An Angel for Emily Read online

  “Even my husband?” she teased, but Michael looked away and didn’t answer. And she didn’t ask, because heaven only knew what had happened to her in a time before modern medicine.

  True or not, the stories he spun almost made her see herself in another time and place. She could see the candles, smell the perfume, hear the soft laughter of the other dancers. She could almost feel the corset cutting into her skin and making her waist tiny while the long skirt, heavy with thousands of tiny silver glass beads, twirled about her legs sensuously.

  When the music stopped and Michael removed his hand from hers, the vision disappeared, and it was all she could do to keep from flinging herself back into his arms just to have it reappear.

  It was Michael who said, “I think we should separate for tonight, Emily. Good night.” Then he’d turned away abruptly, leaving her alone under the glaring modern lightbulbs. No more candles, no more bare-shouldered gowns.

  But it was when she was locked safely away alone in her bedroom that she gave herself a good talking to. She had to get control of herself. “Detachment,” she said aloud. Detachment and distance. And maybe tomorrow night a call to Donald, even though he didn’t like to be bothered during the week. Except for emergencies. And wasn’t this, she thought as she slipped between the sheets, an emergency?

  So now—walking to work after having tiptoed out at 5 A.M. while Michael was still asleep—she told herself she was not a coward. She left early because she had a lot of work to do, no other reason. And leaving Michael a note in which she sternly told him he was not to leave the apartment all day, not to allow anyone to see him, was just a common-sense precaution. He knew he couldn’t be seen, but it was better to remind him, wasn’t it? And a letter showed more force than a conversation, didn’t it?

  Again, she thought of waltzing with Michael. “Maybe I’ll call Donald at lunch,” she murmured, then increased her pace.

  “And how’s your family, Mrs. Shirley?” Emily asked the heavily pregnant woman across the checkout desk of the library.

  “They’re all well, except the youngest has a cold. And how’s Donald?”

  “Excellent health. He’s—” She broke off as she looked up and saw Michael come walking into the library.

  “Emily? Are you all right?” Mrs. Shirley asked “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “No, just an angel,” Michael said, leaning on the counter and looking at the swollen, pregnant and very tired Mrs. Shirley as though she were the sexiest person he’d ever seen.

  “Oh my,” Mrs. Shirley said, fluttering her lashes. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Susan Shirley and you are—”

  Michael lifted her extended hand to his lips and lingeringly kissed knuckles that were permanently reddened from ten years of caring for her growing brood of children. “I’m Michael….” Hesitating, he looked at Emily and she knew he’d forgotten his last name.

  “Chamberlain,” she snapped, and gave him a look meant to let him know she was going to kill him for appearing in public.

  But he ignored her and looked back at Mrs. Shirley. “Yes, of course—Chamberlain. I’m Emily’s cousin. On her mother’s side. And I’m staying with her.”

  “Why, Emily, you should have told us,” Mrs. Shirley said, making no effort to remove her hand from Michael’s.

  Emily was choking too hard to be able to speak. Cousin? Staying with her?!

  “Emily, honey,” Michael said, “are you all right? Can I get you something to drink?”

  As Mrs. Shirley looked from one to the other, she gave a little smile, and Emily knew that her life, as she knew it, was now over. Within three hours all of Greenbriar would know that her “cousin” was staying with her.

  “Tell me, Mr. Chamberlain, are you married?”

  “Yes!” Emily spat out, the word catching in her throat so hard she started coughing.

  Michael reached across the desk and thumped her on the back, but after one thump his hand motion turned into a caress.

  “Separated,” Michael said, smiling at Mrs. Shirley. “Alas, a divorce is underway.”

  Emily, still coughing, jerked away from Michael’s hand on her back, but when he left his arm draped across the counter she gave it a good, hard stamp that said his due date was in two weeks.

  Michael didn’t take his eyes off Mrs. Shirley but he withdrew his arm while Emily finally finished coughing.

  “Well, Emily,” Mrs. Shirley said, “I better get back to the house before the kids destroy it. I must say that it’s been a surprise and a delight to meet you, Mr. Chamberlain.”

  “Michael, please,” he said.

  “You must come to dinner at my house so my husband and I can get to know you. Or no,” she said as though she’d just thought of it, “a divorce can be so lonely—maybe I should introduce you to a few of my women friends.”

  “I would like that very much,” Michael fairly purred. “Oh, but you’d better make it soon because those babies are coming early.”

  “Babies?” she said, puzzled. “Oh no, it’s just one. I’m just extraordinarily big and I have two whole months yet.”

  To Emily’s pure disgust and Mrs. Shirley’s obvious delight, Michael put his hands on her enormous, hard belly. “Two babies, a boy and a girl, and you have only five weeks left.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Shirley said, smiling, for all the world looking as though she’d just been blessed by the pope, as she started toward the door. “I do think I’ll call my doctor and maybe I’ll insist he do another sonogram.”

  “Yes,” Michael said sweetly. “And don’t forget your invitation.”

  “Oh, never fear,” she said, backing out the door as though to turn her back on him would make her miss even a second of seeing him.

  When she was gone, Michael turned back to Emily, still smiling.

  “You are insane!” she hissed, keeping her voice low so the other people in the library couldn’t hear her. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “I wanted to see your library in this dimension,” he said cheerfully.

  She took a deep breath and started to count to ten, but she only got to three before he leaned across the desk so that she was almost nose-to-nose with him. “Mrs. Shirley will tell every woman in town about you and within twenty-four hours the FBI will be here!”

  “Actually,” Michael said calmly, “I don’t think that’s true. I was talking to someone this morning and—”

  “Dead or alive?” she snapped.

  “Alive.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “With or without a body?”

  Michael gave her a one-sided grin. “Without. She said there are twenty women to every man in this town and—”

  “She? She who?”

  “The spirit who told me this is a woman. Are you jealous?”

  “Not in the least. I just want to know where you met this woman and if she is haunting my apartment.”

  “No, she stays at The Duck’s…er, ah, Donald’s. She told me that there are so few men in this town that I’m safer here than anywhere else on the planet. Even the women who have men are without them most of the time. She said I’m certainly safe from anyone telling something that will get me thrown out of here.”

  Emily wasn’t going to comment on this distorted view of her beloved town. And besides, a patron, Anne Helmer, noticed them and decided she just had to check out her books at that moment. Michael opened his mouth to speak to the woman but Emily gave him such a fierce look that he turned away and became intensely interested in a poster announcing Nancy Pickard’s latest mystery.

  When Anne was gone, Emily turned back to Michael, her voice lowered. “What was a woman doing in Donald’s apartment?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed rude to ask.”

  “Great. Etiquette for ghosts,” she murmured, her lips tight.

  “Emily, are you angry with me about something?”

  She was not going to answer what she was sure he knew was a redundant question, nor was she going to all