The Unexpected Bride (Montana Born Brides) (7 page)

“
Em-Em! Em-Em!” Emma was awoken by Jerome crying out for her. She threw back the comforter on her bed and rushed to the toddler’s room to see what the matter was.

Jerome was standing up in his bed, his pajamas awry, bawling terrified tears.
He held out his arms to her. “Em-Em!”

“It’s all right, sweetheart.
Emma’s here.” She scooped him into her arms and tucked his hot, damp head under her chin. “There, there,” she crooned, rocking him from side to side. “It’s okay.”

Laurent appeared bleary-eyed in the doorway, clad only in pajama bottoms.
“Is he okay…?”

“I think he’s had a bad dream,” Emma explained, continuing to rock Jerome, who had subsided into snuffling hiccups as he clung to his nanny. She leant back and looked at his tear-streaked face, smoothing his hair away.
“There’s no monsters, darling. Daddy’s chased them away.”

She caught Laurent looking at her with raised eyebrows.
“You chased the monsters away, Daddy, didn’t you?”

“Ah…yes…the monsters have gone,” Laurent confirmed, sounding a little reluctant to join in soothing his son.

“Here, would you like to hold him?” asked Emma, inclining her head towards Jerome, who burrowed his face away from his father.

“No.” Laurent waved a hand, looking awkward and taking a step back.
“He wants you, not me.”

Emma was about to protest, but was stopped by
Evie’s voice from behind Laurent’s legs: “Did you kill the monsters, Daddy?”

Laurent turned around and met his daughter’s enquiring eyes.
Then he turned back to Emma, who nodded encouragingly. He turned back to Evie. “Yes, I killed them.”

“
How
did you kill them, Daddy?”

“Never you mind, young lady,” Emma interjected, realizing that this particular strand of conversation had gone far enough.
“Daddy’s going to take you back to bed.”

“But Jerome’s still crying.”

“Emma’s got him. He’ll be okay,” Laurent assured Evie, grabbing hold of her hand.

“I think he misses Mommy,” Evie announced sadly.
“I miss Mommy, you know.”

Laurent shot Emma another look, pleading for silent help. She gave him a rueful smile, willing him to find the words to comfort his daughter.
But he looked like a little lost boy himself.

Reluctantly, she stepped in.
“I know you do, sweetheart, and that’s okay. I think you’re right that Jerome does too. Why don’t we talk about it some more in the morning? I’d like to hear all about it, and I know Daddy would too. But right now, we all need to get some sleep.”

Evie gave this short consideration.
“Okay. Come on, Daddy. We’ve got to go back to sleep.” She started pulling Laurent along the corridor towards her bedroom.

While Laurent got Evie settled, Emma carried on cuddling Jerome, singing to him softly and holding him tight.
She could feel his small body relaxing and his breathing slowing. The snuffling stopped. She looked down at him and saw that his eyelids were drooping. Carefully, she took him over to his bed and laid him in it, pulling his duvet up around him and placing his favorite knitted rabbit—Pierre—that his grandmother had made beside him. After a minute or so, he was fast asleep. Poor little soul. She so wished she could find the key to joining him together with his dad.

Emma looked up to see Laurent standing in the doorway once more, leaning on the frame.
All at once, she was acutely aware of the tanned expanse of his bare chest and the T of dark hair that reached along his pecs and arrowed down to his navel and the top of his drawstring pajama pants, which hung loosely on his slim hips. She swallowed and averted her gaze.

“Fancy some tea?” he asked.
“I think we deserve it after chasing the monsters away.”

“
Er…yes, please. I’ll be down in a minute. I just want to make sure that Jerome is asleep.”

After five minutes or so, when she had assured herself that Jerome was slumbering peacefully, she made her way downstairs to the kitchen.
Bobo was snoring gently in his cozy bed in the corner. As she entered the room, she was grateful to see that Laurent had pulled on a sweatshirt. He put the kettle on to the stove.

“I’ve found the English Breakfast teabags,” he told her, sounding uncharacteristically friendly and welcoming.
“And I guess you’ll want to do your strange British thing of adding milk?”

“I will,” Emma confirmed, thinking how comfortably domesticated he looked. It was strange to be in this intimate situation, sitting in her nightgown and sharing a late-night
cuppa with him. “I can’t get used to the American habit of taking hot tea without it.”

“Okay, tea with milk, it is.” He padded over to the fridge.
“Jerome went back to sleep okay?”

“Yes, he’s out for the count.
His bad dream and all that crying wore him out.”

“You think it really was a bad dream, and not something…more sinister?”

“More sinister?” Emma furrowed her brow as she wondered what he was suggesting.

Laurent sighed.
“I meant, is he disturbed by the loss of his mother?”

Emma shook her head.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Since I got here, he’s been a pretty sound sleeper, once you manage to get him to wind down and drop off. Most children go through a phase of waking up upset after having a nightmare, or of fancying that they see monster-shapes in dark shadows.”

She was going use the opportunity to broach the subject of Laurent’s relationship with his son when, at that moment, the kettle started bubbling and he was distracted, moving to take it off the hob, and pour boiling water into the mugs containing tea bags.

“Jerome is a little behind with his speech and he’s only getting the hang of toilet training now, but he’s definitely catching up,” she ventured.

Laurent said nothing and turned his back to her to dispose of the teabags.

Sensing his reluctance to engage, she added, “And Evie’s doing well, too. It’s clear that she misses her mom, but she’s also got lots of resilience. And she’s quite the little artist.”

He turned back to her, handing her a mug.
“She takes after my mother with that,” he said, a note of pride detectable in his voice.

“And you,” Emma added.

Laurent leant back against the kitchen counter. “You reckon?”

“Well, you’ve obviously inherited your mother’s artistry. Your furniture is a work of art.”

Laurent rubbed the stubble on his chin and smiled. “You’re very kind, Miss Peabody.”

“I’m only telling you what I see,” she said chirpily, and then fell silent as she became aware of his gaze sweeping over her.
Remembering she was only wearing a nightgown, she shivered. His eyes came back to hers and for seconds they locked. Then she broke eye contact and caught sight instead of the slumbering dog. “I think Bobo’s exhausted too,” she observed blandly, trying to recover her equilibrium.

“Crazy dog is very good at wearing himself out by being crazy.
But we love him.”

“Did you know he was crazy when you got him?” Emma asked, unable to resist giggling.

“Yeah. We got him from the Second Chance no-kill shelter in town. He was only a pup, and his owners had already dumped him for bad behavior. But the kids picked him out and I reckoned I could train him; we’ve got space here, so he’s free to run around when he gets uppity.”

Laurent surveyed her again with those piercing whiskey eyes and Emma felt naked.

“I need some milk,” she blurted and, placing her mug on the counter beside her, moved to where the carton sat next to him. As she reached for the carton, his arm shot out at the same time to grab it and hand it to her. The suddenness of his action caused her to lose her balance slightly and put her hands against his torso to steady herself. His body felt warm and firm under her fingertips, and she could smell the musky male scent of him. The urge to melt into him was strong. She looked up and saw something fierce and needy in his face.

“The milk…”

He put the carton back down on the counter without looking at it and, with one swift movement, caught her with both hands and pulled her into him. Their groins made contact and she felt his hardness through the thin materials of his pajamas and her nightdress. For one stupid second, she wanted to put her hand on him, to stroke him…Instead, his mouth landed on hers and her lips parted automatically, allowing his insistent tongue entry. He kissed her hungrily and she responded, while his fingers roamed to her breasts and his thumbs circled her nipples as they grew and stiffened, craving his touch. She could feel his heart thumping, and the rush of warmth between her thighs, her brain crying out for him to go there, caress her…

“No!” She put her hands on his chest and pushed herself away from him. His hands
dropped to his sides, his breathing labored. She stepped back further and, with her hands balled into fists, cried, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Then she turned and rushed upstairs to her bedroom.

When the sun came up over Copper Mountain, Laurent was lying awake on his back in bed, turning the scene in the kitchen over and over in his mind…The sight of Emma in her nightgown, its thin material clinging to her breasts and outlining her peaking nipples, and barely skirting the tops of her thighs…something had just exploded in his brain and he had blindly reached for her.
He recalled the softness of her mouth, the clean shampoo-scent of her silky blond hair, the length and hardness of her nipples as they strained against his thumbs and how he longed to push up her nightdress and suck them.

He had an erection so hard and big that it hurt.
A conscience so guilty, it horrified him. And a feeling of loneliness so heavy, he wondered if he could get up and face the day.
He’d made a pass at his children’s nanny
.

But it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, and Emma was exquisitely pretty and so nice and warm.
She listened and she looked at him like she understood. The temptation to lose himself and his aching aloneness in her lovely body had been huge. But those were no excuses. He’d crossed a line and that was inexcusable. She had been shocked and horrified, frightened even. That last thought lingered. Did she really find him threatening, or perhaps she was repulsed? Holy crap. What had he been thinking? This could be enough to make her leave. He hadn’t been thinking, that was the truth; he hadn’t cared about the consequences, just about having her body pressed against his, her breast in the palm of his hand…He would have to find her and apologize as soon as he could. He needed her here—to stay, that was. As much as he didn’t want to go back over what had happened, he had to do the right thing and square things between them…

It was after breakfast when he was able to get Emma on her own and talk to her.
He’d had a word with Linda, explaining that he and Emma needed some time together to catch up on the children’s progress. The housekeeper had nodded knowingly and volunteered to take the kids and the dog out for a walk in the woods that skirted the base of Copper Mountain.

Emma was in the utility room, folding laundry. She looked up at him, a haunted look in her
eyes, which stabbed right at him. He’d known things would be awkward, but clearly she was upset.