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Seth had heard all of that—at least her side of it—but when she turned to look at him he was bent over Peony with his back to her. Trying to act innocent. Discreet. Pretty silly for a guy his size, but she appreciated his attempt.
She’d managed to sound calm—well, calmish—with Trip, although she felt anything but. Her heart was beating like Carlos Santana’s rhythm section, sweat slid down her back between her shoulder blades, and when she looked at her fingers, her whole hand was shaking. Her face was probably the color of cherry cough drops.
God, she hated confrontations. She wouldn’t recover for a week. Everybody thought she was so tough, when inside she was made of pure marshmallow. By the time Trip got his story straight, the whole breakup would’ve been his idea. Because she’d failed to live up to his exacting specifications. Because she’d abandoned him when he needed her.
She could hear her father’s voice in her head. “I warned you he wasn’t good enough for you.” Actually, he’d mostly been on Trip’s side.
Her father had started denigrating her boyfriends in high school and kept on until she dreaded introducing him to her dates. Her real worry was that she wasn’t good enough for them. They’d catch on. Better be the dumper rather than the dumpee. So she usually dumped first.
How come one woman was never enough for one man? How come she wasn’t enough for Trip?
The answer came roaring back in her head. Because I couldn’t take the chance of letting him know the real me. The one who’s scared to fail.
Trip was supposed to be different. This time she’d planned to marry for all the sensible reasons. On paper she and Trip were perfect for each other. She didn’t have a clue whether love even existed, and lots of doubts that it would ever exist for her. She’d convinced herself she was in love with Trip. Obviously, she didn’t break his heart. He was probably already setting up a date with her successor.
She went back to the pantry floor beside Seth. “You’re a mess.”
“More on me than in them,” he said. “I’m sticky as a bear in a honey tree. I think you can drop the feedings to every six hours with the food we added to the milk.”
“Really? Does that mean I can sleep?”
“Sleep? I’ve heard that word a time or two. Not sure what it means.” He stood up and slipped Peony back into her nest.
Emma didn’t take his proffered hand to stand up this time. “There’s another word I’ve heard, but not recently. Food? You ever hear of that?” She grinned up at him. “I went to the grocery store between feedings this afternoon. I have lots of bacon, plenty of eggs and enough onions for a Western omelet. Plus I bought some artisan bread. And beer. I don’t drink it, but I thought you might.”
He followed her into what passed for a kitchen. “At this point I’d fight Peony for her dog food. Don’t tell me you can cook. Girl like you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I grew up with hot and cold running servants? Here.” She tossed him a big Vidalia onion. “Peel and chop this. You do the crying for a change.”
An hour later as he finished his fourth piece of buttered toast, he said, “Okay, so you can cook.”
“Very limited menu. And you can eat.”
“Big engines require a lot of fuel. So, who’s this guy Trip you don’t like?”
She took a deep breath. To tell him or not? Oh, why not? It wasn’t a secret. Not at home, in any case. “A rich, handsome corporate lawyer on the fast track to being named partner. Just not mine. He’s got political aspirations, too. Going to put his name in the race for State senator, maybe eventually governor. Let’s drop it, okay? I cook, you clean.”
“What? No dessert?”
“You’re kidding, right? All you have to do is rinse and load the dishwasher. It may be the world’s smallest and oldest, but it works.”
As she was scrubbing the kitchen table, she said, “I wish you’d known my aunt Martha. I used to spend my summers up here with her. I loved this place.”
“From what I hear, I wish I’d known her, too. Barbara said she was a great gal. After she died, how come you didn’t come up here before now?”
“My stepmother and I came up to deal with the estate and the papers and things right after. She left me everything, but there wasn’t much actual income to fix the place up, and I didn’t have any disposable income myself. Plus I was at a place in my life where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the house. She already rented it out, so that’s what I did. I hired an agent who handles it all. When the last tenants—the Mulligans—left six months ago, I missed the little bit of income they brought me, but I figured sooner or later I’d get a new tenant. I was looking for somebody who might want to barter upkeep for rent. Karma, I guess. It hit me when I got fired and unengaged practically the same day that I needed a sanctuary. And thanks to Aunt Martha’s kindness, I had one.” She glanced around the shabby room. “This, however, needs help.”
“Not to mention the skunks.”
She leaned back against the table. “I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, but aren’t you going to get in trouble over my skunks?”
“You shouldn’t think of them as your skunks, or you’ll hate letting them go even more. Yes, I can get into trouble, but if we return them to the wild before somebody reports them, I can ask forgiveness.”
“As opposed to permission?”
He rinsed out the sink and hung the dish towel on its hook. And yawned. “Sorry.”
“Go home. Go to bed.”
She followed him to the front door.
“Don’t forget. We meet in the morning at the Farmers’ Co-op.”
She nodded.
He turned, took one step, swung back and reached for her.
* * *
JUST A “meet the new neighbor kiss.”
Maybe it started that way, but it got out of hand—fast. She wasn’t used to being lifted off her feet. When he wrapped his arms around her, she felt as if she were being hugged by that bear in the honey tree.
He tasted of the fig preserves they’d used on their toast, and when their tongues met and teased, her head seemed to lift free of her body.
He set her down, let her go, wheeled around and almost ran across the street. Thank God there was no traffic, because he hadn’t checked either direction, just barreled on inside his house.
She leaned against the wall beside her front door and tried to catch her breath. One kiss, and she could feel her nipples harden.
She hoped he didn’t regret it. She didn’t. Or did she?
Talk about your rebound! The last thing she wanted in her life right now was another man—any man. Certainly not this big, powerful, difficult man who would not be manipulated. Even if she was any good at manipulation. Which she wasn’t.
She’d sworn off the entire sex for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever.
So far, she’d done all right convincing him to help keep her skunk babies safe, but that was only because he had a soft spot for small animals. He could always revert to being Mr. Regulation and take them away from her.
She needed to keep him on her side, but there were limits as to how far she’d go to manage that. On a lifestyle compatibility scale of one to ten—ten being the most compatible—the two of them were about minus a thousand. If her father thought Trip was barely good enough for her, he’d flip out the first time he laid eyes on Seth.
She didn’t truly believe Seth was expecting some sort of sexual quid pro quo for helping with the skunks. If he was, he’d made a big mistake.
But what did she know? If some other halfway stranger had swept her into his arms and kissed the stew out of her like Seth had, she’d have sent him flying with a big red handprint on his cheek.
And possibly found herself facing a stalker who wore a uniform and carried a gun.
She sank onto the front step of her porch and leaned against one of the columns that held it up. The guy had majorly overstepped his boundaries.
Even if it was the best kiss she’d ever experienced in her entire life. Not that she’d kissed that many males, but she hadn’t been a nun either.
It was just a kiss! she reminded herself.
Emma looked across the street. She could see him pacing back and forth, silhouetted against the front window of his house. She went back into her hall, turned off the lights and shut the front door with its big oval pier glass. He wasn’t going to watch her pace up and down or keep track of her by the lights that went on throughout the house, from living room to bedroom. She’d undress in the dark.
Tomorrow when she met him at the co-op—assuming he showed up—she would be completely casual, never mention the kiss and dial them back to square one. Acquaintances. Period. She needed him for the skunks. She definitely did not need him as a male person who raised her blood pressure.
* * *
HE HAD LOST his mind.
In two days this woman had put him in the position of breaking rules he was pledged to adhere to. Not just adhere to, but enforce.
And grabbing her up and kissing her like that? She’d be well within her rights to call the police and have him arrested for assault by an authority figure.
Not that she’d left him much authority. She hadn’t asked him to help her build an outdoor run for the skunks. He’d come up with the idea himself. Now he was committed to a fairly complicated project, one she’d already told him she either couldn’t or wouldn’t participate in.
She’d intimated that she’d sworn off the entire sex for the foreseeable future. As if he had all the time in the world outside his job to play nursemaid to skunks. Why hadn’t she adopted a couple of baby squirrels? Or even a raccoon? He could justify helping her in that case.
Tomorrow morning, he had to meet her as though they’d never shared that blockbuster of a kiss. Casual. Professional. Acquaintances. Neighbors. Nothing more.
He could handle that.
In his dreams.
Then again, what was the use? How long before her fancy, rich lawyer fiancé showed up in a brand-new Mercedes, gave her a big diamond and swept her off to marry him? From her phone conversation with The Jerk—he thought of him in capital letters—the guy was having an affair with a married woman while he was engaged to Emma. Talk about nuts! But with his fortune and social position... No woman would choose Seth Logan over him. If, as Emma said, he was aiming to go into politics at some point, she’d make a smashing senator’s wife. Or governor’s, for that matter.
Seth had enough experience with domestic disputes to know that in almost every case infidelity was not a deal breaker. All too often, women kept going back to the guy who gave them a broken jaw or a broken heart. His mother had gone back to his alcoholic father again and again, offered him support and forgiveness and her belief that he would stay sober. She’d written him off and divorced him only after Sarah was drowned. She couldn’t go on living with Everett, her husband, knowing it was his fault Sarah had died.
She barely took her eyes off Seth in the months following Sarah’s drowning. She knew how deeply he blamed his father. Watching him was as much for Seth’s benefit as her own. She’d continued to look at Seth even when he couldn’t bear to look at himself. She was afraid of what he’d do if his father showed up drunk and maudlin, making excuses, casting blame...
She’d been right to worry. At fourteen Seth was taller, broader and stronger than his father. Besides, his liver was healthy. He doubted dear old Dad’s was. He’d had to avoid the bastard so he wouldn’t put him in the hospital. Or the morgue.
The only thing that saved Everett Logan from his son’s wrath was that Seth hated himself more than he did his father. If he hadn’t been able to hide out in the woods for days at a time, he might well have followed Sarah into the lake.
He couldn’t do that to his mother. So he’d nursed his anger and avoided his father. He could thank his father for forcing him to love the outdoors, not that the old man had intended to point him to his career path. Seth only knew he could breathe in the woods.
Poor Earl. He knew about Seth’s family and how close to the surface Seth’s temper ran when faced with dangerous jackasses like that party boat group. When Seth realized those people on the boat weren’t wearing life jackets, it was touch and go whether he could keep his temper or whether he’d tie the idiot captain to his anchor and toss him overboard.
Thank God he’d had Earl there to help him maintain control. He thought he’d managed to stay calm, but that big woman who’d caught his expression had looked scared.
Maybe the alternative was to force the entire party to stare at pictures of bodies pulled from that lake, the quiet little lake that could kick up whitecaps in a strong wind and upend half the boats in the water.
As he climbed into bed, he was sure he’d lie awake thinking about Emma with The Jerk. In reality he spent the night dreaming of her instead.
And dreaming of inventive ways to barbecue that Trip guy. Slowly.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u49de7998-349f-53b6-9d13-2fb154474906)
“I WASN’T SURE you’d show up.” Seth opened the driver’s door of Emma’s SUV, then stood back. Sweet of him not to loom over her.
“I said I would.”
“Ever been to the co-op?” he asked. “It’s the farmer’s answer to the big-box hardware stores. Little bit of everything from two-by-fours to horse feed.”
She shook her head.
“Hey, Seth,” a voice from the shadowy depths of the store said. “And who’s this pretty lady?” The man who came to meet them wasn’t quite as tall as Seth but outweighed him by a factor of two or possibly three. Somewhere under the thick layers of fat could be glimpsed layers of muscle. He wore actual bib overalls that stuck out in front.
“Hey, hon.” He engulfed her hand in a rough sunburned paw as gently as though he was holding a butterfly. “Seth giving you the grand tour of our fair city?”
His grin was broad, gleaming, but with something of a mountain lion behind it. A man who could handle himself, Emma thought, and probably Seth, as well.
“Shoot, you’re the biggest tourist attraction we got,” Seth said. “Emma French, meet the mayor of Williamston, Sonny Prather. Sonny, this is Emma French. She’s Miss Martha’s niece. She just moved in across the street from me.”
“And you figured you’d introduce her to old Sonny. ’Cause you gonna need to buy out the store to get that place all fixed up after the last people. Friendly enough folks, but didn’t do much to take care of the place that I could see.”
“I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy more than a tiny piece of all this,” Emma said and waved a hand at the shelves around her.
“Sure you can. We gonna open an account for you like everybody else in the county. That way, you can send your contractor in to buy whatever you need.”
“As for the contractor, you’re looking at him,” Seth said. “This morning, all we need is stuff to build an outdoor run. Emma here is thinking about bringing her dog up from Memphis to stay. He’s a city dog.”
Emma gaped at Seth. She now knew that he could lie like a rug. Good information for the future. She had to admit, however, that he’d sounded plausible. And not a word about skunks either.
“Lord, yes. Miss Emma, you got to have a kennel for a city dog around here ’less you want him running off after the coyotes or getting hisself snakebit.” He turned to Seth. “You know what you want, or you want me to work it out for you? Is it a large dog?” he asked Emma.
“Uh...”
Seth stepped in. “Large enough. Long as we’re building, might as well do a decent job of it.”
“You got you a new dog yet, Seth?” Sonny asked over his shoulder as he walked off down the store and through a wide doorway at the back. “Know you miss Rambler. He was a good ol’ dog.”
A fine epitaph, Emma thought. Interesting that Sonny knew the particulars about Seth’s dog. But then he probably knew the names of the dogs and horses owned by all his customers. Maybe sheep and goats, too. Certainly bulls. Possibly even cats, although she doubted it. Men tended to ignore felines, but from where she stood, she could see a pair of yellow tabbies curled up in a ray of sunshine beside the front door. No doubt if she mentioned them, Sonny would blush and tell her they were good ratters.
“Barbara’s looking out for a rescue for me,” Seth said as he followed Sonny. Emma trailed along in their wake, feeling like a third wheel.
The same thing had happened when she first started working for Nathan Savage. Once a prospective older client sat down at their conference table, turned to her and said, “Get coffee.”
Not even a “please.” She didn’t hit him, but that was because Nathan intervened, explained that Emma was one of their top marketing executives and thus did not act as a waitress. The man never so much as looked at her throughout the meeting. But then he signed a contract for more money than anyone had expected. Guilt, probably. That worked. After she’d engineered the launch of his metal-roofing company with more media coverage than he’d expected for such a specialized top-of-the-line niche product, he became a friend. Who would work with him now that she no longer worked for Nathan?
She glanced over at Seth and Sonny. They weren’t cutting her out. They’d simply forgotten she was there. She left them to it.
By the time they’d worked out everything that would be needed for the so-called kennel, she had accumulated a wicker basket full of little cans of cat food, a bag of dry food and several small cat toys.
Sonny said, “Thought it was a big dog.”
“We’ve seen a couple of feral cats around,” Seth said. “If they have kittens, Emma may domesticate a few to keep down the mice.”
Saved again. She looked at the length of the invoice Sonny held and groaned. She might have to borrow money from her father, after all, if she didn’t get a job soon. When she reached for her credit card, however, Sonny waved her away.
