Undaunted. Diana Palmer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was the girl on the dock?” Ariel asked as she and Connor shared the overcooked soufflé she’d taken out of the oven.

      “One of the new generation,” he said coldly. “And that’s all I want to say about her.”

      She sighed. “Whatever you say, darling. Are we going out tonight?”

      “Where do you want to go?” he asked, giving up his hope of a quiet night with a good book and a whiskey sour.

      “The Crystal Bear,” she said at once, naming a new and trendy place on the outskirts of Atlanta, near Duluth, where the main attraction was a huge bear carved from crystal and a house band that was the talk of the town. The food wasn’t bad, either. Not that he cared much for any of it. But he’d humor Ariel. She was beginning to get on his nerves. He gave her slender body a brief appraisal and found himself uninterested. He’d felt that way for several days. Ever since that little blonde pirate had almost run into him on the Jet Ski and he’d given her hell for it at Mamie’s party.

      The girl was unusual. Beautiful in a way that had little to do with her looks. He’d seen her, from the porch of his lake house, usually when she didn’t see him. There had been a little girl who’d wandered up on the beach. The blonde woman—what was the name Mamie had called her? He couldn’t remember—had seen her, bent to comfort her, taken the child up in her arms and cuddled her close, drying her tears. He’d seen her walking back down the beach, apparently in search of the missing parent.

      The sight had disturbed him. He didn’t want children, ever. Countless women had tried to convince him, practically trick him into it, for a decade, but he was always careful. He used condoms, despite assurances that they were on the pill. He was always wary because he was filthy rich. Women were out to ensnare him. A child would be a responsibility that he didn’t want, plus it also meant expensive support for the child’s mother. He wasn’t walking into that trap. He’d seen what had happened to his only brother, who lived in misery because of a greedy woman who’d gotten pregnant for no other reason than to trap him into a loveless marriage. That marriage, his brother’s, had ended in death, on this very lake. It chilled him to remember the circumstances. The blonde woman brought it all back.

      Still, the sight of the blonde woman with the child close in her arms, her long, shiny hair wafting in the breeze, made him hungry for things he didn’t understand. She had no money, and wasn’t even that pretty. It puzzled him that he should have such an immediate response to her. That night, at the party, he’d stared at her, hungered for her, wanted her.

      He’d made her cry, frightened her with his reckless anger. He hadn’t meant to. She didn’t seem like other women he knew who pretended tears to get things. Her tears had been genuine, like her fear of him. He’d been shocked when she backed away from him. It had been a long time—years—since anyone had done that. And never a woman.

      Then he’d found her sitting on his dock, laughing as she dangled her feet in the water. The sight had hit him in the heart so hard that it had ignited his temper all over again. He had no need of this blonde woman. He had Ariel, bright and beautiful, who would do anything he asked, because he showered her with the expensive diamonds she loved.

      The blonde in the cheap dress had been wearing even cheaper jewelry. Her shoes had been scuffed and old. But she had a regal pride. It amused him to recall her cold defense of her morals. Which were of no concern to himself, he thought, and promptly shut her out of his mind.

      * * *

      Mamie called Emma to her office a few mornings later as she was sealing the last of several envelopes that contained the neat little notes Emma had typed and printed for her. Mamie had just finished signing them.

      “I would have done that for you,” Emma protested.

      “Of course you would, but I had some time.” She put the envelopes in a neat stack. “You can stamp them and put the address labels on. Here’s the thing, sweetie, I’m going to be away for about two or three months. A sheikh has invited me to stay at his palace and see the sights in Qawi with his family. We’ll watch horse races, attend cultural events all over the Middle East, even spend some time on the Riviera in Monaco and Nice on the way home. Do you want to stay here or go home to your dad?”

      Emma swallowed. “Well...”

      “You’re welcome to stay here,” she said gently, because she knew how Emma’s father treated her. Emma had often lived with another family in Texas, but she’d said that she didn’t want to impose on them. “I know how much you hate to travel. It’s why I’ve never taken you overseas. But you’d be doing me a favor actually, because I wouldn’t have to close up the lake house. What do you think?”

      “I’d love that!”

      Mamie smiled. “I thought you might. Okay. You know what to do. You can drive the speedboat, too, but no speeding,” she added firmly. “You don’t want to make Connor angry. Really, you don’t.”

      Emma frowned at her employer. There was something odd about the way she’d said it.

      Mamie sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t always a famous author,” she began. “I started out as a newspaper reporter on a small weekly paper. From there I moved to entertainment magazines, doing feature stories on famous people.” She grimaced. “One of them was Connor Sinclair. His best friend—who turned out to only be a distant acquaintance—had assured me that he had Connor’s permission to tell me things about his private life. So I quoted the man as my source and ran the story.”

      “This sounds as though it ended unhappily,” Emma said when her companion was very quiet.

      “It did. The man who gave me the quotes was a business rival who hated Connor and saw an opportunity to get even for a business account he lost. Most of what he told me was true, but Connor’s fanatical about his privacy. I didn’t know that until it was too late. Long story short, the magazine fired me to keep him from suing.”

      “Oh, no.”

      “It was a bad time,” Mamie recalled quietly. “I was just divorced, with no money of my own. I depended on that job to keep my bills paid and a roof over my head. I landed another job, with a rival magazine, a couple of weeks later. Luckily for me, that publisher didn’t like Connor and wasn’t going to be forced into putting me on the street for what another magazine printed.”

      “He tried to have you fired from that job, too?” Emma asked, aghast at the man’s taste for vengeance.

      “Yes, he did. So when I tell you to be careful about dealing with him, I’m not kidding,” Mamie concluded. “I would never fire you, no matter what he threatened. But I still work for publishers who can be threatened.”

      “I see your point,” she said quietly. “I won’t make an enemy of him. I’ll make sure I stay out of his way from now on.”

      “Good girl,” Mamie said gently. “You’re very special, Emma. I trust you, which is more than I can say about most people I know. I wanted children, but my husband didn’t.” She smiled sadly. “It’s just as well, the way things turned out.”

      “Why is Mr. Sinclair so bitter?” Emma asked suddenly. “I mean, he never smiles and he’s always upset about something or someone. It just seems odd to me.”

      “He lost his brother, his only sibling, in an accident on this lake. A drunk driver in a boat hit him and his wife in their houseboat СКАЧАТЬ