by Carol Ross
Emily listened with fascination as Amanda filled her in on all that had transpired while they were away. Emily was impressed by the amount of information that Amanda had managed to gather—everything from Jeremy’s tanking on the Argot job and the graphics staff’s part in it to his medical diagnosis with irritable bowel syndrome.
“Amanda,” she said, her voice filled with awe, “have you ever thought about a career in espionage?”
Amanda’s lips turned up into a satisfied grin. “Just looking out for my best friend—who also happens to be my boss.”
“What an idiot!” Emily said. “Amanda, why didn’t you tell me he was such an idiot?”
“It took me a while to see it for myself. He was very smooth, and he’s a good-looking guy if you like that pretty-boy thing, and he’s a snappy dresser. He was talking the talk and putting in long hours, although now I’m certain he was in his office playing video poker and shopping for shoes the entire time.”
Emily let out a disgusted snort of laughter. “According to the feds, he’s supposed to be arriving today. What is taking him so long anyway?”
“Oh, unfortunately, he had to travel on a cargo flight full of live birds. Apparently there’s some Native Alaskan village up there where they rehabilitate migratory birds that have been injured and then they let them go back into the wild. They’ve got this indoor setup for all kinds of birds and different weather conditions and everything. Isn’t that interesting? But if Kim’s calculations are correct—and I’m sure they are—he should be arriving in a few hours.” At that she winked, toasted Emily with her bottle and took a deep drink.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BERING LET HIMSELF into Tag’s house. He heard a female voice and realized that Tag must have some company. He was surprised because his cousin hadn’t dated at all since Amanda had left town. Well, he would make himself scarce very shortly. He just needed to pick up the mail that Tag had been collecting for him the past few days.
Then he was going to go home, take a shower and head over to Janie’s. The twins had come early, but thank goodness not as early as they’d feared. They’d been healthy, if a bit fragile, at three weeks early, but now at three months they seemed to be thriving. He counted his blessings for that every single day. Janie, however, was battling a severe case of postpartum depression, and Bering was doing his best to help out any chance he could.
But when he walked into the kitchen, what, or who, he saw there stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Amanda?”
“Bering!” She gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Howdy, stranger.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Visiting your cousin,” she said, flipping a thumb over her shoulder. “And it’s nice to see you, too.”
“I’m sorry, Amanda. It is great to see you. Um, how are you? What are you...?”
“I’m good—great now that I’m here. And I’m here because someone had to fly back up to make a donation at the Chamber of Commerce banquet tonight. I volunteered. Cam-Field has decided to donate a million dollars to the hospital anyway—a philanthropic gesture of good faith or something like that.”
“Oh, that’s great. Is, uh, Emily,” he stuttered, “did Emily come with you?”
“No, Bering, she didn’t. I thought you probably knew.... She doesn’t work for Cam-Field anymore.”
Bering swallowed heavily and looked down at the floor. “Did she get married, then?”
“What? Married? No!” Amanda sputtered.
“Senator Marsh said she and Strathom were engaged. So I thought maybe she got married so she wouldn’t have to testify against him. I know the trial is coming up....”
“That’s silly. She would never marry that fool.”
“Oh—”
“Bering,” Amanda interjected sharply, “what are you wearing?”
Bering looked down at his clothing and let the relief sink in. Emily. Not married. Why did that make him so inexplicably happy? It wasn’t as if he still had a chance.
He met Amanda’s annoyed stare. “Oh, sorry...yeah, I’m a little dirty. I’ve been on a four-day guide trip—”
Amanda gestured at him impatiently. “Not that.” She reached over and tugged Emily’s red knit scarf out of his collar. “I’m talking about this.” She snatched it off his neck.
“What?”
“Emily went crazy thinking that she’d lost this scarf.” Amanda held it aloft as if it were evidence from a crime scene. “I tore the house and the office apart looking for it. Then she thought maybe she’d left it in the rental car. I had to search through an entire Dumpster, Bering, looking for it.”
Bering stared at her in confusion. “But...I found it at her house. The day she left here when you gave me the key. I went there to see her, but she was already gone. I found it on the floor. I thought she had left it on purpose.”
“Trust me, Bering. She did not leave it on purpose. She was devastated that she’d lost it. Almost as devastated as she was over you— Know what?” She grimaced and tried to correct her slip of the tongue. She plastered on a wide fake smile and continued talking. “We should go for a walk. Whaddya say? All that frigid, fresh air, Tag?” She gestured toward the door.
Bering was stunned. It couldn’t be possible, could it? That she hadn’t left it on purpose? That she’d cared enough about it...to want to take it with her?
“Amanda, are you saying that she didn’t leave it? That she wanted it?”
“I think we should head toward the water, don’t you? But let’s stick to the sidewalk. Better safe than sorry, as I always say.” She started marching on the spot. “I’ll just get my coat and stuff and then we can head out. It’s really not so bad outside. You guys said it was beautiful up here in the summer but I didn’t believe it would be this—”
“Amanda.” He stepped toward her and took hold of her wrist. “Please, just, please,” he said in an urgent tone. “Tell me everything.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you, Bering.” Amanda looked away from him and winced. “She made me promise,” she added quietly.
“Amanda.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, opened them and asked, “Do I have to beg...again?”
“All right,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I can’t stand this anyway. She’s...she was totally broken up about it—betrayed by her stepfather, betrayed by Jeremy and finally betrayed by you. A betrayal trifecta. But those things were nothing compared to getting her heart broken by you, Bering. Emily’s never been in love before and you just—you can’t imagine how awful it’s been for her.”
“Love! What love? I didn’t know... She never said... And I...I didn’t mean to betray her. And even some of the newspaper articles said that she and Strathom were engaged.”
“Pfft,” Amanda said with a roll of her eyes. “You believe everything you read in the papers now? She was in love with you—you moron.”
“But...but she never said anything.”
Amanda scowled at him. “And you did?” she said, her tone oozing sarcasm. “You mean she didn’t reciprocate when you shimmied up her balcony with your mandolin and professed your undying love through poetry and song?”
“I...I... But the scarf...”
“I can’t believe you gave up because of this stupid scarf.”
“I don’t understand... I thought... How is she?”
Amanda shrugged helplessly. “How do you think? She’s been miserable. Slowly getting better, but the only thing that’s kept her sane was helping to straighten out the legal nightmare that Jeremy created.”
“Where is she, Amanda?” Bering’s tone allowed for no argument.
“You’re not going to believe it when I tell you.”
* * *
WOW. IT REALLY was one big boat, er, ship—whatever it was, it was big. Emily stared up at the cruise ship with a welcome sense of satisfaction. She’d survived. The past four months had been hell, but she’d made it. She’d done her part to untangle Cam-Fiel
d’s massive legal knot. The charges against Franklin and the CFO had been dropped, leaving Jeremy on the hook for the entire fiasco.
But luckily, like Jeremy did virtually everything else with regard to his career, he’d done it badly. It hadn’t taken the authorities long to prove that he’d been bribing local officials. The idiot had even used a company check when he’d first started the scheme. His trial date had been scheduled, and in the meantime he was behind bars. Franklin had refused to post his bail, and Emily hoped he was having a fine time in his new corner office constructed entirely of steel bars.
Franklin had offered Emily her rightful position as vice president, and she’d shocked him and the entire Cam-Field staff by not only declining the offer, but by resigning, as well. Her mother had nearly passed out when she heard the news. Emily suspected it had as much to do with the fact that she wasn’t getting married as it did with her resignation. Franklin had taken it surprisingly well. Emily knew it was partially because he didn’t believe that she would stay away for good. He’d told her that he was giving her a leave of absence to think it over. But what he didn’t realize was that she’d already thought it over, and she wasn’t going back.
But she also now believed that he really did want to see her happy. That was the one good thing to come out of the whole ordeal—she and Franklin had breached some kind of emotional wall in their relationship. Emily felt sure that he loved her—he told her almost daily now. And they’d begun to talk and to discover that they did have things to discuss that didn’t relate directly to Cam-Field. They still talked about that, of course, but he began to share things about himself and about her mother that she’d never known—about how her mother’s childhood had been filled with poverty and neglect. Emily better understood her mother’s neediness, and while it didn’t make up for her lack of parenting during Emily’s childhood, it was somehow improving her relationship with her mother, too. And that was the best that Emily could hope for, to move forward—in her relationship with her parents and in her life.
She’d applied for a job on one of the cruise lines that ran out of Houston, gotten the job, learned the job and now here she was, two months later, sitting in the sun preparing for the ship to depart yet again. She’d worked every single day for the past month, until her boss had finally insisted that she take a few days off. She wasn’t looking forward to the downtime, because she’d discovered that the busier she wasn’t, the more time she had to think about her time in Rankins—her time with Bering.
If only she could somehow work her way out of love with him. Sometimes it surprised her how much she still missed Bering. She supposed she should feel lucky, rather than extraordinarily pathetic, that she’d managed to make it to twenty-eight before she’d had her first experience with heartbreak. Poems were written about it and songs were sung, but she’d always assumed that they were speaking metaphorically and exaggerating for effect. They weren’t.
She’d forgiven him for the most part, now that time had passed, for what he’d done. Maybe forgive was too strong a word, but she certainly understood why he’d done it. He’d warned her that he was going to do whatever it took to keep Cam-Field out of Rankins—she just hadn’t been savvy enough to realize that he was referring to the indiscriminate shattering of her most important organ.
She might have done the same at one point in her life. It seemed so strange to her now that her job had ever been that important to her. She had definitely become a different person. Or was it that she’d just never known who she really was? Regardless, she was glad that the end result had saved Rankins from destruction and her stepfather from prison.
Emily glanced up from the book that she’d been staring at for the past few minutes and froze as she saw a familiar figure striding her way. What? No, it couldn’t be... Emily stood up as he got closer, her book slipping out of her hands, tumbling onto her lounge chair and hitting the ground with a thud.
She squinted toward the advancing form. “Aidan?” she called out as he neared.
“Hey, Emily. They told me I’d find you up here.”
Emily beamed and hugged him. “Aidan, what in the world are you doing here?”
“Taking a cruise. This is a cruise ship, is it not?”
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
He looked down at her intently. “I thought maybe we could use some brother-sister time, and I haven’t had a vacation in, what, three years? I’m all yours for the next two weeks. I figured I was due. I’ve never been on a cruise before. What’s it like?”
Emily shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, either. I’ve been working the entire time, but it seems like everyone is always having fun. This is my first one to enjoy like a paying customer.”
* * *
BERING SPOTTED HER immediately. Even in the crowded room, his eye was drawn to her like a magnet. Again with the red—as though she knew he was coming for her. His lips slowly turned up into a smile as he watched her. She was wearing red and she was dancing. She was a really good dancer. Why hadn’t he ever danced with her? He was going to correct that right now. But wait, who was that guy holding on to her like that?
“Amanda,” Bering managed to whisper when he could finally speak. “Who is that?”
Amanda peeked out from behind him. “What the—” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it,” she repeated. “He’s actually here. That’s—”
And in that moment Bering knew, and he started moving. It was Strathom. She was with Strathom. She’d actually gone back to him. But she couldn’t. He wouldn’t let her. Not now, not when he’d come so far and was so close to getting her back. He’d learned so much from Amanda on the way here—about her relationship with Strathom, about her family, her life—and he knew how difficult it all must have been for her.
But if Amanda was right and she really did care about him, he had to try. He had to convince her to at least hear him out. And he was hoping for more than that—he’d brought Amanda, Tag and Janie along in case there was any chance that Emily would say yes....
He strode across the long dining room and stepped onto the dance floor.
“Bering?” Emily said, shock registering clearly on her face. “What are you doing here?”
He gently took hold of her elbow and guided her off the dance floor.
* * *
EMILY FELT AS IF her heart was going to explode inside her chest it was beating so wildly. What could he possibly be doing here? Had he come to get information out of her? She’d already told the authorities everything she knew. She was on the prosecution’s list to testify if they needed her.
“I came here to talk to you, Emily. I need to tell you some things I should have told you months ago.” He reached into his jacket pocket to pull something out, but paused for a moment as his eyes drank her in. They roved over her lightly tanned skin and finally settled on her wide gray eyes. “I, uh, I—”
Emily felt tears sting her eyes and she looked away.
“Emily,” Aidan said as he approached them. “Is everything okay?”
Bering cursed softly and then spoke sharply without looking away from Emily, “Give us a minute—”
She looked at Aidan, wanting to reassure him. “It’s fine, Aidan.”
“Aidan?” Bering said, turning now to take a good look at him. “Aidan... Oh, right, you guys look so much alike.”
Emily huffed impatiently and pointed at him. “Yes, this is Aidan, my brother. Forgive my rudeness in skipping the introductions. Bering, what are doing here—” she blurted, noticing then what he was holding in his hand. “Is that my scarf? How did you...?”
“Um, I wanted to bring it to you. Amanda said you didn’t leave it on purpose.”
Emily swallowed down the bubble of hope that had started to rise within her. “You came all the way from Alaska to bring me my scarf?”
“Amanda said you were looking for it and I thought maybe that meant—”
“What, Bering? You thought it meant what?” H
er voice was choked with emotion.
He stepped toward her and wrapped the scarf around her neck. “I thought maybe it meant that you didn’t leave it on purpose.”
She gripped the ends of the scarf and squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds. She opened them and started to speak in a strangled voice. “Bering, no, I didn’t. I—”
“Emily—” he began, but then fell silent as he stared deeply into her eyes. “I didn’t know Franklin Campbell was your stepfather. I knew Strathom’s name because of the research I’d done on Cam-Field before you ever showed up in Rankins. But I didn’t know your relationship to him or to Franklin Campbell. Emily, I never would have let the senator make that announcement if I’d known.... And then I found your scarf lying on the floor and I thought that you’d left it....”
Emily reached for his hand and held it tightly.
“From the day we met and you stripped your clothes off in front of me...”
She still held on to one end of the scarf and Bering closed his hand over hers. “What are you saying, Bering?”
“I love you, Emily.”
“Oh, Bering,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”
Bering tugged on the end of the scarf, gently pulling until she bumped lightly against his chest. He took her into his arms.
“My sister’s a stripper?” Aidan looked toward Amanda and frowned.
“No, no, it wasn’t like that,” she said. “She was on drugs.”
“Oh, drugs, yeah, of course,” he said drily. “That explains it—a druggie and a stripper. Who are you people anyway?”
* * *
BERING WANTED TO get married on the ship, but Emily refused. They were lounging side by side on deck chairs outside her cabin, with the scarf resting on her lap. At least she’d agreed to marry him, though.
“Emily, I brought Janie and Tag and Amanda with me, and your brother is already here. Who else could you possibly want to be here?”
“It’s not that, Bering.”
“Is it your parents? Because they could meet us at the next port, too, and anyone else that you want—”
