“I will,” Kyle said wryly, and pie in hand, left the diner and walked to his car. His mind was still on wedding rings as he drove out of town and back up the winding road to his house.
He carried the pie into the darkened kitchen. Bax was probably in his room, watching his favorite TV reruns. Kyle cut a chunk of pie, added an uneven scoop of ice cream and carried it upstairs to Emma’s room. He tapped on the closed door. Maybe she was already asleep.
“Come in.”
His gut tightened as he pushed open the door.
And there she was. Sitting in the middle of the wide bed, her back propped against a stack of pillows and a sheaf of oversize papers spread across her lap. Her hair was damp and curling around her shoulders and her face was scrubbed shiny clean. She looked about eighteen. But the soft yellow nightgown that hung from narrow straps over her shoulders covered a figure that needlessly reminded him that Emma Valentine was most definitely a grown woman. He knew he’d never met a woman whose body shrieked sin and whose lovely face and eyes countered it with such innocence.
“Kyle,” she said, those wide innocent eyes expressing her surprise. She set aside the papers. “I thought you were Baxter.”
“Disappointed?”
Her cheeks colored and she pushed her hair off her forehead. “Don’t be silly.”
He started to close the door behind him, then thought better of it. He held up the plate. “A gift.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Pie? That looks like—”
“Millie’s blueberry pie.” He crossed the room and handed it to her. “You were right about it, by the way. Indescribably delicious.”
Emma took the plate, carefully avoiding contact with his fingers. “You were at Mom & Pop’s?”
“Millie asked me to tell you to call her. Tomorrow first thing.”
Her fingers twitched on the plate. “She knows I’m staying here?”
“I didn’t tell her in so many words, but she seemed to know. You’d better eat that before the ice cream melts.”
Emma obediently took a bite. “Did…did she seem upset?”
“Considering the big smile she gave me? I’d say not.”
Emma set the plate on the nightstand. “This isn’t going to work,” she murmured.
“What?”
“This.” She spread her hands. “This charade. All your Mr. Cummings needs to do is walk into the diner where I’ve worked for a good while now, mention the name Emma, and the truth will get out. Buttonwood isn’t exactly overrun with Emmas!”
“Cummings has no reason to go into that diner,” Kyle assured her evenly. “He expects me to go to him, not the other way around. Trust me on this, Emma. I know the man’s habits. Dropping in at Mom & Pop’s isn’t one of them. Hell, coming to Buttonwood at all isn’t one of them.”
“But calling your wife to invite you and her to dinner is.”
“What?”
Emma moistened her lips, wishing Kyle would stop hovering over her. “He called this evening. Probably to speak to you, but when Baxter told him you weren’t available, he asked to speak to me. To your wife.” She’d actually mistaken his voice for Kyle’s for a brief moment when she’d picked up the extension.
She watched a muscle work in Kyle’s stubble-shadowed jaw. The man was fantasy fodder when he was all spiffed up and clean-shaven. But looking slightly ragged with a definite five-o’clock shadow, he was positively lethal.
“What did he say?”
“You’re making my neck hurt. Can’t you sit down?” But he didn’t sit in the side chair across from the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed, casually nudging her knees over to make room for himself.
“What did Cummings say?”
Emma swallowed and shifted her knees away from his hard thigh. But she only succeeded in brushing the arm that he’d braced to one side. “Winter duly reported the sighting.”
“Figures.”
“He called to reiterate his invitation to dinner for Sunday night.” She wanted to adjust the square neckline of her nightgown, but resolutely kept her hands folded in her lap. “I didn’t know quite what to tell him.”
“No, I hope.”
She looked at him.
“Emma.”
“I’m sorry. I did tell him that I thought this week was still a bit soon after the baby and all. But we’re on for three weeks from now.”
He rubbed one hand over his face and wrapped his other around her calf. “At least there’s that. It was going to happen sooner or later. That’s why I needed you.”
Emma smiled weakly. But all her attention had become focused on the absent way he held her calf. Her bare calf, since her tentlike nightgown had crept up toward her knees.
“Where’s Chandler?” he asked abruptly.
“Sleeping.” She pointed to the deep wide drawer that was pulled out of the bureau and sitting on the floor.
“Are you serious? We won’t wake him?”
“I think he sleeps better with some noise. Take a look.” Emma closed her eyes and drew in a long breath when he got up and walked over to see. She also tugged at the bodice of her nightgown. When Kyle looked back at her, her hands were again folded in her lap.
“Cozy,” he said softly. “All the stuff we bought today, and your son sleeps in a drawer.”
“Like mother, like child,” she quipped.
Kyle moved over to her side once more. Thankfully, however, he didn’t sit. “Slept in a drawer a time or two yourself?”
“So I’ve been told. I don’t remember.”
He smiled faintly. Rubbed his hand over his jaw.
Emma felt her stomach tighten at the brief silence. She drew her legs up, casually tucking the voluminous folds of her nightgown over her knees, covering even her toes. The fabric was opaque, thank goodness.
“How are you feeling?” His eyes drifted over her. From her covered toes to the top of her damp head. Then his gaze met hers. “Are you, uh, doing okay?”
His unexpected concern, oblique as it was, made her throat constrict. “Mmm-hmm. Fine.”
“I didn’t mean to run you ragged today.”
“You didn’t. Much,” she tacked on when he just kept looking at her.
“For the rest of the week you can take it easy. Indulge Baxter’s yen to pamper you. I’ve got meetings back to back for the next week that’ll keep me out of your pretty hair.”
She felt her cheeks heat right up through the tips of her ears. “What about dinner with the Cummingses?”
“What about it?”
“What if I can’t…can’t carry it off?”
A narrow gleam of green studied her from between dark lashes. “You’ll be perfect.” He reached out and slowly drew a strand of hair away from her cheek. His touch lingered along her jaw, then her chin. “I knew it when I first saw you.”
His hand fell away from her face. “You didn’t finish your pie.”
Emma looked stupidly at the plate on the night-stand. The ice cream had nearly melted, surrounding the vibrant filling with a pool of cream. “Millie makes her ice cream by hand,” she murmured. “There’s an ice-cream place right by her, but she makes it by hand.”
“You’re tired, Emma.”
Her eyes burned. She looked down at the sheets of music she’d been studying and started gathering them together. “Yes.”
He crouched down beside the bed, stilling her restless hands with his own. “Emma.”
She froze. He was close enough that she could see the fine webbing of lines fanning out from his mesmerizing eyes.
“I want to kiss you again,” he said.
She swallowed. Moistened her lips.
“But I—” his jaw tilted “—won’t if you don’t want that, too.”
“I—”
From his drawer-bed on the floor, Chandler let out a soft cry.
Kyle looked over his shoulder.
The cry built momentum.
Kyle straightened and retrieved Chandler, drawer and all. He lifted it carefully, then se
t it on the mattress on the opposite side of Emma. “Your son is watching out for you,” he murmured. “Good night.”
Emma watched him walk out of the room, pulling the door securely closed behind him. She leaned over the drawer and lifted the baby out of the soft nest they’d made from a dozen folded towels. “I wanted to kiss you, too, Kyle,” she whispered softly.
Chapter Seven
Kyle sat straight up in bed, blinking in the darkness. His heart was thundering and sweat beaded on his face. He’d dreamed of Emma. Her kiss. Her touch.
It had been too damn vivid for his peace of mind, and even now his nerve endings crawled with the need to taste her again. He looked at the glowing clock and groaned.
Three a.m.
Then he realized what it was that had wakened him from the dream where Emma had been sending him straight to heaven.
Crying. The baby was crying.
It was an alien sound in his home. He let out a rough breath and fell back against pillows that looked as if they’d done battle. He pressed his arm over his eyes, trying to block out the sound of the baby crying.
An alien sound in this home, but not alien to Kyle. And just as he’d been helpless to stop the crying when he’d been a kid, he was helpless now. Little Annie hadn’t wanted her seven-year-old brother to cuddle her. She’d wanted their mother, except their mother, Sally, had been out searching for whatever she hadn’t been able to find at home.
Chandler continued crying, little bleats of outrage. Kyle unconsciously counted his heartbeats in tune with the pulsing cry. Any minute now Emma would tuck the baby against her breast and the little tyke would…
Continue crying.
Kyle shoved back the rumpled sheet and started for the door. Then backtracked to rummage through his closet for the robe he’d gotten last Christmas from Lydia. He pulled it on, thinking that Emma was the first woman he’d ever bothered to put on a robe for.
Looping the slippery silk belt into a knot, he left his bedroom and looked around the doorway of the nursery, but as he’d suspected, Emma hadn’t put the baby in the unfurnished room. He continued on to the connecting room. The door was ajar and he pushed it open.
The only light in the room came from the bathroom. He could easily see Emma pacing, though. Wearing her virginal yellow nightgown that left her shoulders bare but otherwise covered her right to her toes. Chandler was a bundle of blanket and cries on her shoulder.
Even though he was already in the room, Kyle knocked softly on the door to keep from startling her. “Emma.”
She turned, her hair swinging with the abrupt movement, then settling like heavy silk against her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped we wouldn’t wake you.”
He banished the dream that still hovered, a sight too real, too disturbing, in his mind, and focused on Chandler. “Is he all right?”
“He’s dry and fed and—”
“And you’re exhausted.” He could hear it in her voice. See it in the angle of her shoulders, the bend of her elegant neck as she lowered her head over Chandler. He still felt guilty over his contribution to that exhaustion. What the hell had he been thinking?
He could have given her a dozen catalogs, and she could have chosen what she wanted from the comfort of a soft chair. But he’d had his plan and that was that.
He walked toward her, grimly aware of the wary look she gave him. “Let me give it a try,” he murmured.
“I’m sure I can get him settled.”
“I’m sure you can, too, sweetness.” He simply reached forward and lifted the baby out of her arms. Chandler wasn’t as small as his sister’s baby was, but still Kyle could hold him within his two palms. He lifted the infant up to his face. Chandler was so surprised his lips parted, but only a squeak emerged.
Kyle couldn’t help grinning at the baby. He was so damn cute with his fists scrunched next to his round cheeks. “You’re causing a fuss, big guy,” he murmured.
Chandler blinked, wide-eyed.
Beside them Emma sighed and sank onto the side of the bed. “Men,” she muttered.
Kyle looked at her. He almost suggested that he take the baby out of her room, but decided against it, figuring she wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. Her eyes followed him like a hawk as he picked up the path she’d been making when she’d been the one walking the baby.
“I’m sure you didn’t have nights like this in mind when you offered me this, ah…”
“When we decided to help each other out?”
She lifted one silky shoulder. “That’s a nice way of phrasin’ it,” she said, her voice thick with exhaustion.
Chandler squirmed, his legs butting Kyle’s chest. Kyle changed his hold, carrying him easily in a football-style grip, the baby’s chest and head supported by his forearm and palm. Chandler sighed deeply.
“Though you seem pretty adept at handling babies,” Emma added after a moment.
Kyle glanced at her. She’d curled her legs up on the bed and was leaning sideways against the pillows she’d mounded against the headboard. Her face was in shadow, but he could feel her eyes watching him closely. “Little brothers and sisters,” he reminded.
“And you’re the oldest of them all,” she murmured.
He smiled faintly. “Yup.” Both the family before Sally’s death and the family after. Chandler’s eyes were closed, his little bow lips parted slightly.
Emma sank a few inches farther into her nest of pillows. One narrow strap of her nightgown slipped off her shoulder and hung loosely over her arm. From his vantage point he could see the upper curve of her breast, and he deliberately paced the other way, removing himself from the tempting sight.
“Why Buttonwood, Kyle?”
He heard the rustle of her nightgown, the shifting of pillows, and despite himself, he looked back at her. She’d looped one arm over a pillow and hugged it to her cheek, her chest.
His body stirred. “Why not? I like Buttonwood. It’s not overrun with tourists, but it’s not a backward little town, either. The clinic is proof of that.” He’d been impressed several years ago with the fine services offered by Buttonwood’s clinic. So much so that he’d donated a considerable amount of money to it over the years. It was one of the reasons he’d gone to Dennis Reid in his quest for a wife. He knew the man wouldn’t advertise Kyle’s personal business.
“That’s all? You liked it here?”
Chandler was asleep. Kyle kept walking. “Do you want me to give you some great complicated reason?”
“No,” she murmured. “Though you do seem more complicated than that.”
There wasn’t one thing complicated about him at that moment. He was a man, fully aware of a beautiful young woman lying on a bed only three feet away.
Which meant it really was time for him to get out of this room. He moved next to the bed and carefully reached over Emma to settle Chandler in the drawer that was still on the mattress beside her. “He’s asleep.”
She caught his arm as he straightened. “Thank you.”
He couldn’t help himself. He ran his thumb along her satiny cheek, leaned over and pressed his lips to her forehead. “You sleep too, sweetness.”
She already was.
“Mama, will you let me get a word in edgewise?” Emma propped her elbows on the kitchen counter and held the phone away from her ear. Her mother’s agitated chatter went on and on. Baxter, working at the stove across the kitchen from where she sat, lifted an eyebrow.
Emma put the phone to her ear and tried again. “Mama? If you’d listen to your answering machine like I’ve asked you to do, you’d know I’ve been staying with a friend. Calling the sheriff to say I was missing was really unnecessary.”
Baxter gave her another brows-lifted look.
Emma sighed and shook her head. “My friend Kyle is—” handsome, intriguing, sexy “—a perfect host, and no, Mama, we’re not living in sin.” Her jaw tightened and she wished she’d made the call in her bedroom rather than the kitchen, where she’d found herself spending
a lot of her time in the past two weeks since she’d come to stay with Kyle. “How is your job at the grocery?” She changed the subject.
Baxter had turned around, facing the stove again as he put the finishing touches on their lunch. Kyle was at work as usual. His statement that she’d see more of Baxter than of him had proved to be true. There were moments she wondered what on earth she was even doing, living in his arctic-white home. As far as she could tell, her “wifely” presence had been totally unnecessary.
She listened with half an ear to her mother’s comments about work, which Hattie peppered liberally with lectures on life, love and the importance of wearing clean underwear.
Emma didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “Mama, I’ve got to go now. Mr. Baxter needs to use the telephone.” She shrugged when Baxter looked at her again. “I love you. I’ll call you again next week.”
She hung up the phone with a clatter. “I cannot believe she did it. She says she called the sheriff back home in Tennessee. Everybody in Buttonwood knows by now that I’m involved with Kyle Montgomery to the point of living with him, but does she call the diner to ask for me there? No, she just keeps calling my home number, and when I don’t answer after a few days, she jumps to the most ridiculous conclusion. The sheriff! Can you believe it?”
“What’s this about the sheriff?”
Emma whirled around on her stool to see Kyle walking into the kitchen. He set his briefcase on the empty stool beside her and tugged at his tie enough to loosen the button at his throat. “You’re home.”
His eyes crinkled. “You noticed.”
She forced her lips into a smile, watching him roll up the cuffs of his wheat-colored shirt. He reached past her for the bowl of fruit on the counter and picked up a cluster of green grapes. Emma dragged her attention from his sinewy forearms and focused blindly on the music score she’d been studying before she’d made her weekly call to her mother. But his scent still beckoned, twining appealingly around her senses.
He popped a grape into his mouth and leaned back against the counter. “What’s this about the sheriff?”
“Nothing.” Emma closed the score and slid from the high stool. Since that first night when, wearing nothing but a dark silky robe, he’d walked her son to sleep, she’d been careful to keep a good amount of physical distance between them. It hadn’t been difficult, really. The man was hardly ever around. And when he was, he’d certainly made no gestures toward picking up where they’d left off. He hadn’t entered her room late at night again to help her with Chandler when he was fussy. Hadn’t mentioned their kiss nor indicated any wish to repeat it.
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