Читать книгу A Tempting Engagement - BRONWYN JAMESON, Bronwyn Jameson - Страница 8

Emily—his Emily—was working in a bar?

Everything inside Mitch Goodwin tensed at his sister’s casually delivered piece of news. Chantal was kidding, right? Looking to get a rise out of big brother on his first night back in Plenty. Welcome home to Australia, Mitch. Now you’ve unpacked and enjoyed a nice neighborly dinner, here’s something to get your blood pumping.

And of all things guaranteed to get his blood pumping, his son’s former nanny topped the list. With careful control he slotted another plate into the dishwasher. “And you didn’t think you should mention this development when you rang me? When you said ‘Guess who’s moved back to Plenty?’ and I asked how she was doing?”

“How, not what,” Chantal corrected mildly.

“You said she was fine.”

“A change of occupation doesn’t necessarily mean a person’s not fine and/or dandy.”

Mitch gave up all pretence of calm and slammed the dishwasher door shut. “The back bar of the Lion is some kind of change.”

“Hey, it’s not so bad since Bob Foley took over. As a matter of fact, the last brawl—”

“I don’t give a damn if it’s the Ritz. She’s a trained nanny, for cripe’s sake, not a barmaid!”

His angry outburst stopped Chantal midstride. For several surprised seconds she stared at him, the coffee cups in her hands suspended midway between cupboard and bench. “I thought that information would interest you in a more positive way. As in, you moved back here to write, you need a good nanny.”

Precisely. And knowing that the best nanny was pulling beers in the town’s seediest pub added urgency to his objective as well as heat to his conscience. “Joshua can stay here with you and Quade for an hour or two?” he asked.

“Of course,” Chantal answered automatically before she saw him start for the door. Then she threw down a handful of teaspoons with a metallic clatter. “Wait there, just one minute.”

Hand on the doorknob, he started counting down the sixty seconds.

“You’ve been driving half the day, cleaning and unpacking for the rest of it. Go home and sleep. Introduce yourself to a razor and see Emily tomorrow when you’re not looking quite so primitive.” She paused, eyes narrowing as she studied him head to foot. “I assume you do want to engage her services?”

No, want didn’t really cover it. He needed Emily. He and Joshua both.

That steely determination must have shown in his expression because Chantal sighed and shook her head. “Go easy on her, Mitch. I know you’ve had a tough couple of years, but so has Emily.”

Mitch knew all about Emily Warner’s tough years, and the fifteen-minute drive into Plenty provided plenty of time for that knowledge to turn him inside out. His ex-wife dismissing her as Joshua’s nanny for no good reason. Her grandfather’s death and the subsequent battle over his estate. That injustice still boiled Mitch’s blood…although not half as much as his own error of judgment.

Error of judgment? He snorted with self-disgust. That didn’t even begin to describe how he’d abused his duty of care two months after reemploying her, how he’d taken advantage of her warm, compassionate nature and shattered her trust.

As Joshua’s nanny, she’d lived in his home, and the night he learned of Annabelle’s death… His hands tightened on the wheel reflexively. He remembered the gut-kick of intense, impotent anger and the numbness he sought at his local bar. Emily had fetched him home, Emily with her gentle brown eyes and her comforting arms and her soft words of sympathy.

He’d kissed her, possibly to shut off those platitudes. Possibly because he’d ached to lose himself in something softer and sweeter and more supportive than a whiskey bottle. Oh, yeah, he remembered the kissing and the falling into bed and then…a dark, black hole in his memory.

A vision of Emily as he’d last seen her, dressed in nothing but his white linen sheets and a soft, pink flush, drifted through his thoughts and rubbed every raw edge of his conscience. He might not recall what happened that night, but he would never forget the morning after. Her wariness, his clumsy questioning, her insistence that nothing had happened. Except, hot on the heels of that “nothing”—while he and Joshua were traveling to Annabelle’s funeral—she packed her bags and disappeared.

Frustration twisted his gut into a tight, hot knot as he pulled into the car park behind the Lion and switched off the engine. Six months wondering and worrying over the consequences of that night, and he didn’t think he could wait another minute, certainly not the hour until closing. From the near-empty lot he figured she wouldn’t be too busy—the impending rain had kept most sane folk home. He jumped down from the cab, shut the door and—city habit—paused to lock up. He almost missed the small, female figure that slipped from a side entrance. As she hurried off down the street, the wind tore at her hooded parka. Long hair, stick straight, shone silvery pale under a streetlight.

Emily.

His pulse kicked, an instant response to the tumult of sensations that swamped his body. Most of them he didn’t want to identify, so he concentrated on the quick surge of anger. She was walking home alone, through the dark streets, and she didn’t even have the sense to pull her hood over that luminous beacon of hair. Might as well shout, Here I am, young, blond and female. Come and get me.

Suddenly the door to the bar swung open, and two men veered toward Mitch, two men he recognized as former classmates at Plenty High. He had nowhere to hide as Dean Mancini did a classic double take.

“Mitch Goodwin? Stone the crows! I heard you were coming back. Moving into the old Heaslip place, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.” Beyond the mens’ shoulders, Mitch could see Emily’s rapidly retreating figure. “Sorry, mate, but I—”

“Lucky break, your sister getting married and letting you take her place.” Rocky O’Shea rode right over the top of Mitch’s attempt to end the conversation. “But then you always were a lucky bastard.”

Dean planted an elbow in his mate’s side and Rocky, eventually, caught on. His gaze skittered, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and Mitch didn’t really want to hear whatever fumbling words came next. “I have to be somewhere,” he said shortly. “Catch you another time.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Sorry about your…you know.”

“My ex-wife?”

Both men shifted their feet, awkward and ill at ease, but Mitch was already climbing into his truck. Powerful engine gunning, he wheeled the vehicle into the street, but his irritation faded as quickly as it had flared, replaced by a tinge of sympathy for the discomfited pair.

What were you supposed to say to a man whose wife ran off to chase her dazzling career without a thought for their three-year-old son? A wife whose glamorous must-have lifestyle placed her in a doomed jet in a Caribbean thunderstorm?

Even six months after her funeral, he didn’t know what the hell kind of etiquette covered that.

When the first spots of rain dotted the pavement a block from home, Emily huddled deeper into her parka and walked more briskly. She didn’t run. Running would be like ceding defeat to the fear crouched low in her belly, woken by the dreaded combination of rain and darkness and the revving of a powerful motor.

“For pity’s sake, Emily Jane, you’re not even in the car,” she muttered. “Plus you’re in Plenty, not Sydney.” Reasonable points, but the sweep of headlights turning into her street sent her memory into a tailspin.

Her car stopped at traffic lights. The door wrenched open. The man, the knife, the icy clutch of terror as he told her to drive.

Emily was jolted back to the present by the sound of a vehicle slowing and pulling into the curb behind her. Now she should run but her stupid, scared legs refused to cooperate.

“Emily.”

At the sound of her name—of that voice—her heart stuttered, then resumed at the same frantic pace, except with a different kind of panic. A Mitch Goodwin kind of panic. She’d heard talk of his imminent move from Sydney to his family’s hometown, had known he wouldn’t let sleeping dogs—or nannies—lie. That was Mitch’s way, ever the journalist, needing the full story, fact by painful fact.

Six months she had spent constructing her version, preparing for this moment, and now her brain appeared to be in meltdown. Wonderful. With a fatalistic sense of doom, she turned toward the car…correction, truck. Mitch Goodwin sat behind the wheel of a crew-cab truck that could have been tailor-made. Big, dark, rugged. A shivery tension weakened her limbs as he stretched across the front seat to open the passenger door. The cabin light cast tricky shadows across his darkly stubbled face, and his deep-set eyes, too, looked unfathomably dark. Emily tried not to stare at his lips, not to remember their determined heat as they—

“Get in,” those lips said. “It’s starting to rain.”

Her first reaction, innate, unthinking, was to get in. Emily Warner, always eager to please, to avoid conflict and make life easy for herself and those around her. But the combination of his arrogant demand— “Would you like a ride?” or even “Get in, please,” may have worked—and a festering pique set her back on her heels. She was angry about him appearing without forewarning, for following and scaring the daylights out of her, and she was more furious with herself for reacting as always—same old want, same old need.

“You’re getting wet.” Curt, impatient.

“I did notice that, actually.” She lifted her face, and a score of heavy raindrops spattered her heated skin. “But I don’t have far to go and I would rather walk.”

She didn’t run, she walked, and when his truck door slammed, she barely flinched. When he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him, she did flinch. His gaze narrowed but he didn’t let her go, and she was mad enough to lift her chin and glare right back at him. “What do you want, Mitch?”

“To get you out of this rain,” Mitch fired back, burning from the way she’d refused his lift and jumped from his touch.

“Then perhaps you had best let go of my arm.”

He lost all patience. Tightening his hold, he ushered her the last thirty yards, through her front gate and onto the sheltering verandah. When he tipped her face to catch the glow of a nearby streetlight, a raw tightness gripped his gut. Her skin felt as baby soft as he remembered, but her face looked strained with a new weariness. And her eyes…still deep, warm, mellow, but no longer trusting. They shifted under his scrutiny, her expression edged with a wariness he’d seen only once before.

That morning in his bed. Damn.

“You’ve been working too hard,” he muttered, stroking the dark circle under one eye with the pad of his thumb. Wishing he could erase it along with that leap of reaction in her wide eyes. Fear?

When he let her go, she backed up so quickly she almost tripped over her feet. Mitch’s gut twisted with consternation. “What’s the matter, Emily? Why are you so jumpy?”

That chased the wariness from her eyes. “You drove up behind me and scared me half to death. You manhandled me into my own yard. Do you really have to ask?”

Put like that… “I’m sorry for frightening you. I meant to catch you before you left the pub.”

Distrust darkened her gaze but she didn’t look away. “Why? What do you want, Mitch?”

The directness of her question swept all contrition aside, leaving only the hot, churning frustration born of seeing her again. “Why did you run away, Emily?”

“I left a note—”

“That said absolutely nothing except sorry. What was that supposed to mean? Sorry, Joshua, for leaving and breaking your heart?”

She flinched as if he’d grabbed her again, as if he’d struck her, and stared at him with wide, stunned eyes. Hell. He hadn’t meant such a low blow. Undeserved, given her reason for running. He raked a hand through his hair, scraping the wet strands back from his face and wishing he could tidy up his rampant emotions as easily.

“I’m sorry, Em.” He closed his eyes a moment. “That was uncalled for.”

When she didn’t answer, he looked back to find she’d sat. On top of a packing box. Distracted, he gestured at its many mates sitting higgledy-piggledy along the porch. “Are you moving?”

“Yes.” Her reply sounded as much like a weary sigh as a word.

Mitch frowned. Chantal hadn’t mentioned this in her update. “Because of your grandfather’s will?”

“Stepgrandfather.”

“Semantics. Every man and his dog knows you did more for Owen in his last years than all his blood relatives lumped together. You shouldn’t have given up fighting, Emily.”

“I didn’t give up, I lost,” she fired back. Defiance lent color to her cheeks; her eyes sparked fiercely. She no longer looked stunned, no longer sounded defeated. If he touched her now, she wouldn’t jump and tremble. If he touched her now… Don’t go there, Mitch.

He blew out a long, serrated breath and hitched his chin toward the boxes. “When are you moving?”

“This weekend.”

“To?”

“I have a room at the Lion.” She stood up and straightened defensively, as if in response to something she saw in his eyes. Possibly pure, hot exasperation. “It’s clean and it’s conveni—”

“It’s cold, and there’s nothing convenient about living on top of a bar. Hell, Emily. You about jumped out of your skin when I drove up beside you. How do you think you’re going to manage when a drunk knocks on your door?”

“I’ve taken self-defence classes,” she said, lifting her chin. But the words came out coated in hesitation rather than bravado. With a jolt of satisfaction Mitch sensed the shift, and started toward her. No way was she moving into any hotel room, and he intended to make that crystal clear.

“What did they teach you, Emily?” he asked softly, backing her up with slow, steady deliberation. “Did they teach you the three prime targets?”

“Yesss.”

Her husky whisper wouldn’t have scared a mouse. Disgusted, annoyed, he kept coming. “Which would you go for first?”

Her back hit the wall and her eyes widened, thick lashes fluttering. Her mouth opened, no words came out, but Mitch felt the touch of her exhalation against his skin. And knew he was much closer than he’d intended.

She shifted, drawing breath, and her jacket brushed against his, a soft shush of fabric against fabric, yet he felt it as intensely as if he’d leaned right into her body. An intense desire to do just that expanded in his blood, catching him completely unaware. Hands planted either side of her face, he felt the soft temptation of her body inches from his. Saw her lips, pink, moist, open.

You’re supposed to be talking her into coming back, he told himself, not reminding her why she left.

“What would you do, Emily?” he asked, irritated with himself, his body, his cursed male hormones. “If I were that intruder?”

Blinking, she stretched taller against the wall, and he wondered if she was trying to escape or trying to get closer. Mouth to mouth. And still she said nothing, did nothing but breathe fast and shallow, air sloughing against his throat until he could stand it no longer. With a muttered oath, he used his purchase on the wall to push himself away.

From the edge of the porch, he heard her sigh, the sound as soft as the slow fall of rain. “I guess you made your point.”

“Which point would that be?” he asked with rueful honesty. Something like—now I’ve seen you in my bed, I can’t think of anything else but getting you back there?

“The lessons were a big fat waste of money. I am a wimp and nothing will change that.” She tried to temper the words with a smile, but when Mitch didn’t return it, she looked away. “The room is only temporary. Until I find a better place.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said slowly. This was it—the opening he’d been waiting for. He paused, deliberately, until her gaze swung back to his. “If you come back and work for me.”

At first she simply shook her head, eyes hauntingly dark with some unnamed emotion. But when he opened his mouth to explain, she stepped in quickly. “I have a job. Two jobs, actually.”

“Chantal told me about the bar job.” Mitch shook his head, hoping to clear it of the residual, hazy desire. “What else are you doing?”

“Cleaning. At the Lion.”

“Pulling beer and cleaning hotel rooms?” The words exploded from his mouth. “Hell, Emily, that’s not the kind of work you should be doing.”

Hell, Mitch, that’s not the way to go about this. What is wrong with you? Scaring her out of her wits, all but jumping her bones, judging her job choice…or lack of choice. He needed to remember what this was about. Joshua needed a secure and stable home environment, constancy and routine, and he wanted Emily. Mitch had let him down enough times this past year—this time, he wouldn’t fail.

“Joshua needs a nanny,” he said more softly. Evenly. “I’m working from home, writing, so the hours are flexible. My Everyday Heroes series is going into production soon, so I’ll have trips to Sydney where I might be away most of the week. I’ll make the extra hours worth your while. You can double your previous pay.”

She choked out a laugh, a strangled sound of surprise. “With that kind of pay, you should have candidates lined up halfway to Cliffton.”

“I’m only making the offer to you.”

Her amusement faded, her eyes looked large and somber in the low light, and when she spoke, the one word was barely audible. “Why?”

“Joshua wants you.”

Those three words widened the crack in Emily’s defences—the crack that had started when he’d accused her of breaking Joshua’s heart. Not knowing how to answer—not wanting to answer too fast, too emotionally, too thoughtlessly—she touched an anxious hand to her throat.

“Ever since you left, he’s been…difficult.”

Oh, Lord, he knew exactly where it hurt most. Emily’s gaze darted back to his shadowed face, found his expression as hard to read as the color of his eyes. Hazel, according to his passport, but they changed as often as his mood. One minute as green as a winter garden, the next the cool gray of a rainstorm.

“There’s no need to live in,” he said evenly. “If that’s what’s bothering you.”

Her heart lurched. Of course he wouldn’t want her in his house, not when she might do something inappropriate and embarrassing such as, say, climb into his bed. Again.

“I’ll find you a place in town and pay the rent.”

“As well as that extra pay?” She swallowed audibly. “You are kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I am?”

No, he looked intent and purposeful, his jaw set as hard as the rest of his body. A ripple of sensation shimmered through her nerve endings as she recalled the look in his eyes as he’d tracked her across the porch. The feeling of all that dark heat so close, and so far. Because naturally, she’d misread those signals, too. He’d been playing with her, proving his point, demonstrating her vulnerability.

Frustrated and annoyed, she shook her head. “That’s plain ridiculous, spending so much money—”

“Money isn’t the issue. I’ll pay whatever it takes, Emily.”

A strangled, hiccuping laugh escaped her lips at the irony. He’d pay whatever it took, and no amount of money could compensate her deficit. His house was twelve miles from town, and she couldn’t bring herself to sit behind the steering wheel, not once since the carjacking. “I can’t drive, Mitch. I don’t have a car.”

“What happened to your Kia?”

“I needed the money for my legal bills,” she said simply. The insurance money for her burned-out car, dumped at the end of a terrifying joy ride. But that wasn’t something she had shared—or would share—with anyone. “And before you offer to buy me a new car, I should add that it won’t make a lick of difference. The answer is no.”

A word he apparently didn’t understand because, after the barest beat of a pause, he kept right on. “You can stay with Quade and Chantal. It’s not a long walk across the paddocks and they have—”

Anger flashed, quick and hot. “No, Mitch.”

He stilled, straightened, tensed. She had surprised him, she noted with a spurt of pride. Dark frustration burned in his eyes right alongside fierce determination. “Fine. We’ll find somewhere else.”

“I meant, no, I don’t want the job.”

For an instant he looked too taken aback to respond, then he drew a hand down his face, the gesture so achingly familiar she felt its kick in the solar plexus. “What can I offer to change your mind?” he asked softly.

Emily shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mitch.”

Breath held, she waited for him to say more. She could see the more in his expression, in the firm set of his jaw. She knew how stubborn he could be.

“I’m not giving up, Emily. Take a few days to think about it, to decide what it would take to engage your services. You know you can name your price.”

As she watched him walk away, she shook her head sadly. She didn’t need a few days to think, didn’t even need a few seconds. The answer vibrated through her body and centered in her heart, as sure and strong and passionate as always.

Your love, Mitch Goodwin. That’s all it would take.