“Does he know you’re coming?” she asked, her voice soft, soothing.
Chris let out an audible sigh. “No. I suppose it will be as much a surprise for me to see him as it will be for him to see me after thirty-two years.”
It was Emily’s turn to reach across the space separating them and hold his hand. “Everything will work out.”
He stared at her again, raw hurt glittering in the depths of eyes so dark that no light would ever penetrate them. “I hope you’re right.” He flashed a wry grin. “Billy Savoy must be spinning like a whirling dervish. He’s finally found something to attack me with.”
A soft gasp escaped her. “William Savoy? What does he have to do with this?”
“It was his investigators who uncovered that Alejandro Delgado is my biological father and that he has been living in hiding in South America.”
Pulling her hand away, Emily slumped back against the tufted cushion on the rattan chair, shaking her head. “Why now, Chris? Why didn’t he reveal this information two years ago when he opposed you for the senate seat?”
Chris shifted his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Maybe he hadn’t known about it, or perhaps he was so cocksure that he’d win because his father is the governor.”
“He’s a fool,” she spat out angrily. “He ran a clean campaign the first time, and now he’s resorted to slinging mud. I hope I’ll be able to make it through the next ten months covering his campaign and remain unbiased.”
Chris registered her last statement, the words hitting him in his gut with the force of a well-aimed punch. “What did you say?”
Emily took another sip of her fruit punch to relieve the dryness in her throat. She had planned to call Chris and tell him that she would not be covering his own campaign when she returned to New Mexico. Now there was no reason to wait two weeks.
“I’ve been reassigned.”
“Why?” The single word was harsh, cutting.
“Richard Adams claims…” She paused, trying to recall her boss’s exact words. “He said, ‘I’ve decided to reassign you for the gubernatorial campaign. I’ve changed my mind after being apprised of your relationship with Senator Delgado.’ End of quote.”
“What the hell is he talking about, Emily? What relationship? Does he think we’re sleeping together?”
Chris was looking forward to having Emily join his campaign as a part of the press corps when he began touring New Mexico. As it was he did not see her enough. He was lucky if he met with her more than twice a month. His permanent residence was in Las Cruces, even though he maintained an expansive loft apartment in an industrial section of Santa Fe.
She shrugged a narrow shoulder. “I don’t know what he thinks or believes when it concerns us. What he’s become is a spiteful man who has a problem accepting rejection.” Chris’s expression had changed from shock to anger and, finally, to amusement. Her quick temper flared. “You think it’s funny?”
He sobered. “No, Emily, I don’t think it’s funny. What I don’t understand is your naïveté. How many men have to either lose their lives or their minds when it comes to you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Take a look in the mirror and you’ll know what I’m talking about, Emily Teresa Kirkland. You’re an incredibly beautiful woman and you have the perfect combination of looks and brains. Of course a man—any man—would have the hots for you. And I’m no exception,” he stated after a pause.
It was her turn to smile. “You?” How could he, when he shared his bed with another woman?
“You think it’s funny, Emily?”
“I find it amusing.”
“I don’t,” he countered.
She waved a hand. “We’re friends, Chris. We’ve always been friends.”
He stared at her until she lowered her gaze. “I’m not debating our friendship. But I will admit that I’m just as enthralled with you as your boss and the millions of Keith Norrises who lust after you.”
Emily held up her right hand. “Chris—”
“Let me have my say,” he said, interrupting her. “I came to Ocho Rios because I was frightened. More frightened than I’d ever been in my life.”
There was a soporific silence as they sat motionless, staring at each other, shutting out the sounds of the band playing a seductive ballad, the soft conversations going on around them and the clink of utensils against plates. It was as if they were strangers seeing each other for the first time.
And it was the first time that Emily saw Christopher Blackwell Delgado not as a friend she had known all her life, but as a man—a man who finally saw her as a woman.
“Why?”
The sound of her query reminded him of a cloaking fog, sweeping around his face like moist, caressing fingers. “Why, Emily?” She nodded slowly. “Because I thought I was going to lose you.”
Her gaze widened. “To what? To whom?”
“Keith Norris.”
“But I told you that I’m not marrying Keith.”
His lids lowered, a fringe of long black lashes touching his high cheekbones. “Something wouldn’t permit me to believe you.”
“What I can’t believe is that you’re jealous of Keith.”
“I’m jealous of Keith Norris and any other man you’ve ever been involved with.”
Her shock was complete. If he was jealous of the men she dated, then that meant that his feelings for her ran deeper than mere friendship, and that the bond between them went further than their parents being lifelong friends, than she and his sister were best friends, and than they were godparents to Sara and Salem’s son.
Her heart was pumping so wildly that she was certain it was noticeable under the delicate fabric of her silk shell. She had waited years—more than half her life—to hear the words Christopher Delgado had just uttered. And now that she heard them, she was totally unprepared to respond.
She had earned an undergraduate degree in communications and a graduate degree in journalism, yet she was unable to communicate with the man sitting a few feet across from her. She earned a generous salary because of her verbal ability, but at the moment she was too dazed, too stunned to speak. Closing her eyes, she swallowed several times, helpless to halt her embarrassment.
Chris was aware that he had shocked Emily, but now that the words were out he could not retract them any more than he could change how he felt about her.
“I love you, Emily,” he said simply. “I don’t know when it happened, but I do know that I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”
Her lids fluttered wildly as she struggled to control her emotions. Covering her mouth with a trembling hand, her eyes filled with unshed tears. The moisture turned them into shimmering pools of brilliant peridot.
“But…but you see other women,” she whispered through her fingers.
A sensual smile lifted the corners of his strong mouth. “And you’ve seen other men,” he countered softly.
Emily lowered her hand. “Touché, Chris.” She had dated a number of men, but what Chris did not know was that she hadn’t slept with any of them. She was certain Keith Norris had proposed marriage because he thought she would agree to share his bed if she wore his engagement ring.
Emily wanted to tell Chris that she loved him, had been in love with him since he kissed her for the first time in her grandparents’ garden after her cousin’s wedding the year she turned twelve.
She’d been a preteen girl who had physically become a woman but had been experiencing the gamut of strange emotions that changed her moods from highs to lows within seconds. And it was during one of her elated moods that she and Chris found themselves in the cloistered seclusion of the formal boxwood garden. Still enthralled with the ethereal beauty of Aaron and Regina Spencer’s wedding ceremony, she
had asked Chris to kiss her.
He had hesitated, then placed his mouth over hers for her first kiss. A passion she had never known before or since ignited a fire within her. At seventeen, Chris claimed a dark, masculine beauty that turned the heads of much older women whenever they surveyed his tall, slender body, rakishly long, wavy black hair, deeply tanned tawny skin and penetrating dark eyes that tilted upward in the most beguiling smile.
She’d felt the warmth of his moist breath, inhaled the sensual scent of his flesh and aftershave, and felt the lean hardness of his body as he pressed closer. The kiss lasted only seconds, but everything that was Christopher Blackwell Delgado had lingered. Every boy and man she’d ever met or dated paled when she compared them to the young man who had captured her heart with a single kiss.
Chris saw the sweep of emotions cross Emily’s incredibly beautiful face. She knew. He had bared his soul and confessed his love for her, and now he would wait—wait for her to verbalize what she had told his sister. A look of tenderness filled his eyes when she lowered her gaze shyly, making his heart turn over with the demure gesture. He stared at the length of her slender neck, the velvet skin he wanted to touch, to kiss.
She glanced up and slowly let out her breath. “What’s going to happen to us?” Her query was a breathless whisper.
Chris covered both her hands with one of his. “Nothing,” he whispered in return. A reggae version of Marc Anthony’s blockbuster hit “I Need To Know” floated through the restaurant and he tightened his grip on her fingers. “Come, dance with me.” Apprehension made it impossible for him to sit still.
Emily waited for Chris to come around the table to pull back her chair and within seconds found herself on the dance floor and in his arms. The pulsing Latin rhythm and the melodious sound of his voice in her ear as he sang along with the band’s lead singer sent a torrent of fire throughout her body. He spun her around, swung her out, then pulled her up close to his chest, their lower bodies fused from belly to knees.
Chris was an excellent dancer, and although they had danced together in the past, she knew this time it was different. Neither was aware of the other couples on the dance floor as they shared a smile, a smile reserved only for lovers, when their gazes met.
The song ended amid rousing applause, Emily and Chris joining the others as they made their way back to their table. He pulled out her chair, seated her, then leaned over and dropped a light kiss on her mouth when she tilted her head to stare up at him. Curving his fingers around the column of her neck, he pressed a kiss on her silken throat before moving to her mouth.
“Emelia,” he crooned against her moist lips, using the Spanish derivative of her name.
Her lids lowered as she smiled up at him through her lashes. “Sí,” she replied, lapsing easily into the same language.
“Dimelo.”
He wanted to know, needed to know. And she knew exactly what he wanted. He needed to know how she felt about him. He wanted to hear the words she had locked away in her heart for years.
Her smile faded and her eyes darkened with passion. “Te amo, Cristobal.” The confession flowed out of its own volition, reminding her that she had broken her promise that she would never tell Chris that she loved him again.
Hunkering down beside her chair, he ran a forefinger down the length of her nose. Leaning closer, he winked at her. “Thank you.”
She pressed her lips to his. “You’re welcome.”
Chris retook his seat, a soaring joy making him feel lightheaded. The trepidation he had felt when he boarded the jet in Las Cruces had vanished completely. Even if he lost the upcoming election, it would never be as traumatic as if he lost Emily Kirkland.
She had become his everything; if he lost her, he surely would lose himself.
Chapter 7
December 30
“Put me down, Chris.” Emily clutched her shoes to her chest as Chris carried her out of the car, around the house, and headed for the gazebo.
He tightened his grip under her knees. “I’ll put you down in a little while.”
Resting her head on his solid shoulder, she closed her eyes. It was a few minutes after midnight, and the food and drink she had consumed left her feeling a bit too full and very drowsy. And it hadn’t helped that she and Christ had spent more than ninety minutes on the dance floor once they’d finished eating dinner.
The reflective paint on the white structure shone like a beacon in the darkness as Chris walked up the two steps that led to the gazebo. He deposited Emily on the oversized hammock, then climbed in beside her. His greater weight caused it to dip lower as she moved over to give him more room to stretch out his long legs.
Turning on her right side, she laid her head on his shoulder. “I knew I shouldn’t have had that second passion punch. I think you were trying to get me drunk so you could take advantage of me.”
Chris tried making out her features in the darkness. “I thought you said it was nonalcoholic.”
“It is,” she confirmed. “It must be the combination of the ingredients that make it so potent.”
He chuckled deep in his chest, causing her to glance up at him. “I would never deliberately get you drunk so that I could take advantage of you. I will not touch you, Emelia, unless you want me to. That choice will have to be yours, not mine.”
Her left arm curved around his slim waist. “You’re going to have to be patient with me.”
The fingers of his left hand played with the short, silken curls sweeping over her ear. “Take all the time you need.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, Chris.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I join Savoy’s campaign February fourth. After that my contact with you will have to be kept to a minimum. We can’t be seen in public together. I don’t want to compromise myself.”
Chris cursed to himself. Raw, crude expletives. He had forgotten that she would be traveling with his opponent’s campaign team. “We can always make arrangements through Sara to see one another,” he suggested.
“No, Chris. I don’t want to sneak around to see you.”
The muscles in his body tensed, then eased. “Do you have a better suggestion?”
“No.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “I’ll think of something.”
That was the last thing she said as her lids fluttered before they closed. Chris held her to his heart while she slept, trying to think of a way he and Emily could see each other over the next ten months.
He hadn’t even slept with her, yet his protective and possessive instincts were in full throttle. What he refused to think about was William Savoy coming on to Emily.
Thirty-eight-year-old, never-married William Alan Savoy had become one of New Mexico’s most eligible bachelors. Women found him attractive and extremely intelligent, while both men and women applauded his political intellect. Yet he had one defect in his nearly flawless character: he had a proclivity for women—married or single. Chris had heard rumors that Billy preferred married women because of his unwillingness or inability to commit.
Now that he knew the woman he loved would be traveling from city to city with Billy Savoy, he would have to make arrangements to keep her out of the man’s clutches.
A peaceful expression softened the lines of tension around his mobile mouth as he closed his eyes. The soft sounds of Emily’s breathing whispered under his ear. She had fallen asleep in his arms like a trusting child.
Fifteen minutes later he welcomed the arms of Morpheus calling him to sleep—a sleep wherein he dreamt of Emily Kirkland-Delgado—her belly swollen with his child.
* * *
Emily walked halfway up the staircase leading to the second floor. “Hurry, Chris, or we’re going to be late.”
“I’m coming,” he called bac
k.
She glanced down at her watch, retracing her steps to the parlor to wait for him. They had spent the night in the hammock, waking before dawn, but only to retreat to their respective bedrooms, where they slept until the sun was high in the heavens.
It was Sunday, and Emily had planned to attend mass at a quaint little church ten miles away. She heard footsteps and turned to find Chris standing under the arched doorway, smiling at her. He was casually dressed in a finely woven off-white short-sleeved linen shirt and coffee-colored linen slacks. A matching jacket dangled from the forefinger of his right hand while he clutched a tie in the other hand.
“Will I need a jacket or tie?”
“No,” she replied. “Everyone’s always informal.”
She wore a loose-fitting, sleeveless, yellow shift dress with a squared neckline. Picking up a soft straw hat, matching purse and a pair of sunglasses from a drop-leaf table, she preceded Chris out of the parlor and to her car.
He deposited the jacket and tie on the table, followed her, then held his hand out for her key. “I’ll drive.”
She dropped the key in his outstretched palm, hiding a smile. “What’s the matter, darling? You don’t trust my driving?”
Curving an arm around her waist, he opened the passenger-side door of the Mustang and waited until she was seated on the leather seat. “You still drive too fast.” He closed the door with a resounding slam.
She managed to look insulted. “I was only going seventy-five.”
He slipped behind the wheel next to her, vertical lines appearing between his eyes. “Seventy-five at night on a road without lights.”
“Don’t be such a ninny, Chris. I’ve traveled that road hundreds of times. I can navigate it with my eyes closed.”
Snorting under his breath, he put on his sunglasses, started up the car and backed out of the driveway. “Which road do I take?”
“Take a right and continue until you see the sign for Shrewsbury. Then make a left. The steeple of the church will be visible from the road.”
Private Passions Page 6