Emily and the Stranger
Read Emily and the Stranger Online
Authors: Beverly Barton
Tags: #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #General
Contents:
Prologue
D
arkness surrounded Emily, pressing her down, down, down. Thick, heavy smoke obliterated everything in its path, spreading throughout the room and taking away the very air she breathed. Dropping to her knees, she called out to Stuart. She could barely see him.
"Get on the floor and stay there," Stuart said. "Crawl toward the door. I'm right behind you."
He tugged on her foot. Sighing, Emily lowered herself to the carpet, careful not to bear all her weight on her stomach. Above all else, she had
to
protect her unborn child.
A thunderous boom shook the building. Emily screamed. Stuart reached out for her, grabbing her ankle. She gazed up into the swirling black mass above her. A burst of flames shot down from the ceiling.
Sirens sang a high-pitched, never-ending song somewhere outside. Emily prayed that help would reach them in time.
Stuart released his hold on her ankle. "Crawl, Em. Get
to
the door."
Following his directions, she inched her way across the living room, past the sofa, and toward the closed door. Only a few more feet. The hem of Emily's nightgown caught on the edge of the magazine rack by Stuart's recliner. Jerking to free herself she ripped the pink silk.
Surely the firemen would find them quickly. Their apartment was only on the third floor. Any minute now their rescuers would burst through the front door and carry Stuart and her to safety. Suddenly a shattering rumble shook the room. A hot, fiery weight hit Emily's back and flattened her
to
the floor. She cried out once, twice, three times. The pain! Dear God, the unbearable pain!
"Help us! Stuart! Oh. God, someone help us!"
Moaning, Emily lifted her head, then eased back down on the pillow. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. "Stuart? Help us. Stuart!"
She didn't have the strength to open her eyes. The fierce reality of the dream had drained her physically as well as emotionally, and the pain eating away at her flesh was as strong as it had been two years ago when burning shards of the ceiling had fallen across her back.
She had lost everything that mattered to her. She had longed to die, had pleaded with Uncle Fowler to let her die, but he had willed her to live. Stuart's uncle had prayed for her life when she had begged God to let her die. He had given her his strength when she had none of her own.
"I'm here, Emily. I'm here." Fowler
Jordan
leaned over his niece's bed. He placed his slender hand on Emily's head and petted her tenderly.
"It hurts, Uncle Fowler." Even the soothing touch of Fowler Jordan's hand could not ease her suffering.
Opening her eyes a fraction, Emily stared up at her husband's much loved uncle and noted the sorrow and worry in his dark blue eyes.
Uncle Fowler loves me so dearly that he can't bear
to
see me confined
to
my stomach and suffering again, after yet another operation.
"I know how it must hurt," Fowler said. "But it'll stop hurting very soon now. I promise you, my sweet girl."
Emily gripped a piece of the sheet that lay beneath her hand, wadding it tightly in her grip. Parting her lips, she tried to speak, but emitted only a breathy moan. Her eyelids closed.
"I don't think she can hear you, Mr. Jordan," the nurse said. "She doesn't seem to be fully conscious. She's probably just talking in her sleep."
"Yes, she does that a lot these days," Fowler said. "She's reliving that horrible morning."
But I'm awake!
Emily wanted to tell them.
I'm not talking in my sleep.
She tried to open her eyes once again, wanting desperately to communicate with her uncle, to tell the man who had been her lifeline these past two years that she needed more medication. How long had it been since the last injection? Dear God, it didn't matter whether it had been four hours or thirty minutes. She needed something not just to ease the pain, but to put her into a deep, dreamless sleep.
But the nurse wouldn't give her a shot if it wasn't time for one. They doled out the medication as if it were liquid gold.
Concentrate, dammit, concentrate on something other than the pain. You've endured worse than this; you can defeat the pain
if
you try hard enough.
Sighing heavily, Emily eased her eyelids open again and in her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of the private nurse her uncle had hired for the twelve-hour day shift. Ann Loggins. That was the woman's name. She was sweet, attentive, caring, but a bit nosy and such a chatterbox.
"That terrible fire happened nearly two years ago, didn't it?" Ms. Loggins spoke softly. "Your Emily's been a real trouper, I'll say that for her. She never complains, except in her sleep, like she just did. And to think this sixth surgery won't be enough. How on earth will she endure another one?"
"She'll endure it the way she's endured everything else that has happened to her." With his gaze centered on Emily's misty, half-focused eyes, Fowler smoothed back the dark, damp strands of hair that stuck to his niece's pale cheek. "Are you sure she's not fully conscious?" Fowler asked. "She keeps opening her eyes."
"She may be partially conscious, Mr.
Jordan
," Nurse Loggins said. "She's drifting in and out, but I doubt if she understands anything we're saying. She's heavily medicated."
"My poor sweet darling. When she lost Stuart and the baby, she didn't want to live. She's gone from wanting to die to unemotional acceptance of whatever comes her way."
"Someday she'll marry again and have another child. She's too young and beautiful to mourn forever." Ann Loggins opened the window blinds, letting in slivers of bright morning sunshine.
Emily blinked several times. The light hurt her eyes.
"I'm afraid Emily will never consider herself a beautiful woman again," Fowler whispered. "Dr. Morris has told us that no amount of surgery will ever completely erase those ugly scars from her back."
"The right man won't care that she's scarred. He'll love Emily for all the reasons you love her."
"The right man will have his work cut out for him." Fowler sighed. "Emily's grandmother raised her to be a bit old-fashioned. She always wanted a husband and children as much as she wanted a career. Now she's afraid to care about anyone or anything."
Emily closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, bitterness rising in her throat. Didn't Uncle Fowler understand? Didn't anyone understand that she couldn't let herself care, that she didn't dare dream of a happy future? It would have been better if she had died, too. When the apartment building where she and Stuart had lived for less than a year had collapsed and caught on fire, why had God taken Stuart and the baby and allowed her to live—to suffer so unbearably?
After Stuart's death, she had been hospitalized for months, so Uncle Fowler, on her behalf, had joined forces with the residents of Ocean Breeze Apartments. They had brought suit against the contractors who had cut corners, used substandard materials and paid off a building inspector when they'd built the apartment complex.
Consumed with grief and pain and rage, she had been determined to see Styles and Hayden bankrupted, and had rejoiced in their ruin. If she'd had her way, the two men would be rotting in jail right now. But Randall Styles had disappeared off the face of the earth before the trial. Then shortly after the jury awarded a settlement to the Ocean Breeze residents and no criminal charges were brought against him, M. R. Hayden had left town.
For months afterward, Emily had longed for revenge. She had told herself that if there was any justice in this world, the two men responsible for her torment would learn the real meaning of pain. And even now, two years later, after reading and rereading the transcripts from the trial and learning that M. R. Hayden had been duped by Randall Styles, she could not find it in her heart to forgive him any more than she could forgive his guilty partner. She hoped they both burned in hell.
* * *
The policeman tried to hold him back, but he rammed his way through the barricade, only
to
be stopped by two other officers blocking the entrance
to
Ocean Breeze Apartments.
"Just where do you think you're going?" the young, freckle-faced cop asked. "If you've got family inside, take it easy. They've gotten nearly everyone out. There are just a few people left."
"Please,
if
there's anyone trapped in there, let me help," Mitchell Ray Hayden begged the policemen.
"Look, check over there," the older officer said. "Whoever you're looking for is probably in that crowd yonder."
Mitch glanced at the men, women and children huddled in small groups near the row
of
emergency vehicles. Most of them wore pajamas, gowns, robes or hastily pulled-on jeans. Some of the children clung
to
their mothers; others sat in their fathers' lops, their frightened eyes filled with tears. All their soot-streaked faces blurred together in front of Mitch's eyes.
Dear God, how had this happened? But he knew. The proof of what he had suspected for several weeks now, and had only confirmed yesterday, stood in front
of
him. The collapsed apartment building, in flames, its residents barely escaping death, told him more than he wanted to know about his own stupidity.
He had been a fool
to
trust Randy Styles. A greedy, egotistical fool! He had wanted it all, and had been willing
to
do whatever it took to make it big. But he'd never agreed
to
Randy cutting corners, using substandard material or paying off the building inspector.
Mitch had never meant for something like this
to
happen. If only he had uncovered the truth a little sooner, maybe, just maybe, this disaster could have been prevented.
"Please, sir, move out
of
the way." The redheaded policeman nudged Mitch. "They're bringing someone out now."
A fireman rushed through the front entrance, a still body lying in his arms. Medical attendants scurried toward him
to
take the woman and place her facedown on a stretcher.
"She's badly burned," the fireman said. "Not much flesh left on her back."
Pain hit Mitch square in the gut. No, please, no!
"But she's better off than her husband, I guess." The fireman shook his head. "We didn't get to him in time to save him."