“Yeah, your brothers are protective of you,” I said. “I picked up on that.”
She nodded. “Yeah, overprotective is probably the most accurate description, but they mean well. It’s like they made some sacred vow that they’d never let another man hurt me the way our dad did when he left us.”
I almost replied back with a smart ass comment about Ty making it past their radar, but her eyes shifted to the side, focusing on nothing in particular. Like she was hoping the movement would keep whatever tears that might be forming inside.
My hand found its way to hers, my fingers twining between hers before my mind caught up. But she wasn’t pulling away. Her fingers curled around mine like I was the only thing holding her above water.
“I’m sorry your dad left you,” I said, wishing I could siphon away the pain coursing through her right now. “If I had a daughter like you, I’d need a damn good reason to leave. And I’d be thinking of you every second of every day if I did.” The words fell out of my mouth before I knew they were there.
One of the tears she was trying so hard to keep contained fell. Damn my must-say-the-first-thing-that-comes-to-mind straight to hell.
“Em, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying,” I said, tightening my grip on her hand. “Just pay no attention to the idiot sitting across from you.”
“It’s fine,” she replied, and thankfully I repressed replying with
whenever you girls say “it’s fine,” it’s anything but fine.
“You’re a good man, and that’s what a good man would think,” she said, her eyes glassed over, somewhere else, before she whispered, “but my dad wasn’t a good man.”
Silence was my reply. My only reply. Nothing I could say or do could counter, cancel out, or comfort that bombshell. How does one come back with a reply when a daughter tells you her dad wasn’t a good man? I guarantee you the shrinkiest of shrinks doesn’t have a good answer for that one.
Thank the heavens the captain chose the moment before I was about to scoop Emma in my arms and carry her off to a private island where she could never be hurt again to fire the engines to life. The water churning broke both our silences.
“Question two?” she asked, visibly bracing herself.
“I promise,”—I crossed my fingers over my heart—“they won’t be as . . . emotional as the beginning of our Q and A.”
“Like I said, your easy is everyone’s hard,” she said as she wrestled the heels from her feet. Tossing them to the side, she folded her arms over the table and leaned forward, fixing her eyes on me. “Bring it on.”
She loved porcupines. Yep, the oversized rodents that blow-dart needles at you if you look at them the wrong way. At least, that’d been my impression of the ugly as snot species until Emma set me straight.
She claimed they were misunderstood little sweetie-pies that were so affectionate and loyal God had to give them needles or else everyone would want a pet porcupine. For all that tough exterior, they were nothing but softies inside, she’d said.
No, I didn’t miss the irony that her favorite animal was the four legged equivalent of moi.
She was born not so far away and had grown up in the same house she was born in, was going to be twenty in May, loved singing almost as much as she loved volleyball, but she said Stanford offered to give her a full ride scholarship to any other school but theirs when the admissions committee heard her sing.
In addition, she liked bluegrass music—it made me reach for the nearest vomit bag. She loved mornings—I was a night owl. Her favorite season was winter—mine was summer. She was a dog person—I was a car person. So on and so forth.
We couldn’t have been more different.
I was glad the courting, match-making, and arranged marriages of my times had evolved into it being acceptable for a couple to choose one another because, on paper, we were about as compatible as oil and water.
But, the big but, in every other way that couldn’t be made note of on paper, we were perfect for each other. The energy zapping in the air, the bottoming out of my stomach when she made any kind of movement with her mouth, the ache and emptiness I felt when I was away from her, the nonexistence of everything else when I was with her. It was powerful stuff. Destiny uniting our paths together, powerful stuff.
She just didn’t know it yet.
“You’re being uncharacteristically quiet over there.” Emma’s voice broke my shameless daydreaming. “Did you finally run out of questions?” I heard the
I hope
insinuated.
“I just so happen to have a question for you of such utter importance that I’ve been mentally formulating how best to deliver it.”
Something that registered like panic flashed over her face. “Yes?”
I made the smallest nod of my head and, right on cue, a platter—platinum plated, thank you very much—extended between us.
“Crème brulee or strawberry and whipped cream covered funnel cake?” I asked, staring at her like I had her in an interrogation room and this is the all important did-you-or-didn’t-you question.
She played right along, only moving her gaze from mine to review the dessert selection. Her eyes slid back to mine, and by this point I can tell we’re both close to losing our composure. “Funnel cake. Any day of the week.”
“My God, woman,” I said, aghast, “quit being so perfect.”
She laughed, for at least the hundredth time tonight. And like her smile, it’s real. No high notes of phony, no perfectly tapered chuckling to completion. Just raw, real laughter.
“It’s funnel cake for the lady, Albert. You know what I’ll have.”
Albert was already sliding the powered sugar dusted funnel cake in front of Emma. Her eyes reminded me of a little girl’s as he scooped the strawberries and homemade whipped cream deliciousness onto the deep-fried mound of dough.
Her attention diverted, I didn’t waste an opportunity to stare at her, but then I noticed her arms were speckled with goosebumps. I muttered an internal curse for being so wrapped up in Q and A I neglected to consider the chill in the late night air.
I slid out of my tux coat in one seamless movement and was already tightening it around her shoulders before she noticed.
“Oh, thanks,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me. “I was all right.”
I slid the jacket deeper over her shoulders, just for an excuse to be this close awhile longer. “What was that little agreement about honesty we had earlier?” I mused, tapping my chin.
“Okay, fine. I was a little chilly,” she admitted, followed by a sigh. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I grinned victoriously all the way back to my seat where Albert was just putting the finishing touches on my funnel cake extraordinaire.
“I would have taken you more for a crème brulee kind of guy,” Emma said around a mouthful of whipped cream.
Flames—the good ones—erupted in my gut. The woman could make eating carnival food sexy. Unbelievable.
“And why’s that?” I asked.
She picked at another bite. I foudnd myself both hoping and not hoping it would be more whipped cream. “Because girls from lower class, broken families like funnel cakes, and boys from rich southern families eat cream brulee. For one, because you know how to say it the right way without embarrassing yourself, and for two,”—she shrugged—“because it’s the best.”
She just managed to draw a parallel between food preferences and socio-economic classes. No wonder she’s at Stanford.
“Emma, I don’t choose the best because it’s what everyone else thinks is the best. In fact, I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.”
“Sure, sure,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Why would you be the kind of person to choose the best? It’s not like you drive the best, or sail the best”—the twitching was advancing into a smile—“or wear the best,”—her eyes scanned my tux, ending at my watch, which, although it was pretty darn blingin’, wasn’t my “best”—“or that you—”
“So I have a taste for the finer things in life,” I interjected, sensing her just getting started up. “What’s wrong with that? I like the car, the boat, and the clothes because
I
like them, not because I care what anyone else thinks. If some secret society of rich stiffs decided to declare that Kia was the best car out there, I can assure you I wouldn’t be putting along in a hunk of junk more plastic than metal.”
“Touchy,” Emma replied. “I must have hit pretty close to the mark.”
I shot her a
give me a break
smile while I restrained myself from shoveling a third of the cake into my mouth. Chewing through a respectable, but date-appropriate sized bite of funnel-licious, I considered the quickest way to end this debate before we launched into an argument.
In my experience, women liked being right (even when they were wrong). I mean,
really
liked being right. The one good thing about being the last single brother was I’d gleaned invaluable experience by watching my brothers with their wives. The quickest way to end an argument was to concede and, while conceding was something I wasn’t known for, Emma had proven to me how even the deepest rooted habits I held could be tossed on their butts.
“So you’re right,” I admitted. “I do like the best. The best of the best. Why do you think I’m here with you?” Her face was as equally pleased as it was surprised. And something about that expression made me shove the dessert plate away and come around the table toward her. “Dance with me?” I asked, reaching for her hand.
Like the pro he was, Jacque made sure the music started just then.
Emma snapped her head behind her. “A mariachi band?” she exclaimed, staring at them like they couldn’t be real. Like a five member mariachi band astounded her more than the car, the boat, or anything else tonight.
“Who are you, Patrick Hayward?” she asked, looking back at me slowly.
“Who do you want me to be?” I said, praying she’d tell me, knowing I’d be whatever it was she wanted.
“You,” she answered, slipping her hand into mine.
“Good thing for both of us that’s who I am best.” Folding my other hand over hers, I half-guided, more-pulled her towards the band, feeling like if I had to wait one more heartbeat to have her in my arms, I’d keel over from the anticipation.
“The last woman I danced with told me I’m pretty much a lost cause,” I said, hoping she couldn’t hear my heart thundering like I could. “So don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I happen to be a dancing queen. The kind that inspired the ABBA song,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. “Try to keep up.”
With a flick of my wrist, I spun her before twisting her into my arms so close I could feel the beat of her heart against my chest, and on a scale between hummingbird and sloth, Emma’s was trilling more along the lines of the avian species.
In fact, it was
almost
keeping up with my own erratic beats. The clashing sensations hit me harder than I knew how to manage. Feeling her skin heating through to mine, the scents that were all her own, the innocent smile lighting up her face, it was like a brigade of assassins attempting to kill my restraint. I was going to kiss her. I knew I shouldn’t, I knew I
couldn’t
, but you know what desire tells your inhibitions when it’s at full throttle?
Screw you. I do what I want.
I could feel the sting from the slap I’d likely be dealt, the drive of it was that strong. Grasping at whatever fate would throw me, I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and prayed this would dim the kissing autopilot. I opened my eyes, right into hers, very possibly the most beautiful eyes I’d ever looked into—certainly the most captivating—and wanted her more than I had a moment ago. I wanted her to be mine. Forever.
Here was the slap to the face I needed just then, although I’d be cursing it from here on out. She wasn’t mine. She was Ty’s. She’d been his and she’d continue to be his if I couldn’t get her to see reason. Reason being Ty was the bad boy fathers had been warning their daughters against since the time of Abel.
“So you’ve been with the boy of Steel for six years, huh?” I said, clearing my throat and my mind at the same time.
She didn’t look amused by my attempts at humor. She rarely was when it involved Ty, whereas I thought those were the crème de la crème of my comedic aptitude. “Six years next month,” she clarified.
“You ever mistaken your life for purgatory?” I asked, keeping my arms locked around her, not able to let her squirm away. Now that I had her where I wanted her, I wasn’t sure I could let go.
“Only recently,” she threw back at me, her eyes sharply pointing right at the guilty party.
“So that’s—Ty, I mean,” I said, “what you want?” This time, there was no undercurrent of teasing in my voice. I wanted to know. And while I’d be anything she needed, if it was a person like Ty, I just didn’t know if I could contort myself into a similar mold.
Staring over at the band unseeingly, she answered, “It’s what I know.”
I waited for something else, but after a full chorus of silence passed between us, I knew that was all she was going to say.
“I know cream of wheat, but I don’t want to wake up to it every morning,” I said, not sure if I was more flabbergasted by my reply or her lack of reply earlier.
Her eyes stayed fixed in some far away place that only she could see and, from the looks of it, it wasn’t a place where visitors would want to frequent. “Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.”
“Okay,” I said, flabbergasted, “do you realize you just compared your boyfriend to the devil?”
She looked back at me, her eyes refocusing. “You know what I mean,” she said in that attempt-at-patronizing tone I was growing familiar with.
“Are you going to marry him?” Nothing like cutting right to the heart of the matter. If she said yes, what hope did I have in pursuing her? What kind of man would I be if I did? Something deep inside answered my rhetorical questions. For her, I didn’t need hope, and I didn’t care what kind of man I became.
“If he asks,” filling in the lines with a shrug, she said, “probably.”
The only thing that overshadowed my shock was my relief. “Six years together and he hasn’t asked you?” I said. “A little risky, isn’t it?”
“Risky?” she repeated.
“If I had a girl like you who, by the grace of all things holy, loved me in return, I’d slap a ring on your finger faster than you could say DeBeers.” It was the kind of profession that would have left most chumps fidgeting, but I’d left my chump-hood behind decades of humility bolstering lessons ago.
“DeBeers?” she asked like that was the only thing she’d picked up on, although the great thing about a fair-skinned woman was a blush. Even the slightest tinge of color could be detected by the non-Immortal eye.
“Oh my goodness, woman. The ways I could spoil you,” I said over the music. “Just lose the baggage,” I hinted, and from the line her mouth drew, I knew Emma hadn’t missed it.
“And you call this not spoiling?” she replied, glancing around the boat. “Why do I need to drop the baggage when I’m not even your girlfriend and you’re rolling out the red carpet?”
“This is just an appetizer, not even the main course,” I said, wondering if I’d be out of line if I ran my fingers down her arm. If I was questioning it, it probably was. “And let’s not forget dessert.”
“I’m guessing you never do,” she played along.
Compromising with myself, instead of giving her a first-base skin skimming, I suddenly dipped her low to the ground. She held my eyes the whole way down. “You’re a good guesser.”
Settling her back into an upright position, she grinned. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said, “but Ty isn’t exactly what you’d call a fan of dancing—”
“Or flowers,” I said under my breath.
She continued, only narrowing her eyes at me, “And even if I did manage to persuade him onto the dance floor, I’m sure his clumsy hands would have dropped me on the floor if he tried that.”
“That man of yours never fails to amaze me.” I grinned innocently at her, as the band transitioned into something slow and sultry.
“You’ve got some moves, I’ll give you that, Patrick,” she said. “You must have been with more women than any girl would care to know about to have perfected them.”
Honesty, honesty, honesty, I reminded myself. My past was my past, my present my present, and Emma my future. While admitting to her I’d developed something of a “ladies man” reputation didn’t thrill me, I also knew if she ever did grow to love me one day, I wanted her to love me for me.