What The Heart Knows (31 page)

Elliott
let out a short, humorless chuckle. “Yeah, you know he gets the
same look when I say your name.”

“I
don't know what you're talking about,” Emily insisted, standing
up straighter. Did he really? He flinched? Wasn't that a good thing?
Didn't that mean there was still some residual feeling left there?
Even if it wasn't necessarily a good feeling... something was better
than nothing.

Elliott
pursed his lips for a second, nodding his head. “You know the
strangest thing happened the day after James left here,” he
said.

“Oh?”
Emily asked, hating herself a little for wanting to know.

“Yeah,
he came to work,” Elliott said, chuckling. “With no
flair. No prancing around my floor flirting with all the secretaries.
No announcements over the sound system saying Mr. Michaels is in the
building.”

“That
sounds like him,” she murmured.

“Yeah
that's the thing. This new James in my office getting work done,
wearing suits, and not making nightmares for HR with his flirting...
this James isn't my brother. So I was curious about what might have
happened here,” she opened her mouth to deny something, but he
cut her off. “between you and him I mean.”

“Elliottt...”

“Don't
worry... I'm not going to send you to HR with a copy of the
interoffice fraternization clause of your contract. I really don't
care who screws who so long as things don't get ugly at work.”

“Nothing
much happened,” she said and it was true enough. And she
certainly was not going to be telling him that she had wild sex with
his brother... in his kitchen.

“Nothing
much, yet he's a ghost of his former self?” Elliott nodded,
like everything made sense. She wanted so badly to understand what he
understood. But she'd be damned if she would be weak enough to ask
him. “I thought so,” he said, watching her. “You
know you don't get very far in business if you don't learn how to
read people.”

Emily
raised her brows at him. “Are you reading me?”

“Yeah,”
he said, nodding.

“And?”

“And
it's just like I suspected. You're in love with my brother.

“No...
I'm...”

“Maybe
just as much as he is in love with you,” he said, cutting her
off.

Emily
felt like she'd been punched in the stomach, or like she had fallen
off a swing onto her belly. Like all the air had been knocked out of
her. Was that possible? Was it possible he had feelings for her? Not
love, obviously. That was pushing it. But maybe he wasn't as
indifferent to her as she was worried he was getting.

“Elliott
I don't think...”

“Look
I get it,” he said, then dipped his head lower to look her in
the eye. “I get it. You and I aren't that different. We're very
self-sustaining. We take care of ourselves. We don't need anyone. We
keep romance out of sex. We think love is some abstract notion that
people like us don't experience.” He paused and there was a
smile toying on his lips. A smile that Hannah had put there. “But
then someone comes along and turns all that on its head. All of a
sudden your usually very selfish brain cant stop thinking about them.
And when they aren't around, we feel that absence. Our lives, very
quickly, stop being about ourselves. Trust me, I know how terrifying
that is.”

“Pretty
little Hannah terrified you?” Emily asked.

“Pretty
little Hannah is hell on heels,” Elliott countered. “But
yeah. When she took off to Stars Landing to stay with Sam...”
he stopped, shaking his head at the memory. “I had no power to
fight coming right over here and dragging her back with me. That's
how much I needed to have her with me. I couldn't even think of
trying to get work done knowing she was gone.”

“And
yet James has the exact opposite affliction,” Emily said,
raising a brow at his logic.

“True,
but only because a hardworking nine-to-fiver suit is the furthest
thing from what James is naturally. He couldn't take off to some
island without thinking about you in the sand next to him. Or go to
some ski resort in Vail and not think about you guys at the lodge.”

Emily
lowered her eyes at him. So much for the sanctity of friendship. “She
told you about that?”

Elliott
grimaced, knowing he was going to be in trouble for that at some
later date. “She might have mentioned it. No details,” he
said, holding up his hands like he was the innocent party in it all.
“Don't be mad at her, she's really invested in the idea of you
guys. I thought it was just the pregnancy hormones but...”

“No
see,” Emily said, pointing a finger at him. “you created
that monster. Before you, the woman didn't even date so she would
never have thought to interfere with other people's love lives.”

Elliott
shrugged. “She has the best intentions at heart here. And, for
what it counts, she was right. You guys did hit it off.” He
paused, looking uncomfortable. “Maybe after the new year, I
will send him back down here...”

“No.
Please,” Emily said, shaking her head. “you two just stop
interfering. If we are supposed to be more than a fling, we will be.
Without any help from well-meaning outsiders.”

“Alright,”
Elliott said, nodded. “I'll try to call off Hannah. No
promises, mind you. I think she might be more stubborn than I am. But
I really do hope you two work it out eventually. It's weird at work.
Stuff is actually getting done. It's freaking me out.”

“Well
anything I can do to make your business suffer,” she said,
chuckling. “just let me know.”

Elliott
smiled. “I'm glad to see you're okay. You'll stop looking so
awful in a few days,” he added, winking.

“Go
get back to your wife,” Emily said. “she's convinced you
and Isaac have some kind of bro code that she is not in on.” At
his blank look, she added. “he doesn't cry for you.”

“Oh,
that,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “I don't have the
heart to tell her to stop trying to sing to him. She... ah...”

“Has
the voice of a dying rabbit?” Emily supplied.

“Pretty
much,” Elliott laughed. “I find it charming, but Isaac...
not so much.”

Emily
laughed. “I'll buy him a lullaby CD for Christmas. One in
French... so she can't sing along.”

Elliott
chuckled. “I like you, Emily.”

Emily
shrugged a shoulder. “I like you too, Elliott. Now get.”

After
he was gone, she grabbed as many platters as she could carry and took
them to her room, piling them on one side of her bed. She wasn't
going to think about the conversation with Elliott. It wasn't going
to help anything. She was just going to lay in bed, watch old
Christmas movies, and eat junk food. That was the plan.

Twenty-Six

Emily
woke up the next morning with a half-eaten oatmeal cookie still in
her hand and a banging at her bedroom door. She grumbled, getting
slowly out of bed in her sweat clothes and fluffy purple robe.

“Keep
your panties on,” she called, but the knocking persisted. She
pulled the lock and ripped the door open. And stumbled back a step.
“What the...”

There
in her doorway, wearing thin black and white plaid pajama bottoms and
his Stars Lodge sweatshirt, was James. Looking exhausted and
disheveled. His hair was sticking up in every direction and there was
a strong stubble on his face, more than a five o'clock shadow, but
less than a beard.

“Jesus,”
he said under his breath, looking at her.

He
heard it was bad. When he got the phone call, he was told she had
been viciously attacked. It had been the night before, around
midnight. His cell phone started ringing shrilly over and over.
Normally, he didn't pick up calls he didn't recognize, but the
lateness of the hour and the fact that they called six times, finally
dragged him out of bed.

“Hello?”

“What
the fuck are you still doing there?” the voice accused.

“Excuse
me?” he asked, running a hand through his hair.

“You
should be in Stars Landing right now,” the voice said. A man,
slightly familiar but he couldn't place it.

“Nope,
I am done in Stars Landing for the time being.”

“What
the fuck is wrong with you? Man, you don't deserve her. Forget it.”
Then the line went dead.

James
looked down at the phone for a minute before putting it back down,
shaking his head, and heading toward bed. But then it started ringing
again. He walked over to it, hitting the answer button. “I
don't know what your deal is here... but stop calling me,” he
growled into the receiver.

“I'm
sorry but when someone I care about gets viciously fucking attacked
by a former employee, I try not to be such a dick about it.”
Line dead again.

James
looked down at his phone for a long minute. Someone he cared about
got viciously attacked? That didn't make any sense. If that had
happened, he would have heard about it. Besides, the list of people
he really cared for was short.

But
someone had obviously been attacked and he wouldn't be able to sleep
if he didn't find out who, so he hit redial and waited.

“What?”

“Who
got attacked?”

There
was a long silence on the other end, so long that James looked down
at the phone to make sure he hadn't been hung up on again. “Emily
got attacked,” the voice said finally.

If
he lived a thousand lives, he would never again feel the way he felt
in that moment. Like someone had opened him up from throat to belly
and raked a hand down his insides. Like his lungs were filling up
with fluid and he couldn't breathe. Like the floor was giving way
underneath his feet. Like the whole world was unraveling around him
and he just stood there dumbly.

“What?
How?

“Remember
your grand plan to ferret out the person who was stealing from the
inn?” the man asked and James finally figured out where he knew
the voice from. It was the man from Emily's room. The man she threw
in his face at Elliott's house. The man he had spoken to when he had
called the inn the other night. Dane. What a douchebag name. “Yeah
well maybe you should have been a fucking man and came back down here
and dealt with that yourself. Didn't it cross your mind that it could
be dangerous for her?” There was a pause, a sigh. “Look,
whatever. What's done is done. But it's really messed up that you
wouldn't come down here... even just as a boss...”

“I
didn't know,” James said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

Another
long silence. “Well now you know.”

“Is
she...” he couldn't get any more out than that. Was she
alright? Was she in the hospital? He wasn't sure what he wanted to
ask. He needed to know it all and his tongue was being clumsy.

“She's
recovering back at the inn,” Dane said. “So what are you
gonna do about it?” he asked, but it was rhetorical because,
yet again, he hung up.

James
had stood there for a moment, trying to remind himself to breath. And
then he was moving, grabbing a sweatshirt out of his closet and
slipping on shoes. He threw his wallet and phone in his pocket and
was in his car within three minutes of that phone call.

He
had called Elliott's cell on his way, hearing a groggy Hannah answer.
“James? Is everything alright?”

“Emily
was attacked,” he said. There was a long pause that had him
tightening his jaw. “You knew.”

“We're
in Stars Landing, James. Remember? For Christmas?”

“How
could you not tell me?”

Hannah
snorted. “Maybe if you treated her better, I would have.
Besides, don't be mad at me. She's my friend. My loyalty is to her.
Be mad at your brother. He knew too. Actually, he just got back from
talking to her a little while ago.”

James
watched the road fly by, bright lights in the dark night, hard on his
tired eyes. She was right. He had treated her like shit. He couldn't
imagine what she had been thinking about him after that day in
Elliott's kitchen. That was uncalled for. He had fucked her with
every moment of frustration and self-loathing and fear that he had
been trying to drown in alcohol and other women. He had fucked her
like punishment.