After Glow by Jayne Castle Read Free Book Online Page A

gave a few orders, and was rushed into surgery. Last time I checked, he was still unconscious.”
    “How critical is his condition? Do they really think he might die?”
    “I don’t know. The doctors are being very guarded at the moment.”
    “But in the meantime, you’re the new Guild boss.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She sighed. “Well, I suppose I can understand why you felt you had to take over for Wyatt when he asked you to help out. After all, you’ve been connected to the Guilds your whole life. You probably have a very ingrained sense of loyalty toward them.”
    “Let’s get something straight here,” Emmett said quietly. “It wasn’t some kind of knee-jerk sense of Guild loyalty that made me agree to take over until Wyatt recovers.”
    She scowled. “Then why in the world did you do it?”
    He exhaled deeply. “Another type of knee-jerk loyalty, I guess. I did it because Mercer Wyatt is my father.”
    ----
     

Chapter 4
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    She just sat there in the middle of the rumpled bed, speechless.
    Wry amusement flickered in Emmett’s eyes. “When I was growing up it was fairly common gossip back in Guild circles in Resonance.”
    She swallowed. “I see.”
    “Guess the stories didn’t circulate here in Cadence, huh?”
    “They certainly didn’t circulate in my circles,” she said briskly. “But, then, I’ve never socialized much with the Guild crowd.”
    “And you couldn’t have cared less about gossip concerning any of its members, right?”
    She raised one shoulder in a small shrug. “I had other interests.”
    “Yeah, like getting into a prestigious graduate school so that you could become a highly respected professor of para-archaeology and get to publish impossible-to-read treatises on tiny, insignificant artifacts that no one else gave a damn about and then do your socializing at boring faculty sherry hours where you got to trade witty repartee with a bunch of pompous academics.”
    “Hey, it was my life and I was real happy with it until a couple of idiot hunters failed to do their job, nearly got me killed, and succeeded in getting me fired. Don’t start with me, London.”
    His jaw jerked slightly. But all he said was, “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
    There was a short, tense silence.
    “So tell me about your father,” she said eventually.
    “Not much to tell. The way I got the story from my mother was that before I was born she and her husband, John London, were on the point of ending a simple Marriage of Convenience. He’d had a fling with someone else.” He paused a beat. “She’d had one, too.”
    “Her affair was with Mercer Wyatt, I take it?”
    “Yes. But Wyatt was in a Covenant Marriage at the time and moving up fast through the Guild ranks here in Cadence. His wife was pregnant. There was no question of a divorce.”
    “No, of course not.”
    “John London was killed in an excavation accident underground. Mom had me a few months later and put London’s name on the birth certificate. It was the only thing she could do under the circumstances.”
    “Wyatt knows the truth, I assume?” she said.
    “I assume so. I never asked.”
    She widened her eyes. “You assume so?”
    “We don’t talk about it, okay?” Emmett sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Mom has always made it clear that as far as she and the law and the benefits office of the Resonance Guild are concerned, I’m John London’s son. Fine by me.”
    “I see. A real communicative family.”
    He stood and disappeared into the bathroom. “When I was growing up Wyatt came to Resonance City several times a year. Whenever he was in town to talk business with the leaders of the Guild, he would visit with me and Mom. He acted like he was some sort of honorary uncle. He always showed up with an armful of the latest toys and games. He gave me my first amber. Showed me how to summon a ghost. Kept track of how I was doing in school. Took my mother out to dinner.”
    “How long