Diana Palmer - Undaunted

Emma’s father had delivered Emma at home, and he’d planned to do the same with his second child. Apparently it had never occurred to him that he should have taken his wife to the hospital when she started complaining of chest pain. She’d had an undiagnosed heart condition that the stress of prolonged childbirth had caused to go critical. She’d died of a massive coronary.

It had hurt, so badly, to lose her mother, especially at such a young age. Emma had watched her die, helpless to do anything. She had managed to live at home until graduation, but the minute she had a job, she moved to town and never looked back. Emma had nothing to do with her father at all these days. She wasn’t certain that she’d even be willing to ask him for help in a dire emergency. Or that he’d give her any. He was rarely sober enough to care about anything, anyway. He did manage to go out to work on the ranch, enough to keep it going, but his drinking was such a problem that he now had a huge turnover in cowboys.

Emma was ashamed of the way he behaved. Although his ranch was in Comanche Wells, everybody knew about him in nearby Jacobsville, where Emma had worked at the local café. At least she hadn’t told Connor about the drinking when he was sighted. She’d been too ashamed to admit it, even to a stranger.

“Emma?”

“Oh. Sorry. I was...lost in the past,” she confessed.

“You were with her when she died, weren’t you?” he asked suddenly, as if he knew.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

He crossed his long legs. “My sister-in-law was pregnant when she died.” His eyes glittered. “She didn’t want the baby. She said so, often.”

“Then why...?”

“My brother would never have married her if there hadn’t been a child on the way. She bragged about it, about how she’d snared him with the child, and that he’d have to support it, and her, until it came of age. She’d have everything she wanted, she’d said, and she laughed at him.” His eyes closed. “He was a sweet man. I tried to tell him what she was like, but he was naive. He’d never been in love before, and she was a good actress. He only found her out when it was too late.”

“That’s a shame, for a woman to do that to a man,” she said quietly. “We had a sweet old fellow in our church who’d been married to the same woman for fifty years. When she died, a widow down the road sweet-talked him into marriage. Then she took him for everything he had, even sold the house out from under him. He went to live with his son, and she called him every night to laugh at how gullible he’d been.” She sighed. “He killed himself.”

“Why?” he asked, shocked.

“He loved her,” she said.

“Love,” he scoffed. “I fell in love when I was a teenager. I soon learned that it’s just a euphemism for sex. That’s all it is, a chemical reaction.”

She sighed. “You’re probably right,” she said. “But I’d like to keep my illusions until I grow as crotchety as you are.”

His eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

“Crotchety. That’s what you are,” she explained patiently. “You’re rude and overbearing and your temper could curdle milk.”

He chuckled softly. “Feeling brave, are you?”

“I can type.”

“That’s an excuse?”

“A woman who can type can always get work,” she explained. “So if you fire me, I’ll just go right out and look for another job.”

He stretched lazily, still smiling. “Always the optimist. Doesn’t anything get you down, young Emma?”

“Worms.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Worms. You put them on a hook and drown them in an attempt to catch fish that you also have to kill in order to eat them. It’s so depressing. Imagine how the worm feels,” she teased.

He burst out laughing.

“You look nice when you laugh,” she said softly.

“I don’t, often,” he said a minute later. “Perhaps you’re corrupting me.”

“That’s my evil influence, all right. I’ll have to look up my pitchfork.”

“Back to work, my girl,” he said. “Read me the next letter in the stack.”

“Email doesn’t have stacks.”

“Sure they do. Get busy.”

She grinned. “Okay.”

* * *

That night, something woke her. She couldn’t think what. She sat up in bed, frowning, and looked around. The house seemed quiet. There was nothing going on outside, either. She got out of bed in her flowing cotton nightgown with its puffed sleeves and slipped on her matching housecoat, tossing her hair in a pigtail over the back of it. She crept to her door and opened it.

Maybe it was her imagination...no! There it was again. A moan. A harsh moan.

She walked down the hall, frowning. The sound grew louder. She stopped at a door and knocked.

“What the hell do you want?” came a rough, angry voice from behind the door.

She opened the door a crack. “Mr. Sinclair?” she called softly.

“Oh. Emma. Come here, honey, will you?”

She hesitated. “Do you...wear pajamas?”

He laughed even through the pain. “Bottoms, yes. Come in.”

She opened the door and walked in, leaving it open behind her.

He was sitting on the side of a huge, king-size bed. A brown paisley duvet was thrown back from brown sheets. Pillows were scattered everywhere. His head was in his hands, propped up on his broad thighs.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No. I hurt like hell. Go into the bathroom and look in the medicine cabinet. There’s a bottle with blue-and-white capsules in it, for migraines. Bring me one, and a bottle of water out of the minibar in the corner.”

“Mini what?”

“Minibar.” He lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was drawn with pain. “Like a small fridge,” he explained kindly.

“Sorry. I’ve never seen one.”

“They have them in most hotels,” he pointed out.

“Well, I’ve never stayed in a hotel. Or a motel.” Which was true. Mamie traveled, but Emma stayed home and took care of the house and typed drafts for Mamie’s new books. She walked into the bathroom, unaware of his raised eyebrows.

She found the bottle, read the directions, popped one out into her palm and closed the lid. She put the bottle back, then went to find the water.

“Open up,” she coaxed. He opened his mouth and she put the capsule on his tongue. It was intimate. It was also sexy, to feel his mouth that way. She tried not to react as she opened the bottle of water and put it carefully into his hand.

“It’s open,” she said.

He then lifted the water to his chiseled lips and took a long swallow. The feel of Emma’s fingers near his mouth affected him, even through the pain. He winced. “Do you have migraine headaches, Emma?”

“No.”

“Anyone in your family have them?”

“No.” She was going to mention that her employer, Mamie, did until she realized that she wasn’t supposed to know Mamie. “I had a friend who had them,” she managed. “They were pretty awful.”

“Awful is a good word to describe them. They make you sick as hell, and then they give you a headache that makes you want to bounce your head against a wall.”

“I never get headaches,” she said.

“Mine weren’t this bad until I was blinded,” he said.

She winced. She hadn’t realized how it was going to feel, watching him suffer and knowing that she’d caused it. She’d blinded him. It was very hard, trying to live with that. She wanted to tell him the truth, but every day she waited made it more impossible.

“Sit down,” he said. “There’s a chair by the bed. Stay with me for a minute, until it eases.”

“Of course.”

He hadn’t moved much. She noticed the faint olive tan that covered him from the waist up, the muscles in his big arms. He was gorgeous without his shirt. A thick mat of hair ran from his chest down to the waist of his burgundy pajama bottoms, and probably past it. She flushed. She’d never seen a man in pajamas before, except on television or in movies. He was very sexy. And he didn’t look his age at all.