Undaunted. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Did the drunk man have family?”

      Mamie nodded. “A wife and a little girl. They lost their home, their income... The child had to go to social services. The mother ended up dead of a drug overdose. It was a tragic story, all the way around.”

      “Life is so hard for children,” Emma murmured, thinking of the poor little girl. Connor Sinclair was vindictive.

      “It is.” Mamie looked around. “Well, I’d better be on my way. Come help me pack, Emma. I have a couple of evening dresses I want to give you. They’re too small for me, and they’ll suit you very well.”

      “I never go anywhere to wear evening dresses.” Emma laughed. “But thank you very much for the thought.”

      Mamie glanced at her. “You should be dating, meeting men, thinking about starting a family.”

      “I haven’t met anyone I felt that way about, except Steven.” She shuddered. “I thought he was the perfect man. Now I’m not sure I’ll trust my judgment about a man ever again.”

      “You’ll get over it in time, honey,” Mamie said, a gentle smile on her face. “There are plenty of handsome, eligible men in the world, and you have a kind heart. You don’t think so right now, but men are going to want you, Emma. That nurturing nature is something most men can’t resist. They don’t care as much for physical beauty as they do for someone who’s willing to sit up with them when they’re sick and feed them cough syrup.” She grinned.

      Emma laughed, as she was meant to. “Well, one day. Maybe.”

      Mamie left in a whirlwind of activity, met by a stretch limousine with a stately driver in a suit and tie. She gave Emma a handful of last-minute chores, a research assignment to complete for her next book and an admonition to be careful about going out after dark. Her parting shot was to stay off the lake in the speedboat until Connor went to his home in the south of France as he did most years just before Christmas.

      Emma promised to be careful, but no more. The speedboat had become her solace. When she was out on the lake, with the wind blowing through her long hair and the spray of the water on her face, she felt alive as she’d never felt before.

      * * *

      She hadn’t told Mamie, but she was still wounded by Steven’s rejection several years later. She’d been too wounded to ever trust another man. She’d felt close to Steven, felt a sense of belonging to someone for the first time in her young life. His rejection had been painful. She’d always been shy, lacked self-confidence. Now she distrusted her own judgment about people. Steven had seemed so perfect. But he had prejudices she hadn’t known about.

      Ideals were worthwhile, certainly, but it had been her father’s choice of vocations that had alienated him. He hadn’t considered that she might not feel as her father did. He simply walked away, without a backward glance.

      For several weeks, she hoped that he might call or write, that he might apologize for making assumptions about her. But he hadn’t. In desperation, she’d written to a former girlfriend in San Antonio, where Steven had moved to, a mutual friend from high school. The friend told her that Steven was involved with a new organization—a radical animal rights group, much larger than the one he’d belonged to when Emma knew him. He and his friend were apparently still living together, too. Neither of them dated anybody. Steven said that he was never going back to Jacobsville, though. That was when Emma finally gave up. She wasn’t going to have that happy ending so beloved by tellers of fairy tales. Not with Steven, anyway. She walked idly through the woods, a stick held loosely in her hand. She touched it to the tops of autumn weeds as she walked, lost in thought.

      She almost walked straight into the big man before she saw him. She jumped back as though he’d struck out at her. Her heart was beating a mad rhythm. She felt breathless, frightened, heartsick. All those emotions vied for supremacy in her wide brown eyes.

      She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry,” she said at once, almost cringing at the sudden fierce anger in his broad face.

      His hands were jammed deep in his trouser pockets. He was wearing a beige shirt with tan slacks, and he looked, as usual, out of sorts.

      He glared at her from pale glittering gray eyes, assessing her, finding her wanting. His opinion of her long brown checked cotton dress with its white T-shirt underneath was less than flattering.

      “Well, we can’t all afford Saks,” she said defensively.

      He lifted an eyebrow. “Some of us can’t even afford a decent thrift shop, either, judging by appearances,” he returned.

      She stood on the narrow path through the woods that led to the lake. “I wasn’t trespassing,” she blurted out, reddening. “Mamie owns up to that colored ribbon on the stake, there.” She pointed to the property line.

      He cocked his head and stared at her. He hated her youth, her freshness, her lack of artifice. He hated her very innocence, because it was so obvious that it was unmistakable. His whole life had been one endless parade of perfumed, perfectly coifed women endlessly trying to get whatever they could out of him. Here was a stiff, upright little Puritan with a raised fist.

      “You’re always alone,” he said absently.

      “So are you,” she blurted out, and then bit her tongue at her own forwardness.

      Broad shoulders lifted and fell. “I got tired of bouncing soufflés, so I sent her home,” he said coolly.

      She frowned, searching his face. He showed his age in a way that many older men didn’t. He pushed himself too hard. She knew without asking that he never took vacations, never celebrated holidays, that he carried work home every night and stayed on the phone until he was finally weary enough to sleep. Business was his whole life. He might have women in his life, but their influence ended at the bedroom door. And nobody got close, ever.

      “Can you cook?” he asked suddenly.

      “Of course.”

      He raised an eyebrow.

      “My father has a little cattle ranch in Texas,” she said hesitantly. “My mother died when I was only eight. I had to learn to cook.”

      “At the age of eight?” he asked, surprised.

      She nodded. Suddenly she felt cold and wrapped her arms around her body. “I was taught that hard work drives out frivolous thoughts.”

      He scowled. “Any brothers, sisters?”

      She shook her head.

      “Just you and the rancher.”

      She nodded. “He wanted a boy,” she blurted out. “He said girls were useless.”

      His hands, stuffed in his pockets, clenched. He was getting a picture he didn’t like of her life. He didn’t want to know anything about her. He found her distasteful, irritating. He should turn around and go back to his lake house.

      “You had a little girl with you a few days ago,” he said, startling her. “She was lost.”

      She smiled slowly, and it changed her. Those soft brown eyes almost glowed. “She belongs to a friend of Mamie’s, СКАЧАТЬ