“HOW’S IT GOING with the skunks?” Seth stood on the front porch in clean jeans and a navy polo shirt. His short brown hair was damp, so he must have taken a shower after he came home from work.
“Do you really want to know? Barbara Carew said she’d advised you to ignore them.”
“Not easy to do. I worry.”
Emma moved aside so he could come in. He stayed on the porch.
“I brought you something that may help.” He slid a folded baby’s traveling playpen across the step.
“I thought Barbara said you didn’t have any children.” Her heart had given a major lurch. Children meant wives. She did not want this man—this almost stranger—to have a wife. Go figure.
“I don’t. I have it for raising puppies. I don’t need it, and I thought you could borrow it to use in place of a crate.”
“Can’t skunks climb?”
“They mostly don’t. Not at their age, at any rate.”
“Then please bring it in.”
He picked it up one-handed. He held a cardboard box in his other hand. He hauled both box and pen into the pantry, leaned the playpen against the wall and began to unfold it.
“Will it fit in here?” Emma asked.
“It’s a country pantry with enough storage area to get through a whole winter, Ms. French. Besides, this is a traveling playpen. Half-size. It’ll fit.” He didn’t even glance at the babies.
“Out of sight, out of mind?” Emma said. “And when did I become Ms. French? I thought we were beyond that after last night.”
He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been “out of mind” since he’d walked out of her house the night before. The skunks hadn’t been either—well, not much. He set up the playpen, took a fresh towel from a stack on the kitchen counter and made a nest at one end. From the cardboard box he pulled out a folded square. “Brought you a box of puppy pads, too,” he said. Unfolding one, he laid it in the other end of the pen. “Might help with cleanup.”
“Oh, Seth, thank you! I didn’t think…”
“Not my first rodeo, Ms.—Emma. I see you’ve got a water dish.”
She sat on the floor beside him. “I found it on the top shelf of the pantry. I guess my last tenants must have had a dog. I know Aunt Martha had cats.”
“The last tenants, the Mulligans, had two Australian cattle dogs. I’m surprised you didn’t bring a dog with you as protection out here in the wilderness.”
She shook her head and sat on the floor beside him. “I’ve never had a dog or a cat. My stepmother is allergic to both.”
“Well, you sure started out with a bang. Don’t know what I’d do without a dog.”
“You have a dog? I didn’t hear one last night.”
“I’m between dogs. Barbara’s looking for the right rescue for me. That’s why I could lend you the playpen.” He ran a hand down Sycamore’s back. “You’re going to have trouble with this one. Ought to have named him Columbus. He sees new worlds to conquer.”
“He already made it to the kitchen this afternoon,” she said with a smile.
“The playpen should keep them in for a while. Until you get them weaned and back in the wild.”
“How long do I have?” she asked.
“Maybe as little as a couple of weeks or as much as a couple of months. All depends.”
“On what?”
“How fast their scent glands develop.”
“Oh, Lord!”
“By that time they’ll be acclimated to you. They won’t spray you unless you really annoy them. Don’t. You’ll have to teach them to be afraid of human beings.”
“But…”
He heard the longing in that one word and understood it perfectly. He could always recognize someone who cared about animals, any animals. “It’s best for them.”
One of the hardest choices he had to make was to let nature take its course and to free a wild creature back to the wild. He watched her fingers touch the soft fur between Peony’s ears. She had beautiful hands, even if that fancy manicure had pretty much bitten the dust in the past couple of days. He wondered what it would be like to be stroked by those gentle fingers… Uh-uh. Not a safe image. Certainly not when they were sitting on the pantry floor thigh to thigh.
She leaned across him to pet Rose, and her sleek hair brushed his cheek. “How do I teach them to hate me?”
“Not to hate you. Be wary of you.” He had no idea which flower her hair smelled like. Flowers weren’t his thing. Whatever shampoo she used, it was a darned sight more enticing than eau de skunk.
“The playpen won’t work for long,” Seth told her. He held little Peony in the palm of his hand. She seemed perfectly content. “They need to get outside.”
“But they’ll run away!”
“They need a big outdoor cage that’s safely enclosed so they can get used to the outdoors. They’re going to live in it, after all. They have to learn to forage for food, identify smells… How to be skunks.”
“Where on earth do I buy something like that? I’ve never seen one big enough for what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t buy it. You build it. Should be tall enough so that you can move around inside without stooping, with a roof and a door and someplace they can use as a den. Needs to have a metal strip set below ground so they can’t dig under it.”
“I have no idea how to do that,” Emma wailed. “My daddy tried to teach me carpentry, but I’ve never been able to drive a nail straight.” She looked down at her cracked manicure. Why bother redoing it? One day of hammering, and she wouldn’t have any fingernails left anyway.
“If I tried to use a power saw, I’d cut off my hand,” she added. “How do I find someone I can hire to build it? Or even design it in the first place?”
He leaned back against the pantry wall and let Peony snuggle against his chest. She made tiny puttering noises that were almost like a cat’s purr. “It’s not that hard.”
“No, no, no, you don’t understand. I’m the original klutz. If this wasn’t during the school year, I might be able to con my half brother, Patrick, into driving up here to help, but he not only has school during the week, but lacrosse on the weekends. And baseball practice starts in two weeks.”
“You have a half brother?”
“And a half sister. Patrick is seventeen, Catherine is fifteen. Daddy remarried after my mother died.”
“Then if you have a family in Memphis, why are you up here?”
“I beg your pardon. Why is that your business?” She inched away from him and organized herself to stand up.
He laid his free hand on her arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. You just don’t seem the type to go off to a house like this in the country alone. Rehabbers don’t usually admit to being unable to drive a nail.” He should’ve kept his mouth shut. Must be a bad situation at home—wicked stepmother, maybe, although he’d never visualized Cinderella as wearing designer jeans.
“You assumed I came up here to rehab this place?” She shrugged. “I’m going to clean it up, get the yard in order and paint. Cosmetic stuff, but basically, I am up here to endure the place while I lick my wounds and get my résumés out. You might as well know. I got fired last week. The last thing I wanted was to run into all my old office buddies while I was pounding the pavement looking for another job.”
He had no idea what to say to her. He figured she would hate being subjected to sympathy.
* * *
NO WAY WOULD she tell him about Trip. Losing her job and her fiancé in the same week seemed like an ultimate case of bad Karma.
It was probably a case of one thing being responsible for the other. Trip surrounded himself with successful people. Once she was fired and therefore no longer successful, he no doubt went looking for some eye candy to commiserate with him—straight into bed.
Emma did not consider herself a total loser, dammit. It suddenly seemed terribly important that Seth Logan didn’t think she was, either.
He set Peony back in the playpen. “How about if I help?”
“They don’t get fed for another hour. I thought I’d put a tiny bit of dog food in the milk this time. I was going to check with you first, but since you left the cans, I figured it couldn’t do any harm.”
“As long as you’re starting with a little bit. I didn’t mean I’d help with the feeding, although I will. I meant building the outside cage.”
She stammered, “I—I can’t ask you to do that. According to Dr. Barbara, you already work all the hours of the day and night until you drop.”
“You didn’t ask. I offered. I’ve built several of these cages. I’ve even built a couple of big flight cages for raptors that were recuperating from head-on collisions with cars.”
“I keep telling you. I’ll be worse than useless if I try to help with the cage. I don’t even know where to buy the raw materials.” Or how much they were going to cost. In any case, she hadn’t planned to include them in her budget. “I don’t own any tools, power or otherwise.”
“That’s all right. I do. I’ll meet you at the Farmers’ Co-op in Williamston tomorrow at eight,” he said. “By then I’ll have worked up some specs. My partner, Earl, will be happy to help, too. Provide pizza and you’ll have half the county out here.”
“I don’t know half the county.”
“That’s okay. Barbara and I do.”
Seth had brought a small baby bottle, and Emma stirred a little of the dog food into the milk. While she held the kits, he attempted to get them to suck even a tiny bit from the larger nipple. As usual, Rose and Sycamore caught on fast. Peony, not so much.
“She’ll starve if she doesn’t eat!” Emma wailed as another tablespoon full of milk dribbled into Seth’s lap. He dipped his finger in the remaining mush and rubbed it across her gums.
“Yeah, baby, that’s it,” he whispered as Peony licked his finger. “She won’t starve. Not on my watch.”
Emma’s landline rang. She ignored it. After half a dozen rings, he looked up. “You ever going to answer that?”
“Hadn’t planned to.”
“Whoever it is knows when to hang up before it switches to voice mail.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Might be important. Your family?” He dipped his finger once more and held it to Peony’s lips.
“I can guess who it is. Oh, hell.” She grabbed the handset from the shelf behind her and answered. She didn’t realize it was set on speakerphone until she heard Trip’s voice.
“Emma! Thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you for days. I’ve been going nuts. Are you all right? I finally convinced your father to give me your landline number, since you won’t answer your cell phone.”
She glanced at Seth. He was watching her while he seemed to be watching the baby.
“Ow!” He scowled down at Peony. “You imp. You bit me.”
Emma laughed at his wounded expression.
“What’s happening? Who’s there? Is it your father? He said he might drive up there if he didn’t hear from you. Let me speak to him.”
Holding the phone in her right hand, she braced her left against Seth’s shoulder, stood and turned away. A second later she turned back and saw that he was grinning at her. She’d touched him so casually. Her hand on his shoulder felt natural; he was no longer a stranger.
She flipped off the speaker and walked across to the fireplace before she answered again. “Trip, nothing is going on that concerns you in any way. No, my father is not here and he doesn’t plan to come. He would prefer, however, that you stopped calling him at the office.”
“He’s damn near my father-in-law! Who else should I call when you disappear and won’t take my calls? I had to beg to get him to give me this phone number.”
“He is not nor will he ever be your father-in-law. I asked him not to give anyone this number.”
“I am not anyone. I’m your fiancé.”
“No, you aren’t. We broke up, remember? I did not run off. I came up here to look for a new job…”
“You don’t need a new job. You don’t need any job. You need to marry me so I can take care of you. I screwed up…”
“You might say that.”
“You must hate me now, but…”
She sat on the arm of the sofa. Seth was hearing every word she said, but hiding in her bedroom was ridiculous. Better get it over and done with once and for all. “I don’t hate you, Trip. Although I’ll admit I did when I found out about you and Susan. I thought she was my friend.”
“It was a one-night stand. You and I had that fight because you didn’t want to go to the ball after I bought the tickets. Damn things cost a fortune.”
“I told you to find another date.”
“I didn’t want another date. I wanted my fiancée on my arm. You know how tongues would’ve wagged if I’d shown up with someone else. I would’ve spent the night explaining why you weren’t with me. So I had to go stag.”
“Unfortunately, you didn’t feel you had to remain stag.”
“If you’d gone, I wouldn’t have run into Susan once I got there. Hell, she came on to me. I was mad and I was drunk. That’s no excuse, but I swear it’ll never happen again.”
So it was Emma’s fault for not doing what he wanted? “Until the next time you want to schmooze with a room full of VIPs and I am just getting over a hundred and one degrees of fever. Not only did I feel rotten, I was trying to avoid giving everyone there what I had. I didn’t blow you off.”
“I’m not blaming you.”
“Really? Sure sounds like it.”
“Anyway, what’s the big deal? You break off our engagement a week before we’re scheduled to announce it. How’s that going to look?”
He’d gone from contrition to recrimination in three sentences. How on earth had she ever considered marrying him? Had she been blind? No, just stupid. You couldn’t fix stupid, but she was going to try.
“When we decided to get married, you agreed that infidelity was a deal breaker. I guess that’s why you lied to me. It wasn’t a one-night stand, Trip. Susan told me she’d been seeing you for the past month.”
“That didn’t have anything to do with us, you and me!”
How many times had Emma heard that?
“Call it a crazy last fling. Now I know for sure you’re the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with. Together we can own the world. I miss you. On Saturday I’ll drive up there, take you to lunch.” He hesitated, then whispered, “Make up afterward.”
When she heard his tone she felt her stomach flip, and not in a good way. She knew what he meant, but making up with Trip no longer sounded appealing.
She slid over the arm of the sofa and swung her legs around to sit. “Trip, I don’t hate you. It’s worse than that. Hate implies passion. Passion is one step away from love.”
“Take that step again, baby, I’m begging you. I’ll prove you can trust me.”
“Trip, I’ve realized I don’t like you. I don’t want to have your babies, but I’m sure there are a bunch of women who do. Go marry one of them. Heck, marry Susan. Oh, sorry. I forgot she’s already married.” She laid the handset gently back into its cradle.
Seth had heard all of that—at least her side of it—but when she turned to look at him he was bent over Peony with his back to her. Trying to act innocent. Discreet. Pretty silly for a guy his size, but she appreciated his attempt.
She’d managed to sound calm—well, calmish—with Trip, although she felt anything but. Her heart was beating like Carlos Santana’s rhythm section, sweat slid down her back between her shoulder blades, and when she looked at her fingers, her whole hand was shaking. Her face was probably the color of cherry cough drops.
God, she hated confrontations. She wouldn’t recover for a week. Everybody thought she was so tough, when inside she was made of pure marshmallow. By the time Trip got his story straight, the whole breakup would’ve been his idea. Because she’d failed to live up to his exacting specifications. Because she’d abandoned him when he needed her.
She could hear her father’s voice in her head. “I warned you he wasn’t good enough for you.” Actually, he’d mostly been on Trip’s side.
Her father had started denigrating her boyfriends in high school and kept on until she dreaded introducing him to her dates. Her real worry was that she wasn’t good enough for them. They’d catch on. Better be the dumper rather than the dumpee. So she usually dumped first.
How come one woman was never enough for one man? How come she wasn’t enough for Trip?
The answer came roaring back in her head. Because I couldn’t take the chance of letting him know the real me. The one who’s scared to fail.
Trip was supposed to be different. This time she’d planned to marry for all the sensible reasons. On paper she and Trip were perfect for each other. She didn’t have a clue whether love even existed, and lots of doubts that it would ever exist for her. She’d convinced herself she was in love with Trip. Obviously, she didn’t break his heart. He was probably already setting up a date with her successor.
She went back to the pantry floor beside Seth. “You’re a mess.”
“More on me than in them,” he said. “I’m sticky as a bear in a honey tree. I think you can drop the feedings to every six hours with the food we added to the milk.”
“Really? Does that mean I can sleep?”
“Sleep? I’ve heard that word a time or two. Not sure what it means.” He stood up and slipped Peony back into her nest.
Emma didn’t take his proffered hand to stand up this time. “There’s another word I’ve heard, but not recently. Food? You ever hear of that?” She grinned up at him. “I went to the grocery store between feedings this afternoon. I have lots of bacon, plenty of eggs and enough onions for a Western omelet. Plus I bought some artisan bread. And beer. I don’t drink it, but I thought you might.”
He followed her into what passed for a kitchen. “At this point I’d fight Peony for her dog food. Don’t tell me you can cook. Girl like you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I grew up with hot and cold running servants? Here.” She tossed him a big Vidalia onion. “Peel and chop this. You do the crying for a change.”
An hour later as he finished his fourth piece of buttered toast, he said, “Okay, so you can cook.”
“Very limited menu. And you can eat.”
“Big engines require a lot of fuel. So, who’s this guy Trip you don’t like?”
She took a deep breath. To tell him or not? Oh, why not? It wasn’t a secret. Not at home, in any case. “A rich, handsome corporate lawyer on the fast track to being named partner. Just not mine. He’s got political aspirations, too. Going to put his name in the race for State senator, maybe eventually governor. Let’s drop it, okay? I cook, you clean.”
“What? No dessert?”
“You’re kidding, right? All you have to do is rinse and load the dishwasher. It may be the world’s smallest and oldest, but it works.”
As she was scrubbing the kitchen table, she said, “I wish you’d known my aunt Martha. I used to spend my summers up here with her. I loved this place.”
“From what I hear, I wish I’d known her, too. Barbara said she was a great gal. After she died, how come you didn’t come up here before now?”
“My stepmother and I came up to deal with the estate and the papers and things right after. She left me everything, but there wasn’t much actual income to fix the place up, and I didn’t have any disposable income myself. Plus I was at a place in my life where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the house. She already rented it out, so that’s what I did. I hired an agent who handles it all. When the last tenants—the Mulligans—left six months ago, I missed the little bit of income they brought me, but I figured sooner or later I’d get a new tenant. I was looking for somebody who might want to barter upkeep for rent. Karma, I guess. It hit me when I got fired and unengaged practically the same day that I needed a sanctuary. And thanks to Aunt Martha’s kindness, I had one.” She glanced around the shabby room. “This, however, needs help.”
“Not to mention the skunks.”
She leaned back against the table. “I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, but aren’t you going to get in trouble over my skunks?”
“You shouldn’t think of them as your skunks, or you’ll hate letting them go even more. Yes, I can get into trouble, but if we return them to the wild before somebody reports them, I can ask forgiveness.”
“As opposed to permission?”
He rinsed out the sink and hung the dish towel on its hook. And yawned. “Sorry.”
“Go home. Go to bed.”
She followed him to the front door.
“Don’t forget. We meet in the morning at the Farmers’ Co-op.”
She nodded.
He turned, took one step, swung back and reached for her.
* * *
JUST A “meet the new neighbor kiss.”
Maybe it started that way, but it got out of hand—fast. She wasn’t used to being lifted off her feet. When he wrapped his arms around her, she felt as if she were being hugged by that bear in the honey tree.
He tasted of the fig preserves they’d used on their toast, and when their tongues met and teased, her head seemed to lift free of her body.
He set her down, let her go, wheeled around and almost ran across the street. Thank God there was no traffic, because he hadn’t checked either direction, just barreled on inside his house.
She leaned against the wall beside her front door and tried to catch her breath. One kiss, and she could feel her nipples harden.
She hoped he didn’t regret it. She didn’t. Or did she?
Talk about your rebound! The last thing she wanted in her life right now was another man—any man. Certainly not this big, powerful, difficult man who would not be manipulated. Even if she was any good at manipulation. Which she wasn’t.
She’d sworn off the entire sex for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever.
So far, she’d done all right convincing him to help keep her skunk babies safe, but that was only because he had a soft spot for small animals. He could always revert to being Mr. Regulation and take them away from her.
She needed to keep him on her side, but there were limits as to how far she’d go to manage that. On a lifestyle compatibility scale of one to ten—ten being the most compatible—the two of them were about minus a thousand. If her father thought Trip was barely good enough for her, he’d flip out the first time he laid eyes on Seth.
She didn’t truly believe Seth was expecting some sort of sexual quid pro quo for helping with the skunks. If he was, he’d made a big mistake.
But what did she know? If some other halfway stranger had swept her into his arms and kissed the stew out of her like Seth had, she’d have sent him flying with a big red handprint on his cheek.
And possibly found herself facing a stalker who wore a uniform and carried a gun.
She sank onto the front step of her porch and leaned against one of the columns that held it up. The guy had majorly overstepped his boundaries.
Even if it was the best kiss she’d ever experienced in her entire life. Not that she’d kissed that many males, but she hadn’t been a nun either.
It was just a kiss! she reminded herself.
Emma looked across the street. She could see him pacing back and forth, silhouetted against the front window of his house. She went back into her hall, turned off the lights and shut the front door with its big oval pier glass. He wasn’t going to watch her pace up and down or keep track of her by the lights that went on throughout the house, from living room to bedroom. She’d undress in the dark.
Tomorrow when she met him at the co-op—assuming he showed up—she would be completely casual, never mention the kiss and dial them back to square one. Acquaintances. Period. She needed him for the skunks. She definitely did not need him as a male person who raised her blood pressure.
* * *
HE HAD LOST his mind.
In two days this woman had put him in the position of breaking rules he was pledged to adhere to. Not just adhere to, but enforce.
And grabbing her up and kissing her like that? She’d be well within her rights to call the police and have him arrested for assault by an authority figure.
Not that she’d left him much authority. She hadn’t asked him to help her build an outdoor run for the skunks. He’d come up with the idea himself. Now he was committed to a fairly complicated project, one she’d already told him she either couldn’t or wouldn’t participate in.
She’d intimated that she’d sworn off the entire sex for the foreseeable future. As if he had all the time in the world outside his job to play nursemaid to skunks. Why hadn’t she adopted a couple of baby squirrels? Or even a raccoon? He could justify helping her in that case.
Tomorrow morning, he had to meet her as though they’d never shared that blockbuster of a kiss. Casual. Professional. Acquaintances. Neighbors. Nothing more.
He could handle that.
In his dreams.
Then again, what was the use? How long before her fancy, rich lawyer fiancé showed up in a brand-new Mercedes, gave her a big diamond and swept her off to marry him? From her phone conversation with The Jerk—he thought of him in capital letters—the guy was having an affair with a married woman while he was engaged to Emma. Talk about nuts! But with his fortune and social position… No woman would choose Seth Logan over him. If, as Emma said, he was aiming to go into politics at some point, she’d make a smashing senator’s wife. Or governor’s, for that matter.
Seth had enough experience with domestic disputes to know that in almost every case infidelity was not a deal breaker. All too often, women kept going back to the guy who gave them a broken jaw or a broken heart. His mother had gone back to his alcoholic father again and again, offered him support and forgiveness and her belief that he would stay sober. She’d written him off and divorced him only after Sarah was drowned. She couldn’t go on living with Everett, her husband, knowing it was his fault Sarah had died.
She barely took her eyes off Seth in the months following Sarah’s drowning. She knew how deeply he blamed his father. Watching him was as much for Seth’s benefit as her own. She’d continued to look at Seth even when he couldn’t bear to look at himself. She was afraid of what he’d do if his father showed up drunk and maudlin, making excuses, casting blame…
She’d been right to worry. At fourteen Seth was taller, broader and stronger than his father. Besides, his liver was healthy. He doubted dear old Dad’s was. He’d had to avoid the bastard so he wouldn’t put him in the hospital. Or the morgue.
The only thing that saved Everett Logan from his son’s wrath was that Seth hated himself more than he did his father. If he hadn’t been able to hide out in the woods for days at a time, he might well have followed Sarah into the lake.
He couldn’t do that to his mother. So he’d nursed his anger and avoided his father. He could thank his father for forcing him to love the outdoors, not that the old man had intended to point him to his career path. Seth only knew he could breathe in the woods.
Poor Earl. He knew about Seth’s family and how close to the surface Seth’s temper ran when faced with dangerous jackasses like that party boat group. When Seth realized those people on the boat weren’t wearing life jackets, it was touch and go whether he could keep his temper or whether he’d tie the idiot captain to his anchor and toss him overboard.
Thank God he’d had Earl there to help him maintain control. He thought he’d managed to stay calm, but that big woman who’d caught his expression had looked scared.
Maybe the alternative was to force the entire party to stare at pictures of bodies pulled from that lake, the quiet little lake that could kick up whitecaps in a strong wind and upend half the boats in the water.
As he climbed into bed, he was sure he’d lie awake thinking about Emma with The Jerk. In reality he spent the night dreaming of her instead.
And dreaming of inventive ways to barbecue that Trip guy. Slowly.