"I don't know," she managed eventually, her voice choked with emotion.

"I'm sorry, Em."

Of all the things she didn't want to hear right now, sorry topped the list. "Because I was a virgin?"

"h.e.l.l, Em." He scrubbed a hand across his face. "I had no right to sleep with you."

"Because you're my boss? Because you still see me as a child, in your care, in need of your protection?"

"You are in my care-"

"I'm an adult and it's my day off, so forget feeling guilty." Amazing how a little righteous indignation could come to a girl's aid, delivering the strength and the anger to cut through the tears and his attempt to justify. "I wanted this to happen and, yes, my judgment is probably way off, because, G.o.d help me, I want it to happen again. And again and again. And if that freaks you out, as my boss, then it's probably best if you don't remain my boss, although that will pain me and Joshua, both."

For a long while her vocal avalanche hung in the air between them. So much pa.s.sion, so muchemotion, and she didn't have the foggiest idea from where it all came.Liar , a rogue voice whispered.It came straight from your heart, direct from that corner of your soul where all your secrets hide.

"Finished?" he asked with infuriating calm.

Finished but for one last point. "If there's any other reason you feel sorry, I don't want to know." When her eyes started to fill with d.a.m.n-fool tears again, she knew she had to get out of there. She made it all the way to the door before he stopped her.

"Where are you going?"

Away, anywhere, not here. But she said the first thing that came to mind. "It's time to pick up Joshua."

A beat of silence. "It's your day off."

Of all the comebacks. Emily threw her hands in the air. "Fine, you go get him. If we're going to make checkout time, I need to start packing." * * * Mitch had wanted to keep her there in his bedroom, to challenge most everything she'd said, to tackle the things left unsaid. But how could he have stopped her determined path to the door? By physically blocking her path, making her meet his eyes, putting his hands on her?

Not a good idea.

Not with the heat of her pa.s.sionate words still simmering in the air. Not with edited highlights burning through his blood.I want it to happen again. And again and again . Definitely not while the gleam of tears in her big cinnamon eyes shaped that heat with a myriad of new and unsettling facets. More than six hours later that memory still turned him inside out.

His hands tightened on the SUV's steering wheel, but he kept his eyes fixed on the road. Why hazard a sideways look? He knew she sat stiff and straight in the pa.s.senger seat ... and not because of any driving fears. Tension might as well have climbed aboard this trip and strapped itself into a spare seat, it loomed so large and real and palpable.

Well, h.e.l.l, he'd needed time to think, to a.s.sess everything that was right about what had happened in that mountain bedroom, and all that was wrong. He'd needed time to find a solution, one that compensated his lack of restraint, his refusal to accept her word, his failure to honor the most basic of boss-employee ethics.

Mostly he needed to prevent her leaving.

One solution grabbed ahold of his brain, strong and unshakable. A full afternoon of his son's exuberance, a plane trip back toSydneyand an hour on the road back toPlenty hadn't loosened its hold. A perfect, workable solution for a range of practical reasons that had nothing to do with Emily in his bed, again and again and again.

A glance in the rearview mirror confirmed that Joshua had finally succ.u.mbed to exhaustion. Beside him Emily sat constrained by a seat belt and the confines of a vehicle speeding through the darkening landscape. No means of escape. He cleared his throat.

"What you said back there, at the lodge..."

Mitch sensed as much as saw her straighten, stiffen. "Which particular piece? I seem to recall saying rather a lot."

"You mentioned leaving ... if what you said freaked me out."

The pause was only a heartbeat, but that beat reverberated through the car like a drum roll. "And did it? Freak you out?"

"The thought of you leaving does." Hand over hand, he steadied the car around a tight right-hand bend before he could slanther a look. She sat staring straight ahead, her hands gripping the edges of her seat as if to anchor her there. Smart choice, he thought wryly, as his own stomach jumped with nerves. "I think we should get married."

Chapter 10.

Acar seat, it turned out, did not provide ample mooring when the world spun out from under oneself. Emily dug her fingers deeper into the upholstery but reality continued to whirl with the shock of Mitch's ... did you call that out-of-nowhere statement a proposal?

"Are you serious?" she asked. After the devastating end to his previous marriage... "You want to get married again?"

"I want to do the right thing. For Joshua and for you."

Of course he didn't want to get married. He wanted "to do the right thing," for everyone else but himself. Emily shook her head and, paradoxically, it stopped spinning. "Because you slept with me? Because of some misplaced sense of responsibility? That is so old-fashioned it's laughable."

He didn't laugh.

"I mean, it's not even as if you mighthave to marry me, seeing as we used protection."

"So did my sisters," he said shortly. "And look at them."

Both pregnant when they married. Emily's heart stuttered at the possibility that her one explosive, mind-blowing s.e.xual experience could yield a similar result.No , she cautioned herself sharply. Not even a slim, next-to-nothing possibility she had never been that lucky.

"Even if the impossible happened," she said, faking a light tone as best she could. "I don't have any shotgun-toting relatives who are likely to track you down."

"Exactly. You don't have any relatives who help you out at any turn. They didn't even know where you'd gone, how to find you, when you disappeared. I didn't know where you were, in what condition."

"You thought that I might be...?" Lord. No wonder he'd been so incensed by her disappearance, so grim that first night onGramps's verandah. So insistent about unearthing the truth.

He huffed out a breath. "The thought did cross my mind. More than once."

"I didn't know you thought we'd even..."

Her vague, waving gesture from her to him and back again, wrung a dry humorless laugh from Mitch. "Done it? h.e.l.l, Emily, I couldn't even remember what we'd done or not done, so what was the chance I'd have thought to use protection?"

"I didn't know."Any of that. Anything . Her voice trailed off as she slumped back in her seat, sh.e.l.l-shocked by the notion that he'd thought she may have been pregnant.With his baby. Her hand shifted, hovering over her belly as her heart and her stomach and her emotions jumped all over the place.

"Why did you leave?" he asked,then before she could begin to think how to answer thatpearler , he made an impatient sound low in his throat. "No, you didn't justleave, you dropped off the face of the earth. Obviously since we didn't do anything you had no concerns about an unwanted baby, so why, Emily?"

Emily pressed a hand to her jittery stomach. What could she say? I ran because wedidn't do it? Because, even with you falling-down drunk, I couldn't seduce you, so what chance I could ever win your love? Reflexively she pressed her hand against the ache low in her stomach. "If there had been any chance of a baby, I wouldn't have hidden it from you," she said honestly. "A child needs as many parents to love her as possible."

For a second she felt his eyes on her silent, watchful,measuring and then he needed to concentrate on the road as it wound its way over the top of the Great Divide. Hopefully she'd diverted him from the why-did-you-leave issue, although her whole body tensed in expectation of the next twist and turn.

"You haven't had much of that in your life," heobserved, his voice low and unhurried.

Emily frowned. "That's not what I meant. It was like a hypothetical if I ever found myself in that position."

"Based on your own childhood." Not a question, although he held up a hand in case she chose to object. "Home's important to you? And family?"

The aching tension shifted higher, circling her chest in a steel-banded embrace. "I'm not exactly your expert on home and family."

"Is that why you chosenannying as a career? Because that's what you wanted?"

Wanted?Ah, Mitch, that word doesn't even begin to describe how much I have craved, yearned, wished-upon-a-candled-cake for those things. "I suppose you could say that," she prevaricated. "Except the home-slash-family isn't really yours when you're the nanny. It's only a loaner."

"I'm giving you the chance to change that," he said. "All you have to do is marry me."

Her heart was already starting to pound when she met his eyes. Only a brief clash before his returned to the road, but the steely purpose, the dark intensity ... she dragged in a serrated breath and felt the tremor roll right through her a tremor that whispered with insidious and seductive intent.

Marry him, Emily, and you can have it all.

"That sounds too easy." Like one of those unsolicited lottery letters: Congratulations! You are the one in ten-million winner! The kind you toss straight in the garbage, because you know there's a catch. "I get a home and a family, but what do you get, Mitch?"

The look he slanted her one brief second sizzled with all they'd shared that afternoon. Her mouth may well have fallen open, her eyes definitely clouded with heat, and her thighs tingled from that one blazing glimpse of what marriage to Mitch would include. Hot and powerful and often. She closed her mouth before she said something ill-advised, such as, Yes, I'll marry you.

"Don't underestimate the power of great s.e.x," he said softly. Only a tiny hint of humor edged his deep velvet-cream drawl. "Especially when it's been a while."

Emily swallowed, caught between powerful flattery and cynical reality. Sure, he may use the "great" adjective, but if it had been "a while" and how long const.i.tuted a while for a man like Mitch? then any s.e.x might qualify. She looked at him now, with those darkly rugged good looks, his athlete's body, and that deceptive calm she knew could explode into heated pa.s.sion at the drop of a ... bathrobe ... and she shook her head. "That's not something you would have to marry to get regularly, Mitch. I imagine you'd only have to crook a finger at certain parties or bars."

Something hardened in his profile. "I'm not interested in picking up my next wife at a bar."

Annabelle, the beautiful party girl. How could she have forgotten? All the shimmering heat of s.e.xual flattery faded, leaving only hard reality. He's suggested they marry what was the catch? "Do you think, honestly, that I qualify as your next wife?"

"You're a good person, Emily, easy to be around. You're warm, practical, even-tempered ... usually," he added with a quirk of his lips.

"You left out plain." And vanilla, her own personal favorite descriptor.

Strangely enough, Mitch's eyes sparked. "I've seen you naked, Emily. You're far from plain."

Oh. Okay. She swallowed.

"But that's not the point." His gaze switched back to the road. "I like your company. We could have a pretty decent marriage."

Pretty decent, good, practical what happened to great s.e.x and her far-from-plain naked body? "Sounds like good grounds for a friendship," she said.

"Maybe that's what I want this time, a relationship without all the emotional upheavals. Where I'm not walking around on eggsh.e.l.ls struggling to understand what could have gone wrong and backpedaling like crazy to make up for whatever d.a.m.n thing I messed up."

And there it was, his first marriage summarized in one heated string of words. Not that Emily should have been surprised she'd lived through two years of Annabelle's emotional dramas but, oh, what she'd give to inspire that kind of high pa.s.sion. And she knew, suddenly, that she didn't care for a "pretty decent" marriage, and she definitely couldn't guarantee a lack of emotional upheaval. Her emotions were heaving all over the place at this very moment.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. And her mouth twisted a little with the irony of what she was doing, saying, turning down her fantasy for most of the past three years. "But I don't think I can marry you."

He huffed out a breath that sounded both bitter and disbelieving. "Sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"For a lot of things." Mostly that he'd started this whole circular conversation withI think we should get married instead ofI want to get married . That he wanted a clear conscience and a nanny who wouldn't leave rather than a wife who loved him. "I can't be the kind of wife you're looking for."

"Don't you think I'm the best judge of that?" His quiet words wrapped her in a tempting cloak. "Promise me you'll think about it. Will you do that?"

In all honesty... "Yes." Her answer was a thin whisper of sound, barely audible over the road noise. Of course she would think about it. Quite possibly for the rest of her life.

Amazingly, Emily slept. She didn't remember nodding off but she woke with a start that jerked her head upright. Where were they? She squinted through her side window toward a single light glowing in the darkness. A farmyard, she thought, although one she didn't recognize.

"Are we home yet?" Joshua asked groggily from the back seat. When she turned to see him rubbing his eyes, several pieces of his hair standing on end and a just-woke-up pout on his little mouth, she felt the same winded punch as when she'd hit the ground hard that first day on skis.

"Soon, honey."

Through the back window she saw Mitch coming toward them, a dark silhouette whose size and presence blocked out much of that one bright spotlight. The ache in her chest intensified. Did she really think she could resist such a twosome? Couldn't she simply take what she could get, and hang the grand pa.s.sion?

"Where's Daddy?"

"He's coming now," she told Joshua, a smile starting as she recognized the squirming bundle under his arm. "Looks as if we stopped to pick up a pa.s.senger."

The back door opened and Joshua yelled "Digger!" and greeted his pal as if they'd been apart weeks instead of days. By the dog's clamorous response, the elation was mutual.

Laughing, she turned back around to find Mitch sliding into the driver's seat and watching her with a strange expression on his face. Her laughter faded. Those new, shorter layers of hair were probably standing on end like Joshua's. Self-conscious, she finger combed them back into place. "Better?" she asked.

He shook his head no answer at all then Joshua asked, "How come Digger was here? We left him with UncleQuade ."

"It appears your uncleQuade got busy." Warmth and a subtle sense of contained excitement turned his lopsided grin into a thing of powerful beauty. For a moment it blinded Emily to everything, including the cell phone he brandished.

"The baby?" she squeaked.

"Hetexted to say we'd find Digger down here with theAndersons."

Emily rocked forward impatiently, grabbing hold of his jacket sleeve. "Forget the dog. Have they gone to the hospital? Has Chantal had the baby?"

His grin widened. "Seems like."

CharlotteQuade made her entrance into the world several hours before their return from the ski trip. Just like her cousinBridie , she jumped the gun by almost a month, impatient to get out and start bossing everyone around, Mitch surmised.

Emily smiled, remembering. How long since she'd seen him so ... happy.Charlotte's safe arrival completely overshadowed the tension that still resonated betweenthem, that would continue to resonate until she made a decision about her future.

Would she change her mind? Could she marry him?

Frankly, she didn't know. There had been times in the last two days when he could have taken her by the hand and led her to the nearest celebrant. Talk about your complete familyjoyfest ! Emily caught the overflow and let it fill every hollow ache in her soul until she practically vibrated with longing. Her smile turned wry. So much for staying strong.

"Good to see you smiling," Mitch said, steering the SUV she'd yet to drive into the hospital parking lot. "All the way in here, you looked tense enough to snap."

Well, yes, but she had justification. For a start, this was her first visit with Chantal, and the prospect of seeing baby Charlotte filled her with a complicated mix of antic.i.p.ation and excitement and dread. With Mitch alongside and, all that my-sisters-used-protection-and-look-at-them talk whispering away in the back of her consciousness Lord help her if she got to actually hold this infant.

Secondly, Mitch's parents had arrived home this morning and although she'd met them many times in the past, that was before she'd slept with their son and agreed to consider his marriage suggestion. Which kind of put a new spin on the meeting, her nerves had decided as she'd dithered over her wardrobe choice.

In the end she'd gone with her nice, plain, practical and only skirt. With nervous hands she smoothed the woolen fabric over her knees and felt it p.r.i.c.kle against her bare skin. She had managed to stick a finger right through her only pair of pantyhose while dressing. When she felt Mitch's gaze track her nervous smoothing, sensual warmth rippled through her blood. Just from that one, covertglance . Lord, she had it bad.