Emily shook her head. “I’m okay. I’ve got to go—”
But he couldn’t release her. Still holding her shoulders tightly, he stared down into the swirling blue of her eyes, feeling again the loss of gravity, the absence of any solid ground. “Please,” he heard himself say, his voice no more than a hoarse whisper. But please what? Please don’t go? Or please kiss me?
“Jim, I’ll be okay,” she said again.
Perfect. He’d meant to reassure her, but she was the one doing the reassuring here.
Jim did the only thing he could think to do under the circumstances. He kissed her.
It was remarkable. One moment he was gazing into Emily’s beautiful eyes, and the next he was locked with her in an embrace that told the truth about the fire that still burned between them. It was an explosion of desire, a chemical reaction between two highly volatile substances kept too long apart.
Jim heard himself groan as he kissed her again. She tasted sweet, so sweet, and she clung to him, returning his kisses with an equal desperation. Her body was so soft against his. He could feel her heart pounding, every beat an echo of his own drumming pulse.
And then the doorbell rang.
Emily sprang away from him guiltily, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed as she stared at him.
“Don’t go,” he said. It wasn’t a request, it was a demand, only there was something wrong with his voice. The words came out a mere whisper that made them sound more like a plea.
Emily’s eyes filled with tears. Don’t go. But she had to. She bent down to pick up her purse from where it had fallen on the floor. She was afraid to go, but the truth was, she was more afraid to stay. She turned and opened the door.
Alex surely noticed the tears that were still brimming in her eyes, and Jim’s tight-lipped expression. But he politely didn’t comment, at least not until he was helping her into the back seat of his limo.
“Isn’t it strange how you can be apart from someone like a brother or a sister for years, but then, when you see them again, nothing has changed?” Alex said, with unexpected sensitivity. “Everything’s exactly the same. It’s as if you pick up right where you left off, with all of the old issues and emotions and arguments suddenly alive again.”
Emily murmured her agreement.
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “This evening is perfect for you,” he said with a smile. “What you need is a little time away from him.” Him being Dan, who was, in reality, Jim.
Alex had no idea just how right he was.
AS JIM WATCHED Delmore’s limousine pull out of the driveway, he dialed the number of Felipe Salazar’s car phone.
It rang once, twice, three times. Where the hell was he? God, was it possible that Salazar wasn’t even in his car? And if he wasn’t in his car, then he wasn’t following Delmore and Emily—
Salazar didn’t pick up the phone until after the fifth ring. “Hola.”
“Answer the damn phone when it rings, damn it,” Jim barked.
“Ah, Diego. I am fine, and how are you?” Salazar said, not one bit fazed.
“Are you following Delmore?”
“Yes, but it would be much easier if I were not distracted by the ‘damn phone.’ The limousine made a left turn across heavy traffic, and my choice was either to concentrate on following it or to lose them and answer the phone. I let it ring.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just…” Jim took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Felipe, don’t lose her,” he said softly.
“You know I won’t, man,” Salazar said.
“When they get to their destination,” Jim said, “go in, let Emily see that you’re there. She was pretty nervous about being alone with Delmore.”
“Got it,” Salazar said. “I’ll call you from inside.”
“Thanks,” Jim said.
“Later,” Salazar said, and the line was cut.
Jim slowly hung up the phone. The silence in the apartment surrounded him, and he started to pace.
Emily was scared. He could still see the traces of fear in her eyes, could still feel her trembling as he held her in his arms. What if he finds out—? There was no doubt about it, she was scared. Of Delmore.
Jim stopped pacing. He stood in the middle of Emily’s living room and stared sightlessly out the sliding glass door.
It was obvious now that Emily had dreaded this date with Delmore. Jim had been wrong, thinking that she might still be in love with the millionaire. No way could she be in love with a man she was so afraid of. Yeah, he’d been dead wrong about her reasons for accepting this dinner date with Delmore.
He couldn’t remember the last time being wrong about something had made him feel so good.
CHAPTER TEN
AS SALAZAR CRACKED OPEN another pistachio nut with his teeth, Jim glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. Delmore and Emily had been inside Aquavia’s restaurant for close to three hours now.
Salazar had been going inside every ten minutes to check on Emily. According to Jim’s partner, Emily had ordered some kind of broiled whitefish for dinner, but she hadn’t eaten much of the meal. She and Delmore had been sitting alone in a secluded corner of the harborside restaurant until about an hour ago, when another couple had motored up to the dock on their yacht. They were friends of Delmore’s, and they’d joined him and Emily. Now they all sat at a bigger table, having dessert and drinks. Emily was drinking herbal tea, Salazar reported.
“This is driving me crazy,” Jim muttered, staring at the back of Delmore’s limousine. Salazar cracked open another nut, and Jim shot him a look. “And you’re not helping any,” he added.
“Sorry,” Salazar said, crumpling up the paper bag that held the rest of the nuts and the discarded shells.
They sat for a moment in a silence broken only by the soft purr of the car’s engine and air conditioner.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Salazar asked suddenly. “You know, about what’s going on between you and Emily?”
Jim turned to find his partner watching him. Talk about it? What could he possibly say? “There’s nothing going on,” he said flatly.
Salazar nodded slowly. He obviously didn’t buy it. “You trust me with your life, Diego,” he said. “You can trust me with this, too.”
Jim raked his fingers through his hair. There was no way he could talk about what he was feeling. Hell, in order to put his thoughts into words, he’d have to figure out exactly what he was feeling. And that was way too frightening. “I’m sorry, Phil,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but…I can’t…talk about it.”
Salazar looked out the windshield at Delmore’s limousine. “Me, I’m in too deep with that girl, Jewel,” he said, as easily as if he were telling Jim what he had had for lunch that day. “You know, that friend of Emily’s?”
Jim couldn’t hide his astonishment. “The redhead?”
“Yes.” Salazar smiled. “Jewel Hays. I have been going to visit her every day.” He laughed and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he shot Jim a sidelong glance that was a mix of humor and despair. “Can you believe it? Me, Mr. Clean, getting involved with a crack addict.”
Jim found his voice. “But…she’s been through rehab.”
“Three times,” Salazar said. “Which means she has already slipped back twice.” He sighed. “She looks like an angel—but I know she’s not one. Far from it, in fact. She was on the street, turning tricks, before she was fifteen. Fifteen.” He broke off, muttering something in Spanish. Jim caught enough of it to know his partner was damning to hell everyone responsible for leading a child so far astray.
Another minute ticked by on Jim’s watch as he stared out at the brightly lit parking lot. He’d been just a little bit older than Felipe Salazar when he first met Emily….
“Still,” Salazar said, breaking the silence, “when she looks at me and smiles…” He shrugged and smiled ruefully. “You know, I’m not in love with her. I’m not crazy enough to let it go that far. But I can’t control what s
he’s feeling. I know she’s got a crush on me. I know this attraction thing is very mutual, and way too strong, you know?”
Jim nodded. He knew. “What are you going to do?”
“What can I do?” Salazar sighed. “I’m going to keep visiting her. She needs someone to care, man, and it looks like I’m it.”
Jim nodded again. He knew how that felt, too.
“And I’m going to pray that she stays away from the drugs,” Salazar continued. “I know enough about addicts to know that keeping her drug-free is not something I can do for her. She has to do that herself. She seems to be doing okay, but, you know, she’s still in the honeymoon phase.”
The alarm on Jim’s wristwatch beeped. As he turned it off, Salazar climbed out of the car. Ten minutes had passed. It was time to check on Emily.
Emily. Beautiful Emily, who deep down inside was nowhere near as cool and serene as she pretended to be. Emily, who had kissed him back as though there were no tomorrow. Emily, who was sitting in that restaurant right now, with another man’s arm around her shoulders…
Big deal, Jim told himself sternly. Compared to Felipe Salazar’s, his problems were nothing. At least the woman Jim was attracted to wasn’t a recovering drug addict. Sure, it was true that Felipe didn’t want any kind of lasting relationship with Jewel. He wasn’t in love with Jewel, the way Jim was in love with—
The way he was in—No. Jim felt himself start to sweat, and he pushed the air conditioner’s fan up a notch higher. He wasn’t falling in love with Emily again. No way. Only a fool would set himself up for such total and absolute failure. Sure, Emily was still physically attracted to him. That was clear from the way she’d returned his kisses. But she’d damn near run out of the apartment afterward. Jim shook his head. She couldn’t wait to get away from him. She’d told him, in plain English, that she didn’t like him. Yeah, he had a screw coming loose if he thought falling in love with Emily again would bring him anything but pain.
So he wouldn’t let himself fall. Easier said than done. Jim felt like a man clinging to the side of a rocky cliff, hanging on with his fingernails and the sheer force of his willpower. Every thought of Emily—which was damn near every thought—was like a strong wind, buffeting him, straining his tentative hold.
Felipe Salazar climbed back into the car. “They are all still sitting at the table,” he reported. “I made eye contact with Emily. She’s doing fine. She even smiled at me. That is one tough lady.”
Jim murmured his agreement, wishing Salazar would change the subject. He wanted to know that Emily was all right—period, the end. He didn’t want to know if she was smiling or if Delmore was holding her hand. He didn’t want to remember her short but well-manicured fingernails, or her long, slender, cool fingers, or that only one touch of her graceful hands could drive him damn near wild….
“Jewel told me Emily teaches both remedial English and honors AP English,” Salazar went on. “Apparently remedial English is where they send the troublemakers in her school. According to Jewel, before Emily came along, that class was little more than baby-sitting the students the school’s administration hoped would drop out when they reached age sixteen. But from the bits and pieces I’ve heard from Jewel, Emily wouldn’t give up on those kids. She got them involved in creative writing. They published their own literary magazine—these kids who had never written anything that wasn’t spray-painted on a wall. It was like magic. They were hooked. But from what I have heard from Jewel, I think it was more than the magazine that hooked the kids. I think it was Emily. I think she treats these kids like human beings. She respects them, and she gives them opportunities to gain her trust. And once she trusts them, she stands by them. She believes in them, so they can believe in themselves.”
Jim knew what it felt like to have Emily believe in him. He could remember her eyes shining as she’d smiled up at him, back when they were dating. He could see her sitting by his bed in the hospital, believing that he would pull through, that his pain would soon ease, believing enough for both of them. He could remember her coming to his apartment, to his bed, giving herself to him, strong in her belief that he would not abuse her trust.
And then he had.
He’d destroyed everything between them.
And still she believed in him. He’d heard it in her voice, only a few hours ago. She’d said, “You’re going to follow me, right? Then I’ll be fine.” She believed he would keep her safe.
As if his memory had been captured on film, lit by a strobe light, Jim saw Emily’s face as she stared up at him, as he bent his head to kiss her. Contact. Heat. Soft, sweet mouth. Fingers in his hair. Pulling him closer. Closer. His tongue against hers. Her body molding to his. A flash of pleasure so intense it was nearly pain.
And then it was pain.
Who the hell was he kidding here? He wasn’t going to fall in love with Emily again. It just wasn’t possible.
He wasn’t going to fall in love with her again—because, damn it, he’d never stopped loving her in the first place.
EMILY HEARD the words, but they didn’t register at first.
“It’s still early,” Alex’s friend Marty was saying, swishing around the ice in her Long Island iced tea. “Why don’t you and Emily sail back to the cottage with us?” She smiled. “I’m dying to show off the new pool we’ve just put in. What do you say? We can all go for a swim.”
Sail? Across the harbor, to Marty and Ken’s palatial “cottage”? Emily felt a flash of panic. If they sailed, if they didn’t take the limo, Jim wouldn’t be able to trail her. He’d have no idea where she’d gone, no way to find her.
“That sounds great,” Alex said. He turned toward Emily. “I’ve been hearing about this new swimming pool for close to a year now.”
“But…I didn’t bring my bathing suit,” Emily said.
Marty lit a cigarette and smiled at Emily from behind a cloud of smoke. “With a body like yours, you don’t need one.” She laughed, the lines around her eyes crinkling with genuine amusement. “On second thought, with a body like yours, we better keep you covered up. We don’t want Ken’s blood pressure to get too high. There’re some extra suits in the boathouse. I’m sure there’s something that would fit you.”
“Great,” Alex said again, as if it were settled. “Let me take care of this bill, and we’ll get going.”
“I should call…Dan,” Emily said, “and tell him not to wait up for me.”
“Emily’s brother is in town,” Alex explained to Ken and Marty, searching through his wallet for his credit card. “Use the phone at the bar,” he said, glancing up at Emily. “Those public phones have lousy wiring.”
Emily scooped her purse off the table, heading first toward the ladies’ room. She had the phone number for Jim’s cellular phone written on a piece of paper in her purse. But since she was supposedly calling her home, it would look strange for her to look up the phone number. She would quickly memorize it in the ladies’ room.
But inside the ladies’ room, in the privacy of one of the stalls, Emily realized that Jim’s phone number was not in her purse. Too late, she remembered putting her wallet and her keys and the paper with Jim’s phone number in her other purse, the white one—which was no doubt sitting on her dresser in her bedroom.
Silently she cursed her own stupidity. Jim was sitting in Felipe’s car, not more than a few hundred yards away from her, yet he might as well be a thousand miles away.
She quickly searched through her purse. What did she have in here, anyway? A lipstick, an eyeliner pencil, a wide-toothed comb, a sticky pack of wildberry Lifesavers, about three dollars in change—mostly pennies—some gas receipts, last year’s calendar datebook, a wrapped granola bar, a small packet of tissues, a tampon and an expired credit card.
She wasn’t carrying a phone book. She didn’t have any obvious solutions. She didn’t even have a pencil so that she could scribble a note to Jim telling him where they were going.
Come to think of it, even if she had Jim’
s phone number, she couldn’t tell him where they were going. She had no idea what Marty and Ken’s street address was. Shoot, she didn’t even know their last name!
Emily closed her eyes, trying to imagine what would happen after she and Alex left the restaurant on Marty and Ken’s yacht.
The limo driver would leave his seat at the bar, where he was drinking glass after glass of ginger ale. He would go out to the limo, get in and drive away.
Jim and Felipe would watch in astonishment. Felipe would come into the restaurant to find their table empty and Alex and Emily gone. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that they’d left by boat.
Jim would be mad as hell. And worried, too. Emily could still see the look in his eyes when she’d admitted that, yes, she was afraid to go to dinner with Alex. Jim had looked almost desperate. And then he’d kissed her…
Emily shook her head. She couldn’t think about that kiss right now. She didn’t want to think about it now. Or ever, for that matter. But it was hard not to. She could still feel the rough stubble of his beard against her face. She could still taste the too-familiar sweetness of his mouth. She could feel his arms around her, pulling her against the hard, lean length of his body….
Emily heard the water running in the sink, and smelled the unmistakable aroma of cigarette smoke that followed Marty around. She took a deep breath and left the illusion of safety and privacy that the bathroom stall had given her.
Marty was touching up her lipstick, looking into the long mirror that was on the wall above a line of sinks. She met Emily’s eyes in the mirror and smiled.
Emily washed her hands. “Marty,” she said, “I realized suddenly that I don’t even know your last name.”
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