Emily And The Stranger

by Beverly Barton

  But this stranger’s overwhelming masculinity beckoned to her on some basic, primitive level, frightening her by the very strength of her own almost uncontrollable needs.

  But he hadn’t seemed to notice her—not once during the month she had been watching him. It was as if he looked right through her, as if she were invisible to him. She wondered if there was some woman in his life. Even though he lived alone and she hadn’t seen a woman at his cottage, that didn’t mean anything. Since he left every morning before seven and returned late in the day, always wearing jeans, cotton shirt and heavy work boots, she assumed his job to be blue collar and physical. A man like that wasn’t likely to go long without a woman.

  Emily had mentally devised different ways to meet him, always pretending that he would find her beautiful and desirable, that he would sweep her into his arms and make mad, passionate love to her. But that could never happen. No man would ever find her desirable. No man would ever want her. Certainly not this rugged stranger.

  Mitch Hayden downed the last drops of black coffee as he stared sightlessly out at the bay. Four months. Four long months on the Gulf, working from morning till evening on the Gulf Shores resort project, pushing himself to exhaustion in the hope that he could sleep without dreams. He had sworn he would never come back to South Alabama, had hoped he could escape the past by staying on the run. But he’d spent the past five years running, trying to find peace, forgetfulness and absolution. No matter where he’d gone or what he’d done, he had found nothing but loneliness and pain and the never-ending guilt from which he could not escape.

  Zed Banning had brought him back to the Gulf, back to face the past, to start anew. Mitch had always thought Zed was overly optimistic. Could a man actually build a new life on the cold ashes of other people’s lives?

  But for five years he’d tried everything else, traveling across the country, bumming around, drinking himself into stupors that would give him a few hours of sleep without haunting dreams. Nothing worked; nothing helped. Nothing could change the past. Nothing could bring the dead to life or undo the damage that had been done.

  There wasn’t a construction firm in the South that would give him a job after what had happened. Everyone knew his name, even if few recognized his face anymore. Zed had told him that he’d aged ten years in five. Mitch accepted the fact that the slender, cocky young man with the movie star mustache, pretty-boy good looks and tailor-made suits no longer existed. He had been replaced by a hard-as-nails, muscular construction worker, with a rugged, lined face.

  All those years ago, before disaster struck, Zed had tried to tell him that he had made a bargain with the devil, that no good would come of a partnership with Randy Styles. But Mitch hadn’t listened. He’d been too eager, too greedy, too determined to prove himself to the world...and to Loni. Zed had cautioned him about Loni, too. Dear God in heaven, if only he’d taken heed of his friend’s warnings.

  But he had ignored Zed. He had listened to Randy’s big plans, the promises of wealth and power. And he’d allowed his love for Loni to overshadow his common sense. The woman had twisted him around her little finger and made a fool of him. He had paid dearly for his youthful ignorance. After the Ocean Breeze disaster, Mitch had accepted the price he’d had to pay as his rightful punishment. What he could never accept was the price the innocent had had to pay.

  Mitch laughed, the sound a mixture of self-loathing and hindsight. He had wanted too much, too fast, and he had disregarded every warning sign. When he had finally realized what was going on, it had been too late. The Ocean Breeze apartment building had crumpled like a house of cards, killing Stuart Jordan and injuring countless others. And destroying Mitch’s dreams as his conscience hurled him into an endless nightmare of guilt and torment.

  He had come damn near close to dying more than once in the past five years. He’d drunk too much, driven too fast, gotten into too many fights and had too many one-night stands. It wasn’t so much that he’d had a death wish, he just hadn’t given a damn whether he lived or died.

  He was sober now; he hadn’t had anything stronger than a beer in four months. And for the first time in five years, he had a steady job, he ate three square meals a day—and he hadn’t had sex since he’d done some nameless, faceless little blonde back in Kentucky.

  When Mitch turned to go inside the cottage and finish dressing before leaving for work, he noticed Emily Jordan standing on the porch of her cottage. He’d seen her numerous times over the past month. Sometimes she’d be on the porch the way she was this Friday morning; other times she’d be sitting on the beach under a huge umbrella, a sketch pad in her hand. Zed had called him a fool when he’d told his old friend that he intended to rent a cottage next door to Emily Jordan. He’d tried to explain to Zed why he needed to be near Emily, why he needed to get to know her, to make sure she was all right, to find a way to help her if he could. He didn’t think Zed understood. Hell, he wasn’t sure he really understood his motives himself. All he knew was that without Emily Jordan’s forgiveness, he’d never be able to forgive himself and truly move forward with a new life.

  Zed had warned him that he was playing a dangerous game. Zed was right. If he had a lick of sense, he’d stay as far away from Emily as he could. But that was the problem. He couldn’t stay away from her. In the years since the collapse of the Ocean Breeze Apartments, Emily had become a symbol of his guilt, an obsession in his heart. She was a stranger to him, and he to her, and yet not one day in five years had gone by that he hadn’t thought of her, wondered about her, worried about her.

  Since his breakup with Loni, there hadn’t been a woman in his life he’d cared about and certainly no one who’d really cared about him. Hell, there never had been a woman who had truly loved him. Loni had used him, betrayed him and left him high and dry.

  But this woman—the sad and lovely Emily Jordan—was as different from Loni as diamonds are from cut glass. There was a certain genteel air about his neighbor, a casual elegance. He knew that she’d been raised with money, the kind that had been in the family for generations. Yeah, that’s what this woman reminded him of. Good breeding. A Southern lady. She somehow seemed out of place in this modern world, a woman in her ankle-length, flowing skirts, her wide-brimmed straw hats and her long, dark hair secured with satin ribbons.

  He didn’t want to find Emily attractive, but he did. The sorrow in her life had slowed her pace and changed her youth into maturity before its time. But there was a strength in her that had helped her survive a tragedy that would have destroyed a weaker woman.

  He had been living beside her for a month and still hadn’t worked up the courage to face her, to tell her who he was. He needed her forgiveness. But more than anything he needed to do something—anything—to help make amends for the havoc Styles and Hayden Construction Company had created in her life.

  Somehow, someway, he would make atonement to Emily Jordan. If she asked for his head on a silver platter, he would kneel at her feet and hand her the sword.

  Chapter 3

  He had made up his mind to speak to her. Today. It would be so simple. All he had to do was walk out on the beach and say hello. But what would she say, what would she do, when he told her he was M. R. Hayden? Common sense warned him to stay away from her, not to ask for the impossible. His own gut instincts told him he was a fool. Emily Jordan didn’t need him in her life.

  But he needed her.

  He needed to hear her say that she forgave him, that he should stop punishing himself, that it was time for him to move ahead and let go of the past.

  Mitch was restless and lonely today, more so than most days. Sunday was his only off day. The Banning Construction Company worked six days a week on the Gulf Shores resort project. He should be taking it easy on his one off day, but he couldn’t. He had seen Emily leave around nine-thirty this morning with the middle-aged man he’d seen visiting often. He was sure the guy was Fowler Jordan, her late husband’s uncle, the man who hadn’t missed a day of Mitch�
��s trial. From the way they’d been dressed, Mitch assumed Emily and Jordan were headed for church. Emily was a good little girl, the type the old Mitch Hayden had avoided like the plague. That alone should have been enough warning. But no, it had simply increased his desire to know her, the hauntingly beautiful woman who often watched him from her porch.

  She had no idea who he was, of course. Even if she had seen the few newspaper photographs of him taken during the trial, she wouldn’t recognize him. He’d changed so much in the past five years, he doubted his own brothers and sisters would recognize him. The man he was now bore little resemblance to the man he’d once been.

  When he had rented the cottage on the beach, he hadn’t meant to become so fascinated by Emily, hadn’t meant to think of her as anything more than a victim to whom he owed recompense. He had told himself all he wanted to do was make certain she was okay—really okay—and find out if there was anything he could do to help her.

  Hell, it wasn’t as if he needed a woman’s company so damn bad. If he did, all he had to do was take up the offer he’d seen in that waitress’s eyes, the bosomy blonde at Andy’s, where he often ate supper after work.

  Getting a woman wasn’t his problem. A sexual relationship with Emily wasn’t the reason he was here. Guilt and remorse motivated him, and the hope for redemption.

  The spring sunshine warmed his face and heated his body through his jeans and shirt. Cottony white clouds filled a brilliant blue sky, and the tawny white sand crunched beneath his feet. A soft breeze floated in off the Gulf as the murky blue-gray water of Mobile Bay drifted in and out to the rhythm of the ocean’s heartbeat.

  There was a dreamlike serenity to this private stretch of beach, and only the sound of a piano could be heard over the lapping surf and mild wind. Slow and soft, gentle music filled the air. Mitch listened carefully, not recognizing the tune, but immediately aware that it was something classical. It figures, he thought. Emily Jordan looked like the classical type. He wasn’t surprised that the melody coming from her small cassette player would be something written hundreds of years ago.

  Even though he was standing a good twenty feet away from his neighbor, he could make out her delicate features as she sat, concentrating on the sketch pad in front of her. Her oval face was as golden tan as her slender arms and legs. Her nose was small and slightly tilted at the end. Her chin held a hint of a dimple. Her mouth was full and pouty—the kind of mouth that made a man want to taste it.

  She had tied her pink cotton blouse in a loose knot at her waist and hiked her full floral skirt up to her hips. She’d bent her legs at the knees so she could use them as a makeshift prop for her pad. Mitch had a perfect view of her long, trim thighs and shapely calves.

  Fabric in the same design as her skirt draped around the widebrim straw hat she wore. Long tails of flowery pink material cascaded down her back and covered part of her sun-streaked, dark-brown ponytail. Loose tendrils of hair curled about her face, clinging to her forehead where perspiration dampened it.

  When he was within a few feet of her, Mitch stopped. She seemed totally oblivious to his presence as she continued using the charcoal in her hand to create a sketch of the bay. When the music ended, she didn’t stop drawing; she merely reached down with one hand to where the cassette player lay on the quilt beneath her and turned over the tape. Another tune, completely alien to Mitch, permeated the air, mixing the sound of harp with the light spring breeze.

  He felt like a fool standing there staring at her. He wasn’t some insecure teenage boy hoping to impress a girl. He was a thirty-five-year-old man who had learned the hard way the price a man had to pay to impress a woman. If he had any sense, he’d run like hell. Obviously he didn’t have any sense.

  He couldn’t stop looking at Emily, couldn’t stop wanting to reach out and touch her. The afternoon sun glistened off the locket that hung from a thin gold chain around her neck. She doesn’t look real, Mitch thought. Wearing that long skirt and straw hat, she looked like someone from an era when ladies never went out in the sun without their parasols. Hell! He shook his head to dislodge such idiotic nonsense.

  He was acting like a romantic dreamer, and that was the last thing on earth Mitch Hayden was. He was a realist, and often a pessimist, and God knew he was a fool. But there wasn’t a sentimental, romantic bone in his body.

  He’d been too long without a woman. That had to be the problem. Otherwise he’d never be attracted to this gentlelooking creature. He preferred his women sexy, earthy and a lot less a lady. Yeah, lady. That was the first word that came to mind, and that’s exactly what she was, a lady, and by the looks of her, an old-fashioned one. So, why did he find her so appealing, so intriguing? Ladies had never been his type.

  And if she realized who he was, she wouldn’t find him appealing in any way. If he introduced himself, would she run from him screaming?

  Halting directly in front of her, he blocked her line of vision. Glancing down at her just as she tilted her chin and raised her gaze to meet his, Mitch noticed that her eyes were brown—dark, rich, cinnamon brown—and framed by long, thick black eyelashes.

  She was beautiful.

  Somehow he’d known she would be. On that April morning five years ago, he hadn’t gotten a good look at her face. But as long as he lived, he would never forget her singed dark hair and tattered pink nightgown.

  The moment their eyes met, she gasped. “Oh, hello.” Her voice fit her feminine image perfectly. Soft. Sweet. Slightly sexy.

  “Hello,” he replied.

  When she smiled, he felt the warmth of it spread through him. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Dammit, this wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Stretching out her legs on the quilt, she laid her sketch pad aside. “I was hoping it wouldn’t rain this weekend, so I could stay outside and sketch.”

  “What are you drawing?” He wasn’t a man used to idle chitchat, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why he was bothering with it now. Because she is Emily Jordan and you want to get to know her. You want to find out if there is some way you can repay her for the life Styles and Hayden Construction Company destroyed.

  Lifting the pad, she turned it so he could see the sketch. “What do you think?”

  “I’m no art critic, but I think it’s good.” He pointed to the sketch. “There’s a child in your drawing.”

  “Hannah.” She ran her fingertips lightly over the sketch of the little girl. “I’m working on illustrations for a children’s book. Hannah is my main character.”

  “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.” Layin
g 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?