’m so sorry.”

Her voice caught in her throat as she met Connor Sinclair’s pale, glittering silver eyes. She bit her lower lip. She’d forgotten how dangerous he was. That cold gaze brought it all back. He’d probably call the police as soon as she told him what she’d done.

“My fault,” he returned. “I can’t see you.”

“You can’t...see...me?” she gasped. The horror of what she’d done made every muscle in her slender body clench. She’d blinded him. She’d blinded him!

He shrugged. “Concussion,” he said, turning toward the lake as if he could see it. “I fell off a Jet Ski and hit my head. Or so they say. I don’t remember any of it. They said it was a miracle that I made it back to the dock at all.”

“I’m...so sorry,” she choked. “Your sight...will it come back?”

“They don’t know. Five thousand dollars’ worth of tests to tell me that they’re not sure if I’ll see again. No more Jet Skis, for sure. Either way.”

She paused beside him. “I thought Jet Skis were dangerous,” she began.

“They are. I like dangerous things,” he said curtly. “Skydiving, race cars, testing planes, Jet Skis,” he added with a faint smile. “I had my housekeeper lead me down here. I’ll have to find my own way back. As I said,” he added whimsically, “I like dangerous things.”

“Why?”

Both thick eyebrows went up. He turned toward her voice. “What the hell do you mean, why?”

“Life is precious,” she said.

“Life is tedious, monotonous, maddening and joyless,” he shot back. “It’s hard, and then you die.”

“You stole that line from a retro television show,” she accused involuntarily, with a muffled laugh, and then flushed.

But he chuckled, surprised. “Yes, I did. Dempsey and Makepeace; you can find reruns of it on YouTube.”

Then he frowned. “Who are you, and why are you here?”

She had to think fast. Confession was good for the soul, she thought, but not yet. “I’m staying with a girlfriend for a couple of weeks. I’m sort of in between jobs. I got lost. I thought her cabin was this way, but nothing looks familiar here.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Brain surgery,” she said pertly. “I took this mail-order course...”

He burst out laughing.

She was surprised, because he was a man who hardly knew how to laugh.

“Pull the other one,” he invited.

She grinned. “Okay. In my spare time, I make custom harnesses for frogs. So you can walk them.”

He let out a breath, and grinned. “What do you do?” he persisted.

She shrugged. “I’m a copy typist for a law firm. Or I was.”

“Why?”

“I was made redundant. Laid off sounds better, though.” She glanced at him. “It’s getting dark. Should you be out here by yourself when you can’t see? The lake is very deep.”

“Should you be out by yourself when you’re lost?” he shot back.

“No, I shouldn’t,” she said. “But you shouldn’t, either.”

“Want to lead me to my door?” he invited.

“I might as well. At least you’re not lost,” she added.

He held out his hand.

Odd, how it felt to hold his hand, to feel the warm strength of that big, beautiful hand against her skin. She had to fight to keep her confusion from showing.

“Where do you live?” she asked, because she wasn’t supposed to know.

“Pine Cottage. There’s a sign.”

She let out a breath. “Oh, it’s there. I see it.”

He hesitated. She tugged, just gently.

“It’s this way,” she said softly, letting him catch up without making an issue of it. She walked very slowly, very carefully, so that he was on the path and didn’t walk into obstacles like rocks that could throw him off balance. “Three steps,” she said. “This is the first one.”

He went up them with no seeming difficulty and stopped. “You’re quite good at this.”

“I practice on little old ladies who can’t find their glasses,” she returned, tongue in cheek.

He smiled. It wasn’t a cold, formal or social smile, either. And he hadn’t let go of her hand.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“The Energizer Bunny?” she suggested.

“Try again.”

“I’m Emma,” she said, having fought the impulse not to lie to him. But there had to be a zillion women named Emma. He wouldn’t connect her. He probably didn’t even know her name. He’d have no reason to want to know it. He’d connected her with the near-miss on the Jet Ski before Mamie’s party, when she’d been driving the boat, but that was just physical recognition. Mamie had said that he didn’t know Emma except as her assistant. He hadn’t asked for her name.

“Emma what?” he asked.

“Copeland,” she replied.

His lips pursed. “Think you could find your way back here?”

She hesitated. “I found it because I was lost.”

“I’m having Barnes drive you home,” he said surprisingly. “He can pick you up where he drops you off, yes?”

Her heart was racing. “Why would I want to be picked up?”

“Breakfast,” he said simply.

“Breakfast?”

“Eggs, bacon, pancakes...strong black coffee,” he added.

“My friend has Pop-Tarts.” She groaned.

He grinned. “Eggs, bacon, pancakes—”

“Don’t! You’re torturing me! What time?”

“Eight a.m.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sleep late?”

“I go to bed at nine,” she said. “Eight a.m. is late to me.”

He chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll see you soon, Emma.”

“Who are you?” she asked, because she couldn’t give herself away. Not yet.

“Connor.”

“Connor. It’s nice.”

“I’m not,” he cautioned, his silver eyes flashing at her.

“Pop-Tarts might not be so bad...” she began.

He grinned. “I’ll try to be nice. Just for breakfast.”

“Okay.”

“Barnes!” he called.

A short, older man came in, smiling. “Yes, sir?”

“Take Emma back to her roommate,” he said, indicating Emma. “And make sure you remember where you drop her, so you can pick her up in the morning and bring her back for breakfast.”

“Yes, sir. Are you ready to go, Miss Emma?” he asked in his slow, sweet Georgia drawl.

“I am.”

“Good night, Emma,” Connor said with a smile.

“Good night.”

* * *

She had Barnes drop her off at the Frenchwoman’s house. She waved him off and then asked Jeanne Marie if it was all right that she pretended to live there. She couldn’t explain, she added, but she promised it was nothing illegal or immoral.

Jeanne laughed and said of course it was all right. When Emma told her about the next morning’s appointment, Jeanne said that was fine, as well. She was curious. Emma just blushed, and Jeanne asked no more questions.

* * *

All night, Emma agonized about going to breakfast at Connor’s. It seemed like a sound idea, to get to know him, just a little, and then confess what she’d done. If he knew her, he might not jump to conclusions that she’d hit him on purpose.

But it was risky, just the same. She couldn’t go back to her father. She couldn’t go to her friends in Jacobsville, either, without putting them in the line of fire. She knew they wouldn’t mind, but they’d already done enough for her.

At eight the next morning, she got into the expensive sedan with Barnes at the wheel and let him take her to Pine Cottage.

“Eggs, bacon, pancakes,” she enthused as she walked into the dining room and took a long sniff. “What a delicious smell!”

Connor was sitting there at the head of the table, his broad face smiling, his head cocked slightly to one side. He wore a green polo shirt with tan slacks and deck shoes. He looked expensive and so sexy that he made Emma’s toes curl.

But those thoughts were destructive. He was just a man she’d met on the lake. That was all he could ever be.

“It tastes as good as it smells,” he assured her. “Edward has cooked for me for over a decade, but he didn’t want to live on a lake in Georgia. So I left him at my house on the Riviera years ago and hired Marie,” he indicated an older woman with silver hair and a bright smile, “who has a way with herbs and spices.”

Emma started to pull out a chair for herself when Barnes came out of nowhere to do it for her. “Miss,” he said politely, bowing.

“Thanks,” she replied shyly.

“Barnes practically came with the property.” Connor chuckled. “His mother kept house for my father, on his rare visits here.” His face tautened, as if the memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

“It’s true,” Barnes said, smiling. His eyes twinkled. “He’s a terrible boss,” he added suddenly. “You should see him when he loses his temper.”

“Shut up while you still have a job,” Connor muttered, but his eyes were twinkling, too. He waved a hand. “Go build something.”

Barnes winked at Emma and left, grinning.

Connor chuckled. “He weaves baskets as a hobby. He picks up vines out of the woods and twists them into all sorts of shapes. There’s one of his on a side table. Over there, I think.” He indicated an elegant-looking basket on a side table.

“It’s really beautiful,” she said, surprised. Her knowledge of baskets was scanty, but that one looked professional.

“He could make a living with them if he wanted to,” he said. “He has his own website. He sells to designers all across the country.” He shook his head. “When he makes his first million, I’ll have to have a stranger drive me everywhere.” He raised his voice. “I’ll probably be killed in a horrible wreck!”

“I will never make millions!” Barnes called back. “And if I do, I’ll still drive you!”

“Okay,” Connor called back. His sightless eyes were twinkling. Barnes threw up a hand and went out the back door.

“He drove me mad at first. But I tend to get moody. I don’t like strangers in my house, as a rule.”

She fingered her empty coffee cup and remained quiet.

“I didn’t mean you, if that’s what the silence is about,” he mused.

She laughed softly. “Okay.”

He looked in the direction of her voice. “Well? Are you pouring coffee or meditating on it?” he chided.

“I, well, I wasn’t sure if you said grace or...”

“Grace?”

Her eyes widened at the venom in his tone.

His pale eyes glittered with bad humor. “I’m not much on religion. Just pour the coffee. And if you want to say grace, say it silently, please,” he added curtly.

She didn’t know what else to do. She nodded. Then she realized that he couldn’t see her, and guilt washed over her like a wave.

“Well?” he prompted, his tone cutting.

“Sorry. Coffee?”

“Obviously I want coffee. Hence the empty mug right here.” He fumbled for it and rattled it.

“You are a very unpleasant man!” she pointed out.

“And I work hard at it, too.”

She grimaced as she poured his coffee.

He reached for it, managed it on the second try and lifted it to his mouth. “I want bacon and eggs. No pancakes.”

She got up and ladled them onto a plate. She put the plate down in front of him, caught his big hand and put a fork in it. “Bacon at three o’clock, eggs at nine o’clock. Buttered toast?” she added.

“I don’t eat much bread.” He dug into his breakfast, downed a swallow of eggs and coffee and put the cup down. “How did you learn to do that?” he asked.

“What?”

“The positions on the plate.”

“Oh. We had a blind lady who went to our church. I used to sit with her when we had picnics. She taught me. That was how she managed her food. She was eighty-six and she could ride a bike and play the piano. I was very fond of her.”

He finished eating, then leaned back with a sigh and pursed his lips. “Did she teach you anything else about blind people?”

“That you never grab them. It disconcerts them.” She told him about the guide dog the woman had, and her determination to learn Braille.

He was smiling faintly. “You learned a lot.”

“I listened,” she said simply. “People mostly don’t listen. They want to tell you about themselves, they want to discuss the latest vote on the reality shows and the latest fashions.” She sighed. “I never cared about those things. I don’t watch much television.”

“I listen to the news. I don’t follow anything except the stock market.”

There was a brief, companionable silence while she finished her coffee.

“You said you were in between jobs.”

“Just briefly. I’m going to put my name down with one of the temporary agencies in Gainesville...”

“Come work for me.”

She almost dropped the cup. “What?”

“Come work for me,” he repeated. “I have secretaries in all my corporate offices, but I don’t have a private secretary. Administrative assistant. Whatever the hell you call it. Someone to take dictation, answer the phone, make appointments and see to it that I keep them. Things like that. I used to have the Atlanta office send someone up, but I don’t want my condition to get around.”

She knew what he meant. Any bad news about his health would probably drop stock prices. People gossiped.

So he was offering her a job. She didn’t dare. She couldn’t. But she wanted to. “For how long?” she asked breathlessly.

“We’ll give it a month’s probation to see if we suit each other. How about that?” he asked, and his face tensed, as if her reply really mattered.

She smiled. A man like him wouldn’t care whether she said yes or no. It would be insane to agree. If he ever found out who she was, if he ever recognized her voice...

On the other hand, she could help him, take care of him, try to make up for what she’d done to him. It pained her to realize the price he’d paid for her stupidity. If only she’d never gotten behind the wheel of the stupid boat, if only she’d looked where she was going!

“Well?” he prompted curtly.

“I...I would like to,” she heard herself saying with absolute horror. It was nuts!

His face relaxed. He drew in a breath. “Fine. You’ll live in. Marie can show you to a bedroom later and help you get settled.” He named a salary that was six times what Mamie paid her.

She blanched. Her gasp was audible.

“Not enough?” he chided.

“Not enough?” she burst out. “I don’t make that much in a year!”

“You’ll earn it,” he said, and his pale eyes twinkled faintly. “I’m a difficult man, Emma. You may wish you’d said no.”

“If you get too troublesome, I’ll push you headfirst into the lake and use my alligator whistle.”

He thought for a minute, and then burst out laughing. “If you can find an alligator in any North Georgia lake, I’ll double your salary,” he mused. “All right. We’ll give it a month.”

* * *

The first few days were hectic. There was a learning curve, because he wasn’t as flighty as some of her bosses had been. He was studious, methodical, exacting and sometimes maddening. He wanted files in a certain order. He wanted letters done exactly as he said, even if they weren’t always polite. He wanted routine in everything. Emma found it exasperating.

“You’re making that sound again,” he said curtly from his desk. “Now what?”

“I feel like I need to ask permission to change my clothes,” she muttered. “Organization. Heavens! I’ve never been able to organize anything in my life. I’m too scatterbrained.”

“You’ll learn. You can pretend you’re in the military.”

“I’m not going on military time, and I’m not saluting you,” she shot back.

He chuckled. “Okay.”

“You’ve got two thousand unanswered emails,” she added.

“Go through them and delete the ads. That should get rid of ninety percent.”

“I need a program that does that automatically,” she murmured.

“Then go online and download one,” he said.

She almost sighed again, but he was looking surly this morning. “Yes, sir,” she said instead.

“How sweet that sounds,” he snarled.

“Sweet like vinegar, sir, the better to douse you with,” she muttered.

He chuckled.

The phone rang and she answered it.

It was a woman. She asked for Connor. Emma had no idea who the woman actually was; she just handed the phone to Connor and went back to work.

There was a terse conversation. It ended with a short curse and the phone being slammed down on the desk.

“Don’t ever put that woman through again, do you understand me, Emma?” he snapped.

“Yes, sir!” she said at once, reddening.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Damn women everywhere!” he cursed. “I gave her a mink and a Ferrari and a diamond the size of a hen egg, and she can’t understand that it was to get her out of my hair!”

“Poor man, stalked by women, not safe even in his own home,” Emma mused. “Perhaps we should build a fence.”

“Damn it!” he exploded. He stood up, his eyes blazing, furious. “Do you think I’m kidding?”

She drew in her breath. He looked formidable when he lost his temper. She sat quietly, waiting for the rest of the explosion.

“She wants to make up,” he snarled. “Which means she wants more presents from me, and she’s willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to get back into my life. I would rather feed myself to a shark!”

She wanted so badly to invite him to, but that way lay disaster. She just sat still, like a statue.

“I don’t want marriage. I don’t want a family. I’m happy with my life just the way it is. She said that I needed a son to inherit what I’ve got. A son.” He slammed his fist down on the desk and Emma jumped. “What she meant was that she wanted to get pregnant with my child and have me support her for the next eighteen years! No damned way!”

She didn’t say a word.

“I’ve always been careful,” he said through his teeth. “Always prepared. They said they were using birth control, but I never believed it. All my adult life, I’ve dodged women trying to trap me into marriage. All I wanted was brief affairs. They wanted forever. There is no forever!” he ground out. “Only damned fools believe there is!”

She was almost shivering now. The force of his rage was intimidating, even when he was sightless.

“And you put her through,” he added, looking toward where he thought she might be. “You put her right through to me without asking if I wanted to talk to her. By God, you do that again, and I’ll throw you out on the front lawn in your damned nightgown!”

She fought back tears.

“Do you understand? Talk to me!”

“I understand, Mr. Sinclair,” she said shakily.

“Good!”

She tried to type, but her hands were shaking too hard.

“Get me some coffee,” he snapped.

“Yes, sir.” She got up from her chair, still wobbly. Her voice had sounded shaky.

“Emma!”

She stopped. “Yes, s-sir?” she stammered.

He hesitated. Frowned. “Emma, come here,” he said in a tone like velvet, soft and gentle. “Come on.”

She went to him slowly, disturbed and shivering.

He felt for her shoulder and pulled her suddenly right into his arms, folding her close to that warm, magnificent strength. She laid her cheek against his chest and the tears stained the fabric.

“You’re crying,” he chided. “Come on, Emma, I’m not an ogre.”

“Yes, you are,” she said through tears. “You’re scary like one.”

“So people tell me.” He kissed her hair. She made him feel guilty. It had been ages since a woman had accomplished that. “Come on. Stop crying. I won’t yell anymore.”

“I didn’t know who she was,” she sobbed.

He held her closer, burying his face in her throat, petting the soft, long hair that ran down her shoulders. Then his big hands smoothed gently along her spine. “I didn’t realize that.” His mouth moved on her neck.

She gasped. Her heart raced. This close to him, she was feeling odd sensations, ripples of pleasure that she’d never experienced, not even with Steven. This man had a sensual magnetism that was uniquely his.

“You like this,” he teased.

“Mr. Sinclair...” she protested.

He laughed, deep in his throat.

“I have to go...”

His cheek slid against hers. “Do you?” he whispered as his mouth moved close to hers, hovered over it.

“I should...” she choked.

“Should you?” he whispered.

She didn’t know what to do. There had only been Steven in her life, and he’d barely touched her. Theirs had been a cerebral sort of relationship until he found out what her father did for a living and dumped her. She had no experience at all with the sort of flirting Connor was subjecting her to. She stiffened in his arms.

He drew back, his eyes narrowed. He wished that he could see her face. Her young body was stiff as a board. But her breath was fluttering at his collarbone. He could feel her heart beating like a butterfly. She was attracted to him. Very attracted, by the feel of her. But she was also frightened.

He frowned. “What are you afraid of, Emma?” he whispered.

Both her hands pressed against his broad chest, feeling the hard, warm muscle under his shirt. “Please,” she faltered.

He let her go. He didn’t seem to be angry anymore. He looked more puzzled than anything else.

She almost ran out of the room. But she didn’t. She stood her ground. And went back to her desk.

Three

Emma took dictation on a letter he was writing to his attorney. She was barely aware of what she was writing down. It had upset her, that blatant, unbridled anger. But what had followed it had upset her even more.

She was vulnerable with him. It was surprising, because he was so much older than she was, almost a generation. But when he touched her, the years fell away. She felt far different with him than she’d ever felt with Steven, and it scared her.

She tried to tell herself that he was just very experienced with women. That was what it was. But there had to be an attraction in the first place. He’d been amused by her reactions, but then he’d gone silent. He was still silent, in between dictation. He was frowning, as if he was worrying a puzzle in his mind.

“Read that back,” he said when he finished dictating.

She read the letter to him.

He drew in an irritated breath and ran a restless hand through his thick, wavy hair. “I hate not being able to read my own damned letters,” he muttered.

“It will get easier as you go along,” she said quietly.

His head lifted and turned, as if he was trying to see where she was. “Do you think so?” he asked with a rough laugh. “I very much doubt it.”

“We all have trials in life,” she said simply. “We get through them. Everything passes away—grief, anger, hope, joy, all of it. It’s both a blessing and a curse.”

“What have you gotten through? Are you even old enough to have had trials at all?”

She started to tell him about her father, then quickly bit her tongue. There were going to be pitfalls, working for him. Here was one of the biggest. She remembered telling him, when he was sighted, about Dolores, and her father, and the boy who’d broken their engagement when he found out her father ran beef cattle.

“We all have trials,” she replied.

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

She knew she’d never told him that. She doubted that Mamie had, or that he would have bothered to ask. “I’m twenty-three,” she said softly.

“Twenty-three.” His face was impassive. His eyes were narrow. His lips compressed. “Twenty-three.”

She couldn’t see into his mind or she might have been surprised at why he reacted that way to her age. He was seeing doors closing. She was twenty-three. He was thirty-eight. Her life was beginning. He was approaching the middle of his. Even if he’d been interested—and he was—her age put him off.

He leaned back in his chair and drew in a long breath. “My brother died on this lake,” he said abruptly.

“Your brother?”

“He and his wife were on a houseboat. There was a party. It was late on a Friday night. A couple of teenagers in a motorboat came flying around one of the coves and hit it broadside. My brother and his wife drowned in the time it took rescue people to get here and start looking for them.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she understood, too well, too late, his overreaction to her speeding in Mamie’s boat.

“He was the last living relative I had,” he replied. “We were close.” He glanced her way. “Do you have family, Emma?”

She hesitated. “Yes. My father lives on a small farm in North Carolina.” There was no reason for him to check that out, after all.

“Are you close?”

“Not so much. He’s very independent. But my mother and I were. She was very sweet and gentle.”

“How did she die?”

She swallowed. “She died in childbirth.”

A shadow passed over his broad face. “Unusual, isn’t it, in this day and age? Any decent obstetrician should be able to call in specialists if there are problems.”

“She was in labor for a long time and she had a hidden heart condition. She died of a heart attack.”

“I see. And the child?”

“A little girl. She was stillborn. They said she’d been dead for several days. They couldn’t save her.” That wasn’t the whole truth. She wasn’t telling him that her father had let her mother lie in childbirth for two horrible days, or that she’d died, ironically, while he was delivering a calf out in the pasture several miles from the house. By the time he finally got home to a sobbing Emma and a still, cold wife, it was too late to save her.

Emma’s father had delivered Emma at home, and he’d planned to do the same with his second child. Apparently it had never occurred to him that he should have taken his wife to the hospital when she started complaining of chest pain. She’d had an undiagnosed heart condition that the stress of prolonged childbirth had caused to go critical. She’d died of a massive coronary.

It had hurt, so badly, to lose her mother, especially at such a young age. Emma had watched her die, helpless to do anything. She had managed to live at home until graduation, but the minute she had a job, she moved to town and never looked back. Emma had nothing to do with her father at all these days. She wasn’t certain that she’d even be willing to ask him for help in a dire emergency. Or that he’d give her any. He was rarely sober enough to care about anything, anyway. He did manage to go out to work on the ranch, enough to keep it going, but his drinking was such a problem that he now had a huge turnover in cowboys.

Emma was ashamed of the way he behaved. Although his ranch was in Comanche Wells, everybody knew about him in nearby Jacobsville, where Emma had worked at the local café. At least she hadn’t told Connor about the drinking when he was sighted. She’d been too ashamed to admit it, even to a stranger.

“Emma?”

“Oh. Sorry. I was...lost in the past,” she confessed.

“You were with her when she died, weren’t you?” he asked suddenly, as if he knew.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

He crossed his long legs. “My sister-in-law was pregnant when she died.” His eyes glittered. “She didn’t want the baby. She said so, often.”

“Then why...?”

“My brother would never have married her if there hadn’t been a child on the way. She bragged about it, about how she’d snared him with the child, and that he’d have to support it, and her, until it came of age. She’d have everything she wanted, she’d said, and she laughed at him.” His eyes closed. “He was a sweet man. I tried to tell him what she was like, but he was naive. He’d never been in love before, and she was a good actress. He only found her out when it was too late.”

“That’s a shame, for a woman to do that to a man,” she said quietly. “We had a sweet old fellow in our church who’d been married to the same woman for fifty years. When she died, a widow down the road sweet-talked him into marriage. Then she took him for everything he had, even sold the house out from under him. He went to live with his son, and she called him every night to laugh at how gullible he’d been.” She sighed. “He killed himself.”

“Why?” he asked, shocked.

“He loved her,” she said.

“Love,” he scoffed. “I fell in love when I was a teenager. I soon learned that it’s just a euphemism for sex. That’s all it is, a chemical reaction.”

She sighed. “You’re probably right,” she said. “But I’d like to keep my illusions until I grow as crotchety as you are.”

His eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

“Crotchety. That’s what you are,” she explained patiently. “You’re rude and overbearing and your temper could curdle milk.”

He chuckled softly. “Feeling brave, are you?”

“I can type.”

“That’s an excuse?”

“A woman who can type can always get work,” she explained. “So if you fire me, I’ll just go right out and look for another job.”

He stretched lazily, still smiling. “Always the optimist. Doesn’t anything get you down, young Emma?”

“Worms.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Worms. You put them on a hook and drown them in an attempt to catch fish that you also have to kill in order to eat them. It’s so depressing. Imagine how the worm feels,” she teased.

He burst out laughing.

“You look nice when you laugh,” she said softly.

“I don’t, often,” he said a minute later. “Perhaps you’re corrupting me.”

“That’s my evil influence, all right. I’ll have to look up my pitchfork.”

“Back to work, my girl,” he said. “Read me the next letter in the stack.”

“Email doesn’t have stacks.”

“Sure they do. Get busy.”

She grinned. “Okay.”

* * *

That night, something woke her. She couldn’t think what. She sat up in bed, frowning, and looked around. The house seemed quiet. There was nothing going on outside, either. She got out of bed in her flowing cotton nightgown with its puffed sleeves and slipped on her matching housecoat, tossing her hair in a pigtail over the back of it. She crept to her door and opened it.

Maybe it was her imagination...no! There it was again. A moan. A harsh moan.

She walked down the hall, frowning. The sound grew louder. She stopped at a door and knocked.

“What the hell do you want?” came a rough, angry voice from behind the door.

She opened the door a crack. “Mr. Sinclair?” she called softly.

“Oh. Emma. Come here, honey, will you?”

She hesitated. “Do you...wear pajamas?”

He laughed even through the pain. “Bottoms, yes. Come in.”

She opened the door and walked in, leaving it open behind her.

He was sitting on the side of a huge, king-size bed. A brown paisley duvet was thrown back from brown sheets. Pillows were scattered everywhere. His head was in his hands, propped up on his broad thighs.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No. I hurt like hell. Go into the bathroom and look in the medicine cabinet. There’s a bottle with blue-and-white capsules in it, for migraines. Bring me one, and a bottle of water out of the minibar in the corner.”

“Mini what?”

“Minibar.” He lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was drawn with pain. “Like a small fridge,” he explained kindly.

“Sorry. I’ve never seen one.”

“They have them in most hotels,” he pointed out.

“Well, I’ve never stayed in a hotel. Or a motel.” Which was true. Mamie traveled, but Emma stayed home and took care of the house and typed drafts for Mamie’s new books. She walked into the bathroom, unaware of his raised eyebrows.

She found the bottle, read the directions, popped one out into her palm and closed the lid. She put the bottle back, then went to find the water.

“Open up,” she coaxed. He opened his mouth and she put the capsule on his tongue. It was intimate. It was also sexy, to feel his mouth that way. She tried not to react as she opened the bottle of water and put it carefully into his hand.

“It’s open,” she said.

He then lifted the water to his chiseled lips and took a long swallow. The feel of Emma’s fingers near his mouth affected him, even through the pain. He winced. “Do you have migraine headaches, Emma?”

“No.”

“Anyone in your family have them?”

“No.” She was going to mention that her employer, Mamie, did until she realized that she wasn’t supposed to know Mamie. “I had a friend who had them,” she managed. “They were pretty awful.”

“Awful is a good word to describe them. They make you sick as hell, and then they give you a headache that makes you want to bounce your head against a wall.”

“I never get headaches,” she said.

“Mine weren’t this bad until I was blinded,” he said.

She winced. She hadn’t realized how it was going to feel, watching him suffer and knowing that she’d caused it. She’d blinded him. It was very hard, trying to live with that. She wanted to tell him the truth, but every day she waited made it more impossible.

“Sit down,” he said. “There’s a chair by the bed. Stay with me for a minute, until it eases.”

“Of course.”

He hadn’t moved much. She noticed the faint olive tan that covered him from the waist up, the muscles in his big arms. He was gorgeous without his shirt. A thick mat of hair ran from his chest down to the waist of his burgundy pajama bottoms, and probably past it. She flushed. She’d never seen a man in pajamas before, except on television or in movies. He was very sexy. And he didn’t look his age at all.

“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” he asked after a minute.

“I figured that talking wouldn’t really help the headache.”

“Good point.”

“Have you had them all your life?”

He nodded and winced, because the movement hurt. “My mother had them. Terrible headaches. We had to drive her to the emergency room a lot, because they got so bad.”

“Wouldn’t a doctor come to the house for you? I mean, you’re very rich...”

He smiled. “I wasn’t always.”

“Really?”

“I inherited a small private air service from my father. I studied business management and parlayed it into a bigger private air service. I absorbed a company that made baby jets, and added a regional air taxi service that had gone bankrupt. It took a long time, but when I hit it big, I hit it big.”

“Empire builders.”

“What was that?”

“You’re an empire builder,” she said simply. “I read about them when I was in school. Men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Sinclair. Men who started with nothing but had good brains and strong backs and earned fortunes.”

“It was a little easier in their day.” He chuckled. “No income tax back then, you see.”

She cocked her head. “You own one of the biggest airplane manufacturing corporations in the world,” she recalled. “One article said you test-flew the planes yourself.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

His eyebrows arched.

“I mean, you’re rich. It’s risky, right, testing planes?”

“Very risky.”

She was silent. She didn’t push. She just waited.

He drew in a long breath. He didn’t usually discuss personal things with staff, not even with Barnes or Marie. But she was different somehow.

“I got married when I was eighteen,” he said after a minute. “She was beautiful, inside and out. She had black hair and blue eyes, and I loved her beyond measure. At that age, I thought I was invincible. I thought she was, too. We went on this vacation. It was before cell phones were popular, when you usually had to have a landline to talk to people. We were on an island with no outside communications except a line to the mainland, to be used in emergencies. It was a quiet place just for honeymooners. The boat ran once a week. We had the time of our lives, lying on the beach, cooking for ourselves. She was five months pregnant with our child.”

Her lips fell apart. She stared at him.

“She’d been healthy, perfectly healthy. The doctors said it was risky, to go off like that, but we were young and stupid. Something went wrong. She was in agony and I didn’t know what to do. I tried to call for help, but there was a storm and the lines were down to the mainland. I couldn’t even manage to build a fire and signal, because of the rain.” He lowered his head. The memory was still painful. “She died in my arms. The baby died with her. At least, I suppose it did, because I had no idea how to save it. It would have been too soon in any case. When the boat came to bring supplies, I was half-mad. They took me off the island, put me in the hospital and sedated me. My father and mother, and her mother, came to make the arrangements for her and to bring me home.” His face hardened. “I never wanted a child after that. I hated the whole idea of a baby, because a baby cost me Winona.”

She grimaced. What a tragic life he’d had. Now she understood his attitude about love. He’d had one great love, and now he’d convinced himself that love and sex were the same thing. It was a shame. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I can’t even imagine how that would feel.”

He hesitated a minute before he spoke again. “I’ve had brief affairs, but I never let a woman get close again. And I make sure there will never be another child. I thought about having a vasectomy, but my doctor talked me out of it.” He shrugged, then clenched his jaw. “Every woman who came along wanted a child. I told them that if they got pregnant, I’d insist on a termination.”

The words chilled. He was the sort of man who would love a child if he had one. But he was obviously determined never to let that happen. To Emma, who loved children, it was a blow. She caught herself. Why should it bother her? She was just his assistant. She sat up straighter. “It’s sad, to blame a baby for something that wasn’t its fault,” she said very quietly.

“The baby killed Winona,” he said harshly.

She felt his sorrow, his rage. “You know, we think we’re in control. That we can decide what happens to us by the actions we take. But life isn’t like that. We’re like leaves, floating down a river. We can’t even steer. We have the illusion of control. That’s all.”

He sat up. “And now we can talk about God and how He loves people and takes care of us,” he scoffed.

“No. We can talk about how there’s a plan to every life, and that what happens to us is part of it. If she’d been meant to live, she would have.”

His eyes began to glitter. “Twenty-three, and already a philosopher,” he said sarcastically.

“I’m not bitter, the way you are,” she said. “I haven’t had bad things happen to me.” That was a lie, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. “So I see things from a different perspective.”

“Pollyanna.”

She smiled. “I guess I am. Optimism isn’t expensive. In fact, it’s cheap. You just have to take life one day at a time and do the best you can with it.”

“Life is a series of tragedies that ends in death.”

“Oh, that’s optimistic, all right.”

A half smile touched his hard mouth. “Happiness is an illusion.”

“Sure it is, if you think that way. You’re living in the past, with your heartache. You don’t trust people, you don’t want a family, you don’t have faith in anything, and all you live for is to make more money.”

“Smart girl.”

“Now you’re all sarcastic,” she said. “But what I’m trying to say is that you don’t expect any more from life than a struggle and more heartbreak.”

“That’s what I get.”

“And are you happy?”

He scowled.

“It’s an easy question,” she persisted. “Are you happy?”

“No.” His jaw tautened. “Nobody is happy.”

“I am,” she said.

“What makes you happy?”

“Birds calling to each other in the trees. Leaves rustling when they turn orange and gold and there’s just the faintest nip in the breeze. White sails on the lake just after dawn. Crickets singing on a summer night. Things like that.”

“How about nights on the town? Dancing in a nightclub? Going to a rock concert? Watching the Grand Prix in Le Mans?” he mused.

“Martians playing in dust storms? Because I’m just as likely to see the latter as the former. Not my world.”

“I’ll take my dancing in a nightclub before your crickets on a summer night,” he said sardonically.

“Glitter. That’s what you have. Glitter. It’s an illusion.”

“So are crickets. I’m sure they only exist in cartoon form and star in Disney movies.”

“I give up.”

“You might as well. You’ll never change my perspective any more than I’ll change yours.” He chuckled.

“How’s your head feeling?”

He blinked. The question surprised him. “Better.”

“Probably all the talk about crickets and rustling leaves,” she said pertly.

“More than likely the hilarity over your concept of happiness.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” she told him. She stood up. “If you’re better, I’ll go back to bed.”

“You could stay,” he pointed out. “We could lie down and discuss sailboats.”

She laughed softly. “No, thanks.”

“Have you ever been in love, Emma?” he asked, curious.

She drew in a breath. “I thought I was once,” she said. “We got engaged. But it didn’t work out.”

He didn’t like that. It surprised him, that he was jealous, when she was far too young for him and an employee to boot. She’d been engaged. Even religious people had sex when they were committed. It changed the way he thought of her.

“Why didn’t it?” he asked.

She didn’t dare tell him the truth, because she’d told him about her ex-fiancé before he was blinded. “We discovered that we didn’t think alike in the areas where it mattered,” she said finally. “He wasn’t at all religious...”

“And that matters?” he chided.

“It did to me,” she said stiffly.

He cocked his head and looked toward the direction of her voice. “You’re a conundrum.”

“Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Now you’re getting nasty. I’m going.”

“How about bringing me another bottle of water before you leave me here, all alone and in pain, in the dark, by myself?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re a grown man! You’re always by yourself in the dark,” she muttered as she opened the minibar and pulled out another bottle of water.

“Not always,” he said in a deep voice that positively purred.

She blushed, and she was glad he couldn’t see it.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m putting it right here on the night table... Oh!”

While she was talking, he’d reached out and caught her around the waist, pulling her across him and down onto the bed with him.

He was very strong, and she felt the warmth of his body as he made a cage of his big arms and trapped her gently under the light pressure of his broad, muscular chest.

“Mr. Sinclair,” she began nervously.

He lifted one big hand and touched her hair. “Just be still,” he said quietly. “I want to see you. This is the only way I have, now.”

Guilt made her lie still in his arms as his fingers traced her eyebrows, her forehead, her high cheekbones and straight nose. They lingered on her rounded chin and her soft, bow-shaped mouth. From there they went down to her throat and stilled on the pulse that was surely visible as well as if he’d been able to see it. Her heartbeat was almost shaking her and she had to fight to get in a breath of air.

“You’re nervous,” he said softly.

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

“No need. I’m curious. Surely you did this with your ex-fiancé?” he chided.

She pushed gently against his chest. Her fingers tingled in contact with the hard, warm muscle. “What I did with him is not your business, Mr. Sinclair,” she said uneasily. If he could have seen it, her face was flaming red.

He didn’t like her assertion that it wasn’t his business.

“I’m just curious,” he said sarcastically. “Did that religious thing tie you in knots when you slept with him?”

“Religion is all I’ve had most of my life, Mr. Sinclair. Please don’t ridicule me because I believe in something more powerful than human beings.”

She was so devout. But he’d never felt closer to anyone. The thought shocked him. She was an employee. She was a glorified typist. She had no knowledge of sophisticated living, of men, of the world. Or did she? He’d had too much of women who pretended innocence and were more experienced than he was.

He traced her soft mouth and felt her teeth on the full lower lip. “Stop that,” he said, tugging at it.

She swallowed and drew in a shaky breath. The feel of him was like a narcotic on her senses. He smelled of soap and the faint, lingering scent of aftershave or cologne. He was muscular without being blatant, and as his chest rose and fell, it seemed to her that his own breathing was none too steady.

“Are you on the pill?” he asked suddenly.

She pushed at him, growing frantic when she couldn’t move out of the cage of his arms.

He laughed. “All right,” he said. “Calm down. I get the idea. First you fall in love, then you get in a committed relationship, then you have sex.”

She almost corrected him, that nothing short of a wedding ring was going to get her into any man’s bed, until he laughed again. “It’s not funny,” she muttered angrily.

He took a long breath. There was a lingering smile, but no more amusement. “You fight for your ideals, don’t you, young Emma?” he mused. “I don’t agree with them. But I respect you for them.”

“Thanks. Can I get up, now that we’ve agreed that I’m living in the past?”

His fingers traced her soft mouth, feeling its helpless response. The house was very quiet. The only sounds were her quick breathing, and the furious beat of his own heart. The medicine had relaxed him a little as it took the pain away. Perhaps it had relaxed him too much.

“I’m hungry, Emma,” he whispered, bending slowly to her lips. “I want to see how you taste.”

The last word was almost a groan as he found her mouth with his and possessed it with a tenderness he hadn’t felt since Winona. He could feel Emma’s uncertainty as his mouth teased hers, explored it softly, parted her lips and moved against them with slow, sweet sensuality.

Emma wanted to fight. But it was like a drug. He was tender, and methodical. He didn’t rush. He didn’t demand. He enticed. He coaxed.

Her lips were parting on their own now, following his as they lifted and tempted her, taunted her. He laughed, deep in his throat, at her sudden yielding. So much for her high moral tone. She was as hungry for this as he was. He drew in a quick breath as he felt her hands flatten in the hair over his muscular chest, and reacted to it helplessly. It had been years since he’d been so quickly aroused with a woman.

He wanted to drag her against him and let her feel his hunger, but he hesitated. Even if she was only doing lip service to her morals, he didn’t want to dampen the hunger she was beginning to reveal. He caught her upper lip in both of his and tasted it underneath with his tongue, brushing and lifting. He felt her hands on his upper arms now, her nails digging in involuntarily as she lifted toward him.

His hands slid under her back, under the robe, and he eased down against her, the pressure of his chest even through her gown causing odd, sweet sensations all over her untried body.

One big, strong hand came around to toy with the cotton under her arm. She caught it with a tiny gasp, because even through her robe and gown, his touch was electrifying. But his mouth covered hers again and her fingers relaxed more and more until they moved away. She didn’t want to stop him, anyway. He was making her body sing. He smoothed his fingers over her rib cage, his thumb brushing just the side of her firm breast and making her quiver. He slid it around, over her hips, down to cover her flat stomach.

Why should he suddenly think of babies? His own breath caught against her mouth. A child. He groaned. His mouth became suddenly insistent, demanding. He moved down against her.

Through the gown and robe, she could feel his chest rubbing against her pert little breasts, brushing his chest, arousing him. His hips brushed hers and she felt the changing contours of his body.

A sound worked its way out of her throat and up into his mouth. He recognized it for what it was.

So did she. Even as she heard herself moan, she knew she had to stop him. This could never happen. He was a man who had disposable lovers. She was the woman who’d blinded him. She couldn’t—didn’t—dare let this go any further.

Her hands pressed hard against his chest and she drew her mouth from under his, not without a little shudder of anguish. “Please,” she whispered brokenly. “Please don’t...!

He lifted his head. Odd, that he had a sudden image of white roses and lace flash in his mind.

He moved away from her and fought to catch his breath. It was hard to let her go, because she tasted like heady wine.

He felt her begin to relax as he lifted himself away from her. But his fingers still moved on her rib cage, very slowly, teasing near her breast. He felt her reaction to even that innocent touch. She wanted him. She might not be ready for intimacy, but she wouldn’t resist long, if he insisted. He was sure of it.

Emma was torn between what her body wanted and what she knew she had to do. His touch kindled a hunger that was totally unfamiliar. New. It wasn’t the lure of sex, either. It was something more, something sweeter.

He drew in a last, steadying breath. “You’re very slender, Emma,” he said softly. “How much do you weigh?”

She laughed. “A hundred and ten,” she said, surprised.

“You’re tall.”

“Well, not so very. Just five feet and six inches.”

His hand lifted, reluctantly, and found her hair. It was braided down her back. He smiled. “You don’t let it loose at night?”

“It tangles.”

“I suppose so. What color is it?”

“Blond. Pale blond.”

“And your eyes?”

She smiled. “They’re brown. Dark brown.”

“An interesting combination.”

“I’m not pretty,” she added quietly. “I have regular features, but they’re not beautiful. Nothing like...” She bit her tongue. She was going to say, like that woman who’d cooked him a soufflé once that he complained about. She’d been beautiful. But the woman he’d hated, who’d blinded him, had remembered that. The woman she was pretending to be wouldn’t have known about the soufflé, and he’d have snapped at the memory like a fish biting a worm. She had to be careful about what she said to him.

“Nothing like...?” he asked.

“Nothing like the sort of women you probably know,” she said instead.

He shrugged. “They all start to look alike after a while. Feel alike. Sound alike.” He sighed. “I suppose I’ve gotten jaded in my old age, Emma. Women come and go. Mostly they go. I’m thirty-eight. I’m slowing down. I sent the last one away a couple of weeks ago. The one you put through to me recently,” he added with pursed lips.

“Oh, dear.”

“You’ll learn who gets to talk to me and who doesn’t.”

“Do they take numbers and stand in line?” she wondered.

He chuckled. “Not quite.”

It felt comfortable, lying in bed with him. She liked it very much.

“I should go to bed,” she said.

“I guess you should.” He sat up and felt for her arm, pulling her up gently with him.

“Is your head better?” she asked as she got to her feet.

“Much better.” He cocked his head and smiled wickedly. “If I get another migraine, will you come back?”

She laughed softly. “Not without some promises from you first.”

“Coward.”

“You bet.”

He drew in a breath and stretched lazily. Watching him, Emma almost moaned at the way he looked, half-dressed. He was beautiful, like a painting. Like a sculpture.

“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” she said abruptly, because she realized she was enjoying the sight of him a little too much.

“Thanks, Emma,” he said suddenly.

“You’re welcome. I’m glad your head’s better.”

He just nodded.

She went out and closed the door.

He groaned and put his head in his hands. His body was in agony. She wasn’t like his other women, and he wanted her. But she’d expect a commitment, a wedding, the whole nine yards if he gave in to his urges. So what the hell was he going to do now?

Down the hall, Emma was wondering the same thing. She loved kissing him. She loved having him hold her. She should have resisted more. Instead, she’d enjoyed everything he did to her.

It had felt like descriptions she’d read in one of the romance novels she loved to read. She’d dreamed of a kiss like that from a man who’d love her and marry her and make a home with her.

But she had to keep in mind that Connor was a millionaire—maybe even a billionaire. He lived life in the fast lane. Casinos and shows on Broadway and all things glamorous. She’d never fit into that world. And she’d better remember that he didn’t want marriage or children. It would be madness to get involved with him, even in an innocent way.

Beneath all that was the memory that she’d blinded him, that he couldn’t see because she’d gone wild in a speedboat on a lake where one had killed his only brother. She shivered as she thought of the vengeance he was likely to take if he ever found out who she really was. It had been insane to do this, to think that he might soften if he got to know her, that she could tell him and he’d forgive her. This was a man who never forgave anyone, who repaid in kind every transgression. This was a man who didn’t know what mercy was.

She didn’t sleep much. By morning she’d made a decision. It wasn’t an easy one.

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