The Billionaire's Secret Kink Box Set: Knox: Secret Alpha Billionaire Romance Bundle (Rosesson Brothers Book 1) (58 page)

The thought of telling him why she'd been so stupid caused a quivering feeling in her chest. The thought of not telling him and possibly never working things out with him caused a weakness in her legs and made her want to scream.

Jerry was right. She had to tell him. She had to share everything with him and hope he could understand and forgive her.

She jumped up. "You're right Jerry. I will tell him. Pray he will understand." She stopped and hugged him. "Thanks Jerry, you're so smart."

"Don't mention it Em. I'm going to call us back in service."

Emma grabbed her phone from the front and texted Craig.

I'm so sorry about last night. I had a good reason, or at least I thought it was a good reason. Can you talk?

***

Three work days later, and Emma still hadn't talked to Craig. He hadn't responded for two days, but finally he texted her back.

It's ok. It's fine. I don't really want to talk right now.

That response hurt her heart, but at least he had replied. She couldn't bring herself to look for him at the firehouse. She knew an in-person rejection from him would shatter whatever small sense she had that things would be OK. Miraculously, she hadn't seen him on a call lately. He must have had a few days off.

Emma was trying hard to regain some sort of normalcy and keep hope alive in her heart. She let herself sleep on the bed again, replaying Jerry's words over and over in her brain. She wasn't bad - she just had a bit more issues than most people. It wasn't totally her fault.

Finally, she decided to write him a letter and explain it all. He might not want to talk to her, but if he heard the reasons without having to talk to her hopefully he could forgive her. She allowed herself small fantasies about what his reaction might be. Maybe he would call her and ask her out on a date. Maybe they would run across each other on a call, and he would give her a small smile. Maybe he would come to her house and when she opened the door he would take her in his arms and kiss her like he had kissed her at his truck after the wind tunnel. Or like he had kissed her on her couch.

With these big dreams in her heart she sat down and poured the whole story onto paper.

She told him about her past. How her mother had died in childbirth and there was no father's name on her birth certificate, and no one had ever adopted her. Instead she entered the foster system. Her first foster home had lasted until she was almost two. She didn't remember it. Her second foster family had lasted until she was 7. Her foster mom and dad had made all their money with welfare and payments for being foster parents. They weren't horrible parents, but they didn't really care about her or the other four children they fostered either. After her vision about the little girl that died, that family had taken her back to social services. They didn't want a girl who was 'weird'. Emma had then lost contact with Gigi, the oldest girl in the family. Gigi had been ten, and had taken care of Emma, singing her to sleep, calming her fears, and soothing her hurts. Gigi had been like a real and true sister to Emma and Emma had never seen her again. She still sometimes cried over the loss of Gigi, twenty-three years later.

She shared how she had then bounced around a lot, never staying with a family for more than two years. When she was fifteen, one of the teenage boys, also a foster, in the family she was in had taken to teasing her mercilessly in the home and at school. One day he pinned her to the ground behind the shed on the property they lived on and ripped her underwear off. He was touching her all over and her scrabbling hands found a good-sized rock. She pried it out of the dirt and brought it down on his skull, then stood over him feeling more helpless than she ever had in her life as he shook on the ground, blood leaking from his ear. Finally, she started screaming, which brought the family on a run. She shared how she was kicked from that family and went straight to a home for girls. She was never charged with anything, but she never found out if the boy lived or died or recovered or what.

She explained how that had been a defining moment in her life, trying to keep too much emotion out of her words, hoping he would see that these experiences shaped her, but didn't rule her. In the home for girls she had set out to escape the system. She spent every spare moment in the library or at her job grooming animals for a veterinarian. She saved $3000 and petitioned to be emancipated at sixteen. The court granted it and just like that she was on her own. She had to leave the home within seven days, and her plan had been to find an apartment, but even with her emancipation letter in hand, no one would rent to her. On the last day before she was going to be homeless she heard the 1-800-GO-ARMY commercial on the radio and called it. Yes, the army would take an emancipated sixteen year-old as long as she was at least halfway to her seventeenth birthday.

She was, and so she joined. Boot camp and medic training were easy, compared to living in foster homes. She made friends, although she never got too close. The boys liked her but she was scared of getting pregnant, so she held them all at arm's length. There was no way she was ever going back into the system. She wanted freedom, independence, and a real and true family, so she would wait for the right boy.

Finally, she found a boy who pursued her even though she tried to hold him at arm's length. He was strong and sweet and handsome, and he never looked at any of the other girls who fawned all over him. He only seemed to have eyes for Emma. She was working in the emergency room of the Brooke Army Medical Center at the time. He was a medic attached to an infantry unit, and was often pulled in to the E.R. to run sick call for the units. They spent many hours discussing getting married when their tours were over and buying a house and having kids and a dog. If you combined their savings, they had almost $31,000. They didn't need much to live on in the Army.

Then he got deployed with his unit to Afghanistan. He never came home. Emma had had enough loss at this point. She pulled in on herself, shunning even her friends.

When her tour was over, she was twenty-one years old. She felt fifty-one - maybe seventy-one. Dried up, and ready to be done with it all. There was no joy or sunshine in her life. She paid for paramedic school and tried to find a reason to be happy.

Emma thought about whether Craig would want to hear about Norman, and she decided that yes, he needed to hear every sad detail to truly know her and understand why she did what she did. When it was all out in the open, she would never hide who she was again.

Emma wrote about finishing school, returning to Westwood Harbor, and getting a job - then meeting Norman - how he was a young patrol officer who turned women's heads everywhere he went. Even Emma noticed him. She didn't give him a second thought though, because he had a reputation of being a playboy. She had never wanted that.

When he set his sights on her she knew it. He was charming, and intensely focused. He sent flowers frequently. Sometimes he would go out and hand pick them for her. He would monitor her radio and show up when she was eating lunch, plying her with questions about herself, and then he would bring her gifts related to the things she loved the most. She felt flattered, loved, cared for, and wanted. Something she had never felt in all of her childhood. Slowly, she let him in. When they dated he seemed to good to be true. She had no idea that meant he probably was. He forgave her anything. He never got angry. The only emotion he showed to her was happiness and love. He was a tender lover, always putting her needs first. Would she marry him? Of course she would. She was in love with him. Or with the man he was pretending to be. He brought her happiness.

The evening of their wedding, after it was over, was the first time she saw a flash of the real Norman. She had danced with him first of course, and then the best man had asked her to dance. She did, thinking it was tradition. Norman had seemed cold after that, but she didn't know what to think of it. He'd never said a cross word to her, ever.

That night, in their suite, he had argued with her, saying she danced with his best man for too long and she shouldn't have touched her body to his. She was dumbfounded. She had never heard him yell before.

Within a month he hit her, just once, a backhand slap across the face because she forgot to bring home something he asked her to get at the store. She left the house and didn't come back.

He apologized. Said he'd been under a lot of stress at work. Said he couldn't believe he had done it. He became dating Norman again. She found herself crumbling, but didn't want to become one of those abused women, but also didn't want her marriage to fail. She had dreamed of marriage and her own family for so long.

Everything was good for two months, then she came home early one day and found him in her bed with a hooker. A hooker whose face was swollen and red, like he'd been hitting her while screwing her. As Emma left, this time for good and forever, she thought to herself that she really didn't know anything about Norman's past. She'd never met his parents or siblings or even any aunts or uncles. None had come to the wedding - he'd said his siblings were busy and on the East Coast, and his mom and dad were sick and not able to travel. But he'd never shared even a story from his childhood. For the first time she wondered if she wasn't the only one in the marriage with issues.

Norman contested the divorce but the judge granted it anyway. Norman followed Emma for almost a year, trying to convince her to take him back. She had almost filed a restraining order against him many times, but that would have gotten him fired. She didn't want that on her conscience.

Finally, he backed off. And the rest Craig knew. When she tried to date after about a year, Norman ran the men off. Finally she had just given up. She buried her dreams in overtime.

She did, however decide it was time to get healthy. She went to therapy and read books on how to recover from a childhood like she had. She made a lot of progress, and still went to see her doctor occasionally to look for new ways to break through the pain of her past.

Craig had to understand - she wasn't asking for pity. Just baring her soul so maybe he could understand why she did what she did just a little bit.

Then she explained about the vision she had, in which she had seen what she thought was her future husband, and he loved her. The joy from the vision overshadowed every hurt she'd ever felt. This was the man who would be the anti-Norman. He would love her always and be who he said he was and take care of her, and they would have a large family together. That was what she thought anyway. And the man in the vision had dark hair and dark skin.

So even though she had grown to love Craig, she pushed it aside and kicked him out of her life. She was still chasing the vision with desperation. That's what made her go to Reece's apartment. That's what made her ask out Dennis. That's what made her tell Craig no when she really wanted to tell him yes.

And now, now she realized her folly. She was done with the vision. Whether she ever met the man or not, the man she wanted was Craig. Life is for living as it happens, and she realized that now.

Emma re-read the letter and almost tore it up. She felt shame burn her cheeks at how messed up she was. Craig really would not want her now. But no. She straightened her spine and hardened her resolve. This was her and she had promised herself a long time ago she wouldn't hide who she really was anymore. If he could read this and forgive her and possible see her again, then he was a better man than she deserved. But she would work to deserve his love.

She sealed the letter, put a stamp on it, and mailed it to his address.

Craig pulled out the thick fire hose and started checking it for kinks. It was a slow day, and he needed to do something to keep his mind off Emma. He had gotten her letter two days ago. He hadn't read it at first, but the weight of it called to him. He couldn't imagine what she could say that would excuse her behavior that night. But he got curious. Obviously she was going to try.

After reading the letter he really didn't know what to do. He had liked Emma so much - maybe he had even been approaching that edge between like and love. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, and so much like his sweet Lucy, the woman he had thought he was going to marry. But then she rejected him twice. And now the letter. Her past hurt his heart, tore at his soul. But he had personally seen that, although she might have been scarred by it, she wasn't destroyed by it. She had learned to love and care and find joy again. His admiration for her deepened. But he did still feel hurt by her rejection, and a little concerned that maybe she wasn't as healed as she thought she was.

Most of his being wanted to run to her and kiss away every indignity she had ever suffered. The rest of him was scared. Scared that she might see this man in someone else and push him away again.

He didn't want to think about it anymore, he just wanted some peace in his aching brain. So he hauled out another fire hose and went over it even more closely.

Behind him, a large white sedan pulled into the driveway.

He walked over, waving it away, "Hey, you can't park there - you'll block in the fire truck."

Norman Foster got out of the car in plain clothes, badge in hand, large gun on hip.

"This will just take a second," he said, his face a rock.

Craig stopped short, frenzied thoughts filling his head. Norman had no idea that Craig knew who he was did he? No he couldn't, and Craig wanted to keep it that way. This couldn't be good news though, for whoever Norman wanted to see.