by L. J. Fine
Now, as she lay there staring up at the ceiling, she couldn’t stop the contented smile from lifting her lips. For such a remote, emotionally controlled person, that man sure liked to cuddle. And she wasn’t about to complain as he was excessively good at it. She had never felt so warm, or so safe in her life as she did wrapped up in his arms.
As they had lain together, he had kissed her, slowly, deeply, tenderly until her lips felt swollen and she couldn’t hold her eyelids open anymore. Then he had started tracing light kisses down her chin, onto her neck. That’s how she had fallen asleep. In the cocoon of his arms with the sweet rocking of his lips back and forth across her skin.
Turning onto her side, she hugged the pillow and took a deep inhale of his scent, that woodsy, masculine scent that engulfed her. She sighed happily until she had the disturbing thought that if she weren’t careful, she could get used to this.
That’s when she heard the sizzling sound of bacon frying in a pan. She groaned. Yeah, she could definitely get used to this.
Maybe she should quit lying around and get up and go help him. Make herself a little uncomfortable so she wouldn’t want to get used to this.
She was delighted to find that he had an en suite bathroom. He hadn’t exactly given her a tour of the place last night when he’d man handled her up here. But, oh, how she loved the way he handled her.
Okay, stop it, she admonished herself as she cleaned up in the bathroom. After last night she seriously needed to get a grip on herself. No matter what it might seem like at the moment, she knew this wasn’t going to have a fairytale ending. She needed to prepare herself for that eventuality.
Quickly, she did her business, washed her face and snagged the spare toothbrush it seemed he had laid out for her. The thoughtfulness tugged at her heart but she forced the feeling away. She needed to get her head back in the game. A man like Ben just wasn’t the right one for her, and she would do well to remember that.
After finger-combing her hair, she exited the bathroom and got dressed in her shirt and jeans from last night. Then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and left the bedroom to go find Ben.
Immediately leaving the bedroom found her in a long hallway at the top of some stairs. Assuming the kitchen was downstairs, she gripped the wooden balustrade and followed the scent of breakfast downward.
She found him in a small but surprisingly well equipped, kitchen scrambling some eggs over the stove. When he became aware of her presence, he shot her one of those small, rare smiles until his gaze ran the length of her body and the smile turned into a frown.
“Damn, I liked it better when you were wearing my clothes,” he said grabbing some plates and turning off the stove.
His playful mood from last night was still in full effect and she could feel her resolve of only a few moments ago slipping. Oh, she really needed to get out of here. Before her heart turned into mush.
“Maybe I should have grabbed one of your belts while I was at it. I could have wrapped it around my waist and worn your t-shirt as a dress.”
“On you? Woulda looked fucking awesome.” The smile returned to his face as he approached her. He cupped her face in his hands and gave her a soft, lingering kiss. “Morning, Sugar,” he whispered against her lips before kissing her again.
Inwardly, she whimpered. This, as far as she was concerned, was the perfect way to wake up. A sexy-as-hell man kissing her tenderly and cooking her breakfast was a definite plus in her book. Too bad said sexy man could never be a permanent fixture in her life.
Nevertheless, when he finally pulled away from her, she knew her expression was dazed as her eyes were slightly unfocused. Further evidence was that spark of amusement in his eyes before he said, “You hungry?”
Emma blinked then cleared her throat. “Sure, I mean, yeah.” Great she was babbling. Apparently she couldn’t handle this much affection directly after waking up. Her brain wasn’t working yet. So without saying anything else, she sat down at the kitchen table and poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe he’d set there.
It was then she noticed that the table was set and there was cream and sugar in front of her as well. She was digesting this when he came over to the table and set a plate full of fluffy scrambled eggs, bacon and toast in front of her. Embarrassingly, her stomach growled as soon as the aroma of the food hit her nose.
To cover up the sound, she said, “Wow, feeling a little domesticated this morning? This is amazing, Ben. Thank you.”
Either the comment or the praise within the comment, seemed to make him suddenly uncomfortable. The loose, relaxed way he had been moving about the kitchen disappeared as he stiffly nodded and took a seat opposite her. So which was it? Maybe both?
She was starting to regret ever making the comment when he suddenly looked up at her and shrugged. “I don’t ever really have people spend the night here so maybe I’m relishing the opportunity to show off.”
Then he winked at her and she felt her whole body flush with warmth. What was he doing to her? The ability to think clearly just flew right out the window whenever he was near. This whole experience was beginning to become too much. She’d come into this expecting one thing but his actions last night and this morning were suggesting something else entirely. It was dangerously causing her to hope that what they had here held some fragile substance, that they could be more if they tried. Maybe he wanted to try as much as she did.
And she completely blamed what she said next on that feeling. It was that budding sanguineness that had her blurting it all out over the pleasantness of coffee, bacon and eggs. She hadn’t stopped to think that what she said might ruin it.
“Ben, what are we doing here?”
Immediately, wariness clouded his expression. “We’re having breakfast,” he said slowly as though he wasn’t sure why he needed to state the obvious.
That right there probably should have clued her in that she shouldn’t have said anything. But she suddenly needed to know the answer to her actual question. “No, I mean, what are we doing,Ben?”
Sitting back in his chair, he sighed and ran a hand over his face. “So we’re actually gonna have the ‘where is this relationship going’ conversation? I really didn’t think you’d be into that.”
That comment pulled her up short. What exactly did he think she was into? “What does that mean?”
“Look, you said yourself that we were just having fun while you’re here. When did that change and do you really wanna complicate it? Believe me, Sugar, helping you out with your book is far from a hardship. But if we go down this road it probably won’t end the way you want it to.”
Even though his response was the most realistic thing he could have said, for some reason she hadn’t been expecting him to actually say it. For as long as she could remember, she had always let her fanciful, romantic side get her into trouble. First with her failed engagement and then with her “Charming List” that wouldn’t let her give any real men of her acquaintance a chance. And here she was, doing it again with the most unlikely of people. The type of person that, up until now, she would have stayed far away from.
Feeling extremely foolish, she shook her head. “No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have even brought it up.” She stood and grabbed her purse, which she had tossed on the floor beside her chair. “But just in case, maybe you should take me home so that I don’t get confused again about where we stand.”
The look he gave her then didn’t make sense. It was…wounded, and somehow incredulous as though he hadn’t expected her to react this way. Well, what had he expected her to do? Stay, have breakfast, then maybe a quick fuck up against the counter before he dropped her off back at her motel room?
Yeah, so not happening.
“Emma,” he said, his whiskey-colored eyes filled with what looked like regret. He opened his mouth to continue and that surge of hope rushed through her again that he might change his mind. But then his jaw snapped shut, the strong muscle ticking there as he stood and that r
idiculous hope died.
“If that’s what you want, I’ll take you back to your motel.” He pinned her with an intense, steady look. There seemed to be a question or some other meaning in his stare but she just couldn’t interpret it. At this point she was done trying.
Nodding stiffly, she said, “That’s what I want.” She couldn’t stay here with him. If she did, it would just make this harder for her. Not to mention the tension that would fill the space between them the whole time they were together after this conversation.
The tension in the truck on the way back to her motel wasn’t much better, though. They wouldn’t look at each other and neither of them spoke, making the air in the cab feel almost oppressive. But she was glad he hadn’t taken his motorcycle. She wouldn’t have been able to handle sitting so close to him, wrapping her arms and legs around him to hold on. The reminder of what he felt like against her and that she would never feel it again, wasn’t necessary.
Oh, God, were her eyes actually starting to water? Hell no. She would not cry over him. Especially not right in front of him. In the end, he had been right anyway. She should have checked her emotions and pulled back the moment the lines began to blur for her. So it was better this way.
When he finally pulled into the parking lot of her motel, she muttered a thank you and a goodbye and jumped out of the truck before he could say or do anything.
Immature? Probably. But she couldn’t stand to be in that truck with him any longer than necessary. Stupidly, she was both relieved and disappointed when he made no move to follow her. Just waited until she got inside before driving away. Mostly, she was disappointed.
There was an ache right in the center of her chest and her stupid eyes wouldn’t stop with the waterworks. She didn’t try to hide it now. There was no point. But she refused to wallow in this feeling. If she was going to have a pure, genuine emotion, she was going to put it to good use.
First things first, though. She needed to get out of her clothes from last night. Ben’s scent still lingered on her skin, making what had just happened all too real. Right then, she decided that she would take a long, hot shower, put herself back together with a fresh change of clothes and take her pen, notebook and bruised emotions back to the lake.
The way she was feeling right now? Charlie was in for one hell of a fight scene.
Chapter Ten
The golden autumn sun had just started to set on the lake when Emma decided to pack up and make her way back to the room. The lake wasn’t far from the motel and she had been so amped up after Ben had dropped her off that she had walked over rather than driven. That little bit of exertion and the cool crisp air had done her a world of good. But once she had found her bench and sat down to write, the pain and hurt over what happened with Ben had turned into anger.
Turned out that had been a good thing. Her writing had never been so vivid and full of life. She had been able to pour all of those tumultuous emotions onto the page, use her story as an outlet. With it came a kind of peace that she only got from writing. The jumbled mess of her thoughts over her situation were pushed to the side and she concentrated solely on her characters and their conflict. It was freeing in a way that she had never truly appreciated before.
As she had gotten further and further into their world, she had lost track of time. It had been midmorning when she had arrived at the lake and when next she looked up, it was early evening.
Unfortunately, as she walked back to her room, the details of her own life came flooding back into painful focus. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how foolishly she had behaved that morning.
Essentially, she had been the one to ruin what they had. Things had been going just fine until she had gotten swept away by wishful thinking and opened her big mouth. It was just—the way he had been acting last night and even this morning had felt so different from the other times they had been together. He had been so tender and open with her. A man who just wanted some hot sex and could get it from her without the added effort, wouldn’t act like that, would he?”
Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair as she turned the last corner toward her motel. What the hell did she really know about men, anyway? It wasn’t like she had a whole lot of experience in that area.
The low rumbling of a male voice pulled her from her thoughts as she crossed the parking lot to her room. By this time, it had gotten dark and she struggled to see into the shadows cast by the street light where the voice had come from. It sounded like someone was having a drunken argument either on the phone or with himself. Emma didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.
Digging her keys out of her pocket, she held them in a white knuckled grip as she quickened her pace.
“Hey.” She heard the slurred voice call out behind her. Ignoring him, she kept walking. “Hey! Don’t walk away from me, bitch. I know you hear me. Or maybe spending so much time with Ben fucking Serano makes you as much of a dumbass as you are a slut.”
She knew she probably shouldn’t have turned around. She should have just kept going until she got safely into her room and locked the door behind her. Then maybe called the police. But she was just so sick and tired of the people in this town talking about her and Ben that she couldn’t help herself. She just reacted.
It wasn’t at all surprising to see Paul behind her leaning up against the most ostentatiously tricked out, bright orange pickup truck she had ever seen. If she couldn’t tell from his attitude, that truck told her all she needed to know about how badly he was compensating for something.
“Jesus, are you ever sober?” she asked sliding her keys through her fingers and making a tight fist.
“You know, there’s something I just don’t get.” He shoved away from the truck to amble toward her.
“I’m guessing there are probably a lot of things that you don’t get.” She kept her tone confident and nonchalant even as he advanced on her, causing her to back up onto the sidewalk in front of the motel.
Paul continued speaking as though she hadn’t said a thing. “Why do all you women flock to a worthless son of a bitch like Serano? He’s a punk piece of shit and I just don’t see the appeal.”
“If I didn’t know you better, Paul, I’d say you were jealous.”
Of all the things she could have said, that apparently was the completely wrong one. All at once, he rushed her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her back against the side of the building, knocking the wind out of her.
“I could never be jealous of that murderer.” The unadulterated rage on his face was frightening but not half so incapacitating as what he was saying.
The horrified shock must have shown in her expression because he let out a wheezing laugh, his foul, tequila-tainted breath fanning over her face. “What? You didn’t know that your lover-boy was a killer, did you, bitch?”
No, that wasn’t even within the realm of possibility. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“That bastard murdered my brother!” he shouted, genuine tears of anger and excruciating sadness falling down his cheeks. “Everybody knows it’s true. But he fucking got away with it.”
Emma felt like the world was spinning. Everything in her cried out that there was no way that what Paul was saying could be true. No way Ben was capable of something like that. But one look at Paul’s face told her he was undeniably sincere and heartbreakingly grief-stricken, drunk or no.
Before she could spin out of her head in disbelief, he was talking again.
“So now it’s his turn to suffer, the way I’ve been suffering all these years without my little brother. I’m gonna fuck up someone that he cares about.” He pulled her back from the wall only to slam her up against its hard surface again. “I’m gonna take away something that he wants more than anything else.”
It didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to realize he was talking about her. Though she was fairly certain that she wouldn’t be able to reason with him in his current state of inebriation, it
was on the tip of her tongue to correct him about how much Ben supposedly cared about her. To tell him that he would be wasting his effort with her. But as she opened her mouth to speak, Paul was ripped away from her and flung backward into the parking lot.
To her immense surprise, Adam stood between her and Paul, blocking him when he tried to get at Emma again. Once again Adam shoved Paul away, almost knocking him on his ass. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, Paul? What were you doing?”
Finally, Paul seemed winded and braced himself once again against his truck. “I’m gonna make your fucking brother pay for what he did, Serano,” he choked out.
“Oh, Christ.” Adam ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Seriously? You know you’re acting insane, right?” Though he sounded exasperated, it didn’t escape her notice that Adam kept his body between her and Paul at all times.
“You know what he did to Tim.” The quiet, all-consuming anger and pain vibrated out of Paul, making his whole body shake with it.
“No.” Adam shook his head. “I know what Tim did to himself. It was a terrible tragedy, I know that, man. But you know what happened to Tim wasn’t Ben’s fault. It still would have happened no matter if Ben had been there or not.”
“That’s bullshit!” Paul roared. “Ben was supposed to look after him! Tim wouldn’t have even been there in the first place if it wasn’t for that bastard.”
“Look,” Adam said in a pacifying tone. “You’ve obviously had one too many and you’re not thinking clearly. You’re entitled to your opinion about what happened in the past, but you don’t want to take it out on Emma, man. You don’t even know her.”
Paul looked past Adam to sneer at Emma as he gave her a once-over. “I know she’s fucking Ben. I know that he cares more for her than any of the other little skanks he taps. That’s enough for me.”
