A Tempting Engagement

“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 she might totally let go, releasing all the pent-up emotions swirling inside and catching at her throat and the back of her eyes. Three days ago this man had flabbergasted her with his crazy, name-your-price job offer yet it seemed more like three weeks. So much had happened since, events that had brought her life to a crippling new low.

Mitch Goodwin sure could pick his times.

“You should have rung first,” she said. “I could have saved you the trip into town.”

The words came out more tersely than she’d intended, and Mitch’s gaze narrowed in response, although his expression lost none of its determination. A shiver rocketed up her spine. Standing on her porch in the pearl-edged winter sunlight, he should not have looked so steely hard. Hard eyes, hard face, hard body.

“You’re not finished packing?” he asked, hard voiced.

“I’m not moving.” Emily allowed herself one small luxury, one hand on Joshua’s head, one fleeting caress of his silky hair. “Not today, at least.”

“Because you lost your job?”

Emily’s hand stilled, although she had no reason for surprise. In a town such as Plenty news traveled fast, bad news even faster, and with all the cosmic forces currently conspiring against her, it made sense for Mitch to turn up on her doorstep…while she was at her most vulnerable.

“I didn’t only lose the job,” she said. There seemed little point in hiding the truth. “I also lost the room.”

“Emmy, did you really sock that moron?” Joshua asked.

While the father admonished the son for his language, she closed her eyes. Shook her head. “I didn’t sock anyone, sweetie.”

“But Uncle Zane said—”

“Too much,” Mitch finished. “He also said he’s seen you out walking a dog.”

“Was he right, Emmy? Have you got a dog?” Instantly diverted, Joshua fizzed with excitement. “Is he black and white like Mac? Didya know Uncle Zane’s keeping Mac ’cuz he’s grown ’tached? That’s what Daddy said. Is he a she? Is he big?”

Emily squatted down to four-year-old level and waited for him to draw breath. “He’s a bitzer, not as big as your Mac, but just as smart. His name is Digger.”

“Where is he?”

“In the yard out back.”

“Can I see him?” His eyes, so like his father’s, pleaded with hers. Oh, boy, she was in some trouble if he started asking for things other than viewing her gramps’s dog. “Please, Emmy?”

“Let’s see what your dad says.” She looked up past long denim-encased legs, hands in pockets— Don’t look there, Emily Jane!—and a sky-blue sweater she’d always fancied. Perhaps because of the way it stretched across his broad, beautiful chest. She swallowed to find her voice. “He’s used to kids. The Connorses next door took him after Gramps died, until they moved.”

“Okay, but make sure you…” Mitch’s voice petered out as Joshua sprinted across the porch and disappeared around the corner. “Is there a fence to negotiate?”

“There’s a gate. He’ll manage.”

Excited barking announced his success, and Emily was suddenly very conscious of being alone with Mitch. Despite the broad daylight, she felt more self-aware than the other night in the rain and dark. With every movement she felt the gentle slide of satin nightwear against her skin. Hoped he couldn’t see the effect of that stimulation through her thick robe. She folded her arms across her chest and tried to remember what they’d been talking about before the dog distraction.

“So, you didn’t sock the moron?”

Now she remembered. Unfortunately. A flush warmed her cheeks from the inside out. “I didn’t touch him, I only threatened to—”

“Did he touch you?”

Emily shook her head. “I don’t know what you heard, but I’m sure at least fifty percent is exaggerated.”

“Suppose you tell me which bits are true?”

Ahh, that protectiveness. She heard it in his grim voice, saw it in the tight set of his jaw and wished she didn’t find it quite so bone-meltingly appealing. She wanted to be strong, wanted to stand up for herself and develop some backbone, but every time she was put to the test lately, she managed to fail.

“This traveler was trying to chat me up in the bar. Harmless stuff,” she said quickly when his eyes darkened. “I didn’t think anything of it, but then he was waiting when I finished my shift and, well, I told him I wasn’t interested.”

“Did he touch you?” he asked again.

“No.” She shook her head, surprised by his vehemence. “It was nothing, Mitch, really.”

“If it was nothing, how did you come to lose your job?”

“Maybe I walked under a ladder or a black cat.” Emily faked a laugh. “It’s like bad luck’s following me around.”

“What happened, Emily?”

Mitch Goodwin in journalist mode made a formidable opponent. He kept on ferreting around, circling and digging. She might as well get it over with, the whole belittling truth. “The next day he told my boss that some money was taken from his room. I cleaned it, so I was the scapegoat.”

Mitch swore. “You were sacked on this jerk’s say-so? Because you rejected him?”

It sounded bad, put like that, but at the time she’d almost understood her boss’s dilemma. She hated it, but she’d understood. “His company does a lot of business with the hotel. I guess they didn’t want to lose it.”

“So you’re just going to take this?” Their eyes met and held, his as dark and angry as a winter storm.

“I know I should do something, and if it didn’t involve conflict, I would. But these last months with Gramps’s will and his family and all…”

“Chantal told me about that. I’m sorry, Em.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I’m just tired of fighting.”

Something shifted in his eyes and he nodded, as if with satisfaction. “I’m pleased to hear that.”

Then, before she realized what he was about, he strode along her porch, hunkered down in a way that threatened the seams of his jeans and lifted the first of her packed boxes.

When he started back the way he’d come, Emily jumped into his path. “What are you doing?”

His look was an undisguised challenge. “Are we fighting about this or not?”

“Yes.” She tugged at the box, but he held firm. “No.” She released her grip and a heavy sigh. “I don’t know.”

There was something incredibly undignified, not to mention futile, about playing tug-of-war with a man nine inches taller and at least forty pounds heavier. Especially while dressed in one’s nightwear. Emily lifted a hand to tuck a loose tress of hair behind her ear and felt him looking. Not at her hair. Face flushing, she pulled the gaping sides of her robe back together and tightened the sash at her waist.

He used her momentary distraction to haul the box off to his truck. When he came back for a second load, she stepped in front of him. “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 in the intensity of the moment, she didn’t hear Joshua until he was right at the fence, his small hand tugging at her sweater to attract her attention. “You’re right, Emmy. Digger is a smart dog. Watch this, Daddy.”

He tossed a much-chewed tennis ball long and straight, a sportsman in the making, his father’s son. They applauded the retrieval part of the act, even though Digger absconded with the ball, circling the yard and refusing to give up his toy.

“See, Daddy? He doesn’t give it back when he wants to play chasies.”

Eventually Joshua gave up the chase, falling flat on his back at their feet. A small boy filled with exuberance, happy and exhausted from the simplest kind of play, not thinking about the mother who deserted him. Emily’s heart twisted with sympathy. Her own mother might still be alive, but she knew all about that kind of rejection.

“After we take your stuff to Chantal’s,” the boy said, puffing from his supine position, “we’re going shopping. Can you come with us? We hate shopping.”

“Why is that?”

He rolled his eyes. “Last time, Mrs. Hertzy patted me on the head. I’m not a dog.”

“You smell like one.”

He laughed uproariously and Emily was doomed. This kid…how could she turn her back on him?

“But we’ve got to shop,” he continued with breathless sincerity. “We’re sick of eating s’getti.”

At which point Digger dropped the slobbery ball on his new friend’s chest, his eyes lambent with come-play pleading. Batteries recharged, Joshua leaped to his feet and took off again. As she watched him run, Emily felt her own peculiar sense of breathlessness. She shook her head.

“What?” Mitch asked, and she turned to catch him watching her, his expression tricky.

“‘We hate shopping. We’re sick of spaghetti.’ Have you been coaching him?” she asked.

A corner of his very attractive mouth kicked up. “He has a point about the head patting.”

“They do that to you, too?” she asked, tongue in cheek.

He didn’t laugh. “I’d pay you triple just to avoid the supermarket.”

Oh, yes, she saw it very clearly now. The pained looks of pity and tuttings of sympathy for “that poor Mitch Goodwin whose wife up and left.” How he must hate that. And, oh, how she ached to help. She felt herself wavering, the need churning and building and crying out for her to accept.

“I’m no use to you as a shopper,” she said, striving for a light tone. “Unless you think I can wheel one of those trolleys all the way out to your place.”

“You know I’ll provide a car.”

“I don’t drive.” There, she’d said it. The truth. And she turned her gaze to Joshua climbing into the tree swing again.

“You used to drive just fine,” Mitch said slowly. “What happened, did you have an accident and lose your nerve?”

“Something like that.”

“Then you just need to retrain.”

She blew out a scoffing breath and shook her head. “You just need to force me behind the wheel of a car, first.”

“I’ll get you driving again, Emily.”

That confidence—he was a man who thrived on accomplishment—could have convinced most people. Except Emily knew how easily she froze, not every time but with certain combinations of stimuli. Darkness, city streets, a male passenger, the strident sound of an overrevved engine.

She didn’t know what to say or how to explain her problem with driving. Remembering his vehemence when she’d told him about losing her job…no, she could not add this story to her growing inventory of victimhood. He would ask more questions, demand more answers, when all she wanted was to forget the whole episode. When all she wanted—just one blessed time—was to feel strong and in control.

Agreeing to work for Mitch Goodwin did not seem like a wonderful step in that direction. She exhaled on a ragged sigh just as Joshua scampered back to unwittingly tighten the screws. “Can Digger come and live with us, too?” he asked.

Oh, boy. Emily hunkered down to his level. “I’m not coming to live with you, sweetie.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed? “Because I’m moving in at your aunty Chantal’s and uncle Cameron’s.”

Joshua stared at her hard. “D’you mean Uncle Quade?”

Everyone called him by his surname, why not Joshua? “Yes, I mean your uncle Quade. It’s not far from your house if you want to come visit.”

“Daddy said I’m not to go ’cross the paddocks.”

“That’s because he’s worried that you might get lost.”

Expression solemn, he seemed to consider her point. His eyes were deep, gray-green pools of hope. “Not if I had a smart dog like Digger. He wouldn’t get lost.”

Emily struggled to suppress a grin. The dog might be smart, but Joshua Goodwin was a genius at twisting the conversation. He wanted a dog. Perhaps she didn’t have to let him down completely.

“I think it’s time you guys got going,” she suggested, rising to her feet. “I have to finish packing.”

“Is there much more?” Mitch asked.

“Not really.” She shoved her hands in her jeans pockets, not wanting to think about the implications. Once she finished packing, there’d be nothing left to do but leave. She would be adrift again, homeless. “Just some clothes and personal things.”

“I’ll call back in a few hours, then?”

She nodded. Watched as Mitch let his son through the gate, then followed them around to the front of the house. Seeing them together, fair and dark, short and tall, but bonded by blood and love, her own feeling of aloneness swelled from the pit of her stomach, tightening her chest and constricting her throat. She had to sit on her porch steps, had to close her eyes and fight the tears and the clamoring need to call out.

She also had to ask Mitch about the dog.

Taking a deep breath, she rose to her feet as he closed the truck door behind Joshua and started around to the driver’s side.

“Mitch.”

She waited until he came back, out of Joshua’s earshot, one brow raised in query.

“It’s about Digger. I can’t keep him.” The reason didn’t need stating—a dog couldn’t be packed away in a storage box. “I was thinking that a dog might be good for Joshua.”

“It would,” he said slowly, but his expression remained closed. Not the good-idea-Emily smile she’d hoped for. His eyes met hers, hard and direct. “But right now he needs something more than a dog. He needs you, Emily. We both do.”

Three

Living with Chantal and Cameron Quade wasn’t as bad as Emily had imagined. Allowed to housekeep and cook, she didn’t feel like a complete charity case, although she had spent the last forty-eight hours on tenterhooks, waiting for her nearest neighbor to resume his recruitment campaign.

He’d been surprisingly silent during the fraught trip from Gramps’s to her new temporary residence, although Joshua compensated with his mile-a-minute chatter. She hadn’t helped them shop and she hadn’t seen either since, yet she remained hyperaware of their presence, a mere mile away, closer, across the three paddocks that separated the farmhouses.

Was it any wonder she jumped every time someone walked into the room?

This time it was Chantal. Yawning widely as she came through the kitchen doorway, she seemed sleepy enough from her afternoon nap not to notice Emily jump. Unfortunately, Chantal had been a lawyer all her adult life and a Goodwin even longer. Even half-awake, she noticed.

“You have to stop doing that while you have a knife in your hand. You’ll have a finger off.”

Emily studied the paring knife in her hand. No blood. And her fingers were all intact. “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else and you startled me,” she said unnecessarily.

“Well, I kind of hoped I didn’t look that frightening.” With one hand resting comfortably on her pregnant belly, Chantal hitched herself up onto a kitchen stool. “Not with another two months to grow even fatter.”

“You know you look beautiful.”

“You know you have a friend for life,” Chantal countered. Then her expression turned ominously serious. “Is that incident with the jerk at the hotel making you jumpy?”