“You seem to have all my smiles,” she said, clinging to him.
“I just want them for eternity, that’s all.”
“And how long is eternity?”
“Until I stop loving you, which will be never.”
Emily put her head back and let him kiss her neck. “I so love it when you do that.”
“And what about this? And this?”
Emily didn’t have the strength to answer—at least not in words.
Chapter 16
WHEN EMILY AWOKE, IT WAS FULL DAYLIGHT AND SHE was alone in the little glade. And she was stark naked. It was romantic to be nude at night when a beautiful man was making love to you, but to wake up in full sunlight, alone with no clothes on, just made her feel embarrassed.
“Michael?” she whispered, but received no reply, so her embarrassment increased. What if some schoolchildren, playing hookey, had come upon her?
Quickly, she grabbed her clothes from where they’d been tossed into the bushes and pulled them on. So much for angels, she thought with disgust. An angel didn’t just turn over and go to sleep, he flew away into never-never land.
Now that it was daylight, the sane and sensible Emily was back and she was trying not to remember what had happened last night. Or what she thought had happened. There couldn’t have been wings and wood sprites, couldn’t have been…. Well, the truth was, she was an engaged woman and there just couldn’t have been another man.
It was while she was pulling her sweater over her head that she finally remembered what had happened last night. The woman with the gun! The car explosion! Had she really left the scene of a crime?
She was still pulling her sweater down as she started running toward the library. Had anyone found the car yet?
She was some distance from the library when she saw the red lights and heard the noise of many voices. Obviously, the car had been found. Emily slowed her pace and kept herself hidden in the trees, thinking that it was better to find out what was going on before bursting onto the scene. When she was close enough, she saw two fire engines, half a dozen police cars and two big news vans with satellite dishes on top. There was general chaos and confusion as what seemed to be a hundred people ran about and tripped over each other.
At the edge of the forest was a pile of firemen’s coats, great heavy things that would cover a person twice Emily’s size. Cautiously, she picked up one of the coats, put it on and then put on a helmet that pretty much covered her face.
Cautiously, she walked into the midst of the mayhem and went to a man who was fiddling with what looked to be a sound machine for one of the news vans. “What’s going on?” she asked.
The man didn’t look at her but kept turning knobs. “Where have you been that you haven’t heard?”
“I spent the night cavorting with angels and wood sprites and just woke up.”
The man gave a half-smile in her direction then turned more knobs. “The local librarian was blown up in her car.”
“W-what?”
“Emily Todd, librarian, blown up,” he said. “Seems she was leading a double life. Librarian by day, criminal by night.”
“Criminal?!”
The man gave Emily a sharp glance but she pulled the helmet closer down over her face so he couldn’t see her. “Yeah. She was living with the FBI’s most wanted criminal. There’s rumors that she had something to do with the mob. She used to spend a lot of time in the mountains and they think she was taking goods to mobsters on the lam. She seems to be a real piece of work because she had the whole town believing she was taking books to underprivileged kids. She was even given some awards for it, but here she was working for the mob.”
Emily could only stare at his profile as he turned knobs and then listened to earphones.
“It was Donald who broke the story,” the man continued.
“Donald?” Emily managed to whisper through a throat closed to the point of pain.
“Yeah, you know, Mr. News? Surely you’ve heard of him. He broke the Johnson case a couple of years back.” The man paused as he finally seemed to have adjusted the knobs to his satisfaction. “So now it looks like he’s broken the Todd case. You know, I wonder if she’s any relation to Mary Todd Lincoln? That woman was crazy too. Hey! Maybe I oughtta tell Donald and he can look into it. Listen, help yourself to coffee and doughnuts. Nobody’s looking.”
Emily was too stunned to move, much less eat anything. She just stood there staring at the control panel as though it were of great fascination. So now it seemed that she was dead. And it was a good thing too since she was a thoroughly evil person who helped mobsters escape the law.
“This can’t be,” she said to herself. “I’ll just have to tell the truth and get this sorted out.” With resolve, she reached up to remove her helmet but then she saw the men who had come to her hotel room that night. FBI, she thought. If she went to them she’d have to tell the truth, that she had harbored a man thought to be a criminal. And that she had lied to them. And last night that man’s wife had been blown up in Emily’s car and instead of reporting it to the police, Emily had run away into the woods and made love with a man who was not her fiancé.
“Worse and worse,” she muttered.
“What is?” asked a woman standing near her. “This mess or life in general?”
“This mess,” Emily said, ducking her head so her face couldn’t be seen. “I just arrived here, so what makes everyone think it’s Miss Todd in the car?” She thought the “Miss” made her seem a bit more respectable than what the sound man had insinuated.
“It was her car and her handbag was blown free. Of course it’s not positive yet as there wasn’t much left of the body but Donald identified her as his former fiancée.”
“How could he do that?”
The woman shrugged. “I don’t know but he certainly seems to know it’s her, and it may be the biggest story of his career. Seems that Miss Emily Jane Todd was into some heavy dirt. There’s talk of drugs and money laundering and who knows what else? Lord! And to think that Donald almost married someone like that! Just goes to show you that even with years of dealing with criminals you can still be bamboozled. Hey! Are you okay? You ought to get something to eat. Fighting that fire must have been hard work.”
Emily tried to breathe but it wasn’t easy. Under the heavy coat she was sweating profusely. It was as though she were seeing her own future and what would have happened to her if she had been the one to start the engine of her own car. If she had, she would be dead now and her name would have been ruined forever. All her years of trying to do right and to give more than she received would have gone down the drain. Instead, everyone would remember her as involved with the Mafia. As someone who harbored criminals, as someone who lied to the FBI.
When she swayed on her feet and felt as though she were going to faint, she caught herself. She would not collapse now! she told herself. If she were to fall to the ground in a stupor at the injustice of what she had just heard, she’d never recover. She’d be hauled off to FBI headquarters and probably be locked up and never heard from again.
No, instead she had to think and to plan. Alone, she thought with some bitterness. So much for angels, she thought angrily. Where was her guardian angel when she needed him? Was he practicing using his wings and that’s why he had left her alone to figure out what to do?
Turning, she saw that the woman had a notebook sticking out of her pocket. Heavens, she was probably a reporter. One wrong word and Emily would find herself in prison.
Emily glanced at the woman from under the helmet just enough that her blushing cheek could be seen. A blush of rage instead of the shy embarrassment that she hoped the woman took the red for. “Could I impose on you for something? You wouldn’t know Donald Stewart very well, would you? I mean, are you high enough on the ladder to be able to get me his autograph?”
“Of course I am,” the woman snapped so Emily knew that she had probably never spoken to Donald in her life.
“Th
en could you get it for me? Could you get him to make it out to ‘Muffin’? That way when my sister sees that it has my nickname on it, she’ll think that Mr. Stewart and I might have been…well, you know, acquainted.”
“Muffin?” the woman said in disgust and Emily could see that she already regretted saying that she would get the autograph. With a grimace, she told Emily not to move, that she’d be back in a moment with the autograph.
“I wouldn’t move for the world,” Emily said honestly, then stood rooted where she was as the woman made her way through the crowd toward Donald, who Emily could see was sitting on a chair having his face made up in preparation for appearing on camera.
As Emily watched the back of Donald’s head, she knew that he’d received her message and knew what it meant. Twisting about in his chair, he looked at her, saw her tiny form dwarfed by the huge fireman’s coat. Emily raised her hand in greeting and in seconds, Donald was beside her, her upper arm locked in his grip as he half dragged her into the shade of the trees.
“Just what do you think you’re doing here?” he demanded when they were alone.
Emily pulled away from his grasp. “What is that supposed to mean? Aren’t you glad that I’m not dead?”
“Of course I am,” he snapped, not sounding glad at all. “It’s just such a shock, that’s all. We all thought that…”
“That you had the story of a lifetime, is what,” she said bitterly, then her bravado left her; she could feel tears gathering. “Donald, I thought you loved me.”
“I did. I mean, I do, but, Emily, really, you must admit that you’ve treated me pretty badly these last weeks. You were living with another man.”
“Not in the way you mean,” she said, trying to find something in the pockets of the coat to wipe her nose with, but the pockets were so low down that she could reach only the top of them. “You’ve said horrible things about me and you know they aren’t true. You know that I was only helping Michael because I’m the world’s softest touch.”
Donald shrugged. “It was a story.”
For a moment his callousness stunned her then her mouth tightened into a thin line. “You knew very well that wasn’t me in that car, didn’t you?”
Donald didn’t answer but glared at her. “Better you were dead than run off with that…that…”
“You did all that for revenge, didn’t you? You decided to blacken my name, make a big story of it, then what, a few days from now I’d turn up alive and a retraction would be printed on page twenty-three of some local newspaper? Is that what you planned?”
“It’s what you deserved,” Donald said tightly. “How dare you hurt my reputation and my entire career with that killer? Really, Emily, how could you do something like that to me?”
“I didn’t do it to you. I took him in because he’s a nice man and he needed help. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Anything you do has to do with me. It has to do with my future. I chose you because you were loyal and I was sure you’d never give me any trouble. How could you betray me like this?”
“Me?” she gasped, then calmed herself. “Donald, why did you ask me to marry you? And before you make up a lie, might I remind you that all I have to do is walk out there and tell those people I’m alive and you’ll look like a fool on national TV. It is national, isn’t it? I assume you got that out of this.”
“Yeah, it’s national. And it’s my big break.”
“So answer me. Why did you ask me to marry you? Truthfully, Donald, you’re so beautiful, so why didn’t you want one of those long-legged beauties who’s always hanging around you?”
Reaching out, Donald took her hands in his. “Because I wanted a woman who pays attention to me. I don’t want one who throws tantrums and expects me to soothe away her tears with roses and diamonds. No, I want someone like you, Emily, someone who has eyes only for me, who’s at home when I call her. I want a wife who can be a mother, who’s content to stay home and raise the kids. Deliver me from those spoiled women who expect a man to wait on her and tell her she’s beautiful ten times a day. When a man wants a future like I want, he doesn’t need a wife who’s sneaking around in motels. No, I want a motherly type. Pretty but not gorgeous. Smart but not an intellectual. Amusing but not a great wit. Someone I can rely on. Like you, Emily.”
Still holding her hands, his face full of his honesty, he bent forward and kissed her on the nose. “Emily, love, I know how sensible you are and I know you will be about that dreadful man, that escaped criminal. I know you’re going to give him up because I’ve asked you to. I need a woman who is willing to help me and…”
His eyes lit up and he smiled in a conspiratorial way. “I’m going to reward you for helping me. How about setting a wedding date a year from today?”
For a moment Emily could only blink at him. His idea of a reward was marriage to him.
Suddenly, it all became clear to Emily and she understood why a handsome, famous man such as Donald would ask a plain, boring, practical woman like her to marry him. “It was always your career, wasn’t it? You never loved me in the least, did you?”
“Emily, it wasn’t like that. I have loved you. Really, I did.”
“You loved me as long as I was no trouble, but the minute I did something that could hinder your precious career you were ready to throw me to the wolves.” She glared at him. “On national TV!”
“Emily,” he said and the way he said it made her know that she had some power over him, but she didn’t know what it was.
But then she saw everything. If she were to walk out of the woods now and show herself, Donald would look like an enormous fool. Nationally. If she was going to save herself she’d better do it now. “I know I’ve always been the epitome of acquiescence.” She’d be damned if she was going to call herself a doormat. “But, so help me, Donald, if you don’t straighten this out, I will. The woman who was blown up is Michael’s wife.”
For a moment Donald looked blank, as though he couldn’t remember who Michael was. “Chamberlain? You mean his wife found him? When the FBI couldn’t? I know I said that she’d find him first but I didn’t think I’d be so right on.”
“Spare me your self-congratulations. She found him and was planning to kill him. And why not since she was the one who turned him in to the FBI in the first place? But here’s a scoop for you: I was the one targeted by whoever put the bomb under the car, not Michael or his wife.”
“You?” Donald said in surprise, then his lips curved into a smile. “Who in the world would want to kill you?”
Without a word, Emily turned on her heel and started toward the news vans, but Donald caught her arm.
“All right, I apologize. He’s made you feel this way, hasn’t he? What happened to the nice Emily I cared so much about?”
“Car bombs. Gun threats. Pulling bullets out of skulls. Ghosts. You name it and I’ve been through it. What are you going to do with this information?”
“That Chamberlain’s wife was blown up?”
Emily stared at him.
“Okay, I’ll think of something and I’ll clear your name.”
“You better or I’ll make sure yours is so dirty that you’ll never be elected to any office.”
“You are not the Emily I have always known.”
“Good. I want you to make it clear that I’m an innocent victim in all this and that no one knows where I am. But I don’t want a manhunt out for me.”
“How about if I say you’re in protective custody?”
“Just so my name is cleared,” she said, then removed the heavy coat and helmet and handed them to him.
As she turned away to head deeper into the forest, he said, “Emily, who is trying to kill you and why would they want to?”
“All of Heaven is working to answer that question,” Emily said over her shoulder and kept walking.
“But what about the wedding?” Donald called after her.
She looked back at him and gave him her sweetest smile. “How can
you marry me, Donald? I’m dead, remember?”
Chapter 17
SO MUCH FOR BRAVADO, EMILY THOUGHT ONCE SHE was in the woods and hidden from the newspeople. Now what should she do? Part of her wanted to run back to Donald, throw herself on him and beg his forgiveness. “Standing up for yourself is a lonely business,” she said aloud, then sat down on a rotten stump and hoped for some divine inspiration to tell her what to do.
“Looking for me?” asked a familiar voice, but Emily refused to look up at Michael. He had deserted her when she most needed him so why be nice to him now?
Seeming oblivious to Emily’s anger, Michael stretched out on the grass at her feet so she turned the other way so she wouldn’t be looking at him. “I didn’t leave you, you know. You had to make your own decisions about your boyfriend and I had to stay out of it. I’m not allowed to interfere.”
For a moment Emily looked into space, then, slowly, anger began to run through her. “Interfere?” she said, her teeth clenched. “That’s all you know how to do. You have taken my perfectly sane, happy life and turned it into something out of a horror novel. A woman held a gun to my head, then minutes later I saw her blown up. I’ve had not one but two bombs planted in my car—a car I no longer have, I might add. Then of course there’re all the women leaving casseroles on my doorstep. And now the man I love is…”
Michael handed her a handkerchief and she blew her nose. Damn it all anyway, but her anger was turning into tears, and she was afraid they were tears of self-pity.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, looking at the big linen square. There was an “M” embroidered in the corner.
“Madison. We’ve made our peace as long as I promise not to publish what really happened when he was alive.”
Emily still refused to look at him or to take the bait he was dangling before her. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking what really happened with Captain Madison.