Emily and the Stranger (16 page)

Emily greeted her uncle warmly, readily going into his embrace. "Uncle Fowler, what are you doing here?"

"Nikki called me this morning and told me what had happened." Fowler slipped his arm around Emily's waist. "You shouldn't have stayed here alone last night. I wish you had telephoned me. I would have driven over immediately and taken you home. You know your room is always ready. I haven't changed a thing since you moved out."

"By the time the police left, it was awfully late." Emily clasped Fowler's hand in hers. "Besides, I wasn't alone last night."

"When Nikki phoned, she didn't mention that she'd stayed with you."

"Nikki didn't stay with me." Emily hesitated, fearing her uncle would overreact to the news that Ray Mitchell had spent the night with her. "Mitch stayed with me."

"My God, girl, you let that man stay here…" Fowler's face flushed. "He could have murdered you in your sleep. He could have—"

"You're getting upset over nothing." Emily squeezed Fowler's trembling hand. "Mitch is not the person who's been harassing me."

"I believe he is." Fowler turned, grasped Emily's shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. "There are things about that man you don't know."

"What things?" Emily asked.

"I've been making inquiries about this Ray Mitchell and—"

"Oh, Uncle Fowler, you had no right to do that."

Mitch jumped when the back door slammed shut. He turned his head. Nikki came up behind him.

"'Ray Mitchell' is an alias," Fowler said.

Every muscle in Mitch's body stiffened. His heartbeat accelerated, the drumming roar pounding inside his head. Fowler
Jordan
was going to tell Emily exactly who Ray Mitchell was and there wasn't a damn thing Mitch could do to stop him.

"What do you mean 'Ray Mitchell' is an alias?" Emily asked.

"The man you've been dating is not the man you think he is," Fowler told her.

Mitch's stomach knotted painfully. He knew what was going to happen. Nikki's small hand closed around Mitch's arm. Her nails bit into his flesh.

"This Mitch you're so smitten with is Mitchell Ray Hayden. M. R. Hayden of Styles and Hayden Construction Company." Fowler cleared his throat. "I'm so very sorry, my dear."

"What?" All the color drained from Emily's face. "What did you say?"

"I realize that this Hayden fellow didn't actually kill our Stuart, but—"

"Please, Emily … honey … please let me explain." Mitch stepped around the corner of the porch. Nikki followed close behind him.

Jerking her whole body around in one trembling move, Emily stared at Mitch. "You're M. R. Hayden?"

"Dammit! I didn't want you to find out this way." Mitch's eyes pleaded with her.

"You've changed a great deal, Hayden." Fowler
Jordan
focused his heated glare on Mitch. "I'm not sure I would have recognized you. Not at first, anyway. But the detective I hired to investigate you gave me irrevocable proof of your identity."

"You hired a detective to investigate Mitch?" Emily asked.

"My instincts told me that this new neighbor of yours couldn't be trusted, that he might well be your tormentor," Fowler said. "I think I've been proven correct. Mitchell Hayden set out to deliberately deceive you." Fowler grasped Emily's chin, forcing her to look at him. "I am so very sorry, dear child. I should have found a way to protect you from—"

"I didn't mean to deceive you!" Mitch said, knowing he had to defend himself before Emily's uncle convinced her that he was truly a monster. "I had intended to tell you when we first met, but I couldn't." Mitch took a tentative step toward Emily, then stopped when she backed away from him.

"Are you really M. R. Hayden?" The warmth in Emily's brown eyes died, turning her stare into a frozen glimmer.

"Yes, I'm Mitchell Ray Hayden. I was once co-owner of Styles and Hayden Construction Company," Mitch admitted, and when he saw the look on Emily's face, he wished more fervently than he'd ever wished before that he could die on the spot.

Emily quivered from head to toe. She clutched the back of a nearby rocker.

"Emily," Mitch said.

"Em," Nikki said.

Emily closed her eyes. The pain was more than she could bear, but bear it she would. Just a little longer. "I trusted you. I believed I'd found someone I could love. You let me care about you. You let me lie in your arms all night and—"

"No, Emily, it can't be true. You didn't sleep with this man!" Fowler swayed on his feet. He reached out and grabbed the banister. "My God, Emily, how could you have—"

"Shut up!" Nikki screamed. "She doesn't need your censor. Not now. She needs our love and support."

Mitch wanted to take Emily into his arms and kiss away the pain he saw on her face. He wanted to comfort her. His sweet Emily. No, not his Emily. She would never be his Emily again.

Emily and Nikki and Mitch stood, unmoving, on the porch. No one said a word. Then Fowler reached for Emily. She shook her head. Fowler dropped his outstretched hand.

"You must come home with me, dear," Fowler said. "I'll take care of you and help you forget this ever happened."

Ignoring her uncle, Emily looked at Mitch. "Please leave."

"Emily, don't do this to me," Mitch begged. "Don't do this to us."

"There is no us," Emily said. "I fell in love with a man who doesn't exist. You're not my Mitch, the gentle, loving man who held me and comforted me last night." Emily choked back a sob. "You're more a stranger to me now than you were the day we met. Dear Lord, you're M. R. Hayden. You killed Stuart. You killed my baby!"

Emily balled her hands into fists. She hated M. R. Hayden, but she loved Mitch. No, no, no! It wasn't fair! With blind fury, Emily lunged at Mitch, pounding her fists into his solid chest. Again and again. She screamed at him, saying over and over, "You killed Stuart. You killed my baby. You ruined my
life."

 
Mitch stood there, allowing her to vent her torment, taking every blow without feeling anything, taking every word she spoke to heart, dying inch by inch as Emily destroyed his last hope of redemption.

Chapter 9

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M
itch found Zed Banning alone in his
Mobile
condo. All the way there, he'd known what he was going to do. He was going to ask Zed Banning why the hell he'd ever bothered to bring him back to the Gulf, why he'd given a damn about saving him from self-destruction. He'd have been better off drinking himself to death than dying a thousand times over every time he remembered the look of loathing on Emily's face.

"So you and Emily Jordan finally got around to sharing past histories." Zed stepped back, swinging out his arm in an invitation to enter.

"Why, Zed? That's all I want to know. Why?" Mitch stared at the man who'd given him a chance to put his life back together, the man who had saved him from himself, the man who'd given him a job and a place to live when no one else in the country would give M. R. Hayden the time of day. "Why did I ever think she'd forgive me?"

"Come on in. I'll fix you a drink."

Zed turned and left Mitch standing in the doorway. He picked up the remote control to the television and switched off the sports channel he'd been watching. Then he walked behind the chrome, glass and leather bar at the far side of his living room, set up two glasses and lifted a bottle of ginger ale from the metal shelves beneath the bar. "Neat or on the rocks?"

"Neat." Slamming the door behind him, Mitch entered the room, walking slowly, taking his time.

Zed poured their drinks, picked up the glasses and rounded the side of the bar. "Sit down." He handed Mitch his ginger ale. "I don't think you need anything stronger."

Mitch sat down, took a sip, then frowned at Zed. "You knew all along what would happen. You tried to warn me, and once again I wouldn't listen."

"I wasn't a hundred percent sure what would happen," Zed said. "There was always a chance that the lady would see past her own hurt and loss and realize you weren't responsible for what your partner did."

"You didn't seem surprised to find me on your doorstep? You already knew what had happened with Emily? How?"

"I just got a call from Fowler Jordan, cursing a blue streak, demanding to know how I had the nerve to give a killer a job and allow him to move into a cottage next door to his niece." Zed huffed loudly. "It seems
Jordan
holds me responsible because I'm the man who brought you back to this area and gave you a job."

"Well, I don't suppose you could defend your actions, could you? After all, in a way, I am a killer."

"You didn't kill anyone!" Standing beside Mitch's chair, Zed took a sip of his drink. "You made some errors in judgment about your partner. You trusted the wrong people. If anyone is responsible for Stuart Jordan's death, it's Randy Styles."

"I was a fool. The biggest fool who ever lived. All I could see were dollar signs, big-time success and Loni Prentice in my bed every night." Mitch gulped down the remainder of the ginger ale, wishing with all his might it were whiskey. But Zed had been right not to serve him any hard liquor. Not today. It would be far too easy to drown his sorrows in the bottle. "Why couldn't I have discovered what Randy was doing before anyone had to die, before Emily lost her husband and child?"

"I assume Emily didn't take the news well when you told her who you are." Zed sat down on the tan leather sofa across from Mitch's brown leather chair. "Give her time and she'll come around."

"Are you crazy?" Mitch glared at Zed, then looked down at his feet when he saw the pity and deep concern in his friend's eyes. "Yeah, you're crazy, but I'm crazier than you are. All you did was bring me back to the Gulf and give me a job. I'm the fool who moved next door to the widow of a man killed in the collapse of one of Styles and Hayden's buildings. I'm the one who asked her for a date.

"You didn't put Emily and me in the situation we're in now. You warned me to tell her who I was. I don't see how anyone could blame you for what happened."

"If I hadn't brought you back to
Alabama
, you'd probably be dead now. You know that, don't you?" Zed asked.

"Yeah, well, I'd probably be better off and so would Emily," Mitch said.

"If there's something real between you and Emily Jordan, you'll find a way to work through this."

"Do you honestly think that Emily will ever be able to forgive me for my part in the collapse of the Ocean Breeze Apartments?" Mitch set his empty glass down on the sleek, beige metal table beside his chair. "I was fooling myself when I thought she'd understand. I was living in a fantasy world."

"I'm sorry, Mitch. But you can't run away from Emily. Not now. Not after you've gotten this deeply involved with her. You owe it to her and to yourself to face the past and make peace with it. Even if she never forgives you, you have to find a way to forgive yourself."

"I guess you're right, except you didn't figure in the possibility that maybe Emily and I might … well, that we might…"

"Are you finally admitting that you're in love with her?"

"I'm admitting that I've never felt about another woman the way I do Emily. She made me happy, Zed. Happier than I've ever been in my life."

"And how does she feel about you?"

"Before or after she found out that I'm M. R. Hayden?"

Zed took another sip of his ginger ale, then set it down on the glass-and-chrome coffee table in front of him. "Before?" Zed asked.

"I think she was falling in love with me." Standing abruptly, Mitch nearly knocked over the metal table at his side. Running his fingers through his hair, he paced the floor. "I didn't get the chance to tell her who I was. Hell, I should have told her I was M. R. Hayden when we first met. She wouldn't be hurting so bad if I'd been up front with her in the beginning."

"So why didn't you tell her yourself that you're M. R. Hayden?"

"That's a long, complicated story."

"I've got time to listen."

"I didn't get a chance to tell Emily I'm M. R. Hayden because last night when I took her home from our date, we discovered that someone had broken into her house and ransacked her living room. Whoever did it left her a message."

"What sort of message?"

"'Don't ever see him again. He's the wrong man for you,'" Mitch said. "The message was scrawled, in spray paint, across the mirror in her living room. Somebody's been harassing her for weeks—phone calls, letters and now the break-in. I'm just afraid that now that my true identity has been revealed, her uncle will convince her I was the one behind everything."

"But we know it wasn't you," Zed said. "So that means whoever has been harassing Emily is still out there. She's still in danger. She's going to need you."

"I'd do anything in this world to protect her, but how can I, when she isn't going to let me get anywhere near her?"

Positioning himself on the edge of the sofa cushion, Zed spread his legs apart and dropped his clasped hands between his knees. "You want my advice, old buddy?"