Duke tagged along after him. “Not a date? Hey man, that’s not the way it looked. You couldn’t take your eyes off the lady. Can’t say I blame you. I wouldn’t mind dating her myself. Is she available?”
T.J. swung around, the drum in his head beating louder than ever, his stomach about to rebel. “If that’s all you have on your mind, get lost!”
“Hold your fire,” Duke protested. “I came to tell you your dad called while you were off yesterday afternoon doing whatever it was you say you weren’t doing.”
T.J. scowled. In his present weakened condition, the last thing he needed was sexual innuendo. “Any message?”
“Nope,” Duke answered cheerfully. “The boss said he’d see you today.”
T.J. eyed his foreman. He wore a wide grin and looked too pleased with himself to be innocent. “What else did you tell him?”
Duke shrugged. “I could have mentioned the ba—the lady and the sexy outfit she was wearing.”
“Jeez!” T.J. cussed under his breath. “That’s all I need the way I feel. Testosterone talk. Go back to work.”
When Duke left whistling cheerfully, T.J. dropped down on the wooden crate and took a deep breath. It hadn’t taken Duke’s remarks to make him realize that what was bothering him wasn’t so much the heat as some unfinished business. He’d been taught from day one never to leave for tomorrow what he should do today. No wonder he felt uneasy.
His mind’s eye flashed back to Emily. How she’d gazed at him as if he, and only he, could be her knight in shining armor. Instead of saving her, he’d chickened out at the earliest opportunity. What kind of a hero did that make him?
Maybe that was why he felt so lousy.
Duke was right. In her slip of a sundress, Emily had been a bundle of femininity fetching enough to draw the attention of every man within eyesight.
She’d certainly been all woman. To his chagrin, his instinctive response to her had been all male. Her sensuality and his reaction must have come through loud and clear or Duke wouldn’t have commented on it. At his age, he should have known better than to let sex appeal get to him.
How Emily felt about him was another story, he mused unhappily, but a promise made was no promise kept when there was unfinished business to take care of.
All the more reason for him to go back to the hotel, stop Emily from coming up with a fake marriage certificate and think of another idea. If she wound up in trouble, he’d never be able to live with himself.
The point was, he chided himself, he knew enough about the transfer of real estate holdings to be aware that printing up a fake marriage certificate had to be illegal. Emily might be willing to take a chance, but not him. He had his conscience, the family business and the Kirkpatrick name to consider. The last thing he wanted to do was get into trouble with the law.
A horn sounded a tattoo, and T.J. glanced up to see his father’s specially equipped van roll up to the work site. Since the automobile accident two years ago, he’d conducted business from home.
T.J. took another swallow of tepid water and sauntered to meet the van. “What brings you here this morning, Dad?”
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