Double Life

by Amanda Stevens

Lynette moved past her and led the way down the hall. When Emma followed her into the study, Lynette glanced both ways before sliding the doors closed. She turned to Emma, her expression troubled.

  “This is probably none of my business, but I saw you and Ash dancing just now. I couldn’t help noticing the way he looked at you…the way you looked at him…”

  Emma’s heart skipped a beat. “It was just a dance. There’s nothing going on between us.”

  “I think you mistake me,” she said softly. “I don’t disapprove. I don’t care that you’re in love with Ash. I would wish you two every happiness except…that’s not possible in this family.”

  “Mrs. Corbett, I’m not in love with Ash.”

  “Yes, you are,” she said sadly. “I can see it on your face even now. You’re in love with him and you have no idea how much that makes me pity you.”

  Emma was stunned into silence for a moment.

  “This family has terrible secrets, Emma.”

  A knot of fear formed in Emma’s throat. “What are you talking about?”

  “If you marry Ash, you’ll become a Corbett. Those secrets will become part of you. If you try to get away from them, you could end up like Ash’s mother.”

  Emma gasped. “What are you saying?”

  “Get out now,” Lynette said desperately. “Get out and don’t look back.”

  “Mrs. Corbett—”

  Lynette glided to the doors, but before she slid them apart, she glanced back at Emma. “We never had this conversation. For both our sakes, keep your mouth shut and just walk away while you still can.”

  EMMA REMAINED IN THE STUDY for several long moments, trying to compose herself. Lynette’s warning had shocked her deeply and Emma knew that her emotions would show on her face.

  But she also knew that she couldn’t stay away for too long. She would be missed and people might start asking questions. So she left the study and made her rounds once again, performing her duties as best she could, but inside, she trembled with fear.

  What on earth had Lynette meant by terrible secrets? She hadn’t been talking about Ash because she seemed convinced that he was Ash. So convinced that she’d warned Emma away from him.

  What secrets did she mean then?

  After a while, Emma managed to slip outside for a few minutes to catch her breath. Her mind tumbled with questions and she didn’t know what to do. She was involved in something that went much deeper than the scam. The Corbetts were a powerful family, and if she somehow crossed them…

  She shuddered as she walked across the terrace and out into the deeper shadows beyond. Standing at the base of the oak tree, she glanced back at the house. How many times had she watched from this very spot and dreamed of belonging to that glittering throng inside?

  The Corbetts had seemed like golden people to her back then. Like royalty that could only be admired from afar.

  Now she realized that the fairy lights and the flowers and the flowing champagne created nothing more than an illusion. A beautiful shroud that covered a terrible darkness beneath.

  “I wondered where you’d gone off to.”

  Emma turned at the sound of his voice. At that moment, she was almost glad that he wasn’t Ash. Because the look in Lynette’s eyes when she warned Emma away from the Corbetts had been more frightening than anything Tom Black had told her yet.

  She shivered in the warm night air. “I need to get away from here.”

  “Sure,” he said. “We’ll slip away for a few minutes and go for a drive.”

  “No. I mean…forever. I can’t stay here. I can’t be a part of this.”

  His voice lowered in concern. “What happened?”

  “I can still walk away,” she said desperately. “I won’t say anything about what you’re doing because…I don’t care anymore. I just want out of here.”

  He looked around, assuring himself that they couldn’t be overheard. “It’s not that simple. If you leave without any warning or reason, it’ll look suspicious.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll disappear,” she said. “Like Ash did.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He’s not a part of this. If I’m gone, he’ll be safe.”

  “If they suspect you know too much, what makes you think they won’t use your father to get you back? They’re ruthless people, Emma. They’ll do anything to get what they want. Besides, you’re not the type to run away. You never have been.”

  “You’re wrong.” She wrapped her arms around her middle as she moved away from him. “Why do you think I left Dallas? I was running away from what happened to me there. I’m not strong and I’m not brave. I just want to be happy,” she said. “I want to fall in love with someone normal and have a family. I don’t need all this. I never did. I only thought I did because…”

  “You were in love with Ash.”

  “I was in love with a dream. I can see that now. It wasn’t real. None of this is real.” She drew a shaky breath. “When I was little, I used to climb up this tree and watch parties like this and I wondered what it would be like to be one of those beautiful people inside. But I never really thought I could be a part of it until one night I fell out of this tree right at Ash’s feet. And he said—”

  “What took you so long.”

  HE SAW THE SHOCK REGISTER on her face a split second before the anger took hold. “How did you know that? Who told you?”

  “Emma—” He tried to take her arm, but she jerked away from him.

  “There’s only one person who could have told you that. Where is he? Where’s Ash?”

  “Right here, Emma.”

  “What? No! You’re not Ash. You said…” She trailed off and closed her eyes. “Why? Why?”

  “I have my reasons. I can explain everything, but not here. It’s too dangerous.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She put a trembling hand to his face. “Ash?”

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  “I can’t believe it. I thought you were dead. All those years…”

  “I know.”

  “You let me think you were dead. Why?”

  “I had to. Emma…there’s so much you don’t know. So much that I don’t even know. But if what I suspect is true, we could both be in a lot of danger.”

  “From whom?”

  “From someone in my family. I meant what I said earlier. They’re ruthless people who will do anything to get what they want. They’re not above murder, Emma. Not by a long shot.”

  “Murder?”

  “Shush.” His gaze shot to the terrace. “Keep your voice down.”

  “If they’re that dangerous, why did you come back?” Emma asked.

  “I came back because you did.”

  Her eyes went wide with yet another shock. “You came back…because of me?”

  His voice hardened. “Someone had to be here to protect you. I knew your father was sick and you had no idea what this family is capable of. I had to do something.”

  “But…I don’t understand. Why not just come back? Why pretend to be an imposter—” Emma broke off as laughter sounded nearby.

  Ash pulled her into the shadows and whispered against her ear, “We can’t talk here. I’ll come to your room later.”

  And then he slipped away, leaving Emma alone and trembling in the dark.

  EMMA HAD CHANGED OUT OF HER gown into jeans and a casual shirt and was standing by the window staring out into the dark when the soft knock sounded on her door. She crossed the room and drew it open a crack. When she saw Ash in the hallway, she stepped back so that he could enter.

  He came inside and closed the door, and for the longest moment, neither of them spoke. Emma had been wondering what she would say to him. How she could ever believe him. Could she really trust that he was Ash?

  He smiled slightly as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “You got your braces off the summer before Grandmother sent me away to boarding school,” he said. “Your favorite band that year was the Smashing Pumpki
ns. I got you one of their CDs for your birthday.”

  Tears filled Emma’s eyes, but she still said nothing.

  “When you turned sixteen, I bought you a tiny gold heart pendant with both of our names engraved on the back. Kind of lame, I’ll admit, but I never claimed to be original.”

  Emma touched her throat where the heart had once lain against her skin. “I loved that necklace. I wore it for a long time after you left. I finally took it off when I realized you were never coming back, but I didn’t get rid of it. I still have it, along with everything else you ever gave me.”

  He reached up and stroked his knuckles down her face. “You shouldn’t have kept it. You should have thrown it away. You should have been married with kids of your own by now. If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you.”

  “How could I be happy thinking you were dead?”

  He closed his eyes. “You don’t know how many times I wanted to call and let you know that I was all right.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t. It was too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? Ash, what’s going on? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “It’s a long story,” he said and moved past her to the window. “And I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “I do.” She walked up behind him. “Twelve years ago. Start with the night you left here.”

  She saw his shoulders rise slightly as he drew a breath. “Grandmother and I had it out that night. She gave me an ultimatum. She said if I didn’t break things off with you, she’d fire your dad and make sure that neither of you ever set foot on Corbett property again. And I believed her. I knew she was capable of that and much worse.”

  He turned from the window, his expression bleak. But there was an edge of anger in his tone. “You have to understand how she operates, Emma. It’s not about love with her, it’s about control. She has a knack for finding a person’s weakness, and once she has power over you, you never get away. She won’t let you. My father tried. He stayed gone for a while, but then she found a way to lure him back, and in the end, he liked being a Corbett more than he loved my mother and me. Grandmother couldn’t control my mother and that’s why she hated her. She made her life miserable, Emma, and I didn’t want that for you.”

  “So you left.”

  “I left and I was young enough and naive enough to think that I could go off on my own and start a new life, just like that. I wasn’t going to be like my father. I was never coming back here. And once I was settled with a good job, I was going to send for you.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Emma said softly. “I would have gone to you, you know. Wherever you were. It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “I was counting on that. But then something happened to make me realize that it didn’t matter how far away we got, my family was always going to find me. I would never have any peace as long as my last name was Corbett.”

  “So you changed it?”

  He shrugged. “Not quite as simple as that. I got rid of the Porsche because I didn’t want Grandmother using it to track me down. I traded it for an old beat-up Ford and kept the previous owner’s title and registration. I thought that would be enough, but someone found me. My car was forced off a bridge one night and I was left for dead.”

  Emma gasped. “Helen would never do that. She’s a stubborn old woman, Ash, but she loved you.”

  “It wasn’t Grandmother who wanted me dead.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “I can’t prove it, but I’ve always thought it was Wesley. No one else had as much to gain from my death as he did.”

  “There’s no way it could have been an accident?”

  Ash shook his head. “That truck deliberately rammed my car. There was no one else on the road. He must have followed us out of town that night.”

  “Us?”

  “Someone was in the car with me, a guy I’d met on a job site in Shreveport. He had a lead on another job in New Orleans and the two of us were driving down there together. After we went over the bridge, I managed to pull him out of the water, but he was already dead. He’d gone through the windshield and his face was all cut up. There was nothing I could do for him. He’d told me once that he didn’t have any family. He’d been orphaned when he was twelve years old. There wasn’t anyone that was going to miss him or come looking for him, so I took his ID and from that moment on I became Tom Black.”

  “That’s why you never called me,” Emma said. “Or wrote to me.”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t take a chance on Wesley finding out that I was still alive. I didn’t want to put you in any danger. If he knew that I hadn’t died in that crash, he could have used you to get to me, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. When I heard that you’d moved away from here, I was tempted to get in touch with you in Dallas. I even drove up there one day. But by then it had been years since I left. I didn’t think you’d still want to hear from me. And I was still worried that Wesley might somehow find out. So I parked across the street from your apartment and waited for you to come out. I watched you get in your car and drive off, and then I left.”

  Emma closed her eyes. He’d been so close that day. If only she’d known.

  “And then a little while ago, I heard that you’d moved back here. That you were actually living in this house. I couldn’t not come back then. You had no idea what this family is capable of. I had to make sure you were safe.”

  “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t just come back as Ash?”

  “Because Wesley was still around. I didn’t intend for him to see me. All I wanted to do was get word to your dad so that he could persuade you to leave. But then I was spotted on a job site, and a few days later, David Tobias approached me.”

  “And he believed that you were Tom Black?”

  “He had me checked out first.”

  “But there must have been photos of the real Tom Black.”

  He shrugged. “A mug shot that didn’t even look like the real Tom Black. Tom was a drifter. He didn’t leave much of a paper trail other than his prison record. Besides, they didn’t dig too deeply because they were already convinced that I was dead.”

  “And as long as you remained dead, you weren’t in any danger.”

  “Nor were you.”

  “So they approached you about posing as Ash to get Helen to change her will.”

  “That’s why I think it’s Wesley. He had every reason to believe that I was dead and out of the way, but Grandmother didn’t. And she refused to change her will. He could either wait for her to die and hope that the others didn’t challenge him, or he could arrange to have the company turned over to him with Grandmother’s blessing.”

  “But you don’t know for sure that it was him,” Emma said.

  “I don’t know that he was the one who tried to kill me, either. But someone did.”

  Emma sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly exhausted by the night’s events and by everything she’d just learned from Ash. “Why did you tell me that you were Tom Black? Why didn’t you want me to believe that you were Ash?”

  “Because I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea about us. I needed a way to make you keep your distance.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  He turned from the window. “That’s the main reason,” he said. “But a part of me wanted to know if you could love someone like me. You always put me on a pedestal, Emma. You had this fantasy of who you wanted me to be, and I guess I just wanted to know if you’d still be attracted to me if I didn’t have this house or the Porsche or the Corbett name.”

  Emma got up and walked over to the window where he still stood. She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. Slowly she moved her mouth back and forth against his until she felt his response and then she drew away.

  “Does that answer your question?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Damn, my hands are shaking,” Ash muttered as he str
uggled with the buttons on her blouse.

  “Here, let me.” Emma unfastened her blouse and slipped it slowly down her arms. Then she undid her bra and as it fell away, she heard the sharp intake of Ash’s breath.

  “You’re beautiful, Emma.”

  She was starting to tremble, too. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”

  “Neither am I. I’m not the same man that left here twelve years ago. In a lot of ways, Ash Corbett really is dead. I’ve done some things in the past that I’m not really proud of. Are you sure you want to get mixed up with a guy like me?”

  She kissed him again, a long, deep, intimate kiss that made her heart pound in anticipation. She tugged at the tail of Ash’s shirt, and he broke the kiss long enough to yank it over his head and toss it aside.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her between his legs. “I’ve thought about this since the moment I first saw you on the road.”

  “I’ve thought about it for years,” Emma confessed. “But now that you’re really here, I’m…nervous.”

  “Why? It’s just me.”

  “That’s the problem. It’s you.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said softly. “Don’t put me back on that pedestal. I don’t belong there.”

  “Old habits die hard. No matter what you call yourself, you’ll always be Ash to me. I’m not talking about the money,” she said quickly. “I’m not talking about this house or the fancy car you used to drive. I’m talking about the way you make me feel.”

  “You don’t think you make me feel the same way?”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you.”

  He gave a low laugh. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “How do you know? It’s been a long time since we were together and I haven’t exactly gained a lot of experience in that time. I haven’t been with a lot of men.”

  “I haven’t been with a lot of women.”

  She smiled. “Now why don’t I believe that?”

  “It’s true. And it doesn’t matter anyway because none of them were you.”

  “Ash.” She sighed his name as he drew her to her. They kissed for a long time, and then his mouth skimmed down her throat, touched her scar briefly, then found her breast.