“I’m listening.”
“First of all, my private life is off-limits. And my body is off-limits. Keep your hands to yourself.”
“I see. You are in the harem of another man.”
“I am in no harem and—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Stop that right now. I can see very well what you’re doing. You’re trying to annoy me, make me angry. I don’t like that.”
“But you look like an angel when you’re angry. Your eyes flash and—”
“I mean it! You either stop these personal comments or there’s no deal. Understand?”
“Perfectly. Any more earth rules?”
“Ground rules. They are called ground rules. And that’s another thing. I don’t want another word about this angel business. I don’t want you to tell me that you’re an angel, that I’m an angel, or that…that….”
“That we’re all angels, just that some of us have human bodies and some don’t? That sort of thing?”
“Exactly. And today we look for you another room. You cannot spend another night in the same room with me. Now, do you agree to all this?”
“Of course. Easily. Only, you must promise me one thing.”
“Such as?”
“That if you want me to discard any of these rules, you will let me know. If you want to talk about your private life, would like to have me touch you and would like to hear about angels, you must promise to tell me.” At that he held out his hand to shake hers. “Is it a bargain?”
Emily hesitated, feeling that she should tell him to get out of her life, but she shook his hand. And, again, the moment she touched him, a feeling of peace came over her. She felt that everything was going to be all right and that her life would be the way she wanted it to be.
She snatched her hand away from his. “Now I want you to leave so I can get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs in one hour, then we’re going to buy you new clothes and find you someplace to spend the night. Other than in here with me, that is,” she said.
“Thank you, Emily,” he said, smiling. “You’re an angel.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but closed it when she saw the twinkle in his eyes. “Get out!” she said, but she was laughing. “Go!” And he left the room.
Emily was on her way to the shower when the telephone rang.
“Hey! My little love muffin, are you mad at me?” she heard Donald’s voice. “Would you forgive me if I told you I was up all night covering a fire? A really big fire and that I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart?”
Emily sat down on the bed, glad to hear a familiar voice. “Oh, Donald, I’ve had the most horrible time of my life. You couldn’t believe what’s happened to me. I hit a man with my car!”
For a moment Donald was silent, and she could imagine the lines that were creasing his forehead. “Tell me everything,” he said solemnly. “Especially about the police report. What did the police say?”
“Nothing. The police weren’t called into it. I mean they weren’t last night. This morning they told Michael—he’s the man I hit—that he could press charges and put me in jail for life but—”
“Emily! Slow down and tell me everything from the beginning.”
She did the best she could, but Donald kept interrupting and asking the same questions about the police. “Donald, if you don’t let me tell all of the story I’m going to think that you’re only interested in what this could do to your career.”
“That’s absurd and you know it. I’ve asked if you were hurt.”
“No, not in the least, but I was going too fast on a winding road and I’d had at least two glasses of champagne.”
“But this guy isn’t going to press charges, right?”
Emily’s lips tightened as she took a deep breath. “No,” she said calmly, “but he’s demanding that I perform unspeakable sex acts with him.”
Donald didn’t miss a beat. “If you learn anything, be sure and show me.”
Emily was not amused, because he obviously thought that the idea of a man demanding sex from her was a joke. “Actually, this man, Michael Chamberlain, is gorgeous and he’s staying in the same room with me. I bought a black silk teddy.”
“That’s a good idea,” Donald said. “Let him stay with you so you can observe him for any signs of injuries. And be sure people see that there’s nothing wrong with him. We don’t want this jerk to come up with some phony charge later.”
“Donald!” Emily said angrily. “He’s not a jerk and I spent the night with him.”
Donald laughed in a very secure way that made Emily even more angry. “Emily, my love,” he said. “I trust you, and you’ve never owned a black silk anything in your life. You’re much too practical to waste your money like that.”
“Well, I might!” she said, her lips still tight.
“Yeah, and I might start driving a Volvo. I have to go. You stay and have a good time with your stray cat. Love ya!” He hung up.
For a moment Emily sat there and stared at the receiver blankly. He had just hung up on her. There had been no mention of his driving up to spend the rest of the weekend with her, and he hadn’t heard a word she’d said about spending time with another man. An angel of a man, she thought as she dropped the receiver into the cradle.
She got up and took a shower, and all the while she was cursing Donald. Practical, she thought. What woman wanted to be thought of as practical? And what woman wanted to be told that she’d never owned anything black silk in her life, even if it was true?
Out of the shower, Emily looked into the chest of drawers against the wall. She’d unpacked yesterday while she was waiting for Donald to appear with roses and apologies. Not that he ever did show up with roses, but he often nearly drowned her in apologies.
Everything in the drawers was “practical.” She was a conservative packer, so everything she’d brought matched everything else—and all of it was washable. “Practical,” she said with disgust and pushed the drawer shut.
Slung on the end of the bed were the remains of her beige silk evening gown, but even that was eminently practical. Or at least it had been until she’d run down a ravine in the middle of the night, and now it was merely shreds.
She pulled on a pair of dark blue trousers, a pale pink blouse and a very ordinary blue cardigan, then looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair, her best feature, was scraped back from her face with a blue scarf, and the few cosmetics she wore were guaranteed to make her look “natural.” But that’s the way Donald liked her. He said he couldn’t abide what he called “painted ladies.” Irene said that he couldn’t abide anyone being prettier than he was.
But no, as she looked in the mirror, she saw that she wasn’t the type of woman to whom mad, exciting adventures happened. She was pretty in a calm, unexciting way, with big brown eyes, a small nose and a rosebud of a mouth. Even with lipstick she’d never possess the full-lipped, seductive mouth of a model. Only her hair, a dark chestnut brown, thick and full with just a bit of a wave, hinted at any sexiness.
But sexiness didn’t suit her job as town librarian, she thought, then gave a sigh. No, her quiet prettiness, her neat, trim figure, and her wardrobe suited her as she was.
“Natural and practical,” she muttered as she left the room.
Chapter 3
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN WAS WAITING FOR HER BY THE front door, sitting quietly in the sun, his eyes closed, his head back and smiling.
She plopped down beside him. “Do you think I’m a practical woman?”
He didn’t ask her to explain what she was talking about as anyone else would, he just answered her question. “Emily,” he said softly, “I think you are the least practical woman I have ever looked after. I mean, that I have ever met. You are a great romantic. You love inappropriate men, you dream of adventures no one else has ever imagined and you are utterly fearless.”
Emily gave a little laugh. “Me? Fearless? You are a great liar, aren’t you?”
“If you aren’t fearless, then why aren’t
other women traveling into the backwoods of Appalachia, alone, just so she can give books to children? When was the last time you could get anyone to go with you?”
“Never. A few people said they would but….”
“But they backed out. The hills and hollows scare them, right?”
She looked away, then turned back and smiled at him. “I never thought of myself as brave before.”
Michael smiled, then stood and held out his arm to her. “Well, my brave princess, where shall we go?”
“To a men’s clothing store,” she said, making him laugh, for he still wore what he had on last night, and in the sunlight she could see how dirty and raggedy it was.
“And afterward, we will go to a woman’s dress shop and I shall dress you.”
Emily started to protest, but ever since hearing Donald’s words her drab navy outfit had seemed hopelessly dowdy and stuffy. But oh so practical, she thought with a grimace. “Yes,” she said, laughing. “I would like to do some shopping for myself.”
They were sitting in an ice cream parlor that someone had spent a great deal of money on to make appear old-fashioned. There were tiny round tables topped with white marble and little wire chairs with red seats and heart-shaped backs. Before them were two huge banana splits, Emily’s dripping chocolate syrup, but Michael’s plain—just nuts and no other topping.
They’d had fun this morning in the clothing shops, and it had been nice to choose clothes for a man. Donald always knew exactly what he wanted to wear and how he wanted to look, so Emily never so much as bought him a tie. But Michael had let her choose sweaters, shirts and trousers, then coordinate them all. He was a willing mannequin as she held up clothes against his body to see how they’d go with his dark hair and eyes.
He paid for everything with his credit card, then allowed Emily to pull him into a barbershop to have his mass of curls trimmed and tamed. “With all that hair you look like a street thug,” she had said, laughing.
“Maybe I am,” he had answered. “If I don’t remember who I am, I could be anyone.”
“Even an angel?”
“Even an angel,” he had said, smiling.
With his hair cut properly and combed, his appearance had changed a great deal, showing Emily that he was in fact a lot more handsome than she’d originally thought. When he saw the way she was looking at him, he smiled at her in such a way that her neck started getting warm.
“Stop it!” she hissed at him so the barber wouldn’t hear. “Come on, get up from there and let’s go find you a room.”
“I have a room,” he said as he stood, then looked at himself in the mirror. “This body’s not bad, is it? I’ll have to thank Michael.”
She gave him a sharp look.
“Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t look sorry. Instead, he was grinning at her in a way that made her think, Room! Must get him a room.
Once they were outside the barbershop, she led the way toward the end of town opposite from her inn. Wasn’t there a place he could stay out there?
“Emily,” he said from behind and she turned to look. He was standing before a store window and staring at women’s clothing. “There.” He was pointing toward a store dummy to her left. “That one.” The next thing Emily knew, she was in a dressing room trying on a heavenly outfit.
And now they were sitting in the ice cream parlor—Michael had ignored her protests that a banana split was not a proper lunch—and she was wearing a cream-colored silk challis dress with a beautiful pattern of flowers and a tiny rust-colored jacket. The dress was belted with a three-inch-wide, rust-colored leather belt with a mother-of-pearl buckle.
And Emily was aware that the dress was the most impractical thing she had ever worn in her life. The light color would get dirty easily and the bodice was…well, the bodice didn’t have a button on it. Instead, it was crisscrossed so that if she bent in such a way, well, a great deal of her top half would be exposed. And, as well, the bodice was altogether too tight—it showed a bit more of her shape than she wanted shown.
“You look beautiful,” Michael said. “So stop worrying. I like your hair down like that. Much better than pulling it back. Scythian women always had beautiful hair and when you were an Elizabethan—”
“When I was a what!” she said.
“I, ah, I mean, you look…How’s your ice cream?”
She looked down at the enormous boat of ice cream and smiled. “I’ve had a good time today,” she said.
“Me too. I didn’t embarrass you too much with my mala….” He looked thoughtful. “It means ‘bad’ in Latin.”
She smiled. Not many people today had studied Latin, but “mal” meant bad. “Malapropisms.”
“Did I embarrass you?”
“Of course not. Everyone likes you.” And it was true. He had a way of making people feel calm. At the clothing store the cashier was quite rude; at first she couldn’t be bothered with ringing up their sales. But Michael had looked her in the eyes, and Emily had seen that as he’d handed her the items they were to buy, he’d twisted his hand in such a way that his fingers touched hers. And the instant he touched her hand, she calmed and started smiling at them.
“How do you do that?” she asked. “When you touch someone, they become quieter, more at ease, more—” She stopped and glared at him. If he started telling her he was an angel, she’d walk out.
But he just smiled at her. “Thoughts are very strong. You can make a person feel what you’re feeling. Here, give me your hand. Now try to make me feel an emotion. Any emotion at all.”
She took his strong right hand in hers, looked into his eyes and sent what she was thinking directly to him.
After just seconds, he laughed and dropped her hand. “All right I get your message. You’re hungry and you want no more holding hands. I guess The Du—” Breaking off, he smiled. “I guess the man you love wouldn’t like for you to hold the hand of another man, stay in the same room with another man, spend—”
“Would you mind!” she hissed as she started to get up. “I think it’s time we found you your own room and—”
She broke off because a pretty little girl, about two years old, came running up to Michael, her arms opened wide, and Michael caught her.
With wide eyes, Emily sat back down and watched the two of them hugging and kissing, the child clinging to Michael as though he were the love of her life and they hadn’t seen each other for years. I guess he got his memory back, she thought, and was disgusted at the sadness that shot through her. Now she’d either have to return home or spend the rest of the weekend alone. Selfish Emily! she told herself as she looked up to see a young woman who was obviously the child’s mother hurrying toward them. Was this Michael’s wife?
“Rachel!” the woman gasped. “What has come over you? Oh, sir, I am so very sorry. Usually she’ll have nothing to do with strangers. I don’t know why she’s—”
Emily refused to pay attention to her feeling of relief that this was not Michael’s family.
“Please, sit down,” he said graciously. “You look tired. How about some ice cream and a friendly ear?”
Emily ate her banana split and kept silent as she watched the scene unfolding before her. The child was still sitting on Michael’s lap, snuggled up to him as though he were her father, perfectly content.
As soon as the child’s mother was seated, the waitress appeared and Michael silently held up two fingers for more ice cream, and without the least bit of encouragement the child’s mother began to pour out her heart to Michael. She felt sure her husband was seeing another woman and she was going crazy with anger. “I try to be a good mother, but Rachel misses him so much.”
And so do you, Emily wanted to say, but she didn’t.
The ice cream arrived, the woman kept talking, and Michael began to feed the little girl from a spoon as though she were six months old.
“Your husband Tom is a good man,” Michael said at last, and only Emily seemed aware that the man’s name had never bee
n mentioned. The woman didn’t seem to notice. “And he loves you. But now he’s afraid that there isn’t any room for him in your heart since Rachel was born.”
The woman dropped her head. She’d been able to keep the tears back, but now they were beginning to form. “I know how he feels. Rachel is a high-need child.”
To Emily’s consternation, this statement made Michael laugh. “Is that what you’re calling it this generation? Hear that Rachel, honey, you’re driving your parents crazy.” He looked back at the woman. “She is cantankerous,” he said, smiling fondly at Rachel, “because she’s missing something in her life.”
“We give her everything we can afford. She—” her mother began defensively.
“Music,” Michael said. “Rachel is a musician. Take her to a music store. Buy her a flute or one of those….” He made a playing motion on the table with his free hand and looked to Emily for help.
“Piano,” she said softly.
“Yes, exactly,” Michael answered and looked at Emily as though she were a genius.
“Get Rachel something to make music with so she can translate what’s in her head,” he told the mother.
“But don’t you think she’s a little young to be playing music?”
“How old were you when you first fell in love with the ocean?”
The woman smiled at Michael so warmly it’s a wonder her untouched ice cream didn’t start steaming. “I better go. I can just make it to the music store before they close. Come on, Rachel, we have to go.”
The child threw her arms around Michael, obviously never planning to leave him.
Standing, the woman looked down at Michael in wonder. “She seems to love you, yet she’s never met you.”
“Oh, we’ve known each other a long, long time and she’s so young she still remembers me. Go now, sweetheart, go to your mother. She’ll give you your music and you can stop shouting at her. Your mother will listen now.” With that he kissed the child’s cheek, gave her one last hug and set her to the floor, and she went to stand beside her mother and hold her hand.