Cold Comfort (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 5)

“Damn.” Oliver knew he had just hurt her but had no idea why considering the situation between them was now personal should upset her so. Determined to get it out into the open, Oliver threw a disgusted look at Rhys and Harry, who were now actively unsaddling their horses, before he followed Emmeline into the house.

The door slammed loudly behind him, not least to warn his colleagues that the situation between him and Emmeline was not good. Oliver hoped the men would have the good grace to give him a little time alone with her and would stay outside, however they couldn’t stay in the yard forever. Because he knew time was short, Oliver didn’t waste a moment to follow Emmeline through the house to her bed chamber, which was located at the top of the second flight of stairs. There, he caught her standing before the window, staring blankly out of a side window which overlooked the lower end of the house’s rather unkempt garden.

“Emmeline, we have to talk about this,” he began as he stalked into the room without bothering to knock.

“Everything is fine. There is nothing to talk about.” Her voice, while perfectly normal, contrasted with the stiff set of her shoulders, underwritten by the fact that she didn’t turn around to talk to him as he suspected she would usually have done had she not been upset.

He edged closer. When she still refused to look at him, he turned her to face him. At first, she refused. But his gentle persistence forced her to give in and she reluctantly turned around.

“God, don’t cry,” he whispered.

“It is nothing.” She offered him a brave smile. “I just cannot do this right now.”

“What?”

“This.” She waved a hand between them. “Us.”

“You regret it.”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” she hissed, more annoyed with herself than with him.

“What do you want me to do, offer for you?” He asked quietly, well aware that she might consider he had ruined her reputation by being so forward with her.

And on such a short acquaintance as well.

“No.” She huffed a laugh. “God, no. You have your investigation to get on with, and I, well, have my life here. Well, my own home. You are going to ride out of my life when this is all over.”

She didn’t ask, but the question was there.

“I have to continue working with the Star Elite, Emmeline. It is not just my job it is who I am now. I cannot conceive of doing anything else with my time,” Oliver reasoned. “I won’t give up the Star Elite for anybody.”

“I don’t believe that anybody should ever ask you to,” she replied crisply.

“That’s good then.”

“Yes. But it means that you are going to leave and continue with your investigation, or start a new one somewhere else, and I am going to stay here. Our lives will always be separate,” she said quietly with an air of sadness that made tears spring back into her eyes. “The last thing I need are any romantic entanglements.”

“Do you plan on any others?” The idea of Emmeline sharing with someone else what he had just shared with her was enough to make him positively shiver with jealousy. His scowl of objection was instinctive, his annoyance strong as he glared challengingly at her, almost daring her to admit to having a secret lover somewhere she had yet to tell him about.

“No.” Emmeline sucked in a breath. She had no idea why she was reluctant to admit to him that she couldn’t conceive of ever feeling with another man the way Oliver had made her feel. “But that isn’t to say that I won’t have a romantic entanglement in the future. It is just that I have spent the last several weeks of my life worrying over my sister. While her demise really comes at no surprise, it is still unexpected. I still have her funeral to arrange and now, my life is in complete disarray through no fault of my own. You know that. I am not even living in my own home. I have been swept out of it and thrown into your world without having ever done anything wrong. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for you to come into my life and make me think things, feel things, a young woman like me shouldn’t think or feel. It isn’t right, but I don’t know what it is that makes me incapable of defeating it. It’s annoying.”

Oliver grinned at

her frown of confusion. When Emmeline saw it, she glared at him.

“Do not mock me,” she glared.

“I am not,” he replied honestly. His smile didn’t diminish. “I just didn’t think you would know how I feel. I don’t want any romantic entanglements right now either but was unable to defeat whatever it was that overtook us back there. There was absolutely nothing I can do to ignore this attraction that overcomes me whenever we are together. What we share has the capacity to throw both of our lives into chaos. My life is in about as much disarray as I can handle, not least because if we don’t succeed in this mission the Star Elite could be forced to disband. I don’t know what I would do then. It has been such a large part of my life for so long now that I don’t know what would be left if it wasn’t a part of my life.”

Emmeline sighed and looked ruefully at him. “Now what?”

“I wish I knew,” Oliver growled. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I wish I knew.”

In that moment, several more men rode into the stable yard.

“You have company you need to go and talk to. Go. I will be all right but shall stay up here, if that is all right with you. I will be down in a while,” she assured him.

“Sure?”