But could he really blame her? He’d pretended for as long as he could, too, because those moments together had seemed too important for an encounter that was so brief. Face it, he didn’t know how the hell to handle the interlude or move forward from it himself.
So for now he just wanted to…to be with Emmaline. Have her perfume lingering in his bedroom and her nurturing touches on display throughout the house until he could get his sister married and his company merged.
After that he’d determine his next move.
Or if there should even be a next move. Because he’d been burned before and he wasn’t inclined to rush into anything now.
Later, in his own good time, he’d sort it out in his head. Sort them out.
“I’ll contact the placement office at the academy and let them know you have an opening, if you’d like,” she said now. “They might find someone for you in as short as a couple of days.”
“A couple of days?”
She flushed.
“You’re not going to work through your two weeks’ notice?” he persisted, pinning her with a ruthless stare. “I believe that’s in the academy-provided employment contract that we signed. I can look it up—”
“It is,” she said, her cheeks flushing darker. “I just thought—” She broke off as a series of sounds echoed throughout the house—a slamming door, rushing footsteps, the rattle of plastic.
“Emmaline!” Stella’s voice, sounding panicked. “Emmaline, I’m desperate for your help!”
Lucas turned, and his butler pushed past him. The three of them met up in the kitchen, where his sister stood, the handles of several shopping bags ringing her arms from elbows to wrists.
“Thank goodness you’re here, Emmaline,” Stella said, near-breathless.
Relief flooded through Lucas once more. The butler wasn’t about to rush away this afternoon when there was a bride-to-be in need, he felt sure of it. “What’s going on, Stel?”
“My maid-of-honor has left me holding the bags,” she said. “Literally.”
Then she let the multitude she carried slide onto the kitchen island.
Emmaline peeked inside one and pulled out a bottle of Gatorade. “Um?”
“I’m putting together thirty Hangover Survival Kits for the bachelor party coming up this weekend. I need to deliver them to Aaron tonight. I promised him.”
Lucas frowned. Since the event was a few days away—booze and boating at a huge cabin on Big Bear Lake—he didn’t see the emergency. And why couldn’t the groom pitch in and help if they needed to be completed in such a hurry? “What about Aaron—”
“I said I’d have them done,” Stella said quickly. “He expects me to keep my word.”
Emmaline shot the younger woman a quick glance as she methodically began unpacking the bags. “Surely your guy wouldn’t be angry if you needed more time. It’s such a little thing.”
“If it’s such a little thing, then surely I can get them done on time,” Stella said stubbornly, pulling out a stack of small, flattened boxes. They were black, with “I Regret Nothing” printed in white on them. As she began to fold the boxes into rectangular shapes, Emmaline was gazing curiously at a stack of note-shaped items in her hand.
“Okay, these are funny.” She held one up to show Lucas. “Temporary tattoos. They say, “‘If I’m lost call’ and include a number—”
“Mine,” Stella chirped.
Grinning, Emmaline continued, “‘Or, just buy me another drink.’”
“I saw it on Pinterest,” Stella said.
“Are you going to be sporting one of these this weekend?” Emmaline asked Lucas, wiggling the tattoo between her fingers.
“I, uh, no.” Aaron’s crowd was not Lucas’s crowd, and a weekend watching men getting loaded because another guy was about to marry his sister just didn’t sit right with him. “The brother of the bride might put a damper on the festivities.”
“Lucas and I are going to have our own night out,” Stella said. “Kind of a goodbye to the old.”
He smiled at his sister even as bittersweet emotion rolled through him, thinking of all the big moments in her life he’d managed to weather—recruiting female friends to help with bras and other feminine rites of passage, teaching her to drive, watching her skipping out of the house for dates and dances. “Just remember you’re never getting rid of me, Stel.”
Feeling eyes on him, he glanced over to see Emmaline studying him, her expression unfamiliar. “What?” he asked her, scrubbing his face. “Am I dirty?”
“Nothing like that,” she said, and her soft eyes made him feel like he did when he slid between the sheets she’d smoothed onto his bed or when she handed him his favorite beer along with a plate of crackers and cheese at the end of the work day. It was…he had no word for it.
When the two women finished unpacking all the items for the hangover kits—the Gatorade, tattoos, pain relievers, sunglasses, and more—they began to assemble them, moving buffet style down the kitchen island, boxes in hand. Lucas volunteered to help, but Stella requested his famous margaritas instead. So he mixed a batch and half-listened to their chatter.
Emmaline suggested a new restaurant as the upcoming brother-sister dinner destination. “I read about the opening, and it sounds fabulous—a farm-to-table focus. Let me book you a reservation.”
“Yes, do that,” Stella said, beaming as she straightened the stacks of kits. “Why don’t you join us that night, Emmaline?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t intrude—”
“Lucas thinks you should come with us, right, Lucas?”
“Of course,” he said smoothly, seeing it as a way to keep her in the job at least another few days—long enough for him to allay her uneasiness. “What the bride wants, the bride gets. Don’t you agree, Emmaline?”
“Well, I…” She slid him a helpless look he pretended not to see.
Stella accepted the last black box from the other woman’s hand and then swept her up for an impulsive hug. “And I want Emmaline. She’s going to be such a help to me up to and including on my wedding day!”
Lucas smiled at his butler as he crossed to her, passing over a frosty margarita as Stella released her. “That’s it then,” he said quietly. “You don’t leave before the wedding.”
“But after…” Emmaline began.
“We’ll reassess.” With a gentle hand at her elbow, he nudged the glass toward her mouth. “Don’t look so doomed.”
Don’t look so doomed.
The next morning, Emmaline stared into her bathroom mirror and repeated Mr. Curry’s words to her reflection. “Don’t look so doomed.”
Yes, she’d tacitly agreed to stay in her almost-lover’s employ until after his sister’s wedding. And yes, to her mind the situation still felt awkward as heck. But there was nothing to do now but go about her business and not waste another minute stewing over the man and the mess of it all.
Sigh.
After completing her early morning chores, she headed for the grocery store. On a whim, though, she detoured to the house where Charlie lived with Ethan Archer and his son Wells. The little boy’s chatter would surely prove a welcome distraction from her discomforting thoughts, Emmaline decided.
She grinned at his enthusiastic greeting. He and Charlie had plans to set up a beach camp a few feet from their back terrace, so she happily fell in line with them. Soon she sat on a blanket with her friend, shaded by an umbrella and with a clear view of Wells who was learning to use a skim board.
His skinny arms cast it onto the shallow inches of the spreading surf, and then he jumped on the board’s deck, trying to ride the slick sand as the ocean sucked the wave back to deeper waters.
She applauded his efforts and his first success. Turning to Charlie, she took in the other butler’s pleased smile. “He’s a prodigy, Charlie, I tell you. He’s a prodigy.”
Her friend glanced at her then looked back at Wells, shaking her head. “He’s a little boy.”
“Don’t pretend
with me, Charlotte Emerson. You think he’s the most talented six-year-old in the United States.”
Charlie made a face.
“Okay,” Emmaline conceded. “The universe.”
Her friend laughed. “Much better.”
They both watched Wells make another go at it, this time tumbling off but coming right back onto his feet with a grin.
“He looks so happy,” Emmaline mused. “Is he still announcing his mother’s death to perfect strangers?”
According to Charlie, ever since his mom passed from cancer, Wells found ways to bring up the fact in grocery-store lines, at the dentist, upon meeting newcomers. Prepared for just such an event, when Wells had cheerfully shared with Emmaline the information at their first encounter, she’d managed to handle it with aplomb.
“I used to think he said it to get himself accustomed to the idea,” Charlie shared now. “But I’ve come to wonder if it’s a way to remind himself of her. It would be natural if his memories are fading.”
“They do,” Emmaline agreed. She’d lost her mom at ten, and it took looking at photos to recall Colette’s features.
As Wells began some industrious digging in the wet sand with a short shovel, Charlie drew a thick notebook and pen from her beach tote.
“What’s that?” Emmaline asked, peering over her sunglasses. “Your plans to take over the world?”
“Details regarding the book fair at Wells’ school. It’s next October, and I’ve volunteered to lead the committee.”
“Of course you have,” Emmaline said. “Does this mean you and his dad have given up on engaging a new nanny?”
Their last one had been chronically late and often a no-show. Charlie seemed to have no problems handling the additional childcare responsibilities.
“I can manage Wells just fine along with everything else,” she said, defensive.
“Did I say you couldn’t?” Emmaline asked mildly. “You’re frighteningly efficient, Charlie.”
“Thank you.” She bent over the lined pages and made a few notations.
Emmaline looked out over the Pacific, the glare making her eyes sting despite her sunglasses. “You put me to shame.”
“Uh-oh.” Her friend closed the cover of her notebook and half-turned. “That sounded pensive. You don’t usually do pensive, Emmaline. Does this have something to do with that conversation you said you would have with your Mr. Curry?”
“Um…” They’d yet to talk honestly about that night in the hotel room. Though she’d hoped to avoid it altogether by running away, he’d caught her before her escape. Then Stella had arrived, and in the end Emmaline had returned her clothes to their drawers.
Still Mr. Curry’s butler.
She sighed.
“More of the pensive,” Charlie said, pointing at her. “What’s going on?”
Emmaline had commanded herself not to stew. But her mind refused to obey the edict, and her troubles continued bubbling up. She sighed. “It’s just…”
“Just?”
She shook her head and focused on the horizon. “You wouldn’t understand, Charlie. You’re too smart and too level-headed to have made past mistakes as big as mine.” Not that she regretted leaving Enzo. And Dina had confirmed that the way she’d done it—escaping in the middle of the night and cutting all ties—had been the safe choice. But she shouldn’t have agreed to marry him in the first place!
So young, so young and inexperienced and easily swept off her feet. Only to later find herself under the thumb of a man who began to hurt her in more ways than one. “I didn’t listen to my instincts when they first started buzzing at me. Maybe worse, I didn’t want to disappoint my father,” she murmured.
“I made a big mistake, too, and then compounded it by trying appease my mother’s anger.”
Emmaline swung her gaze to her friend. “You?”
“Me.” Charlie’s lips turned up in a half-smile. “Nobody gets out of life without making mistakes, Emmaline. Some bigger than others.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
A thousand questions on the tip of her tongue, she opened her mouth to launch into a full probe of Charlie. But then a sodden Wells rushed up to them, flinging cold, salty drops onto their warm skin as he shook like a dog, laughing when they shrieked in protest.
“Boys,” Emmaline said, throwing up her arms to protect her face, trying to swallow another squeal. “Can’t live with them…”
“Can’t live without them,” Charlie finished.
It sounded strangely like a vow, but when Emmaline drew down her arms to glance at her friend, the other woman’s expression gave nothing away.
Soon Emmaline had to take her leave of the pair, and she mulled over the possibilities of Charlie’s mistake as she accomplished her errands. What could the other butler have been alluding to? But no answer presented itself.
Arms encircling canvas grocery bags, Emmaline shouldered her way into the house and made for the kitchen. The sight of two women sunbathing on the terrace beyond the open doors gave her pause.
“Stella?” she called.
Mr. Curry’s sister sat up and twisted around, her expression abashed. “Oh. Emmaline. I…I thought you’d be gone longer.”
“No problem. Can I bring you and your friend something cool to drink and something to eat?” As the other figure turned, Emmaline put on a welcoming smile. “Hello—” She broke off as she recognized Valerie, the woman who’d been Mr. Curry’s set-up date.
Awkward.
“A cold drink and a snack sounds just great,” the other woman said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “Doesn’t it, Stella?”
“I can get it,” Stella said, starting to rise.
“But why?” Valerie asked. “Your brother’s ‘domestic partner’ volunteered.”
“About that, um, domestic partnership…” Emmaline cleared her throat. “There might be a slight misunderstanding.”
“Oh, she knows,” Stella said. “I told her you’re his butler.”
“Yes, and I must admit my curiosity is piqued by the idea.” Valerie pushed back a lock of platinum hair with one long, blood-red nail. “What exactly does being a man’s ‘butler’ entail?”
The innuendo was spread thick, but Emmaline ignored it. “All manner of things in a modern household.”
“You should see her cool uniform,” Stella put in. “Very proper. A morning coat, starched shirt, and everything.”
Valerie’s gaze dropped to Emmaline’s bare legs beneath the hem of her summer skirt. “Though I’m guessing the master of the modern household likes you dressed in something more feminine while you…do what, exactly?”
Emmaline felt her temper starting to kindle, and she reined it in by taking a tighter hold of the groceries in her arms. “My training focused on everything from planning parties and serving meals, to acting as a personal assistant and valet.”
Valerie’s eyebrows, as black as her lashes and in great contrast to the blonde hair on her head, rose. “You mean you help Lucas put on and take off his clothes?”
Warmth spread across Emmaline’s face as she remembered the night of the charity event and how close she’d stood to Mr. Curry as she helped him into his shirt and jacket. He’d told her to breathe, obviously and embarrassingly aware of the tightness in her chest as physical longing welled inside her. Wanting like that was new to her, and she had no experience in handling it with poise. For sure, no instruction at the butler’s academy had covered the subject.
“Excuse me,” she said now, turning toward the kitchen to hide her blush. “I need to get these things into the refrigerator. I’ll be back in just a few moments.”
Reminding herself that taking care of guests was part of her job, upon stowing the groceries away Emmaline put together a tray and carried it out to the pair on the terrace. With a murmur, she bent to place it on a small table between the lounge chairs. As she straightened, Valerie spoke up again, her voice lazy.
“Emmaline, I find I can’t get all
this fascinating master-servant stuff out of my mind.”
“Valerie!” In a rare show of spirit, Stella pointed a finger at the other woman. “Stop. If you want to poke at someone, poke at my brother who wasn’t upfront to begin with.”
Glancing down to adjust the straps on her bikini top, Valerie sighed. “He could have made it clearer on the night we met that he wasn’t interested.”
Emmaline figured Mr. Curry had been merely polite, but this woman wasn’t accustomed to a man’s lack of interest in her oh-so-obvious charms. Edging away, she began thinking of what was next on her to-do list. The herb garden at the side of the house—planted a couple of weeks before—would need some weeding. And one had to keep a watchful eye on basil, or it could quickly go to seed.
“Oh, don’t take it personally,” Stella said to the other woman. “Lucas has been steering clear of anything that might lead to attachment since his broken engagement three years ago.”
“Broken engagement?” Valerie echoed. “That sounds juicy. Give me all the details.”
Bad Emmaline did not immediately go tend the reckless basil. Instead, she moved about the terrace, adjusting furniture and then the cushions on the furniture. Mr. Curry had been altar-bound? She decided, after a moment’s reflection, that this was something a good butler should know about. Any and all information could help her do her job of taking care of him better. So she lingered within earshot, smothering any small misgivings.
“Her name was Francie. Francie DeVore. She and Lucas were engaged, with a date set and everything, when he found out from a buddy that she was seeing her old boyfriend on the sly.”
“Seeing?” Valerie asked.
“As in, without clothes on Wednesday afternoons at a nearby hotel.”
Ouch.
“If she had some nooner guy she wouldn’t give up, why get married in the first place?” Valerie asked.
Excellent question, Emmaline thought.
“Money,” Stella said. “When Lucas confronted her, she admitted she still wanted marriage and his money and offered to give up the side guy to keep their plans in place.”
The Seduction (Billionaire's Beach Book 5) Page 8
