“Okay,” Wendy said, a little breathlessly as she got in, too, and quietly closed her car door. “Good to go.” All of them had been tiptoeing around for hours, hoping the baby would get a really good nap in before the barbecue, when the noise and commotion was likely to keep her awake for hours.
Emily stared out the window, feeling her nerves tighten a little more with every block they passed, until she felt vaguely nauseated. She rolled the window down a little until she felt the blow of air on her forehead.
“Have you heard anything about the offer you made on the house, Emily?”
Emily looked over at Marcos and caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. “Not yet,” she told him. “My Realtor gave them until tomorrow night to accept or counter.” She’d settled on the little house on the hill. Even though the nursery wouldn’t likely be used now, it was still the most appealing place she’d looked at. Max might have ended things, but Emily still needed a place to live. And the steps needed to arrange buying one had given her something to fill her days with.
The nights, though, just stayed endless and empty.
“With any luck, you’ll have your guest bedroom back within few weeks,” she added.
“You know we haven’t minded you staying with us,” Marcos said.
Emily managed to smile slightly in response, before looking out the window once more. They were turning into the main entrance of the airport.
Her smile faded. Nerves returned.
Even before Marcos reached the parking lot in front of the flight school, they could see the enormous red, white and blue balloons that stretched high into the sky, bobbing and waving in the breeze. There was even one of those enormous inflatable houses that kids bounced in and Emily knew from Jordana there were other games and entertainment planned for the children. Thanks to Wendy’s dithering, they were more than a half hour late, and there was already a crowd of people milling around the grassy area as well as the open bays of the hangar. If the early turnout was any indication, the afternoon would be an unqualified success.
Marcos left them off near the lawn before going in search of an open parking spot since the lot was clearly full. Emily managed to carry all of MaryAnne’s gear and push the stroller they’d fastened her carrier into while Wendy carried her pastry boxes ahead of her, aiming for the tented area where the food was located.
Alongside the tent, the largest barbecue setup Emily had ever seen was being manned by a couple of men wearing white aprons wrapped around their waists, and every time they opened one of the doors to the barrel-looking contraption, the mouthwatering scent of barbecue escaped.
It even made Emily feel a little hungry, and she hadn’t felt like eating since Max had left her at the curb in front of Wendy’s house.
“Emily!”
She heard her name through the cacophony of music and childish shrieks and craned her head around, searching for the source. She finally found it in her cousin, Victoria, who was standing on a folding lawn chair, waving madly at her.
Emily hitched the Fold-N-Play under her arm a little higher and maneuvered the stroller across the thick grass, working her way around tables and chairs and blankets spread on the ground where people were already picnicking.
She could feel beads of sweat working down her back when she finally made it to Victoria and knew they were just as likely caused by the effort not to think about the picnic blanket she’d shared with Max as they were from the afternoon’s heat.
Victoria was beaming at her and her cousin hopped off her chair, bouncing over to give Emily a hug before peeking beneath the canopy shading MaryAnne in the stroller. “She just gets prettier every time I see her,” Victoria pronounced as she straightened and waved toward the very tall man who’d risen from his own lawn chair when Emily approached. “Garrett, honey.” Victoria gestured toward her fiancé. “Help Emily unload, would you?”
The good-looking rancher smiled faintly, and nodded at Emily in greeting as he quickly slipped the Fold-N-Play from her unsteady grip.
“Thanks.” She pulled the diaper bag off the back of the stroller and set it on the ground because she was afraid it was too heavy and would tip the whole multi-wheeled contraption right over, MaryAnne included. “I didn’t even think to bring a lawn chair,” she admitted, looking over the crowd.
Victoria just waved a hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Jordana says they’ve nearly rented out the town’s supply of ’em.” Her brown curls bouncing, she looked up at her tall fiancé. “Garrett, honey—”
“I got it,” he said, looking amused, and set off, working his way through the congestion far more easily than Emily had.
“Just because you can bat those big brown eyes of yours at that man and he seems ready to jump to your bidding doesn’t mean you had to send him off for a chair for me,” Emily told her cousin wryly. “I could’ve gone and got one myself.”
Victoria made a face. “Max was over there, last I saw.”
Hearing his name made everything inside Emily take a slow, swooping dip. She quickly shoved her hands into the hidden side pockets of her green sundress before Victoria could see them shaking. Her fingertips worried the small links of the daisy bracelet she’d tucked there. Unable to put it away, but unable to wear it. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she lied to her diminutive cousin.
Victoria just gave her a look as if she knew better. Since she and Wendy were close, and Emily knew Victoria was also thick as thieves with Jordana, perhaps she did know.
“Tanner’s got to be pleased with the turnout today,” she said, anxious to move away from the topic of Max. “I see so many Fortunes around you’d think it was a family reunion.”
“Right?” Victoria’s head bobbed. “Garrett saw the crowd and wanted to turn around and head back to Pete’s Retreat.” She smiled, oozing sweet, Southern charm. “I, of course, convinced him not to.”
Emily couldn’t help but laugh. Her cousin’s infectiousness always had that ability. “I really should go find Jordana and check in with her.” Emily glanced under the canopy to see that MaryAnne, miraculously, was still sound asleep. “She’s been haranguing me for days that she had too many tasks to fill with too few able bodies.”
“She’s got me scooping ice cream, of all things,” Victoria said. “Once they bring it on out. Last I saw, she was over by Tanner’s pretty new jets.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Go on and find her. I can watch MaryAnne. I’m hoping if Garrett keeps seeing me minding her, it’ll give him ideas.” Her eyes sparkled.
Her cousin had no way of knowing how her words hurt. Emily managed a quick thanks before heading in the direction of the hangar bays, bracing herself even more as she went.
With every step she took closer to the planes, her anxiety grew, feeling like Max was going to pop out of nowhere at any second. Which was ludicrous. He wouldn’t be hunting around for her, that was for certain.
She left the grass and crossed the tarmac, her gaze straying over to the tie-down area where the plane he’d flown the day of their picnic had been parked. The small, white and green plane wasn’t there today, though. She didn’t know if she was relieved, or sad.
Tanner’s jets—two of them—were parked next to each other, their placement right at the yawning opening of the hangar doors, showing them off as the obvious guests of honor. The cabin doors were open, the stairs extended for people to head up inside and explore the luxury. She rounded the line of people waiting at the nearest one, her eyes hunting for her sister.
“Emily!” Tanner waved from inside the shade of the hangar. “Jordana’s got stuff set up in the classrooms.”
She nodded and angled toward the door that she knew, courtesy of Max’s tour, would lead her there. She brushed her hands down the front of her sundress, took a deep breath and went inside. But even then, she didn’t run into Max along the way. Just reached her sister, who was pointing hither and yon, directing a small group of people Emily didn’t recognize, and looking like she was ready to tear out
her hair.
Spotting her, Jordana shooed the others off to their assignments and turned on her. “Finally! Where’s Wendy? She brought her desserts, didn’t she?”
Emily nodded. “Don’t stress out any more than you already are. Wendy’s delivering the goods over to the food area and I’m here to help with whatever you need.”
Jordana blew out a puff of air that stirred her hair. “Good. Okay.” She waddled to a table piled high with boxes that had been pushed against one wall. “These toys, believe it or not, need to be wrapped.” She picked up a roll of red, white and blue wrapping paper. There were dozens of similar rolls sticking out of a crate next to the table. “The store that donated them said they’d come wrapped but…obviously not. There’s scissors and tape and as soon as I can find someone else to help you, I’ll send ’em over.”
“Why do you need to wrap them?” Emily picked up one of the toys. It was already packaged, albeit not in the red, white and blue colors of the day. But Jordana gave her a look, and Emily snatched up the scissors. “Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “What are you using them for?” There had to be at least a hundred of the boxes. “How soon do you need them?”
“Game prizes for the kids. And the sooner the better.” Jordana shook her head, heading off. “They were just supposed to already be wrapped,” she was muttering.
Emily blew out a breath, studied the overloaded table for a moment before dragging over another table that wasn’t being used. When it was positioned to her liking, she retrieved a few of the large empty boxes discarded haphazardly in one corner of the classroom, and positioned them beneath the table. Then she unrolled the first roll of wrapping paper. Got an idea of how large a piece she needed. The toys looked like they were different items, but the boxes they came in were all pretty much the same size. And she leaned over her work surface and began cutting. And cutting. And cutting. She’d cut and stacked enough squares of paper to empty six rolls of the wrapping paper when she judged that sufficient enough to make some significant headway. Then she grabbed the roll of tape and plopped a toy in the center of the first paper square.
“Looks like you’ve got an organized plan there.”
She straightened, whirling around to face Max. Her heart felt like it shot to her throat, dropped to her toes and shot back up again all in the moment it took for her gaze to race over his face. Did he look thinner? His eyes tired? “What are you doing here?”
He plucked at the front of his Redmond Flight School polo. “Work here,” he said, his voice deadly dry.
She flushed. “I meant in here.” Tired or thinner or not, he still looked so wonderful to her that her chest ached. “Shouldn’t you be out there—” she gestured vaguely “—enjoying the results of your efforts?”
He didn’t answer that. Just jerked his chin toward the work table she’d organized. “Jordana was looking for help.”
Emily quickly spun around again, facing the paper and the toys. He hadn’t come to find her. Of course not. Wanting to throttle her sister, she blindly tore off a length of tape only to have it fold over and stick to itself, useless. She made a noise and shook it off her thumb to start again. “I’m sure she can find someone with less important tasks than you have to help with this.”
“I offered.”
Her hand trembled. She pressed it on top of the covered gift and sealed the paper with the tape. “I’m sorry.” She turned the gift. Folded paper. Sealed again and dropped it in the box before grabbing the next toy. “She should have warned you I was here.”
“I knew.”
“I see.” But she didn’t. Not at all.
She focused hard on her task. Plop toy. Fold paper. Slap some tape on. If Emily worked fast enough, Jordana would have the toys—maybe not perfectly wrapped, but still wrapped—by the time she needed them. Without looking at Max, she divided her stack of pre-cut sheets and set some to the side for him. “All of the tape is over there.” She’d stacked the rolls so that she could grab them easily when she ran out. She muttered an oath when she ruined another piece of tape.
“Here.” Max lifted the tape dispenser out of her hand. “You wrap. I’ll give you the tape.”
She casually hid her hand in the folds of her skirt and tried to rub away the tingling inside her fingers. “Fine. Give me a piece of tape, then. It doesn’t need to be very long. Maybe an inch, inch and a half. Otherwise I’m afraid we’ll run out before—”
“You are bossy.”
She snapped her lips together and watched him tear off a piece of tape, quite deliberately, at least four inches long. He gave it to her and she slapped it onto the paper, dropping the finished product into the box. Without a word, she reached for the next toy but her nerves had already reached such a screaming pitch she couldn’t stand it. She whirled on him. “If you didn’t want me to be here, you should have just told Tanner that! I would have stayed home.”
“Who said I didn’t want you to be here?” His smooth tone gave absolutely nothing away.
“Obviously, you don’t.”
“I’m helping you, aren’t I?”
She stared. He was using an overly reasonable tone that wormed right beneath her skin. “I don’t need your help. As you pointed out, I have an organized plan here.”
“Plans can be shared.”
She inhaled, feeling like she’d been hit below the belt. “I’m sorry. I’ve told you I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you. Shouldn’t have kept what I was doing a secret.”
“No,” he agreed. He reached past her for one of the boxes, his arm brushing against hers, and placed it in the center of the paper. “But I am able to see how that might have been…awkward at first.” He tore off three short pieces of tape and made fast work out of fastening all the perfectly folded sides before dropping the wrapped toy in the box.
Much more efficiently, and certainly much faster, than she’d been doing.
“I worked in a department store over Christmas once,” he said and handed her back the tape. “One of my many jobs in my misspent youth.”
Her mind felt pinched with memories. She turned back to the toys. Mimicked Max’s method. The end result was a little neater. She grabbed another toy. “It would be easier to do this alone,” she said huskily. “And I know you must have more important things to do.”
“Maybe.” He was silent for a moment. “What’s the next step in your plan? Your pregnancy plan. You going to have another artificial—” He waved his hand, not finishing.
She gnawed at the inside of cheek and shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
Her shoulders bowed. “Do you really want the details?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but shook her head. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do.” She, who hadn’t dithered over decision making since she was a schoolgirl, and maybe not even then, couldn’t seem to make one single plan in that regard.
“Pursue adoption some more?”
She forced herself to grab another toy, not answering.
“Tanner says you made an offer on a house.”
“Tanner talks a lot,” she muttered, feeling too wounded inside to dwell on how surprising that actually was. Tanner wasn’t a big talker. But then what did she know about how close Tanner and Max were becoming? They worked together every day.
“Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”
She felt an ominous burning behind her eyes.
She hadn’t let herself cry since that day in Max’s bedroom.
If he wanted a pound of flesh, she would give it. “Yes.” She pressed her molars together, finished another toy and dropped it in the box. But when she reached for the next toy, her hand wouldn’t go. She stared down at the paper. Realized her hands were clenched into fists. “If I could go back and change anything, Max, I would.”
“What would you change? Going to Red? Etienne’s? My place? Flying? What?”
She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t give up the memory of any one of those moments with him. Not when
they were all she had left. “I wouldn’t have had the A.I,” she said huskily.
“Why? You want a baby. More than anything, you said.”
She couldn’t take it. The pain inside her was excruciating. “If I hadn’t done it, maybe I would still have you.” She stared at the toys that Jordana was so insistent about having wrapped and decided that her sister would have to be disappointed. She set down the tape and walked away, blindly heading in the general direction of the door that led back to the hangar, because she couldn’t see through the tears glazing her eyes. Her hands felt the crash bar and she pushed, door swinging wide, and escaped into the hangar, breaking into a run and not caring that the people standing in line to view Tanner’s new jets were turning to look.
“Emily. Wait!”
She could hardly hear anything over the rushing sound inside her head, but she still heard his voice.
She almost kept running.
But she lived in Red Rock now. Sooner or later she was bound to run into him again. It was the same poignant promise—just as much a curse—that had dominated her thoughts, coming to the launch party.
But she stopped. Looked back at him, watching him stride through the hangar toward her, and it took everything she possessed to lift her chin and square her shoulders, slide her hands inside her dress pockets and wait. Not to show herself as utterly destroyed as she felt inside.
But his blue gaze searched her face, as if he saw right through her. He stopped several feet away. “I thought the hardest thing I’d ever do in my life was admitting that Anthony wasn’t mine.”
She trembled, the edge of a tiny metal daisy pressed against her palm.
He took a step closer. She saw a muscle flex in his jaw. “Thought that if I never expected anything from anyone else…never counted on anyone else…I’d be okay. And I’d never have to face something like that again.”
“Max—”
He lifted his hand. “Let me.”
She pressed her lips together, her throat going tight. She wasn’t even sure what she’d wanted to say, how to articulate the emotion roiling inside her chest.
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