Which was why right now, the thing that worried him most was hurting her.
“I want to keep seeing you,” he said quietly. “I want to be able to have dinner together and sometimes breakfast together and play with your ridiculous cat. That’s not me trying to use you. That’s just all I’ve got for an answer right now.”
She was quiet for a few moments. “All those things you said . . . That’s why no girlfriend, right?”
He nodded. It was uncomfortable to talk about, but he guessed this was the day for uncomfortable things. “I wasn’t really looking to get attached. I don’t think I was capable.”
She stared out at the water. “It’s not just you,” she said, and he frowned, not understanding.
“What do you mean?”
“Not being sure you could have a relationship. I told you I didn’t want one, but I didn’t tell you why.”
He waited for her to collect her thoughts, tracing the fine lines of her profile with his gaze. This was one of the other things about Emma—her ability to surprise him. He wondered how she could possibly have existed in this town for so long with so few people discovering who she really was.
Then again, there were a million reasons to put up walls. He was familiar with more than a few.
“I was with a guy. Ben. Back in college, and then after. He was brilliant. I mean”—she laughed softly—“I thought he was brilliant. He was also a professor, which should have been a huge red flag, but . . . well, like I said, I’m not great at people. Finding someone who seemed to be on my wavelength was kind of a huge deal.”
He could see it, prim, elegant, intelligent Emma absolutely knocking the socks off some professor. Who had obviously been a giant douchebag. He began to hope this story ended with Emma’s fist connecting with this guy’s face, but he thought he’d probably be disappointed.
“So what happened?”
She shrugged. “Lots of whirlwind romance and me being impressed. After I graduated and came home, I figured it was only a matter of time before we took things to the next level. He hadn’t asked, but I was . . . stupid, I guess. Naive. I was comfortable, and being with him was always so easy. I felt safe.” Her blue eyes fixed on him. “After losing Dad, and how rocky things were afterward, safe was the one thing I really wanted to feel.”
Seth thought of how he must have looked to her, an ex-soldier, a cop—a guy whose job would always involve a willingness to risk his life—and he knew exactly why she’d tried to head in the other direction. She was taking more of a risk with him than he’d known. More than she’d known, too, though not after this conversation. The realization came with a surprising amount of pain. He tried to keep his expression neutral, though, wanting to hear the rest.
“Anyway, I finally got tired of waiting. I decided, what the hell, I’ll go up, surprise him, and we’ll have a big romantic weekend during which I’ll profess my love and he’ll obviously insist we move in together. It was perfect.”
“Except it wasn’t,” Seth said.
“Nope.” She kicked the bench with her heel. “He didn’t want to be surprised. In fact, he took the opportunity to accuse me of being distant. Cold. Only concerned about my own needs while I ignored his. I was the one who’d moved right back to my crappy little Podunk
town. I was the one who had abandoned him. I couldn’t just show up on his doorstep whenever I wanted. He needed someone who really understood him. Somebody who was just . . . more than me.”
“This guy sounds like a complete asshole, Emma. Please tell me you punched him.”
“No.” Her mouth curved into a small smile. “I cried. When he told me that I was manipulative, I kicked him in the junk. Then I drove home.”
Seth didn’t know whether to put an arm around her or high-five her. Yet she didn’t seem to need comforting. The story had been told with the kind of distance that said she was over the man himself. Just maybe not the things he’d said.
“He couldn’t have known you at all. You’re not cold, Em. You’re anything but.”
She lifted her brows at him. “Maybe not cold. But I can definitely be distant. I never liked to get too close. I know myself pretty well, Seth. I know what I do with people.”
“You can be prickly,” he conceded, wishing he knew whether it was okay to touch her face, her hair, anything to reassure her—and himself. “But you let me in.”
“People aren’t usually as determined as you. Or as much of a Boy Scout.”
“I have my good points.” Seth watched the breeze toy with the tendrils of her hair, her cheeks still pink from the ride. “I wish you hadn’t listened to him. Doesn’t sound like he knew you at all.” In a single month he’d gotten to know her far better than that.
“Maybe not. But some of what he said that day wasn’t completely off the mark, either. I’m good at holding everyone at arm’s length. Sam tried to let people in, and all she got was abuse. So I always figured, why bother? I’ll just get hurt. And I’d had enough of that.”
She breathed deeply and fell silent, seeming lost in thought. He couldn’t blame her. On paper, he was exactly the wrong kind of guy for her. But she was still here, and that had to count for something.
“So,” he echoed, “we’ve both got some baggage. Think we can work with it?”
Emma studied his face. “That depends. What are the odds of me ending up crying and kicking you in the junk at some point if I say yes?”
He laughed softly, suddenly sure he couldn’t have had this conversation with anyone but Emma. “Low, I hope.” He didn’t want her to walk on him, but he knew Emma well enough now to know that she needed honesty. “I can’t make you any promises. You don’t get to come back from as much time as I spent in a war zone without some broken pieces. I’m mostly healed, I think, but I’m still feeling out my limits. This place, and you, have been good for me. I’d like to keep that going. You make me happy, Emma. That’s what I know.”
For once, he knew he’d said the right thing. She tucked a strand of hair that had come loose behind her ear when she looked at him again. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For telling me. All of it.” She shifted, suddenly restless. “I should tell you that, much like I’m not great at people, I’m also not great at uncertainty.”
His heart sank. “Ah.”
This is the part where she leaves. This is the part where she says “thanks, but no thanks” and goes.
The thought flooded him like ice water, and his heart began to pound. He hadn’t expected to feel this kind of terror, this kind of loss. The fact that her scent, seductive and sweet, still enveloped him made it that much worse.
Then her hand covered his, a simple gesture that
banished all the ugliness roiling inside him as though it had never been there, the sun dispelling the storm.
“But,” she said softly, “I want to try.”
He exhaled, releasing a shaky breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. “Okay,” he said. It sounded silly to him, but he couldn’t think of anything else. “Okay.”
“I don’t do things halfway, Seth,” she warned him. But the coolness was gone, as was the anger, and he could hardly see past that to hear her words. “If we’re headed nowhere fast, I need to know before I—just before too long, okay? Be fair. And stop pretending you don’t have a past, because we all do. I can handle more than you think. I already have.”
He nodded. “Deal.” Sitting there beside him, prim and lovely in her pearls—only Emma, he thought, would wear pearls on the back of a motorcycle—she was one of the loveliest things he’d ever seen. That mattered. Really, everything about her seemed to. She’d gotten him to take a step today that no other woman had. It was exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.
“Seal it with a kiss?” he asked hopefully, and her chuckle was low and warm as she leaned in. She tasted of strawberries and wine, and Seth knew that at least for a little while, everything would be all right.
He’d learned not to ask for more than that.
O
n a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Emma and Seth pulled up to the comfortable old Craftsman-style home Jake and Sam shared. The temperatures hovering in the midseventies made it feel like summer had already arrived instead of still being just around the corner. Emma wore shorts for the occasion, white and high-waisted, even though she worried that the color matched her legs a little too closely. Seth was in a pair of old jeans and a black T-shirt, and he’d conned her into letting him bring her on the bike, so she’d been over earlier to drop off Boof. The cat needed to move occasionally, and a visit with Sam’s cat, Boof’s sleek and diabolical sibling Loki, was as good a way as any to achieve that.
Seth looked good enough to eat, Emma thought as they walked through the fence gate into the backyard. And his hair was still slightly damp from his shower. Well,
their
shower. Which was why hers was up in a bun. He flashed a wicked grin at her as he shut the gate behind them, and she felt a funny, aching twist in her chest that she’d been afflicted with more and more often lately where he was concerned.
Just light and easy,
she told herself for the umpteenth time that day.
Take it as it comes. Relaxed Emma, that’s
me. Here I am, going with the flow.
And then:
Oh God, I am so full of shit. Where’s the sangria?
The sangria, fortunately, was on the wrought-iron patio table with her sister, while Jake was playing with the big stainless steel grill Sam had gotten him for his birthday. He abandoned it briefly to come greet them, and any worries she’d had about Seth and Jake not getting along evaporated almost instantly. Jake had a knack for putting people at ease, and he shoved a beer in Seth’s hand seconds before steering him to the grill to show it off. As introductions went, it worked. Emma settled herself at the table with Sam and poured herself a glass of sweet, fruity goodness. Sam was more interested in other things.
“Aw, look, they made a fire.”
“Hopefully they won’t make too much.” Emma eyed Sam. “I can’t believe you bought him that. He can barely manage ramen.”
“I think he has a knack, believe it or not. Maybe it’s the books. He’s assembling an entire grilling library,” Sam said, watching Jake with obvious adoration. “It’s cute.”
“Sure. It’s cute until he tries to grill steak and turns your backyard into a scorched hellscape. At least Tucker can run fast.”
The umbrella she and Sam sat under cast a long shadow on the grass. Tucker, Jake’s spastic cattle dog mutt, sat hopefully beside the grill, thumping his tail on the ground every time Jake so much as glanced in his direction.
“To good taste,” Sam said with a grin, nodding in the men’s direction before clinking her glass against Emma’s. Her sister looked perfectly at home here, Emma thought, lounging in a chair and wearing ragged old
cutoff jean shorts and a Pink Floyd T-shirt. Her pale blond hair was in a ponytail, making her look almost too young for the drink in her hand. After all Sam had been through, seeing her happy was something Emma never got tired of.
“Good taste,” Emma agreed, and took a sip.
Sam smirked and lowered her voice so the men wouldn’t hear. “So how are things? Are you feeling better? You two look pretty cozy. Hand-holding and motorcycle rides and other things I’m slightly weirded out by you doing.”
“Things are fine. Everything’s fine,” Emma said. “We’re taking things slow. You know. Nice and easy.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and shrugged uncomfortably. Sam looked at her strangely.
“Nice and easy. Ah. That . . . doesn’t sound like you.” Sam frowned. “You sure everything is okay?”
Emma nodded. She had no intention of trying to explain it. How would she put it?
Well, you see, he’s trying to figure out whether his lingering emotional scars will prevent him from having normal relationships, romantic ones included, so I’m kind of the guinea pig, and it’s freaking me out, but really, I’m okay, as far as it goes.
Yeah, no.
“Hmm. Well, he still spends an awful lot of time looking at you.”
“I know. I am pretty hot.”
Sam snorted and rolled her eyes. “You’re still obsessing, aren’t you? You’re such a stubborn butthead, Em. You’re so busy analyzing everything that you miss what’s right in front of your face. Not everything in life is spelled out in ten-foot neon letters.”
“It would be easier if it were.” Emma looked over at Seth, watching the way he laughed easily with Jake, the
way he moved, and felt a hunger for him so fierce that it shocked her. It wasn’t just desire, either. Every bit of him fascinated her, both the shadows and light. It was the same problem she’d had from the beginning. She wanted more. More of him, all of him, more than the “maybe” she currently had. She was a big-enough girl to recognize that this was her issue and not his . . . but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
She wished, not for the first time, that she could change her own intensity settings.
“Some men communicate better in the universal language of groping,” Sam said, pouring herself more sangria. Emma couldn’t help but laugh.
“I don’t need to hear this. Especially not if Jake is a groper. You’re still my sister.”
“Jake’s language of love is dependent on how many hours he’s worked and the last time he was properly fed.”
Emma toyed with her glass. “Filing that away under information I didn’t want. And I’m not obsessing, for your information. I’m just trying to figure some things out.”
Sam leaned forward, her expression concerned but interested. “Things?”
“Things,” Emma repeated. “Like, how not to confuse the amount of hot monkey sex I’m having with the level of affection in a relationship.”
Sam looked shocked, then burst out laughing and poked Emma with her flip-flop-clad foot. “You shameless hussy! Monkey sex? Mary Poppins isn’t supposed to have that!”
“I’m not Mary Poppins,” Emma informed her, and thought about the shower escapades of earlier. “At all. You called me a fairy godmother last weekend. Fairies are notoriously oversexed. I mean, look at Tinker Bell.”
“Wow.” Sam watched her over the rim of her glass. “There’s a lot of non-work-related stuff going on in that practically perfect head of yours lately. I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“That makes two of us,” Emma replied.
“I find that scarier than you could possibly know.”
“Good.” At least some things in her life never changed, Emma thought. They smiled at each other, then sat in comfortable silence watching the two men bonding over a discussion about the art of barbecue. Sam was right, she decided. They were a good-looking pair, if a study in contrasts. Jake was a bit taller, and boy-next-door handsome, with beautiful hazel eyes and brown hair that was often spiked up like he’d been shoving his hands through it—which a lot of times, he had been. Seth was darker, leaner, and the hint of his tattoo peeking out beneath his sleeve gave him a touch of the bad boy. In some ways, it looked as though they’d each chosen their own opposites—the artist and the prince, the geek and the rebel. But underneath, Jake, at least, was exactly what Sam had needed.
Of course, Jake had wanted desperately to win Sam over. He’d been in love with her for years. Seth was . . . a different case. He seemed to need something, but Emma didn’t know if that something was her. Unfortunately, neither did he. But at least he’d been honest about it.
There was the sound of car doors slamming out front, and Emma started, looked around, and then frowned at her sister. Sam looked overly innocent, which meant she was responsible.
“Who else did you invite?”
“It wasn’t me,” Sam insisted. “I said ‘cookout’ and Jake heard ‘party.’ By the time I figured out what he was up to, it was too late. It’s not that many people. I
promise.” Her voice lowered. “I don’t think he really misses his crappy ex-friends, but being social still makes him happy. I’m probably going to have to get kitchen items for actual entertaining. Just so you know, you’re getting roped in.”
“The horror,” Emma said. “You just want to use me for my fancy hors d’oeuvres skills.”
“You should use them somewhere,” Sam replied. “You don’t have dinner parties. You don’t even like people.”
Emma took a sip of her drink, unimpressed. “Neither do you.”
“I like people. Sometimes,” Sam replied. “I just also really like snuggling in my pajamas.”
Emma sighed. “I’m with you there. So who got invited? Half the Cove?”
Her question was answered before Sam could speak as Andi stepped through the fence gate wearing a long sundress and a filmy scarf, her hair tied back with a simple elastic. She looked younger, Emma thought. And happier.
And alone, which was unacceptable. She didn’t know if it was a side effect of dealing with Seth’s reluctance for the past month, but her tolerance for intrigue was right at zero.
“Mom!” Emma called to her as Andi set what looked like a big bowl of potato salad on the card table Jake had dragged out. “Why didn’t you bring Jasper?”
She heard Sam’s coughing to hide her laughter as Andi gave her elder daughter a look that had once sent Emma running. Not anymore, though.
“Emma Lynn Henry. What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“I know you’re seeing him, Mom,” Sam said. “You
need to stop worrying about it and call him to come over, or I will.”
Andi’s cheeks turned pink, and she made a strangled noise both girls knew well. It had once been the sound of impending doom, after which the phone, the television, and all fun things would be taken away. She gave Emma a murderous look.
“Hey, I didn’t tell her,” Emma said, holding up her hands. “She figured it out for herself. It’s not my fault you’re old and decrepit and forgot how to sneak around properly.”
“I’ll show you decrepit,” Andi replied, her eyes narrowed. But she pulled her phone out of the knit bag she had slung over one arm and obliged them. “Hey, you,” she said when he picked up. “Do you want to get together a little earlier than we planned? Jake’s having a cookout, and the girls are insisting. Yes, they think they’re awfully smart. No, don’t start with the ‘I told you so.’” She listened a moment, smiled, and then shot her daughters a smug, inscrutable look. “Okay, see you in a few.” Whatever he said prompted a husky chuckle from her mother that was utterly unlike her. It was almost . . .
sexy
. Sam gave Emma a look.
“We may regret this.”
“I think I already do.”
Andi walked over to the table to sit down and poured herself a drink. She looked exasperated, but she didn’t seem especially annoyed.
“Satisfied? Jasper is on his way.”
“So we heard.” Emma tilted her head at her mother. “Not really sure why you were sneaking around in the first place, though. We’re not little kids. We won’t be traumatized if you have a boyfriend.”
Andi’s smile turned wistful, and she looked away
across the yard. “Boyfriend. That’s a strange word to start throwing around when you’re my age, but I suppose it’s better than . . . What else would you call him? My companion? That makes me sound ancient!”
“Or like Doctor Who. How about your
lovah
,” Sam drawled, earning a swat on the arm from her mother.
“That’s a hell of a way to send people running in the other direction. Though there are a few people I should try it with, in that case.” She sighed. “I know you girls like Jasper. You’ve known him forever, and he made it clear a long time ago he was interested. I wasn’t going to tell you two when I hadn’t sorted it out myself yet. Took a while.”
Emma frowned lightly. “It didn’t take you that long. You’ve only been seeing each other for a few months.”
Andi’s eyebrows lifted, and she laughed. “Honey, I’ve been sleeping with Jasper Reed for over two years now.”
The mouthful of sangria Emma had been about to swallow went down her windpipe. She spit the remains into the grass, then doubled over coughing while Sam went into gales of laughter. Andi thumped her on the back.
“Sorry, Emmie. I’m sneakier than I look.”
When she could finally breathe again, Emma sat up and stared at her mother as though she’d never seen her before.
Two years?
How could she have missed that? She prided herself on never missing anything! Her mother’s blue eyes were sympathetic, though she still looked amused.
“It’s okay, honey. You wouldn’t have known. It was just a physical thing for a long time. You wouldn’t have figured it out unless you were staking out the house at night.”
“Told you we were going to regret this,” Sam muttered into her drink.
Andi’s mouth twisted. “Please. I know I’m your mother, but I’m not dead.”
“No. No you’re not.” Emma grabbed a napkin to dab at her mouth and noticed Seth watching her, sharp-eyed with concern. She waved and smiled, and he relaxed a little, his lips quirking into a small smile before he turned back to Jake. “It’s just . . . I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, neither was I.” Andi sipped at her sangria and sighed contentedly. “It means a lot that you two support it, though, so thank you for that. Even though he’ll be impossible now that he knows that cat’s out of the bag.”
Sam fiddled with the end of her ponytail and watched her mother curiously. “Don’t you
want
people to know you’re a couple?”
“Yes, mostly. A few of our friends already knew. Steve and Ginny, for two,” she said, looking at Emma. “I think I’m ready to just fully couple up and be done with it. But it hasn’t been as easy as you’d think, you know, giving up the idea of being odd Andi Henry, living in her big house all alone and puttering around with her horrible paint colors and gardening and knitting and possible drug-dealing operation.” She winked. “I’ve gotten set in my ways.”
Sam nodded, but Emma didn’t think her sister really understood.
She
did though—or at least, she could see how easy it would be to get so comfortable flying solo that you didn’t want to deal with anyone’s baggage but your own. She’d been headed firmly in that direction. Seth had slipped through all her defenses.
And now she wanted something else.
“What made you change your mind?” Emma asked, watching Seth again as he spoke to Jake, his voice too low to hear but his eyes as intense as they always were.
She wondered what was so interesting, then forced her attention back to her family. Andi was looking at her curiously.