Delicious and Deadly (7 page)

The memory of that moment froze her blood, stiffened her spine.

She folded her arms, jerked her chin.

"I don't believe a word of it. You walked out on me, on us. Supposedly to re-join your unit. And I never heard a single word from you, or saw you, until today. So how do you explain that?"

Silence.

If she'd cold-bloodedly slid a knife into his heart, Oscar would have been less stunned, less... hurt.

He'd been decorated for his last mission. Not that he'd ever tell Emma. Real soldiers never boasted about their awards. Earning medals for glory usually meant honourable men, or the innocent, had died. On his watch he’d lost four good and brave soldiers. He refused to taint their memory by using their loss for personal gain.

Anger for everything his men had gone through, the sacrifice they'd made rose inside Oscar.

How dare she talk to him like that?

What the hell was wrong with her?

“I didn’t walk away, Emma. Why do you keep saying that?” Oscar ordered himself to calm the hell down. He’d never had a problem with his temper in the past, and he didn’t want to start having one now. "I don't understand how you can stand there and say those things to me. After everything we had, what we meant to each other, and after what happened between us less than twenty-four hours ago. What was that all about?"

Her frosty stare made him wonder now if he'd imagined what they'd shared together, because the Emma standing before him, angry, cold and hard, was not a woman he recognised.

"You are un-bloody-believable," she snapped. "I meant nothing to you. You walked away and never once looked back."

He noticed she avoided the last question and decided he’d get back to it later.

Now it was his turn to fold his arms.

His chin jutted.

"Oh I looked back, sister. I returned to New York to find you on your honeymoon, married to Richard Murray III." His voice went hard. "Naturally, your mother was thrilled."

Even though she went utterly still, those green eyes were filled to the brim with suspicion as they searched his.

"I don't believe you. I don't believe you came back. My mother would have told me."

"Would she, Emma?" Oscar shot back. "Would she really? How do you think I know you met him at a cocktail party? That it was love at first sight? That you married him within weeks. I turned up at the door to find you on your honeymoon in Venice. How do I know all that if I didn't speak to your mother?"

Colour fled from her face so fast that he moved towards her.

Emma sat on the sofa with a hard bump, pressing fingertips into her forehead.

Those glittering green eyes stayed on his, but they went wary now.

"But... I still have your letter."

Oscar was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

A very bad feeling.

"You have it with you now, here?" When she nodded, he held out his hand. "Let me see it."

Emma rose, moved to the desk holding a shiny laptop and a mountain of paper.

She unzipped a laptop bag.

And all the time he watched her, Oscar found himself wondering why she'd keep his letter, carry it with her, if she hated him so much.

She turned, placed it in his hands.

He examined the envelope, studied her name written in black ink, by him.

His hand shook as he slid out a single page, read the contents.

Read the lies.

Read the cold words.

Words carefully chosen to inflict the most harm, to wound, to kill a burgeoning love.

The Emma he'd loved had been a beautiful girl with a big heart, an innocent in the ways of the world. Someone who always saw the best in others. For a battle-weary soldier, she'd been a wonderful breath of fresh air, a shining light in a world of darkness.

Oscar lifted his eyes to look at her now and saw a very different woman. A woman who was still incredibly beautiful. But a woman with hard eyes filled with a latent hostility, with mistrust. A woman who, it appeared, no longer had a big heart. The letter he held in his hand certainly had the power to wound, to hurt. But surely that hurt hadn't led to the changes in the girl who stood before him now?

What on earth had happened to her?

Her marriage?

Her ex-husband?

Oscar held out the letter to her and wondered how she was going to react when he told her the truth.

He braced himself.

"I didn't write this," he said.

A natural reaction would be for her to jump to her mother's defence, even outrage, but he could never have imagined what happened next.

The ice that chilled Emma's blood too fast made her whole body give a convulsive shudder of utter horror.

A horrible cold sweat beaded on her top lip, trickled down her back.

The room spun as nausea rose into her throat, stinging her eyes.

These days she was a woman who recognised the fist of shock when she felt it.

Why wasn't she surprised Emma wondered numbly?

Maybe because she read the truth in those steady eyes the colour of dark chocolate. God knew she'd had plenty of recent experience with a consummate liar. And she'd had plenty of recent experience, too, of how her own mother had played mind games and taken the side of her powerful son-in-law against her only daughter.

On legs that felt like jelly, Emma moved to stand before Oscar, took the letter from his hand, read the words again.

She blinked rapidly.

Why hadn't she seen it, the same phrases, the same words before now?

Hadn't she heard them ringing in her ears day after day?

Her mother hated Oscar.

And Emma knew what was at the bottom of that hatred... his ethnicity.

Heartsick, a wave of shame rose in her lungs, that her own mother could stoop so low. Now she realised just how deep the depth of her mother's betrayal went.

The room swam as a hot fist closed her throat.

Dear God how could she bear this?

How could she face the man standing in front of her?

A man who was waiting for her to speak.

What was she supposed to say?

Silence.

Oscar cleared his throat.

"If you look at the handwriting very carefully, you'll see it's not a particularly good forgery. You do realise your mother wrote it?" he asked in a soft voice, as if to gentle the blow.

Blinking rapidly, Emma's eyes stayed glued to the floor.

She couldn't look at him.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you know why she did it?”

Her hand fisted around the letter.

“Yes. I want to apologise to you on my mother’s behalf, Oscar. Her thoughts and opinions on certain subjects utterly shame me.”

"Look at me."

It cost her, but she lifted her head.

The compassion that burned in those dark eyes, for her, almost broke her.

However, it was the pity she saw there, too, that had her chin wobble.

“You have nothing to apologise for, Emma. You are not responsible for the actions of your mother. I’m sorry that by lashing out at me, she hurt you, she hurt us.”

Emma's throat burned.

His face blurred.

She became aware that Oscar was standing too close, of the sound of his breathing, the scent of his familiar cologne. The realisation of how much she'd lost, they'd lost, threatened to break her. And all at the hands of her own mother.

She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but it was too late for that now.

Oscar had a new life.

Instead she turned, moved away.

"What happened with your husband?"

Emma stopped dead, didn't turn around.

After everything that had happened between then, everything that had been revealed, the one thing Oscar deserved was the truth, nothing but the truth.

But now wasn't the time.

Her brain needed time to process, to think.

Emma knew she was on the edge of a breakdown, she recognised the signs.

And knew she couldn't take any more of this.

She battled like a warrior to drag oxygen into burning lungs.

The result was unsteady breath.

"Our relationship was... all wrong... a big mistake. It didn’t work out. And I don’t want to talk about it."

"Emma..."

She shook her head, kept walking.

"I worked through the night. I need a shower. Perhaps we can talk later?"

Her marriage was a big mistake. It didn’t work out. That’s it?

Oscar heard the hitch in her voice, saw the shudder tremble through Emma as she straightened her spine, lifted her chin, walked into the bedroom and closed the door with a soft click.

Two minutes later he heard the sound of the shower, and told himself it was only natural that Emma was devastated by her mother's behaviour.

He understood that devastation, he'd seen it in her eyes.

Mind reeling, Oscar couldn't work out why the whole conversation had felt weird... all wrong.

But something was very wrong.

He could taste it.

The girl was a nervous wreck.

And no fucking wonder.

Christ, Catherine Ludlow was a piece of work.

As soon as his time in Eden was over, Oscar promised himself he'd be paying her mother a little visit. No way was he going to let the woman get away with manipulating his life or Emma's. No way.

To be honest Oscar wasn't at all thrilled to re-hash what had taken place in Emma's marriage either. But something bad had happened to her, something she didn't want to talk about. He hadn't missed the way she'd flinched from him when she opened the door, the way she'd braced herself as if for a blow.

Now his eyes slitted as a foul feeling tickled his gut, his intuition.

He might not want to accept the concept that now snuck unerringly into his brain, the idea that she might have suffered abuse at the hands of a man. If Senator Richard Murray III had laid a finger on Emma, he'd fucking kill him.

Oscar hadn't followed events in Emma’s neck of the woods, having determinedly put her right out of his mind. But surely, if she'd been having serious trouble in her marriage, Nico or Alexander would not only have told Oscar, but they'd have done something about it. Neither man was the type of person to just stand by when family was hurting.

Plus his friends
knew
he still had feelings for her.

What the hell was going on?

And right there he promised himself he'd have a little chat with his best friends, too.

No way was it an accident that he and Emma were in Eden at the same time.

No way.

The whole set-up in Eden had the fingerprints of Nico Ferranti and Alexander Ludlow all over it.

It took a while for the first part of Emma's response to hit him.

What the hell did she mean by,
she'd worked through the night?

Turning to study the chaos in the room, Oscar had a fastidious streak a mile wide, he bent to retrieve a couple of pages of paper from the floor. A manuscript, he realised. Then he moved to check out the desk, the laptop, the ergonomic chair. She was typing a piece of writing for someone?

He frowned when he spotted the bowl of candy, the mug of coffee gone cold.

No wonder the woman was jittery, she'd too much sugar and caffeine in her system.

Jeez, the place was a mess, with an inch of dust covering the glass topped tables. Had she always been untidy? Oscar couldn't remember. Surely he should be able to remember? Or had he been too wrapped up in the heat of lust and the flush of true love to see Emma as she really was? Not that it mattered to him if she was messy. Who the hell cared about that?

Then he admitted that three years ago they hadn't had the chance to get to know one another, not really.

Oscar made short work of gathering up papers strewn on the coffee table, the floor, and left them on a tidy pile next to her laptop. He picked up candy wrappers, chip packets, a couple of apple cores and dumped them in the bin in the kitchen. He noticed wine remained untouched and there was hardly a dent in the fruit bowl. He washed his hands before moving to the refrigerator. Oscar ensured the staff placed plenty of fresh and nutritious food in the fridges and the cupboards of all the private apartments. Shaking his head, he pulled out a carton of eggs, cheese, sniffed the milk, and began whipping up an omelet. For a moment he stopped, wondered what the hell he was doing?

He shrugged.

The least he could do was feed her, and then he'd find out what was going on.