“Tell me it’s not because of what I said.” Chase’s shoulders sagged.
“Don’t feel bad about that. Your threat that I’d lose your family—that you’d choose Stefanie—was exactly the reminder I needed. My losing you was what I had to do to make sure she didn’t lose you.”
“Emmett.” Chase’s expression was chagrined.
He raised an arm, but not to deliver another mind-clattering punch. Chase palmed Emmett’s shoulder and squeezed, the move almost...brotherly.
“I was angry when I said that. I would never blacklist you from the family any more than I would Stefanie. You could never do anything that would warrant it.” He gestured at Emmett’s face, where, no doubt, a bruise was forming. “A black eye, sure, but that’s different. You are family, Em.”
He blinked, taking in what Chase had said and trying to wrap his grieving mind and heartbroken soul around it.
He was family.
“Family doesn’t run out on each other,” Chase said.
“Mine does.” The words were rusty, but no less true.
“Mine doesn’t. Especially when my sister’s heart is on the line. I came here to knock some sense into you. About the resignation from my team, and about the way I know you feel about Stef. Once I stopped seeing red, I realized why you were doing this. You were always loyal to a fault. You’re the guy who dives in front of bullets and keeps everyone around him safe. But no one is firing at you, Emmett. You’re safe.” Chase shrugged like it was a simple realization. Like he hadn’t just brought Emmett’s world back to center. “You’re home.”
Since he was a little boy, Emmett had wanted a home. Not only the physical place to lay his head but also a family who would live in service to one another—who would stand by one another no matter the rift. He’d found that in the Fergusons, accepting that if he couldn’t have it for himself, at the very least he could be in proximity to it.
“When are you planning on delivering this big speech of love to my sister?” Chase asked.
Then a dash of blond caught the corner of Emmett’s eye and he turned to find Stefanie standing in his kitchen, arms folded.
“How about now?”
Miriam stepped in behind her, arms folded as well, her expression speaking for her. Make it good, buddy.
“Mimi. Stef.” Chase turned, clearly surprised to find his fiancée and his sister here.
A second look at Stefanie told Emmett that his wife was as sad as he felt. Her arms might be crossed, her voice might be strong, but her cheeks and nose were pink, her eyes red and tired like she hadn’t slept well outside the circle of his arms.
“What are you two doing here?” Chase asked.
“I suggested we stop by and see how the intervention was going.” Miriam snapped her head over to Emmett. “Nice shiner.”
“Well?” Stefanie asked, her heat-seeking gaze landing on Emmett. He was aware of Chase and Mimi stepping off to the side.
“How much did you hear?”
“Oh, something about how I was your sun and your reason to wake up in the morning.”
He swallowed past a thick throat, not sure how she felt about his admission. She’d heard it all.
“We’ll be outside.” Chase took Miriam’s elbow but before they left, he gripped Stef’s shoulder. “If you need me—”
“I can handle him.”
She wasn’t wrong. And now that Emmett had a second chance staring him in the face, he’d be more cooperative. Once Chase and Miriam were gone, Stefanie strolled to the center of the wide kitchen, leaving several feet between them.
“How did you go from wanting nothing from me to feeling everything?”
“Those two can coexist.”
“Not in my book.”
“I love you so damn much I can hardly breathe without you,” he admitted. “But I’d never ask you to choose between me and your family. I’d never ask you to live without them when I knew firsthand how hard that is to do.”
“Chase just made it clear there was no escape for you from this family.”
“I know.”
“I’m not the only one who deserves better. So do you.” She took another step in his direction.
The relief he felt when Chase told Emmett he was home was unparalleled. Like his best friend had voiced what Emmett had been searching for since he was a very small boy. In that same way, Emmett had known what it was like to be half of a whole with Stefanie—to earn her heart and her love when she’d asked for nothing in return.
Emmett was a good husband, and with some work, he knew he could be a great one.
“I’m learning.” He swallowed thickly, the faint copper taste of blood on his tongue. “I want it back. Our marriage. Our promise.” He lifted her hand, where the wedding band still sat. “Us.”
Certainty filled his chest. This felt right. Having her here, him admitting that he’d been wrong.
“I want you back. And not just back in my bed. Back in my arms. Back in my life. Next to me every step of the way. I will always protect you, Stef. It’s in my nature. It’s the way I’m built. But I want to do that because I love you. No other reason.”
“I hear you resigned from the protection business,” she said, holding his fingers with hers. “What were you planning on doing?”
“I hadn’t figured it out yet.” A sharp laugh left his chest. “My priority was—always has been—you. I thought it’d be easier if I was out of your life completely. If we didn’t accidentally cross paths.”
Stef shook her head, tears welling fresh in her eyes.
He swiped them away with his thumb. “Don’t cry over me, Stef.”
“I’m not.” She sniffed. “I’m crying because you’re so dumb.”
A laugh shook his shoulders. Laughing felt so damn good after feeling so damn miserable.
“You were going to leave us behind.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way.
“Your mom and baby brother left not of their choice. But your dad chose. How did it feel to love someone as much as you loved him and not have him around?”
He pushed the truth from his tight throat. “Awful.”
“Exactly. Awful. You let all of us love you, but you kept your love to yourself.”
“I thought... I thought you’d be better off.”
She rested her hands on his chest and looked up at him. “Dumb.”
He’d missed her warm touch so much that he didn’t move a muscle for fear of scaring her off.
“I love you,” he said, and it was easy to say to her. Like breathing.
“How much?”
“Enough to marry you. Again.”
Her smile broke forth. “We’re already married.”
“We’ll do it better this time. We’ll do it right. With your family present. On a beach. In Europe. Whatever you want.”
“Whatever, huh?” A mischievous smile curved her lips.
If he had a prayer of getting this woman to forgive him—to make her happy, he’d give her whatever her heart desired. As long as she desired him above all else.
“Whatever,” he confirmed, his lips dangerously close to hers. “Can you forgive me?”
She hmmed, but in her shining bright blue eyes, he saw he was already forgiven. It was enough to send his confidence through the roof. His strength returned like Samson with a full head of hair. He was enough for this woman. He was the only man who could fill her heart and make her body sing. She was the only woman for him—the only one who could crack through the wall he’d been trapped behind for years.
“You’re for me, honey,” he said before he placed a tender kiss on the center of her lips.
“You’re for me,” she confirmed, gripping his neck tight.
“One favor?” he asked.
“Just one?”
“For now.”
>
“What’s that?”
“Don’t make me wait until our second wedding night to take you to bed again.”
Her warm laugh tickled his lips as he folded her into his arms. “I’d never put myself through that kind of torture twice.”
She melted into him, her body softening against his as she twined her arms around his neck.
“Is that a yes?” he asked when she gave him a chance to catch his breath.
“Yes.”
He bent and scooped her into his arms. “To the wedding or the sex?”
“Yes to both.”
He wasted no time carrying her upstairs to his bedroom and showing her exactly how much he missed her. Exactly how much she meant to him and exactly how much he loved her.
On the cusp of her orgasm, he proposed again, vowing to love her forever. On his own release he repeated the word.
Forever.
It sounded like the perfect place to start.
Epilogue
Chase’s Dallas mansion had been turned into a virtual winter wonderland. Every room Emmett walked through was draped in silver shimmery something.
Garland.
Ornaments.
Sheer material of some sort hanging on the back wall of the ballroom with curtains of twinkle lights that reminded him of the Sparkle & Shine gala.
He smiled to himself. That was one of his favorite memories.
Two tall Christmas trees stood at either side of a white altar, where their officiant, Reverend James Woods—yes, really—stood with a leather Bible in hand. James was a good friend of the Ferguson family, and Rider and Elle had been overjoyed that Stefanie and Emmett agreed to allow him to perform the ceremony.
Emmett, strangling bow tie be damned, wore a tux. So did Rider and both of Stefanie’s brothers. Chase and Zach were standing to Emmett’s left, both groomsmen fighting not to sweat through their black jackets.
Stefanie’s dream “Christmas” wedding was happening in Texas in May.
When he’d won Stefanie back, Emmett had promised her anything and he’d meant it. She whipped together a plan to renew their vows, employing both Miriam and Penelope to help. After Chase was reelected the mayor of Dallas for another term, Stef pulled the trigger on her own wedding plans.
To get it out of the way so Mimi and Chase can have a wedding, she’d told him.
He loved her giving heart. He loved her passion for other people and her desire to do things big. There were no small celebrations in Stefanie’s world, and that Emmett was a part of her world was a gift.
A gift he deserved.
Miriam and Penelope made their ascent up a runner littered with fake snow, both waving at little Olivia, who waved back from her grandmother’s lap. Elle smiled and sent Emmett an approving nod. It meant more to him than she could possibly know. He’d tell her later, but for now he simply nodded back.
This was a fairly small affair for the Fergusons; fewer than fifty chairs had butts in them. In one of those chairs sat Emmett’s father, who smiled proudly from his seat next to Miriam’s mother, Emmett noticed. He suspected his wife was responsible for seating the only two single people in attendance side by side. Another subject to broach later.
His relationship with his father was a work in progress, but when Emmett finally met with him a few months ago, he’d been able to progress past some of the hurt that had haunted them both for years.
The formal music bled into Stefanie’s favorite Christmas song: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” And then his bride appeared around the corner, arm in arm with her father, her smile as bright and contagious as it had been the day Emmett met her.
Like the first time she strolled to him in a wedding gown, his gut clenched with what he now knew was certainty. That feeling of rightness. The expression on his face was no longer the stunned shock of a man who didn’t deserve her but the confident acceptance that this woman belonged with him.
She’d told him just last night that she’d decided to legally change her name to Stefanie Keaton. That, and the fact that Chase had claimed Emmett as an honorary brother, was enough to cause Emmett to blink suspiciously scratchy eyes. He’d never accepted the good that’d come his way, but it was hard to resist when it came in tsunami form.
Stefanie stood in front of him now, having been given away by her father, her white dress the same one she’d worn during their original wedding. She claimed it was “lucky.”
He couldn’t agree more. He was the luckiest man alive.
They joined hands as the reverend began the ceremony. Emmett thumbed the wedding ring that had been at home on her hand for five months. He recalled the story about the widow who wanted the rings to have another life—to be a part of another union that would stand the test of time.
Emmett and Stefanie planned on doing her proud.
“You may kiss your bride,” James, the reverend, said, inspiring quiet chuckles from the crowd when he added, “Again.”
Stefanie threw her arms around Emmett’s neck and laid one on him. He caught her, lifting her off the floor to hold her close. Applause rippled around them as he lost himself in her mouth.
Never had he imagined he could live a life overflowing with love and happiness, but he’d accepted his fate. And he had this woman in his arms to thank for it.
And thanking her was exactly what he intended to do.
Starting with today, and every day thereafter that he walked this good earth.
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Blame It On Christmas by Janice Maynard.
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Blame It On Christmas
by Janice Maynard
One
“The answer is no!”
Mazie Tarleton ended the call, wishing she had a good old-fashioned receiver she could slam down on a cradle. Cutting off a phone conversation with the tap of a red button wasn’t nearly as satisfying.
Behind her, Gina—her best friend and coworker—ate the last bite of her cinnamon crunch bagel and wiped cream cheese from her fingers. “Who’s got you all riled up?”
The two women were in Mazie’s office, a cramped space behind the elegant showroom that drew tourists and locals to All That Glitters, Mazie’s upscale jewelry store in Charleston’s historic business district.
Mazie dropped into a chair and scowled. “It’s J.B.’s real estate agent again. He’s making her badger
me.”
“You mean J.B. who wants to offer you a ridiculous amount of money for this building that’s falling down around our ears?”
“Whose side are you on anyway?” Mazie and Gina had met as freshmen at Savannah’s College of Art and Design. Gina was aware of Mazie’s long-standing feud with Charleston’s highly eligible and incredibly sexy billionaire businessman.
Gina flicked a crumb from her cashmere-covered bosom. “We have dry rot in the attic. A heating system that dates back to the Civil War. And do I need to mention that our hurricane policy rates are set to triple when the renewal is due? I know you Tarleton people are richer than God, but that doesn’t mean we should thumb our noses at a great offer.”
“If it were anybody but J.B.,” Mazie muttered, feeling the noose of inevitability tighten around her neck.
J.B. Jackson Beauregard Vaughan. The man she loved to hate. J.B. Vaughan had been on her personal hit list since she was sixteen years old. She loathed him. And she wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.
“What did he ever do to you?” Gina asked. Her perplexed frown was understandable. J.B. Vaughan was the prototype for tall, dark and handsome. Cocky grin. Brilliant blue eyes. Strong features. And shoulders that were about a million miles wide.
“It’s complicated,” Mazie muttered, feeling her face heat. Even now, the memories were humiliating.
Mazie couldn’t remember a time when J.B. hadn’t been part of her life. Way back when, she had even loved him. As an almost-brother. But when her hormones started raging and she began seeing J.B. in a whole new light, a spring formal at her all-girls prep school had presented itself as the perfect opportunity to do some very grown-up experimentation.
Not sex. Oh, no. Not that. She was aware, even then, that J.B. was the kind of guy who knew things, and she wasn’t ready to go down that road.
She called him on a Wednesday afternoon in April. With her nerves humming and her stomach flopping, she blurted out her invitation.
J.B. had been oddly noncommittal. And then, barely four hours later, he had showed up on her doorstep.
A Christmas Proposition Page 17
