Emily

Chapter Six

Nathaniel Whitlock was entirely convinced that Emily Carter was the woman for him and absolutely nothing was going to change that.

He'd first thought it when he'd met her properly at a dinner he'd hosted two years ago. He'd always thought she was very pretty but, once he'd heard her speak with such eloquence and intelligence, he'd realised that she was beautiful. Her mind only enhanced her features, in his opinion.

He knew most men wouldn't agree with him at all, but he liked his women with a brain. He wanted someone he could have a conversation with, not some mindless doll whose days and nights would be spent in anticipation of his needs. He needed a woman who thought for herself, not a girl who would just adorn his arm and warm his bed.

Emily was exactly that sort of woman. She had a mind of her own and she had no qualms about expressing her views. He respected her, and that was the most essential quality of any relationship, whether romantic or not. She was independent and didn't allow others to treat her the way they wanted. She stood up for herself and that was a quality he admired in people of either sex.

The night before, when they'd met in the kitchen and had shared a cup of cocoa, he'd felt so.......alive. There was an inferno in his heart where previously there had only been the slightest embers.

For so long, his entire existence had centred around raising, rearing and loving his sisters. He'd been so focused about teaching them to grow into themselves that he'd forgotten almost entirely who he was. Finally, he was starting to remember something.

He loved his sisters, of course he did, more than anything else in the world. However, he'd left himself behind somewhere along the road between being the boy he once was and becoming the man he had now grown to be. That disconnect had only widened, but with Emily's arrival he was becoming his own person again, and he loved that very much.

The problem lay in the fact that she most probably did not think of him like that. They'd shared a few moments here and there, but she hadn't given anything away. He had made it slightly obvious that he thought of her a certain way, but he had not received any signals on her part that she felt the same.

Besides, it was all too quick. They didn't know each other nearly enough. He wanted to know someone's very soul before he could marry them and, as much as she appealed to him, he didn't know the deepest depths of her character yet. He only knew what she allowed him to see.

But, again, he was progressing much too quickly in his thoughts. He needed to control himself, to breathe.

He found that he couldn't, though. She now occupied the every beat of his heart and every thought that passed through his head, and had turned him into a witless fool who couldn't dream of anything but her.

He hated himself for it, but enjoyed the feeling. It made him feel as if he were floating through the clouds, embracing the sky as he danced through the blue with silver wings. It was the strangest feeling he'd ever had, as well as the sappiest but he couldn't change the fact that that was what it was. It was incredibly silly, and he'd never admit it to anyone else, though.

He groaned, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his temples for the briefest of seconds before looking up. This was bound to end in disaster, in him having his heart broken and his feelings hurt, but he could not stop himself from becoming more and more involved.

He couldn't even focus on his damned tenant agreements because all he could think of was her offering to help him with his work and pondering a situation in which she did, in which they would spend many a sleepless nights poring over boring documents together until, someday, he found it in him to kiss her.