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dominated the far wall of the small, low-ceilinged room.
    “What?” Felix Dorn unfolded his frame from the depths of an old wing chair, the TV remote in his hand. He hit the mute button and straightened slowly to his full height. Eighty-four, white-haired and bushy-browed, her grandfather was still an inch or two over six feet. Her father was only five feet eight, and Emma had shot past him her junior year in high school. She got her height from the Dorns.
    “Grandfather, this is Blake Weston.” Emma made the introductions. The two men shook hands. “Mr. Weston had a run-in with a magnum of Dom Perignon,” Emma explained, raising her voice slightly to compensate for her grandfather’s failing hearing and his refusal to wear a hearing aid. “I brought him for a dose of your elixir.”
    “I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Blake said. His color wasn’t good, and there were deep lines carved nose to chin on each side of his mouth. “I see you were getting ready to watch the game.”
    “Kickoff isn’t for another twenty minutes, and in fifty years I haven’t seen an entire football game from beginning to end. Why should today be any different? Follow me, young man. My office, such as it is, is right through that door.”
    Blake looked as though he might refuse, but he was standing next to a table with a bowl of her grandmother’s rose potpourri on it, and with each breath he took, he turned a shade paler, and a shade greener around the gills.
    “Go with Granddad. He’ll fix you up in no time flat, I promise,” Emma said in her best advice-giver tone.
    Blake’s eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, staring a little past her, as though trying to recall something he’d forgotten.
    “Yes, go with Felix, Mr. Weston,” Martha urged. “You’ll feel much better soon, I promise.”
    “Come on, man. Time waits for no one.”
    “My husband has never been known for his bedside manner,” Martha said dryly.
    “I haven’t got all day. This is just like Emma Martha,” Felix muttered under his breath, but loud enough for them all to hear. “Always bringing home strays and birds with broken wings. It’s no wonder she’s in the business she’s in. Talking to the Lord knows who on the radio about sex and what-all and more sex, just as if she’d known them all their lives.”
    Blake stopped dead in his tracks. “Talking on the radio?” His green-gold eyes bored into her.
    “Emma’s on the radio, Mr. Weston,” Martha explained. “In New York City. Didn’t you know that?” Her grandmother gave Emma a puzzled glance. Emma shrugged. This was going to take some explaining.
    “I listen to your show in Manhattan,” Blake said, a dull red flush overlaying the pallor of his skin. “‘Night Talk with Emma Hart.’ That’s why your voice was so familiar.”
    “I should have taken a pseudonym when I started out,” Emma murmured. It was an omission she was coming to regret more frequently as ‘Night Talk’s popularity grew. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, too.
    Martha took a protective step toward Emma. “He didn’t know who you were? I thought you said he was your friend?”
    “We met this morning, Nana. At Maureen’s. I—”
    “Taking in strays,” Felix muttered louder than before. “Well, it makes no difference if you’re suffering. Took an oath fifty years ago. Not about to break it now. C’mon, young man. Before I forget what I came in here for.”
    “I—” Blake said helplessly.
    “Go on. You really will feel better in no time,” Emma said, the shocked expression on Blake’s face sending a bubble of laughter into her throat. He must be mentally reviewing each and every word he’d said to her in the last three hours. “I promise I’ll never mention this on my show. You have my word on it.”
    * * *
    B LAKE LOOKED at the foaming brown liquid in the glass and swallowed hard. He’d be damned if he’d lose the contents of his abused stomach in front of Emma’s grandfather. And from the look of