Enticing Emily (Southern Scandals 3)

Somewhat suspiciously, Emily studied Wade’s pleasant, friendly-looking expression. Finding nothing there to alarm her, she sighed faintly and reacted the way she always did when townspeople showed up on her doorstep. She held the door open.

“I suppose this is as good a time as any. Won’t you come in, Chief Davenport?”

Wade promptly took her up on the invitation.

WADE COULDN’T HELP noticing that Emily McBride’s living room looked as though it belonged to a little old lady, not the attractive young woman she was. He doubted that the decor had been changed in the past twenty years, if not more.

He’d done his research since meeting her. He knew Emily had grown up in this house. That her father had left his entire estate—little as it was reported to be—to Emily when he’d died less than six months ago. He was also aware that it was not yet common knowledge in Honoria that Emily had listed the house for sale.

Wade glanced around the room with the eyes of a potential buyer. He’d been renting a little bungalow since moving to Honoria four months ago, hoping to find a house to buy, but nothing had appealed to him yet. Emily McBride’s place interested him—almost as much as she did.

The house sat on twenty acres of mostly wooded property, seven miles out of town. The yard surrounding the frame structure was a good size. Needed some landscaping work done, but very nice, on the whole. The house itself was white, wood-sided, with big, black-shuttered windows and a wide, wraparound porch. Four bedrooms and two baths, according to the Realtor. A large, open living area with a fireplace. Probably a big kitchen. The house, too, could use some work—just general maintenance things Wade could do himself, for the most part—but it looked to be in pretty good shape. It was a house meant for a family.

Wade could picture himself living here with his son.

A wheezy, overweight gray poodle that had to be fifteen years old, at least, danced noisily around Wade.

“Be quiet, Oliver,” Emily ordered sharply.

The dog subsided into disgruntled rumbles. Wade had always thought poodles were pleasant, good-natured dogs, but this one had him revising his opinion.

Emily motioned toward a comfortable-looking sofa. “Please have a seat, Chief Davenport. I have iced tea, or I can make a pot of coffee, if you’d like some.”

“Iced tea sounds good.” Feeling a bit like a bull in a china shop, he made his way around a table loaded with fragile bric-a-brac.

“I’ll be right back.” She turned and hurried out of the room.

Wade watched her until she was out of sight—she looked darned good in her jeans, he couldn’t help noticing—and then turned his attention back to her living space, ignoring the dog who stood guard at the doorway.

An antique cherry sideboard against the wall nearest the sofa was particularly interesting. It was covered with photographs. Dozens of them. Old sepia-toned portraits. Newer, color studio poses. Framed snapshots—black-and-white from decades past, color shots that looked much more recent. There were pictures of children, teenagers, adults, family groups, even a portrait of a beautiful Irish setter. There were no photos of the irritable poodle.

The collection had obviously been arranged by someone to whom family was very important. Was Emily the one who’d assembled all these photos, or had it been started by her parents? And if she was the one who so carefully maintained the collection, why was she selling her family home?

Wade was finding Emily McBride more interesting with every observation he made of her, and with every snippet of information anyone had told him about her.

Emily returned carrying a tray that held two glasses of iced tea and a plate of assorted cookies. She set it carefully on the low table in front of Wade, then took a seat on a small chair facing him. “Now,” she said, “what can I do for you, Chief Davenport?”

The totally inappropriate replies that popped immediately into Wade’s mind startled him.

Stick to the job, Davenport, he reminded himself irritably.

“First,” he said, “I want to apologize for that awkward scene in your employer’s office. I’m not sure I handled that very well.”

She frowned, but lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “You probably had little choice. I know what Sam Jennings can be like.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just learning. Coming into a new town, there’s a lot to understand about the people here. Like the interpersonal relationships, for example.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying ‘family feuds’?” she asked wryly. “I’m surprised you didn’t learn about the bad blood between the McBrides and the Jennings as soon as you walked into your office the first day.”

Wade hadn’t heard about it quite that early, but he’d been told a fair bit since Jennings had made his accusations on Friday. Now he wanted to hear about it from Emily. “Just how long has this ‘feud’ been going on?”

“Since long before I was born. I think it started with my great-grandfather and Sam Jennings’s grandfather. It’s been going on in one way or another ever since. It’s, um, particularly ugly when it comes to my branch of the family.”

“Sam Jennings has a reason to want to hurt you, personally?” Wade had already wondered if Jennings disliked Emily enough to plant evidence of a crime against her. The animosity that Sam had shown toward Emily in the bank president’s office had seemed totally out of proportion to the unsubstantiated accusations he’d made against her.

“Sam hated my father. I think Sam may have dated my mother when they were in high school, but I don’t know if that was the entire problem. My father wouldn’t talk about the Jennings family.” She drew a deep breath, then added, “My mother ran off with Sam’s older brother when I was little more than a baby. Al Jennings was also married, and the father of two children at the time. No one has heard from him or my mother in the past twenty-four years. I don’t even know if they’re still alive.”

Emily presented those unpleasant facts with a firmly lifted chin, but her eyes spoke of the heartache of an abandoned little girl. Wade doubted that she realized quite how much those big, blue eyes of hers revealed—or how deeply he reacted to the echoes of her pain.