LITMIR.BIZ

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was not in his way. If he wanted to leave, he could get right up and go. “Pardon me?”

      “Get out of the way. Refuse to marry me and decline to assume custody of my sister. If you won’t marry me and you won’t take Mandy, either, there’s no problem. She’ll go to me.”

      The wild man had a point. Nothing said she had to go along with Blythe’s crazy scheme. Mr. McAllister had said the same thing a few minutes ago, hadn’t he?

      If Ms. Hewitt is unwilling, then these changes become meaningless….

      Emma could just…do what Jonas Bravo wanted her to do. Get out of the way. Mandy would go to him and—well, wasn’t that the right thing, anyway?

      Emma opened her mouth to tell him she’d do what he wanted: step aside. Make no claim on Mandy.

      But the words got caught in her throat.

      A little over five years ago, right after her aunt Cass died, Emma had first come to L.A. She’d brought nothing but a few cheap clothes, a battered Ford four-door, a degree from a two-year business college in Odessa and a burning will to succeed, to make a mark upon the world. She’d taken a job at a famous deli/restaurant on Fairfax—just until she could figure out what kind of business she intended to make her mark in.

      She’d met Blythe Bravo the second morning on the job, when Blythe had dropped in good and early for a black coffee and a plain bagel to go. It was immediate, the feeling of connection between them. It didn’t matter that, on the surface, they had nothing in common. Emma had looked in Blythe’s eyes and known that things were going to be all right, that she didn’t have to be secretly terrified anymore. She had lost her dear aunt Cass and she was starting all over. But she had found a rare friend. That gave her confidence, made her certain that she really was going to make it in L.A.

      “When can you take a break?” Blythe had asked the third time she walked into the deli and found Emma behind the register. “We’ll do lunch.”

      After that, they met two or three times a week—for lunch, to take in a movie, sometimes just for coffee and serious girl talk. Within a month, Emma was telling Blythe her idea of creating a special kind of “pet retreat.” And Blythe was offering to be her backer….

      Emma owed Blythe so much. She did want a chance to repay her—not only for giving Emma her start, but also for holding out her hand in true and binding friendship.

      Some people—like the man who was trying to push her around right now—would say that Emma came from nothing. Her daddy and her mama had both been dead by the time she was five. She’d been raised by a good-hearted, sun worshipping, platitude-loving aunt in a double-wide in a dinky, dusty west Texas town called Alta Lobo.

      So yes. Some folks might say she was a nobody from nowhere.

      But in Alta Lobo, in her aunt Cass’s double-wide, Emma had learned a number of important lessons. One of them was that if you can possibly give a friend what she wants, you do it.

      Emma longed to do just that, to grant her dear friend’s dying wish.

      But, oh, Blythe, she thought miserably. Oh, Blythe, why this? Anything but this, to get myself hitched up to this awful man.

      Emma was not sure she could bring herself to do it—even for the very best friend she had ever known.

      The awful man in question was still watching her through those blue-black angry eyes, waiting for her to give in and say she’d do what he demanded.

      Well, she wouldn’t do what he demanded.

      Not right yet, anyway.

      He would just have to wait a little longer, because she needed time to think.

      Emma slid the strap of her bright orange purse high onto her shoulder. She closed the folder on her copy of Blythe’s will and tucked the folder under her arm.

      Jonas said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

      “Out of here.”

      “Oh, no you don’t. Not yet.”

      Emma pushed back the big leather swivel chair and stood. “This is a lot to think about. I’m not makin’ any snap decisions, Mr. Bravo. I need a little time.”

      He looked at her as if he’d like to pick her up and toss her through that big window behind her. And probably all he’d do was smile in satisfaction when she hit the pavement ten stories below. “Time, Ms. Hewitt, is the thing we don’t have much of. You’ve got to marry me in the next two weeks—or you’ve got to prove to my satisfaction that you do not intend to try to claim custody of my sister.”

      “Excuse me,” Emma Lynn Hewitt replied. “I do not have to marry you. And I do not have to prove a single thing. I have to decide whether or not I can bear to grant my dearest friend’s dyin’ wish. And if I decide I just can’t make myself do that, since to do it I’d have to marry up with you, then I have to figure out whether or not I want to fight you for custody of sweet little Mandy. Those are the things that I have to do and they are all that I have to do. And in order to do them, I need some time.”

      She turned for the door, thinking as she headed for it that maybe refusing to marry him would be the best way to go. She could refuse—and then fight to get Mandy put in her care. Maybe that would satisfy her obligation to her friend. After all, the little sweetheart would certainly have a better chance at a happy, normal life with her than she ever would with Jonas Bravo.

      “I’ll see you in hell before I let you have Mandy,” the billionaire said before she got out the door.

      Emma paused, turned to face him again and gave him her sweetest, brightest smile. “I’m sure you know just where you’re headed, Mr. Bravo. But whether I’ll be there to meet you remains to be seen.”

      “We are not finished here.”

      “Oh, yes we are. I told you. I need a little time to think.”

      “How much time?”

      “A few days. Then I’ll get back to you.”

      He started to stand. She didn’t stay to watch him come at her.

      She darted through the door, yanked it closed behind her and headed for the exit as fast as her three-inch heels would carry her.

      Chapter 3

      Jonas dropped back to his chair as soon as the blonde in the orange suit bolted from the room. There was nothing to be gained by following her right then, nothing left, at that moment, to use on her save physical force. And contrary to what a lot of people believed, Jonas Bravo never used physical force. He only let them think that he might.

      A few days, she had said. She would get back to him in a few days.

      What the hell, Jonas wondered, was a few days? Two? Three? Four?

      He felt caged. Caught. Bested.

      Made to wait.

      He sat alone in the conference room for several minutes, giving his frustration a chance to abate, at least minimally. Eventually it occurred to him that Ambrose would be ducking back in shortly, just to check and make sure he hadn’t torn the little dog groomer limb from limb.

      Since Jonas felt zero inclination to deal with Ambrose again right then, he left the lawyer’s offices and went to Bravo, Incorporated, which was housed in the Bravo Building, a towering forty-story structure of pale granite and dark glass in downtown L.A.

      He had a meeting at three with the project manager of a certain upscale shopping center that was due to open in six weeks. It was a project in which he’d made a significant investment of Bravo, Incorporated funds.

      The meeting lasted two hours. When it was over, Jonas hardly remembered a thing that had been said. He kept thinking about the kennel keeper, about that word, few, about what she had really meant when she said it.

      About how damn long she intended

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