LITMIR.BIZ

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you didn’t sock the moron?”

      Now she remembered. Unfortunately. A flush warmed her cheeks from the inside out. “I didn’t touch him, I only threatened to—”

      “Did he touch you?”

      Emily shook her head. “I don’t know what you heard, but I’m sure at least fifty percent is exaggerated.”

      “Suppose you tell me which bits are true?”

      Ahh, that protectiveness. She heard it in his grim voice, saw it in the tight set of his jaw and wished she didn’t find it quite so bone-meltingly appealing. She wanted to be strong, wanted to stand up for herself and develop some backbone, but every time she was put to the test lately, she managed to fail.

      “This traveler was trying to chat me up in the bar. Harmless stuff,” she said quickly when his eyes darkened. “I didn’t think anything of it, but then he was waiting when I finished my shift and, well, I told him I wasn’t interested.”

      “Did he touch you?” he asked again.

      “No.” She shook her head, surprised by his vehemence. “It was nothing, Mitch, really.”

      “If it was nothing, how did you come to lose your job?”

      “Maybe I walked under a ladder or a black cat.” Emily faked a laugh. “It’s like bad luck’s following me around.”

      “What happened, Emily?”

      Mitch Goodwin in journalist mode made a formidable opponent. He kept on ferreting around, circling and digging. She might as well get it over with, the whole belittling truth. “The next day he told my boss that some money was taken from his room. I cleaned it, so I was the scapegoat.”

      Mitch swore. “You were sacked on this jerk’s say-so? Because you rejected him?”

      It sounded bad, put like that, but at the time she’d almost understood her boss’s dilemma. She hated it, but she’d understood. “His company does a lot of business with the hotel. I guess they didn’t want to lose it.”

      “So you’re just going to take this?” Their eyes met and held, his as dark and angry as a winter storm.

      “I know I should do something, and if it didn’t involve conflict, I would. But these last months with Gramps’s will and his family and all…”

      “Chantal told me about that. I’m sorry, Em.”

      She sighed and shook her head. “I’m just tired of fighting.”

      Something shifted in his eyes and he nodded, as if with satisfaction. “I’m pleased to hear that.”

      Then, before she realized what he was about, he strode along her porch, hunkered down in a way that threatened the seams of his jeans and lifted the first of her packed boxes.

      When he started back the way he’d come, Emily jumped into his path. “What are you doing?”

      His look was an undisguised challenge. “Are we fighting about this or not?”

      “Yes.” She tugged at the box, but he held firm. “No.” She released her grip and a heavy sigh. “I don’t know.”

      There was something incredibly undignified, not to mention futile, about playing tug-of-war with a man nine inches taller and at least forty pounds heavier. Especially while dressed in one’s nightwear. Emily lifted a hand to tuck a loose tress of hair behind her ear and felt him looking. Not at her hair. Face flushing, she pulled the gaping sides of her robe back together and tightened the sash at her waist.

      He used her momentary distraction to haul the box off to his truck. When he came back for a second load, she stepped in front of him. “Where do you think you’re taking my things?”

      “Chantal’s.”

      “Wait.”

      Naturally, being Mitch Goodwin on a mission, he paid no notice. Not until she stopped him with a hand on his arm. For a moment she lost her place. Her senses focused on the rigid strength of his muscles, taut under the heavy load, and her memories of touching him another time. Without the barrier of a soft woolen sweater.

      He cleared his throat and she snatched her hand away.

      “You can’t just move me somewhere,” she said, her voice husky with rising heat and panic. This was so much worse than she’d imagined, being close to him, touching, remembering. “Does your sister know?”

      “She made the offer.”

      Because Mitch asked? Maybe. The Goodwins—unlike her splintered family—supported each other unfailingly. Or perhaps Chantal, who’d been her lawyer at the start of the estate wrangle, did offer without any prompting. Even after off-loading Emily’s case to a city estate specialist, her support and help continued. But she and Cameron Quade were newlyweds with a baby on the way. They deserved their own space. She shook her head. “I don’t want to move in with them.”

      “Where do you want to move then? It has to be somewhere…unless you want me to buy this place for you.”

      Heart pounding, she read the direct challenge in his eyes. This is why he’d come, to offer this choice—his sister’s charity or his.

      Standing so close, with the feel of his hard strength still coursing through her veins, with the scent of some masculine soap in her nostrils, she knew she had no choice. At least Chantal might provide some respite, some thinking time.

      Gazes still locked, she drew a short, sharp breath and stepped aside. She didn’t need to say a word. A small nod signaled his satisfaction, and he got on with the job, one box after another. Feeling utterly defeated, Emily started to sink down on the top step, then thought better of it. He might just pick her up like one of the boxes and dump her in the truck.

      She needed to get dressed, preferably in the kind of thick, winter clothing that might numb his potent effect, or at least keep her responses contained. Then she needed to check on Joshua and Digger before they found mischief.

      Five minutes later she watched them scamper around Gramps’s big yard, a hairy tricolored mutt and a boy whose laughter soared, as pure as the winter sunshine. A surge of tenderness rushed through her, so huge it rendered her dizzy. She rested her chin atop her arms on the chest-high fence and let her heart enjoy the moment.

      How could he have known? How could he have picked this perfect time and this perfect blond-haired accomplice?

      Oh, it wasn’t only Joshua who got to her, but the whole father-son package. It would be so easy to capitulate, to talk herself into the benefits of a secure job with a mind-boggling pay packet. To succumb to the seductive knowledge that they needed her in all the everyday practical ways, that they wanted her—plain, old, vanilla variety Emily Jane Warner—ahead of anyone else.

      Except that after she tumbled completely and impractically under their spell came the heartbreaking truth that she was only the nanny and could never replace the beautiful, exotic, triple-choc-and-mocha Annabelle. All she needed to do was remember the pain of his point-blank rejection. In his bed, naked and willing, and he’d turned away. She wouldn’t set herself up for another bout of humiliation and heartache, not of that magnitude, not ever again.

      A low ache settled in the pit of her stomach when she sensed Mitch’s approach, his footsteps muted by the thick, damp lawn. He rested his hands on top of the fence next to hers, and side by side they watched Joshua climb into an old tire slung from a tree in the far corner of the yard. Digger yapped gleefully as he tracked the swing’s motion, back and forth, back and forth.

      “It’s zactly like Uncle Zane’s swing,” Joshua yelled, clearly delighted with the discovery.

      She sneaked in a sideways glance and caught the ghost of a smile on Mitch’s lips. Pleasure, pure and strong, pierced her chest. She remembered his companionship with his own dog, back in the days before Annabelle decided they needed an upmarket apartment

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