He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. He hesitated and she wondered what he was thinking. He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “Em, I’ve been holding back because you and I are sneaking around but I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Me either,” she admitted.
“So, we’re on the same page?” he asked.
“Yes. Unless there is some reason we shouldn’t be,” she said. “Is there something you’re not telling me? I know you have something going on with your attorney. Is there a reason we shouldn’t be together?”
He dropped his arms and stepped back. “Is that what you think?”
“I’m not really sure what to think. You haven’t discussed whatever it is with me and I assume if a lawyer is involved it must be serious.”
“It is,” he said. “But it’s not…I just can’t talk about it now.”
Emma looked at Red and wondered what it was he couldn’t tell her. He’d been open about everything since they’d been kids. What was this? Was it his way of keeping things more sexual between them instead of developing a relationship? She wasn’t sure and she felt if she pushed he might ask her to stop dating him altogether.
“Fair enough. I just don’t know if it’s serious or not,” she said. “Is that why all we’ve done is kiss and make out lately? Is it that you’re not sure about me?”
There, she thought, she’d asked him. She hadn’t slept with that many men and she knew that for her it had to be more than a casual hookup. She’d just always been that way. She didn’t care what anyone else did but for her it had to mean something. And she had started to think that maybe there was something holding Red back from hooking up with her again. Whatever he and his attorney were dealing with.
“No, Emma. Not that,” he said. “It’s complicated and I was waiting for you to be sure you wanted to be my girl. You’re the one who wanted to keep things quiet. Now that I know that has changed, everything is different.”
*
Red knew he had to come clean with Emma about everything that was going on in his world. But he’d been trying to balance her needs. She’d been pretty clear when they’d had dinner that being seen with him wasn’t something she was ready for. But here they were weeks later, and she was ready.
He was too. He’d been patient with her, giving her the time she needed to get used to him. It went against every instinct he had to take things slow, but she was different. And she hadn’t seemed to mind until this afternoon.
“I’m glad that it’s changed,” she said.
“Me too,” he admitted. He had to tell her about his daughter. But it was still up in the air. Her maternal grandparents weren’t going to give her up without a fight and at this moment he wasn’t too sure he was going to ever get custody of his daughter. Should he mention it to Emma now? It seemed a bit presumptuous to do it. They were dating but it was so casual…except it wasn’t.
“I’m not saying you have to tell me about whatever you have going on,” she said. “I’ll trust you if you say it’s nothing. I just feel like there is a part of you that you are holding back. Is it because you think you’ll overwhelm me?”
“Overwhelm you? How would I do that?” he asked.
“You’re usually so much bolder and I know you hook up a lot from gossip around town and we have only once…”
He took her hand and led her away from the men who were working downstairs and outside where they could be alone underneath the big oak tree.
“Emma, I am holding back a little bit because I don’t want to screw things up. You’re right—I do date around a bit, but those women are only interested in me for one thing. Not one of them has talked to me the way you do. To them I’m something different than I am to you and I know that.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
He was handling Emma with care because she mattered to him and he wanted her in his life—always. Even if this relationship didn’t work out. That was why he’d secretly talked to his builder about turning the dedicated game room space into a library. He knew the Corbyn Mansion had one and Emma had admitted that she’d cultivated her love of reading while spending her afternoons in there and it had made him think of his daughter—God he hoped she didn’t have dyslexia the way he had. But if she did, he’d be more aware. He wasn’t faulting either of his parents—they’d done the best they could by him—but neither had been focused on raising him. Their careers kept them busy and his dad just figured he didn’t like reading.
“I’m not the most open person in general. I don’t like talking about myself or my problems,” he said. “I just feel like I should sort that stuff out on my own. No one likes a whiner.”
“That sounds like Mr. Aldean talking—not you, Red. You’ve never once whined,” she said. His father had been a gruff, quiet man. Emma hadn’t spoken to him more than a handful of times before he retired and moved to Seattle to live with his wife.
“Maybe. But it took. Those words of his. I do have something going on,” he said. “I will tell you about it but not yet. It’s still a big muddy mess.”
She could see on his face that he was troubled by it and he looked a bit pissed off too. “It’s okay. I just need to know that I’m not looking at you but seeing someone else, you know?”
He took a step back and looked at her with his brow furrowed. “Who else would you see?”
He wasn’t entirely sure that he could live up to an ideal she’d formed about him or about them together. He was trying but he knew he was close to the breaking point. He hadn’t had a minute out on the river fishing by himself where he wasn’t worrying about either Molly or Emma in more than a month and he was tired. Not of Emma. Never of her, but things were coming a head with the custody battle. Now that his house was almost finished and he’d proven he was a stable man, it was harder for the Odems to just write him off. And then there was Emma and his feelings for her were deepening but he was afraid to let it go any further until she committed to going out with him in public. Honestly, he was doing his level best to keep it together.
She watched him as if she weren’t sure how to word her response and he wondered if he’d moved too slow. Had he given her too much line? Was she getting away before he’d had a chance to even try to keep her?
It wouldn’t really surprise him since he’d been torn between trying to get his daughter and woo Emma. And he knew that there was going to come a time when he was going to have to choose between waiting for Molly to officially be his and telling Emma.
And if he did tell her would she think that he had asked her out because she made him seem more settled, more respectable? And he knew he hadn’t asked her out until after he’d found out about Molly… In his head these were two very different things but would she see it that way?
“Emma?” he asked, prompting her because if there was one thing Red knew it was that he hated not knowing.
*
Emma wasn’t sure that she should have admitted what she had. But she knew that Red wasn’t being himself around her. Since Christmas he’d been a polished-up version of the Red that she liked but the truth was she’d started to like him as he was. That big outdoors man never hesitated but for some reason he was tentative around her.
She wanted to say that she saw him as the man she was falling for, she thought, but was smart enough not to say that out loud. She knew that it was too soon to really know but there were little things he’d done while they’d been working on his house that had made her realize that whomever Red was playing at being, she liked him. “I see a version of you. Someone who checks all my boxes.”
“I hope that is the only version of me,” he said.
“We both know it isn’t. You’re being someone else for me. You pretty much admitted it a minute ago. I know the real you is somewhere between what those women get of you at the saloon and what I get.”
He put his hands on her hips and shook his head at her. “Woman, you are making me crazy.”
He pulled her into
his arms and lifted her off her feet, walking backward until he was leaning against the trunk of the oak tree. “You’re getting the real me. The only me that I want to be.”
She put her hand on his jaw. She loved the freedom to touch him when they were out here and she leaned down, brushing her lips against his. He took control of the kiss and her pulse beat so fast she was sure the workers could hear it up in the house. But she didn’t stop. She kept kissing Red until she forgot everything else except him. But in the back of her mind was the worry that he had a secret.
He wasn’t telling her something and she had no idea what that was or what impact that would have on them.
She could only hope that whatever it was, she could handle it.
His phone rang and he ignored it. It was the first time that he’d done that, and she lifted her mouth from his and opened her eyes. He was watching her with his stormy-blue-gray gaze, and she knew he was debating taking the phone call.
“You can answer your phone,” she said.
“No. I want this moment just for us,” he said.
She saw the truth of those words in his eyes and the intent in his gaze. He was doing this for her, but she had no idea of the reason why. She did know that secrets—no matter why they were being kept—had a way of hurting people and sometimes it hurt those who weren’t directly involved. “Do you know the story of why Amelia left when she was sixteen?”
“Not really,” Red said. “Something to do with a fight with your mom?”
“Yes,” Emma said. She took his hand and led him to the bench that had been placed near the tree and looked down to the river. “Please don’t mention this to anyone else, but I think you need to know why secrets bother me so much.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“I want to,” she said. “I have to. My mom was pregnant when she and my dad fell in love, but she didn’t know it. When she found out and told him it changed nothing between them: he still loved her, and she still loved him. The other man wanted nothing to do with my mom or her child and so my parents just decided that the baby was my dad’s. He raised Amelia as his own and we all lived like that until Amelia’s biological father needed her. He needed her bone marrow to save his young son and my parents had to tell us the truth. It shattered my family in a way I can’t describe to you, Red. It changed everything. From that day on my parents weren’t the same. They’d lied to us all for so long and in a way, it didn’t change the family we were, but it had.”
“Wow. That’s a lot to take in. How old were you?”
“Thirteen,” she said. “I could never just trust my parents again. Sure, they spent a lot of time trying to make up for it but a part of me has always understood why they did it. I wouldn’t have said anything either and I think all of us live in that gray area between truth and lie.”
He turned to face her, taking her hands in his and looking down at her with a very troubled look in his eyes.
“I don’t want that for us,” he said.
“I don’t think we have a choice. Something is going on in your life,” she said. “I respect that you need the space to deal with it and I get that. I just can’t help fearing the worst.”
Ugh. It sounded to her like she was trying to get him to tell her his secret, which she wasn’t. She stood up and turned to face him. “I’m just saying that’s why I’m so weird about it. I don’t need you to tell me. I’m just afraid. And that’s the fear that was born that day when I learned Amelia wasn’t who I thought she was, and our family wasn’t either. It’s not that we couldn’t be human or flawed, it was simply that we’d always felt perfect and now I knew we weren’t.”
Red got up and pulled her into his arms, hugging her close. “No one is perfect.”
“I know that. But in my mind sometimes I still try to make it seem that way. Try to smooth the rough edges… I don’t want to do that with you, Red. I want us to be real.”
“We are, Emma. I was saying to you that I want that too. I can’t…I have to get into town but tonight at dinner we will talk about everything. Will you trust me?”
She nodded but in her heart she wasn’t sure. She’d told him her deepest, darkest fear. The thing she normally kept hidden away so he’d know that she didn’t need him to be perfect, just honest.
You can judge a man by the size of his library.
~lesson learned from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice
Chapter Ten
“I need a favor,” Red said as he walked into Braden’s office at Outlaw Tequila. His friend was leaning on his desk, looking at a foam core board displaying images of different wanted posters for their fall/winter promotions.
“Sure. Which do you like best?” Braden asked motioning him over and leaning over the desk.
“I think Finn looks like a bad Santa. Lea suggested we just use one of us, but I can’t decide. Cal’s left it up to me because he had to go to New York for one of his football buddy meet-ups.”
Only Braden would call Cal meeting with his former NFL teammates a football meet-up. It made Red realize how a different perspective could put things into the right view. Maybe he was overthinking everything with Emma. There was no reason to keep his daughter a secret from her. He’d known that since the night they’d slept together at his place. But he hadn’t been able to find the courage to tell her about Molly.
He’d never even met her. What if…
“I like them all,” Red said. “When I buy tequila, I don’t really care what’s on the label.”
“Great, that was really not helpful. What did you need?”
“Advice,” he said. “And do you have one of those stand-up wine ice buckets? I know Delilah has them at the Dragonfly but I’m trying to surprise Emma.”
“I don’t have one, but I’ll ask Delilah for one and tell her you are picking it up for me,” Braden said. His best friend knew he was sneaking around with Emma. Red and Braden just had never kept anything from each other.
“Thanks. Should I tell Emma about Molly?” Red asked. “I’ve gone back and forth on this and spent a good bit of time at my favorite fishing spot thinking on it and I’m still not sure.”
“Yes, you should tell her. I know all the reasons why you are hesitating but the longer you wait the more hurt she’ll be and there is a chance you’ll lose her,” Braden said. “That’s not what you want.”
“Hell. I know that. I keep running it around and around and like you said there’s risk on either side. I mean I tell her: she gets pissed and leaves me. I don’t get Molly so no one in town would ever know and I’ve lost Emma. Or I get Molly…and then what?”
“You’ll figure it out. Remember when you took me on the survivalist weekend thing in April?”
“Yeah, I saved your damn life more than once,” Red reminded him. “I’m not likely to forget that.”
“You did. And I’m grateful and so is Lea by the way. But you said to me we don’t have to worry about how we’ll drive home, remember? Just worry about surviving the next hour and then the one after that. That’s what you need to do with Emma and Molly.”
“Just tell her what I can,” Red said out loud. It made sense. In this moment his gut was telling him to talk to Emma about the daughter he’d never met because her temporary guardians and the guardian ad litem had agreed it would simply confuse Molly. But that made Red’s heart ache at what it might mean. What if he never got custody of Molly? What if telling Emma about Molly caused him to lose her? That would be two more women who walked out of his life.
The risk was so high and he prided himself on accepting the path he’d been on, the life he’d lived so not taking this risk… He had to do it.
“Thanks, Bray. Text after you’ve talked to Delilah,” Red said.
“You’re welcome. Let me know how it goes,” Braden said. “I’ll be working late. Lea is going to Whiskey River for her stepbrother Alex’s bachelor party so if you need me later…I’m here.” Lea and Alex weren’t technically related because Lea’s mom
had broken up with Alex’s dad a long time ago but the two of them kept their bond.
Red nodded and walked out the door. He was a loner by nature. He didn’t have a lot of family around him, which was probably why he’d hooked up with various women over the course of his adult life and never settled down. Braden was the only one he really relied on and he felt like he could do the same with Emma but at the same time, he knew the life he’d lived was putting that at risk.
The fact that he’d never formed any bonds meant he had a daughter he’d never met and now that he was ready to put down roots with Emma that might be asking her for too much. He walked out of the Outlaw Tequila building, which had been built in the old jail, and saw the library. The library was always going to be Emma.
He realized tonight when he came clean with her—and he was going to do that—he might be putting their relationship at risk. There might come a time when he was in town and wouldn’t feel like this. Wouldn’t look at the library and have that warm, Emma-induced feeling.
Damn.
He was getting all Dr. Phil on himself and that wasn’t what he needed. He had lanterns to pick up at the antique shop in Whiskey River and a dinner to get to work on fixing. He’d focus on that. Like Braden had reminded him. One step at a time. He couldn’t predict what the next outcome would be, but he’d roll with it.
He was good at taking chances and making a spot where no fish were biting turn into a fine catch. He could do that. He would do that with Emma. And Molly when she came here. But until then he was going to just keep moving forward.
Braden texted him he could go by and get the wine cooler and he did it. Delilah was in the kitchen yelling at someone and Red hid his smile when she glanced up and saw him standing there. For such a petite woman she could really give a dressing-down. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d heard his mom do the same when a novice sommelier had corked a vintage bottle of wine.
“Braden sent me to collect an ice bucket,” Red said.
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