she stepped in quickly. “I have a job. Two jobs, actually.”
“Chantal told me about the bar job.” Mitch shook his head, hoping to clear it of the residual, hazy desire. “What else are you doing?”
“Cleaning. At the Lion.”
“Pulling beer and cleaning hotel rooms?” The words exploded from his mouth. “Hell, Emily, that’s not the kind of work you should be doing.”
Hell, Mitch, that’s not the way to go about this. What is wrong with you? Scaring her out of her wits, all but jumping her bones, judging her job choice…or lack of choice. He needed to remember what this was about. Joshua needed a secure and stable home environment, constancy and routine, and he wanted Emily. Mitch had let him down enough times this past year—this time, he wouldn’t fail.
“Joshua needs a nanny,” he said more softly. Evenly. “I’m working from home, writing, so the hours are flexible. My Everyday Heroes series is going into production soon, so I’ll have trips to Sydney where I might be away most of the week. I’ll make the extra hours worth your while. You can double your previous pay.”
She choked out a laugh, a strangled sound of surprise. “With that kind of pay, you should have candidates lined up halfway to Cliffton.”
“I’m only making the offer to you.”
Her amusement faded, her eyes looked large and somber in the low light, and when she spoke, the one word was barely audible. “Why?”
“Joshua wants you.”
Those three words widened the crack in Emily’s defences—the crack that had started when he’d accused her of breaking Joshua’s heart. Not knowing how to answer—not wanting to answer too fast, too emotionally, too thoughtlessly—she touched an anxious hand to her throat.
“Ever since you left, he’s been…difficult.”
Oh, Lord, he knew exactly where it hurt most. Emily’s gaze darted back to his shadowed face, found his expression as hard to read as the color of his eyes. Hazel, according to his passport, but they changed as often as his mood. One minute as green as a winter garden, the next the cool gray of a rainstorm.
“There’s no need to live in,” he said evenly. “If that’s what’s bothering you.”
Her heart lurched. Of course he wouldn’t want her in his house, not when she might do something inappropriate and embarrassing such as, say, climb into his bed. Again.
“I’ll find you a place in town and pay the rent.”
“As well as that extra pay?” She swallowed audibly. “You are kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I am?”
No, he looked intent and purposeful, his jaw set as hard as the rest of his body. A ripple of sensation shimmered through her nerve endings as she recalled the look in his eyes as he’d tracked her across the porch. The feeling of all that dark heat so close, and so far. Because naturally, she’d misread those signals, too. He’d been playing with her, proving his point, demonstrating her vulnerability.
Frustrated and annoyed, she shook her head. “That’s plain ridiculous, spending so much money—”
“Money isn’t the issue. I’ll pay whatever it takes, Emily.”
A strangled, hiccuping laugh escaped her lips at the irony. He’d pay whatever it took, and no amount of money could compensate her deficit. His house was twelve miles from town, and she couldn’t bring herself to sit behind the steering wheel, not once since the carjacking. “I can’t drive, Mitch. I don’t have a car.”
“What happened to your Kia?”
“I needed the money for my legal bills,” she said simply. The insurance money for her burned-out car, dumped at the end of a terrifying joy ride. But that wasn’t something she had shared—or would share—with anyone. “And before you offer to buy me a new car, I should add that it won’t make a lick of difference. The answer is no.”
A word he apparently didn’t understand because, after the barest beat of a pause, he kept right on. “You can stay with Quade and Chantal. It’s not a long walk across the paddocks and they have—”
Anger flashed, quick and hot. “No, Mitch.”
He stilled, straightened, tensed. She had surprised him, she noted with a spurt of pride. Dark frustration burned in his eyes right alongside fierce determination. “Fine. We’ll find somewhere else.”
“I meant, no, I don’t want the job.”
For an instant he looked too taken aback to respond, then he drew a hand down his face, the gesture so achingly familiar she felt its kick in the solar plexus. “What can I offer to change your mind?” he asked softly.
Emily shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mitch.”
Breath held, she waited for him to say more. She could see the more in his expression, in the firm set of his jaw. She knew how stubborn he could be.
“I’m not giving up, Emily. Take a few days to think about it, to decide what it would take to engage your services. You know you can name your price.”
As she watched him walk away, she shook her head sadly. She didn’t need a few days to think, didn’t even need a few seconds. The answer vibrated through her body and centered in her heart, as sure and strong and passionate as always.
Your love, Mitch Goodwin. That’s all it would take.
Two
“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy.”
Emily had scarcely opened the door before a pair of surprisingly strong four-year-old arms wrapped themselves around her legs. Their owner didn’t stop talking, thirteen to the dozen, his run-on words indistinguishable, given the way he’d buried his face and a large part of his body in her cumbersome winter bathrobe.
Oh, and perhaps her hearing was hampered slightly by the treacherous buzzing in her ears, a reaction to both the warm enthusiasm of Joshua’s welcome and locking gazes with the second of her early-morning visitors.
Six foot two of clean-shaven, square-jawed purpose.
Beneath her thick, flannel robe and not-so-thick satin pajamas, Emily’s tummy flipped. “Oh,” she said. Then, even more intelligently, “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Were you expecting someone else?” Hazel eyes slid over her, devastatingly direct.
“No one.” Absolutely no one.
“We’re here to help,” Joshua said. “In our truck.”
Emily fastened both hands around her coffee mug, anchoring herself against this latest thunderbolt. They were here—unannounced, no forewarning—to help her move. Mitch and his backup weapon, a three-foot-tall pistol of a kid who still hadn’t disengaged himself from her clothes. She ached to sink down and hug him back, but feared she wouldn’t be able to let go.
Or that
