by Noelle Adams
Emily wasn’t feeling particularly charmed at the moment. She frowned back at him. “What about it?”
“Why aren’t you in it?”
The authorities genuinely believed that, despite his mob roots, Marino wasn’t violent, having been taken in by the white-collar persona he’d adopted over the last two decades. The neighborhood knew better. Marino was just a thug in a five-thousand-dollar suit.
“Because I wasn’t offered it, and I wouldn’t take it even if we were. I’m not in any danger, and everyone knows it. I wouldn’t have to be followed around by that cop if you hadn’t raised such a fuss with the local precinct.”
“I know him better than you do.”
“He can be violent, sure, but he’s old-school. He isn’t going to kill a seventeen-year-old girl from the neighborhood.”
“I’m not convinced of that.”
She was silent, wondering if Paul, with his privileged life and innate entitlement to anything he desired, really believed his own father was so completely ruthless.
“He burned down your house,” he added.
“When no one was in it.” She made the comment offhand, but she didn’t feel that way. She’d loved the old row house where she and her father had lived all her life. There wasn’t anything left to salvage after Marino’s men had burned it down as a warning to keep what she knew about him to herself.
The irony was, if he hadn’t burned down their house, she never would have decided to testify against him. South Philly wasn’t what it used to be, but there was still a lingering community loyalty that Emily would have intuitively fallen back on. She didn’t like to be bullied, though, and her instinct was always to resist all attempts to control her.
Marino had tried to do both.
“You’re going to testify against him now too, aren’t you?” Emily asked, trying to turn around the momentum of the conversation. “What about your protection?”
Paul’s decision to testify against his father had been met with shock and controversy in the neighborhood, with the locals evenly split between those who thought it was the ultimate act of betrayal and those who thought it was the only decent, responsible thing Paul had ever done.
“I’ve arranged for my own security,” he told her. “What about your aunt? Is someone watching her?”
“She’s home sick in bed. She can’t seem to shake this flu. She doesn’t have any important testimony to offer anyway—she’s just confirming what I say. There wouldn’t be any reason to kill her.”
Paul rubbed his chin distractedly, a hint of bristles making a slight scratching sound. “How can you be so casual about this? It’s your life.”
She met his eyes evenly. Paul was six years older than her, and until recently she wouldn’t have dared to give him more than a trembling greeting. “Right. It’s my life.”
“Anyway, the point is you need more security. I can—”
“You can what? Pay a bodyguard to follow me around? Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not being stupid. I can easily—”
“I don’t care what you can easily do,” she spit out, suddenly angry at his arrogant assumption that he had any say at all on her life. “I’m not a spoiled rich boy who lives on a trust fund and wastes his life partying, sleeping around, and jumping out of planes. I might have to work here every hour of the day just so I can pay for things like clothes and college, but my aunt and I don’t accept charity. We definitely don’t accept charity from you.”
Paul’s expression grew tighter and tighter as she spoke, and his eyes were cold and hard when she’d finished. “What have I done to you to deserve that?”
Emily drooped, letting out her pent breath in a rush. “Nothing. You haven’t done anything to me. I’m sorry if I was harsh.”
The truth was she was scared and defensive, and it rubbed her wrong to see how easy Paul’s life appeared.
His mouth softened slightly. “I really wasn’t offering you charity.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“Reasonable measures to ensure the federal case against my father doesn’t lose its star witness.”
Despite herself, Emily snorted at his dry, lofty tone.
Paul might be irresponsible and entitled, but he’d always been incredibly smart. He finished college when he was twenty and went on to get his MBA. How he managed to successfully earn his degree last month while still indulging his very wild lifestyle she couldn’t even imagine.
“Well,” Emily said, forcing down her defensiveness since it wasn’t really Paul’s fault, “It wouldn’t kill you to get a job.”
To her surprise, he didn’t laugh or shrug her comment off. “Believe it or not, I’ve been trying.”
Taken off guard, she blurted out the obvious question. “Where do you want a job?”
“Simone’s.”
Paul was neighborhood royalty not because of his father’s reputation, since many thought Vincent Marino had abandoned his roots long ago. His mother’s family had been equally important in the community—her great-grandfather having made a fortune by starting Simone’s, a national department store chain, and her father having been savvy enough to transition to successful online retailing just in time to keep the company from going bust.
Currently, Paul lived on a trust fund from his grandfather. His mother had died six months ago, leaving all she had to her son as well, but he couldn’t claim it or his share in the company until he’d turned twenty-five.
Emily could hardly blame the woman for not risking everything her family had worked for to a reckless bad-boy like Paul.
“What kind of job are you trying to get? Mail room clerk? Receptionist?”
The corner of his mouth turned up briefly, as if he were suppressing a smile. “I’m not expecting to be appointed CEO at twenty-three, but I’m perfectly well-qualified for some sort of position. The board just doesn’t trust me.”
“Can you blame them?”
The smile disappeared. “It’s my family’s company.”
“Yeah.” Emily thought about it for a minute, surprised and faintly pleased that Paul was actually serious about his desire to work in his mother’s company. In all the years she’d known him, he hadn’t appeared to take anything seriously. “Good thing the press hasn’t caught wind of that. Evil board members heartlessly shutting out grieving son from his birthright.”
Paul was leaning on the counter, but now he straightened up suddenly. His brows drew together.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. He might have said something else, but just then Chris and Laura Mason walked into the bakery.
Emily had been friends with Chris since they both could walk. He’d been the star of the high school soccer team and had gotten an athletic scholarship for college. For years, Chris had been her dream guy, but he’d just never been interested in her that way.
Laura was his older sister.
She was gorgeous and built like a model, and she’d dated Paul for almost six months last year, the longest he’d ever dated anyone. For a while, it looked like he might have really fallen for her, but they’d finally broken up.
Laura was smiling as she approached, and she wrapped an arm around Paul in a half-hug.
Emily turned to Chris, his square face and brown eyes familiar and comforting.
“How’s your aunt?” he asked.
“Even worse. She seemed to have gotten better for a while, but then the flu or whatever just came back.”
Paul and Laura drifted away, absorbed in their own conversation. With their dark hair and movie-star looks, they were absolutely stunning together. Like they matched.
“What were you doing with Paul?” Chris asked, frowning toward the object of his question.
“Just talking. He was being obnoxious, demanding to know why I don’t have better security.”
“He doesn’t really think his dad would…”
Emily shrugged. “Who knows what he thinks?”
“Well,
just be careful around him.”
“Around Paul? He hates his father. He doesn’t want anything to do with him.”
The incident that had confirmed Paul as a prince in their neighborhood was when, during the vicious divorce battle between his mother and father, he’d sided entirely with his mother. He never accepted a dime from his father, not since he was thirteen years old.
“Yeah. I know. But you know how he is with girls. He might try to…try to…” Chris cleared his throat, adorably awkward at the topic. “Get in your pants,” he concluded lamely.
Emily laughed out loud, in genuine amusement, her eyes straying to the corner where Paul was smiling irresistibly at Laura.
One thing Emily knew very well.
There were Lauras in the world, and there were Emilys.
The Lauras were adored by all who saw them, winning admirers and lovers by doing nothing more than flashing a smile. The Lauras married rich men and lived lives of ease and safety.
The Emilys of the world had to scrimp for every penny. Even though they were smart and nice and pretty enough, they still made it through high school without ever having a real boyfriend—since no one of interest ever asked them out. The Emilys of the world made stupid mistakes, like overhearing a mob boss’s conversation about drug trafficking and money laundering. And, being too stubborn to be intimidated into silence, the Emilys of the world ended up in ridiculously melodramatic scenarios like becoming witnesses in federal trials.
Emily had daydreams like everyone else, but she’d long since given up hoping they would come true. It was fine. She had a perfectly decent life and good friends. She didn’t need anything more.
There were Lauras in the world, and there were Emilys.
And the Emilys would never get the prince.
***
A month later, Emily sat stiffly in a hospital room and watched her aunt die.
When she first starting getting the fevers, she’d been restless, sometimes violent in her delirium. She wasn’t anymore. She just lay in the bed, so pale she matched the sheets, and she never even opened her eyes.
Maybe it was the medication, or maybe her body was simply shutting down.
Emily made a point of never lying to herself.
She was her aunt. She was all the family she had in the world.
And she was going to die before the week was over.
She’d been sitting by her aunt’s bed for the last several hours in a numb stupor, but a motion from the doorway managed to catch her attention.
When she turned her head, she saw Paul standing just outside the door, in all of his cool, expensive sexiness.
She hadn’t been expecting visitors, and she just blinked in his direction, trying to get her mind to work.
He made a slight inclination with his head toward the hallway.
After verifying that her aunt’s condition hadn’t changed, she heaved herself to her feet and walked on unsteady legs. Under normal circumstances, she would have resisted his summoning her with just a gesture of his head, but she didn’t have enough energy to argue today.
“Is she okay?” Paul asked after she’d joined him in the hall and they walked to an empty waiting area nearby.
She gave a silent half-shrug.
Her aunt wasn’t okay.
“I didn’t realize it had gotten so bad. I wish someone had told me.” Paul’s eyes were sober, strangely quiet, in a way she’d rarely seen them.
“She just kept getting worse. It happened fast.”
“I would have come back from Switzerland right away if I’d known.” He’d been skiing with friends for the last couple of weeks.
She gave another shrug. “What could you have done?”
“What do the doctors say?”
“They still have no idea. They’re assuming it’s a virus, since it didn’t respond to any of the antibiotics they’ve tried. They had the CDC in and everything, but no one has seen anything like it.”
“Has anyone else gotten sick?”
Emily shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to be contagious that way. They say it doesn’t pass from person-to-person contact. They have no idea what’s going on.”
“And the fevers are the only symptom?”
“That’s it. No symptoms except the fevers. But they just get higher and higher and last longer and longer, and they’re going to kill her soon.” She thought she’d cried as much as she could, but her voice still broke on the last word.
Paul glanced away, his expression strangely tight. “I’m sorry.”
She believed him. He’d played around most of his life, but he wasn’t a bad-hearted guy. “Yeah.”
“Have they…” Paul trailed off and started again. “Have the doctors considered the possibility that this isn’t random?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you and your aunt are witnesses against Vincent Marino.”
It was so strange to hear Paul talk about his own father so distantly, as if he were a stranger.
“I know that, but I’m the key witness, and I’m not sick. Besides, they tested for poisons and toxins and everything. They think it’s a virus.”
“I didn’t mean she’d been poisoned. My father traffics in arms, among other things, and he doesn’t just sell guns and missiles. For a while, he’s been interested in the development of biological weapons.”
She gasped. “You think he did this to my aunt on purpose?”
“I don’t know. It might not have been on purpose. Maybe your aunt was exposed to something accidentally on the job. I just want to make sure the doctors look into every possibility. Is it all right if I talk to them?”
Emily nodded, horrified by this new possibility.
It made a bleak sort of sense, though.
Everything terrible that had happened to her in the last year was because of Vincent Marino.
Paul glanced down the hall toward her aunt’s room. “Do they just have the one uniform stationed at her room?”
“Do we really have to go through this whole thing again?”
“It’s not enough.”
Emily was too tired and drained to have another argument about security.
Paul seemed to recognize this and took advantage of it. “One half-competent cop isn’t enough to keep you and your aunt safe. I’m not any sort of professional, but I could take that cop out without blinking.”
For a strange moment, Emily was attracted to him. Not in the old way—the kind of movie-star idolization—but in an intense, visceral surge prompted by the masculinity he exuded.
The weird response came and went in just a moment, since she wasn’t in any sort of condition to process or indulge it.
“And then you and your aunt would be dead,” Paul concluded, still looking down at the uniformed police officer stationed at her aunt’s door.
Emily didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything.
“I’m serious,” he continued, turning his gaze back to her. “You may not believe it, and the feds may not believe it, but I know my father better than any of you. He’s perfectly capable of killing anyone he sees as a threat to him.”
She shrugged with one shoulder. “My aunt is almost dead anyway.”
“But you aren’t, and you’re still a threat to my dad if you testify against him. I don’t know what they’re thinking, just putting one half-assed cop on—”
“Would you stop?” she burst out. “I’m so sorry that my aunt dying is putting a crimp in your little vendetta, but I’ve got other things to worry about right now.”
Paul’s expression changed. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know. I know you didn’t.” She exhaled, suddenly as limp as a popped balloon. She swayed on her feet, and Paul reached out to put a supportive arm around her.
It wasn’t tender or gentle, but it was strong, and she needed it.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked.
She sneered at him faintly, too weak to give his presumptuo
usness the snide response it deserved.
Evidently realizing she wasn’t going to answer, Paul went back to their previous subject. “I’ll understand if you decide you don’t want to testify against him now, given what’s happened.”
“No. I still want to do it. Your dad doesn’t get to win, just because everything else has gone to shit.”
Paul’s handsome features relaxed slightly. “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you.”
“But still…” He cleared his throat. “Can I please do something for you?”
She looked up at him, surprised.
“Can I hire security to protect you until the trial is over?”
She just stared, wondering why she didn’t feel the immediate defensiveness she’d felt when he made the same offer before.
Paul gestured with his head toward a big man in a suit who stood several paces away. Emily had assumed he was related to one of the patients in the hospital, but she suddenly realized he was a bodyguard. “They’ll be discreet. They won’t get in your way. And they’ll keep you a lot safer than law enforcement seems capable of.”
She swallowed and thought about it. Then made a helpless gesture with her hands. She just couldn’t care about such things when her aunt was dying down the hall.
Paul reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. His grip was warm and heavy. “I might not be able to do anything to help your aunt, but I can keep you safe, Emily. Let me do it.”
For a moment, she couldn’t look away from him. She’d never seen Paul so utterly earnest.
“Can you trust me?” he asked, when she still didn’t answer.
Maybe there was no reason to trust him, since Paul had done little in his life but waste time, money, and relationships, but she did anyway. “Yeah.”
“You’ll let me keep you safe?”
“Yeah.”
He squeezed her shoulder before he dropped his hand. “I won’t let you down.”
***
Three weeks later, Emily buried her aunt with a simple graveside service.
The Masons opened their home afterwards so people could give Emily their support and comfort.
