Red Crystal Romance: #1 Emma

by Diroll-Nichols, Karen

  “In the center, at the bottom and…the tiles have to be carved or…or fit somehow…I don’t know the terms. Cemented?” She frowned but relaxed when she looked up and he didn’t look confused at all. In fact, he looked quite fascinated and leaned forward to study her creation. “So…in the center, you place a drain…but you need mesh or…or screen…something to keep things from coming up…like mice and rats and…and alligators,” she murmured, her gaze up immediately when he laughed.

  “Alligators?”

  “Don’t judge,” she warned, keeping her expression serious and looking at her creation. “Okay…so maybe you put just the tiniest bit of angle to the floor so the water flows to the drain. Now…up here…is the…the…” Emma sighed and closed her eyes, envisioning what she wanted to say. “I don’t know the word. But it’s round and has holes in it so when the water comes through, it kind of sprays instead of just falling on you,” she drew in the circle and put dots inside it. Then drew out the pipes. “Something that gives it pressure.”

  “This one is hot and this one,” she gestured to the big oval on the right and then left. “Is the cold water. They come out of their holders and join here,” she tapped the center pipe. “And when you turn on the water, they mix and come out of the shower over top of you,” she tilted her face back and smiled up at the ceiling. “Oh!” She moved her pencil to the bottom of the shower. “You need a kind of…lip…ledge…maybe four inches high because the water shouldn’t collect in the bottom unless something is blocking the drainage but you don’t want it flowing out onto the floor. And…oh, up here…” she drew in a tiny hole on either side, her head tilted in consideration. “Maybe holes here for a stick or rod of some type that can hold a curtain. Waterproof would be best but I suppose as long as you have airflow in the room, the water will dry and it’ll be alright.”

  “That is an intriguing idea,” Lucas took the drawing and spun it to face him, lifting his own pencil and making notes across various places.

  “You’d want it at least seven foot…I know you use metric but I don’t know that measuring system,” Emma murmured. “Taller than you, anyway. You don’t want to bump your head on the shower.” She moved around to the side so she could see it right, adding little tiny crosses on the side and smiling. “Hot and cold.”

  Lucas felt her arm along his shoulders, her breast squeezed against his shoulder as she leaned over and made marks on her drawing.

  “Well, I’m going outside. You need to go play in your workshop,” Emma told him firmly, striding to the tray and pouring a full glass of the lemonade. She sipped first and then drained it with a grateful sigh. “Yummy,” she faced him and shook her head. “No, you need to do whatever you normally do, Lucas. I don’t need you to shadow me. I won’t go far, but I want to go outside and walk. I’ll be back later…” she lifted her wrist and shrugged. How did they tell time?

  He didn’t have anything to say. He wanted to tell her he’d rather be with her. But another part of him pulled his attention to the drawing and his workshop. He rolled the page and left the library. He’d leave the doors to his shop open while he worked on some things he’d been neglecting.

  Chapter Eight

  Emma walked out the patio doors and stood scanning the expanse of the new world laid out before her. Lots of green, she thought. The library was at the side of the house and she took the few stairs to the lawn and backed up, staring up at the house.

  Now she knew why her room had the odd shape.

  And her room was directly above the library, the other odd shaped room in the house and part of a huge six sided tower that took up half the back of the house. She continued backing up until she met the waist high stone wall and jumped up to sit on it, just staring.

  According to Nancy, Lucas had been renovating things for several years. She could make out the front of the house from where she was perched on the wall, a long cobblestoned driveway leading up from a dirt road at least half a mile down. They weren’t exactly an easy destination. The dirt road continued along the rise above the ocean and off to the west, away from the house.

  Very quiet, she thought, inhaling and shifting to swing her legs on the other side of the wall. She dropped down and headed unerringly toward the ocean. The sounds of gulls became louder as she walked closer and closer. When she reached the expanse of crème colored sand, she stopped long enough to take her shoes off and tie up the side of her dress.

  Emma made it to the water line before sinking to the sand and leaning back.

  She didn’t want to like it here. She wanted to hate everything about what she’d been thrown into but she couldn’t. She stretched out on her side and let the almost soft rolling waters just flow into her mind. Her arms were curled together and cushioned her head, tears falling and disappearing into the sand.

  It didn’t seem to matter what she liked or didn’t like. What she wanted or didn’t want. This is what was and if it was, indeed, a dream, then it was the most complex, lucid of dreams she’d ever had in her life.

  Lucas looked up from his drawing table several hours later and winced, stretching his neck to the side and taking his spectacles off to clean the dust from the lenses. He didn’t have his two assistants with him on weekends, but the dust in the large converted barn still collected.

  He completed several of the designs he had been contracted to complete and labeled each large envelope carefully. Many cities in England were finally willing to improve their sewage and drainage issues and he was one of the few qualified design engineers in the country willing to work on such mundane things as sewers.

  Then he saw the pale spring green lying on the wide bench at the end of his workshop near the doors. Lucas squinted, quickly replaced his spectacles and leaned forward.

  It wasn’t his imagination.

  Emma was stretched out on the bench, her arms up and cushioning her head. Lucas crossed the large, open room and dropped to his heels in front of her. Thick, dark lashes fanned over her cheeks and her breathing was deep and steady.

  “Emma…why didn’t you tell me you were here?” He said softly, his fingers up and stroking over her cheek.

  Emma heard him and brought one hand from behind her head to her mouth to cover the yawn.

  “I did,” she answered without opening her eyes right away. “You said you’d be a few minutes. So I laid down. I went for a long walk on the beach,” she said, blinking slowly and letting daylight back inside her eyes.

  “I am terribly sorry, Emma. I…” Lucas looked over the palm she had abruptly placed over his mouth.

  “No. You were really focused and I think it’s cute,” she slipped her feet to the floor and slowly pushed to sit up, stretching her arms high above her with a yawn she tried to swallow. “’cuse me…so, what were you working on? You looked quite fierce and intense.”

  “Reconstructing and installing new sewer lines in several large cities,” Lucas waited for the inevitable bored look of distaste. But it never came.

  “That can’t be simple since the city is built already,” Emma looked toward the thick, heavy table he’d been bent over. “I always thought it would be so much simpler to build a city from the ground up and get it right the first time, but people don’t work that way. Is it difficult? Are there…” she thought about the right wording. “Is there already underground…things…to work with?”

  “In most cases, there are,” Lucas stood up and offered her his hand. “Shall we go inside for dinner? We seemed to have both missed the middle of the day meal.”

  “I definitely need some water,” Emma’s hand went into his without thinking and she stood next to him. “Oh, my shoes…”

  “You appear to be covered in sand,” Lucas smiled at the sparkling of sand in her hair when they stepped out of the workshop and into daylight. He turned and latched the door in place after a quick look around to make sure all the lights were extinguished.

  “Oh, it washes out,” she said with a shake of her skirts. She dusted her shoes toget
her as they walked across the small patch of grass to a large door at the back of the house. “Where does this go? I need a map…”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Lucas said with a laugh, pushing the door inward and letting her go past him. “Into the kitchen. Mrs. Neilson left us plates of food to choose from.”

  “I’ll just leave these sit here by the door,” Emma went back to the door and laid her shoes there. “I’ll get them in the morning. They’re quite comfortable for walking but walking on sand, especially hot sand, is just really nice on the toes.”

  Lucas washed his hands and offered her a hand towel when she was finished washing up. “I’ll take these into the dining hall for us.”

  “Can we have them in the library? I think we left our lemonade there,” Emma took one of the plates from him and lifted an apple from the fruit bowl on the table.

  “The library would be comfortable,” Lucas agreed, following her through the hall with his own plate in his hands. He was about to suggest the sofa when she continued outside to the small porch, her plate on the stone wall before she somehow managed to perch on the wide stones. She used the fabric of her dress for cushioning and crossed her ankles on the wall in front of her.

  Lucas lifted a chair in one hand and placed it on the planking of the porch, his knees holding the plate when he settled into the chair.

  “It’s very pretty here. Is that why you chose the area?” Emma examined the things on the plate and began taking small bites of meat and cheese and fruits.

  “There’s a very large estate to the east of us, closer to town,” Lucas said as he followed her example and began eating. “This property was part of that estate. I bought it from the owner when he was low on funds.”

  Emma watched him. Evasive and slightly embarrassed, she thought, peeling off a piece of the moist, tender beef and chewing.

  “It belonged to your father, didn’t it, Lucas?”

  “I’m not accustomed to a woman using her intuition and intelligence to the level I’ve seen with you, Emma,” Lucas finally said after a long pause. “For that matter, few people use the skills of their mind like I’ve seen in you in such a short time.”

  “Thank you,” she replied simply. “You’ve never spoke of your mother. Does she live there? At the estate?”

  “Mother left him when I went off to university when I was sixteen,” Lucas answered honestly. “She visits me when she’s in the area, but her father was wise and kept her money for her in a special trust fund to keep my father from completely ruining her life, as well as his own.”

  “You continue the upkeep on the estate,” Emma said quietly, the answer in his eyes. “Have you invented lots of things? Nancy was telling me about all the fantastic things you’ve created around the house to help with the functioning. She’s quite a fan of yours…” she knew immediately that the word was off. “Okay…fan…” she stopped, scratching her head in thought. “If a person is a fan of yours, it means they…okay, maybe this would work better. Horse racing,” she looked over to see that he understood. “People who really like horse racing, would be called fans.”

  “And you believe Nancy is a fan?”

  “I believe Nancy is quite proud of where she works and of you, as her employer. I also think she has a crush on Mr. Harris, who believes she’s too young for him,” Emma laughed at the surprised look on his face. Nothing surprising there, she thought. Her very own absent-minded professor. “But I’ll talk to him when he returns.”

  “You…Emma, perhaps you should allow Harris and Nancy to conduct their own liaisons without your interference,” Lucas said quickly.

  “Where’s the fun in that? Trust me, I’m subtle,” Emma assured him with a wink and a grin.

  “Emma, people should be permitted to conduct their own…” Lucas stopped when he realized she was no longer looking at him, but studying her plate instead. Then he remembered the circumstances that brought them together and sighed.

  “It’s alright, Lucas. I’ll mind my own business. It’s just nice to see people happy and Nancy is really nice to me,” Emma picked at the food on the plate, eating quietly.

  “I hadn’t noticed that it was difficult to be nice to you, Emma.”

  “Well, I do have a temper.”

  “Tell me more about Emma Carstairs,” Lucas urged with a little smile at the curious expression on her face.

  “Sometimes I’m not very neat,” Emma chewed thoughtfully, cataloging herself in her mind. “I get depressed sometimes. Humans…they haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. They’re still mean and hurtful. I love Christmas and especially the music…I love singing…and I like playing about in the kitchen. I could spend hours just walking in the surf and collecting shells and bits of shells and filling jars with them and decorating my room,” she stopped and moved her feet to one side, standing up and lifting her plate from the wall. “I’m going to put this in the kitchen and go to my room. Good night, Lucas.”

  He sat in the fading sun and stared after her. He wasn’t sure what had happened. And he wasn’t sure how to figure it out. Lucas slumped back in the chair for a few minutes before following her inside, latching the glass doors and leaving the empty plate on the cart with the lemonade.

  He made it to the hall when he heard the heavy sigh, his pace increasing until he came to the bottom of the stairs case. She still had her dress tied up and her legs were bare from the knees down. Her feet braced on the floor and elbows on her knees. She had her head in her hands, the once neat braid now a little frayed.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma said without looking up from the crossed toes. “I don’t know why I know the things I said. I…I suddenly got sad and…I didn’t want to take it out on you.”

  “I can handle the temper, Emma,” Lucas dropped to his heels, one hand beneath her chin and forcing her to look at him. “But it confuses me when you simply run from me.”

  “I keep telling you I don’t belong here…”

  “But you won’t tell me why.”

  “And I end up confused because I want to belong here,” she confessed with a long sigh. “At least part of me wants to belong.”

  “Perhaps some sleep might help,” he stood up and gently took her hands in his, pulling her to her feet.

  “You’re always putting me to sleep, Lucas,” Emma sighed, turned and marched up the stairs like a child pouting.

  “I’ll light the lamps for you,” he said, smiling at her exaggerated foot stomps.

  “I found papers in the trunk. My birthday’s in October. I’ll be twenty-five then,” she went straight out onto the small balcony and opened the buttons on her dress. She could hear Lucas moving around in her room as she pulled the dress over her head and shook it, watching sand fall over the side and onto the ground in a fine cloud. “I suppose I did bring some of the beach back with me,” she carried the dress inside and laid it over the trunk. It was good for another day.

  Lucas turned around from lighting the sconce near the toilet and felt his breath catch. The innocent, almost absent-minded way she didn’t care about what she wore fascinated and aroused him.

  He watched her remove a ribbon from the end of her braid and splice her fingers through the thick mass, freeing it from the once neat and intricate weave. She remained on the balcony until she was satisfied she’d gotten most of the sand from her hair and looked up to see him staring at her.

  “You’ve seen it before, Lucas,” Emma said with a grin, walking up to him and taking his hand. “Okay…I’m going to try and be normal and talk like we were downstairs. So come and sit with me, please?”

  Lucas let her draw him toward the neatly made up bed, laughing when she crawled over the surface and yanked the covers down before plopping in the center and sitting, waiting.

  “You should take your shoes off,” she told him.

  “I should retire to my room and let you rest.” But he leaned against the bed and opened the buckles at the side of the low boots he wore. Following her example, he removed his
socks and dropped them to the boots before sitting back against the headboard, arms crossing his chest.

  “Have you ever heard of body language?” Emma asked with a little frown. She moved closer to him and tugged at the knot that was his bare arms. “That posture indicates a closed mind.”

  “I have never been closed minded,” Lucas returned stiffly.

  “Then you’re shielding yourself from me,” she said with a smile. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “I’m concerned about what I want to do with you…and to you,” he answered with a low, rough tone to his voice. “I’m concerned that you are completely unaware of what you’re offering me.”

  “Ahh…you’re a male and I’m female, Lucas. I know what happened between them. I’m not naïve and I’m not inhibited. I think if I were concerned about anything in that regards, it would be…” she thought for a quiet minute about how badly her body had failed her too often.

  “There is that sad look again,” going against the warnings in his mind, he reached out and lifted her chin. “I’ve asked that you always look at me when we speak, Emma.”

  “Sometimes it’s embarrassing to admit to being a failure…especially when it’s personal,” she said simply. “But I suppose all failures are personal.”

  Emma abruptly straightened and moved a little closer. She liked him. She liked him enough to fake it as long as he was pleased. She’d deal with her own depression over it later.

  “You don’t want to tell me what you feel you’ve failed at.” Lucas felt the hard wood of the bed behind him when she moved forward and he countered by trying to back away. But there was no place to go.