Undaunted

by Diana Palmer

  “No ego,” he mused. “None at all. You’re soft and warm and desirable. You make me ache all over when I kiss you.”

  “I do?”

  He brushed back her disheveled hair. “Your engagement put you off men, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she confessed. “I thought it proved that I wasn’t woman enough to make a man want me. It hurt so badly that I was afraid to try again. I did my job and went home.”

  “Surely you were asked out again.”

  She smiled against his broad chest. “I didn’t get asked out much. When Steven dated me, I was so excited by the attention that I didn’t question why he wanted us to get engaged so quickly. Looking back, I think his mother pushed him into it. She’d met me at the café and liked me. She introduced us.”

  His hand tangled in her hair. “Maybe she just liked you.”

  She grimaced. “She wanted to tell everybody about the engagement. She made sure it was in all the newspapers. When Steven dumped me, everybody knew about it. It was so humiliating. I couldn’t stay there and face the pity. Even Steven’s mother was upset. She told people her son was an idiot for letting me get away—like I’d left him, instead of him leaving me.”

  “Odd,” he mused.

  “She and Steven’s father moved away when he went up to San Antonio with his friend.”

  He was getting a good picture of her engagement, and it did no credit to the boy. He wondered if she really knew what was going on? For his mother to push him into an engagement, she must have been desperate to protect her son, or herself, from gossip. After a moment of stillness, she said, “You’re very quiet.”

  “I’d like to punch your ex-fiancé,” he said frankly.

  She nuzzled her face against his chest. “That’s nice. Thank you.”

  He chuckled. Under her ear she could feel the heavy, fast beat of his heart. “You’re welcome. So. Are you coming back home?”

  He made it sound as if she really would be going home. Because home was wherever he was.

  “Well...it’s a long way to the road, and my suitcase is very heavy,” she murmured.

  He turned her face to his and drew his lips slowly, tenderly, over hers. “Yes, it is,” he whispered huskily. “And you might meet a bear along the way or a coyote, or even a person with ill intent.”

  “I guess I could stay. For a while longer.” She panicked, thinking that Mamie would be coming home in less than two months. What would she do then? She worked for the famous author. Could she just quit and stay with Connor? She went cold at the thought of leaving him forever. She couldn’t even bring herself to tell him the truth. She should have told him right after the accident. She should have gone to him and confessed, regardless of the punishment. By working for him, staying with him, she was digging her own grave.

  If he ever regained his memory, he’d think she’d stayed to play him, as he’d said before, that she was out for what she could get. She would never accept anything from him, except her salary, she decided. That way, when she left, if she did, he’d realize that she wanted something more than his easy conquests. She just wanted him.

  * * *

  He walked her back to Pine Cottage, carrying the suitcase while she clung to his other hand and guided him to the back door. Marie was still in the kitchen, almost done with her chores, when they came in.

  She smiled from ear to ear. “Oh, I’m so glad you came back!” Marie exclaimed, running to hug her.

  Emma grinned at her. “My suitcase got too heavy,” she teased as Connor set it on the floor in the hall.

  “Besides, there are probably bears,” he remarked.

  “There’s a big grizzly one who lives here,” she chided.

  He grinned from ear to ear. “He’s tame,” he told her.

  “Not so much,” she returned.

  “Barnes will get the cars organized in the morning for the guests to get to the airport,” he told them. “For now, perhaps it would be good if we all went to bed and got a little sleep. I have contract negotiations to get through tomorrow in Atlanta. Emma, you’ll stay here and deal with the mail.”

  “Yes, sir.” She was relieved. Maybe she wouldn’t have to see Ariel again.

  “Stop that,” he chided. “Don’t call me sir again.”

  “Okay, chief.”

  He made a face.

  “Boss?” she persisted.

  “Harsh.”

  “Dictator?” she went on. “Despot? Tyrant?”

  “That’s no way to talk about your employer,” he said, but he was grinning.

  “Boss, then.”

  He shrugged. “I can live with that. For now,” he added, and he was almost purring from the tone of his voice. “Go to bed.”

  “Good night,” she said to both of them.

  “Sleep well,” he said softly.

  “You, too,” she replied.

  * * *

  “I’m glad she came back,” Marie said when Emma had closed her bedroom door. “She’s a great little helper, and not just in the office.”

  He nodded. “I almost ruined things. She isn’t at all what I thought.”

  Marie glanced at his set features. “I could have told you what sort of person she was when she started guiding you around the plate at dinnertime. She’s not like some of the other women who come here,” she added deliberately.

  He grimaced. “No. I should have realized that. She’s never asked me for anything,” he remarked.

  “She never would. She works for what she gets.”

  He smiled. “Remember when I took her to the casino on Paradise Island?” he asked Marie. “She won five thousand dollars. She put every penny of it in the donation box at a church in downtown Nassau.”

  “Good heavens!” Marie exclaimed. “So much money, and her dressing out of thrift shops...” She put a hand to her mouth. She shouldn’t have let that slip.

  He scowled. “Thrift shops?”

  “She’s very frugal,” she replied. “I think it must have something to do with her upbringing. She said clothes didn’t matter to her, or what other people thought about what she wore. She said that people should only look at the character of a person, not at what they had on. She said snobbery was a sad thing and she wouldn’t look down on anyone, not if she had millions.”

  “Quite a woman,” he murmured.

  “She really is. Sir, you won’t tell her that I gave her away?” she asked worriedly.

  “I won’t. But she doesn’t hold grudges.” His face hardened. “I do. I remember things people did to me years ago, and I still brood over them. I don’t forgive easily, and I never forget.” He drew in a breath. “I’m vindictive. I guess that goes back to my upbringing, as well. My father was...harsh.”

  Marie smiled gently. She knew about his upbringing. “You’re a gentleman, for all that, Mr. Connor,” she said, using the name with affection.

  His high cheekbones had a ruddy color. “Thanks.” He bent and lifted the suitcase. “Leave the rest of the party stuff until the morning, Marie, and get some sleep. You’ll have to make breakfast for everyone before they leave.”

  “I don’t mind. But I’ll turn in, too. Good night, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  He picked up Emma’s suitcase and felt his way down the hall to her room. He knocked on the door. “Special delivery,” he called.

  Emma laughed as she opened the door and took the suitcase from him. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t get up until we all leave in the morning. Marie can make you a late breakfast,” he said solemnly.

  She realized, with a start, that he was protecting her from Ariel, who would probably be furious that Connor turned down her offer to sleep with him.

  “I think I’ll do that, if you don’t mind.”

  �
��I don’t mind.” He hesitated. “I don’t have plans in Atlanta that include her,” he added gruffly. “In case you wondered. Sleep well.”

  “You, too.”

  He went on down the hall. Emma went back into her room and closed the door. Her eyes were wet. She’d expected a different end to the evening than the one she got. She was so relieved that she didn’t have to go. She couldn’t even imagine life without Connor now. If she lost him, she didn’t know how she would survive. And he was a man who had nothing to offer except the occasional night in his bed. She had to keep that in mind.

  But when she was bedded down for the night, all her mind kept turning to was the tenderness he’d shown her on the lakeshore, sitting on the log together. It was new and exciting, and it promised something she ached to have.

  It might be foolish to stay, especially since he was getting more and more flashes of memory back following his accident. But she had to have just one more day, one more week, one more month. She’d live from day to day, hoping that he might someday want more than just one night with her.

  He’d promised not to seduce her, though. That was something. It gave her the only hope she had that they might really have a future together.

  Ten

  Emma was still half-asleep when she heard cars start up and doors opening and closing. Connor and his guests would be on their way to Atlanta. She remembered what had happened the night before and her heart lifted like a wild thing.

  She got up and dressed in a simple sundress before she went down the hall to the kitchen. Marie was washing dishes, and she smiled when Emma came in.

  “Your breakfast is right there,” she said, indicating a plate sitting in front of warmers that contained scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits and hash brown potatoes. “There’s just enough left. My goodness, those folks can eat!” She laughed.

  Emma grinned. “It’s nice to have the house to ourselves again.”

  “Tell me about it,” Marie said, shaking her head. “Honestly, Ariel couldn’t say one nice thing about the food or me or you. She was furious. Mr. Connor just sat there and didn’t say a word. He grinned, which made it worse.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “She’s a bad woman, and I don’t mean just because she likes a variety of men. She’s really bad, especially for him. When she was staying here, before you came, she complained about everything. She tried to get Mr. Connor to fire me and Edward, because she didn’t like the way we cooked. She tried to get Barnes fired because she said he was too old to do the job.” She let out a whistle. “Good thing the boss didn’t listen to her.”

  Emma hated to think about the way it had been with Connor and Ariel. They had a history. He’d slept with her. The pain it caused her was almost tangible. She had to remember that it was before she’d known Connor, in another world.

  She drew in a breath. “She’s so beautiful,” she murmured. She grimaced. “And he told Cort Grier that I was homely.”

  “He was topping cotton. He said a lot of things. I’m sure he’s sorry for them now,” she added. “I’ve never seen him so upset as he was when I told him you were leaving.”

  That made her smile. “He was?”

  “Subdued, that’s the word I’m searching for. It was so unusual. He’s never subdued. But he couldn’t go after you fast enough.” She stopped what she was doing and turned to Emma. “I’m so glad you stayed. He needs you.”

  “I’m properly functioning office equipment,” Emma said wickedly. “That’s why.”

  “I was thinking of other things. You pamper him. And when he’s sick, he doesn’t want anyone but you around him. He’s changed since you’ve been here, Emma,” she told the younger woman. “He laughs. Honestly, I worked here all those years and it was so rare for him to be anything but somber, even when she was here,” she said distastefully, and Emma knew she was talking about Ariel. “He’s such a lonely man. All the family he had left was his brother. He loved him very much.”

  “He told me.”

  “That she-cat led his brother around like a dog on a leash, treated him like dirt, made him do things he’d never have done on his own. Then she deliberately got pregnant. She bragged about trapping him into marrying her. Mr. Connor hated her. He tried to split them apart, but his brother genuinely loved the woman.” She shook her head. “Always amazed me, how much men respond to women who seem to hate them and treat them like dirt. Maybe that’s the secret of life.”

  Emma chuckled, and dug into her breakfast.

  * * *

  Later, she sat in Connor’s big leather chair and tried to organize talking points from the email messages that came in from the various divisions of his corporation. But her mind wasn’t really on it. She was thinking back to last night. Connor didn’t want her to go. Even if it was just that he needed her office skills, or her amateurish nursing skills for his migraines, the bottom line was that he needed her. And that made her feel warm all over.

  She forced her mind back to the tasks at hand. She was learning things about aircraft corporations and the way they were organized. Some divisions made engines. Some made accessory parts. Some made wheels. Some made the computers that handled tasks in the cockpit. Another made the seats, while yet another made the metal bodies of the airplanes themselves.

  Mostly what he built were corporate jets, although he’d told Marie that he maintained a research division in Arizona that worked on innovations like rockets and space-worthy vehicles. That was exciting, that he had a division working on ships that might one day go the moon or even Mars. Manned spaceflight, although Emma didn’t know much about it, was a fascination of hers. She loved science fiction movies.

  “Couldn’t you build one like that incredible ship they had on that old TV series, Firefly?” Marie said she’d teased him about it.

  He’d chuckled. “Sorry. Ours will be more like the NASA shuttle,” he said. “Or even the Mercury series nose cone modules. Proven designs fare better than innovations. If we changed our designs, we’d also have to retool our factories to produce them. My board of directors would drown me in jet fuel if I even suggested it.”

  Marie had relayed the conversation with twinkling eyes. “And I told him, No guts, no glory?” she related. “He just laughed.”

  Emma did, too. She loved listening to Connor talk. Aviation was truly the love of his life. In between dictating letters and listening to program talking points, he liked to talk about his first days as a pilot, about inheriting the company from his father and building it into the multinational corporation it was today.

  Emma enjoyed the talks. She didn’t understand a lot of the terms he used, although she was getting better at that. What she liked most was that she could indulge herself when it was just the two of them, without any danger of someone else seeing the way she looked at him. She was so smitten that it would have been obvious, even to a stranger, how she felt about her boss.

  * * *

  By the time he came back from Atlanta, she had most of the urgent messages outlined, along with information that was about ongoing projects. Problems and complications that he had to address covered almost three printed pages, single spaced.

  “It’s going to be a long day,” she said with a sigh as she outlined the business data for him.

  “They’re all long days, honey,” he said softly, smiling at her. “I’ve had to delegate a lot of my daily routine to managers to keep things running smoothly.” He shook his head as he leaned back in his desk chair and closed his eyes. “I’ve never had time like this. Time to just sit and go over projects, without a dozen interruptions an hour.” He laughed. “I actually turn the phone off when I’m sleeping. I never did that before. I was running on five hours of sleep a night and flying all over the world to troubleshoot problems and meet with clients.”

  “You were a heart attack waiting to happen,” s
he murmured, flushing at her own boldness.

  He raised a thick black eyebrow. “Have you been talking to my doctor?” he teased. “Because those were almost his exact words.”

  Her eyes adored him. “I’m sorry you had to have this happen, to slow down,” she said with genuine sadness.

  “Me, too.” His face hardened. “I’ve remembered something.”

  “Something?” she prodded, because he wasn’t forthcoming.

  “About the accident that did this.” He waved a hand over his eyes.

  “Oh?” she replied, hoping her voice didn’t quaver.

  “There was a boat,” he said, and there was ice in his deep voice. “I remember seeing it come around the bend, too fast. I was on the Jet Ski, but the sun was in my eyes. It was so bright that I didn’t see it coming.”

  “You think a boat hit you?’ she asked worriedly.

  “It might have,” he said, his eyes narrowing in thought. “I’ll have to have them check the Jet Ski and see. I assumed that I’d hit something in the water. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  “I can’t imagine that anyone would want to hit someone deliberately,” she began.

  He laughed coldly. “You’d be amazed,” he replied. “You haven’t noticed them, because they keep a low profile. But I have two bodyguards on payroll. Anytime I travel, they’re with me.”

  She recalled two men on the jet when they’d flown down to Nassau. She’d assumed they were just employees, because one was on the computer the whole time and the other sat up front and talked to the copilot. She’d thought he might be the relief pilot.

  “Bodyguards.” She was trying to wrap her mind around why he needed them.

  “I’ve had a couple of close calls,” he said gently, because he sensed she didn’t understand what he was saying. “When you have to close down a facility, and people lose their jobs, you tend to make enemies. I’ve only had to do that once, but I’ve downsized other facilities. Once it was a man with a gun. Another time, it was attempted sabotage on the jet. I was lucky. They were caught before things got sticky.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” she gasped. She couldn’t have imagined that anyone would want to harm him deliberately.