“Where do you think you’re taking my things?”
“Chantal’s.”
“Wait.”
Naturally, being Mitch Goodwin on a mission, he paid no notice. Not until she stopped him with a hand on his arm. For a moment she lost her place. Her senses focused on the rigid strength of his muscles, taut under the heavy load, and her memories of touching him another time. Without the barrier of a soft woolen sweater.
He cleared his throat and she snatched her hand away.
“You can’t just move me somewhere,” she said, her voice husky with rising heat and panic. This was so much worse than she’d imagined, being close to him, touching, remembering. “Does your sister know?”
“She made the offer.”
Because Mitch asked? Maybe. The Goodwins—unlike her splintered family—supported each other unfailingly. Or perhaps Chantal, who’d been her lawyer at the start of the estate wrangle, did offer without any prompting. Even after off-loading Emily’s case to a city estate specialist, her support and help continued. But she and Cameron Quade were newlyweds with a baby on the way. They deserved their own space. She shook her head. “I don’t want to move in with them.”
“Where do you want to move then? It has to be somewhere…unless you want me to buy this place for you.”
Heart pounding, she read the direct challenge in his eyes. This is why he’d come, to offer this choice—his sister’s charity or his.
Standing so close, with the feel of his hard strength still coursing through her veins, with the scent of some masculine soap in her nostrils, she knew she had no choice. At least Chantal might provide some respite, some thinking time.
Gazes still locked, she drew a short, sharp breath and stepped aside. She didn’t need to say a word. A small nod signaled his satisfaction, and he got on with the job, one box after another. Feeling utterly defeated, Emily started to sink down on the top step, then thought better of it. He might just pick her up like one of the boxes and dump her in the truck.
She needed to get dressed, preferably in the kind of thick, winter clothing that might numb his potent effect, or at least keep her responses contained. Then she needed to check on Joshua and Digger before they found mischief.
Five minutes later she watched them scamper around Gramps’s big yard, a hairy tricolored mutt and a boy whose laughter soared, as pure as the winter sunshine. A surge of tenderness rushed through her, so huge it rendered her dizzy. She rested her chin atop her arms on the chest-high fence and let her heart enjoy the moment.
How could he have known? How could he have picked this perfect time and this perfect blond-haired accomplice?
Oh, it wasn’t only Joshua who got to her, but the whole father-son package. It would be so easy to capitulate, to talk herself into the benefits of a secure job with a mind-boggling pay packet. To succumb to the seductive knowledge that they needed her in all the everyday practical ways, that they wanted her—plain, old, vanilla variety Emily Jane Warner—ahead of anyone else.
Except that after she tumbled completely and impractically under their spell came the heartbreaking truth that she was only the nanny and could never replace the beautiful, exotic, triple-choc-and-mocha Annabelle. All she needed to do was remember the pain of his point-blank rejection. In his bed, naked and willing, and he’d turned away. She wouldn’t set herself up for another bout of humiliation and heartache, not of that magnitude, not ever again.
A low ache settled in the pit of her stomach when she sensed Mitch’s approach, his footsteps muted by the thick, damp lawn. He rested his hands on top of the fence next to hers, and side by side they watched Joshua climb into an old tire slung from a tree in the far corner of the yard. Digger yapped gleefully as he tracked the swing’s motion, back and forth, back and forth.
“It’s zactly like Uncle Zane’s swing,” Joshua yelled, clearly delighted with the discovery.
She sneaked in a sideways glance and caught the ghost of a smile on Mitch’s lips. Pleasure, pure and strong, pierced her chest. She remembered his companionship with his own dog, back in the days before Annabelle decided they needed an upmarket apartment and that she might be allergic to dogs.
“I’m surprised you let Zane keep Mac.”
His shrug brushed against her shoulder. “Well, he’d grown ’tached.”
She smiled at the echo of Joshua’s words and didn’t need another glance to know he shared the smile. Ahh, she missed these moments. There’d been so many in those first years, so much warmth and understanding.
“He ran away.”
For a moment she thought she’d misheard his low words. “Joshua ran away?”
“At the mall.” Mitch expelled a harsh breath. “He was there with the nanny.”
“When?” Alarm tightened her throat, so the question came out as a husky squeak.
“Two weeks ago. It took three hours to find him.”
Emily struggled to accept what he was telling her. “That doesn’t sound like Joshua. Why would he do that?”
Mitch didn’t answer for so long that she thought he wouldn’t…or couldn’t. Then his sleeve brushed against hers again, although this time it wasn’t a casual shrug but a tightening of muscles. Everything inside her tensed in reaction. “He thought he saw you. The nanny called after him but he kept on running and she lost him in the crowd.”
Not your fault, Emily Jane, not your problem, she told herself, but guilt swamped logic. Fingers pressed against her lips, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Sorry for Mitch’s despair, sorry for leaving and breaking Joshua’s heart. Sorry even for the hapless nanny.
“And this is why you moved back here?” she asked quietly. “Why you want me to come back and work for you?”
“I’ll do anything to stop that happening again. Anything.”
The steel-capped purpose in his voice should have alarmed Emily, could have intimidated her. But all she heard was the sentiment behind the words, and when she placed a comforting hand on his forearm, she didn’t feel hard muscles and heat. She felt his vulnerability as a father, the fear and helplessness he must have suffered in those three hours.
“It’s been a rough time for him,” she said quietly. A rough time for both of you. “Does he…talk about his mother?”
In the hard plane of his cheek, a muscle jumped. “Not often. You know she wasn’t around much.”
Yes, but the impact of her leaving, her death, must have scored painfully deep. Much deeper than her own departure. “She was his mother,” Emily said simply. Under her hand his arm twitched with tension and she increased the pressure in a gesture of comfort and support. A pittance, she knew, given the depth of his grief. “No matter where she was.”
He opened his mouth to reply, closed it again. Emily’s heart stalled, waited, longed for him to share. Dangerous, her mind whispered. Remember the last time you offered comfort? Remember that heartache?
Lost
