“Neither have you,” Emily said.
Jaimie colored a little. Lissa looked at her. It was true. Jaimie had been pretty quiet, too.
“Work,” Jaimie said briskly, waving her hand. “I’m all tied up with stuff. Things are stabilizing a little, people are putting their houses on the market…” She frowned. “And we weren’t talking about me, we were talking about Emily.”
“Emily is standing right here,” Emily said, trying to sound amused. “Let’s not talk about her as if she weren’t.”
“Well, no. Let’s be more direct than that,” Lissa said, opening one of the four big wall ovens and peering inside. “We’re all talking about what’s new in our lives. You haven’t opened your mouth.”
“If you’re checking on those pies, I think the crust on the one in the top oven might be—”
“Don’t you want to tell us about your new job?”
“What new job?” Emily said. “Lissa, really, that pie—”
“The one you called and told me about,” Jaimie said. “The personal assistant thing.”
Emily swallowed hard.
“Oh. That.”
“Yes. Oh. That. How’s it going?”
Emily turned on the water in the sink, reached for the coffee pot.
“I quit.”
“How come?”
“I just did. Hand me the canister, will you?”
“Yeah, but why? It sounded like a great job.”
“Well, it wasn’t. And I don’t want to talk about it, OK? Just hand me the coffee.”
Voices, laughter, the sounds of people greeting people flooded the house. Footsteps made their way down the hall. The Wilde sisters turned around…
And Emily went pale.
“Laurel?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The women stared at each other. “Khan and I flew in for the holiday. Didn’t Jake tell you? He invited us.”
“Khan’s here, too?”
“Of course he’s here, too. Emily. Em. I’m so sorry about what happened that night. Neither of us ever dreamed—”
“What night?” Lissa said.
“What happened?” Jaimie said.
“Nothing happened,” Emily said, and she looked up and saw her brothers crowded into the kitchen, Khan standing just in front of them, and the world tilted. “Not a goddamned thing happened,” she said, and she dumped the coffee pot into the sink and fled.
******
The thing about having a big family was that you couldn’t escape them.
The thing about running was that you couldn’t escape what you were running from.
And the thing about spending the last ten days telling yourself that you hated the man who’d broken your heart was that it was a lie, and as she’d already so horribly proved, she wasn’t a very good liar.
Jaimie knocked on her door. “Em? Come on out. We won’t ask you any questions.”
Lissa tried next. “Honey? Please come out. No questions, I swear.”
Talk about lies…
Afternoon gave way to evening.
Her sisters tried again. They rattled the doorknob, said they were driving into town. Mr. Upton, the postmaster, had phoned. It was a holiday and the post office was closed but somehow or other, a bunch of packages had arrived anyway. From the general—he always sent Christmas gifts early—and, of course, Mr. Upton knew they had to be dealt with. The female contingent—Lissa, Jaimie, Adoré, Jennie, Laurel and Sage—were driving into town to pick them up. Why didn’t she come with them?
She considered it. She was all cried out and she had to face everybody eventually. But she considered it for too long because the next thing she heard was the sound of an SUV driving away.
OK.
Her sisters were gone.
Her brothers were still here but they’d be easier to deal with. Men were uncomfortable with emotional stuff. She could silence them with a look.
Besides, what had happened to her was none of their business. She had no need to give in to badgering and questioning, assuming they tried any of that.
She rose from the bed where she’d thrown herself hours ago. Turned on the lights. Showered. Changed into jeans and a long-sleeved cashmere sweater. Brushed her hair, pulled it back in a ponytail and scrubbed her face. No makeup. She wasn’t in the mood for makeup, wasn’t in the mood for artifice of any kind.
One last deep breath and she opened the bedroom door and marched downstairs to face reality.
The Wilde brothers and Khan, a brother by attitude if not by birth, were all in the kitchen, seated around the enormous oak table that was older than any of them. No babies in sight. Evidently, they’d been put to bed.
There was a platter of huge man-ready sandwiches in the center of the table. Everybody had a big mug of something steaming hot, coffee or tea or maybe hot toddies.
All at once, on top of being in no mood for interrogation, she was also hungry and thirsty.
Emily straightened her shoulders and marched into the room.
Every head swiveled toward her.
“Em,” Jake said.
“Honey,” Travis said.
“Sis,” Caleb said.
“Emily,” Khan said, and cleared his throat.
She nodded, went to the stove, took down a mug and poured herself some coffee. Got a plate from the cupboard, a spoon, knife and fork from the silverware drawer. She liberated a while linen napkin from the shelf. Then she went to the empty space at the foot of the table, pulled out the chair and settled into it.
The men watched her.
She reached for the platter of sandwiches.
Four pairs of hands reached out to help her. She glared. The hands drew back. She leaned over the table. The sandwiches were halved; each half looked substantial enough to feed a family of four.
“I made them,” Jake said proudly.
Emily nodded, took a half of what looked to be ham, cheese, turkey, beef and a couple of dozen other things and put it on her plate. She picked it up again, realized there was no way she could possibly get her mouth around it, put it down, took her knife and fork and sawed off a corner.
The men watched her.
She put the piece in her mouth. Chewed, even though the thing seemed unchewable. Swallowed. Took a sip of coffee. Sawed off another piece of sandwich.
The men went on watching her,
She swallowed. Drank a little coffee. Cleared her throat. If she talked about eating the sandwich with a knife and fork, maybe she could keep them from trying to talk about anything else.
So she tried what she hoped was a smile.
“I don’t normally do things like this,” she said, “but—”
“But you did.”
She looked at Caleb. His voice was stern, that big-brother tone in it he’d occasionally used on all the sisters when they were in their teens.
“Well, yes. I know it doesn’t look good. But what else could I do? I mean, all that size and heft...”
A fist hit the table. Emily swung her head toward Travis.
“Jesus H. Christ, we don’t want to hear that kind of stuff!”
“Huh?”
“So, that was it? The guy turned you on so bad that you agreed to be his mistress?”
Emily blanched. “What the hell are you talking about, Jacob?”
Travis: “We’re talking about your—your paramour.”
Any other time, she would have laughed.
Caleb: “Your lover.”
Jacob: “The guy who seduced you. Marco Santini, the son of a bitch!”
Emily stared at her brothers. She had never seen them so furious. The hard, handsome faces. The cold eyes. The tension visible in the set of their shoulders.
And Khan.
He looked exactly the same. Angry. Furious. Totally and completely pissed off.
She put down her knife and fork, wiped her mouth with her napkin.
“Listen to me,” she said carefully. “Listen well, because I’m only going to say this once
. This is none of your business!”
Jacob: “The hell it isn’t!”
“It isn’t. It’s my business. Period.”
Travis: “It’s our business, kid, and don’t you forget it.”
“It is not your business,” she said coldly, “and I am not a kid!”
“You’re our baby sister.”
“I am your twenty-four-years-old sister. Not your baby sister. Got it?”
“Why in hell didn’t you come home?”
Emily swung toward Jake. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said coldly. “Why didn’t you come home after you were discharged from the hospital?”
“I did.”
“No. You did not. You dropped by, stayed for a while, then took off.”
Jake shot to his feet. “That was different.”
“How was it different?”
“I’m a guy. You’re a girl. You’re our sister.”
Emily threw down her napkin and stood up. “That’s such bull, Jacob!”
“It’s not bull.”
“It is,” she said, turning toward Caleb. “Dammit, that’s what I’ve been my entire life. One of the Wilde girls. The Wilde sisters. The youngest one, the one who needs to be protected from the real world.”
“That’s not true,” Travis said.
Emily looked at Khan. “And you. Couldn’t you keep quiet? Couldn’t you keep what you saw to yourself?”
He rose slowly from his chair, his eyes dark, his mouth thinned.
“I did. For all this time. I kept quiet because Laurel said if you wanted help from us or your family, you’d ask.”
Emily raised her chin. “Smart woman you married.”
“But I could not keep quiet any longer.” His eyes narrowed. “I liked Marco. I believed him to be a good man. I never imagined, never imagined, that he would take the sister of my friends as his mistress.”
Emily snorted.
“Lovely. Mistresses are OK so long as they aren’t the sisters of anybody you know.”
Khan’s face reddened. “You are twisting my words.” He paused; she could tell he was trying to compose himself. “I would not have spoken, Emily. I would have kept my counsel… but when you ran, your family had questions. And they told me they were worried about you. That you have not been yourself. That you have been very quiet. That you seem so sad—”
“I am not sad,” she said and burst into tears.
“Oh, crap,” one male voice muttered, and then there was a general stampede and Jake, Caleb and Travis all tried to reach her at the same time.
Caleb got there first. He pulled her into his arms. She stood stiff, rigid, and then a sob broke from her throat and she fell against him, her tears soaking his flannel shirt.
“I’d like to get my hands on that prick,” Travis said.
“Get in line,” Jake said.
“He is my friend,” Khan said. “Was my friend. I’m the one who gets first shot. To think he would turn into a man who would seduce a woman, convince her to be his mistress—”
“We seduced each other,” Emily said.
Caleb shut his eyes. “Em. We don’t need details.”
“But it’s true.” She stepped out of her brother’s arms, took her napkin from the table and blew her nose in it. “I wanted to sleep with Marco.”
Jake grimaced. Travis ran his hands through his hair.
“And I wasn’t his mistress. I worked for him. I was his PA. His AA. I was damned good at my job. I earned my pay legitimately, and I’m surprised that you would think I’d do anything less.”
“I didn’t,” Jake said. “We didn’t. It’s just that—”
“When Laurel and I walked into that apartment and saw you, we were shocked. I had no idea—”
“I’m amazed,” Emily said coldly, “you didn’t fly straight here to tell my brothers what a—a fallen woman I’d become.”
Khan rubbed his face with his hands.
“I had no wish to do that. Even when I realized that we had walked in just as Santini was ending your—your relationship. I told you, I would not have spoken of it but for what happened here today, what your family told me of your distress.”
“I am not distressed! And he wasn’t ending it.” One lie out of two. Considering her average, that wasn’t bad.
“Emily. I saw it with my own eyes. His coldness. His rage. He was in the middle of—of telling you that it was over when Laurel and I arrived.”
“You’re wrong. Everything was fine until you showed up.”
“Great!” Travis shook his head, paced to the stove, then paced back. “It’s your fault the SOB dumped her.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Of course it wasn’t Khan’s fault.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. “And he didn’t dump me. Not the way you think. We were—we were in love.”
“Until he got tired of you, the no-good—”
“No,” Khan said.
They all looked at him. For the first time, he seemed uncertain.
Travis frowned. “What do you mean, no?”
“Laurel said it didn’t make sense.”
“A man taking advantage of our sister? Goddamned right, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Not that. What we saw... ” Khan shook his head. “I spoke with Marco that afternoon. He invited us to dinner. I said I wanted him to meet Laurel. And he said that he wanted me to meet someone, too.”
“So what?”
“So, why would he have wanted to introduce Emily to us if he were planning to end their relationship? It makes no sense but then, neither does the fact that the woman he said he wanted me to meet was named Emily Madison.”
Silence.
The Wildes looked at him. At each other. And then, finally, at Emily.
“That’s who he thought I was,” she said in a small voice. “Emily Madison.”
“Why?”
The word came from four throats. Emily gave a deep sigh.
“It’s complicated.”
The Wilde brothers and Khan folded their arms, the way Marco had always done when he was annoyed. Was it something arrogant men learned in in some secret ritual?
“It’s true. I told him my name was Madison. Well, I’d told that to everybody. To every prospective employer. And—and, see, I live in a neighborhood that’s not so great—”
“Not so great?” Travis said in a dangerous voice.
“It’s what I can afford,” Emily replied, her chin angling up. “It’s difficult to make much money, playing piano in bars.”
“Holy crap,” Jake snarled. “Playing piano in—”
“That was how I met Marco. I’d been playing in a bar that was—that was kind of run down. And the owner fired me. And it was almost two in the morning and it was raining and I missed the bus and—”
Caleb made a sound that was more a snarl than anything else.
Without thinking about it, Emily folded her arms. Her brothers were upset. She got that. But she’d be damned if she’d let them make easy judgments about the choices she’d made. Right or wrong, they’d been hers to make.
This was her life, not anyone else’s.
“Here’s the deal,” she said. “You want to know what happened? Then try listening instead of playing judge and—”
The sound of an engine roared up outside. Good. The women were back. She might as well get this over with instead of having to tell the story twice.
Somebody knocked at the kitchen door.
“The girls must have forgotten their keys,” Khan said.
“They don’t need keys,” Travis said. “They know that. The doors are never locked at El Sueño.”
The knock came again. Harder. Much harder. Emily could almost see the door shake.
A strange feeling swept through her. A premonition. An awareness.
“Who in hell could that be?” Travis said tightly. “The last damn thing we want right now is visitors.”
Jake strode to the door. Grasped the knob. Swung it open. It was dark out
side; no moon, no stars.
“Yeah?” he said. “Who—”
Emily took a step forward.
“Marco?”
“Emily,” that accented husky voice said, and he stepped through the door, the man she hated, the man she pitied, the man she had loved...
The man she would never stop loving.
Her Marco, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, his hair a little too long, his face a little too thin, his eyes a little too haunted.
“Are you Marco Santini?” one of the Wilde brothers said.
“Emilia mia,” Marco said, his eyes on the woman he loved and had lost.
“Screw this,” Jake growled, and Emily screamed, and that was the last thing Marco knew before a clean right uppercut connected with his jaw and he went down in a boneless heap.
******
“Marco. Marco, please, please speak to me!
Marco groaned and opened his eyes. Where in hell was he? He was in a kitchen but not his big, blindingly white glass, steel and granite kitchen. This one had a Spanish tile floor, white stucco walls, a stove big enough to roast an ox.
He blinked. And looked into Emily’s beautiful blue eyes. She was kneeling beside him and the sight of her filled his heart with joy.
“Emily,” he whispered, “cara mia.”
“Talk English,” a male voice growled.
He looked up. Four enormous men stood in a semicircle around Emily. Three of them looked alike. Big. Hard. Tough. Angry. The fourth was as big, as hard, as tough but not quite as angry. Was that…
“Khan? What are you—”
“What are you doing here, Santini?”
Marco switched his gaze to the man who had spoken.
“That’s Travis,” Emily whispered. “My brother.”
Marco sat up. He touched his jaw and hissed through his teeth. His jaw hurt like hell.
“He asked you a question,” the second man said.
“That’s Jacob. My brother.”
“Yeah. Answer the question,” the third man growled.
“That’s—”
“Caleb,” Marco said. “Si. I figured that out for myself.”
“Marco.” It was Khan. “Listen, man, I hope you have some answers because I have to tell you, you are in enemy territory.”
“I have answers.”
“I sure as shit hope so,” Jake Wilde snarled.
Emily: Sex and Sensibility Page 20
