by Noelle Adams
She hadn’t bothered to notice his existence all evening, but she was sure paying a lot of attention to all these other guys.
Ryan had said she always had guys hanging around that needed to be swatted away like flies. Noah was understanding that now.
He wanted to swat all these other guys away. Maybe then she would look at him again.
He’d gotten here early and taken a tiny table in the corner, where he could sit with his back to the wall. Occasionally, people he knew would stop by and sit with him to chat for a while.
Blacksburg wasn’t really a small town—it was actually large for a town, although it wasn’t a city—but most of the population was the university, so the locals felt like a small community. He’d been raised here. He knew a lot of people in town.
It was strange being back. It made him feel vulnerable. Like seeing his father’s wife yesterday and embarrassing himself over it with Emma.
She’d helped him yesterday. A lot. It was giving him even more thoughts he shouldn’t be having about her.
And other kinds of thoughts still hadn’t gone away either. Hot, vivid pictures of them together in very carnal ways.
The way he couldn’t stop lusting after Emma made him feel vulnerable too.
He was used to being able to control himself better than this.
What the hell was happening to him here?
He kept watching Emma. She was sitting on a stool at the counter, and her legs were crossed in a way that made her short skirt slide even higher up her thighs. Her thigh looked soft, touchable.
His body went hard as he thought about touching it.
He diverted himself by watching her smile at the guy hovering almost on top of her. Noah didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t like the guy’s wolfish smile.
Emma should know better.
She was supposed to be on a Man-Fast.
And this guy definitely wanted to take her somewhere and screw her.
Noah did too, but that was an entirely different matter. He didn’t see her as an object like that guy clearly did.
She was a whole person. A whole, beautiful, intelligent, sensitive, generous, kind-hearted, gutsy person.
A gorgeous, sexy person.
Whom he wanted to take to bed and kiss, touch, claim until she was exhausted and hoarse with screaming from pleasure.
That was not an image he should indulge. Nowhere—and certainly not here in a tearoom full of people.
He really needed to pull it together.
When a hand clamped down on his shoulder, he jerked in surprise, feeling like he’d been caught doing something naughty.
He felt even more guilty when Patrick sat down at his table. “Good turnout,” he said.
Noah nodded. “It is. The girls should be happy.”
“Hell, I’m happy. I put some money into this place.”
“So did I.” Noah didn’t care about the money. He did care about Ginny, though. And Carol.
And Emma.
Noah tried to look around in a casual way, but his eyes strayed back over to Emma.
Patrick must have followed his gaze. “That’s Ken Franks she’s talking to. She went out with him a few times—a year or two back.”
“He obviously wants to go out with her again.”
“She was never really into him.”
Noah was pleased to hear that, but he would have felt better if she hadn’t been smiling at him in that irresistible way. “I thought she was on that Man-Fast thing.”
“That’s what she says.” Patrick let out a breath. “I think she really just wants a nice guy, and all she ends up with are losers. The last guy she dated…” He shook his head, looking grim.
“What?” Noah asked.
“Cheating on her. Lying about it. Cheating on her some more. Lying even more. I wanted to beat that guy to a pulp.”
Noah felt an intense wave of outrage that almost made him rise to his feet. “I would have.”
“And you would have faced Emma’s wrath too. She doesn’t want us interfering in her personal life. And I can’t say I blame her.”
Noah noticed that Patrick had grouped the two of them together—as if they were both her brothers.
Noah wasn’t Emma’s brother.
Noah wasn’t anywhere close to Emma’s brother.
Noah didn’t want anyone to mistake him for Emma’s brother.
And he definitely didn’t want Emma thinking about him like a brother.
He could hardly say that to Patrick, though. He just made a wordless sound.
Fortunately, Patrick took the sound as agreement and didn’t pursue the topic.
***
An hour and three more guys flirting with Emma later, Noah had had enough.
He’d been swinging between desire and arousal for too long. If he had to watch another guy come on to Emma, he was going to either scream or hit something. Neither one would be ideal in the current circumstances.
Better to just leave.
He looked around the crowds for Ginny, so he could let her know he was leaving, and he finally found her carrying a tray of empty dishes toward the kitchen.
He followed and saw her slump slightly as she put the tray down on a counter.
“Are you okay?” he asked, a sliver of worry distracting him from his obsessive thoughts about Emma.
She jerked in surprise, but smiled at him as she turned around. “Yeah. Fine. It’s all going great, but I feel like I’ve done nothing but run around for three hours.”
“It won’t always be this busy.”
“I know. If it is, we’ll have to get a bigger place and hire about three more people.” She grinned at him. “Are you having a good time?”
“Yeah. Sure. But I was thinking of taking off.”
“No! Not already.”
“I’ve been here for a long time already.”
“I thought you were having fun. I saw you talking to a bunch of people.”
“I was, but I’ve talked to people enough. Will you be mad if I leave?”
She shook her head with a little smile. “I guess not.” She wiped her hands on her short black skirt and then stepped over to him. “I’ll walk you out.”
Noah was relieved about his escape, but he shouldn’t have counted on a quick exit. Ginny stopped by the counter where Emma was sitting as she passed by it.
“Noah’s leaving already,” Ginny complained to her friend. “Try to convince him to stay longer, will you?”
“I don’t need con—”
Before Noah could finish his automatic response, Ginny gasped, “What on earth!”
There was some sort of commotion across the room, and she hurried toward it.
Noah looked over at Emma, who met his eyes for the first time that evening.
“Things are going pretty well, I guess,” he said, hoping he sounded casual.
“Yeah. I think so.” She swung her leg, and Noah had to fight not too leer at her soft, bare skin. “So you’re leaving?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Did you have a good time? I saw you talking to a lot of old friends.”
Noah hadn’t even realized she’d noticed him at all. He couldn’t repress the sliver of pleasure at the knowledge that she’d been keeping track of him—at least a little. “Yeah. There are a lot of folks I know here.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He thought back. “Oh. Yeah. I guess I had a good time.”
“Why do you guess?” She met his eyes evenly, almost challenging. “Don’t you know?”
“No,” he admitted. “I really don’t know.”
She seemed to understand what he meant. She nodded quietly.
Noah felt an emotional pull toward her, that she seemed to understand him so well, even when he wasn’t sure he understood himself.
But he shouldn’t—he really shouldn’t—be feeling that way.
He cleared his throat. “And I noticed your Man-Fast flew out the window.”
&
nbsp; She gasped and straightened her spine, which unfortunately called attention to the curve of her breasts. “What are you talking about?”
Struggling not to gaze too fixedly on the slight outline of nipple he could see beneath the white fabric of her dress, he managed to say, “Your Man-Fast. With all the flirting you were doing, I figured you’d given up on it.”
“I was not flirting!”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Don’t you give me that snide look,” she said, her lush lips turning down in a frown. “I was talking to some people I know, same as you.”
“There was definitely more than talking going on over here.” He had no idea why he was pursuing this. It was stupid. Futile. It would just make things worse.
But he’d been bristling for too long about all the guys falling over themselves around her, and it was going to come out one way or the other.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I didn’t do anything but talk.”
“Right. You didn’t smile at them and show them all that skin and make them think they might be getting lucky later on.”
She gasped again. “I did nothing of the kind.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t! I was talking. A girl can talk to guys without being accused of leading them on. I could say the same thing about you—every time you talk to and smile at women.”
“I haven’t been talking to women tonight.”
“You talked to a few.”
He tried to remember back to the people he’d chatted with and only remembered two young women. “They were married. I knew them from high school.”
“So? What’s your point? You can flirt with married women, you know.”
“Are you saying you think I’m the kind of guy who would do that?” His voice was now as angry as hers was.
She opened her mouth with some sort of sharp reply, but she must have rethought it. She slumped slightly. “No. I know you’re not.”
“Good.”
“It would be nice if you’d know I wasn’t like that either.”
“I’d never think you’d come on to married men.”
“You just think I’m some kind of tease, torturing men for fun.”
Noah sighed and leaned against the counter. “No. I really don’t.”
“Then why were you acting like that then?”
Good question.
And a question he couldn’t possibly answer honestly.
“I was just being an ass.”
“Yes. You were.”
“Sorry.”
Her frown was relaxing slightly, and she was peering at him closely. “Okay then.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. Okay.”
He felt a little better, now that she wasn’t so mad at him. But it just made him want to touch her even more.
He really needed to get out of here.
“I already have an older brother,” she said, still scrutinizing his face. “I don’t need another one.”
Damn it.
She thought he was acting like an older brother.
She had no idea he felt like a jealous boyfriend, resenting the fact that any other guy was thinking about what was his.
Could things be any more of a mess for him?
“I know,” he said thickly. “I don’t think I’m your older brother.”
He’d said that wrong. It had sounded way too husky, way too much like he was thinking about sex.
Her cheeks grew very pink.
He needed to fix this. Right now. He needed to say something—anything—to change the mood between them.
Finally, he thought of something that had worked a couple times before. “I already have a sister, Pudge. I don’t need another.”
That did it. The soft confusion on Emma’s face disappeared completely.
And Noah felt like even more of an ass than ever.
She didn’t reply, and Noah took that opportunity to get out of there while the getting was good.
Five
Emma felt like an absolute idiot as she left Tea for Two and headed back to her place—which was just three blocks down in one of the newer apartment buildings downtown.
No matter how much she tried to remember her Man-Fast and be reasonable, she kept getting little hopes where Noah was concerned.
That look in his eyes sometimes… warm, admiring, almost like longing.
It must just be his way, however. He probably flirted with everyone like Ryan did, and he was treating her like any other girl.
He clearly wasn’t serious about her.
Pudge.
The damned man wouldn’t stop calling her Pudge.
She knew he’d never intended the nickname as a way of making fun of her weight, but every time he used it now, it was like a slap in the face or a hard shove, bringing her back to reality with a jarring thud.
She’d left shortly after Noah. She’d felt kind of bad about it—since things were still going strong at Tea for Two—but she’d stayed for more than three hours. Surely that was long enough to show support for Ginny and Carol and still go home and sulk a little.
Her mood had taken a real nosedive after her conversation with Noah.
She wished she was stronger. Maybe some women could just brush it off.
But Noah was obviously still important to her, and it was going to take some time for her reason and maturity to convince her to let go of this crush.
That was all it was, after all.
A crush.
Certainly nothing life-changing.
She wasn’t going to fall for another asshole who would end up breaking her heart, even if he happened to be her brother’s best friend.
She wasn’t that stupid.
Her heart gave a silly little skip when she saw Nan’s old Cadillac, which Noah was still driving. He’d snagged one of the few places in the public parking lot off the street, of course.
He was down a ways from her, standing next to the car, tapping something out on his phone.
Probably lining up a date for later in the evening.
Or maybe just dealing with something from work.
He didn’t look up as she passed his line of sight, and she didn’t call out a greeting.
What would she say after the conversation they’d just had?
Downtown Blacksburg was about ten blocks, and it was always well-lit and full of people at this time on a weekend night. She had no concerns about walking home alone.
So she was surprised when she heard a wolf-whistle. Glancing around automatically, she spotted a group of four guys. They looked college-aged and kind of rough—or at least, they were pretending to be rough.
And the whistle had clearly been directed at her because they were all staring.
She looked ahead again and kept walking, studiously ignoring them even as they called out a few rude comments.
It was no big deal. She knew it wasn’t. It happened all the time to women. But she still felt embarrassed, uncomfortable. She didn’t live in a big city. She wasn’t used to this like other women must be.
“Did you have something to say to her?” The voice came from behind her, and it was loud and authoritative and not at all happy.
Noah.
She turned and saw Noah had come down the sidewalk to confront the rude guys.
Her cheeks flushed even hotter, but she also felt a little thrill of satisfaction—that he would stand up for her that way.
“Noah, don’t worry—” she began.
“It sounded like they had something to say to you.” She could tell he was used to being in control in board rooms and offices. He was barely even raising his voice, but he had complete control of the situation. “Maybe they’d like to say it in front of me.”
“No, no,” one of them said. “Sorry, man.” They all turned around and hurried away with almost laughable speed.
They were just kids really, and even as a group they were no match for Noah.
Emma shifted from foot
to foot, darting a look up at him. “Thanks for that,” she said. “But it was really no big deal.”
“They don’t get to talk to you that way.”
She shivered in pleasure again. There was no way she could talk herself out of it. He looked so defensive, so strong, so possessive.
“Well, thanks.” She wasn’t sure what to say.
“Your place is nearby, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Just a couple of blocks up here.”
She waited to see if he’d complain about her walking home alone at night, but he didn’t. He just said, “I’ll walk with you.”
She started to object—automatically but for no particular reason—but she stopped the words from coming out. There was no reason he couldn’t walk a couple of blocks with her. He would probably insist on it, even if she tried to object.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
They didn’t speak as they walked down the sidewalk and crossed the street to her building. But she was intensely aware of Noah’s presence beside her. It felt so strong, so masculine, so… man.
Why the hell did she always want him so much?
She should know better by now.
She was feeling strangely shy when they reached the front entrance to her building, and she turned to face him, dropping her eyes. “Thanks again.”
“No problem.” There was that husky note in his voice, the one she really liked.
She didn’t dare to look up at him. “I could have made it on my own, you know.”
“I know that.” God, just the sound of his voice sent shivers up and down her spine.
“No matter what you think, I’m not a little girl anymore.”
She had no idea why she was saying this. She was just rambling, too nervous to think through the words that were coming out of her mouth. And she was seriously having to hold herself back from reaching out toward him, taking hold of his shirt and pulling him closer.
He smelled so incredibly good. Not anything as strong as aftershave, but something warm and expensive.
She wanted to smell him even more.
She wanted to feel him.
