He didn’t release her. “Maybe. But then, again, maybe I’m right.”

He kissed her again, his hands sliding up her sides, pressing against the outsides of her breasts, making her shudder with wanting. She came all too close to melting against him, begging him to do whatever he could to tempt her to stay.

With a massive effort, she tore her mouth from beneath his, planted both hands against his chest and gave a slight push. It was like trying to move a granite wall. “You aren’t right,” she insisted, her voice hardly recognizable even to her. “Nothing is going to stop me from leaving this town and finding a life somewhere else.”

He brushed his fingers over her swollen lips. “You’re sure about that?”

“Ab—” She stopped to clear her voice. “Absolutely.”

“Then there’s no reason we shouldn’t spend a little time together before you go, is there? Nothing at all for you to be nervous about.”

The slightest hint of a taunt in his voice made her eyes narrow. “I’m not nervous about spending time with you,” she corrected him firmly. “I was only trying to spare you from being the topic of small-town gossip.”

“Oh. So you were turning me down for my own sake.” This time he made no effort to hide his disbelief. “How very thoughtful of you.”

She shoved again, and this time he let her go. She planted her fists on her hips, knowing she looked anything but intimidating with her hair all tumbled and her mouth still damp from his kisses. But she tried to speak coolly, anyway. “Okay, fine. If you don’t care what the people around here say about you, then why should I?”

“Exactly. So you’ll go out with me?”

She shrugged. “Why not? I have some spare time in the next week or so, and I find you rather amusing.”

If she’d been trying to annoy him—and she had—she failed. Wade laughed. “I find you rather amusing, too, Emily McBride,” he murmured, and brushed a kiss across the tip of her nose. “I’ll call you.”

“Fine.”

Only after Wade had left, carrying his sleeping son in his arms, did it occur to Emily that she had just been manipulated by an expert.

What had she been thinking? Hadn’t she been determined not to get involved with Wade Davenport? And now she’d agreed to go out with him. And if she backed out now, he would be convinced it was because she was afraid of falling in love with him, or some such nonsense.

She gulped, wondering nervously just how nonsensical that idea really was.

“WHAT’S THIS I HEAR about you dating Emily McBride?” Martha Godwin demanded of Wade on Monday afternoon. She had come to his office on the pretext of complaining about the noise her neighbor’s teenagers made in the afternoons after school, but Wade sensed that she had just admitted the real reason for her visit

“What makes you think I’m dating Emily McBride?” Wade asked mildly, unwrapping a stick of gum—only because he knew it annoyed Martha when he chewed it.

She eyed him suspiciously. “You haven’t been on a date with her?”

“No,” he replied, though that was only a technicality now that he’d finally finagled a tentative agreement out of Emily. But it was the truth. They hadn’t officially been on a date as of yet. And it was none of Martha Godwin’s business that Wade intended to remedy that situation as soon as possible.

“I also heard that you’re buying her house.”

“That part is true,” he acknowledged. “I’ve made an offer, and the deal is underway. It takes a while to get all the paperwork filed.”

“Where’s she going to live when you move into her place?”

“I don’t know. I’m not privy to her personal business.”

But Martha Godwin wouldn’t have recognized a hint if it walked up and pinched her broad butt, he thought when she only nodded and said, “Well, it wouldn’t be so bad if you were to ask her out Emily’s a nice girl. Past time she settled down with a husband and family of her own. I guess that’s why she had to sell the house and land? Too much for her to take care of by herself? Not that her father was ever any help to her. Of course, I heard his medical bills ran up pretty high, too. Guess she needed the money from the sale of the place.”

Wade remained silent.

“Yes, I think you and Emily would make a nice couple,” Martha continued with a nod of her silvery head, as if the whole thing had been her idea from the beginning. “You need a mother for that little boy, and she needs a man to take care of her. You can bet she won’t be getting any help from that no-account, murdering brother of hers, wherever he is. Just like his father, that boy was. Mean as a snake and a temper like a volcano. Josiah, Jr. was a thoroughly unpleasant man. His first wife died of pneumonia, and she didn’t seem to want to fight very hard to live. And his second wife, the wildest young woman we’ve ever seen in these parts, ran off after being married to him less than five years. Maybe folks could’ve understood her leaving Josiah, but she shouldn’t have run off with another woman’s husband, leaving his family and her own little girl behind to grieve.”

Wade could almost feel the blood trickling out of the side of his mouth as he bit his tongue to keep himself from responding to anything Martha Godwin had just said.

“Hmmph,” she muttered, studying his face and apparently coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of gossiping with her. “Well, you see what you can do about those Smith kids, you hear? And what have you done about those break-ins around here lately? It’s been going on for more than a month now, and as far as I can see, you and your officers haven’t done a thing about them.”

“The case is still under investigation, Mrs. Godwin. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

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