Emily and the Stranger (6 page)

"Is your story a fairy tale with a phony happy ending?" Mitch well remembered his mother reading to him from the ragged book she'd saved from her own childhood. His mother had been a hopeless romantic, his father a lazy dreamer. Together they had almost ruined the lives of their five innocent children.

Clutching the edge of the pad, Emily sighed heavily. "If you're asking whether or not all my stories will have happy endings, then the answer is yes."

"Adults shouldn't lie to children. Kids shouldn't be taught that life always ends happily ever after."

"I disagree." She saw the skepticism on his hard, lean face, and knew it would be useless to argue. Somewhere along the way, this man had lost his ability to wish for the impossible. "Simplistic as it sounds, life is a roller coaster ride filled with ups and downs. Sometimes we'll have our hearts broken and our dreams destroyed, but we have to dry our tears and dream new dreams."

If Emily Jordan was still this much of a romantic optimist after losing her husband and living through a horrible nightmare, then perhaps her life hadn't been ruined. Perhaps she had found happiness again. "You're obviously a romantic. Your books must fill children's heads with a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas."

"Not really. At least not yet. I'm still in the preparation stages for my Hannah books."

"So you're not published?"

"Not yet, but hopefully, someday." Laying down the pad, she punched the Off button on the cassette player. "Would you like to sit down and get out of the sun?" Emily patted the large tulip quilt on which she sat. She had wanted to meet this man for over a month, and now here he was standing beside her, talking to her, looking at her with the most incredible blue eyes she'd ever seen.

Was she a fool to be so friendly to a stranger? She knew nothing about this man—absolutely nothing. Was it possible that he was her mystery caller? Had he somehow found out her name and phone numbers at home and at work? Was the typed "love letter" she had received yesterday from him?

Her common sense told her to be cautious, but her feminine desires told her to throw caution to the winds.

"Are you asking me to share your quilt?" He watched her closely for a reaction.

Smiling, she looked him directly in the eye. "Yes." There was something about this man, about the way he looked at her, that unnerved her, but didn't frighten her.

When he sat down beside her, she turned and reached inside her small cooler to retrieve two chilled bottles. "Would you care for some apple juice?" She offered him a bottle.

Apple juice? He looked down at her gift. He didn't think he'd ever drunk apple juice in his entire life. His fingers grazed hers when he accepted the bottle, and a sizzling sensation ran up his arm. Touching her, even briefly, alerted his senses to trouble. "Thanks."

Emily studied the big, blond man sitting beside her. Muscular, tanned, robust, and sexy to the point of being dangerous to any woman who crossed his path. She found him extremely appealing. Had she let the overwhelming attraction she felt dull her senses? Was that the reason she had ignored her common sense and allowed her feminine desires to guide her? Was that the reason she had decided to trust a perfect stranger, when she had doubts about Charles Tolbert and Rod Simmons, two men she knew and liked?

The stranger turned and smiled at her, his searing blue eyes focusing on her face. When she felt the warmth of a blush creeping into her cheeks, she abruptly looked down, hoping he wouldn't notice.

Was she blushing? Mitch wondered. He couldn't believe it. As
a
general rule, modern women didn't blush. Hell, was it possible that Emily felt the attraction between them as strongly as he did? Was that what was bothering her?

"My Hannah character was based on a real person," Emily said in an effort to distract herself from concentrating so intensely on her neighbor's obvious physical attributes. She took a sip from the chilled bottle of juice before she picked up her sketch pad.

"Is that right?" Following her lead, Mitch put his bottle to his lips and took a giant sip. Much to his surprise, he found the fruity liquid quite refreshing.

"My grandmother's name was Hannah. She spent many happy days of her childhood in that house." Turning, Emily pointed to the white clapboard cottage nestled on a grassy knoll above the beach. "When I was a little girl and came here in the summer, Grammy used to tell me the most wonderful stories about vacations at the cottage when she was growing up."

Mitch set the bottle of juice between his legs. He knew very little about Emily Jordan. Only what Zed had been able to find out from various sources. After her husband's death in the fire, she'd had eight surgeries on her back. Until recently, she had lived in
Mobile
with her husband's uncle, Fowler Jordan, the respected head of a prestigious accounting firm. Then a few months ago, she'd moved into the beachfront cottage on Scenic Highway 98 that she had inherited from her grandmother. And with a partner, she had opened an art supply store called the Paint Box in the nearby town of
Fairhope
.

"You were close to your grandmother?" Mitch asked.

"My grandmother raised me. At least for the most part." Emily had loved Hannah McLain more dearly than either of her own parents. "My father was killed in an accident when I was twelve, and my mother remarried shortly afterward. I chose to live with Grammy."

"How long have you lived in your grandmother's cottage?"

"For a couple of months. But this—" she spread out her arms in a loving gesture as if she could encompass the house, the beach, the bay and the sky in her arms "—has always seemed like home to me for as long as I can remember."

"I've never felt like that about a place. I haven't had a real home since I was a kid." He leaned back, propping himself up with his elbows. "I've spent the last five years bumming around the country."

"And before that?" She looked at him and couldn't help noticing that his eyes were the coldest, palest blue she'd ever seen.

He didn't reply at first, only stared at her. He was incredibly good-looking and almost too masculine. His height and powerful build gave him an air of rugged strength. His clothes fit his body with a snug casualness, his shirt outlining every well-developed muscle in his chest and shoulders. For some odd reason, Emily had the strangest urge to reach out and run her hands over his broad shoulders.

"Before I started bumming around, I had a steady job." He didn't want to tell this woman anything about his past—not yet. She probably held him responsible for her husband's death; and he didn't blame her. Even if when he told her who he was she didn't run away, how would he ever be able to convince her of his innocence, when in his very soul he felt guilty?

Emily flipped over a page in her pad, picked up her charcoal and began drawing.

"Do you live alone?" he asked, trying to think of something to say to keep himself from taking her face in his hands and bringing her mouth close enough to kiss. Dear God, she was a sweet temptation, a temptation to which he could never surrender.

"Yes." She knew by the way he was looking at her that he wanted to kiss her, and oddly enough the thought of his lips on hers didn't frighten her. "You're living alone, too, aren't you?"

"Quite alone."

"No family? Wife? Children?"

"No." He finished the last drops of apple juice and set the empty bottle next to the cooler.

"You must get lonely." She instinctively felt that this man was unbearably lonely.

"What about you—are you lonely? Or is there someone in your life?" He wanted her to say that she wasn't lonely, that she was happy and her life was good.

"There isn't a special man, if that's what you're asking, but my life is filled with people. A special uncle, a dear friend and my art students."

"You're a teacher?"

"An art teacher," she said. "I own an art supply store in Fairhope. And I teach art classes. Mostly to children, but I do have some adult pupils."

"You must like children if you can endure teaching them."

"I love children." If only she hadn't lost her baby the night Stuart died, her child would be nearly five years old. "Don't you like children?"

"Kids don't fit into my life in any way." He'd grown up in a household overrun with children—crying, fighting, hungry brothers and sisters with bare feet and hand-me-down clothes and
Mississippi
red clay under their fingernails.

"You don't plan to have children of your own someday?" She didn't think about how personal the question was until she'd already blurted out. "Oh, forgive me for asking. It's certainly none of my business."

"No, I don't plan to have any children. I helped raise several younger brothers and sisters. That pretty much got the fathering instinct out of my system." When he'd been climbing the ladder of success and he and Randy had been raking in the big bucks, Mitch had helped his younger siblings. Now he was doing good just taking care of himself. He didn't have anything to offer a woman, let alone anything to give a child.

"I was an only child." Emily lay back and stretched out on the quilt, then looked up at Mitch. "I've always wanted children."

"Then I hope someday you have them." From out of nowhere the thought of this lovely woman's very pregnant body drifted into his mind. She would look beautiful all round and full, her feminine form nurturing a child. His child. "Damn!" Mitch sat up quickly, cursing himself for a fool.

"What?" She'd heard his outburst, but had no idea what had prompted it.

Deliberately he turned away—to avoid her searching gaze. Reaching out, he punched the Play button on her cassette player. A somewhat somber tune began, an elegant blend of strings and brass. Very gradually the music built, then dropped away, only to rebuild again and again. "Classical music, huh?"

"Yes." Instantly she realized he was fighting to control his emotions, and she knew instinctively that it wasn't something he had to do often. "That's Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 5 playing."

"I don't know anything about that kind of music. I prefer good old rock 'n' roll or some hot jazz." He clinked the side of the empty juice bottle with his fingernail.

"I love all types of music, but I must admit I'm a sucker for classical." She watched the way he kept fiddling with his empty bottle, his hands nervously caressing the glass surface. "Grammy's influence. She used to take me to concerts when I was a child. And the ballet. And the opera."

"My old man listened to the
Grand Ole Opry
when I was a kid." Mitch supposed that was why, to this day, he couldn't stand country music. "We weren't very cultured, to say the least."

"Culture isn't everything," Emily said. "I think honesty and integrity and compassion are far more important."

He couldn't resist turning toward her, his gaze traveling the length of her slender body. For five years this one woman had haunted his dreams, had tormented him day and night. When he returned to the Gulf, he had wanted to meet Emily, to make sure she was fully recovered from the tragedy his construction firm had caused. That's all he had wanted. Just to check on her. Make sure she was all right. To see if he could do anything to help her.

But now, after meeting her, all he could think about was what it would be like to make love to her.

He looked at her with such undisguised longing in his eyes that Emily wanted to weep. What would this devastatingly handsome man think of her if he could see her scars? Would he be repulsed? Would he cringe at the sight of her imperfect back covered with disfigured flesh that could never be restored to its former perfection?

Lured by the undeniable attraction that pulsated between them, Mitch found himself reaching out to touch the locket that hung from a thin chain around her neck. His big finger circled the round gold pendant. "Lady, are you what you appear to be, or are you some illusion I've dreamed up?"

Her breath caught in her throat when his hand accidentally brushed against her breast as he continued fondling her necklace. "And just what—what do I appear to be?"

"A very beautiful, very delicate, very sensitive lady." He wanted to pull her into his arms, to see if she would melt against him. She gazed at him as if nothing would please her more.

Emily eased away from him, but smiled as she stroked the gold chain about her neck. Only moments before, his fingers had caressed the thin metal, and she could almost feel his touch. She had never met anyone like this man, had never reacted so strongly to another man's look or touch or the sound of his voice.

"I think you could be a dangerous man," Emily said, admitting that he posed a threat to her self-control. Had she been wrong about him? Was it possible that he was her mystery man? Had he been the one who called "just to hear her voice"? Was he the one who had quoted Shelley and Byron in the love letter? "Any woman would be a fool to trust you too quickly."

"Did your Grammy teach you to be wary of strangers? If she did, she was a smart lady." Mitch sat beside her, unmoving, but within his own mind, he withdrew from her. "You're right. I can be dangerous."

Dear God, sweet Emily, I'm the most dangerous man you know.

"My grandmother taught me to trust my instincts where people are concerned."