your husband?”
“Husband?”
A smile settled fleetingly on his mouth, a glimmer of cool white amusement against the bronze of his skin. “The man you married.”
“I—he’s well, too.” Even had this been the time and place to divulge that her marriage was a thing of the past, Lucas Flynn was not the one to burden with the disclosure. It wasn’t as if he gave a damn; he was merely going through the socially correct motions, as was she when she said, “I was sorry to hear about your wife.”
He lifted his shoulders in another dismissive shrug. “These things happen,” he said, so dispassionately that Emily couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ousted Sydney from his life as easily as he’d evicted her.
“You make it sound as if her death was more inconvenient than tragic,” she heard herself remark acidly.
Annoyance thinned his lips, his amusement dispelled so thoroughly that, if memory hadn’t served her better, she’d have thought him incapable of smiling. “I hardly feel I have to justify to you how I choose to deal with personal tragedy, Emily Jane.”
“You never felt you had to justify anything to me!” The last thing she’d wanted was to be the one to resurrect the past. Even less did she want to come across as the woman wronged, particularly since she’d been the aggressor in their encounter, but the words were out before she could stop them, full of accusation and reproach.
He expelled a brief sigh. “I had hoped you’d forgotten,” he said. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to hang onto the memory.”
Of course he couldn’t, because he hadn’t been the one to offer his heart and have it tossed back without a word of appreciation or thanks. He’d walked away untouched, whereas she’d been permanently scarred by her botched attempt to make him love her as she’d loved him.
He had no idea, no idea at all, of the ultimate cost to her of the night she’d seduced him. Blissfully ignorant, he’d gone forward, married the woman of his choice, and left Emily to carry the burden of her guilt and sorrow alone. Knowing he hadn’t been to blame for that didn’t prevent her from resenting him for it.
“I don’t,” she replied stonily. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t thought about you in years until today.”
“Then you’ve been happy?”
“What do you care?” Oh, Emily, shut up! she told herself angrily.
His sigh this time was fraught with exasperation, as if he found having to explain such obvious and simple facts exceedingly tedious. “We were friends for a long time, Emily. Closer than friends, even. More like brother and sister. One night of ... indiscretion doesn’t negate all the good times. Of course I care.”
About as much as he cared about the weather! But he wasn’t her brother, she didn’t want his diluted affection, and she couldn’t bear his bold references to a time she’d truly tried to bury in the past where it belonged. She wanted to escape and shut herself in her room, to be alone before she faced the fact that he still had the power to affect her more deeply than any other man she’d ever met.
“Then, to answer your question, I am very happy, very successful, and very tired,” she said, stepping around him and heading for the door. “Thank you again for coming to our rescue tonight. Under the circumstances, it was very decent of you.”
“Decent?” Although she couldn’t see it this time, she heard the amusement in his voice. “What else could I have done? Left you to burn?”
“You might have, if you’d known I was visiting my grandmother.”
“Hardly,” he scoffed. “I took a professional oath a long time ago to preserve and honor human life.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, Even mine? but she bit back the words and said instead, “Of course. Well, don’t worry that we’ll make a habit of calling on you to bail us out of trouble. We pride ourselves on being very self-sufficient.”
Like every other assertion she’d made in the last little while, however, that last one of Emily’s turned out to be erroneous. By the following morning, Monique’s left knee was badly swollen. “I remember twisting it when I slipped,” she admitted to Lucas when, at Beatrice’s insistence, he came to take a look.
“If you had gone to the hospital to be checked over as I suggested, this could have been taken care of last night,” he pointed out.
“With everything else that was happening at the time, it didn’t seem worth mentioning. In any case, you’re supposed to be a doctor so you can take care of it now.”
“I’m not leaving myself open to your suing me for negligence, Mrs. Lamartine,” he informed her. “For a start, I have no malpractice insurance, and second, I don’t need the aggravation. Whether you like it or not, you’re going into town for X-rays. And consider yourself lucky you didn’t break a hip.”
“If this is an example of your bedside manner, it’s no wonder you had to give up practicing medicine,” Monique retorted.
Earlier, Emily had gone over to Belvoir to meet the fire marshall and hear his report on last night’s disaster. Although he’d allowed her to collect a few clothes and other basic necessities, he’d been adamant that the house was not safe in its present condition.
The drawing room, sadly, was destroyed, its furnishings blackened and soaked in water, and there had been structural damage to a supporting wall. Not surprisingly, the whole house also reeked of smoke. It would be weeks before they could go home again—news which Emily knew would not be well received.
In her view, all this was trouble enough for one day. She certainly didn’t need to run interference when Monique decided to bait Lucas—which was every chance she got. She had enough to do holding her own emotions in check where he was concerned.
“I’ll get you to the hospital,” she offered, hoping to distract her grandmother. “They phoned this morning to let us know that Consuela is ready to come home, so I have to drop by anyway, with a change of clothes for her and to collect her. Then, once you’re taken care of, we’ll go over to the hotel and take a suite there until we decide what to do next.”
“Whatever for?” Beatrice exclaimed, coming into the room just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation. “There’s plenty of room here for all of you without us falling over one another.”
“You’re very kind,” Monique said grandly, “but it would be an imposition and so quite out of the question.”
“Don’t be so quick to turn me down,” Beatrice said. “We’re heading into summer and the tourists are pouring into the area already. Suppose they can’t take you at the hotel? Where’ll you go then, Monique Lamartine, since you’re so dead set against burdening your family with your ill-tempered presence? Somehow, I don’t see you camping in a tent until your poor house is fit to live in again.”
“Phone for a taxi, Emily Jane,” Monique said, with lofty disdain for such pitiful reasoning. “We have business to which we must attend and I would like it concluded as speedily as possible.”
