Emmett

“Yes,” he agreed without heat and then stood up slowly. “Tomorrow I’ll take the kids back to the hotel, and we’ll get a flight out to San Antonio. We’ll all be out of your hair.”

She didn’t argue. There was nothing to say.

Chapter 3

Earlier in the day, Melody had telephoned the nearest veterinarian’s office and animal shelter, hoping that Alistair might turn up there. But the veterinarian’s receptionist hadn’t heard of any lost cats, and there was only a new part-time girl at the animal shelter who wasn’t very knowledgeable about recent acquisitions. In fact, she’d confided, they’d had a fire the week before, and everything was mixed up. The lady who usually ran the shelter was in the hospital, having suffered smoke inhalation trying to get the animals out. She was very sorry, but she didn’t know which cats were new acquisitions and which were old ones.

Melody was sorry about the fire, but she was even more worried about her cat. She went out into the hall one last time to call Alistair, in vain because he didn’t appear. She just had to accept that he was gone. It wasn’t easy. It was going to be similar to losing a member of her family, and part of her blamed Guy for that. He might hate her, but why had he taken out that hatred on her cat? Alistair had done nothing to hurt him.

Melody slept fitfully, and not only because she was worried about Alistair. The couch was comfortable, as a rule, but Amy was a restless sleeper and it was hard to dodge little flailing arms and legs and not wake up.

Just before daylight, she gave up. She covered the sleeping child, her eyes tender on the little oval face with its light brown hair and straight nose so reminiscent of Adell. Amy’s eyes, though, were her father’s. All the kids had green eyes, every single one. Adell’s were blue, and her hair was light brown. Amy was the one who most resembled her mother, despite her tomboy ways and the temper that matched her father’s. That physical resemblance to her mother must have been very painful to Emmett when Adell first left him. Guy seemed to be his favorite, and it wasn’t surprising. Guy looked and acted the most like him. Polk was just himself, bespectacled and slight, with no real distinguishing feature except his brain. He seemed to be far and away the brains of the bunch.

She pulled on her quilted robe, her long hair disheveled from sleep, and went slowly into the bathroom, yawning as she opened the door.

Emmett’s dark eyebrows levered up when she stopped dead and turned scarlet.

“Sorry!” she gasped, jerking the door back shut.

She went into the living room and sat down in a chair, very quickly. It was disconcerting to find a naked man stepping out of her shower, even if he did have a body that would grace a centerfold in any women’s magazine.

He came out a minute later with a towel wrapped around his lean hips. He had an athlete’s body, wide shouldered and narrow hipped, and his legs were incredible, Melody thought. She stared at him pie-eyed, trying to act sophisticated when she was just short of starstruck.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think to lock the door. I assumed this was a little early for you to be up, and I needed a shower.”

“Of course.”

He frowned as he stared down at her. She was doing her best not to look at him, and her cheeks were flaming. He was an experienced man, and he’d been married. He understood without words why she was reacting so violently to what she’d seen.

“It’s all right,” he said gently, and he smiled at her. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

She swallowed. “Right. Would you like some breakfast?”

“Anything will suit me. I’ll get dressed.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look as he strode back into the bedroom and gently closed the door.

She got up and went to the kitchen, surprised to find that her hands shook when she got the pans out and began to put bacon into one.

Emmett came back while she was breaking eggs into a bowl. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, which stretched over his powerful muscles. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He looked rakish and appealing. She pretended not to notice; her memory was giving her enough trouble.

Melody wasn’t dressed because she’d forgotten to get her clothes out of the bedroom the night before. That had been an unfortunate oversight, because he was staring quite openly at her in the long green gown and matching quilted robe that fit much too well and showed an alarming amount of bare skin in the deep V neckline. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her blond-streaked brown hair and freckled pale skin gave her enough color to make her interesting to a man.

Emmett realized that she must not know that, because she kept fiddling with her hair after she’d set the eggs aside and started to heat a pan to cook them in.

“Where are the plates?” he asked. He didn’t want to add to her discomfort by staring.

“They’re up in the cabinet, there—” she gestured “—and so are the cups and saucers. But you don’t have to…”

“I’m domesticated,” he said gently. “I always was, even before I married.” The words, once spoken, dispelled his good mood. He went about setting the table and didn’t speak again until he was finished.

Melody had scrambled eggs and taken up the bacon while the biscuits were baking. She took them out of the oven, surprised to see that they weren’t overcooked. People in the kitchen made her nervous—Emmett, especially.

“You couldn’t get to your clothes, could you?” he mused. “I should have reminded you last night.”

It was an intimate conversation. Having a man in her apartment at all was intimate, and after having met him in the altogether in the bathroom, Melody was more nervous than ever.

“That’s all right, I’ll dress when the boys get up. You could call them…?”

“Not yet,” he replied. “I want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

He motioned her into a chair and then sat down across from her, his big, lean hands dangling between his knees as he studied her. “About what you said last night. I’ve been thinking about it. Did Adell tell you that it was loving Randy, not hating me, that broke up our marriage?”

Melody clasped her hands in her lap and stared at them. “She said that she married you because you were kind and gentle and obviously cared about her so much,” she told him, because only honesty would do. “When she met Randy, at the service station where she had her car worked on and bought gas, she tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, that she wasn’t falling in love. But she was too weak to stop it. I’m not excusing what she did, Emmett,” she said when he looked haunted. “There should have been a kinder way. And I should have said no when Randy asked me to help them get away. But nothing will change what happened. She really does love him. There’s no way to get around that.”

“I see.”

He looked grim. She hated the wounded expression on his lean face.

“Emmett,” she said gently, “you have to believe it wasn’t because of you personally. She fell in love, really in love. The biggest mistake she made was marrying you when she didn’t love you properly.”

“Do you know what that is?” he asked with a bitter smile. “Loving ‘properly’?”

“Well, not really,” she said. “I haven’t ever been in love.” That was true enough. She’d had crushes on movie stars, and once she’d had a crush on a boy back in San Antonio. But that had been a very lukewarm relationship and the boy had gone crazy over a cheerleader who was more willing in the backseat of his car than Melody had been.

“Why?” he asked curiously.

She sighed. “You must have noticed that I’m oversized and not very attractive,” she said with a wistful smile.

He frowned. “Aren’t you? Who says?”

Color came and went in her cheeks. “Well, no one, but I…”

It disturbed him that he’d said such a thing to her, when she’d been the enemy since Randy had spirited Adell away. “Have the kids given you any trouble?”

“Just Guy,” she replied after a minute. “He doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t like anybody except me,” he said easily. “He’s the most insecure of the three.”

She nodded. “Amy and Polk are very sweet.”

“Adell spoiled them. She favored Guy, although he took it the best of the three when she left. I think he loved her, but he never talks about her.”

“He’s a very private person, isn’t he? Divorce must be hard on everyone,” she replied. “My parents loved each other for thirty years—until they died. There was never any question of them getting a divorce or separating. They were happy. So were we. It was a blow when we lost them. Randy wound up being part brother and part parent to me. I was still in school.”

“That explains why you were so close, I suppose.” He cocked his head and studied her. “How did they die?”

“In a freak accident,” she said sadly. “My mother was in very bad health—a semi-invalid. She had what Dad thought was a light heart attack. He got her into the car and was speeding, trying to get her to the hospital. He lost control in a curve and wrecked the car. They both died.” She averted her eyes. “There was an oil slick on the road that he didn’t see, and a light rain…just enough to bring the oil to the surface. Randy and I blamed ourselves for not insisting that Dad call an ambulance instead of trying to drive her to the emergency room himself. To this day I hate rain.”

“I’m sorry,” he said kindly. “I lost my parents several years apart, but it was pretty rough just the same. Especially my mother.” He was silent for a moment. “She killed herself. Dad had only been dead six months when she was diagnosed with leukemia. She refused treatment, went home and took a handful of barbiturates that they’d given her for pain. I was in my last few weeks of college before graduation. I hadn’t started until I was nineteen, so I was late getting out. It was pretty rough, passing my finals after the funeral,” he added with a rough laugh.

“I can only imagine,” she said sympathetically.

“I’d already been running the ranch and going to school as a commuting student. That’s where I met Adell, at college. She was sympathetic and I was so torn up inside. I just wanted to get married and have kids and not be alone anymore.” He shrugged. “I thought marriage would ease the pain. It didn’t. Nobody cares like your parents do. When they die, you’re alone. Except, maybe, if you’ve got kids,” he added thoughtfully, and realized that he hadn’t really paid enough attention to his own kids. He frowned. He’d avoided them since Adell left. Rodeo and ranch work had pretty much replaced parenting with him. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed it until he got hit in the head.

“Do you have brothers or sisters?” Melody asked unexpectedly. She hadn’t ever had occasion to question his background. Now, suddenly, she was curious about it.

“No,” he said. “I had a sister, they said, but she died a few weeks after she was born. There was just me. My dad was a rodeo star. He taught me everything I know.”

“He must have been good at it.”

“So am I, when I’m not distracted. There was a little commotion before my ride. I wasn’t paying attention and it was almost fatal.”

“The kids would have missed you.”

“Maybe Guy would have, although he’s pretty solitary most of the time,” he replied. His eyes narrowed. “Amy and Polk seem very happy to stay with anybody.”

So the truce was over. She stared at him. “They probably were half-starved for a little of the attention you give rodeoing,” she returned abruptly. “You seem to spend your life avoiding your own children.”

“You’re outspoken,” he said angrily.

“So are you.”

His green eyes narrowed. “Not very worldly, though.”

She wouldn’t blush, she wouldn’t blush, she wouldn’t…!

“The eggs are getting cold,” she reminded him.

The color in her face was noticeable now, but she was a trouper. He admired her attempt at subterfuge, even as he felt himself tensing with faint pleasure at her naiveté. Her obvious innocence excited him. “I have to make a living,” he said, feeling oddly defensive. “Rodeo is what I do best, and it’s profitable.”

“Your cousin mentioned that the ranch is profitable, too.”

“Only if it gets a boost in lean times from other capital, and times are pretty lean right now,” he said shortly. “It’s the kids’ legacy. I can’t afford to lose it.”

“Yes, but there are other ways of making money besides rodeo. You must know a lot about how to manage cattle and horses and accounts.”

“I do. But I like working for myself.”

She stared pointedly at his head. “Yes, I can see how successful you are at it. Head not hurting this morning?”

“I haven’t taken a fall that bad before,” he muttered.

“You’re getting older, though.”

“Older! My God, I’m only in my thirties!”

“Emmett, you’re so loud!” Amy protested sleepily from deep in her blankets.

“Sorry, honey,” he said automatically. His green eyes narrowed and glittered on Melody. “I can ride as well as I ever did!”

“Am I arguing?” she asked in mock surprise.

He got up from his chair and towered over her. “Nobody tells me what to do.”

“I wasn’t,” she replied pleasantly. “But when those kids reach their teens, do you really think anyone’s going to be able to manage them? And what if something happens to you? What will become of them?”

She was asking questions he didn’t like. He’d already started to ask them himself. He didn’t like that, either. He went off toward the bedroom to call the boys and didn’t say another word.

Melody worried at her own forwardness in mentioning such things to him. It was none of her business, but she was fond of Amy and Polk. Guy was a trial, but he was intelligent and he had grit. They were good kids. If Emmett woke up in time to take proper care of them, they’d be good adults. But they were heading for trouble without supervision.

Emmett came back wearing a checked shirt and black boots. Being fully dressed made him feel better armored to talk to Miss Bossy in the kitchen.

“They’re getting up,” he muttered, sitting.

“I’ll warm everything when they get in here.” She busied herself washing the dishes and cleaning the sink until the boys came out of her room, dressed. Then she escaped into the bedroom and closed the door. Emmett’s stare had been provokingly intimate. She’d felt undressed in front of those knowing eyes and she wondered why he had suddenly become so disturbing to her.

Seeing him without his clothes had kindled something unfamiliar in her. She’d never been curious about men that way, even if she did daydream about love and marriage. But Emmett’s powerful shoulders and hair-roughened chest and flat stomach and long, muscular legs, along with his blatant masculinity, stuck in her mind like a vivid oil painting that she couldn’t cover up. He hadn’t even had a white streak across his hips. That was oddly sensual. If he sunbathed, he must do it as he slept: without anything on. He looked very much like one of those marble statues she’d seen photographs of, but he was even more thrilling to look at. She reproached herself for that thought.

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