I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to update. I was busy writing my entry for the Fic This Gif Anonymous Entry Contest (see my list of favourite authors for the competition page) and then I suffered a particularly dry creative spell. I hope some of you are still with me!

You know that I'm not breaching copyright with my scribbles.

Word prompt: beckon

This chapter continues right where the last one left off, but here's a little reminder.

"But the real Emmett is still buried beneath the surface. I know you've caught glimpses of it. I need you, Rose. Emmett needs you, even if he won't admit it himself yet.

Will you help me to save my son?"


Rose opened her mouth to speak without any clear ideas about what to say to Mr Masen. She was saved from having to answer by the office door bursting open behind her. Never before had she been so relieved to see Emmett McCarty.

"Ms Hale, there you are! I've left a stack of papers on your desk to be typed and I need you to set up the equipment for my video-conference call at eleven."

When Rose didn't immediately react to his summons, Emmett beckoned imperiously, eyebrows raised, and walked out without a second glance. With that charming display of manners, Rose looked at Mr Masen somewhat forlornly and gathered the detritus from their morning snack.

"All I ask is that you think about what I've said, Rose. I wouldn't ask if I didn't think you both had something worthwhile to gain."

Rose pursed her lips at this last comment, but nodded and left him with a gentle smile.

When she returned to her desk, Emmett was leaning against it, scrutinising her approach.

"I thought I made it clear that you are my employee, Ms Hale. When you arrive in this building, I expect you to begin work immediately, not spend your time gossiping and drinking tea with my father."

Rose took a deep breath, but held her cool as she breezed past Emmett and took a seat at her desk. She began organising her papers in the hope that he would leave, but he remained standing beside her. She looked up, poised to give him a deserved dressing-down, only to be silenced by the look in his eyes.

On an intellectual level, Rose could appreciate what the verb 'to smoulder' meant and she had come across the description many times in the racy novels she read at night. It wasn't a word she associated with her own humdrum life, but the look in Emmett McCarty's eyes at that moment could only be described as smouldering. All that was missing from the scene was his chest bared in a shirt open to the navel and her heaving bosom in an obscenely tight corset.

She blinked and tried to get her bearings. Was what Mr Masen said true? Was his son interested in her? Before she could analyse his expression any further, Emmett cleared his throat loudly and clenched his jaw.

"I need those letters typed before lunch, Ms Hale. You can make up the time you squandered this morning by working through your tea break."

His words were like a bucket of ice-water being poured down her spine and she watched him walk away with a heavy heart. She would have preferred the heaving bosom.