like even the intimation of prejudice, do you?”
She shifted on her feet. “They were like family to me,” she said. “My father was hard as nails. He wouldn’t even give a man time off to go to a funeral.” She shifted again. “He said work came first, family second.”
“Charming,” he said and it was pure sarcasm.
“So all the affection I ever had was from people who worked for him.” She smiled, reminiscing. “Dolores cooked for the bunkhouse crew. She taught me to cook and sew, and she bought me the first dress I ever owned.” Her face hardened. “My father threw it away. He said it was trashy, like Dolores. I said she was the least trashy person I knew and he...” She swallowed. “The next day, she was gone. Just like that.”
He moved a step closer. “You hesitated. What did your father do?”
She bit her lower lip. “He said I deserved it...”
“What did he do?”
“He drew back his fist and knocked me down,” she said, lowering her face in shame. “Dolores’s husband saw it through the window. He came in to protect me. He knocked my father down. So my father fired Dolores and him. Because of me.”
He didn’t move closer, but she felt the anger emanating from him. “He would have found another reason for doing it,” he said after a minute.
“He didn’t like them being friendly to me.” She sighed. “I felt so bad. They had kids who were in school with me, and the kids had to go to another school where Pablo found work. Dolores tried to write to me, but my father tore up the letter and burned it, so I couldn’t even see the return address.”
“You should have gone with them,” he said flatly.
She smiled sadly. “I tried to. He locked me in my room.” She looked up with soft, sad eyes. “Mamie reminds me of Dolores. She has a kind heart, too.”
There was an odd vibrating sound. She frowned, looking around.
He held up the cell phone he’d kept in his pocket. He glared at it, turned the vibrate function off and put it back in his pocket. “If I answer it, there’s a crisis I have to solve. If I don’t answer it, there will be two crises that cost me a small fortune because I didn’t answer it.”
“I don’t even own a cell phone,” she said absently. It was true—Mamie paid for hers.
How would she pay for one, he almost said out loud. But he didn’t want to hurt her. Life had done a good job of that, from what he’d heard.
He nodded toward the sky. “It will be dark soon,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out alone at night.”
She managed a smile. “That’s what Mamie says. I’m going in.”
She turned, a little reluctantly, because he wasn’t quite the ogre she thought he was.
All the way down the path, she felt his eyes on her. But he didn’t say another word.
Emma wondered about Connor Sinclair. She was curious why he was so angry, because she saw it in him, felt it in him. She didn’t want to think about him so much. He disturbed her, fascinated her, in ways she didn’t understand. Probably, it was because he was so hostile toward her. It had to be that.
Tired of the lake house, she walked to the marina and got into Mamie’s speedboat. Nobody saw her leave, but then, she had the key and she could come and go whenever she wanted to.
It was a beautiful early October morning. All around the lake, mostly trimmed with pine trees, a few hardwoods were beginning to show their lovely fall colors. The leaves turned more slowly here, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Up in North Carolina, people said, the leaf season was in full swing, attracting tourists from all over the piedmont. Around the North Georgia lake where Mamie’s house was situated, the maples were going to be glorious in their reds and golds. This was Emma’s favorite season. She loved the bright beginnings of the season, the many different shades that combined to turn the whole world bright and new in its last feverish gasp before winter.
She turned the boat toward the wide-open part of the lake and revved it up. She laughed as the wind blew her hair back, bit into her face, made her feel alive and young, as if the whole world was hers.
The sun was low on the horizon, making a bright trail in the water as she whirled the boat and sent it spinning toward the distant shoreline. It was so early that nobody was on the lake. She had it all to herself. She could step on the gas and never have to worry—
There was a horrible scraping sound, a horrible jolt that shook the boat and Emma.
“Damn it!”
The angry curse came out of nowhere, like the Jet Ski that she hadn’t seen in the brilliance of the morning sun that blinded her for just a few seconds.
She let off the gas, shaking from the collision and fear of what she’d done. She stood up in the boat, her eyes searching the water around her. There was a Jet Ski on the side of the boat toward the small cove.
“Oh, no, oh, no!” she cried. “I’m sorry!”
There was no answer. The Jet Ski revved and headed toward the distant dock. She knew at once whom she’d hit, and her blood froze. But he seemed to be all right. He got to the dock, and climbed off the Jet Ski. He sat there, seemingly disoriented, and called to someone.
As Emma watched, three people spilled out of the huge, luxurious lake house and ran toward him.
Unseen by the people in the cove, Emma eased the boat into motion and moved it back toward the marina. Her heart was racing like mad. She’d hit Connor Sinclair. He’d be out for her blood. He’d warned her. He’d threatened her. When he found out who’d hit him, she’d have no safe place to hide in the whole world.
She had no place to run. She couldn’t go home. Her father would want to know why she’d come, why he wasn’t getting the money she was supposed to send him every month. He’d be furious. Mamie was overseas and she’d called just once to tell Emma that she’d be in places where she wouldn’t have cell phone service for a few days.
Emma had all of a hundred dollars in her bank account and less than two hundred in savings. Not nearly enough to run and hide from a multimillionaire who’d want her arrested.
She drove the boat back to the marina, aware that it had a dent on one side where it had hit the Jet Ski. It was a sturdy boat. It didn’t seem any the worse for the collision. She drove it into the slip and got out, pausing to ask the custodian if the boat could be dry-docked, because Mamie was going to be away for the rest of the year and it was turning cold.
The older man smiled and said of course they could, and did she want him to beat out that dent in the hull? She smiled back, very calmly, and said that would be very kind; she’d hit a stump in the water too close to a cove.
That happened more often than folks realized, he said, chuckling. When the dam was built, and the land flooded, which created Lake Lanier, many trees had been covered with the water that became the lake.
