She still wasn’t sure if she was grateful, relieved or insulted.
She crossed to the oversize refrigerator and opened it, then pulled out a bottle of water simply to fill her hands.
“Miss Emma called her mother,” Baxter said blandly.
Emma shot him a dark look, which he blithely ignored.
“Which has what to do with the sheriff?”
“Nothing,” Emma said cheerfully. “I’m going to check on Chandler.” Carrying the water, she strode out of the kitchen and headed for the staircase.
Thoughtfully munching the juicy grapes, Kyle watched her leave. “Okay, Bax. What gives?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Baxter flipped a pot of curly pasta into a colander and rinsed it under the faucet.
Kyle snorted. “Nothing goes on in this house that you’re unaware of.”
“Such as the fact that you’ve spent all of two hours a day here since Miss Emma and the baby came to stay?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Baxter didn’t reply; his disapproval was more than plain in his silence.
“You know, Bax,” Kyle said conversationally, “I don’t really have to put up with your attitude. You are an employee.”
At that, Baxter laughed, the sound full and unrestrained.
Kyle turned and went after Emma.
He heard her before he saw her. She was singing, her voice low and smooth and rich. He stood in the hallway outside Chandler’s nursery and listened.
“Amazing Grace,” he realized in the moment before the memory of his mother, his natural mother, singing that very tune sneaked up on him.
She’d often sung to his little brothers and sisters before the accident. Before two-year-old Janice drowned in the big kidney-shaped swimming pool in their backyard. Before his real father had decided marriage and family wasn’t for him. After that, Sally hadn’t sung anything much at all. Mostly because she’d been too drunk or stoned to remember the words of even the simplest songs.
It had been up to Kyle then to sing to the little kids. Up to Kyle to find some food for them to eat. And his means had been…creative, since Sally had invariably spent any available cash on her habit.
He brushed away the memories as hurriedly as he’d brushed away the memory of little Annie crying that night he’d helped Emma with Chandler.
He never thought about those days. Not anymore. It only distracted him from the one consuming goal in his life. Taking the sum of Payton Cummings’s life’s work—his courier service—and erasing its existence from the planet.
Emma was standing in the middle of the room, her long pink skirt swaying as she rocked Chandler and sang. He frowned, wondering when she’d transformed the high-ceilinged room into a cozy colorful haven.
The crib and other furniture they’d chosen that day had been delivered and filled up some of the space in the large room. But it was the yellow-and-blue hanging on the wall above the crib that added some real personality. That, plus the soft matching rugs covering the wood floor.
He looked along the hallway. Pristine white. Glass. Marble. And back into the nursery. Lots of soft colors, warm wood. And Emma and Chandler there in the center of it.
She turned, her brown eyes growing wide when she saw him. Her soft singing was cut off. “I didn’t know you were standing there.”
He felt strangely reluctant to enter the room. So, of course, that meant he had to. If only to prove he could.
He wandered around, setting the rocking chair into motion when he passed it, picking up a stuffed bear dressed like a jockey in blue-and-yellow silks.
“Kyle? Are you okay?”
He set down the bear. “Fine. How’s your mother? And what’s this about the sheriff?”
“Mama’s fine. Overreacting as usual.”
She briefly explained, but Kyle figured there was a lot of detail she left out. He also figured pursuing it would only upset her.
“What are you doing home this afternoon, anyway?”
“Doesn’t Chandler have a checkup this afternoon at the Buttonwood Baby Clinic?”
“Well, yes. But how—”
“I saw your note on the calendar by the phone in the kitchen. I thought I’d drive you. Unless you don’t want me to.”
“No, no, of course not. I’m just…surprised.”
“Why?”
Her soft lips curved and he saw both curiosity and wariness in her expressive eyes. “You’re not exactly the kind of guy who does the pediatrician thing, sugar.”
“Meaning?”
She eyed him. Firmed her lips and sat in the rocking chair, settling Chandler across her thighs. “Your ease with Chandler is admirable. But playing the dad isn’t necessary, you know. Our deal was for me to play your wife for Mr. Cummings’s sake, that’s all.”
“You don’t want me to take you and Chandler?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what exactly did you say, Emma?”
She moistened her lips, pushed her narrow elegant foot against the floor to make the chair rock slightly. “Just that you don’t need to feel obligated to—”
“Obligated?” He smiled faintly. “Emma, honey, you do have one helluva way of making a man feel like a crumb.”
“Don’t be silly. I was merely—”
“Putting me in my place.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She rocked for a moment. “People in Buttonwood are talking,” she finally said. “About me living with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
She waved one hand. “I expected something like this when I agreed to this insane plan of yours. But, Kyle, it’ll only be worse if you take us to our appointment with Dr. Parker at the clinic. Whatever gossip doesn’t get traded around the corridors there will be bandied about over pie and coffee at Mom & Pop’s for the next two weeks. I don’t see any need to add fuel to the fire.”
There was nothing wrong with her reasoning. Yet her reasoning had nothing to do with his unrelenting decision to accompany her that afternoon. “Well, as it happens, there’s something else we need to take care of at some point, so this afternoon is as good as any since my schedule is already free.”
“What do we need to take care of?”
“Wedding rings.”
Chapter Eight
Wedding rings.
The pronouncement seemed to echo around the room.
Emma folded her hands together. Protectively, he suspected. Her lashes fell, hiding her eyes from his. “I…see.”
“You don’t have to wear it until Sunday when we see Payton and his wife.”
She was nodding, though. “Couldn’t you just, ah, pick something out?”
“I can. But I don’t know your ring size.”
She moistened her lips, still not looking at him. “Size five,” she murmured. Then she stood up, carefully settling the now sleeping Chandler back in his crib.
She headed for the door, but Kyle closed his hand over her arm as she passed him. “Emma? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, her lustrous brown hair shading her face. “Why, not one single little thing.”
He knew her well enough now to know that when she fell into that drawling Southern mode, he’d better tread carefully. He settled his hands on her shoulders, inexorably turning her to face him.
She gave a little shake of her head and looked up at him, her expression closed. “Baxter is probably waiting lunch for us.”
“Baxter will forgive us.” He touched her satiny chin with his fingertip, lifting her face to his gaze. “What is it?”
She could withstand Kyle in his smoothly urbane CEO mode. She could withstand him in his steamroller get-the-job-done mode. But she couldn’t withstand him when his emerald eyes looked at her with such befuddled masculine concern. And she couldn’t withstand the fact that he stood so close to her she felt wrapped in his scent, his warmth.
Her eyes burned. “It’s nothing. Really, Kyle. Just forget it.”
“Too late, honey.”
> “You don’t need to call me that.”
His eyebrows drew together. “What? Honey? That’s what you’re like though, Emma. Rich and smooth with a taste that sweetly lingers.”
His gaze on her lips might as well have been a caress for the effect it had on her. An effect that was neither safe nor wise. “The last time I thought about wearing a wedding ring,” she said, pushing the words out, “was when I was involved with Chandler’s…father.” As she’d intended, an unmistakable curtain came down over Kyle’s intense gaze. Even the hands on her shoulders seemed suddenly less intimate.
“I see,” he said smoothly.
Emma bit the inside of her cheek. She’d only told the truth, but it hadn’t been the entire truth. And that bothered her greatly. Once a person sold a piece of her honesty, it seemed as if it became easier and easier to prevaricate.
“All right, I’ll take care of it,” he said, patting her shoulder and dropping his hands.
Emma felt chilled. “Thank you.”
He angled his head, gestured to the doorway calmly, as if the moment had never been. “Lunch.”
She wasn’t the least bit hungry, but she preceded him downstairs. Once again Baxter had set the meal on the lovely table in the garden. She’d eaten lunch out there almost every day. Except this was the first time Kyle had joined her since that first day.
The sun was warm on her shoulders and the sweet scent of flowers surrounded them. Kyle was his typically smooth self.
Just the way she expected, and she felt a good portion of her stress drain away. She was only a woman and he was only her…employer, for lack of a better word.
As he had that first morning, Kyle took the seat with his back to the drop-off. Once Baxter had served their cold pasta salad and fresh rolls and returned to the house, she finally gave in to her curiosity. “Don’t you like the view?”
“I bought this place for the view. And the size of the garage. It held the Lightning without requiring any modifications.”
The Lightning, she knew, referred to the treasured Lockheed P38 aircraft he was restoring. She hadn’t actually seen the thing herself, but Baxter had told her a little about it. About how Kyle had transported the old war plane here, and that the weight of the truck and the plane had put the kibosh on the winding drive, which he was still awaiting a crew to come in and replace. Which, incidentally, meant there still wasn’t room for her big orange car.
“But you don’t look at the view,” Emma pointed out, pushing her salad around with her fork.
He looked over his shoulder, then back at her. “There. Satisfied?” When he wasn’t focusing completely on her, he was focusing completely on consuming the meal before him.
“Baxter is right,” Emma decided aloud, watching the noonday sunshine glint off his hair. “You really do work too hard. Do you ever truly relax?”
A faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Of course.”
“When?”
“I’m not exactly poring over flight routes and FAA regs right now, Emma.”
“And you did loosen your tie,” she added dryly.
“And I came home this afternoon when the conference call I had scheduled was canceled.”
“So if it hadn’t been canceled, you wouldn’t have decided you needed to accompany Chandler and me to the pediatrician?”
His eyes crinkled with amusement. “Is that one of those female questions I can’t answer without putting my foot in my mouth?”
Emma laughed, liking him immensely at that moment. “You don’t have to answer if you’ll do me one favor. Trade seats with me.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “What for?”
“You’re an adventurer,” she said lightly. “Think of it as a new adventure.”
He reached over and pressed his palm to her forehead. “No fever.”
Emma stood up, gathering her plate with hands that trembled slightly. She hadn’t expected that touch. It was one thing when she was expecting it. She could brace herself, prepare herself for it.
“Why on earth would you call me an adventurer?”
She walked around and stood behind him, tapping her bare toes with exaggerated impatience.
“You’re a pilot for one thing,” she said as he finally shoved his plate around to the other side of the table. “A successful businessman in a rather atypical business. Moving your business to this area from a tried-and-true location. That all seems adventuresome to me. And of course, there’s that babe-magnet you race around in.”
She took his seat, smiling. “There. What do you think?”
Kyle looked across at her. The spectacular view behind her shoulders was nothing compared to the view of her. In the past two weeks, she’d regained an incredible amount of energy. She fairly radiated health and vitality, and he couldn’t be within arm’s reach of her without finding himself beating back the urge to taste her lips again. To press every inch of her creamy body to his.
She was waiting for a response.
“I think the view is way too distracting for my peace of mind,” he said truthfully.
Her brows drew together. “You’re the type of executive who faces his desk away from the window, or the doorway, or the hallway, I’ll bet. So you can focus exclusively on your work.”
“And you look at the world around you and see music in every single dust mote.”
“Well, sugar, no wonder our marriage is so successful.” She let the words flow lazily.
He was hard. She’d spoken in the tone that fairly oozed hot lazy afternoons and tangled sheets, and that was all it took. Dammit.
He reached for his glass of iced tea and chugged it.
“You all right?” She moved his untouched glass of ice water toward him. “Did you swallow wrong? I don’t need to do the Heimlich maneuver on you or something, do I?”
Kyle wanted to laugh. “Or something,” he muttered dryly. “I’m fine. Just hot.”
She smiled. “It is warm out here in the sunshine.” She pushed her nearly untouched plate out of the way and rested her arms on the table, her fingers linked together. Her wavy hair brushed over her lightly tanned shoulders as she turned her head to look back at the view she’d just traded away.
Thanks to Baxter’s relentless updates, Kyle knew that Emma spent quite a lot of her time working in the overgrown garden and taking Chandler for daily walks up and down the winding road leading to the house. And the lighter streaks of brown threading through her shiny hair and the golden cast to her skin bore out Baxter’s stories.
“I think the heat feels marvelous, though,” she was saying. “It’s days like this that I dream about during the winter when I can’t seem to get warm enough.”
Kyle dragged his eyes from the enticing shadows at the scooped neckline of her sleeveless vest. He’d always considered himself more of a leg man, but Emma’s curves were seriously hindering his sanity. Thank God he hadn’t seen any more of her perfect legs than he had.
“Sir.”
His attention was jerked to Baxter, who was eyeing him knowingly. Who needed a conscience when Baxter was right at hand? “Yes?”
“There’s a call for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Your father.”
Emma saw Kyle’s quick frown. He tossed his napkin onto the table and strode inside.
“Not hungry, Miss Emma?”
“It’s delicious, Baxter,” Emma assured him. “I guess I’m just a little nervous about this afternoon. Taking Chandler to the doctor and all.”
“Mmm.” Baxter began collecting plates.
Emma rose to help him. He’d finally given up on telling her he didn’t require her help with the household tasks. “Mmm,” she said, imitating his tone impeccably. “What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” She followed him into the house and set her load on the kitchen counter.
“I didn’t notice any particular nervousness about the appointment earlier today,” he said smoothly.
She propped her hands on her hips. “I swe
ar, Baxter, you beat around a bush better than anybody I know. You sure you’re not from the South?”
“Buffalo, New York, I’m afraid.”
Emma waited a moment longer, then tossed up her hands. “Baxter, I’m warning you—you’d better stop being so cryptic around me or I’ll decide that Chandler really doesn’t need to spend those two hours every morning with you.”
Baxter looked horrified. “Miss Emma, I—”
She laughed lightly and kissed his aristocratic cheek. “Relax, Baxter. I’m just teasing you.”
He relaxed. “Dirty pool,” he declared.
“You betcha.” She headed out of the kitchen, looking over her shoulder for a moment at the housekeeper. “Just like you do with Kyle,” she said pointedly. Then she had the pleasure of hearing Baxter’s laughter follow her as she went upstairs to freshen up before she took Chandler into town for his appointment.
She was standing in front of the wide bathroom mirror pulling her hair back into a ponytail when she realized she wasn’t alone.
Her eyes met Kyle’s briefly in the mirror, and she lowered her gaze, quickly finishing with her hair. “How’s your father?”
“Fine.”
Emma squared the handle of the brush with the matching comb, braced herself mentally and turned to face him. She’d already put on her shoes, and the small bit of heel brought her eyes a little closer to the level of his shoulders, but he still seemed tall and broad and…
In her way. She focused on the loosened silk tie at his strong throat. She felt like a yo-yo around him. One minute comforted by his presence, the next trying not to tremble because of the shivers he set off down her back with one glance. She moistened her lips. “What is it?”
“Winter has struck again.”
Winter. Winter who’d kissed him as if she’d done it many times before. But, she reminded herself, Kyle hadn’t exactly encouraged her that day in the furniture store. “Winter Cummings?”
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