better than her scones. The smoothie is very healthy. So drink it, and I’ll see you later.” With that he turned, his long strides carrying him swiftly from the room.
Emily gaped toward the door and then gaped at Amanda. “Amanda, what the...?”
Amanda patted her mouth with a napkin and Emily was struck with the notion that she was swallowing a chuckle, too.
Several minutes later, she decided that that was exactly what she’d been doing, as had Bering James. As Amanda filled her in on the details of the past couple days, she knew it wasn’t the richness of the scone that had her feeling nauseated. She pulled the cool sheet up to cover her now-flaming face.
Amanda seemed to be enjoying her mortification, however, and continued torturing her with more details.
“Okay, okay, I get it,” she finally said, lowering the sheet enough to reveal her eyes. “I had some kind of psychotic break. I just haven’t been hungry since we’ve been here. All this seafood...” Emily scrunched up her face distastefully. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “I’ve got to get out of here, Amanda.”
“The doctor said he’s going to release you today. But you have to take it easy, get some rest and eat something. You need to get your strength back. You’ve got your first presentation in two days, but the town-council vote isn’t until the twenty-third, so that still gives us over a month to prepare.”
A month suddenly loomed before her like a giant and hulking mountain, and just the thought of trying to scale it was exhausting. She wished she could curl up and rest somewhere for a while, somewhere warm and preferably for the rest of her life.
“No, no, I mean I’ve got to get out of this place, this backwoods...frozen...wasteland.” Emily felt her lashes thicken with moisture. “I want to go home.” A single tear broke loose and trickled slowly down her cheek. “I hate it here, Amanda.”
“Emily, listen to me. You can’t quit now. We can do this. We can. We’ve faced worse. Remember that weird town in Northern California that everyone said was impossible? We did it, remember? And what about that ranching community in Texas? We had death threats there, but we won them over. Oh, and who could forget that little Molotov cocktail thrown through our window in Oklahoma? They almost burned down our house. Come on, Em, this place is going to be a cakewalk compared to some of the jobs we’ve been on.”
Amanda took a deep breath and continued, “I know you’ve been struggling and I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, but I think you need to hear this. You need to be successful on this job, Em. It wasn’t right that Franklin promoted Jeremy over you, but you did the right thing by breaking up with him. The guy is a leech. He would never have gotten the job if it wasn’t for you, and now you need to show Franklin what a colossal mistake he has made. This is your opportunity to prove how valuable you are to this company. Without Jeremy here stealing your thunder, Franklin will have no choice but to see it. So, we’re going to do this, in your kick-butt efficient and effective Emily Hollings manner—just not at the expense of your health.”
Emily snuffled into a tissue and then wiped her eyes. Amanda was right. This was what she did—no one did this job as well as she did. She really didn’t know what it was about this place that had her so out of sorts. It was just so cold and isolated and wild and...intimidating. Kind of like Bering James, she decided. Yep, the man personified the place. She was suddenly struck by an image of him hovered over her and holding her hand. Oh, no...
“Amanda, was Bering James here at the hospital earlier?”
Amanda leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “He stayed here the entire time. I mean, he barely left your side until this morning. You came to really early and the doctor said you were going to be okay, so he went home to take a shower, and apparently whip up a little peach power drink, and hightailed it back here. He was gone for maybe an hour, tops.”
Emily’s cheeks grew warm again. She cooled them with the smoothie, holding the cup against one cheek and then the other. “I wonder why. I mean, why did he stay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was hoping for a repeat performance of your impromptu striptease?” Amanda teased.
“Very funny.”
“Emily, he was worried about you, obviously. And I was worried, too. And to tell you the truth, it was really a comfort having him here.”
“Ugh,” Emily bemoaned, “I can’t believe that that man saw me almost naked.”
“Don’t worry about it. He wasn’t the only one. But hey, between him and that cousin of his—I would let either one of them see me naked.”
“Cousin? What cousin?”
“Oh, man, Bering’s cousin is the paramedic that brought you in. And phew, talk about a hottie. I have half a mind to strip down later and fake passing out.” She tapped a finger thoughtfully against her pursed lips and then asked, “How do you fake a heart attack, I wonder? I should probably be wearing something lower-cut, right? Maybe instigate a little wardrobe malfunction?” She tugged down on the collar of her shirt. “Whaddya think? Would that be too much?”
“Amanda, be serious.” Emily winced. “So, there were actually two men that saw me in my, um, semi-dressed state, then?”
“No.”
“Thank goodness.” Emily breathed a sigh of relief and then realized that couldn’t be true. “But wait, you said—”
“It was more like six or seven if you count the doctor, the nurses, the ambulance driver and the other paramedic guys. The whole crew, they were all men—how weird is that?”
“Oh, Amanda, what am I going to do?”
“Quit worrying about it. I’m sure it’s routine for these guys. They see naked people all the time. They probably didn’t even notice, really....”
* * *
BERING COULDN’T GET Emily Hollings out of his head. He’d come home, returned several phone calls, attempted to catch up on some paperwork and then decided to take a quick nap before he went out to meet Tag for dinner. It was like the lost-puppy syndrome, he decided, as he stared up at the cedar-planked ceiling in his bedroom and thought it over.
Granted, it had only been a matter of hours since he’d left the hospital and he was tired and his brain was thoroughly scrambled. But sleep was out of the question—he could see that now—because Emily Hollings looked so much different than a puppy. But it wasn’t her partially clothed state that had him out of sorts, although he didn’t think he could ever get tired of looking at her....
There was a vulnerability about her that spoke to him. He was drawn in by it, and he couldn’t shake the sense that she needed help. What kind of help, he didn’t know, but for some inexplicable reason, he wanted to be the one to give it to her. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He obviously needed to get a grip. He needed a distraction, something to take his mind off her.
But what was a woman like her doing working for Cam-Field Oil & Mineral anyway? She certainly didn’t seem like the kind of executive they would send to do a job like this. She didn’t seem as if she could handle the kind of intense pressure such a job would entail.
Although, to be fair, he hadn’t really met her under the best of circumstances. And according
