Enticing Emily

by Gina Wilkins

  “What are descendents?” The boy stumbled a little over the word.

  “People who have descended from them—their children and grandchildren,” Emily explained patiently. “These are all pictures of my aunts, uncles, cousins, my parents and my brother.”

  Giggling, Clay pointed to the photograph of the Irish setter that Wade had noticed on his last visit “Is that a descendent, too?” the child asked impishly.

  “No,” Emily answered with a smile. “That was my dog, Reilly. He was the smartest dog in the world.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He died a few years ago. He was very old.”

  Clay gazed soulfully up at Emily. “Do you miss him?”

  Wade noted a touch of sadness in Emily’s eyes when she nodded. “Yes. I still miss him sometimes. But I had a wonderful time with him while I had him.”

  Was it loneliness that Emily was running from by selling her house? Wade couldn’t stop trying to understand an action that just didn’t seem to fit the woman he was slowly coming to know.

  Still holding Clay’s hand, Emily took them through the kitchen—which, as Wade had suspected, was large and well-appointed but in need of some general maintenance. Then they looked into a formal dining room with fading wallpaper. At the back of the house were four bedrooms, three furnished as bedrooms, one as a home office. The last bedroom they entered was obviously Emily’s own. Done in dark greens and maroons, it had a cozy, lived-in look. A retreat, Wade thought. A sanctuary.

  It wasn’t the master bedroom. She’d already shown him that one, which was larger, and furnished in a masculine style that suggested it had been her father’s room, though it had apparently been stripped of any personal effects after his death. Emily’s room was probably the smallest of the three bedrooms. But it had the largest windows, which she’d filled with healthy houseplants.

  “Is this where you sleep?” Clay wanted to know.

  “Yes, this is my room,” Emily confirmed, avoiding Wade’s eyes.

  “Is this where you’ll sleep if my daddy and me move in?”

  Wade took pity on her, stepping in before she was forced to explain. “If we buy Miss Emily’s house, she will move out,” he told his son.

  Clay frowned. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “You can stay, can’t she, Daddy?”

  This time it was Wade who groped for words, “Er—”

  “I have fresh pastries in the kitchen,” Emily said quickly. “Would you like a snack, Clay? And there’s coffee if you’d like some, Wade, before we go outside to look around.”

  “Sounds good,” Wade agreed, seizing the excuse. “Clay? Are you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry,” Clay said with a matter-of-factness that brought Emily’s smile back.

  As the three of them headed back to the kitchen, Wade thought of Clay’s innocent question. And he tried to block out the images of Emily living here with them—though not necessarily sleeping in her own room.

  6

  CLAY TOOK ONE LOOK at the old tire swing hanging from a massive oak branch in Emily’s backyard, and he was gone, sprinting toward the tree with the enthusiastic determination of childhood.

  “It’s safe,” Emily assured Wade. “I have the rope checked frequently, since my youngest visitors always love to play on that swing.”

  “Fresh-baked cookies and a tire swing in a big backyard,” Wade murmured with a smile. “I bet you get a lot of young visitors.”

  She saw no need to tell him how often she was asked to baby-sit. Since her married friends with young children generally expected Emily to be home on weekends, they didn’t hesitate to call. Even when her father had been alive, they had asked—after all, Josiah had been confined to his bed for years and hadn’t kept Emily so busy that she couldn’t keep an eye on a few children. Unless her father had been having one of his difficult days, Emily had usually said yes. She loved children. And she rarely had other plans.

  To Wade, she said only, “I enjoy having children visit.”

  Dividing his attention between his son and the property, Wade looked around, examining the house’s foundation, siding, gutters, roofing. Emily doubted that he missed anything, from the basic soundness of the place to the work that needed to be done. Work she’d neglected during the past year, when her father’s medical bills had piled up and his care had grown more demanding. Since his death, she’d done only the general maintenance required to get the house ready to sell.

  Wade asked questions about the property lines, about wildlife that lived in the woods surrounding the yard, about the insurance rates and fire-protection services. All the questions anybody else interested in the house would ask. But even as Emily answered them, she suspected his mind was already made up.

  Something told her that her first potential buyer was the one who would end up with the place. Assuming they could come to an agreement on price—and she would leave that to the Realtor, for the most part—Wade would probably be living here next year. Again, she had that funny, hollow feeling at the thought of someone else in her house, cooking in her kitchen, working in her yard.

  Emily had never lived anywhere except in this house. The thought of moving out was as unnerving as it was intriguing.

  But this was what she wanted to do, she reminded herself. She had no intention of spending the rest of her life in this one house, following the same routines, seeing the same faces, never having experienced any of the world outside the confines of Honoria, Georgia.

  The real Emily McBride was out there somewhere, and she was going to find her.

  Finally tiring of the swing, Clay ran toward them. Wade caught his son and lifted him high in the air, causing the boy to squeal and giggle. The bond between Wade and Clay was so strong that Emily could almost see it.

  She watched them wistfully, reminded that she’d never had that relationship with her own father, who’d become hardened and embittered long before she was old enough to understand. Her half brother, the product of Josiah’s first marriage, had never gotten along well with their father. Emily had always suspected that he’d left town as much to escape his father’s constant criticism and disapproval as the rumors that had spread about him.

  Wade set Clay on his feet, then turned to Emily with one hand still resting on his son’s shoulder. “Thank you for showing us around,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Would you like another cup of coffee before you go?”

  “No, thank you. I promised Clay we’d have lunch and then take in a movie this afternoon. Would you like to join us?”

  The invitation seemed spur-of-the-moment. Clay immediately seconded it, looking so sincere that it warmed Emily’s heart. She came very close to saying yes. The word hovered on the tip of her tongue for a long moment,

  But then she shook her head. “Thank you, but I can’t. I have plans for the afternoon.”

  The plans weren’t anything that couldn’t be postponed for a few hours, but Emily stuck to her excuse. She already found both Clay and his father dangerously appealing. It seemed to her that she would only be flirting with disaster if she got further involved with either one of them at this point.

  Clay looked disappointed. If Wade felt a similar emotion, he hid it well. He merely nodded and said, “Thanks again for the tour. I’ll be in touch.”

  Clay hugged Emily before they left. “‘Bye, Miss Emily.”

  ‘“Bye, Clay. Enjoy your movie.”

  She watched them drive away with a wistfulness that made her wonder if she should have accepted their invitation, after all. And then she shook her head, thought again of her goals, and turned to walk back into her empty house. It would be her house for only a brief time longer, she reminded herself. And that was exactly the way she wanted it...right?

  WHAT EMILY HADN’T considered when she’d made up her mind to resist Wade Davenport’s charms was the possibility that others, having concluded that she and Wade made a nice couple, would conspire to bring them together.

 
When Emily arrived at her aunt and uncle’s house for Sunday lunch, she found Wade and Clay already there.

  “You remember Chief Davenport, don’t you, Emily?” her aunt Bobbie asked with an exaggeratedly innocent smile.

  Emily gave her aunt a look that promised a long, serious conversation later, then forced a smile. “Of course.”

  Clay threw his arms around Emily’s waist. “Hi, Miss Emily.”

  Very aware of her aunt’s approving gaze, Emily returned the hug warmly. “Hi, Clay. I really like that shirt you’re wearing.”

  Clay preened in his long-sleeved black T-shirt with a picture of Darth Vadar on the front “It’s new,” he said. “My daddy got it for me.”

  “I didn’t, however, expect him to insist on wearing it to church and Sunday lunch,” Wade murmured. “I tried to talk him into something else, but he had his heart set on wearing this one, and it didn’t seem worth the battle to change his mind.”

  “I think he looks just fine,” Emily assured him with a smile.

  “Could have been worse, I guess. He could have wanted a tattoo.”

  Emily laughed.

  Looking quite pleased with herself, Bobbie waved to Emily from across the room. “Come say hello to your uncle.”

  Emily gave Wade a rather rueful smile. “She’s been a schoolteacher for more than thirty years,” she whispered. “She just can’t stop talking like one, even at home.”

  Nevertheless, she moved obediently to kiss her uncle’s lined cheek. “Hello, Uncle Caleb. How’s your arm?”

  He smiled fondly at her and flexed his left arm, which he’d injured in a fall at the golf course a few weeks earlier. “Much better, thank you, dear. Doc Horton says it’ll be as good as new in another couple of weeks.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Have you had any nibbles on your house yet?”

  Emily looked involuntarily across the room to where Wade stood chatting with Bobbie and Marvella Tucker, a longtime neighbor of the senior McBrides. “One or two,” she replied vaguely.

  Caleb followed her glance. “I hear Chief Davenport’s interested.”

  Emily should have known that her uncle, the small town’s longest practicing attorney, would have already heard the gossip. “He’s looked at the house,” she admitted.

  “Don’t you let him pay too little for the place, you hear? That property’s worth a good bit The house could use some work, but it’s still sound. You deserve a fair market price for it.”

  Emily nodded. “I’ll bring any offers to you, Uncle Caleb. I always value your advice.”

  Her uncle beamed. He’d been Emily’s advisor on legal and personal matters for a very long time, something her own father, Caleb’s older brother, had never been even before his illness had robbed him of his ability to communicate. Emily was fond of all her family, but she had a special place in her heart for her uncle Caleb.

  The doorbell chimed. “That’ll be Brother Tatum and Jennie,” Bobbie said. “I’ll go let them in, and then we’ll be ready to eat.”

  Of course Bobbie had invited the minister on one of the few Sundays Emily had chosen to be lazy and sleep in. She sighed, knowing she would be in for delicate questioning from the minister’s wife, who took a rather maternal attitude toward her husband’s flock.

  This could prove to be a very long afternoon.

  Officious as always, Bobbie ushered everyone into the dining room and directed the seating. Emily doubted it was coincidence that she ended up seated at Wade’s left, with Clay at Wade’s right. Caleb and Brother Tatum took the head and foot of the table, respectively, leaving Bobbie, Marvella Tucker and the minister’s wife opposite Emily.

  Very cozy.

  Emily glanced at Wade to find him watching her with a gleam of amusement in his warm brown eyes. She suspected he’d guessed that Bobbie was trying her hand at matchmaking. If it bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Outwardly, he seemed perfectly comfortable.

  She suspected that Wade was quite proficient at concealing his true feelings. That stolid, laid-back manner of his had caused Martha Godwin to doubt his intelligence. Emily had never underestimated him so naively.

  The three older women made sure that conversation did not lag during the meal. Wade and Emily answered when spoken to, and contributed when expected. Young Clay, exhibiting excellent table manners, said little, though Emily got the impression he didn’t miss much.

  Again, she had the feeling that Clay was unusually mature in some ways. She wondered if it was because he’d lost his mother so early—a bond Emily shared with the boy. She wished she were sitting next to him so they could talk. She wasn’t quite as comfortable chatting with Wade when she knew that every adult at the table was watching them with varying degrees of interest.

  “This ham is simply delicious, Bobbie. Best I’ve had in years,” Jennie Tatum, the minister’s plump wife, pronounced as she enthusiastically attacked her meal. “What is your secret?”

  Bobbie looked delighted by the praise. “Thank you, Jennie. I cooked it the way my mother always did—basted in Coca-Cola.”

  “These sweet potatoes with pecan topping are great,” Wade chipped in. “How do you stay so trim, Caleb, married to such a good cook?”

  “Golf and fishing,” Caleb replied. “You play golf, Wade?”

  “Badly.”

  “He fishes,” Clay announced. “Once he caught a great big fish that he stuck on a board and hung on the wall.”

  The adults all smiled indulgently at the child.

  “Getting close to the height of deer season,” Caleb went on. “You do any deer hunting, Wade?”

  “Some. But I have to admit, I prefer fishing.”

  “Squirrel. Now that’s good eating,” eighty-year-old Marvella Tucker mused aloud, looking up from her rapidly emptying plate. “My mama used to make the best squirrel and dumplin’s ever. Her dumplin’s were so light they near floated off’n the plate. You ever hunt any squirrel, boy?”

  Wade and Clay looked at each other, trying to decide which one of them she had addressed. Wade finally seemed to conclude that she was talking to him—correctly, Emily thought with a stifled smile. To Marvella, anyone under fifty was a boy.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ve done some squirrel hunting in my time. I used to hunt with my dad when I was a boy back in Alabama. But, as I said, I prefer fishing these days.”

  Marvella turned her attention back to her meal.

  “Are your parents still living, Chief Davenport?” Bobbie inquired.

  “Call me Wade,” he suggested. “And no, they’re both gone now. I lost my father when I was twenty and my mother passed away a couple of years ago.”

  His wife and both his parents. Wade had suffered many losses in the past few years, Emily mused, feeling that they had even more in common than she’d originally believed.

  Bobbie wasn’t finished with her less-than-subtle interrogation. “Do you have any siblings, Wade?”

  “A sister, Pamela. She and her husband live near Birmingham with their three kids.”

  “You going to ask him his social-security number next, Bobbie? Let the boy eat.”

  Marvella’s dry interjection caused Caleb to laugh aloud, while the others struggled against smiles. Bobbie looked torn between being amused and offended. Amusement won out.

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” she assured Wade. “I just like to get to know people.”

  He nodded. “No offense was taken, Mrs. McBride.”

  “Bobbie,” she corrected him.

  Emily was all too aware of how closely Wade was sitting to her. She was right-handed, he left-handed, so their arms occasionally bumped. Though Wade murmured a polite apology each time, Emily wondered if the contact was always entirely accidental.

  She knew that her reactions to his touches were hardly ordinary. Each time, her pulse tripped, her throat tightened, her breath hitched slightly in her throat. She only hoped that none of the too-perceptive observers around her—most particularly, Wade himself—not
iced her embarrassingly juvenile behavior.

  She was all but hyperventilating over the man, for goodness’ sake. In front of her relatives and her minister!

  “What’s this I hear about you selling your house, Emily?” Jennie Tatum asked curiously, looking as if she’d been waiting for the right opportunity to broach the subject.

  This was probably the juiciest piece of gossip that had hit Honoria in weeks, outside of the food fight at the fall festival. Emily imagined that everyone would be speculating about her plans.

  “Yes,” she said, wondering how many times in the next few months she would conduct this same conversation. “A four-bedroom house on twenty acres is more than I want to keep up for myself.”

  Marvella clucked her tongue. “That property has been in your family for generations, Emily. Are you sure you want to let it go?”

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought, Marvella. This is what I want to do.” Emily spoke with a firmness that was as much meant to convince Wade as the others, since she didn’t want him to reconsider his interest in the house.

  But Marvella didn’t look reassured. “Family history is so important, dear. Are you sure you want to just give yours away? What about your own children? Haven’t you considered hanging onto the place for their sakes?”

  “I don’t have any children, Marvella,” Emily reminded her gently. “And I’m not giving my home away. I’m selling it.”

  “Yes, and I’m going to make sure she gets a fair price for it,” Caleb inserted.

  Wade chuckled. “No doubt,” he murmured.

  “Where are you going to live when you sell your house, Emily?” Brother Tatum asked. “Do you have a place in mind?”

  “I’m considering my options,” Emily replied vaguely. She knew very well what would happen if she admitted that she had no plans beyond getting away from Honoria. They would be horrified. Poor, parentless Emily, on her own in the big, bad world with no one to guide her.

  “I told Miss Emily she can live with me and my daddy,” Clay said, speaking up for the first time since the conversation had begun. “We’d like that, wouldn’t we, Daddy?”