Page 60 of The Way to a Cowboy's Heart

Emily squeezed her eyes shut, and he could imagine her silently counting. “You can stay, Liam. And Father, you should go.”

“All right, then. We’ll do this in front of him. I don’t know what you were thinking, following this fellow out here from New York, but according to Muriel, you’re apparently smitten with theideaof a… a cowboy.”

“Oh, she told you that, did she?”

“She did,” Malcolm said, seeming to enjoy this too much.

“I think that’s a lie. Muriel would never say that. Shall I call her and check?”

“For God’s sake, Emily—” her father said.

“And none of that is any of your business anyway,” she went on. “I can’t imagine what inspired this visit, unless—”

Malcolm eagerly jumped in. “You made quite a splash in the British tabloids. Photos and everything of you kissing up your muddy cowboy here.” He swept a hand through the rain, declaring,“Lord Collum Quinn’s daughter, caught up in a Wall Street scandal, hiding out in Montana. Hooks up with a rough and tumble American cowboy. What’s next?”Seriously, Emily. It’s embarrassing.”

Horrified, she met Liam’s confused look. The photographer. In the restaurant. He was a plant. And the man on the road who saw them kissing? Same bastard journalist. The British press was relentless and constantly digging up dirt on those in power. Somehow, he’d found her here. Never in her life had she been paid any attention by the press. And she had every right to be here. To travel where she wanted, to hook up with whomever she wanted. And the only man she wanted was Liam.

“So,” she said. “Suddenly my private life is important to you when somehow it never mattered to you before?”

“Our father has never been part of the Lords’ Chamber before,” Malcolm said. “And I’m on the brink of running for MP. Think, Emily. Think about someone besides yourself.”

“The right people will pay little attention to all that,” her father said, taking a step toward her, to which she took an equal step back. “Emily. Please. You’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to come home. There’s an excellent job waiting for you back in London. I went to a lot of trouble to procure it for you. I called in a lot of favors. And all this fuss is unnecessary.”

“No one asked you to do that.”

“I thought you’d be grateful. Considering that you’re apparentlypersona-non-gratain New York.”

“Did you honestly think I’d be grateful for you coming here to humiliate me? To collect me as if I were some five-year-old? To save me from myself?” To Malcolm, she said, “Blame me for keeping you out of politics?”

“That… is certainly not our—”

“Well, you’ve accomplished it, as usual. And by the way, for all these years, the press has had no reason to follow me for my own sake. But only because of you two, who have literally left me alone all this time. So, tell me why I should care?” Behind the gate, the mama cow bawled for her calf. “Now if you’ll excuse us, there’s a calf that needs warming.”

“You’ll lose the job,” he warned. “If you don’t come back with us now.”

She turned back to him, rain dripping off her soaking hair, thunder rumbling across the sky. “Oh, you mean the job I had no part in getting? The one no one has even spoken to me about directly? The one that’s a grand favor to you?”

“The job that’s everything you’ve always wanted, Emily? Yes. That job. It’s respectable. It’s on a partner track.A partner, Emily. With all the benefits that comes with. It’s a dream package. The money? It’s quite good. And Garrett Falkner has already said he will not hold what happened in New York against you. He hired you because of all you accomplished in New York, because of your reputation. I simply opened that door for you and asked him to consider you. Yes, as a favor to me, but in the end, you got the job. But he won’t hold it for long. He expects you on Monday. And they’re going to deport you anyway. You can’t stay.”

Liam watched what her father said register on her face. Steal some of the anger from her expression. He watched the possibility of that good life far away from him seep into her eyes.

Emily shot a hopeless look at Liam.

“Or you could marry me,” Liam said impulsively. “You could stay here. Marry me. They couldn’t deport you.”

Shocked, she grabbed his arm. “Liam.”

“No, I mean it.Stay.Stay here with me. You don’t need to go.”

“I—” Tears suddenly filled her eyes, but she shook her head.

“There it is,” Malcolm told his father. “Well done, Emily. You managed to wrangle a proposal from the man for a green card. I told you that was her whole point in coming here. One way or another, to stay in this country come hell or high water. But even I never—”

She gasped and slapped Malcolm hard across the cheek. “Sod off, Malcolm.”

He reeled backward, grabbing his cheek, then he bared his teeth at her with an ugly laugh. “Ahhh.She doth protest too much.”

“Malcolm, for God’s sake. Shut the hell up!” Lord Quinn scolded. “Emily—”

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