Forbidden Pleasures

by Bertrice Small

  “So,” Aaron said before another silence set in, “you two need to get together to discuss how we’re going to make this slight directional change in your work, Em.”

  “It isn’t slight,” she replied. “I’m known for writing sweet, not sexy. I’m not certain you can teach this old dog new tricks.”

  “You’re a good writer, Emily, and we’ll start easy,” Mick told her. “It would be too much of a shock to some of your readers if we went too quickly. But not all of them will be shocked, judging by what’s selling today. Your core readers will buy the book because you’ve written it, and you will gain new readers based on the reviews,” Michael finished.

  “You’re presuming that the reviews will be good,” Emily said.

  “They will be,” he assured her. “You’re good, and readers love you.”

  “You’ll have your editor out to Egret Pointe for a weekend,” Aaron suggested. “That way the pair of you can get to know each other, and you’ll work better.”

  Emily looked slightly surprised. The thought of being alone in her house with this man was rather intriguing. But of course it would be all business, she reminded herself.

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude on Emily’s privacy,” Mick quickly said. He used the British pronunciation of the word: priv-ah-see. God, a weekend alone with this fascinating woman would be heaven. But of course it would be all business, he reminded himself.

  “No, no, of course you must come out,” Emily told him. “Actually, it’s perfect. I haven’t started the book yet, and your input will be invaluable. Best to get started immediately, I suppose.” She didn’t sound wildly enthusiastic.

  “Before you get frightened, write your usual story, and retire into anonymity,” Mick murmured candidly. His eyes met hers briefly.

  “Yes,” she admitted, wondering how he could know her so well already.

  “So let’s set a date now,” Aaron said. What was going on? He sensed something between Emily and her new editor. But how could that be? They hadn’t known each other two hours yet. And Emily didn’t have a boyfriend. He wondered if she ever had. Yet he also knew she wasn’t gay. Something was happening here, but what?

  A cell phone rang, and Emily reached into the thin purse she had hung over the back of her chair. “Sorry, I have to take this. Rina? Where are you? Oh. All right. We’re at Felicity’s. I’ll be ready.” She snapped the phone shut. “It’s Rina. She’s ready to go home. She’ll pick me up here in ten minutes, depending on the traffic. She said you are not to go anywhere, Aaron.”

  “Oy vay!” the agent exclaimed. Then he looked to Michael Devlin. “My sister,” he explained. Then he turned back to Emily. “I thought she was having a day at Klinger’s. This is a day?”

  “She said there were too many anorexic matrons with tight faces and expensive boob jobs for her taste. She did a manicure, pedicure, and facial. You know Rina isn’t good in the city anymore, Aaron. She’s become a real country girl. She and Sam love Egret Pointe.”

  Aaron shrugged. “Who would have thought a girl from Riverside Drive and Eighty-first Street would grow up to be happy in a place called Egret Pointe?”

  “Hey, we’ve got a Krispy Kreme now,” Emily teased him.

  He chuckled, then got back to business. “So when should Mick come?” he asked her. “This weekend? Next?”

  “Either is all right with me,” Emily said. “I’ll go with Mick’s schedule.”

  He’d planned to look for a small summer rental at Montauk this weekend, but small rentals could always be found, especially if he didn’t quibble over price. And besides, he wanted to know more about Emily Shanski, a.k.a. Emilie Shann. “This weekend will be fine,” he said in his deep, lilting voice. “I’ve been back almost six weeks, and haven’t had a weekend in the country yet. I like the country. Where would you recommend I stay?”

  “Aaron has my number. Call me and I’ll give you directions. Of course you will stay with me,” Emily said almost breathlessly. A tall, handsome man with an Irish lilt in his voice wandering about the town would certainly attract attention in Egret Pointe. If she kept him bottled up in her house and garden for the weekend no one was likely to see him, and there would be no gossip about the good-looking guy with Emily Shanski.

  “Good, good,” Aaron said, relieved that it was all now settled. He let Michael Devlin pay the bill, and took the box with the tarts and the bag of green gunpowder tea from the waitress. They bade Felicity good-bye, introducing Michael Devlin before they went. Rina was just pulling up in her Lexus as they stepped out onto Madison Avenue.

  She honked and waved.

  “I will bid you good-bye, Emily,” Mick Devlin said, smiling at her. “For now. I’ll look forward to the weekend. I think we’ll get some good work done. Aaron, I’ll call you.” Then he was off, striding down the street.

  Rina had pulled over into a fire lane to allow Emily to get into the car. “Hey, big brother,” she said. “When are you and Kirk coming out to open the cottage?”

  “I’ll ask him,” Aaron said. “You look mah-vel-ous, Rina. Have you lost weight?”

  “Go screw yourself, sweetie. Call me,” Rina said as Emily climbed into the car and belted herself up. “Ta!” She gunned the car out of the fire lane, and back into the midafternoon traffic.

  “Bye, Aaron,” Emily called to him before Rina’s window rolled up tightly.

  “Who was the hottie with you?” Rina Seligmann wanted to know. “My God! Tall, dark, and handsome. You don’t see too many of them today. Is he straight? Or is he one of Aaron and Kirk’s friends? And why were you all having lunch together?”

  “He’s my new editor,” Emily said. “Rachel’s retired. It’s a long story.”

  “It’s a long ride home,” Rina said. “Get talking, sweetie.”

  Rina Seligmann, née Rina Fischer, and Aaron’s younger sister, was the wife of Egret Pointe’s beloved doctor. Her husband had cared for both Katya Shanski and Emily O’Malley until their deaths. Rina had known their granddaughter, Emily, most of her life. Actually, the young woman sitting next to her was the same age as her oldest child. She listened as Emily outlined her morning with Aaron, and her luncheon with her new editor.

  “Aaron doesn’t want to move you to another publisher?” Rina asked.

  “I suppose that will be the court of last resort,” Emily said slowly, “but it really wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense, if we can avoid it. All my backlist is with Stratford, Rina. Even with my name and sales record, it would be starting over again.”

  “It makes me so damned mad that none of this is your fault,” Rina said.

  “It’s like Rachel said: I’m a pawn on a chessboard. If I’m going to check the bitch queen, I have to pull this off. J. P. Woods doesn’t give a shit for me. She just wants Martin to make her Stratford’s new CEO so she can get back at Mick Devlin.”

  “Do you think you can work with him?” Rina asked. “I mean, without trying to jump his bones. He really is outrageously attractive. I’m glad he’s not gay. That would really be a waste. Still, if he were gay we could all be friends, and cause gossip in town.”

  “He seems very nice,” Emily said. Nice wasn’t quite the word she wanted, but it would have to do. How could she tell Rina that this man she had just met had her thinking about being on a beach naked with him?

  “Nice? Nice? The guy is gorgeous, sweetie,” Rina exclaimed. The Lexus swerved just slightly. “Hell, I wish I were your age.”

  Emily laughed. “You haven’t looked at another man since you met Sam,” she said. “Why, you’ve even made him your hero when you watch the Channel.”

  “Now, who told you that?” Rina demanded to know.

  “You did, when you first introduced me to the Channel,” Emily answered her. “You said you thought of the two of you in your younger days.”

  “I talk too much,” Rina muttered. “So what have you been using the Channel for, sweetie? Isn’t it fun?” She chuckled.

  “I’m just an observer,” E
mily said. “I imagine my books, and have the characters act it all out. It gives me a chance to see if it’s realistic and not just silly.”

  “You don’t put yourself in the heroine’s role?” Rina was surprised.

  “Good grief, no!” Emily exclaimed. “Why would I do that?”

  “Well, I thought you might, since you don’t have a boyfriend,” Rina replied. “Did you ever have a boyfriend, Emily? I didn’t think Katya and Emily O were that strict.”

  Emily thought a long moment, and then she said, “You know, Rina, I don’t think I ever have had a real boyfriend. I mean, I like guys, and I was social in college, but no one ever really touched me emotionally. There was never any time, and the story of my parents’ little misstep never really went away. I got the feeling the second I hit high school here that everyone was watching to see if I’d screw up like Katy and Joe. You know, some of my teachers taught them. That’s why I took all those AP courses, so I could graduate early and get the hell out of Egret Pointe. But then I came back.”

  “But you were very popular at Egret Pointe High,” Rina said. “And you were the class president for four years running.”

  “No one else wanted the job.” Emily laughed. “Katy and Joe were king and queen popular. I was the likable nerd. Oh, I went to pep rallies, and games, and even a couple of dances. But I never let a boy get too close. And then I did college in three years too. Wellesley, like my mother. No boys at Wellesley.” She chuckled. “And then just before I graduated Aaron sold my first book to Stratford, and the rest is history. I was a writer. I had a career, and no time for men. Actually, when I see some of the girls I went to school with I don’t think I’ve missed a whole lot.”

  “You can’t miss what you don’t know, sweetie,” Rina said as she swung off the parkway onto the Egret Pointe exit. “Or maybe you do know?” she probed.

  Emily laughed. “I’ll take the Fifth,” she said. “Besides it makes me more mysterious to guard my privacy. People wonder just what I am guarding. And I don’t want you selling my story to the Star.”

  “As if,” Rina answered her. “Want to eat supper with Sam and me?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check,” Emily said. “I always get so keyed up when I have to make these city trips, and today was a shocker. I’ve got to sit quietly with some wine, and think about what happened. And my new editor is coming up this weekend, but don’t you dare tell a soul, Rina!”

  “What’s he coming for?” the older woman wanted to know.

  “He wants to work with me, and help me to direct the new story into a sexier mode,” Emily said.

  “And just how is he going to do that?” Rina queried, waggling her newly plucked eyebrows suggestively.

  “I don’t know,” Emily said. “Writing sexy is a whole new ball game for me.”

  “Where is he staying? The Inn or the Motel 6?” Rina asked.

  “He’s staying with me,” Emily said.

  “Aha!” Rina exclaimed, pulling to a stop before Emily’s house.

  “Aha, what?” Emily wanted to know. “My reasons are based in practicality, Rina. Do I want a handsome hunk wandering about the town connected to me? I do not! The biddies would never rest until they had us involved in an affair. Mick Devlin is a nice man, and from what Rachel says a good editor. We’re both in danger of losing our livelihoods because of that bitch Jane Patricia Woods. I don’t know what Martin sees in her, but he sees something. So Mick will help me write sexy and keep my career, and by doing it I’ll help him save his job. It’s nothing more than that.” She reached for the car door handle. “Thanks for the transportation. I’d still be on the train if it weren’t for you.” Leaning over, she gave the older woman a kiss on the cheek. “That’s for Sam,” she said.

  “Hussy!” Rina shot back.

  Emily chuckled and, stepping from the Lexus, closed the car door behind her.

  With a beep of her horn Rina shot off down Founders Way, and turned the corner onto Colonial Avenue headed for her own home on Ansley Court. Emily watched her go, and then walked up the brick pathway to her house. It was a beautiful old home built in the 1860s. Her mother had been raised in this house. It stood next door to an identical structure in which she and her father had been brought up. Both homes had been built by Barnabas Dunham, a descendant of an early settler to Egret Pointe, as wedding gifts for his twin daughters. Mary Anne Dunham Smith and her husband had gone down on the Titanic in 1912. Their only daughter had sold her house to Jarek Shanski in 1922, and Emily’s grandfather had been born in 1923. Mary Anne’s twin, Elizabeth, also had a daughter, who had married Patrick O’Malley. Their grandson, Michael, had been born in this home in 1925.

  Emily had inherited both homes upon the deaths of her grandmothers. She rented the Shanski house for income because she couldn’t bear to sell it. She had been brought up in that house, as had her father and her grandfather. But she lived in the O’Malley house now. Her maternal grandmother, known as Emily O, had exquisite taste, and the house was furnished to suit her granddaughter. Besides, she held Emily O partly responsible for her becoming a writer. Emily O told marvelous stories, and could have been a writer herself.

  And it had been Emily O who had opened up the world for her namesake. The summer Emily Shanski turned seven she went off on her first trip to England with Emily O. The highlights for her had been a pony trek in Wales, and visiting the city of Bath. And every summer after that new wonders were revealed to her. Europe. Turkey. India. Even China. And Emily O had not forgotten her granddaughter was an American. One summer they spent touring the continental United States in a lavishly furnished trailer with a driver so they might both enjoy the trip. There was a June cruise to Alaska, followed by a flight to the Hawaiian Islands, and a visit to Tahiti for several weeks.

  She had loved it all, but Emily Shanski had returned to England as often as she could. The land, the people, the history all fascinated her. She spent days exploring Bath, and the sites of Regency London. She loved the museums and bookstores. Despite the lack of her parents Emily Shanski had had a wonderful childhood. She had been loved dearly by her two grandmothers, never missed Katy or Joe, and she knew how lucky she was in her life and in Katya Shanski and Emily O’Malley.

  When she had been eight her mother had married Carter Phelps IV. Emily had gone to the wedding with her grandmothers, and Carter had insisted on having pictures taken of them all together. It was only when she was older and wiser that Emily understood that the now Senator Carter Phelps IV wanted no skeletons in his wife’s closet when he one day ran for public office. Still and all, Carter was a decent guy, Emily thought, and on the rare occasions she saw her half sister and brother she was always made to feel welcome by the Phelps clan.

  And then when she was almost fourteen her father had married, and his bighearted Irish-American wife wanted Emily to come and live with them. Her grandmothers had put a stop to that, and Joe’s wife had gone on to have three sons in five years. There wasn’t a holiday or family occasion that her stepmother hadn’t included her and her grandmothers, or tried to. Emily actually felt far more comfortable with her father’s down-to-earth family than with her mother’s elegant political one.

  Stepping inside her house she heaved a sigh of relief. There was no way she would ever be a city girl, Emily thought. It was good to be home. She had a lot to think about, and a guest room to air out and prepare. Walking into the kitchen she found a note from her housekeeper, Essie: Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn in the microwave. Do two minutes on high. See you tomorrow. Emily smiled and, kicking off the elegant little shoes she had worn into town, pressed the appropriate buttons and waited for her dinner to get hot as she set herself a place at the kitchen table and poured a glass of wine. It had been an interesting day. And it looked like the days ahead were going to continue to be interesting. But she was going to survive this sea change in her life. She was!

  CHAPTER TWO

  “My dear girl, I care not a fig what you think. I look like
I look,” Justin Trahern, the Duke of Malincourt, said to his creator, romance novelist Emilie Shann.

  “You cannot look like Michael Devlin,” Emily said stubbornly.

  “You have imagined me this way,” he told her, and, whirling about, he gazed at himself in the mirror. “Read what you have written. I am quite handsome, and most satisfied with myself. Your last hero wasn’t half the man I am.” He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the silken sleeve of his plum-colored coat.

  “Oh, go to the devil!” Emily said irritably. “If you insist on looking like him then do so. And what was wrong with the Earl of Throttlesby?”

  “Much too fair for a man, I fear. And his chin was just a trifle weak, dear girl,” the duke replied. Then, looking directly at her, he said, “I want my defiant duchess to look like you, dear girl. I do have a weakness for fair women, especially those with a touch of red in their hair, like yours.” He grinned wickedly at her as he leaned casually against the mantel of his library fireplace.

  “Oh, be quiet,” Emily said, “and let me think, Trahern.” She looked closely at him, considering that he appeared far different from her other heroes. He was more masculine, a bit rougher, and definitely more dangerous, if that look in his green eyes was to be believed—and she suspected it was. He looked like a man who had wild sex. She shifted herself in the big wingback chair. Her heroines had never looked anything like Emily Shanski, but somehow the idea of being the defiant duchess to Justin Trahern’s duke was extremely tempting. “I have to write a more sexually explicit book,” she said.

  “Huzzah! Huzzah!” he answered her with a chuckle. And then he grew serious. “How experienced are you, dear girl? I want to delight you, but not shock you. A lady’s sensibilities must be taken into consideration, y’know.”

  “What does my experience have to do with anything, Trahern?” she demanded to know. She had used the Channel for several years now to create her books so that she might see what she was writing before she wrote it. It allowed her to work more quickly, but until tonight she had always been an invisible and silent observer of her creations. This was the first time she had ever actually interacted with one of them.