Emily and the Stranger (11 page)

"I ache with wanting you." His ragged-edged voice proclaimed the precarious hold he had over his emotions. "Since we first met on the beach, I've thought of little else but easing your clothes from your body and running my hands over every beautiful inch of you."

Emily froze in his arms. "Please, Mitch, you mustn't say such things to me."

His whispered seduction claimed her heart, but her rational mind reminded her that this man would be repulsed by the sight of her not-so-beautiful body. He had no way of knowing that ugly scars covered her back. She tried to pull away from him, but he restrained her.

"Why shouldn't I say such things to you? I want you to know how I feel. You make me crazy, pretty lady."
Crazy to be inside you.

"Please let me go." Emily tried again to free herself of his hold, but he refused to release her.

"Give me a chance. Give us a chance." He brought her hand to his lips, kissing the top of her fingers. "Don't try to deny that you feel what's happening between us just as strongly as I do."

Emily submitted momentarily, laying her head on his chest. Loving the hard, hot comfort of his big body, she listened to the savage beat of his heart. "I feel the attraction between us, but I can't … I'm not going to give in to what I feel. I thought you understood that all I can offer you is my friendship."

Mitch dropped his hands from her body. He hated himself when he looked into her bourbon-brown eyes and saw the truth staring back at him. Emily was scared.

"I'm sorry." He cupped her chin in his hand. "Don't be afraid of me, Emily. I would never hurt you. I pushed a little too hard tonight, went a little too fast. I'll slow down. We'll move at your pace."

Dear God, he was an idiot. He hadn't meant to confess how much he wanted her, how desperately he longed to make love to her. Their first date should have been less intense.

"Mitch, I… Please don't expect—"

"I expect you to forgive me for wanting more than you're ready to give." Leaning down, he kissed her on the forehead. "There hasn't been anyone, has there, since your husband died?"

"No. There hasn't been anyone."
And there never will be.
The tears that fell from her eyes came from self-pity, from the depths of her soul, which had endured so much to survive despite her heart's desire to die.

Mitch couldn't bear to see her upset, to know that she still felt her husband's loss so intensely. "Don't cry, Emily. Smile for me. Tell me that you forgive me. Tell me you'll be my friend."

Emily swallowed hard. Mitch wiped away her tears with his fingertips. She looked at him and smiled.

"There's nothing to forgive." More than anything she wanted to tell him the truth, to explain why she'd turned away from him, why she was afraid to become his lover. "I want us to be friends, Mitch. I want that very much."

Chapter 6

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"
T
his isn't turning out the way I'd thought it would," Mitch said. "All I had planned on doing was making sure she was all right and seeing if I could do something—anything—to help her."

Zed Banning glanced down into the glass of bourbon he held, grunted, then lifted the liquor to his lips and took a sip. "I tried to warn you. I told you to stay away from her, but you wouldn't listen to me. Then I told you to tell her who you are, but you didn't do that, either." Zed slammed the glass down on the coffee table, sloshing the contents up to the rim. "You're obsessed with Emily Jordan. You have been for the past five years. And now that you've met her, you're more obsessed with her than ever."

Mitch paced the floor in Zed's condo living room. He felt like a trapped animal. Trapped by his own unwanted emotions. Trapped by his desire for a woman he had no right to claim. "She's not like any woman I've ever known. She's so honest and—"

"Ladies never were your type, Mitch." Zed dropped his big body down into a plush navy leather chair.

"It's more than that." Stopping dead still, Mitch glanced at Zed and saw the concern in his old friend's eyes. "I'm about as confused as a man can get. I want to help Emily. I'd like to make everything up to her, to see that nothing bad ever happens to her again. But at the same time, I want her more than I've ever wanted anything in my life." Mitch raked his fingers through his hair and groaned a vulgar curse. "Go ahead and tell me I'm crazy. Tell me that I've screwed up again, that I've gone and painted myself into a corner."

"There's only one way out of this, only one decent thing to do."

"Tell Emily who I am."

"You've been seeing her for a couple of weeks now, and from what you've told me, things are getting pretty serious." Zed lifted one leg, crossing it over his other knee, then he reared back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "If you're not honest with her soon, you're going to wind up breaking her heart, and you've already got more than enough guilt to deal with."

"I didn't plan on getting involved with her." Mitch walked behind the bar, reached into the liquor cabinet beneath and brought out the bottle of bourbon. "Not romantically involved. But I swear, Zed, if you ever saw her … if you ever talked to her … touched her…"

"Are you in love with her?"

Mitch laughed, the sound edged with pain. "Hell, I don't know the first thing about love. I wouldn't know it if it jumped up and bit me on the ass. But I know a lot about lust, about wanting a woman until you hurt with the wanting."

"So you just want to sleep with Emily, is that it?"

"No! Yes! Dammit, Zed, I told you that I'm confused. I feel so many different things when it comes to Emily that I can't straighten out all my emotions." Mitch gripped the bourbon bottle with white-knuckled tension.

"Maybe part of the confusion is that you know you've lied to her and that when she finds out the truth, anything can happen. She might hate you. She might forgive you. Hell, for all you know, she might already be in love with you. But one thing's for certain—you're going to wind up hurting her, whether you tell her the truth tonight or tomorrow or next month."

Mitch poured the whiskey into a glass, recapped the bottle and shoved it aside. He lifted the glass, saluted Zed with it and then downed the bourbon. It blazed a trail down his throat and hit his stomach like a hot coal.

He caught Zed glaring at him and knew his friend was concerned about his drinking. "Don't worry. This is my first drink tonight and it'll be my last. I've found out that drinking myself senseless doesn't solve my problems."

"I'm glad you've made one right decision since coming back to the Gulf. I was beginning to wonder if you were incapable of learning from your mistakes."

"Yeah, well, I've learned something else, too. Something I should have learned five years ago." Mitch took a deep, cleansing breath. "When you give me advice, I should take it. If I'd listened to you, I would have told Emily that I was M. R. Hayden the day I introduced myself to her on the beach."

"Better late than never." Zed glanced down at his gold Rolex. "It's only
eight o'clock
. You can be in Point
Clear
in forty-five minutes. Tell her tonight."

"She's not at home tonight. She's having dinner with her uncle here in
Mobile
. At his house. She's very fond of Fowler Jordan. She told me that he kept her alive when she wanted to die, after her husband's death…" Mitch's voice trailed off. He couldn't bear to think about how much Emily had lost because of Styles and Hayden. "Emily said that
Jordan
wouldn't let her give up. She thinks she owes him her life."

"From what I've heard, she gave him five years of her life."

"And he gave her five years of his."

Zed lifted his arms up and behind his head, leaning back into the soft, thick cushion. "I don't know
Jordan
personally, but we do have several friends and associates in common. And they say that
Jordan
is more than devoted to Emily. They say…" Zed hesitated, focusing his attention directly on Mitch "They say he's obsessed with her, and that when she moved out of his house, he was distraught. It seems
Jordan
had picked out a new mate for Emily, someone he knew he could control. Someone willing to take his nephew Stuart's place not only in
Jordan
's accounting firm, but in his home, as Emily's husband."

"Sounds like
Jordan
didn't intend to lose a niece when she remarried—he just planned on gaining an obedient replacement nephew."

"Be prepared for
Jordan
's wrath when he finds out about you," Zed warned. "Make no mistake about it.
Jordan
hates M. R. Hayden, and he'll do his damnedest to make sure Emily never forgives you."

Mitch stared at the whiskey bottle, badly wanting another drink. He was in an untenable position and he had no one to blame but himself. He had walked into this relationship with Emily Jordan with his eyes wide open, knowing full well he had no right to keep his identity from her. He had unintentionally helped ruin her life five years ago. But this time his common sense had told him that he was going to hurt Emily if he lied to her, and still he had gone with his gut emotions—his damn male desires—and pursued Emily like a lover.

Zed was right. He
had
been obsessed with Emily for five years and now that he'd gotten to know her, he was more obsessed than ever. If only he'd never talked to her, never touched her, never looked into her whiskey-brown eyes, never tasted her sweet, hot mouth.

What the hell was he going to do? He didn't want to lose Emily. Not as a friend. Not as a… As a what? A lover? They weren't lovers. Not yet. But Emily felt the sexual attraction between them as strongly as he did. He knew that she wanted him. With every look, every shy smile, every kiss, she told him silently of her desire. In spite of her declaration to the contrary, Mitch knew that sooner or later, she would allow him to become her lover.

But not if she knew he was M. R. Hayden.

* * *

Emily shifted uncomfortably in the carved mahogany Chippendale chair. She covered her mouth to hide a yawn.

"Are we boring you, my dear?" Fowler
Jordan
asked, his dark-blue eyes focusing on Emily.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Fowler." She smiled at him apologetically, her look beseeching his forgiveness for her rudeness. She knew one of the things Uncle Fowler had always liked about her was her old-fashioned Southern good manners. Grammy had set great store in good manners. As a child, Emily remembered countless times Grammy had said, "We don't do that." Or, "We prefer this." Always using "we" in the royal sense. Other people might be allowed to forget their good manners, but not the McLains.

"It appears that we've bored her so badly that we've taken away her appetite." Charles Tolbert glanced at the food on Emily's plate. "You've barely eaten a bite. All you've done is play with your food."

Emily cringed. Charles was such a fussbudget. When she had described his personality to Nikki, she'd said, "He's as fussy as a crotchety old woman." He wasn't really. It was just that he was so highly organized, his life so structured, his habits so predictable, his opinions so set, that he made little allowance for mistakes—in himself or others. And Uncle Fowler doted on Charles, as he had once doted on Stuart. She couldn't help but wonder if Stuart had been as straitlaced and uptight as Charles was and she simply had been too young and too in love to notice.

"My dear, you don't seem quite yourself tonight." Fowler neatly folded his linen napkin and laid it beside his plate. "Is there something wrong? Something bothering you?"

Telling Uncle Fowler about Ray Mitchell would be easier if Charles wasn't sitting across the table from her. She supposed she should have known that her uncle would invite Charles to join them tonight. After all, he was determined to see her marry Charles and the two of them resume the life that he'd planned for Stuart and her. Although she had dated Charles on and off for mouths before she'd moved out on her own, there had never been anything romantic between them. At least not on her part. And she'd never said or done anything to lead Charles on. She was fond of him, thought of him as a friend, but she certainly didn't love him. And marriage to him was out of the question. She had tried to make Uncle Fowler understand, but he'd told her to give herself time, that he knew Charles was the perfect man for her.

"There's something I think you should know." Avoiding eye contact with either man, Emily glanced across the room at the English Regency sideboard topped by a pair of bronze Chinese vases. "I—I've been seeing someone for a couple of weeks now."

Charles strangled on the sip of coffee he'd just taken into his mouth His pale-brown eyes rounded in shock. Fowler straightened, stiffening his back.

"You've been seeing someone?" Fowler's jaw tightened; his eyes narrowed questioningly. "For a couple of weeks, and you're just now mentioning it to me?"

"I didn't want to give you something else to worry about," Emily explained, well aware that no matter how she handled this, her uncle would not he pleased. "I know you've been unhappy about my moving into Grammy's cottage and I know you think I'm insane for going into business with Nikki … and you've been so upset about the letters and phone calls. I just wanted to wait until I knew my relationship with Mitch was going to … to—"