Emily And The Stranger Read online

  “I think you could be a dangerous man,” Emily said.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Beverly Barton

  BEVERLY BARTON

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “I think you could be a dangerous man,” Emily said.

  “You’re right,” Mitch said. “I can be dangerous.” Dear God, sweet Emily, I’m the most dangerous man you know.

  “My grandmother taught me to trust my instincts where people are concerned.”

  “What are your instincts telling you right now?”

  Swallowing, Emily held back the first response that came to mind. She’d nearly said her instincts told her that she should give herself to him, that she was meant to belong to him. Lord help her, had she lost her mind? “My instincts are telling me to be very careful where you’re concerned.”

  When she gazed up at him, she was shocked by the look of pure lust she saw in his eyes, This man wanted her. The thought sent pinpricks of excitement rushing through her. She couldn’t let this happen. He was a stranger.

  She didn’t even know his name....

  Dear Reader,

  It’s month two of our special fifteenth anniversary celebration, and that means more great reading for you. Just look what’s in store.

  Amnesia! It’s one of the most popular plot twists around, and well it should be. All of us have probably wished, just for a minute, that we could start over again, be somebody else...fall in love all over again as if it were the first time. For three of our heroines this month, whether they want it or not, the chance is theirs. Start with Sharon Sala’s Roman’s Heart, the latest in her fabulous trilogy, THE JUSTICE WAY. Then check out The Mercenary and the Marriage Vow by Doreen Roberts. This book carries our new TRY TO REMEMBER flash—just so you won’t forget about it! And then, sporting our MEN IN BLUE flash (because the hero’s the kind of cop we could all fall in love with), there’s While She Was Sleeping by Diane Pershing.

  Of course, we have three other great books this month, too. Be sure to pick up Beverly Barton’s Emily and the Stranger, and don’t worry. Though this book isn’t one of them, Beverly’s extremely popular heroes, THE PROJECTORS, will be coming your way again soon. Kylie Brant is back with Friday’s Child, a FAMILIES ARE FOREVER title. Not only will the hero and heroine win your heart, wait ’til you meet little Chloe. Finally, welcome new author Sharon Mignerey, who makes her debut with Cassidy’s. Courtship.

  And, of course, don’t forget to come back next month for more of the best and most excitingly romantic reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Leslie Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Warden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  BEVERLY ARTON

  EMILY AND THE STRANGER

  Books by Beverly Barton

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

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  BEVERLY BARTON

  has been in love with romance since her grandfather gave her an illustrated book of Beauty and the Beast. An avid reader since childhood, she began writing at the age of nine and wrote short stories, poetry, plays and novels throughout high school and college. After marriage to her own “hero” and the births of her daughter and son, she chose to be a full-time homemaker, aka wife, mother, friend and volunteer.

  When she returned to writing, she joined Romance Writers of America and helped found the Heart of Dixie chapter in Alabama. Since the release of her first Silhouette book in 1990, she has won the GRW Maggie Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award and has been a RITA finalist. Beverly considers writing romance books a real labor of love. Her stories come straight from the heart, and she hopes that all the strong and varied emotions she invests in her books will be felt by everyone who reads them.

  To Leslie Wainger, a special lady and an extraordinary editor, and a big Thank You to Joan Parris, who saved my sanity when my old computer died—while I was writing this book!

  Prologue

  Darkness surrounded Emily, pressing her down, down, down. Thick, heavy smoke obliterated everything in its path, spreading throughout the room and taking away the very air she breathed. Dropping to her knees, she called out to Stuart. She could barely see him.

  “Get on the floor and stay there,” Stuart said. “Crawl toward the door. I’m right behind you. ”

  He tugged on her foot. Sighing, Emily lowered herself to the carpet, careful not to bear all her weight on her stomach. Above all else, she had to protect her unborn child.

  A thunderous boom shook the building. Emily screamed Stuart reached out for her, grabbing her ankle. She gazed up into the swirling black mass above her. A burst of flames shot down from the ceiling.

  Sirens sang a high-pitched, never-ending song somewhere outside. Emily prayed that help would reach them in time.

  Stuart released his hold on her ankle. “Crawl, Em. Get to the door.”

  Following his directions, she inched her way across the living room, past the sofa, and toward the closed door. Only a few more feet. The hem of Emily’s nightgown caught on the edge of the magazine rack by Stuart’s recliner. Jerking to free herself, she ripped the pink silk.

  Surely the firemen would find them quickly. Their apartment was only on the third floor. Any minute now their rescuers would burst through the front door and carry Stuart and her to safety.

  Suddenly a shattering rumble shook the room. A hot, fiery weight hit Emily’s back and flattened her to the floor. She cried out once, twice, three times. The pain! Dear God, the unbearable pain!

  “Help us! Stuart! Oh, God, someone help us!”

  Moaning, Emily lifted her head, then eased back down on the pillow. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. “Stuart? Help us. Stuart!”

  She didn’t have the strength to open her eyes. The fierce reality of the dream had drained her physically as well as emotionally, and the pain eating away at her flesh was as strong as it had been two years ago when burning shards of the ceiling had fallen across her back.

  She had lost everything tha
t mattered to her. She had longed to die, had pleaded with Uncle Fowler to let her die, but he had willed her to live. Stuart’s uncle had prayed for her life when she had begged God to let her die. He had given her his strength when she had none of her own.

  “I’m here, Emily. I’m here.” Fowler Jordan leaned over his niece’s bed. He placed his slender hand on Emily’s head and petted her tenderly.

  “It hurts, Uncle Fowler.” Even the soothing touch of Fowler Jordan’s hand could not ease her suffering.

  Opening her eyes a fraction, Emily stared up at her husband’s much loved uncle and noted the sorrow and worry in his dark blue eyes. Uncle Fowler loves me so dearly that he can’t bear to see me confined to my stomach and suffering again, after yet another operation.

  “I know how it must hurt,” Fowler said. “But it’ll stop hurting very soon now. I promise you, my sweet girl.”

  Emily gripped a piece of the sheet that lay beneath her hand, wadding it tightly in her grip. Parting her lips, she tried to speak, but emitted only a breathy moan. Her eyelids closed.

  “I don’t think she can hear you, Mr. Jordan,” the nurse said. “She doesn’t seem to be fully conscious. She’s probably just talking in her sleep.”

  “Yes, she does that a lot these days,” Fowler said. “She’s reliving that horrible morning.”

  But I’m awake! Emily wanted to tell them. I’m not talking in my sleep. She tried to open her eyes once again, wanting desperately to communicate with her uncle, to tell the man who had been her lifeline these past two years that she needed more medication. How long had it been since the last injection? Dear God, it didn’t matter whether it had been four hours or thirty minutes. She needed something not just to ease the pain, but to put her into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  But the nurse wouldn’t give her a shot if it wasn’t time for one. They doled out the medication as if it were liquid gold.

  Concentrate, dammit, concentrate on something other than the pain. You’ve endured worse than this; you can defeat the pain if you try hard enough.

  Sighing heavily, Emily eased her eyelids open again and in her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of the private nurse her uncle had hired for the twelve-hour day shift. Ann Loggins. That was the woman’s name. She was sweet, attentive, caring, but a bit nosy and such a chatterbox.

  “That terrible fire happened nearly two years ago, didn’t it?” Ms. Loggins spoke softly. “Your Emily’s been a real trouper, I’ll say that for her. She never complains, except in her sleep, like she just did. And to think this sixth surgery won’t be enough. How on earth will she endure another one?”

  “She’ll endure it the way she’s endured everything else that has happened to her.” With his gaze centered on Emily’s misty, half-focused eyes, Fowler smoothed back the dark, damp strands of hair that stuck to his niece’s pale cheek. “Are you sure she’s not fully conscious?” Fowler asked. “She keeps opening her eyes.”

  “She may be partially conscious, Mr. Jordan,” Nurse Loggins said. “She’s drifting in and out, but I doubt if she understands anything we’re saying. She’s heavily medicated.”

  “My poor sweet darling. When she lost Stuart and the baby, she didn’t want to live. She’s gone from wanting to die to unemotional acceptance of whatever comes her way.”

  “Someday she’ll marry again and have another child. She’s too young and beautiful to mourn forever.” Ann Loggins opened the window blinds, letting in slivers of bright morning sunshine.

  Emily blinked several times. The light hurt her eyes.

  “I’m afraid Emily will never consider herself a beautiful woman again,” Fowler whispered. “Dr. Morris has told us that no amount of surgery will ever completely erase those ugly scars from her back.”

  “The right man won’t care that she’s scarred. He’ll love Emily for all the reasons you love her.”

  “The right man will have his work cut out for him.” Fowler sighed. “Emily’s grandmother raised her to be a bit old-fashioned. She always wanted a husband and children as much as she wanted a career. Now she’s afraid to care about anyone or anything.”

  Emily closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, bitterness rising in her throat. Didn’t Uncle Fowler understand? Didn’t anyone understand that she couldn’t let herself care, that she didn’t dare dream of a happy future? It would have been better if she had died, too. When the apartment building where she and Stuart had lived for less than a year had collapsed and caught on fire, why had God taken Stuart and the baby and allowed her to live—to suffer so unbearably?

  After Stuart’s death, she had been hospitalized for months, so Uncle Fowler, on her behalf, had joined forces with the residents of Ocean Breeze Apartments. They had brought suit against the contractors who had cut comers, used substandard materials and paid off a building inspector when they’d built the apartment complex.

  Consumed with grief and pain and rage, she had been determined to see Styles and Hayden bankrupted, and had rejoiced in their ruin. If she’d had her way, the two men would be rotting in jail right now. But Randall Styles had disappeared off the face of the earth before the trial. Then shortly after the jury awarded a settlement to the Ocean Breeze residents and no criminal charges were brought against him, M. R. Hayden had left town.

  For months afterward, Emily had longed for revenge. She had told herself that if there was any justice in this world, the two men responsible for her torment would learn the real meaning of pain. And even now, two years later, after reading and rereading the transcripts from the trial and learning that M. R. Hayden had been duped by Randall Styles, she could not find it in her heart to forgive him any more than she could forgive his guilty partner. She hoped they both burned in hell.

  The policeman tried to hold him back, but he rammed his way through the barricade, only to be stopped by two other officers blocking the entrance to Ocean Breeze Apartments.

  “Just where do you think you’re going?” the young, frecklefaced cop asked. “If you’ve got family inside, take it easy. They’ve gotten nearly everyone out. There are just a few people left.”

  “Please, if there’s anyone trapped in there, let me help,” Mitchell Ray Hayden begged the policemen.

  “Look, check over there,” the older officer said “Whoever you’re looking for is probably in that crowd yonder.”

  Mitch glanced at the men, women and children huddled in small groups near the row of emergency vehicles. Most of them wore pajamas, gowns, robes or hastily pulled-on jeans. Some of the children clung to their mothers; others sat in their fathers’ laps, their frightened eyes filled with fears. All their sootstreaked faces blurred together in front of Mitch’s eyes.

  Dear God, how had this happened? But he knew. The proof of what he had suspected for several weeks now, and had only confirmed yesterday, stood in front of him. The collapsed apartment building, in flames, its residents barely escaping death, told him more than he wanted to know about his own stupidity.

  He had been a fool to trust Randy Styles. A greedy, egotistical fool! He had wanted it all, and had been willing to do whatever it took to make it big. But he’d never agreed to Randy cutting comers, using substandard material or paying off the building inspector.

  Mitch had never meant for something like this to happen. If only he had uncovered the truth a little sooner, maybe, just maybe, this disaster could have been prevented.

  “Please, sir, move out of the way. ” The redheaded policeman nudged Mitch. “They’re bringing someone out now. ”

  A fireman rushed through the front entrance, a still body lying in his arms. Medical attendants scurried toward him to take the woman and place her facedown on a stretcher.

  “She’s badly burned,” the fireman said. “Not much flesh left on her back.”

  Pain hit Mitch square in the gut. No, please, no!

  “But she’s better off than her husband, I guess. ” The fireman shook his head. “We didn’t get to him in time to save him.”

  I’m sorr
y! Mitch screamed silently as he stepped backward, his glazed stare darting back and forth from the burning building—a Styles and Hayden building—to the ambulance speeding off down the street, carrying a severely burned woman to the hospital.

  He glanced at the sidewalk. A shiny spot of something pink caught his eye. Bending over, he picked it up. A tattered piece of the woman’s nightgown! Mitch clutched the silk fragment in his hand.

  He walked aimlessly down the street, accidently bumping into several bystanders, curiosity seekers gathered half a block away. In his mind’s eye, he kept seeing the seared, sootsmeared, satin gown hanging on the woman’s body, and the length of her long, dark, singed hair falling over the fireman’s shoulder.

  The smell of smoke filled his nostrils. The sound of weeping children and women echoed in his ears.

  He was responsible for this nightmare. He and Randy. If he ever got his hands around his partner’s neck, he’d strangle the life out of him.

  “I’m sorry,” Mitch cried out. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen. Forgive me. Dear God, forgive me for being such a blind fool!”

  Mitch awoke with a start, his body drenched in sweat. He shot straight up in bed. His heart hammered at breakneck speed.

  Running a trembling hand over his face, he took several deep breaths. Two years, dammit! Two years, and yet he couldn’t escape. Neither awake nor asleep.

  Flinging back the light covers, he crawled out of bed, then heard someone snoring. He looked back at the bed. A naked woman lay sprawled on the wrinkled yellow-and-green striped sheet. Her bleached white-blond hair spread across the pillow like thin strands of dried straw. Smeared mascara circled her closed eyes. One large breast lay uncovered, its rosy nipple staring up at Mitch.