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“Come on, Darren. I can sweep for you. I can’t write your paper.”
He grinned, an endearing, mischief-filled expression. “You sure? I hear you’re an expert.”
“Idiot.”
Darren released the broom this time and Emma took over the job. Judging by the condition under some of the tables along the far wall, the server had been doing a good deal of double-duty work while sweeping up.
She was bending to whisk the last of the refuse into the dustpan when someone behind her cleared his throat. Upside down, Emma looked awkwardly around her jeans-clad legs and saw Jimmy’s black shoes, the soft gray of his cuffed trousers.
Damn and blast.
She finished the task and straightened up. “Hello there.”
Her face felt hot, wisps of hair stuck to her forehead and cheeks. She almost certainly had a swipe of dust over her nose, while Jimmy looked cool and controlled in a black shirt and silver tie. One of them had grown up quite nicely. The other had remained an adolescent mess.
His eyebrows were drawn together, but his eyes held amusement. “I could swear I hired somebody else to do that.”
“A bit of sweeping is good for the soul now and again.”
“Where’s Darren?”
“Um…on break.”
“On break.” Jimmy thought that over. “He comes in at six. He needs a break before seven?”
“He needed a chance to finish up some reading for school. I’m ready for the evening—I thought I could help him out.”
“Emma, you can’t do everyone’s work around here.”
“Oh, I know. I haven’t the faintest clue about mixing drinks.” She offered him a cheeky grin. “Tiffany’s job is safe.”
He shook his head, chuckling. “I don’t think I knew what I was getting into when I hired you to work here.” With a smile, he headed back to his office.
Emma watched almost greedily. Even considering the limp that marred his once-athletic gait, he was a wondrously attractive man.
“Neither did I, Jimmy,” she murmured. “Neither did I.”
“NO SHIT, she gave you lunch?” Tommy pounded the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Why didn’t I go?”
Stomach still full, Harlow grinned. “You’re freakin’ stupid, maybe?”
“Maybe.” Tommy didn’t mind knowing he was as dumb as a brick. He was big enough not to need brains. “Man! Ham and cheese.”
“And milk.”
“Chocolate milk?” Ryan stood beside Harlow, shivering in the summer heat.
“Not chocolate. Just cold. In a glass.” Harlow hadn’t had milk in a glass since he’d left home. Or a decent bed. Or a good pair of shoes.
But if he was gonna feel invisible, if people were gonna look at him like he’d just murdered somebody—which, to be truthful, he had—Harlow figured he might as well do it with strangers. Tommy and Ry and his other friends on the street didn’t treat him like anything but what he was. A kid with nowhere to go.
“What I’m thinking,” he said, distracting himself, “is that we can play Emma Garrett for a real good deal. She all but freakin’ melted when I smiled at her. So I butter her up, put on some manners, she’ll be giving me steak before too long. Then I’ll bring in Ry, and he’ll look real pitiful and she’ll feed him. Then Tommy—you practice looking nice, okay? You scare the shit out of most people just standing there. Anyway, if we behave ourselves and keep out of Falcon’s way, we’ll be in fat city.”
Tommy shook his head. “Falcon pulled some of that shit on us, remember? Gave us money, then tried to push rehab. I’m not going that route no more. I’m thinking it’s too big a pain, just avoiding him.”
“Then you’re not hungry enough.” Harlow looked at Ryan. “What do you think? You up for some decent meals?”
“Yeah, I think it’s a good deal.” He smiled, a sweet little boy’s smile that reminded Harlow of his younger brother at home. “But what do I eat in the meantime?”
His eyes were big circles of brown with tiny black dots in the middle, his face white and dirty and sick-looking. He would need another hit in an hour or so. That would use up their last ten bucks.
Time for a couple hours of spanging. Hanging out near the financial district downtown, asking the suits for spare change, they always got enough for a burger or two each. Harlow put his arm around Ry’s shoulders and gave Tommy a punch on the shoulder. “Like always, I got the answer to that, my man. You just stick with me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JIMMY HADN’T FAILED to notice that Emma was keeping to her promise, as far as their working together was concerned. She spoke and laughed with him if he came into the kitchen, said a friendly good-night when he walked her out to the cab he made sure was waiting when the club closed. Just as she’d predicted, they had developed a polite, uninvolved employer-employee relationship.
Too bad he had to work so damn hard to keep it that way.
Sunday night’s crowd was thin and not very hungry. Jimmy leaned back against the bar a little after midnight, listening to the music, thinking about closing up early. Then Emma stepped up beside him.
“This band is quite good.”
He nodded, trying not to take too deep a breath, needing to avoid getting caught by that scent she used. “There’s a recording contract in the near future. Another year, and they’ll be too busy to play here.”
“You had something to do with that, I think.”
“I made a phone call. The music did the rest.”
She glanced at him, moved a step closer. “You must know some very influential people in the recording business.”
Easing back, he shrugged. “I played drums for a year or so with a band that wasn’t very good. After we broke up, one of the guys went back to the family business…which happens to be producing and recording. I let him know when something sounds good, he comes out from L.A. and we have a few drinks together while he listens. Not a big deal.”
The band moved into a slow number, showcasing the piano’s heavy chords and the sax’s sweet wail. Two couples at a nearby table got up to dance. Emma stirred, swayed slightly to the beat.
No. Jimmy threw himself a mental punch. The last thing you want to do is dance. Get a drink, tell a joke. Just walk off.
But he found himself looking at her when she turned his way. “Want to dance, Emma?” As soon as the words were out, he cursed himself for a fool.
She stared at him with caution in her eyes. Damned if he did or if he didn’t at this point, Jimmy grinned. “No strings. Just a friendly employer-employee conference…out on the floor.”
“Will it bother your hip?”
He took her hand and pulled her with him onto the small parquet square in front of the stage. “No.” Only a minor lie. He could handle anything from Emma Garrett except pity. “Let’s dance.”
Graceful they weren’t. His stiff hip threw their rhythm off. After one brush with Emma’s knees and thighs and breasts, Jimmy kept air between their bodies. His reaction to her softness was an echo of urges twenty years past.
And yet…completely in the present. Emma at eighteen had been a tall, thin, pale-skinned girl with unruly red hair, totally different from anyone he’d ever known. That uniqueness alone had been fascinating.
Emma at thirty-eight was a full-bodied temptress whose creamy skin and gold-red hair glowed, even under the harsh fluorescent lights in the kitchen. He’d met enough women in the past twenty years to make comparisons—she was still unique. And still fascinating.
Holding her away from him allowed them to talk. Jimmy went with the flow of his thoughts. “So what’s happened to you in two decades, Emma? You got your degree. And then?”
“Another degree. And another. Academic life is addictive.”
“If you say so.” High school had been more than he could take, though he’d stayed in long enough to graduate. Because Emma had wanted him to. “What’d you study?”
“History—British colonial history, actually, with an emphasis on relations between the Crown and the indigenous peoples of America.”
“Indians, you mean?” He grinned at her raised eyebrow. “I don’t have to be politically correct. You said you taught college. In England?”
“At Cambridge, yes, then Edinburgh and Toronto. I spent two years at Harvard on a fellowship.”
That hit him in the chest. “I’ve got a Harvard professor cooking in my kitchen?”
She looked away, toward the band. “An ex-professor.” Her freckles darkened over a sweet rose blush. “I…um…was sacked about six months ago. Dismissed.” The rose deepened to a splotched red.
His mind took a second to catch up. “You mean fired?” Emma nodded. “Why?”
With a soft glissando on the piano, the music ended. The bandleader said good-night, and the couples around them began to leave. Emma stepped back, needing to get away. Needing to avoid Jimmy’s very reasonable, completely unanswerable question.
He kept hold of her arms, drawing her close again. “Why did you get fired, Emma? Too many parties? You couldn’t get up in time for your eight-o’clock classes?”
Without looking at him, she pushed against his chest, against the solid muscles under a deceptively soft black shirt. His hands retained their strong grip on her elbows.
“I wrote a paper,” she said softly, desperately. “Had it accepted for publication in a major journal, was getting ready to be promoted to department head at an exclusive New England school. Just before I was to present the findings at a conference, the truth came out.”
“Truth?”
“The central conclusions of my paper, the most important parts of the entire project, were based on a recently recovered set of letters, written from the colonies to England in the eighteenth century. I’d been reading for information about native cooperation with the English, but I discovered a remarkable peripheral thread.”
“Yeah?”
“The letters revealed a traitor on the English military staff during the French and Indian war. The spy kept the opposing armies apprised of the movements of English troops. The fact that he was connected to some very highly placed figures in the governments of England and France widened the conspiracy. Or so I thought. The truly vital letters were found to be…to be…” She dragged in a breath. “Forged.”
After a few moments of silence, Jimmy’s hands softened. “Who did it?”
She threw her head back to stare at him. “The presumption is that I did, of course.”
His grin was cynical, knowing. “Sure. But who really did the forging?”
Now she couldn’t look at him at all. “That’s the truly pitiful part. The forgery was discovered by Eric Jeffries, my…my colleague on th-the project. And…” Her voice did not want to work. “And my fiancé.”
Jimmy muttered something under his breath.
When she pulled this time, he let her go. “It doesn’t really matter who forged the letters. As a historian, I should have been certain of the evidence and its provenance. I didn’t check deeply enough, and for that mistake alone I deserved to lose my post.”
He followed her into the kitchen. “Everybody makes a mistake once in a while. Some of us make more than one.”
Emma stood at the sink, staring down at the marred stainless steel. “Better not to do it when there is…are people standing at your shoulder, ready to take your place. I doubt I’ll ever be accepted as a serious historian again.”
“You think Jeffries planted the letters? So he could get the glory?”
“I…yes.”
Jimmy’s warm hands closed on her shoulders and turned her around. Unwillingly she looked into his lean dark face, into eyes as black as the night sky over the desert.
“You might have lost one round, Emma.” His thumbs stroked across her collarbones just above the neck of her shirt. “But you’re not a loser. Give yourself some time. You’ll be back where you belong.”
The touch of his skin, light as it was, set her to trembling. Emma looked at his mouth, remembered his flavor as if they’d kissed only yesterday. Did he still taste the same?
His thumbs stilled. The pressure of his fingers on her shoulders increased, drawing her forward. Emma closed her eyes, waiting.
Not for long. Jimmy touched her mouth with his, softly, asking permission. She parted her lips, granting it. She expected to be swept away. She wanted to be swept away.
But the kiss stayed well within the boundaries of control. Touching, parting, touching again—a sweet torment that brought tears to her eyes and need into her chest. She had no defense against gentleness.
Jimmy drew back, leaned in again to press kisses on her eyelids, her forehead. “You still taste like strawberries,” he said softly. Then he let her go and stepped away. “I’ll make sure the cab is waiting.” Before she could gather her thoughts together, he had left the kitchen.
She managed a calm goodbye as he held the door of the cab for her. She kept herself together during the ride across town, the wait for the elevator and the ride up with two tired-looking men. Emma didn’t react at all until she was safe behind the door to her private room.
There, she set free her self-disgust. “Haven’t you learned anything?” She yanked the band out of her hair and jerked a brush through the tangles. “Throwing yourself at the man like…like a lovesick undergraduate. Surely you know better by now.”
Even before the debacle that ended her research career, Emma’s experience in academia had taught her more than historical facts. Over years of competition with male scholars and teachers, she had come to see herself in a realistic light. Her brain was formidable, her talents varied and useful.
But as a woman she lacked the spark to ignite men’s hearts. Eric had as much told her so when he broke the engagement. “Thanks for the leg-up, Emma,” he’d taunted. “I knew if I played you right, you’d believe me when I said those letters were authentic. What I do for my career…” He sighed. “Now, of course, there’s no need for me to marry you. Amazons just aren’t my type.”
She wasn’t anyone’s type, apparently. That summer with Jimmy, they’d both been young, ready to learn the ways of love. Adolescent hormones and natural curiosity created a powerful chemistry. Only a fool would expect the reaction to last twenty years. Or to survive the twenty pounds she’d gained, the lines at the corners of her eyes, the awkwardness of being too tall, which she’d never managed to conquer.
Jimmy’s charm, his charisma, were as natural to him as breathing. But Emma knew better than to believe the fantasy. Cinderella she was not. When Jimmy was kind, when he was flattering, she would simply have to keep her head. He’d given her a job, given her a means to start over with her life.
How much more could she reasonably ask?
Turning off the bedside lamp, she burrowed under the sheet, arms folded tight against her chest, and acknowledged the answer to her own question.
Not nearly as much as I could want.
EVEN ON SUNDAY, the late-night streets weren’t deserted. Long after Emma had left, Jimmy set the club’s alarm, stepped out the front door and locked it, then turned to assess the situation. The cops patrolled fairly often until about midnight. After that, the pretense at control disappeared, and the street people reclaimed their territory. For a few hours, anyway.
Tonight’s cast of characters included a couple of prostitutes stationed on a corner across from the club and their pimp in his gold Mercedes parked nearby, plus the usual assortment of addicts and dealers, the homeless and the helpless.
Jimmy shook his head. He’d once seen himself as someone who could help these people solve their problems. Now he just figured they all had a right to go to hell their own way.
As he approached the Jag in its usual spot, a trio of shadows separated from the nearby wall. Talking about lost causes…
“Hey there, Mr. Falcon. Great wheels.” The Texas drawl identified Harlow.
“Thanks.” Jimmy leaned back against the front fender. “After that mix-up the other night, I didn’t expect to see you guys around here so soon. Doesn’t look like the neighborhood’s too safe, where you’re concerned.”
